Mikhail was sick, undoubtably. Rutger had said that he was infected with blood spores, a deadly poison used by those from the Deep. Perhaps that was why Kel was being trained... As a replacement for the dwarf. Mikhail had survived a miraculous two decades with the disease, the longest one can be excected to survive is a mere two years, a matter of days if left untreated.
Kel had also executed a flawless assassination of a pair of brothers, and destroyed their stash of luhix, a drug that seemed to turn the members of their cult rabid. However, on his way out, he encountered an elven assassin. Kel was shot in the shoulder by a poisoned arrow, but managed to defeat the assassin by lighting the tower he had been hiding in on fire. The assassin escaped, but Kel found one of his arrows left behind. Perhaps the arrow could be used to track down the assassin... Nobody gets away with sticking an arrow in Kelvaron.