Soulgatherer, Chapter 2 of 6

Soulgatherer, Chapter 2

Chapter 2, Endings and Beginnings

Professor McDurgle sat outside the dean’s office. He shifted around uncomfortably on the hard leather of the chair. He had been sat there for some time. Eventually a loud but creaky “Come,” came through the office door, and McDurgle stood up, brushed at his robes and went in.
The dean was sitting at his desk, surrounded by his leather bound books, his scrolls and grimoires, his skull, stuffed raven and pictures of deans past, some of which could be caught moving their eyes if you turned to look at them fast enough.
“Please have a seat, Professor.” Dean Forthswallis was bald and wrinkly, with a fringe of white hair mainly concentrated in his ears and a pair of thick-glassed spectacles dominating his face. His impressive robes of office looked less so on his scrawny frame. He had been the dean of Ravendish for over a hundred years, and a senior lecturer for decades before that.
It was an uncomfortable truth that those who could use magic lived many years more than those who could not. Many wizards dealt with the resentment by moving to new kingdoms periodically, and eventually becoming hermits in the wilderness when they tired of moving. Dean Forthswallis had instead taken the tack of allowing his physical condition to deteriorate so that he appeared as unthreatening as possible, just a doddering old grandfather hobbling around his office. And considering the importance of the academy in providing the magical talent that formed the backbone of the economy, the people, from the commoners up to the king himself, seemed content to let Forthswallis continue to maintain the stability of that hallowed institution.
McDurgle sat across from the dean, separated from him by his big, carved oak desk. “How do you feel your lecture went this morning?” the dean asked.
McDurgle stared for a moment, trying to focus on the dean’s eyes through the candle light shining on his lenses. “Well... badly!” McDurgle finally said.
“What about it do you feel went badly?”
“Oh, come on, Lucas,” McDurgle said. “My prize student turned into a giant arachnid right in front of me and killed several fu... several students. Do I have to explain the badness of that to you?”
“Yes, William,” said Forthwallis, “an emergency occurred during your lecture. You were the one responsible for dealing with it. As you said, some members of the student body are now deceased. We need a clear accounting of your actions.”
“Me? I didn’t transform the lad into a gods loving spider. Why aren’t you investigating him?”
“We are, of course. No one is suggesting you were the cause of this incident.” For now, the unspoken words floating across the desk. “But nonetheless, you were the man on the spot. Knowing the steps you took will be invaluable for preventing future bloodshed.”
McDurgle swallowed his next rejoinder, sighed, and listed each of his reactions to the recent “incident”. Dean Forthwallis listened quietly, mouth open a crack.
“And then everyone poked their head in to see what all the fuss was about,” McDurgle concluded.
“So you admit,” the Dean said, “that your initial response, to bind the beast before it had fully emerged, was incorrect?”
“Of course I do! I’m a teacher, not a commando! I wasn’t prepared with an action plan for sudden demonic transformation.”
“And yet you must be aware that such things can occur, especially in places of concentrated power. You have been trained.”
“It’s been a while since my own student days. My reflexes aren’t what they used to be.”
“We are wizards, William. We only become more proficient over the years… in the fields we devote ourselves to.”
“And I am. I wasn’t aware that I had to become proficient in rapid monster slaying.”
“Yes, yes, of course, professor. But you can see how it looks to the families of the deceased? To the kingdom? If...”
McDurgle gave up and let the rest of the patter wash over him, replying when necessary on autopilot. The long and the short of it, he was being put on administrative leave “until we can close the book on this matter.”
He walked back to the lecture hall where everything had happened to collect some of his effects, which he apparently wouldn’t be using for a while now. He had cut a square of his robe that had been covered in the spider demon’s discharge, before burning the rest of it. He took a pouch out of his pocket, took the square of fabric out of the bag and unfolded it. It was black, sticky, shiny and smelled like particularly filthy arse. He walked thoughtfully over to where young Dalton had been sitting and placed the square on the chair. He walked briskly back to his rooms in his office, searched through his students’ papers, found one of the boy’s, grabbed it and took it back to the lecture hall, squeezing around people the whole time who seemed only to exist to slow him down.
