Satisfied with the price, Greal told the young men to climb up and carefully remove the window for me. I had come to the abbey in my small wagon, and there was room for the window. It all seemed like fate had meant for it to be, for not long after I was driving my team back across the valley to my parish home.

Within a week, I had hired some men of my own to come to the church and help me install the window high above the floor of the sanctuary. There I knew it would bring brilliant light down upon the worshipers during each Binding and Covenant, our morning and evening rituals. The window would glorify Oghma as well as the faith of Loremaster High Tessen. I was gladdened. Once it was in place, I noticed that young Pheslan, my own seeker, was transfixed by the window.

“It’s so wonderful,” he said, “and yet so odd.”

I looked up at the window myself, and then at the portly Pheslan. “Odd?”

“Forgive me, brother, I mean no disrespect. It is not odd in an ill fashion. It’s just… the pattern. Each time I look at it I see something new. Some different facet to the way the glass has been fitted, or some new way the light plays upon the angles. Yes, that’s it. It is the angles that are so fascinating.”

Looking at the window again, I had to admit that he was right. It was fascinating.

“The workmanship of those days has known no equal since,” I said, knowing that such was something that elders always said to the young. I smiled at the thought, and then at the boy as we both bathed in the blessing of sunlight and looked at the beauty of the rose window.

As the next few weeks passed, I became concerned with other things. Oghma, the Lord of Knowledge and the Wise God, bids his servants to spread information and dispense learning as well as watch over the wellbeing of the worshipers as we guide them toward enlightenment. Thus, the duties of a parish priest are legion, but I suppose that this is not the time to describe them. Let it suffice to say that I was preoccupied-so much so that I paid little attention to the fact that young Pheslan was still enraptured with the rose window. One night, after Covenant, we finished our duties and sat down to our simple meal. He told me that he had seen something strange in the window. I listened only halfheartedly, for I was very tired.

“It must be within the pattern of the glass, or the facets,” he explained. We sat at a small wooden table in the room that lies between our sleeping chambers at the back of the church. It was dark, the only light coming from a lamp on the table at the center of’ our meager feast.

“What must?” I said, my mouth full of bread.

The young acolyte was too agitated to eat. “As I said, brother,” he said, “there were things that seemed to move in the window as the sun set.”

“You mean the light played upon the glass,” I said, swallowing.

“Yes, probably.” His eyes lowered.

“What do mean, ‘probably”?”

“Well, it seemed so real,” he replied, looking into my eyes. “They moved.”

“What moved?”

“The images in the window. It was as though something was on the other side.”

‘Perhaps there was something on the other side, Pheslan.” I was becoming slightly irritated now. “A bird?”

“But I went outside and looked,” he said. “There was nothing.”

I drank the last bit from my cup and stood. “Then it was indeed the light of the setting sun playing upon the glass,” I concluded. “Enough now, Pheslan. It is time for bed.”

With that we retired. Pheslan was nothing if not obedient. It makes me.

Well, let me finish the tale first.

Two more days passed, and Pheslan said nothing more about the window. He was quiet, and slow to finish his duties. I knew I needed to talk to him, but I was just too busy. Later, there would be time.

The night of the second day, after retiring, I heard a strange noise. I had been reading in bed as I often did before blowing out my lamp and going to sleep. I heard the noise again. It sounded as if it was coming from outside the church. Perhaps someone was knocking at the door. I placed my marker in the book, threw the blankets back and made my way to the front of the church in my nightclothes. The sound came again, it struck me as though something was scratching on the outside wall of the building.

The stone floor was cold on my bare feet so I hurried through the dark, only my intimate knowledge of the place keeping me from bumping into anything until I entered the sanctuary. There, the light of the full moon shone through the rose window lighting my way to the narthex and the door.

Although there are dangers in the night, even in our peaceful valley, I never bolted the door. The church should always be open, I believed, always there to we!come the poor as well as those in need of knowledge, Oghma’s sacred gift. I opened the door and looked out into the dark night. A bitter wind blew dead, brown leaves all around the yard in front of the church.

I could see nothing out of the ordinary.

Again, I heard the scraping. Something was outside scraping against the stone walls of the church. A tree? It had sounded big, so I had thought it best to check. Despite my lack of shoes, a cloak, or a light, I went outside. As I made my circuit of the building I saw nothing. No tree grew so close as to have its branches move against the walls. My eyes spotted no person or animal that could have done it, but my night vision is poor, and it was very dark.

Yet had there not been the light of the full moon coming through the rose window? I looked up. The clouds were thick. Besides, I knew very well-now that my wits were about me-that there was no full moon tonight.

I went back inside. Yes, both the sanctuary and nave were full of cool, blue-tinted light and it shone through the rose window. As I looked up at the window, I knew I had to check. So, steeling myself against the cold, I returned to the outside.

No light. I hurried around to the north side of the church, the side that held the rose window. No light. I looked up at the window but it looked perfectly normal, or at least as far as I could see in the dark.

Again, I returned to the sanctuary. Yes, it was still filled with light (was it dimmer now?). I looked up at the window, and then down at the lighted church. As I stood there, between the sets of wooden pews in the nave leading up to the altar, the light cast a shadow from the window all around me. To my horror, it was not the rose-shaped shadow it should have been, but that of some great inhuman beast! As I looked down at my feet, I saw that I stood directly in the gaping mouth of the creature’s shadow.

I ran. Yelling for Pheslan, I rushed to the back of the church. He came out of his room, his eyes filled with alarm and sleep. Without a word, I grabbed the blank scroll that served as a symbol of Oghma’s might from the night stand and led him into the nave.

All was dark.

“Get a light,” I commanded with a whisper.

“What is it?”

“Get a light!”

He lit one of the many candles surrounding the altar and brought it forward. It occurs to me now that Pheslan knew the church as well as I did, for he had found the flint in the dark to strike that light. Ah, Pheslan.

In any event, the candle’s light illuminated much of the room, albeit dimly. I looked around carefully, first at the floor where the shadow had been, and then up at the window.

“Please, Brother,” Pheslan said, “tell me what it is.”

“I thought I saw something,” I said carefully-still looking around.

He replied without hesitation. “In the window?”