‘Yes, yes. I had a bad dream. So stupid. I am sorry.’
‘You are trembling,’ said Kalizkan. ‘Perhaps you have a fever.’
‘I think I will go inside,’ she said, ‘and lie down.’
She left them there and returned to her own room alongside the queen’s apartments. Her mouth was dry and she poured a cup of water and drank deeply. Then she sat down and tried to picture what she had seen in the roof garden.
The image had been fleeting, and she found that the more she concentrated upon it the less clear it became.
Silently she returned to the roof garden, pausing in the doorway, unseen. From here she could see the kindly wizard and the queen sitting together. Closing the eyes of her body she gazed upon them both with the eyes of spirit.
Her heart hammered, and she began to tremble once more.
Kalizkan’s face was grey and dead, his hands only partly covered in flesh. Bare bone protruded from the ends of his fingers. And as Ulmenetha looked more closely she saw a small maggot slither out from a hole in the wizard’s cheek and drop to the shoulder of his blue satin robes.
Backing away she returned to her room, and prayed.
Dagorian stood in the centre of the small room. Blood had splashed to the white walls, and the curved dagger
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that caused the terrible wounds had been tossed to the floor, where it had smeared a white goatskin rug. The body of the old woman had been removed before Dagorian arrived, but the murderer was still sitting by the hearth, his head in his hands. Two Drenai soldiers stood guard over him.
‘It seems fairly straightforward,’ Dagorian told Zani, the slender Ventrian official. ‘In a rage this man killed his mother. There are no soldiers involved. No threat to the king. I do not see why you called me to the scene.’
‘You are the Officer of the Watch for last night,’ said Zani, a small man, with close cropped dark hair and a pronounced widow’s peak. ‘We are to report all cases of multiple killings.’
‘There was more than one body?’
‘Yes, sir. Not here, but elsewhere. Look around you. What do you see?’
Dagorian scanned the room. Shelves lined the walls, some bearing jars of pottery, others bottles of coloured glass. On the low table beside the hearth he saw a set of rune stones, and several papyrus charts of the heavens. ‘The woman was a fortune-teller,’ he said.
‘Indeed she was – and a good one, by all accounts.’
‘This is relevant?’ asked Dagorian.
‘Four such people were killed last night in this quarter of the city alone. Three men and a woman. Two were murdered by customers, a third by his wife, and this woman by her son.’
Dagorian crossed the room and opened the back door, stepping out into the narrow garden beyond. The Ventrian followed him. The sun was bright in the sky, the warmth welcome. ‘Did the victims know one another?’ asked Dagorian.
‘The son told me he knew one of the dead.’
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‘Then it remains coincidence,’ concluded Dagorian.
The Ventrian sighed and shook his head. ‘Twenty-seven in the last month. I do not think coincidence will stretch that far.’
‘Twenty-seven fortune-tellers?’ Dagorian was astonished.
‘Not all were fortune-tellers. Some were mystics, others priests. But their talent was the common factor. They could all walk the path of Spirit. Most could read fragments of the future.’
‘Not very well, apparently,’ Dagorian pointed out.
‘I disagree. Come, let me show you.’ Dagorian followed the small Ventrian back to the door. Zani pointed to recent scratches upon the wood, in the shape of an inverted triangle, with a snake at the centre. ‘All the entries to the room bear this sign. It is part of a ward spell, protective sorcery. The old woman knew she was in danger. When we found her she was clutching an amulet. This too was a protective piece.’
‘Protection against sorcery,’1 said Dagorian, patiently. ‘But she wasn’t killed by sorcery, was she? She was murdered by her son. He admits to the crime. Does he claim he was demon possessed? Is that his defence?’