He placed the essay written by Dalton down on the chair beside the soiled cloth. Two items, one created by the original, one by... the final version. He went over and shut the doors of the lecture hall. No one was due in here for an hour or so, but if he should be caught doing this right after being put on leave, he could get spanked by the dean, maybe even have his tenure revoked.
McDurgle used his wand to trace a circle in the air around the chair and cast a spell of recreation, showing what had happened to the person in that location in the recent past. It could be effective for up to a couple of days, sometimes fizzled out after a few minutes, was usually good for several hours at least.
Lights danced and spun on the air for half a minute, and then the spider shimmered into existence before him, pale and wavy as if seen through water, perched on a bench before him. He drew his wand in a line to the left, and the spider leaped backwards and halfway down Dalton Goodwill’s throat. Another swipe, the spider had vanished and Dalton was sitting and grinning, lips and eyes stretched wide.
McDurgle continued swiping. Dalton’s rictus grimace relaxed somewhat and he eventually stood from his chair and walked stiffly backwards out of the hall. McDurgle followed him. Dalton’s ghost entered the press of students moving up and down the hall, made worse by the fact that many of them were now stopping to look in through the classroom door. Those near the entrance reared back, eyes widening as McDurgle appeared. They didn’t see Dalton, only McDurgle could do that. While Dalton could pass through them as if he, or they, were mist, McDurgle had to go in between, and so their progress down the hall proceeded in jerks and spurts, Dalton’s image growing dimmer as his connection to the spell’s source stretched and strained.
Dalton walked towards the entrance of the student lodgings, and McDurgle worried that he had wasted his energy, as any fool could have gone straight to the boy’s room. Indeed, that’s just what the faculty had done, and they were more than likely still there now and not in a mood to see him already breaking his forced sabbatical. But Dalton walked past the entrance and down a flight of stone stairs.
The image was faint now. McDurgle had to stop in a dark hallway and cast a light spell to be able to see the boy’s faint outline. A few more steps. He started to turn. Almost gone. A mere glimmer of a hand miming the opening of a door, and then passing through the brass bound wood and going inside. Into the office of one of the teachers.
***
It was the silence that finally returned Lizel to consciousness. As she forced her eyes open, she was vaguely aware that the rabbit had maintained its harangue whilst she slept, but it was now digging frantically at the ground, its bottom twitching. It was trying to dig a tunnel. She looked around. There was a manticore padding towards them on heavy lion’s paws, golden cunning eyes regarding her in a human face. Leathery wings shifted on his back, and his serpentine tail swished casually in time with his steps.
Lizel climbed to her feet.
“Good day to you,” she said.
The manticore smiled. “Good day to you, good woman.”
“I would know your intentions before you come too close,” Lizel said.
“Dost thou own this land, that thou wouldst tell me where I may or may not tread?” asked the manticore, still moving.
“No, but I can tell you that I will burn that smile off your ugly face if you don’t stop walking right now,” she said, gripping her seashell pendant.
The manticore stopped a few paces from the circle still holding the rabbit in place. The rabbit had made a noticeable start on its tunnel, clearing a space about a finger wide and a finger deep. There was a small pile of dirt behind it. It turned, looked at the manticore, said “Shit!” and started digging faster.
“Are you scared, woman?” the manticore said.
“Just sensible,” Lizel replied. “Okasto sent you here. He was watching me through the rabbit. He thought you could finish me while I was sleeping. But I woke up. The plan failed. You may as well just go back where you came from. You have no hope of coming out of this well.”
“I’m fast, woman. Strong. You might be able to attack me once with your magic before I am upon you, and then I would feast on your organs.”
“Or we might both die in each other's arms... limbs.”
“Evenly matched. The best type of contest.”
“For your kind? Manticore are hunters more than fighters. You are ever seeking lesser prey.”
“A calumny! I am slandered, good lady!” He started prowling to the left and right, moving his head so that it always looked at her but never coming closer. “That is an unfair stereotype based on a small sample of the population.”
