10

Rosen sipped at her bowl of hot pumpkin soup, seated across the dining table from Varick. She thought over what Licht had told her of the Disteldorn family tragedy, and how only Varick had survived—and that because of Kalt. But it wasn’t enough to make her feel better about the mage. She felt the sensation of spiders crawling up her skin just thinking about him.

She watched as Varick tried to use a spoon more daintily. His thick black eyelashes contrasted heavily with the pale skin of his features. His behavior made more sense now, especially his revulsion of humans. Why would they do something so wicked, and to a family that had ruled over and cared for the town many generations? Perhaps they’d grown tired of their authority? A rich versus the poor type of thing? But…something about the whole situation just didn’t sit right with her.

“There’s still a little light outside,” she said conversationally. “Would you show me where the mines are? I’m in the mood to go exploring.”

Varick’s brow furrowed. “Exploring in a mine? You do know it’s only salt you’ll find there—not diamonds.”

“I’m not looking for diamonds but adventure.” She made a face. “Friends should go on adventures together.”

Varick took a sip of apfelschorle. “Fine, if you say so.”

Rosen finished the schnitzel on her plate, which she noticed had been pre-cut into small pieces for her. Had it been Mrs. Moos’s idea, or…?

She glanced up at Varick. He seemed to be busy avoiding eye contact.

Rosen put on a warmer dress and cloak, and followed Varick out into the darkening mountain forest. He held a lantern aloft, the glass burnt tinted from use.

The path they took climbed for several minutes, and he held his hand for her, helping her over a couple of boulders. Insects still chirped in the night despite the cold, and an owl was out hunting, its soft hoot carrying through the autumn canopy.

The trees eventually parted before a small clearing, a cave yawning there into the mountainside. “This connects to the salt mines. It’s faster,” Varick told her.

He led the way inside. A gust of air shoved Rosen’s hair back as she entered, and a cool dampness brushed along her skin.

The pool of lantern light made veins of rock shimmer in the curved walls as they followed the tunnel downward into the earth. Chirps alerted her to bats: high on the ceiling of the cave they crossed. Rocks took on strange, sharp shapes around them, and after meandering through the length of stalactites and stalagmites, a set of stairs chiseled into the cave floor led them down and to the side of a crossing tunnel.

“And these are the mine tunnels,” Varick announced, his voice bouncing back along the walls. It was much colder and damp here. She cold almost taste the salt in the air.

“Which way?” She looked about.

He motioned left.

Thick wood shafts ran along the walls and ceiling at intervals here, maintaining the tunnel’s structure and stability. When a space opened suddenly before them, the floor ended at an edge and plunged down into darkness.

As she listened, she could hear the echo of tapping and hammering work being done. “Aren’t these mines abandoned?” She scrunched her brow at Varick.

“As far as I knew,” he replied offhandedly.

Who could be down there, mining salt? It wasn’t anyone from Freudendorf, that much was certain.

Rosen searched about. “There aren’t any stairs… How are we supposed to get down there?”

Varick simply pointed at a wooden slide.

“Oh no…no no no. I’m not doing that.” She shook her head vigorously.

“Then I guess this will remain a mystery. Let’s go back; my hair is starting to frizz.” He turned.

She grabbed his elbow, and he stumbled. “I have to know who’s down there. I can’t leave a mystery that’s staring me in the face unsolved.”

He smirked and took a seat on the slide. He patted the spot in front of him, “With our combined weight, we should be fine. Miners use slides like these all the time.”

Rosen regarded the spot. He waited. She swallowed her nerves and gingerly sat in front. Her back leaned against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. Her cheeks heated.

“Ready?” But before she could answer, he pushed them forward and the world tilted down in a burst of speed.

Air whipped past, ripping her breath away.

How were they going to stop?

As soon as she began panicking, the drop leveled out; but their momentum kept them going, until she was sure they’d fly off the end of the slide and into an endless abyss.

Varick’s heels dug down, and their speed slowed. Somehow they gradually came to a halt.

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Varick hopped off as if it had been fun, but Rosen staggered and took his offered hand.

Faint lights appeared in the distance, following along branching tunnels of salt rock. Rosen moved carefully, taking the right-hand tunnel. Varick peered over her shoulder.

The chamber beyond echoed of metal chipping salt. The workers were tall, their skin lumpy and droopy, like layers of batter—no, they looked made of clay.

They were golems.

Rosen started, remembering a piece of folklore about golems: creatures created from dark magic, having no life, no will, but to follow their master’s commands. Someone had created them to mine the salt, stealing it away from Freudendorf. Is that why rumors had spread that these mines were cursed and forbidden? To keep people from coming here and discovering this theft?

“Strange…” Varick whispered. His breath tickled her neck.

One golem finished loading a wheelbarrow and started pushing it towards the chamber’s opposite tunnel.

“I’m following!” Rosen whispered. She put on the gloves from her pocket and crept along the chamber wall on hands and knees. She kept the wheelbarrow in sight, following into the tunnel and praying no passing golem would notice her crawling along the ground.

Two golems passed by the wheelbarrow golem, coming from the opposite way.

She crouched and froze still. They lumbered past in a lurching gait, empty eyes made of hard clay staring straight ahead, focused on the task at hand. Once they were past, she hurried on.

It was a long walk before the tunnel opened to the night sky, leading out onto a space of gravel jutting out the side of the mountains.

