There was a chill on the morning air, which cut through Kanick's thin summer robes, although the clear sky, with the sun blazing in the east held the promise of a scorching hot day. He even contemplated leaving his robes behind and continuing with only his tunic and hose. It was a good number of leagues up to Regius's old cave, and they would have to make most of it on foot, though horses would make the journey easier.

Scanning the street, Kanick saw his apprentice in the crowd, his messy black hair and apprentice robes marking him out. He was alone, and Kanick began to slowly walk to meet him, falling in step as they met.

"Where are the horses?" Kanick asked, wondering if he should have gone himself, or that the magister had denied their use after Kanick's heated words the previous night.

"They keep no horses," Bera replied, defensively. "In fact, they keep no animals of any kind," he added quickly.

"Rubbish," Kanick declared. Enclaves were supposed to be almost self-sufficient, and with the Magister's attitude towards the town, this one should be even more so. "Are you sure?"

"I asked one of the magister's acolytes to direct me to the stables, and he had no idea what I was talking about. An older mage then told me they don't have one." He shrugged. "Not even a barn, or anything like that."

"How do they get their food?" Kanick wondered aloud. "Surely, they don't buy it," he mused, as they passed the Black Crown, and Kanick decided the keep his robe, rather than delay and change it.

"Maybe they fish the river?" Bera asked, shrugging.

"Perhaps," Kanick said. "I have heard of smaller enclaves, or hostels sustaining themselves through hunting, so who knows..." There was a pause and Kanick added, "in that case, we had better be underway – I don't want to be climbing down the cliffs at night."

The weather proved Kanick right, and he was already sweating as they approached the east gate. His hands suffered in the prickly heat from within his gloves. One of the soldiers on the gate started when he saw them, pointing and yelling to get their attention.

"Master Kanick! Master Kanick," the guard exclaimed and broke into a shuffling run. He was shorter than the mage, and ready for retirement, Kanick thought from the tightness of his mail shirt. He had already over-exerted himself running the short distance between them as he arrived puffing and clutching his spear. "The governor would like to see you; I have orders to take you there."

"I'm sorry, but we have important business to attend, would you tell the governor we will see him this evening."

The guard paled and gulped down several lungsful of air. "Sorry, Master Kanick but it's urgent." Kanick arched a sceptical eyebrow; a good trick to use against overconfident students. "We caught him, sir."

"Caught who?" Bera questioned the guard, who looked between the two mages.

"The man who killed the mage," The guard looked to Kanick, he was sweating, afraid they might not come with him. "He's in the Keep. Can I take you?"

"I'm glad we caught you," deLan said as he met them in the foyer of the Keep. "We brought him in last night – early this morning, but I thought not to wake you."

"Your guard told me you've caught the man who killed Regius," Kanick said, getting straight to the point.

"So it seems," deLan said enigmatically. "I will take you to him, so you can question him also." deLan gestured that they should follow.

The governor led them through the keep and to a stone spiral staircase, whose steps only descended. As they walked deeper into the earth the stone changed from brick, to worked stone and finally to rough bare rock.

The three emerged into a dimly lit hallway and Kanick's boots splashed as he stepped from staircase. The whole floor glittered black in the dirty light from rag torches set into the wall. Further away Kanick could hear a disjointed chorus of waterdrops falling and there was a faint wooshing sound if he strained to hear it.

"We're under the river," deLan informed them as they continued, their boots disturbing the flat surface and clapping emptily on the wet stone. "The keep has been knocked down and rebuilt a few times over the centuries, but these catacombs have always been here, and have always been used as a dungeon."

"It's a charming place," Kanick replied as he sniffed the rot in the air. There was something else, a feeling of old powerful magic like the scar. "I'm guessing it wasn't just human prisoners held down here."

"I wouldn't know, before my time."

"Before anyone's time, I think," Kanick muttered, his eyes instinctively scanning the walls for runes.

"It feels like the scar," Bera muttered, uneasily.

"Hmm," Kanick nodded in agreement, "but less recent, I think. Still, powerful magic was used here."