“What did Okasto offer you? Maybe we can make a deal.”
“Ah, therein lies the difficulty. My master raised me from when I was a child-cub. I have a duty towards him.”
“Then he would not want you harmed, you that are like a child to him,” Lizel said, walking in the other direction to keep him from flanking her, the burrowing rabbit between them, its head now lost from sight beneath the ground. “Go to him, report what you have seen, ask for further instructions. Go to him. It is what he would want. Go to him.”
“Yes,” the manticore said, “yes. The situation has changed. I will confer with my master. No doubt I will be seeing you again soon, woman. Until then, I bid you good journey.” He wheeled about suddenly, causing Lizel to take a step back. His leathery, glistening tail flicked the rabbit on its fluffy tail, and the rabbit screeched over and over and burrowed even more furiously. The manticore bounded away, alternating back legs and front legs, and was soon lost amongst the trees.
Lizel relaxed her fingers from her pendant and took a few shallow breaths. Most of the energy she had recovered from her rest had just been poured into that persuasion spell. She took a thin cord of rope from her travel pack and tied the end of it in a loop. Then she reached into the shallow hole, grabbed the rabbit by the back of the neck, pulled it out and slipped the rope over the rabbit’s head, being careful to avoid its snapping teeth. She saw that it was a doe.
She put her back down and erased the protective circle with the toe of her boot. “Take me to Okasto,” she said.
“Fuck you, bitch!” The rabbit pulled at the rope.
Lizel sighed. “I’m tired. Exhausted, really. You are still tethered to someone I need to find. I need your help. Cooperate, and I’ll feed you well and make you comfortable. Fuck with me and I’ll make your life hell. But you will help me, either way. What will it be?”
She kneeled down to look directly into the rabbit’s bloodshot eyes. The rabbit looked back. After a long moment, it started moving, saying “This way.” South. Lizel stood still and let her jerk back at the end of her leash.
“You are lying,” Lizel said. “Do so again and you will feel my wrath.”
Slowly, head hung low, the rabbit hopped around and moved off again. East. Lizel followed after it.
They walked over rolling fields and through the occasional copse of trees until a cobbled road appeared, heading east. Lizel walked and the rabbit hopped along at a steady gait for a mile or so before the rabbit said, “Thirsty. Hungry.”
Lizel unslung her satchel and took out her eating bowl and her waterskin. She poured some water into the bowl and put it before the rabbit. She lapped at the water while Lizel drank from the skin.
“Hungry,” the rabbit said once she had drunk about half the water.
“We just walked through a field,” Lizel said. “Why didn’t you eat the grass?”
“Don’t want grass.”
“What then? Cabbage?”
“Blood.”
“What?”
“Your blood.”
Okastio. The same influence that she was using to follow her target was giving the rabbit unnatural urges. Cure the latter, lose the former. Sighing, she cut the ball of her thumb with her knife and squeezed blood into what was left of the water in the bowl. The rabbit lapped at the mixture with considerably more gusto than it had applied to the straight water. Soon the bowl was empty and the rabbit was licking the sides to get the last drops. Lizel pulled the bowl away from her in disgust.
“More,” the rabbit said.
“No.”
“More.”
“No.”
The rabbit eyed her sliced thumb resentfully but subsided.
They set out again.
“If we are to be companions on this journey for some time, I should give you a name,” Lizel said. The rabbit said nothing.
“I shall call you...Copper,” Lizel said. “For your coloration and your... dietary preferences.”
“Whatever, woman,” said Copper.
“My name is Lizel Goweren.”
“Don’t care, woman.”
“Very well. I will not insist on it. So long as you take me where I need to go. Then I shall free you to return to your fields and remember the taste of green things.”
As the sun was lowering behind them, Lizel heard the sound of flowing water. They came to a village clustered around a river running roughly north to south. There was a wooden bridge crossing the river and a mill with a large wheel of split wooden logs turning lazily with the flow.
“Okastio came this way?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still here now?”
Copper considered for a moment. “No.”
“I could search your mind if I wanted to be sure. It would not be pleasant for you.”
