The room itself was furnished with a four-poster bed and wardrobe, a small table and a mirror bordered by bronze leaves. The bed was unmade, the linen sheets crumpled, the pale blue drapes suspended from the top of its frame hanging half shut. The wardrobe door was open as well. A stool set before a small fireplace had been overturned.
“Looks to me like there was a struggle,” Logan said as soon as he entered.
“Nonsense,” Abelard said. “Lady Kathryn was simply… having difficulty becoming accustomed to her new estates. To be thrown from a sheltered life in Highmont to a northern frontier is difficult.”
“The lady took her duties very seriously, sirs,” Matron Mildred added. “I would often find her greatly distressed. Especially before…” She trailed off.
“Before she disappeared?” Ulma prompted. Mildred nodded down at the dwarf.
“You think her fragile mental state in the days leading up to her vanishing was solely caused by her duties as the mistress of Fallowhearth?” Logan asked Abelard. “Had she not been fulfilling her role here for almost a year by that point?”
“Fallowhearth is not Highmont, or Frostgate,” Abelard said. “Until you have lived here and experienced the difficulties of ruling yourself, I would not hurry to judge what Lady Kathryn was thinking. This is why the heirs of the barony are instated to Upper Forthyn when they come of age. If they can rule in the north, they can rule everywhere. The long winters, the poor harvests, dealing with the clans when they pass through, negotiating with the Dunwarr dwarfs to the north… it is no easy place to govern.”
As Abelard spoke, Durik had moved to the side of the bed. He was only half listening to the seneschal’s verbose observations, his mind focused on hunting for the tiny telltale signs he had no doubt Abelard and his staff had overlooked. He drew the drapes back and bent over it, examining the covers. He could sense both Abelard and Mildred’s displeasure at having a large orc inspect the last place Forthyn’s heir had been seen alive, but he had no time for their bigotry. There was something here. He could feel it in his bones.
There was nothing in the bed save for a few strands of dark hair, which Durik left undisturbed. He moved over to her wardrobe, opening the door fully and looking inside.
“What was the last thing Lady Kathryn was seen wearing?” he asked, directing the question at Mildred.
“Her night gown, I think,” she answered with a slight frown.
“You think?”
“It was a month ago!”
Durik grunted noncommittally, looking through the arrayed garments. The cupboard didn’t look half full. And kidnap victims didn’t usually have the luxury of packing. He kept the thought to himself, turning back to Mildred.
“Do you have an inventory of her clothing?” he asked.
“No.”
“So, you wouldn’t know if any was missing? Her wardrobe seems half empty.”
“Are you expecting her to jump out of the cupboard, orc?” Abelard demanded.
“No,” Durik said simply. “And my name isn’t ‘orc,’ human.”
Abelard glared at Durik but made no response as the pathfinder went on. “You said one of the town’s tomb-keepers was the last person to see her?”
“So he claims.”
“Where was that?”
“Believe it or not, the cemetery. It is attached to Fallowhearth’s Shrine of Nordros.”
“We really must be in the north if they’re openly worshiping the god of necromancy,” Logan said dispassionately.
“Nordros isn’t the god of necromancy,” Ulma said in an exasperated voice. “He’s the god of death and winter. Plenty of people worship him in the north, especially in Upper Forthyn.”
Logan didn’t voice his thoughts on such cults, though his face spelt out his opinions clearly enough. Durik likewise didn’t share a view on the servants of Nordros, though only because he had no desire to add another grievance to Abelard’s list – he had known many brave and honest worshipers of the god of death down the years, and plenty of spavined and vile servants of Kellos. Mentioning that wouldn’t help anyone right now, though.
“What did the tomb-keeper say she was doing when he saw her?” he asked instead.
“I don’t know,” Abelard said. “The man is at best a liar, and at worst demented. It would hardly be a surprise given his profession. If it were up to me, the worship of Nordros would be banned in Upper Forthyn, and that shrine would be closed down.”