She crouched at the entrance, watching as the golem unloaded large cubes of orange-tinted salt into a hefty sack.

“This entrance looks newer,” Varick commented behind her.

The golem lifted its head, knobby clay ears twitching.

She wanted to smack Varick. But the creature continued and heaved the full sack of salt onto its back and began lumbering down an obscure path, down through the sloping forest.

The path rounded boulders and made steep declines. Varick’s grip kept her from losing her balance, and tree trunks made for good handholds. A steady north wind helped mask their noise.

The path reached the valley floor and edged around the outskirts of the town. Rosen suddenly had a hunch as to where the golem was headed. And it was confirmed when they rounded a bend and came face to face with a mansion on top of a hill, just outside Freudendorf. A mansion with stately columns, contrasting with the friendly gingerbread half-timbered houses beyond.

The little path cut around to the back and into the side of the hill, beneath the mansion. “That’s where Lord Kalt lives,” she told Varick.

His eyebrows shot up, though he didn’t seem much concerned.

A concealed door swung open for the golem as it carried the sack of salt inside. Rosen hurried to catch the door before it closed. There was no handle, but the door detected her movement and swung open again. “Some sort of spell?” she wondered.

Inside was a storage chamber, and the golem tossed the sack onto a pile before lumbering back towards the exit. Rosen and Varick slipped behind a stack of crates, as the golem’s lumpy face drifted by.

The door closed on its own, and Rosen dashed forward to investigate, stealing Varick’s lantern and relighting it.

The salt sacks made one pile, while crates of salt sacks made another—the crates had Lord Kalt’s crescent moon symbol, like a trademark, as if he were selling the crates somewhere.

“The salt—oh my word, Varick. He’s selling the salt to foreigners! Making a profit off what should belong to the town!” She fumed.

“And the rest of the salt?” Varick fiddled with a loose thread on a sack.

She thought. “It looks like he’s keeping it, using it for himself? Though I can’t imagine what he would use so much salt for.”

Varick shrugged. “I don’t care what he does with the salt. The town deserves what’s happening to it.” He headed back for the door. “I’m leaving. Your little mystery is solved.”

“Are you being haughty with me? Friends don’t treat friends rudely,” she snapped.

He halted in his steps, heaved a sigh. “I wasn’t trying to— Fine. I’ll wait right here for you.” He dusted a crate off before sitting.

Giving a nod, Rosen held the lantern light out to every corner, every nook of the chamber. A little concealed door slid open, just as the first door had upon sensing her movement. The space inside was small, and littered with shelves and books. One book sat open on a narrow table.

Rosen tiptoed over.

Strange symbols were illustrated on the pages. The top right page labeled: Memory Shift. And a series of instructions and ingredients followed.

She scanned over a snippet of the page illustrating star shapes, which needed to be drawn in a circle around the intended subject. A sidenote read that the spell must be renewed monthly on a regular basis.

This was a book on magic—or something like it. But Varick didn’t seem to think Kalt was a mage. That left only one other option: an ordinary human who wanted to wield the power of mages but by darker means, in other words, a warlock.

“Someone’s coming!” Varick called out, just above a whisper.

Rosen jumped in her shoes with alarm. Her hand was tempted to take the book, or at least the page, to examine further, but then Kalt would know someone had been snooping around his secret lair.

With a frustrated grunt, she hurried out to Varick, blew out the lantern, and together they slipped out the door in the hill and into the underbrush along the path, just before a group of five golems lumbered past.

Varick led her through the woods, heading back towards the western mountain foothills. “Lord Kalt is a warlock. That must be why he creeps me out so much,” she said while she tried not to stub her toes on rocks poking out of leaf-covered forest floor. “Memory Shift, why was he reading that spell? It gives me a bad feeling. What if he’s used that spell on someone?”

Varick shrugged, pushing aside limbs and underbrush for them as she followed close at his back. “I don’t know much about mages or warlocks, but Lord Kalt is the reason I’m still alive. Perhaps he studies spells for the same reason any researcher studies books on mushrooms and astronomy and whatever else. Studying a spell doesn’t mean he’s gone and used it.”

Rosen cocked her head. That was true, but she just didn’t like the feeling her gut was giving her.

“My feet ache…” she mumbled. Her legs weren’t used to hiking uphill this much.

Varick turned around and in one swift movement swept Rosen off her feet and into his arms. He continued up the forest’s incline as if it were a steady stroll, not breaking a sweat.

She felt her face redden, her heartbeat race. “Thanks…” she murmured. Her arm looped around his neck for support, and his face seemed so close. He didn’t glance at her, or maybe tried not to. It wasn’t easy to tell in the moonlight if his cheeks were flushed.

When they reached the high foothill and the castle gate, he set her down. Butler Sterbetod came wheezing, opening the gate and following them in. “Lord Varick…we were so…worried for you both…vanishing off…the way you did!” he tried to exclaim, though it was more the sound of a hissing balloon.

“Oh, sorry.” Varick looked almost bashful. “I didn’t think we’d be out long. It was just an excursion around the mines.”

“You’ll hear an…earful from Licht…that’s certain!”

Later that night, as Rosen slipped warm socks over her feet before tucking into bed, her thoughts kept going back to the page in the spell book and all of the town’s salt profits being snatched away.

The fireplace crackled warmly, its light meeting that of the moon across the rug.

But what should she do? How could she expose what Kalt was doing to the town? And whose memory had he tampered with?