Reud strode through Littlestream, ignoring the shocked whispers of its inhabitants. Their attention wasn’t on him, however. Instead, their focus was wholly on the contents of the cart being pulled along in his wake.
A few steps behind him walked Bo and the new skeleton, Tel, pulling a wooden cart. On that cart, dwarfing it entirely, lay the remains of a huge stag-based chimera. Not that it was all that easy to recognize it as such, his two skeletons had mutilated the beast thoroughly during their fight. Now it looked like nothing more than a vast mass of charred flesh and bone.
Across the square the Mayor, Graham, bustled towards Reud, his face worried.
“My lord Reud.” Graham called. “You’re causing quite the panic in…” He trailed off as he got closer and took in the remains of the beast. “Idia protect me, what have you brought into my village?”
“Your rampaging chimera, killed as requested.” Reud said with a flourish.
“This is…” Graham quickly recovered. “Well, in that case, on the behalf of the whole village, I thank you for your help. If you’ll come with me, we can handle your payment.” Graham went to turn around then stopped. “Though, if I could request one more thing from you, my lord?”
Reud nodded his head.
“Could you dispose of that?” He gestured at the vast mound of flesh. “It’s unsettling the villagers, and I’d like to have it as far away from here as possible.”
With a thought, Reud ordered the skeletons to take the corpse outside the village. If Graham didn’t want it, he would be more than happy to make use of it. Reanimating a giant stag chimera like this? Excitement rose within him as he considered the possibilities. What did its bones look like? Did its life as a chimera make it more or less susceptible to his magic? Would he need to modify his standard animation spell to account for four legs?
“My lord?” Graham’s voice snapped Reud from his thoughts.
“I’m sorry, my mind wandered for a moment. Could you repeat what you were saying?” Reud said, feeling his cheeks heat a little as he realized the man had been talking.
Graham adjusted his floppy hat, hiding a frown of annoyance. “I was saying if you could follow me, we can talk in my house.”
Reud gestured for him to go ahead, and together they walked across the square. As they passed people, some of them waved to him, whilst others avoided his gaze and hurried in the other direction.
Over the past couple of weeks in this village, Lilia and Reud had tried to connect with the villagers. Small favours here and there. Most of it done by Lilia, of course. She really had a way with people. The results of all that effort had been better acceptance by most of the village, though there were still some that stubbornly avoided all contact with the pair of them.
From what Reud could gather, these people were divided into two camps. The first was those that thought that the killing of Telac would bring the wrath of the Duke down on their heads, and avoided them in the hope it would aid their case in such an eventuality. The second camp was those who had lost children or family members to the Seekers. It seemed they did not trust anyone with even a hint of magic as a result. An attitude that would likely take a long time to change.
Graham pulled open the door to his house, leading Reud through a low doorway into a large sitting room. Within, a number of cushioned chairs circled a low table. Along the far wall a number of cabinets stood, including a shelf laden with well-bound books. All expensive goods.
This was a room meant to project wealth and power. Reud looked at Graham, calculating. The man was richer than he had originally judged.
Graham strode across the room and began to dig through a cabinet. Reud settled himself into a chair, looking over at the shelf laden with books. The tomes had titles like The lineage of the great houses of Rudase, and On the classification of winged creatures. The quality of the bindings, the decoration along the spine, would put each one easily around the ten crown range.
“Here you go, my lord.” Graham finally said, pulling a small purse from the cabinet. “Five crowns as payment for ridding us of the chimera terrorizing the village. You also said you wanted some information as the rest of your payment?”
Reud accepted the purse, gesturing for Graham to seat himself in one of the other chairs. “I heard something very curious recently. Apparently, the Seekers have taken a lot more children from this village than the others. Even a pair of twins this very year. I was interested in why this village has managed to attract so much more attention than the rest.”
Graham slumped, his face filling with sadness. “It really is terrible, so many of our children taken. Over the last decade we’ve lost seven. Though, your information isn’t quite accurate. We aren’t the only place affected. Aldsville, Eastrest, and Nileshurst have been similarly unlucky.”
“Really?” Reud exclaimed, unable to keep the shock from his voice. “So many! What is going on around here?”
Graham looked confused. “What do you mean, my lord?”
“Well, the number of children with enough affinity to be detected by the Seekers. It’s high. Far too high.”
“Is this unusual, my lord? All the villages along the Great North Road are similarly affected. Only the smaller, more remote villages, have been spared. Though, I don’t have as close a relation with those places, so they may just be hiding such information from me.”
Reud rubbed his temples, thinking. What exactly connected all these places? What was it about this area that created so many children with affinity?
“Yes, this is very unusual. Pretty much unheard of, in fact. The simple truth that this phenomenon has occurred is fascinating to me, and any information you can give me will settle the remainder of the bounty.”
