by Guy Antibes
There weren’t many tables, but then there weren’t many patrons yet. Harrison sat at a table with Sam, summoning a woman.
“Are you the innkeeper’s wife?”
“Me?” the woman said, pointing to herself. “Not at all. Mr. Prassat keeps his lady upstairs. Few have seen her. She doesn’t come down to the kitchen or the common room.”
Harrison shrugged. “What is for dinner?”
“A hunter brought in a boar this morning, so pork stew. Ale?”
“For me and something watered for Sam, here.”
The woman smiled. “Nice to meet you, Sam.” She left them.
“At least the son kept the server. She has been here since I started to visit Fussel’s Ford,” Harrison said.
“Isn’t it odd the owner’s wife hasn’t shown her face?”
Harrison looked up at the ceiling. “It might not be the oddest thing we encounter on our tour. Some people moving from the outside into a village become instant recluses. She might hate village life. I know that Nad Prassat never mentioned a son, so I would imagine the innkeeper wasn’t born in Fussel’s Ford.”
Sam sat back and wondered. He would do some wandering around the village after he had spent some time gathering herbs.
The food was hearty, Harrison had said. Sam would have used a different word, but he went to his room filled-up. He grabbed his notebook and sat at the small table in his room after lighting the lamp. He wrote down the facts, as he knew them, including descriptions of the innkeeper, the older man, the herbs, and Betti, the healer. The perpetrator was a pollen magician of a high order, Harrison had said. Sam didn’t expect ex-miners to be able to create the straw pouch as the healer described it to him.
Sam looked at the cloth bag holding the fake straw pouch. He and Emmy would find alm’s wort right after lunch. He looked over his notes before he fetched his dog. He looked forward to doing some snooping the next day.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
~
A RMED WITH A SWORD AND HIS GOLD-TIPPED WAND, Sam headed out to the pond, where they had found the mendica and podica plots. He paced off the plots and noted the size of each in his book. He took a handful of alms wort and let Emmy sniff.
She lifted her head up in the air before taking off up one of the slopes that surrounded the pond. Sam followed and found her digging at a different plot. The little plants that had survived were only an inch or two high. Many of them hadn’t taken to the plot. He grabbed a wide leaf of a nearby plant, wrapped one of the surviving seedlings, and tucked it into one of the bags so Harrison could make sure it was alms wort.
This plot was as large as the others. Sam took a dead branch and began to scratch out Emmy’s huge paw prints, and then he noticed footprints. He found that there were two sets, other than his own. He measured each and sketched the prints. Perhaps they might help them find the drug makers, now that he knew there was more than one.
They returned to the other plots. Sam found the same sets of footprints along with Harrison’s, who had large feet, and his own. He left the prints around the pond remain. Sam’s investigation hadn’t taken long, so he began consulting his notebook and began to gather what he could find of the herbs Harrison had noted for him.
With his bags full and his stomach beginning to complain that it was getting close to dinnertime, the pair of them descended down from the woods. Sam tucked the herbs into the wagon and cleaned his shoes and hid his weapons in his room before he stepped inside the inn to get some dinner. Harrison and Betti were already at a table. It appeared that Sam was late to join them as he looked at their mostly empty plates.
“Looks like I’ll eat alone,” he said, standing in front of them.
“Sit. Tell us what you found,” Harrison said. “It’s better to talk while you are waiting for your food. It makes the wait shorter.”
The serving woman that Harrison knew walked up. “A little late, young man?”
Sam looked up. “I’ll have anything that is good.”
The woman smiled, not knowing why Sam looked distressed. “What if we don’t have anything that is good?”
“Then whatever is least bad,” Sam said. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” the woman said as she walked away.
“I found, or I should say Emmy found, the alms wort plot. I brought home a sample. It doesn’t like growing where they put the plot. Half the seedlings were dead.”
“The altitude,” Betti said.
Sam thought about it. “Oh, that’s why plants changed as we went into the mountains?”
Harrison nodded. “Remember the shepherd’s vale with the white-barked trees? Those trees begin to grow where the vale is, and they don’t do well, even lower in Riverville.”
Sam nodded. It seemed logical. “Does pollen change with the altitude?”
“Not that I know of,” Betti said. “I heard that it is thinner above water. I learned that there are areas in the ocean where barely any pollen exists.”
“Some land animals and insects can manipulate pollen, but as far as I know, sea creatures don’t,” Harrison said.
Sam tucked that little piece of knowledge away. “I found two sets of footprints in all three plots and sketched them out.” He didn’t want to open his book at the table with a few people eating at the inn for lunch. “One has a cracked heel, and the other is smaller than the first, but that print didn’t have a sole. Maybe it was a pollen slipper.”
“Good work,” his friend said. “Did you gather more herbs?”
“I did. You can inspect them while I eat. I imagine you’ll be going back to the clinic for evening appointments?”
Betti looked at the clock on the inn’s wall. “We are late already. Have a productive evening. I’ll take whatever herbs that Harrison doesn’t want to lug around with him.”
The pair left him just before his dinner arrived. The innkeeper served it and sat down at the table.
“Have you been up in the hills?”