"We just keep prisoners," deLan said, as they approached a formidable-looking wooden door. It must have been new, Kanick thought, since the damp hadn't yet had time to warp the wood, nor rust the hinges.

deLan stepped forwards, jangling a ring of keys. The door clicked and they were admitted into a small, cramped room with a vaulted ceiling. The floor here was merely damp rather than flooded, though the light still had the same dirty quality. There was rough pinewood table, and matching stool by the nearest wall. The room was bisected by thick iron bars running from the floor to the ceiling.

Kanick gasped as he saw the occupant on the other side. It was a man, standing with his wide back to them, wearing a green tunic and off-white hose. The prisoner's arms were corded like the rope on a ship, clenching and unclenching by his side. His head was shaved close to the scalp, but Kanick could see a thick, black bushy beard peeking out from the man's face.

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Jarron Miller stood in the cell, shaking and muttering words too quietly for Kanick to hear.

"What in the void?" whispered Bera.

"Quite," Kanick said, looking to deLan, quizzically.

The governor leaned against the table and nodded his head towards the prisoner. "I see you took my advice and met with the miller and his wife." He raised his voice to address Jarron. "Tell them what you told me."

Kanick and Bera turned their attention back to the prisoner. Jarron turned to face the two mages, his tunic, while green from behind was thick and stiff with brown, dried blood stains. Flecks of blood were plastered to his skin, and even his beard was reddened.

Even worse than the gore, was the look in his eyes.

They betrayed no hint of recognition, of the mages who had come to his house two nights before, no recognition of the boy who had asked to look under his wife's skirt. Instead, they were dulled, gazing at the wall but focussing on nothing.

In the snap of an instant, the large top-heavy man became animated. "We were happy, my wife and me... He killed my wife!" Jarron screamed, "that bastard killed her, and gave her back." His eyes were darting furiously as he paced, "but she was different. False!" Spit flew from his lips as he grasped the bars of his cage.

"Dead," the miller wept, holding himself up by the iron. "I couldn't see her suffer that way. She was already dead."

"What did you do?" Asked Kanick, confused.

"I killed him!" Jarron spat, sobbing. "I killed that b-bastard Mage and then, gods forgive me... I..." The man collapsed into a weeping, shaking heap on the damp ground, rocking back and forth.

Kanick was horrified and confused. "Jarron," the man looked up at the sound of his name. "It's me, Kanick, don't you remember? I saw you just two nights ago."

"Already I knew! I knew what must be done," the broken man whispered from the ground. "I killed him. I killed that b-bastard Mage and then, gods forgive me..."

deLan stepped forward. "There's nothing more to get out of him," he told the two mages, sadly. "Come, there's something I want to show you about his wife."

"Marin," mumbled Bera, pale-faced, but only Kanick heard.

They were led to a neighbouring cell, very similar to the one they had just been in, though the unvarnished table was on the other side of the bars and the door was open. Upon the table lay a slender shape; a naked woman.

"Please, tell me what you think of the body," deLan

Kanick approached the table, taking in the woman. Her skin had paled, and mottled, but what immediately drew Kanick's eye was the ruin of her head. It was a pulpy mash of brain and bone; the flesh almost foaming at the wound. The hole where half her head should have been disfigured the rest, pulling her features towards it, as though her eyes and mouth and had been dragged towards the ruin.

Her complexion, where it wasn't grey, was browned by blood, which covered the whole top half of her body in a rusty coat, interspersed with clotted pools. Kanick glanced at her leg, and it was as Jarron and she had insisted; there was no evidence of her previous injury.

Kanick wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking for. "She's dead," he announced. "From a blow to the head."

"Yes, at the hands of her husband," deLan said. "He claims she was brought back from the dead, anything strange about that?" deLan asked.

Truth be told, there was much about the Miller's story that was strange to Kanick. He had seemed to be nothing but in love with his wife. He hadn't even cared that Regius might have been a necromancer, when the allegation had been put to him. And why kill Regius, then wait a whole month before taking action against what he believed to be an undead creature?