“No! No no. He stayed a time, but now he’s gone. Over the water and on.”
“Still, it’s almost dark,” Lizel said. “We shall stop here for the night.”
He stayed a time. Would this be a repeat of the rabbits on a larger scale? A village full of people driven to rage and murder? But controlling a whole village was a much bigger task than a couple of dozen rabbits. Frankly if he was so puissant, there was no point in pursuing him, because he would be able to snuff her out like a candle. But pet manticores aside, she had to assume that was not the case. She had to assume that, because she had to catch him.
The cobbled road took them past plowed fields and simple farmsteads, before plunging into the heart of the village. People looked up from their work, gathering tools and baskets and preparing to end their daily labors. Some people ahead were sharing the road, pushing carts and wheelbarrows here and there. Lizel and Copper arrived not far from the river at a building with a sign above the door with a painted wagon wheel. It didn’t seem to be a stable of any kind, so Lizel assumed it was the inn. Some people stopped in the road to watch them. Lizel pulled open the wooden door.
“In here,” she said. Copper hopped into the building to the end of her leash. After a moment, Lizel followed.
The inn was typically small for such a small, isolated village. The magical networks had not extended out this far. Everything still ran on animals, plants and water as everywhere had a hundred years ago. There were a few scratched wooden tables facing a counter with a doorway to the right and a flight of stairs to the left. A modest firepit took up much of the central floor space.
There was a man and a woman standing behind the counter, watching them. Their aprons and positions in the room suggested they were the proprietors. The man was of medium build with scraggly hair surrounding a balding crown. The woman was short and portly with bright eyes and a frowning face. Both looked to be in late middle age, not far from elderly.
“Good evening,” said Lizel.
The man narrowed his eyes and glanced at the woman.
“Evening,” the woman admitted, eventually.
“May I sit down,” Lizel said, gesturing to one of the chairs. After another pause, the man nodded. She sat and looped Copper’s leash through the ornamental spaces in the neighboring chair’s top rail. “Ok,” she said. “What happened?”
“Are you Goweren?” the woman asked.
“Yes. What did the man say about me? What did he do?”
The innkeeper balled his hands on the counter and his face showed signs of imminent collapse. The woman put her palm over his clenched fist. “He cursed our daughter,” she said. The man turned away. Lizel heard him stifle a sob.
“She’s all right by day,” the woman went on. “But last night, she turned into... into a beast. She... she killed an infant.” The woman’s face was as flat as her intonation, but her eyes were wells of bewilderment. “She’s locked up in the village elder’s cellar now.”
The door to the inn opened, and a farmer came in, carrying a pitchfork. Behind him came another person, carrying a scythe, and then four more people, all with various implements. The small common room was filling up.
“And what did the man say,” said Lizel, against a rising surge of panic to lash out with lightning at everyone around her. “That the curse would be lifted if you kill me?”
“That’s right,” the innkeeper said, turning back around, his emotions controlled, face reset in grim resolve.
“I am pursuing this man,” Lizel said. “If I were not, he may not have come here and done this to you. So you have my most sincere apologies and regrets for my involvement in this horror. But this man is a bad man, as bad as any demon or devil. He would have done as bad in other places if left to his own devices. He has done this just to slow my pursuit. I will catch him. And when I catch him, I will make him pay dearly for what he has done to you and to others. But for now, let me make some amends for what has occurred here. Take me to your daughter.”
The husband and wife looked at each other and at the armed mob of field workers. Finally, the woman nodded, and more finally than that, the man nodded.
The sky was deep violet shading to dark blue as they walked the dirt road of the village, Lizel, the innkeepers and the farmers. She had left Copper tied to the chair. She had given her a saucer of water for appearances and in the hope that the rabbit might return to a normal diet, but she had turned her pink nose up at it.
As they turned one corner, and then another, a faint sound of voices grew stronger, and Lizel thought that it would not require magical powers to know that their destination would also be the source of the noise. The elder’s house came into view, a red tiled building set apart from the thatch or wooden roofs of most of the village buildings. Before the door was a young man and woman. The woman was screaming through tears.
