Father Benedictus and Lenora walked into camp leading their horses by the bridle, a few men stood huddled round the fire with their backs towards the woods.
“Where’s Lord Septim? I’d like to see the witch,” Father said.
“It’ll be daybreak soon enough, I’m sure it can wait,” Septim said getting up from the fireside. “Besides, it’s still dark. Morning will be here soon. Why don’t you sit for a while, we’ve food to spare. And Lenora, it’s probably best you go home and tell our father know that we’ve got the witch but lost all his hounds to her poison."
“I suppose I’ve no choice. You don’t mind if I wait for first light? I’m tired and chilled to the bone,” Without waiting for an answer she took a seat at the fire.
Father Benedictus finished unloading his bags. “If it’s no difference to you m’Lord, I’d like to join the next group of sentries that’ll be watching the corpse.”
“Watching the corpse? Father, she’s dead,” Septim chuckled.
Father turned to face Septim, suddenly agitated, his cheeks flush and eyes wide. “You’ve left her alone? Quickly! We must go at once!”
“Father, you’re over excited. I’m sure it can wait till the morrow.”
“Which way to the trap?” Father asked, already leaving the camp. One of the men pointed without getting up. Lenora followed the priest and they’d only gone a few paces when her brother and some of his men joined to follow. Lantern light filled the woods and they’d no trouble finding the way.
“All this excitement for a corpse. I suppose we could drag it back to camp and keep watch there, the poison’s ought to have worn off, right Father?” Septim asked, but the priest didn’t answer. He’d lit his own lamp and was leafing through a small leatherbound book.
“Isn’t that the trap, there?” Lenora said, pointing to a patch of darkened snow around which the Lord’s hounds lay dead.
“Can’t be, this one’s unsprung,” Septim said, stooping low to inspect it, but even he wasn’t convinced of his words.
“You knew! You knew and you didn’t tell us!” Septim yelled at the priest before turning to his men. “Saddle the horses, break the camp. We’ve got to track her again!”
The men took off towards the camp leaving the three alone.
“The Lord’s sent the best men off to the front at the King’s request, this lot couldn’t trace their own steps through a mire,” Septim confided to Lenora. “Still, you and Father best return to the keep. We’ll send for you when we’ve found her again.”
“I think it’s best if I joined,” the priest said.
“You must be tired, we’ll be riding hard through the night. Could you even track without lamplight?” Septim said, leaving.
Neither protested, both knew it’d be fruitless. They returned to the fire and sat eating sweet bread and salt pork that the priest had brought along.
“Shall we return, then?” Lenora said after a long while.
“I suppose. Far be it from me to put ideas in the Lord’s daughter’s head.”
“Father?”
“It’s nothing, let’s saddle the horses.”
“I know you’ve got no kind words for the Lord, that makes two of us. Surely we can speak freely here,” Lenora pressed the issue.
“Do you know why your brother is after the witch?”
“It’s revenge for the fire?”
The priest shook his head. “The King pays a reward for anyone who brings him a witch’s head, more if they bring the heart too.”
“I should have known it was about gold.”
“What most folk don’t know is that the Order pays double for a live witch.”
“Father? What are you saying? That we get her alive?”
“Nothing of the sort! It’d be treason! I’m just thinking aloud, about what your mother would have done. She had a much better grasp on the purse strings, much more sense. Great woman, she was. Why, I remember getting a stipend! Guest of honor, invited to feasts! Instead of being sequestered to that old cabin. Why, I’m blathering on. It’s not that I wish to spite the Lord, you see, it’s just, sometimes I wonder how things would have been if your mother were still here. I see a lot of her in you, you know,” he said with tiredness in his voice.
“One could do a lot with so much gold,” Lenora said, kicking snow into the coals and watching the steam hiss. “Build a new keep. A new town even.”
The priest threw the last of the wood onto the fire. “You wouldn’t begrudge an old man some rest? Wake me before first light.” He passed her a red leather satchel. “There’s a book in here that may interest you, and some things that may be of use. Have a look if you wish.”