Graham sat back in his chair. “I’m not sure what else I can tell you, my lord. The Seekers come, ask questions, then take some children. Their reasoning for doing so are a mystery to me.”
“How about the parents who recently lost the twins. What can you tell me about them?”
“Cecily is a lovely woman, a real beauty of the village. A very talented seamstress, she performs custom work for the merchants in Avonford.” Graham pointed at his sleeve, decorated with intricate needlework. “This is some of her work. Sadly, since the loss of her children, her mood has darkened. She barely ever emerges from her home now.”
“How about the father? Can you tell me about him?”
Graham looked awkward. “We do not actually know who the father is. Cecily has been extraordinarily tight-lipped on the matter. It is assumed the children are the result of an ongoing dalliance with a spoken-for man, but we honestly have no idea.”
“How about the other families that have lost children. What can you tell me about them?”
Graham stroked his long beard. “There was Linota and Fulk, lovely couple, but the wasting cough took them both a few winters past. Before that Roesia, she just arrived in the village one day, already with child, and stayed. After her child was taken, she sadly took her own life. Before that… I’m sorry, my memory fails me.”
Graham stood and walked over to the cabinet. “If it pleases you, however, you could look through the village records yourself.” He pulled out a heavy tome.
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Reud smiled, accepting the hefty book from him. “That would please me, thank you.”
Opening it, he began to flick through. Each page was filled with neat rows of tiny script, detailing major events in the village's history. Weddings, funerals, new arrivals, departures, and more were all detailed. After each year of events, came a detailed accounting of the taxes paid by each resident. Reud skipped through the tome, checking the dates. The records went back over half a century.
Graham’s eyes bored into him, making Reud uncomfortable. How was he supposed to focus with this man staring at him the entire time?
“This is quite detailed.” Reud said, looking up from the book. “It will take me a while to go through, and surely you have more pressing matters to attend to? There’s no need for you to watch me.”
Graham shifted uncomfortably. “You are right, my lord. However, the records. If anything were to happen…”
“You can trust me with this, I will treat it with the utmost care.”
“I don’t…”
“Please, go do your duty. Once I am finished, I will return it to the cabinet and leave your house in peace.” Reud smiled. “Have I given you any reason to distrust me?”
Graham looked torn, obviously wanting to argue but holding himself back. “As you wish, my lord. In that case, please excuse me.” He stood, bowing deeply, before walking out of the room, throwing reluctant glances back at the tome.
With the man’s stare no longer distracting him, Reud turned his attention back to the book. The entries painted a picture of a relatively normal village, modest in population and income. The mortality rate was depressingly high, though. If only they had a biomancer - or a healer, as the mages with a life affinity were otherwise known - the ailments that claimed so many of these lives would have been simple to cure. Before the war, biomancers would compete against one another for the prestige of being the person to cure the deadliest diseases or heal the gravest wounds. They would travel from village to village, curing people along their way.
Just another thing that Lightire ruined.
Reud continued to read through the book, stopping at the entries for the birth of Cecily’s children. Just as Graham had said, the space for the father was blank. A couple of years before that, his eyes spotted more names, Linota and Fulk. Their son was taken almost immediately after his tenth birthday, the same age as the twins.
Reud skipped through the book, looking for the boy’s birth. And there it was, Hamo, born to Linota and Fulk. A few lines below it, however, was a curious entry. A mere few months before was an entry for the marriage between Linota and Fulk. A rushed marriage to ensure the child wouldn’t be born out of wedlock?
As Reud continued to read through the records, a picture began to form. Eleven instances of Seekers taking children were detailed, each child taken within a couple of months of their tenth birthday. Of the eleven parents, six of them had no father listed, and three of the remaining couples rushed into a marriage shortly before the child's birth.
Closing the book, Reud stood and rubbed his neck, stiff from sitting hunched over the tome for so long. A curious pattern was emerging from all this, but to connect it all together he would need to investigate the other village’s records and check that they displayed the same traits. Maybe with a more complete picture, the pieces of the puzzle would start to fall into place. A little tingle of excitement ran through him as his mind whirled.
It’d been so long since he’d had to solve a puzzle.
—
Pulling his cloak tighter around his body to stave off a chill breeze, Reud headed north out the village, towards where he’d sent Bo and Tel with the stag beast corpse.
Thinking of the new skeleton, Reud couldn’t help but feel rather pleased with himself. The soul of the former tax collector was adapting well to the reanimation, the new name and the removal of most of the man’s memories stopping the worst of his violent tendencies. It seemed that it’d been worth spending the time to reanimate him as a greater undead, instead of one of those with a simple artificial mind. The fact that his affinity seemed to have increased instead of decreased was the cherry on the already delectable cake.
Still, Reud would need to keep a close eye on the new skeleton to ensure he didn’t regress to old habits.