“She’s going to change soon! Let us in now so that we can kill her before she turns into that wild animal again.”
A burly man with gray hair and a grim face stood in front of the door to the building, arms like ham hocks folded across his chest. He looked up as the party approached down the road. The crying woman turned to see what she was looking at. She made eye contact with the mistress of the inn.
“I’m sorry, Eileen,” she said, swiping at her eyes with her rough cloak. “I just can’t sit at home, knowing that the creature that killed my baby...” Her voice broke and she sagged to her knees, caught by the skinny young redhead who by his expression was probably her husband. The inn mistress went and knelt before her and embraced her.
“I know, love,” she said. “I’m sorry too.”
The inn master had quiet words with the man standing before the door, who then turned and unlocked the door and held it open. Lizel went in, followed by the two men, who shut the door firmly behind them against the growing crowd.
They lead her to a door and down a flight of stairs to the cellar.
***
Rachael sat at her wooden desk on her uncomfortable wooden chair, reading through a stack of documents, writing on some of them, writing some documents of her own. Her fingers were ink stained. Every hour or so she had to sharpen her quill. Her desk was one of dozens on the fifth floor of Golden Shield Insurance. Every desk was occupied by a similarly hunched, scribbling body.
The work was simultaneously boring and emotionally draining. Boring because of the droning similarity of the language used in the documents and the processes required to deal with them: reference to tedious tables of policies to determine if her company owed their customers money, and if so how much.
It was draining for two reasons. One, the specifics of each case were different, and the slightest mistake on her part could cause huge financial discrepancies. Secondly, through the dry figures and blank statements, people’s lives were being affected. Cause of fire: negligence meant a family business was about to be ruined, leaving just a family out on the street. Lack of second signature on p42 invalidates policy, sorry Grandpa, your retirement fund just disappeared.
Her eyes were straying with increasing regularity to the big clock on the wall as the lunch break approached, when she was approached by her supervisor and Allayard, the wizard who had given her the portal pearl into the Pink. Her hand went reflexively to her pocket. Had they been caught? Was she about to lose this shitty job and be thrust into even shittier destitution? Her heart beat faster.
Her coworkers arrived like the tide, lapped up against her desk and stopped. Allayard’s face was blank but slightly bored looking. He didn’t seem to be giving off trouble vibes.
“Ms Hertzevitz,” said her supervisor. He was a big man with curly graying hair and a bushy mustache. “Do you have a moment?”
“Sure,” Rachael said. “What’s up, Mr Ribbenstock?”
“In my office, if you don’t mind.”
So she stood up from her desk and its freight of misery, and walked with Mr Ribbenstock and the wizard Allayard past the rest of the scribes, none of whom glanced curiously at her as she went. She tried to control her breathing. What would she say if he confronted her about her portal use? Deny? Downplay? Start wailing and beg for clemency? Claim that Allayard had sexually harassed her?
They entered the supervisor’s office at the end of the aisle. There was a desk with one big chair on one side and two smaller on the other. The big chair had a view through wooden slats of the large work hall they had just left. Ribbenstock closed the slats, gestured to her and Allayard to take the smaller chairs, and then placed himself in the larger one.
He made a few banal pleasantries about the weather, which Rachael answered without thinking, like a leg twitching at the tap of a knee. Then,
“How satisfied would you say you are with your current position and responsibilities, Ms Hertzevitz?”
“Well…” Rachael said. She snuck a look at Allayard. He raised an eyebrow, just a trifle. “I feel like I could do more for the company, sir.”
“We think so too,” said Ribbenstock. “Your reports show keen insight and efficient, logical thinking. Your reports are 16% shorter than average while maintaining accuracy. We are considering you for field work.”
Rachael did a mental backflip to adjust to the new information. Not a reprimand, but a promotion! A chance to spend time away from her desk, out in the fresh air, or, for the city, at least the open air. So this was why Allayard was here! He was the technical agent for field operations, using magic to evaluate the customers’ claims.
“That’s great! I mean, yes. I accept. That’s to say, if you offered me that position, I would accept.” Rachael stopped talking.