Lenora opened the bag. Inside was the book she’d seen Father reading earlier, alongside leather pouches, tin vials, brass trinkets and silver baubles. She took the book out of the bag, but it caught on a tiny pouch which fell into the snow at her feet. Father’s eyes went wide. “My signet! I’m supposed to wear it always, it’s the mark of the Order,” he said, reaching for the pouch. “It gets tarnished rather quickly though and I took it off some time ago before losing track of it. I’ve forgotten all about it until now, can you believe it?” He took the ring from its pouch and slid it onto the third finger of his right hand. It was gilded and ornate, but the working was crude and the gold had come off in places. It reminded Lenora of the cheap brass stamp her Father used to seal letters, except in place of a wolf’s tooth the Priest’s ring had a crescent moon encircled by a script she could not read. She turned her attention back to the book and undid the leather clasp holding it shut. Gilded letters twinkled in the weak light: A Witch-Hunting Primer, by Brother Cornelius. She’d have loved to sit and read it cover to cover but instead flipped to the index and looked for anything of immediate use before skipping to the third chapter: Tracking a Witch.
By the time she’d skimmed the chapter the eastern stars were dimming and sky was turning paler where it met the horizon. She roused the old priest and he awoke with some trouble. He reached into his coat and retrieved a flask, popped the cork and took a long pull.
“I suppose this’ll do for breakfast,” he said, the sleep suddenly gone from his eyes. Lenora passed him the satchel but he pushed it away.
“It’s yours to keep, it’ll do you more good than it ever did me. I’d always been rubbish at fieldwork, you should know, you’ve seen me track. I dreaded the day I’d have to leave the Grand Abbey, wished they’d keep me a brother forever. Writing, reading, gardening, baking, studying flora and making medicines, I could go on like that for eternity! But Caldora was growing then.”
“Beg your pardon, Father?”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Beg my pardon for what?”
“Caldora. I’ve never heard that word.”
“I’m sure you have, whether or not you remember it is another story. Seldom used in these parts, now that I think about it. It’s always just the Kingdom. Everything from the coasts to the hills behind us is the King’s. But when one is sequestered so far from civilization proper one forgets a larger world exists. You’ve never left Eskryn, have you?” Lenora shook her head. “A King must become a far away sort of thing, like a petty God, I suppose. You know, I saw him once? A long time ago and he was quite old even then. But I think we’d have heard about it if he died, even out here.” He drifted off into thought for a few moments before finding the thread of their previous conversation.
“It’s so hard getting old, you know that? I don’t recommend it at all. One has so many things to keep track of, so many memories of youth. Now, where was I? Right. Caldora’s borders were moving ever onwards. They pushed us all through the seminary, gave us the rank of Father and sent us off to the hinterlands, scattered to the winds. Every Lord needs a witch hunter! Now look at me, unseated from the Lord’s right hand by a blindseer! I’m blathering on again, have you found the lodeglass?”
“This is it, isn’t it?” Lenora said, taking a leather pouch out of the bag and cradling the lodeglass in her hand. It was a shallow bowl made of copper, small enough to fit in her palm. The top was covered over with glass, its edges brazed shut and set with gold wire in a delicate pattern. It was full of water, or something quite like it, and inside floated an arrow of carved obsidian. The arrow fluttered and spun before settling, pointing directly towards the trap where the witch had lay.
Lenora walked around the camp, weaving big circles and turning around on her tracks and moving the lodeglass around in her hands. The arrow always responded with dead certainty, training its point towards the bloodied snow.
“I’m afraid Brother Cornelius is quite a pragmatist,” the priest said, “and the book is often short on details. The arrow is tuned to witch magic, finds disruptions in the aether or latent miasma or some such, I can’t quite recall the particulars. In any case, it makes no distinction as to where a witch is and where she has been. It takes some time for her traces to disappear.”
“Like a dog and scent,” Lenora said, “I suppose that means the longer a witch has been somewhere, the more the arrow is drawn to that spot.”
Father rubbed his chin, “That stands to reason, though it’s been years since I’ve used one.”
“Let’s go, then, we’ll never find her here.”
“I can go with you for a while, midday at the latest. Your Father will sense conspiracy if we’re out longer than that. He’s a keen one, cunning and clever even without the blindseers counsel.”
They set off leading their horses by the bridle. A short while later the arrow broke free of its enchantment and settled on a different direction. Lenora looked to the priest, he shrugged his shoulders. They walked the way the arrow pointed. Any doubts she’d had about the strange device were soon dispelled after it led her onto the witch’s faint tracks. The lodeglass led them through the woods and out to the river where the tracks disappeared.
“Clever. The dog’s would’ve been fooled,” Lenora said before helping the priest down the muddy banks. They took off their boots and walked through the water, she could hear Father’s teeth chattering from cold. The sun was well up when the arrow veered off.
“I should’ve known,” Father said grimly.
“It’s the old mill isn’t it?”