As Abelard was speaking, Durik moved to the center of the room and lifted the fur rug. Nothing hidden, and no trap door. Too obvious. He shifted to the fireplace, pulling a blackened iron poker from the bracket beside it and probing the ash as Abelard trailed off.
“You saw Lady Kathryn in here yourself before she vanished,” Ulma said to Matron Mildred as Durik continued to rake through the fireplace, both the matron and the seneschal frowning at him. “Yet no one else in the castle spotted her that night? How did she manage to get out? Surely the gate was barred and guarded?”
“I don’t know, my lady,” Mildred said. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Durik looked back at her carefully as Ulma continued.
“And how have the servants been taking it? You must be privy to all of the gossip in the lower quarters. Any particular theories? Anyone acting strange, either before or after the disappearance?”
“No, my lady,” Mildred said. “Certainly nothing I would put any stock in.”
“There was one unusual matter, was there not?” Abelard interjected. “Didn’t one of the cooks stop working in the kitchens just before Lady Kathryn disappeared?”
Mildred’s heavy features began to flush red. “I’m not sure, sir. I would need to check…
“Tobin, or Toben?” Abelard went on. “One of the recent hires. He came in after Cookmaster Jarrow’s promotion.”
“As I said, sir, I would have to check,” Mildred repeated, by now an odd shade of puce. Durik spoke from beside the fireplace.
“We would like to speak with Tobin, assuming he’s still here?”
“The cooks don’t stay in the keep,” Abelard said. “They’re usually seasonally hired. He lives somewhere in the town.”
“Do you know where?”
“No, but I’m sure someone will.”
“There have to be other people in the citadel who saw her that night,” Ulma said. “Does the keep have any sally ports? Any hidden routes or tunnels?”
“Not that I know of,” Abelard said. “Another of the servants did mention something about a strange fog in the lower chambers, but it had cleared by the morning. I’m sure you know how the common folk can get. It will have been nothing more than a figment of his imagination, or some dream he failed to separate from reality.”
“So if the good lady simply upped and vanished,” Logan said slowly, “then why does the baroness believe the northern clans are responsible? Were there any northerners in the town on the night that it happened?”
“I doubt it. I told you, there have been stories of robberies and raids. The clan folk aren’t welcome right now.”
“But, as you said earlier, you don’t have hard evidence of the clans having attacked anyone. Yet you reported to Baroness Adelynn that she had likely been snatched from her bed by them. How in the name of Pollux’s great hammer do northern primitives steal into a garrisoned citadel like this and grab the heiress to the barony unnoticed from its tallest tower? And, for that matter, how do we know she was kidnapped at all, northern tribes or not? Unless you’re sure her clothes are all accounted for, it seems as though she could quite easily have slipped away of her own accord. Gods know, I’ve availed myself of enough quick escapes in times of stress. Why isn’t anyone considering that a likely lead?”
Durik had only vaguely been listening to Logan. He thought he’d found something – the fire poker had hit an unyielding objec
t amidst the cold embers. He probed it with a thud, causing the rest of the group to look at him before answering Logan. There was something solid, right at the back of the hearth. He tested it again with the iron rod, thinking at first that it was just the brittle remnants of a log that had yet to crumble. It was the wrong shape, though. Placing the poker to one side, he reached into the mound of ash and gripped whatever was buried beneath.
He knew what it was almost immediately. The others crowded round the fireplace to watch as he dragged a heavy book from its tomb of embers.
“A book in a fireplace,” Logan said with a smirk. “The northerners probably didn’t realize what it was. Thought it was kindling.”
Durik blew off the thick layer of ash cladding the book’s cover, making Mildred cough and Lady Damhán grimace. It was heavy and leather-bound, though it didn’t seem to bear either a title or an author.
He opened it. Despite having been buried in the hearth, its pages showed no sign of damage or befoulment. It was composed of thick yellow parchment, roughly cut. Some pages were larger than others. Durik glanced at the words, rendered in ink in a neat, regular hand. His skin began to prickle.