“You would be working with Allayard,” Ribbenstock said. “Our cases are time sensitive, so you would no longer be paid on an hourly basis. We would expect you to do what is required to bring cases in on deadline. That means that some days you may work more hours than you currently do, but some days you may work less. It all depends on the nature of the case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Allayard will provide you with on the job training as you go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Uh... do you enjoy it,” she said to Allayard.
He looked at her, and she felt her face grow warm from asking such an inane question. Then he answered, “It’s the search for truth. A noble profession. But you will often see people at their most vulnerable. It can be draining, emotionally.”
Rachael’s vision flashed pink for an instant. “I’ll count on you for your support.”
He nodded gravely. “And I on you.”
Ribbenstock gave her a new contract to sign, and she was a provisional field agent.

It was a week later. Rachael was walking with Allayard to a low brick building on the outskirts of the city. After an hour of crushing press, there was finally room to walk without touching anyone, but there were still plenty of people about, even early in the morning in the middle of the week when most of the population must be at work.
“Well, that was terrible,” Rachael said.
“Already yearning for your desk?” asked Allayard. “You’ll be back to it soon enough, no fear. ‘Field’ work is mostly done in the office.”
“It’s not my desk I’m yearning for,” said Rachael, glancing at Allayard furtively.
He looked back at her wryly. “I see. Well I’m sure something can be arranged.”
She almost said, Now?, but with an iron surge of self control she instead asked, “When would that be?”
“When we get back to the firm. My crystals are there.”
“Fine. That sounds fine,” she said, trying to make her voice light. “I can wait.” He looked at her again. Ugh, why had she said that last part? That wasn’t a normal thing to say.
They reached the building. A small sign nailed to the heavy wooden door said Farebroke and Sons, Cutlers. Below those words was a picture of a crossed fork and knife. They knocked on the door. A tall young man with brown hair plastered down flat on his head opened the door and stuck his head out of it to blink down at them.
“We are with Golden Shield,” Alayard said, holding up his mark box and pushing a button to make the logo of their company float in the air above the box, a shield wider at the top and petering out to a rounded bottom, with the letters GS emblazoned in the middle. “We are here to assist you with your insurance claim.”
Assist, thought Rachael. They were there to, if at all possible, kill the claim in the cradle.
“Yes,” the man said, grasping at the edge of the door with both hands. “Father is expecting you in the accounts room. Please come in. My name is Janfred.” He opened the door a fraction further and sidled to the side so that they could enter. Inside was a long narrow hallway running to their left and right for the width of the building. The wall in front of them had windows showing the workshop beyond. Janfred opened a door that led into the workshop, so Rachael had only a moment to examine the place before she was taken into it. A sound that had been barely noticeable while she was outside, and then a constant mutter when she entered the building, became a dull roar as she went into the workshop.
There were dozens of people and dozens more machines packed into a space the size of a small courtyard. Mostly men, but also a few women and children, were hunched over various stations. There was a line of men applying pieces of metal to grindstones. There were a few blacksmiths beating glowing metal on forges. Some women and boys were dunking pieces into various buckets, others were attaching wooden handles to knives and forks. There was not a lot of room to move, but the people were not moving so much. There was a lot of passing from station to station, hand to hand. Some of the smaller children were given items to take further away, bustling in between the crowded aisles with baskets clutched to their scrawny chests. One woman sitting in relative isolation was carving scrollwork onto a dagger with a motorized chisel. The millstones, forges, chisel and other powered apparatus were all connected to the green power crystals which provided them their energy, giving the room a sickly verdant underglow.
One part of the workshop was strangely empty, a small pocket of space in an otherwise packed room. The workers moved around it like a colony of ants that for some reason known only to it makes a large detour around a seemingly empty stretch of road before continuing on in the same direction as before.
“Is this where the incident occurred?” asked Rachael as she started towards it.
“Yes,” said Janfred. “But please step into our office first. Father wishes to have a word with you.” He guided them through the busy throng, the workers making way deferentially but without much enthusiasm. The heat from all the machines was creeping up on Rachael. She pulled at the hem of her dress to get some air circulating.