The blood, Kanick realised. "The blood!" he exclaimed.

"Exactly," deLan replied.

"I don't understand," said Bera hesitantly.

"In the war, I came upon a group of raised corpses; the leftovers from an attack on a village," deLan explained. "The necromancer who had raised them had clearly left them to stop any pursuit. My troop and I fought them. They did not bleed."

"He's correct," Kanick elaborated. "The dead, raised in the usual way, do not bleed. There is no pressure in them to force blood around their bodies. It's one of the reasons, I believe, that they continue to decay."

"As I thought. I suppose Jarron killed Regius, and then worked up the courage to kill his wife, in the mistaken belief that he was a necromancer, and his wife some undead creature." deLan declared.

"We saw him two nights past," Kanick replied. "He didn't seem like a man working up the courage to kill anyone."

"In my work as governor I've often learned people aren't what they seem," deLan replied. "The man confessed!"

Kanick barely heard the Governor. I killed that b-bastard mage, Jarron's words echoed inside his head. Twice. Jarron had stuttered twice.

"I need to go speak with the prisoner again," Kanick said suddenly.

They walked back to Jarron's cell. He had recovered and was standing, staring in the middle of his cell. There was something otherworldly in his behaviour, scratching at the edge of Kanick's knowledge.

"Jarron, what happened to Regius, the mage?" Kanick asked, his tone harsh.

Jarron screamed, pounding on his head with his fists. He dropped to the floor, contorting himself, twisting this way and that. The man struggled to speak and gurgled out the words. "I. Killed. Him." Jarron was wheezing and gasping as the words came. "I. Killed. That. B-Bastard. Mage!"

When the final syllable left his lips, Jarron collapsed, his back against the floor, breathing a long sigh of relief.

Realisation had long dawned in Kanick's mind as the macabre spectacle played out in the cell. He turned to deLan. "Open the door," he then turned to Bera. "Strip him."

"What?" deLan asked, at the same time Bera said, "Go in there?"

"Yes," Kanick replied, and "do it. I fear this is more insidious than the ramblings of a mind overcome with guilt."

deLan, hesitantly, opened the door to the cell with his ring of keys. Bera hesitated, looking from Kanick to the governor.

"Well," Kanick added, nodding his head towards Jarron, who hadn't stirred. "Naked as he was born, if you please."

For the briefest moment Bera looked frightened, but his expression hardened, and he nodded, drawing his sword and offering it to deLan. "Just in case."

Bera began to work at the larger man's clothes, removing the stiff green tunic. He had gotten the man's boots off when he saw it, Kanick saw it too and entered the cell.

On the sole of the miller's feet, small and with exquisite craftmanship, there was a rune, no larger than the nail of a big toe. Kanick knelt next to the man's left foot to inspect it closer. Cold damp water seeped through his robes and wet his knees, as he did so.

The rune was complex, Kanick saw, as he traced its lines lightly with the end of his finger. The main character of the mark glowed with a dull purple, still active, while the outer lying symbols were dark and carved deep into the foot. He noted some of the common motifs of the runes. He had used a similar symbol to control the demon near the scar.

Jarron had remained silent and passive throughout, though his mumblings began again, quietly as Kanick heaved himself to his feet.

"What is it?" deLan asked, glancing at the exposed foot.

"A spell," Kanick said, shaking his head. "A rune of suggestion, to implant a thought and compel this poor man to action." He wiped dirt, and possibly blood, from the knees of his robes. "I don't doubt Jarron killed his wife, though the idea wasn't his. However, I doubt very much that he had a hand in Regius's death."

"How do you know?" Bera asked.

"Because, whoever did this is skilled at tracing runes and is a powerful mage with knowledge of forbidden arts," Kanick replied. "It is most likely, the mage who traced this rune is Regius's murderer." Kanick's heart felt heavy, his very bones weary. "I'm sorry governor, but I believe the Sons of the Prince are operating in Woodbend."