I’ve kept busy during the wait, though. NaShae brought a ream of notes for Miri to look at, which have been keeping her absorbed at her desk for days now. The notes, as I understand it, are from the arcane research that NaShae’s mother was working on. It seems that she blundered and somehow contracted a disease, and will die--unpleasantly; Miri said there’s a chance she may become an undead--unless a cure is developed. She’s found one of the elements, as she put it, of the cure to be part of a mummy. The others she’s still working on.

This is where I come in. We met Kywyn and NaShae for lunch, where Miri brought them up on what she’d found so far--namely, the need for a mummy. Miri is extremely busy; figuring out these notes is just the beginning. So I volunteered to research where we might find a mummy near the city, starting with the Church’s library. My only real lead there was a book written by a brother named Bakarr. He found a tomb on a butte containing a mummified dwarf in the Western Desert. The sepulcher, as he describes it, was covered with reliefs that told of the history of the kingdom the Butte Dwarf, as he named the occupant of the tomb, came from. Bakarr considered it enough to write a whole speculative history on this long-gone kingdom. He seems to me to foolishly jump to many conclusions about the kingdom, but the tomb he found did contain a mummy, and he may be right about the entire country interring their dead in that way. It’s the best we have so far.

But the desert is a long way away. Bakarr’s book has led me to believe it may be as much as a week’s journey away, and the sources I looked over at the Temple haven’t told me anything otherwise so far, which isn’t terribly encouraging. NaShae and Kywyn helped me out there yesterday, and I’ll meet them there again tomorrow to continue looking.

Bakarr believed that the tomb had been raided before he got there, so there’s a chance it once had grave goods in it. This would be beneficial for us, trying to raise the gold to help out Alissa. But I obviously don’t feel comfortable grave-robbing. It might make it easier if the grave in question was actually inhabited by an unliving mummy. It occurs to me that such a tomb might be untouched, due to previous grave-robbers being killed by the creature inside. It could be a worthy task to lay it to rest. I want to find out more about these creatures themselves, specifically, how dangerous they could be. Perhaps Jager knew something, but he’s gone.

Now it’s late. Both Miri and myself need rest with what we’re keeping busy with.