They left the riverbank and walked into a clearing.
“The place looks untouched!” Father exclaimed. “You’d been hardly a girl when it burned!
Lenora checked the lodeglass, the arrow spun wildly in circles and was of no help at all. She walked through the ashes, looking closely at the ruins.
“Look, Father, someone’s just dug a hole, and left tracks in the ash.”
“Oh no. Are you sure it’s freshly dug?”
Lenora stooped down to the hole, “Certain. You can smell it in the earth.”
Father began pacing nervously, rubbing his chin.
“Terrible. Terrible. I don’t think it could be any worse. You know, after the fire I turned this place over end to end. Never found a bloody thing. I should have known, I should have known,”
“With all due respect Father, what are you on about?”
“She’s found the damned spellbook! It’ll be in the primer, somewhere, chapter seven or eight. A witch is quite harmless without her spellbook. Tricky things to be rid of, too.”
“Spellbooks?” Lenora asked.
“Spellbooks, witches, the whole lot is damnable trickery,” the priest said, mounting his horse.
“I’m afraid this is the end of my tenure here, m’lady. If the abbey finds out I’ve let a dead witch find her spellbook, not to mention lose my post to a blindseer they’ll have me defrocked. Or worse. I haven’t got much time. In the back of the book is a map of all the Order’s cloisters, outposts and abbeys. The nearest one is a week’s ride away, I’ll be there for a fortnight at least. I’ll write to the Grand Abbey to send reinforcements, but should you get the witch on your own, bring her to any one of the places marked on the map. One last thing, before I forget,” he said digging under his collar. He fumbled for a moment removing a gold chain from around his neck. The chain itself was simple, tarnished and almost crude, but from it hung a silver half moon who’s brilliance and crafstmanship made Lenora gasp. He leaned down and fastened the chain around Lenora’s neck.
“Father, I can’t possibly! It’s got to be worth a fortune!” she said, reaching for the clasp but the priest shook his head. She held the silver crescent up so that it would catch the light, its details seemed to intensify the longer she looked. Careful script set in with ochre, too small to have been crafted with any tool she knew of and written in a tongue she could not understand, surrounded by graven vines and flowers. All of it polished so that it seemed to have a light of its own.
“It’s a ward against witch magic. It will do you more good than it’s ever done me, wear it always. And if you’ve any room in your heart for an old fool, put a good word in when you get your reward, will you? Now, I’ve really got to be off.” He looked down at the old mare and sighed. “After I buy myself a new horse, that is.” And with that the old priest rode off as fast as the animal would take him.
Lenora wasted no time in leaving the ruins, following the lodeglass, though she had to walk for some time until the arrow settled again. The tracks were fresher here, still untouched by wind or snow. She was gaining ground. Soon enough she met up with the carriage path where she mounted her horse and brought it up to a trot. It wasn’t until she’d ridden through town and passed the new mill that the arrow wavered, flicking wildly off towards the river.
She stopped the horse and looked, not a soul moved on the grounds. Warm light spilled from the mill house windows and water mill’s wheel spun slowly with the current. She opened the book and once again read over the third chapter, this time carefully, but brother Cornelius offered no insights as to how long the traces of magic may last.
So Lenora put away the lodeglass, realizing the strange tool was not without its flaws. Though it’d been long ago she still remembered how after the fire the poor cobbler spent what little he had on a hired mule team and dragged the great millwheel out from the still smoldering ruins, she’d gone with her brother to watch. They whipped the animals day and night, the stone left a giant muddy rut in its wake. The town was alight with rumors then, about curses, magic and ill fortune. They would have hanged the poor cobbler too, had Father Benedictus not intervened and blessed the wheel with sweetgrass and rubbed it with salt.
Little good it must have done, she thought, as those same rites were performed on the ruins themselves but still the lodeglass had responded as though a witch herself were standing there. The witch magic must have permeated the great stone wheel, the heart of old the mill. She rode on, weighing her options. If she returned to the keep, her hunt would be over. Her brother would set off without her, she’d likely spend a week locked in her room. So instead she spurred her horse towards the Father’s cabin.
It was dark by the time she arrived, the wind had kicked up and brought with it more snow. She was tired and chilled to the bone. She tied the horse up in the lean-to that served as a stable, watered and fed it before going inside and starting a fire. She’d never paid much mind to the Father’s hearth, but now she realized it wasn’t like any she’d seen before. Strange angled lengths of brass and copper, brazed to brackets with springs and pulley-arms and counterweights sat where the iron grate would have been in a typical fireplace and extended outwards towards a pile of firewood. It took her a few minutes of careful poking, prodding shifting and examination before she gave up and built a fire, ignoring the mechanism entirely.