He understood none of them, but that in itself was no surprise. He handed the book to Ulma, Logan leaning over the top of the dwarf to gaze down at it.
“What is it?” Abelard asked. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” Durik said, standing up. “But I wouldn’t advise you to try and translate it.”
“It’s one of the arcane tongues, isn’t it?” Ulma murmured, pausing on a page filled with carefully drawn diagrams and what looked like a heavily annotated chart of constellations. “It’s a tome of magic.”
“The question is, who put it in there?” Durik asked. “And how long ago?”
“I set a fire in here myself the night Lady Kathryn vanished,” Mildred said, beginning to sound upset. “It was burning before I left the chamber! The book couldn’t have been there before it!”
“So you’re saying someone has broken into this chamber and concealed it there since that fateful night?” Logan demanded.
“Well how else would you explain it? If it had been buried in there when I set the fire it would be nothing but ash by now!”
“How would I explain the survival of the sorcerer’s tome in the fireplace?” Logan repeated rhetorically. Then, muttering something about parochial northerners, he took the book off Ulma and put it back in the fireplace.
“Where’s the kindling?” he demanded.
“Logan,” Ulma said in a warning tone, as the rogue set about throwing a few logs on top of the book and hunting through the table drawers until he found a piece of flint and a striker. “We don’t know what that book can do, or what will happen to it.”
Durik simply watched, knowing better than to critique his friend’s theatrical streak as Logan knelt down with a grunt and began striking sparks. It took an awkwardly long time, but he didn’t move to help the rogue – he knew it was best to just let him get on with these sorts of demonstrations. Eventually a scrap of wool caught. A small fire leapt and flared along the logs lying on top of the book.
“Nothing’s going to happen to it,” Logan said firmly, stabbing the logs with the prong before giving them a few short, sharp kicks, sparks swirling. He scraped the charred remains aside and reached back in, lifting the book free once more.
“Nothing,” he said with an air of triumph. The cover and the pages within were wholly unmarked.
Abelard grimaced and Mildred, wide-eyed, made the sign of Kellos’s holy flames.
“The book is warded against fire,” Ulma said. “But if I had another brew of magi-reducto it would probably bring about a conflagration that would destroy it utterly. As well as the keep.”
She sounded quite excited at the prospect.
“There’s no point in destroying it until we know more about it,” Durik said, offering Ulma an apologetic shrug – he knew how much she enjoyed experimenting on artifacts like this. “Could it have been Lady Kathryn’s?” he asked Abelard and Mildred.
“Absolutely not,” the seneschal said. “The baroness’s daughter was no sorceress.”
“Well, if not, then someone close to her was,” Durik said, looking from Abelard to Mildred. “Or at the very least, someone who knew she was gone and that nobody was going to be entering her room anytime soon. This could have remained hidden here for months, perhaps years.”
“It still brings us no closer to finding her, though,” Logan pointed out. “Not until we can connect it to someone or something.”
“We can only use what we have,” Durik said. “There are other leads. I will go and speak with the tomb-keeper who claims to have seen her. Ulma, perhaps you should continue to make enquiries around the town. Take in as much gossip as you can.” Ulma nodded.
“And don’t tell me,” Logan said. “I’m going to have to go and track down the missing cook?”
“Yes,” Durik said.
“Leave the most dangerous job to the old, rich man,” Logan said, throwing his hands up.
“Finding a cookhouse servant is hardly dangerous,” Ulma sneered. “He’s probably just contracted a bout of food poisoning.”
“Why don’t I take the tavern gossip?” Logan said. “I’m far better with people than you are, Ulma.” Durik let out a little grunt of laughter and Ulma rolled her eyes.
“Have you seen yourself recently? You dress like a vagrant who’s just unearthed a dead dragon’s hoard. You’ll stick out like an elf in a brewery. No one will want to talk to you. Besides, I’m funnier, prettier and cleverer than you are, so just altogether more qualified.”
