‘Isobelle? Gweeen!’ Jane’s voice called, from really not very far away at all, a few pools down the path. Close enough to make them both seize and go still. ‘Gargery’s here!’
Gwen groaned, the protest welling up from somewhere deep, deep inside her: ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’m going tomurderthat girl!’
Isobelle let out a somewhat hysterical laugh, bowing her head to press her face against Gwen’s shoulder. Gwen could feel the flush of her skin, and shivered again despite the interruption.
Isobelle moved away before Gwen could stop her. ‘Come on. We should hear what he has to say about the witch.’
Gwen clambered out of the pool, her knees threatening to bend in ways they really shouldn’t. Wrapping herself in one of the towels and shivering against the sudden cold, she followed Isobelle down the path, muttering.
The caretaker of the hot springs was waiting for them back down by the changing rooms. They took a few minutes to dry off and change – even Isobelle wasn’t about to try her hand at interrogation while dressed in sopping-wet shorts – and they gathered in a half-moon cut out in the stone that was being done up as an open-air cafe.
‘Elsie said you ladies wanted a word with me?’ Gargery said, once they’d seated themselves at one of the tables. He was an older man of perhaps fifty or sixty years, with grey hair, deep brown skin, and mournful eyes set in a crisscrossing pattern of wrinkles. ‘Lord Bingleton’s really the showrunner,’ he added, glancing aside. ‘I just look after the waters.’
Gwen felt a sudden, unexpected moment of sympathy for the man, who obviously wanted to be left in peace to tend these pools and not have anything to do with the theatrical holiday spot his lord was concocting.
‘We actually wanted to ask about the true story,’ Gwen said gently. ‘Whatreallyhappened fifteen years ago, not what Bingleton is saying now.’
‘What really happened with the sorceress?’ Isobelle added. ‘Was it truly a battle between good and evil, like the story says? Was she all that bad?’
‘Aye,’ said Gargery in a low voice. ‘It was bad. People died, my lady. Many of my friends. My cousin, his wife, their little one.’
The girls had gathered at a nearby table, listening.
‘What exactly did the sorceress do?’ Isobelle asked gently.
‘She could talk to creatures,’ Gargery said. ‘Bring ’em out of the woods, set ’em to attacking people. Monsters, too. Like that one.’ He lifted his chin, gesturing in the vague direction of the ocean and the sea monster Gwen had fought.
‘Do you know why?’ Gwen asked. ‘Why she’d turn on her town?’
‘She weren’t always that way.’ Gargery ran a hand over his shock of grey hair. ‘She was just another witch, you know. Some remedies when folks got sick, the occasional banishing when a spirit got stuck in someone’s house, that sort of thing. But something happened with the paladins, they say.’
‘The paladins camebeforeshe started attacking people?’ asked Sylvie, abandoning all pretence at not eavesdropping, and turning towards them. ‘Bingleton said they arrived to fight her.’
‘No, lass, they’d been here, oh … six, seven years already. The tower was a training ground of sorts for them. One of several across the land, I think. Something happened up at the tower, andthat’swhen the witch went mad.’
Sylvie went quiet, frowning, and Isobelle took over again. ‘Monsters I can understand, but what real harm could she do, summoning animals? Bears died out here centuries ago, and the wolves are all further north.’
Gargery shot her a sharp glance. ‘You think an animal has to be big to be dangerous? Imagine a swarm of rats, a hundred strong, all maddened, all running at you, clawing and biting at you, out for blood.’
Isobelle recoiled, shuddering.
Gwen had been watching Gargery, his darting, mournful eyes, the slant of his posture, the bobbing of his throat when he swallowed. Softly, she asked, ‘Is that what happened to you?’
Gargery’s shrewd eyes met hers. His eyes flicked down to the dragonsfire scar on Gwen’s arm, for she hadn’t buttoned her sleeves again after dressing. For a moment, a strange understanding passed between them, like an unseen current – one wounded warrior recognising another.
‘No,’ he answered quietly. ‘With me it was a deer.’
He shifted his weight, easing back and putting a hand under one leg, lifting it and setting it down again a little to one side so they could see it. With a jolt, Gwen realised the trouser leg was hiding a wooden limb.
‘Huge red stag came screaming out of the wood and trampled me. Broke my leg in so many places they had to take it off.’
Gwen swallowed. ‘Gargery, how is it that you’re willing–able – to talk to us about this? The others in the town, they all seem to clam up when we ask. Almost like magic.’
Gargery frowned, looking down at his lap, one hand idly rubbing the remainder of his leg. ‘Fear’s a mightyweapon,’ he replied. ‘I can’t tell you anything about magic, really. But I suppose they’re afraid.’
‘But not you?’ asked Isobelle, her eyes bright with sympathy. ‘I’d think you would have more to fear than most.’
Gargery smiled wryly at her. ‘Maybe. But I fought my fears fifteen years ago, lass, when my leg went. Sometimes you just decide the fear can’t have you.’