Knowing tiredness would overcome her if she were to relax even for a moment, she packed as much food as she could fit along with a few useful tools into some riding bags she found so that she’d be ready to set off in the morning. Finally, she sat down on the bed and had a meal of cold ale and stale bread. She didn’t remember laying down, but sleep took her at once.
A sharp knock at the door knocked her from the dreamless dark. A faint glow still came from the hearth and outside it was still dark. She lay still, trying not to make a sound and hoped whoever was at the door would go away. They knocked again, she cursed herself for building a fire without first blacking out the windows and looked around for another way out.
“Father, the Lord requests your help at once!”
Lenora recognized Gideon’s voice, got up and threw another log onto the fire before opening the door.
“M’lady?” Gideon stepped back, surprised.
“None other. Come in, you’re most welcome to stay for breakfast. It is morning, isn’t it?”
Gideon nodded and stepped inside.
Lenora looked through the pantry again and found a tin of tea, some corn meal and a jar of fat. The priest had a potbellied stove that took up most of the space in the kitchen. Much like the hearth it too was overcomplicated, with brass gauges and levers coming off at odd angles. Instead Lenora dropped some teabags into a pot of water and set it directly onto the hearth’s coals. While it boiled she made biscuit dough.
Gideon smiled when she poured him a cup of hot tea.
“A nice surprise. One could get used to living in a cabin like this, eh?” Gideon said, leaning back and stretching out his legs.
“I suppose you’re here to take me back to my Father?”
“Of course, I’ve got shackles and a whip waiting outside!” Gideon said, laughing. “As far as I’m concerned, I still serve the Lady of the keep, rest her soul. I’m indentured to her, not the Lord and no one’s seen to change that, most certainly not me!”
Lenora smiled and got up to tend the biscuits.
“Truth of the matter is the Lord’s in a terrible state, I don’t suppose you know they’ve found the witch.”
Lenora almost dropped the pan.
“Found the witch! How!”
“Blindseer figured it out someways, a lad from town was involved but I haven’t a clue what’s happened to him now. You’d think they’d be celebrating but your brother and the Lord are in a fit, they’ve counted the gold twice over already. Absolutely salivating, you know how they get. Your brother’s ridden off looking for you, the Lord thinks you and Father are trying to get to the King first.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Lenora said checking the biscuits and lifting the pan from the fire. She set it down on a wire stand and sat down across from Gideon, who immediately reached for a biscuit and kept talking between mouthfuls.
“The Benedictus has to mark the witch, he’s got a brand or signet or some such. Makes it so you can’t just drag any poor wretch to the King and ask for a pile of gold.”
“I think I saw him wearing it earlier.”
Gideon raised a brow. “Well maybe there’s a second one? Or perchance a brand? Wouldn’t hurt to look. Old fool would have saved us a lot of trouble if he hadn’t disappeared. Well, I best be off. There’s a lot of ground to cover yet I suppose.”
“Stay as long as you wish.”
Gideon stood up and stretched. “Can I trust these words to never make it to the Lord’s ears?”
“On my mother’s soul.”
Gideon bowed his head solemnly. “It’s good to be out, I’m sick of that dark old keep. I hope they never find that blasted priest. The weather’s nice, chill as it may be. Good for riding. I think I’ll see some old friends past the wood before the day’s up. The Lord doesn’t trust me to stay out past nightfall, so I’ll be back before dark, of course.” Gideon sighed after he said it. “You wouldn’t begrudge me a skin of ale before I go?”
“I’m sure Father Benedictus wouldn’t either,” Lenora said.
Gideon filled his water skins with the priest’s ale and Lenora stood at the window watching him ride off. Once she was quite sure he wasn’t turning back she began searching through every crevice of the priest’s cabin.
It was mid morning by the time she was done. Though she hadn’t found a second signet or any sort of brand, the search hadn’t been fruitless. In a pile of books she found instructions for the automated hearth which was now busy ratcheting wood onto the fire, making the cabin uncomfortably warm. Alongside the manuscript she’d found a small pile of gold, dusty with age, and a curved dagger who’s handle was of polished ivory. Most importantly, behind the piles of books and notepads she’d found a rolled up manuscript which she’d unfurled across the table. It was a hand drawn map of the keep.