I wonder if I can use my magic to soothe them,she thought. It was certainly worth a try. After all, if she could make horses and men fall asleep, surely she could charm an animal too, couldn’tshe?
A movement out of the corner of Tariel’s eye caught her attention, and she slowly turned, thinking it was one of the cats. The motion came from one of the squat houses to her left, and as she stared, she thought she caught a flicker oflight.
What isthat?
Cautiously, she approached the house. The door was wide open, and the floorboards creaked as she crossed the threshold. Like many of the other houses, this one still had all its furniture—a rough-hewn table and chairs in one corner, a counter by the wood-burning stove with several cooking implements laid out, and a rocking chair with a blanket slung over theback.
“Oh gods,” she gasped as she drew closer. The rocking chair was not empty. The skeleton of a child no older than eight sat in it, its head tilted to the side. The bones were covered in a tattered blue dress, and at its feet lay a straw-stuffeddoll.
“I do so miss playing with it,” a forlorn, child-like voice said from behind. Tariel spun around, a scream clawing at her throat that she only just managed to hold back. A ghostly blue figure stood behind her, wearing a tattered dress and clutching a blanket that looked remarkably like the one hanging on the back of the rockingchair.
“I can’t touch real things anymore,” the girl said, bending down as if to pick up the doll. Her ghostly fingers passed through the toy, and her mouth turned down into a frown. “Do you think you could pick it up for me?” sheasked.
“Of course,” Tariel said, finding her voice. She crouched down and carefully lifted the doll from its place on the ground. A chill raced up her spine, and she briefly worried that the toy might be infected with plague before she remembered Zolotais’s assurance that she was impervious to such diseases. “Is that better?” sheasked.
The ghost nodded. “Put her in the rocking chair,” she told Tariel. “Gabby shouldn’t lie on the floor where the dogs can get to her and chew her up. That’s what Momma alwayssaid.”
Tariel cocked her head. “Where is your mommanow?”
“Dead.” Tears slipped down the child’s cheeks, disappearing into thin air before they could hit the ground. “Sometimes I can hear her voice calling out to me in the night, telling me to come to her. But I don’t know where she is.” Her chinwobbled.
Tariel’s heart ached for the little girl. She must be tethered to this world, unable to pass on to the afterlife with the rest of her family. “Was your mommasick?”
The child nodded. “Everyone was sick,” she whispered. “Momma, Poppa, my brother Darry, the whole village,” she said. “Even the chickens and the livestock caught the sickness. There was nothing anyone could do. Our healer was one of the first to die, and no other would come to our aid.” The child’s throat bobbed. “I was the last to die, and there was no one left to buryme.”
Tariel swallowed back tears of her own. “I’ll bury you,” she said, placing the doll in the skeleton’s lap. “Would you like me to bury Gabby with youtoo?”
“Yes, please.” The little girl beamed, a toothy grin banishing the misery on her face. “Maybe then I can go seeMomma.”
“How long has it been since you last sawher?”
“Two years,” she said, her face growing sad again. “She would probably still be alive, if not foryou.”
“For me?” Tariel asked, taken aback. “What do I have to do withthis?”
The little girl shook her head. “Don’t be upset,” she said. “I’m not angry. You were wrongedtoo.”
She reached for Tariel, and Tariel shivered, not certain if she should back away or not. But just as the girl’s ghostly fingers brushed against her hand, twigs snapped beneath horse’shooves.
“Blast it!” she swore under her breath as the girl disappeared. Tariel had wanted to ask her what she’d meant when she’d said the plague was her fault, but there was no time to call her back. Her skin prickled with nerves, her instincts telling her that foes approached. Darting out the back of the house, she gauged the distance to the barn, wondering if she could make it back in time to disguise Riann and Calrain. But the riders emerged from the forest, their armor glinting in the moonlight and illuminating Roisen’s insignia on theirshields.
Heart pounding, she scampered up a tree to hide, and watched as they spread out, searching the village. Zolotais was no longer standing outside the barn—she had likely gone inside to warn Calrain and Riann of the intruders. The soldiers were wary, having come to the same conclusion as Tariel had about where the inhabitants had gone, but even so, it was not long before two of them dragged Calrain and Riann out by the hair, bruised and sporting bloody lips. Rage thundered through Tariel’s blood at the sight of her men being injured and roughed up by the witch hunter’s knights, but there was nothing she could do about it. She did not have enough power to make all of these men fall asleep at once, and she dared not try anything more complicated from thisdistance.
“Looks like I’ve found two out of three,” Sir Jerrold sneered as he loomed over them. Two of his knights held Calrain and Riann fast, while several others stood at the ready, closing off any possible escape routes. “Where is that witch friend of yours? I know she must be around heresomewhere.”
“Witch friend?” Calrain sputtered. “Why would we befriend awitch?”
The knight holding Calrain clouted him on the ear. “Enough of your lies!” he spat. “Tell Sir Jerrold the truth! The Prime Witch Hunter seesall.”
Sir Jerrold narrowed his eyes. “Don’t speak of me as if I were a god,” he said, pinning the knight with a fierce stare. “I am a good tracker, but my skills are entirely due to Roisen’s blessing. He is the one who sees all. I am merely the vessel he uses to mete outjustice.”
“Yes, sir,” the knight said, bowing hishead.
Sir Jerrold smirked. “You’ll have to forgive Mirald,” he said to Riann and Calrain. “He is the newest of my hunting party. Even so, he has enough skill with a blade that he can slit your throat if you don’t tell me the truth,” he added, his voice lowering to a menacinggrowl.
“I swear upon my mother’s life, I am not lying,” Calrain said, and he spoke with such conviction that Tariel would have believed him had she not known the truth. Had he been given to a troupe of performers rather than left at the steps of the Brotherhood’s monastery, Tariel thought he might have made quite a good living at being an actor. “We are not traveling with awitch.”
“Who is this witch, anyway?” Riann demanded. “And why would you think we are traveling withher?”
