Raya and Benn spent another long day at the Archives, this time in the sunshine behind the main building. Birds sang in the trees and the open air felt fresher and healthier to Raya, though the skies seemed to have been permanently darkened by ash from distant Mount Lukar. They’d hadn’t spoken a word about the romantics Benn had brought up a few days earlier. Nor had they found anything about the names Nalisa Orr, Axar, nor anything suspicious about Lotha and Viker. Dondar kept up his daily watch of the house they’d infiltrated. Raya and Benn kept an eye out for any information about Dago, the mysterious vanished traveller.
She had been paging through a book on conspiracy theories she had heard before—such as the Orrish itself being called down by magicians more powerful than those modern day. She closed it with a sigh and looked through the other books she had selected for the day. Nothing too promising. She’d never been an avid reader, and all the letters were blurring together like little boxes, all the same.
Benn stirred from his own book. “Would you like me to bring some more?” he asked. Despite them not bringing up what had been said before, Benn had gone out of his way to polite and helpful to her.
Raya looked up and then paused. Lotha was walking along the path toward them. Benn tensed, as she had. The magician had already seen them, so they had no choice to await her arrival at their curved stone bench. “Raya,” Lotha said, quietly. “Benn. I had heard you were still in Vagren. Erik headed home to Olston, but I’ve been trying to learn what I can here still. Have you learned anything?”
Raya stared at the woman. Lotha’s make up was identical to their first meeting, smooth lines that trailed down her cheeks like tears or rays of sunshine. Her brown hair was folded to the left side in an elaborate braid that hung down her back, while large round earrings, fashioned from reeds hung from each ear. “I might have,” Raya said. “Do you know the name Dago Ai Ji Malzo?”
Lotha tilted her head. “No, it doesn’t ring a bell,” she said. “Should I look into it?”
“He might have something to do with all this.” Raya looked at Benn, then back at Lotha. “I’m just not sure what.”
“Of course, I’ll start investigating that. Where’d you find the name?” Lotha asked, with a smile.
“I heard it from some of the refugees coming into town,” Raya quickly lied. Lotha’s questions were probing, despite her amiable responses. “In Olston.”
“I see. Intriguing.” Lotha looked at Benn, then back at Raya. A moment of silence poisoned the air around them, until Lotha broke the silence. “I found something in my own investigation,” she said. “My colleagues at the guild and I discovered that one of our own has been in communication with the Mage Kings of Ith.”
Raya blinked. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“The woman in question was one Nalisa Orr,” Lotha explained. Raya’s breath caught in surprise. “She could very well be one of the magicians behind the eruption of Mount Lukar, if my suspicions about its cause are correct.”
“How long has she been dead?” Raya asked. “And how’d she die?”
Lotha shrugged. “For quite a while, it seems,” Lotha said. “Looks like she was in a fight. She’s been stabbed a few times and has a few gashes. I can show you her body, if you’d like. We’ve got it on preservatives in case we need more answers.”
“I’d like to see it,” Raya said. Benn gasped, as though that surprised him. Raya was an experienced hunter and could glean a lot from a dead body. She shrugged and looked back at Raya.
“Alright. Will you walk there with me, now?” Lotha asked.
Raya stood up. “Let’s go.” Benn had no choice but to tag along as they followed the orchard path across the Archive grounds. “Was there anything out of place at Nalisa Orr’s house when you found the body?”
“No,” Lotha said. “There were no signs of a struggle.”
“So she knew whoever attacked her,” Raya said. Perhaps the name Axar. It was the only other name she knew in connection to Nalisa’s.
“Or she wasn’t even killed there,” Lotha said. “It’s beginning to look to me like the Mage Kings themselves were behind the destruction of Ellakar. After all, Ith has seized control of Elpan, where all Olston’s refugees fled from. They seem bent on geographical domination. The connection between Nalisa and the Mage Kings is impossible to ignore and I fear for its consequences.”
Raya nodded. Soon the three of them descended the steps in front of the Archive grounds. They marched down the crowded street and spoke in hushed tones. “The Mage Kings are slavers too, right?” Most of Vagren was run by slavers.
“They are,” Lotha said, quietly. “And they’re far worse than any of the locals here. They rule with fear and force. They don’t use magic to benefit those under them, but to control them.”
They kept walking, and Raya wondered where her guide was taking them. Benn seemed nervous—he wanted to say something to her, but there wasn’t an opportunity. Apparently, not in front of Lotha.
Raya wasn’t sure what Benn was worried about—given the information about Nalisa Orr’s house, there was no reason to suspect Lotha of anything. She hadn’t betrayed them in any way. Raya considered what Lotha was saying about the Mage Kings, and what she knew. “Does the name Axar ring a bell?” she asked.
“Of course,” Lotha said, without hesitation. “He’s infamous for his service of the Mage Kings. Many think he will be a new addition to their council. I haven’t heard anything recent about him though. How is he implicated in all this?”
“We found an altar of some kind, overturned near the volcano,” Raya explained. “A burned man had died there, after writing two names on the wall—Nalisa Orr, Axar, and the letter ‘I’. Just scratched with a knife.”
Lotha stopped walking and stared at her. “I wish I had been there,” she said. “That must be where the spell was cast. Cursed ground. Cursed men and women that would bring such suffering into this world.”
They walked in silence for a few steps after that. The occasional ray of sunlight broke through the smoky clouds, but never near them. They walked in the grey. Raya watched some children play nearby—their knees and hands were scuffed with ash and dirt, but they laughed and danced as they kicked a bladder between them. Lotha shifted to the left to avoid getting bumped, and Benn slowed down to let Raya follow between them.
