(Spoken late at night, near a cozy fire in Belegost, to Llwyd, Mariam, and Ryde.)
All right, I'll tell you of it. But gather closely round, for what I have to speak of should not be repeated elsewhere. Some of my brethren would be distressed that I shared this, especially with those not of the Church. And some who call themselves my brothers are regrettably prone to violence.
The vision came over me as we stood outside the shrine to Sagron near Banghall-on-the Deeping. The rest of you stood beside me, yet as far as I can tell, what to me required at least an hour passed in no time at all to you. Mysterious are the ways of the Divine.
I walked alone through a forest, towards a tall and beautiful mountain, topped by a double crag. The glens were rich and green and deep, dappled in sunlight. The only sounds to be heard were the calls of nightingales and finches and bellbirds, calling softly to one another through the trees, and the quiet chuckling of the occasional small stream jumping over rocks and burbling through shallow little pools.
Though I did not walk quickly, I came to the foot of the mountain faster than I ought, as if this were a dream and time passed oddly. Yet I knew this was no dream, though I cannot explain how. The mountain itself was vast, reaching up to touch the sky, but my eye was drawn to the base. There, tucked between the arms of a narrow valley, was a stone building, finely crafted of white marble, bearing the dome and sigils of a chapter house of the Brothers of Epimetrius.
I passed within in a twinkling, though I did not move, and found myself passing through a great and vasty hall leading to a long, curving staircase. The balustrades of the staircase were carven phoenixes, again in white marble, but the tile of the floor and the steps was cunning inlay, in white and black marble flecked with gold, of serpents. Serpents, writhing and twisting everywhere, so that wherever you stepped, your foot found the head of one. Admirable symbolism, of course: evil lurking everywhere, but the assurance that it was both your duty and your capacity to crush the evils your path crossed -- and yet, in so doing you could not clear the path of serpents for those behind you.
I climbed the stairs for a day, or a moment (it does not matter which). At the top, they led to a large room with a domed roof of gold. At the center of the room lay a sarcophagus, of marble, with the top closed. And I felt a joy bathing me such as I have rarely felt, for I knew that I had come to a place that the brothers speak of only in whispers. I stood in the temple where Epimetrius sleeps, awaiting Mithras' call. I wondered that the temple's guardians had not appeared in my vision, for I know that generations of our finest have guarded that temple, whose location is one of the deepest and holiest secrets of Father Church.
I did not see him, but he spoke to me, in a deep booming voice that shook every fiber of my body, yet I do not think it made a sound that a mouse could have heard in the room. He said "You Will Come To ME", and the vision faded, and I found myself back on the shrine grounds in the northlands, and had to blink to remember where I was. Yet I imagined nothing, for clutched in my hand was a tiny crystalline phoenix, caught upon a silver chain, which I have worn from that day to this.
I was of two minds whether to speak of this, so I held my counsel for a time. The protection of the sleeping bodies of Epimetrius and Sagron is the highest and holiest duty that we of the Church undertake. Most of the brothers who are selected for that assignment serve out their lives in those temples, that their location may remain secret from any who would desecrate them, or worse. Those of us who carry their Light elsewhere do not know where they are, though they are rumored to lie within Landsrue, less we reveal it to the minions of Set.
Albidar, I have read, has never gained the benifice of a resting place, as his quest for vengeance causes him to wander mortal paths forever. Some say that he is doing so out of eternal vigilance, and others that it is his doom for pursuing vengeance for its own sake. Regardless, there is no sacred tomb for him, and his adherents ever wander the roads and paths of the world.
I have searched my heart, and chosen to speak of it to you few, for I am far from home, have a heavy duty laid upon me, and am in need of aid. I know not whether you desire to accompany me, or whether you will be permitted to go the entire distance in any case, but those choices are yours. No doubt, if the Light does not will that you should reach a spot of such Sanctity, you shall not. In such circumstance, I may need to account for revealing this secret to you, but I cannot in conscience fear to trust, or I am no better than those we oppose.