Inside the office, an old man with big ears, a wrinkly face and wisps of pale hair sat behind a desk. Standing beside him was a younger man, about Janfred’s age, presumably the other, or at least an other, of the Farebroke sons. She really should have known how many there were. The information was no doubt in the file she had been given. But she had been too focused on the main points of the case to memorize every peripheral detail.
“It’s the insurance people,” Janfred said, closing the office door behind him.
“About bloody time,” the old man said. “I’m Vernor Farebroke. I contacted you lot a week ago.”
“We do appreciate your patience,” said Alayard. “May I use your desk?”
“Yes, yes, go ahead,” said Vernor Farebroke, waving his hand irritably at the desk before him.
Alayard sat in the room’s other chair, removed a scrying bowl from his travel pouch and placed the bowl on the desk. He wiggled his fingers around in the bowl, and lights began to stir. He plucked and pulled at the lights, muttered, “Here we are,” and then a parchment was floating in the air above the bowl. It was a vision of the policy that Farebroke had taken out for his business.
“Ok, have you got your head on now?” Farebroke asked. “Have you taken enough time? Is it permissible if I actually tell you what the hell is going on so that I can get back to some semblance of doing business some time this year?”
He lashed his eyes at Alayard and Rachael as he said this. Rachael looked away, flustered. Alayard merely nodded and said, “By all means, Shopmaster Farebroke.”
“It was one of the forges, like I wrote in my claim,” Farebroke said. “Did you see where we’ve got the space missing out there?”
“Yes, I saw it, Mr Farebroke,” Rachael said.
“Good for you,” he said. “We’d been getting complaints about our silverware for the better part of a year. Just one or two a week at first, hardly more than our usual customer reports of dissatisfaction. But then more and more. Food tasting funny. Utensils suddenly losing their shape. There was one story...” he looked towards the door of his office, which was open. Janfred stepped over and quietly closed it. Vernor went on, “a man stabbed his wife and children to death during dinner. It was with one of our meat cutting knives. A week after his wife had purchased it.”
“By the gods,” Rachael breathed. This last hadn’t been in the report.
“No one publicly linked our product with the event, but we figured it out with them having come here so recent. So it certainly seemed like something was going on. We put all the cases together and figured out that all of the items with the worst complaints had been worked on by the same grinding wheel. Now, usually we have the same people work at the same stations. They get comfortable, they can work faster, it keeps everything moving. The employee who was in charge of the “troubled” forge, as we called it, was a good worker with no history of bad performance. She did her work carefully, wasn’t too slow, knew what she was about. We observed her work after the complaints started piling up. Everything seemed to be in order. Every step after her work left the forge seemed to be in order.”
He took a crystal out of a drawer. It was cracked and smoke stained from within. “We called in a wizard to take a look at her station. This is what happened to his examining tool. Blew it to pieces.” He handed it to Alayard, who inspected it seriously for a few moments before handing it to Rachael, who looked at it and put it back on the table.
“And the grinding technician?” Rachael asked. “Where is she working now that her wheel has been removed?”
“She ain’t,” said the elder Farebroke. “She’s... resting. The forge blowing up did something to her. You want to see how she is?” He nodded to his sons. “Take them to her.”
They were led into a small, dark room at the back of the workshop. A cot was set up in one corner, and in another there was a low table with a lamp, pitcher and cup. A woman was lying on the cot, her back to them.
“Come on,” said Janfred, not unkindly, taking her by the shoulder. “These people want to take a look at you.” He rolled her over towards them. She let out a long, low whimper, but didn’t say anything. She was clutching at her stomach.
Janfred pulled one of her hands away and tugged up her dress, then took the lamp from the table with his other hand and held it towards her. She winced and screwed up her eyes against the glare of the light. So did something on her body. Rachael couldn’t be sure what she was seeing so she craned forward. Growing out of the woman’s abdomen was a red, wrinkly face about the size of a fist. It let out a small, pathetic wail, moving side to side a much as it could while encased in living flesh. Rachael covered her mouth with her fingers and ran out of the room.