“Collecting herbs. Harrison Dimple, my companion, is a traveling healer. He inspects the villages and works with the local healers during the summers, if you didn’t know. This is my herb book,” Sam said patting his notebook on the table.
The man frowned. “I wondered why he was so friendly with Betti, our healer. He seems to be quite friendly with everyone, including me.”
Sam grinned. “That is his way. He’s a bit of a recluse. He lives just outside Cherryton during the rest of the seasons but takes this trip every summer. I guess he saves his friendliness for traveling. I’m a helper this year. He generally comes alone.”
“Is that his dog, or is it really yours?”
“Mine. I paid for her. She joined us in Mountain View.”
The innkeeper nodded. “Will you be staying here very long? Dimple said he was only staying three or four days.”
“That’s all. We have to keep moving to make it through all the mountain villages and a few towns, I guess. It has been more exciting than I thought,” Sam said.
“How so?” The innkeeper leaned forward.
“I found Emmy. We were attacked and had to fight off brigands. Harrison used to be a soldier, but he turned to healing, so our sting was probably unexpected.”
“I see. Ex-soldier. Maybe that is why he seems more formidable than a common healer. Does he report his findings to anyone?”
“Someone in Baskin, I believe. I don’t know who. I needed to get out of Cherryton, so this trip was a good solution for me.”
The innkeeper smiled, but Sam didn’t like the smile. “Did you do something wrong?” the man said.
Sam thought the man had just crossed the line to being too nosy. “Family problems,” Sam said. “I’ll probably follow my older brother to Baskin at the end of summer. I don’t think I’ll be welcome to secure an apprenticeship in Cherryton.”
“Ah. You are that age.” The man nodded knowingly, then rose and brushed off his apron. “Enjoy your meal,” he said. He turned and walked back to the kitchen.
Sam began to eat, now that the innkeeper had left. Harrison was much better at interrogating people than that man. It seemed that an accusation hung behind his every question. Sam pounded his fist on his thigh. He should have been doing the questioning, not the innkeeper, if he was to do proper snooping.
At least dinner tasted better than the slop he’d been served the night before. He went back to the kitchen. The innkeeper wasn’t around, so he pressed his lips together and asked the server for meat scraps for Emmy. She gave him a generous amount.
Emmy tore into the raw and cooked meat and downed half a bucket of water. Sam brushed the dog off a bit, pleased that Emmy’s coat was smoothing out.
Harrison was late, again. So Sam let his friend sleep in. He fed Emmy some more scraps before they set off for the woods on the other side of the village. They spent most of the early morning finding a few of the herbs, but villagers cultivated more of that side of the village, which left less for wild foliage. Sam managed to fill up one sack before he decided to return.
They reached the inn, and Emmy barked at him when he reached out to let the wagon gate down. He touched something that exploded, throwing him back out into the stableyard. His body felt like someone had throttled him before he sank into blackness.
~
Something wet and smelly rubbed Sam’s face as he opened his eyes, looking up at the clouds dotting the sky. He struggled to remember what had happened, and gradually, his wits began to return as a few faces appeared above him.
“Are you all right?” the woman server from the inn said. “There was a loud bang.”
Sam accepted her help sitting up. The back of the wagon was blackened. Herbs littered the stableyard, and Emmy stood next to him, panting with her tongue now lolling out of her mouth, rather than washing his face. His wits finally returned.
He tested out his arms and rose to his feet. His body was sore and probably bruised, but he had survived the explosion. His eyes grew as they searched the stableyard looking for his notebook, but found it underneath him, intact.
The innkeeper walked up. “Can you stand?”
Sam nodded. “I’m pretty sure I can,” he said.
The man helped him to his feet, and Sam winced as he put pressure on his left foot and hobbled to the wagon. The bag of alms wort was gone, of course. The drug dealers had given him quite a spanking. That must have been a real ward.
A few men and the server helped Sam collect his herbs before leaving Emmy and him alone in the stableyard.
He kept his wand but hid the sword in his room before setting across Fussel’s Ford. He decided to hobble through the village and get his foot treated at Betti’s clinic, and he limped into the building and sat on one of the four chairs in the tiny lobby.
“Sam!” Betti said. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
He told the healer what had happened and had to repeat his story when Harrison walked into the lobby. Betti looked at his ankle.
“It’s just twisted. You might be able to walk it out, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend the rest of the day in bed with your foot elevated.”
Sam frowned. “I would have done that myself,” he said.
“But you didn’t,” Betti said, breezily.
“I’m sorry about the alms wort,” Sam said.
“Not your fault,” she said. “I know a spot not far to the east where it grows. I’ll be gone overnight, but I don’t need the herb very often. Perhaps I’ll go next week.” Betti sighed and raised her eyebrows. “Time for you to leave. A few more real patients just walked in.”
Sam thanked her. Emmy waited patiently outside and walked beside Sam to the inn. She followed him into his room and lay down on the rug, with her head over her paws.