Reud passed out through the wooden gates and into the woods, heading north. Unlike the land south of the village, the land up there wasn’t used for fields, instead being dominated by dense forest. It seemed there were all sorts of wild rumours about the horrors that lay to the north, some even saying the land was cursed, so no one wanted to risk growing food there.
Three leagues north of the village lay the ruins of Srinaber, but beyond that there wasn’t much else in the intervening space. If the rumours had basis in fact, it could only really refer to the old magic left over from the war. Not that any of that should still be around, this long after the last spell had been cast.
Though, there had been a few incidents that Reud had caused over the centuries, so maybe the rumours had an alternative source after all…
The clash of metal on metal filtered to his ears through the undergrowth, mixed with the faint sounds of a woman’s voice. As Reud got closer to the source of the noise, the voice got clearer. A woman's voice, rich with power and confidence.
Lilia’s new voice.
It had been so long since he’d heard her original voice that he couldn’t even remember what it sounded like. He was slowly getting used to her new appearance, and bit by bit his memories of her from before were being replaced with memories of her now. One day, would he forget the old Lilia completely? Was that betraying her memory, or honouring it?
Shaking his head to clear his mind of those insidious thoughts, he stepped around a tree and emerged into a clearing. Lilia stood over Rachel, the young woman lying on her back, her face red and glistening with sweat. Rachel raised her torso into a crunch, her body shivering with the exertion, before collapsing back down onto the grass.
“Feel that pain! Feel those muscles! That is where you need to hold strength. The power in your strikes comes from your core.” Lilia clenched a fist in the air. “If you hold tightness there, you can project strength through the blade.”
Reud gave Lilia a little wave when she looked up, catching her attention. The stern instructor look disappeared, replaced with a radiant smile. “Have a short rest.” She said to Rachel, before walking over.
Stopping in front of him, she placed her hands on her hips, replacing her smile with a mock frown. “And what do you think you’re doing here?”
“I was just wandering through the woods and heard some sounds.” Reud said, trying to look sincere.
Lilia raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“Someone could have been in trouble, I had to investigate!”
“Right. And the fact we were training here never came into it?” She said, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“You were? I didn’t know. What a coincidence!” Reud exclaimed, putting a hand over his mouth in mock surprise.
Lilia looked at him for a moment longer, fighting a smile. Reud tried to keep his face impassive as well, but the sight of her trying to hold a frown was just too cute. Stepping forward, he wrapped her in a big hug.
“Get off me! I’m covered in sweat!” She protested, making no effort to extract herself from his arms. In response, Reud squeezed her tighter. A moment of weak protesting later, and she was hugging him back just as fiercely.
“How goes the training?” Reud asked, finally releasing her. “It looks like you’re working the poor girl to death.”
Lilia let out a silvery peal of laughter. “She was the one who wanted to increase the intensity. Besides, once she works herself to the edge of collapse, I just infuse her with a pump of mana and let that repair her muscles.”
“You can do that? I thought you had to be a biomancer to… well… heal people.”
“This isn’t healing, it's more accelerating the body’s natural healing processes. A common training method back in the academy, at least in the warriors. Not that you would know, you weedy necromancer.” She poked him playfully in the arm.
Reud let out a laugh, the familiar expression bringing back old memories. In the academy, the rivalry between the mages who focused on melee magics and those who focused on ranged was the focus of most of his educational life. Countless competitions, pranks, and challenges between the two divisions was what helped shape him into the mage he was today. And besides, the rivalry between the departments was what pushed Lilia and him together originally.
A softness on his lips broke him from his memories as Lilia gave him a quick kiss.
“How goes the winning over the villagers?” She asked.
“Oh, right!” Reud pulled out the pouch of coins, giving it a quick shake to jingle the coins inside. “Our first payment. Though, I also found out something a little odd.” Reud told Lilia of all he’d found from the records.
Lilia smiled at him. “You really do have a talent for finding mysteries everywhere, don’t you?”
“What do you mean? I was just curious as to why-” Reud protested.
“I wasn’t telling you off. I love your inquisitive nature.” Lilia said, laughing. “Go on, investigate. Uncover the truth. Solve the mystery.”
“I’ll need to ask around in the next village over, Eastrest. Did you want to come along?”
Lilia shook her head. “I have a responsibility here. You go.”
“Are you sure - aren’t you a little curious?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me everything there is to know once you figure it all out.” Lilia stepped away from him, pulling an arm across her chest into a stretch. “I’m still trying to get used to this body, and I took her as a student.” She gestured to the young woman still lying panting flat on her back. “You know how seriously I take that.”
Reud smiled, she really was her old stubborn self. He could never change her mind once it was made up. “Okay, I’ll leave tomorrow morning, and be back in a few days.”