I always hated returning to my bed alone. This was no exception. That night, it took me hours to finally drift off to sleep. When my dreams took me, they were filled with a soft glow swirling around a slender white-haired tomcat with amethyst eyes.
When I woke the next morning, I still felt the invigoration of Alan’s spell work. It manifested as a sense of warmth within my chest and body, and the air was filled with a hint of tangy incense. Closing my eyes and imagining Alan beside me was remarkably easy, but when I looked around the room, he was decidedly absent. I decided to fix that right away.
Thankfully, Alan was still worried about my health, so he made an appearance at breakfast. To check on me, he said, but judging by the warmth in his usually cool gaze, I figured he was just as anxious to seek my company.
“Did you wish to join me on my investigation today?” I asked, hoping that he would say yes.
“About the missing hedge witch?” asked Alan.
When I nodded, Alan agreed instantly. A couple of hours after we finished our castle-bound duties, we met in the main hall dressed for yet another adventure beyond the castle walls. Alan seemed more excited than usual. No sooner had he caught sight of me, he was out the doors and mounting his docile mare. Chuckling to myself, I followed suit.
“I’m just worried,” he admitted after I asked him about his curious mood. “I have a bad feeling. No amount of scrying would give me any sense of location, so I cast a few stones today, and it seems as though Fate has other plans for our quarry…”
“You think their fortunes have turned?”
“For the worse,” Alan said. “They may be dead.”
“Gods, I hope not.” I flicked my reins and slowly rode alongside Alan past the castle gates. “I had hoped to have a talk with her… about a great many things.” I winked at Alan. “You know how the ladies can’t say no to me.”
Alan rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes and huffed. It was so informal, that I was startled a little. Laughter bubbled up as I realized that Alan was truly beginning to melt under the infamous warmth of the Starr charisma.
Or perhaps I was exaggerating. Nevertheless, the time it took us to return to the nearby village where we had last searched for the mysterious potion maker passed by all too easily. I told Alan about the most recent messages and reports I had received from my soldiers. After scouring for the past couple of days for the potion maker, my scouts and soldiers had new leads to follow. There was hope that the potion maker might be located soon.
When we arrived in the miserable little village, the laborers, farmers, and housewives moved about quietly, scowling at us from under their hoods and caps. There was a distinct lack ofwelcome in the air, but Alan and I moved from door to door, knocking and asking questions about the potion maker with a bit more force than before. Few answered. Most balked and spoke what I could only assume were lies, based on their ludicrous nature. Others muttered under their breath.
No matter how much Alan assured them that the old crone would not be troubled or even taken away, we got scant responses from the villagers. The one elderly tom who spoke with us hinted at various hideouts in the forests that might house a wandering soul—lean-tos and deer blinds set up for poachers. That was exactly what my soldiers had learned. The castle’s soldiers had spread throughout the forest.
After two hours of huddling in smoky parlors and outdoors in front of pitiful fires, Alan and I were exhausted, but Alan refused to rest. He urged me to make contact with the captain, who I had stationed further up the road. Captain Tam, a feisty molly who had spent many years working at the castle, knew the surrounding environs like the back of her hand. She had already set up a barricade to cut off any attempt to escape by the one main road that wound through the forest.
As we approached the wooden barriers and the groups of soldiers that had gathered about on both sides of the muddy, snow-packed road, Captain Tam detached herself from what looked like a group of scouts.
“Bad news, Ser,” she said with a half-hearted salute.
“What is it, Tam? Lay it on me,” I said with a mildly joking tone, hoping to lighten the atmosphere a bit. “I’ve survived a moldy salmon sandwich and two pints of foul beer already. Not to mention Alan’s slave-driving ways. I can take it.”
Tam glanced at Alan and grinned then. Alan, dismounting as well, drew close to hear Tam’s news. The dogs had found a body. An elderly molly. It was being brought in for inspection. Tamhad already dispatched a messenger to the castle, calling for Aileen and another field medic for analysis of the body.
“But if High Mage Carwick is here, beggin’ your pardon, your Mageness,”
“Just Carwick is fine,” Alan said.
“Carwick. If Carwick don’t mind, he can take a gander if he pleases.”
At the news, Alan’s face had sobered instantly. His worst fears had come true, but I could tell that he was glad to be there for the inspection. Tam escorted us to a nearby hut that the group had commandeered. Before the relative warmth of a blazing hearth, Alan and I downed soup and waited for the arrival of the body and the others.
An hour later, we were all grouped around a table, where an elderly crone had been laid out. She was quite dead. Had been dead for days, I guessed. Judging by the cuts on her cloak and the deep red stains… violently stabbed. I shook my head. No doubt the elderly molly had proved to be a liability, and the scoundrels had simply decided to dispose of her. A terrible end for someone caught up in a plot they probably barely comprehended.
Alan, Aileen, and the field medics came to similar conclusions—death by stabbing. The molly had died almost instantly. Other items taken from the scene included two daggers encrusted with blood iced over, a tattered pack filled with herbs and damp scrolls, and a small, silver hand sickle.
“The hand sickle suggests that this one is a potion maker. That and the pack,” Aileen noted.
“Aye, but they may have simply been placed by her to give us the assumption,” the field medic pointed out.
“Ah, true.” Alan nodded, but then he lifted one hand and gestured to what he’d noticed. “We can see here, staining about the cuticles. And if you smell…”
“Not that I can smell much here beyond dead molly,” grunted Captain Tam.
“If you smell, you can scent a variety of herbs. Whoever this molly was, she worked with herbs. The nick on her thumb there, suggests the use of cutting objects… and here…” Alan carefully turned back the high collar of the dark dress beneath her cloak. “If she made potions… ah. We have a silver necklace with Tala’s sigil. Another clue, potential clue, pointing to herbalist, hedge witch… And at her belt…”