After setting up a prop with his bag, Sam took a moment to find a good position and closed his eyes. His mind began to focus on his day’s activities. So far he could see two people who might have done such a thing. It would depend if Harrison had been with Betti all day or not. The innkeeper had pressed him with too many questions. That was suspicious, but Betti was the only person who knew that he couldn’t see pollen.
Sam wished he knew if the ward had been made to match the back of the wagon. Perhaps someone else might have done it, but they would have had to know about Harrison being a healer and carrying alms wort. Both Betti and the innkeeper had the means to process the drug. Sam wondered why each would do such a thing. Money, obviously. Looking around the village, it looked like not much of it changed hands. The innkeeper had to have had funded the new rooms with something, but that might indicate he had acquired his funds before he showed up in Fussel’s Ford.
His snooping at the Cherryton school wasn’t as complicated as this, although he had been assaulted in both cases. He wondered if that often happened to snoopers. It had happened to him, and Sam would have to be a bit more careful in Fussel’s Ford. It rankled him to have to push on things with his wand to detect a ward, but that was what he’d have to do.
Sam woke with Harrison squeezing on his elevated big toe.
“Sleep is good,” his friend said. “What do you think happened? It looked like a ward to me.”
“Did you see the wagon before you returned to the healer’s clinic?”
“I’ll have to ask Betti. She left that way to look at Emmy while I talked to the innkeeper.”
“The man asked a lot of questions when he served my lunch. Who I was, who you were, why were we here? No one has seen his family. Maybe he makes drugs upstairs.”
“Maybe. He is an inquisitive fellow. Any other ideas?”
Sam sat up. “Betti. If she’s a healer, she has pollen abilities. She knows herbs. She had the opportunity to make an explosive ward and knew that you had alms wort.”
Harrison pursed his lips. “The innkeeper might have gone through our wagon,” he said.
“He probably goes through everyone’s things, seeing how nosy he is,” Sam said. “It might be someone else we haven’t met.”
“Unless Betti and the innkeeper are working together; there are two, right?”
“At least two,” Sam said. “Maybe I should talk to some of the ex-miners. I might run into the man whom I saw on the first day. Are there other drug patients?”
“Drugs or drunks,” Harrison said. “I haven’t seen any patients whose symptoms I would associate with advanced drug use, but then, why would they show up at the clinic? Do you need me to accompany you?”
“I’ll go armed, plus I have Emmy. She barked before I touched the ward, so maybe she can sense if there is something wrong. If there is, I’ll use my wand. If I run into a crazed, drug-addled person, she would also be useful in discouraging him—”
“Or her,” Harrison said. “Do that. I’ll be spending one more day helping Betti.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
~
S AM’S ANKLE FELT A LITTLE TENDER, but he walked without a limp. He reached a dusty lane leading towards a row of cottages where miners lived. He walked up to the first door and knocked. His stomach flipped a little with nerves. He hadn’t done anything like this before.
“You will protect me. Right, Emmy?”
The dog barked, but Sam imagined she barked whenever Sam asked her a direct question.
“Is the sky black?” he asked.
Emmy barked, bringing a smile to Sam’s sunlit face.
A woman came to the door. She held a crying toddler. “What is it?” she said.
“I’m with the visiting healer,” Sam said, his story rehearsed during breakfast with Harrison. “We noticed a man that might have been intoxicated with alcohol or an herb potion. He would like to examine him.”
“Nobody is like that in this house. My husband is off to the mines this week.”
The little child arched his back and wailed.
“Maybe my dog might distract him.”
“Dog?” the woman asked.
“Here, Emmy.”
The dog, sniffing something by the side of the house w
alked up, panting with a dog smile.
“That monster will eat Timmy up,” she said.
The little boy stopped crying and held his hand out towards Emmy.
“Here, I’ll make sure Emmy doesn’t do anything untoward.” He put out his hands, and the toddler reached out. Sam put the child on Emmy as if he was riding a horse. The little boy giggled and tugged on Emmy’s ear, but the dog kept smiling. The boy grabbed the loose skin and made riding motions.
“Momma, momma, doggie,” he said squealing with joy.
“That’s enough,” the mother said.
Sam gave her son back, and he toddled back into the house.
“He’s been a bit out of sorts today, and that brought him right around,” the woman said with a smile this time. “As far as miners not looking too good, you might check the third house down and the last on the row. They are old retired miners and haven’t been around as often lately.”
Sam smiled. “Thank you. I hope your son is happy for the rest of the day.”
“That won’t happen, but he’s happy for now. That’s good enough for me. Good day.”
His first inquiry wasn’t so bad. He knocked on the second door, but no one answered. He knocked on the next door and heard someone crashing about inside. Emmy barked towards the back. Sam spotted the same person who had been lurking by the wagon, so he gave chase.
He plunged into the woods about thirty paces away, but with Sam running after the man, the dog gave chase and soon stopped the fugitive, if that was what he was. Sam arrived, feeling his ankle pulsate with pain.
“Why did you run? I just have a couple of questions to ask.” Sam said. He looked down at the man’s bare feet that didn’t quite touch the ground, guessing he wore pollen slippers. He would have to measure those.
“I don’t want to answer any of your questions,” the man said.
Sam took a breath. “I’ll pay you for answers.”