“I doubt it will take long to find the cook,” Durik said before Logan could explode. “Once you have, you can join Ulma.”
“I can’t imagine anything better,” Logan said. Ulma gave him a little curtsey.
“Where does the tomb-keeper live?” Durik asked Abelard while the other two bickered. “And the cook?”
“The tomb-keeper’s family are given the gatehouse by the cemetery entrance,” Abelard said. “His name is Volbert. As for the cook, I have no idea.” Durik looked at Mildred.
“I think he stays in the first house past the Black Crow,” the matron said noncommittally. Durik nodded his thanks.
“And that’s it?” Abelard asked. “What about the clans? You’re not going to investigate them at all?”
“We have no reason to, yet,” Durik said. “There is no evidence any of them were here the night Lady Kathryn disappeared. Seeking the nearest clan out and questioning them would be gambling with time we do not have.”
“If you wanted help with the clans you should have asked the baroness directly, rather than simply inventing their involvement,” Logan added.
“I’ve invented nothing,” Abelard said angrily, but Lady Damhán silenced him.
“A word before you depart, Master Pathfinder,” she said to Durik. She had remained silent throughout the discovery of the book and the exchanges that had followed, but Durik had felt the intensity of her eyes on him the whole time. It was rare for a hunter to feel so hunted.
“In private,” Damhán added unsubtly to Abelard and Mildred. The former looked unimpressed at being ordered from the chamber, but both bowed and departed, leaving Durik, Ulma and Logan alone with the baroness’s gray-clad adviser.
“How familiar are you with Forthyn’s laws on the use of magic?” Damhán asked. Durik shook his head while Logan said nothing. It was Ulma who responded.
“Users are expected to register with the sorcerers’ guild if they intend to practice within the barony’s borders,” she said. “There are also a number of forbidden magical arts.”
“Correct,” Damhán said. “Namely demonancy, necromancy and prophesy. The latter may be practiced by fully accredited members of the guild. The first two are entirely forbi
dden, under pain of death. Tell me, do you believe that tome might relate to either of those?”
Logan was still holding the book, but appeared to be on the verge of dropping it when the dark magics were mentioned.
“I am no warlock,” Durik said. “I cannot decipher it. Such knowledge is beyond me.” Damhán held her hand out to Logan, and the rogue quickly handed her the book.
“I have some ability when it comes to the mystic arts,” Damhán said. “I will attempt to decipher the owner or author or, at the very least, make something of its contents. However, if we were indeed to discover that this is a tome of dark magic, it would not do well to imagine it belonged to Lady Kathryn.”
“The heiress to the barony can’t be outed as a dabbler in the dark arts,” Ulma said.
“Regardless of what has become of Lady Kathryn, news of this book does not leave this chamber,” Damhán said. “I will be impressing that on both the seneschal and the matron too, individually. If word of the existence of this text somehow does reach beyond this room then there will be consequences, for everyone. Is that clear?”
“It is,” Durik said. Logan and Ulma both nodded.
“You may proceed with the investigation you have already outlined, pathfinder,” Damhán said. “In the meantime, I will be making my own enquiries.”
Chapter Six
On the night of Lady Kathryn’s disappearance, the Fulchards had risen from their family crypt and walked out into the graveyard of the Shrine of Nordros, through the lich-gate and out into the town. That, according to Volbert, was one of two options. The other was that a woman with a startlingly similar appearance to Kathryn had entered the crypt and dragged them out, though where to, no one knew.
The markings certainly didn’t suggest any dragging had been involved. There were only a few prints left around the Fulchard tomb, partially preserved by the hard frosts that the north experienced at this time of year. Durik studied them intently. Over the past month, hundreds of other footsteps had destroyed the trail elsewhere in the graveyard, and out on the street there was no hope of picking them up whatsoever, but the dark rumors that had swirled in the wake of the night’s events had at least kept anyone from daring to approach what should have been the Fulchard family’s final resting place.
The Doom of Fallowhearth Page 6