They were in the northern part of town now, closer to the large estates of the Houses of Vagren. Raya had been here when she visited Shenshar Threjar and a few others. Benn and she had been chased through these streets by slavers, once.
Soon, they reached a two-storey black building; columns supported a small eaves trough and a stone shingled roof. A wooden deck climbed by stairs was shadowed beneath. Raya climbed the steps and saw old words carved above the door: “Here rests the perished ‘til they are lowered beneath.” It was a proper morgue, not just some holding of the Magician’s Guild. Lotha opened the door and admitted Raya and Benn to a small antechamber with velvet seats and a platter of water and wine on a table. A young man, close to their age, bowed as they entered—he wore a brass ring around his neck. “Mistress Lotha,” he said, quietly. “Let me see if the scholar needs to prepare anything for just a moment.”
Raya saw a pale red brand between the man’s shoulder blades as the shirtless slave turned away from them. She was uncomfortable, being served by a slave. She had grown up in a town blissfully hidden from this world. She sat beside Benn and Lotha on the chairs and waited. The wooden shutters in the windows were all closed of course—very few buildings had expensive imported glass, and even those shuttered them as ash rained from the heavens to stain them grey and black. A brazier in the corner and a lantern hanging from the ceiling cast rings of dull light around the dim room. A moment passed before the slave returned, and gestured for them to follow him down a nearby flight of stairs.
Raya was led into a small room, lit brightly by lanterns. A heavy stone casket centered the room. The sarcophagus was not decorated by carvings or paintings; it was a plain stone box, clean of dust and light grey in colour. Benn kept his distance.
“Cover your mouth and nose,” Lotha said. “The preservatives can make you ill.” She lifted her sleeve over her face and pushed the stone slab out of the way to reveal a cloud of dark vapour. The stuff dispersed with a wave of a nearby fan, revealing the body within. When it was safe to do so, they all lowered their breath protection and stepped closer.
A thin, purple stained bed-sheet was draped over the cadaver inside. Half rotted hair hung from the scalp, brown and braided, but breaking. A scratch on the woman’s cheek had become a festering opening revealing her cheekbone as the skin rotted away. This person had been dead for half a year, likely, even with all that preservative. Raya suppressed her urge to heave, and continued looking. Despite it all, she noticed that the woman would have been beautiful, before all this.
“Her worst wounds are in her torso,” Lotha said, with a pause. “I’ll remove the cloth?”
“I’ll wait outside,” Benn said, having come no closer to the rotting body. With a pale face, he clambered up the stairs again.
Lotha waited until he left and then removed the white cloth from the stone sarcophagus altogether. The woman’s body must have been as beautiful as her face had once been; she had the curves men seemed to like. The woman’s Raderan skin had paled and started to rot; her ribs were clearly visible through a thin membrane, and a deep gash on her lower leg—clearly from a bladed weapon—had decayed down to the bone like the wound on her cheek. There were two severe puncture wounds, close to her heart, causing half of her chest to cave in by now; thankfully festering skin hid any proper innards from being visible. Clearly those two stabs were the cause of the woman’s death. Raya couldn’t look there long. It was too gruesome.
“I haven’t seen a pattern like this before,” she told Lotha, indicating a coarse texture to the woman’s skin. She gingerly touched it. The body was ice cold, and the skin vaguely sticky. Her finger came away with the same texture on it, but she easily brushed it off against the stone of the coffin. She examined it closely. “Is this salt?” she asked.
Lotha nodded. “It is. She was probably killed near salt of some kind. A salt lake perhaps? There’s lots of those this far inland.”
“That’s why you thought she must have been moved here after her death,” Raya said.
“Exactly.” Lotha watched as Raya poked the body more. They turned the body over, resting her on her face, breasts, and thighs, and the huntress found only more scrapes and bruises on her back. The back of her head had been impacted heavily, and Raya found rock dirt amidst the matted and decaying hair. Lotha shrugged. “It’s quite the mystery,” she said. “How did Nalisa Orr end up back at her house, after wounds and traces like these?”
Raya could only shake her head. “I have no idea. This is strange.” They rolled the body over again, and Raya helped push the stone slab over the grizzly sight again. Nalisa Orr was definitely dead, but that didn’t bring them any answers at all.
“I’ll look into the other names you provided,” Lotha said, as they started up the stairs. “You two are staying in town?”
“We are,” Raya said. “At an inn. We’ll be back at the Archive plenty, I suspect, so feel free to come visit us there.”
“Of course!” Lotha opened the door into the grey street again. More ash had fallen and a few shopkeepers could be seen sweeping off their threshold.
Benn was leaning against a nearby fence post and waited until Lotha went her own way before he stepped closer. They started walking toward Vagabond’s Rest in silence, until Raya said, “What’s bothering you?”
“Don’t you think Lotha would know Dago’s name if it was found in the very house that her entire guild is investigating?” Benn asked.
“Maybe they haven’t seen the puzzle table,” Raya said. “It was behind a locked door, after all. There were also a few hundred pieces, so Lotha couldn’t possibly know them all. Maybe she just hasn’t looked at the backs of the pieces. You and Dondar seem to suspect her for no reason, but she’s helped us out so much already.”
“That’s fair,” Benn said, holding up his hands. They kept walking. “I’ll just say this then: if Lotha can’t figure out anything about this Dago fellow, then I’ll suspect her truly. There has to be more about him in there.”
“We’ll see,” Raya said. They kept walking, and soon lightened their conversation to more positive things—such as what to eat upon their return to the safety of their local haven. Of course, Master Kama put Benn to work straight away. Raya did her best to help out too.