Is everyone else done asking questions of little relevance to the advancement of scholarship? Yes? In that case she will proceed with her interview.

"What is your current understanding of Iomedae's teachings on torture?"

"Against, with some exceptions I don't know how to generalize for flogging as a military punishment."

Nenio will enthusiastically continue interviewing him! It wonderful to finally have a reliable source of information about Cheliax and Asmodeanism.

And eventually, someone else knocks on the door with significantly more urgency than the last messenger.

What is it now.

This messenger is panting from sprinting to Blai's room as fast as he could. "Your companion, Ser Seelah — we spotted her riding back towards Kenabres, looked barely conscious — we sent our clerics, but I thought you should know — there was a man with her, I don't know his name—"

- yep, okay, "Which direction?" he asks, striding out of the room.

"Northeast of here, I can show you—"

It is not completely lost on Blai that this might be some kind of trick on this guy's part or for which he's a patsy. Will his party be following him or has he lost them all with the Torture Syllabus.

Ember, Thall, and Lann are following him. Woljif and Count Arendae aren't. Nenio is looking indecisively between them, but hasn't moved to leave.

...of all people Nenio isn't coming??

...whatever. This subgroup achieves the "do not walk into a weird situation alone" desideratum without even leaving the remainder, themselves, alone. Hopefully Woljif doesn't get beheaded but there is no way to constructively warn him. Onward to see what's up with Seelah.

(She does eventually resolve her indecision in the direction of concluding that the possibility of gathering novel information for her encyclopedia outweighs the comparative difficulty of conducting an interview.)

Seelah, one of the two friends she left with, and Seelah's horse are clustered around a Sarenrite cleric. Their actual injuries have mostly been healed by now, but the healing magic has done absolutely nothing about the blood they're covered in. 

"Blai — I mean, Knight-Commander — have you seen Curl, or Jannah—"

"He won't have," says the man she's with. "They're traitors, not idiots, there's no reason for them to come back."

"Jannah might."

He gives her a look of withering skepticism.

"I've seen neither. Report."

"The three of us and Valor found the ring, except it was being guarded by a quasit, and the quasit seemed to want to treat it like some kind of game — it could have just flown away, but instead it kept flying just out of reach and taunting us. Quasits aren't that scary, so we chased it down and killed it, except then Curl showed up and stole the ring before we could get it. And Elan swung his sword at him, striking to kill, but I stepped between them, I thought it had to be some sort of misunderstanding. But apparently it wasn't, because the next thing he did — Curl, I mean — was summon a pack of Babau and teleport away. Jannah got scared and ran, but the two of us stayed to fight. And I thought we might die there — it was only me still standing, barely managing to keep myself upright, and still two babaus left — but then their attacks... stopped hurting me? I don't know how to explain it. So I finished off the last two, and spent my Lay On Hands making sure everyone was conscious, and we came back as fast as we could."

"I could tell he was casting a summoning spell, I was trying to interrupt it."

"How fascinating! Summoning babaus takes quite powerful magic. Were you aware he was such an accomplished spellcaster?"

"No! I didn't know he was a caster at all!"

"Did he definitely cast it himself or did he perhaps have a scroll or something?"

"I didn't see a scroll or a wand or anything like that. But I know sometimes powerful mages have other items that can cast spells for them, if he had a magic hat that could summon babau I wouldn't have recognized it."

"I didn't see one either, or any components — I recognized the spell from the gesture, summoning spells all start the same way."

"Strictly speaking that is untrue when considering the more obscure ones. However, it appears that in this case your deduction was correct, so I commend you for your greater-than-typical knowledge of the arcane arts."