Marool shook her head as she took the seat she was offered, then sat there with her lips pursed out in uncharacteristic uncertainty. Her hostesses did not encourage her, but merely waited, as though she could tell them nothing that would surprise them.
“I have been into the hills,” said Marool, at last. “I went to look at the place where my parents and sister died.”
“Ah,” murmured Onsofruct. “You had a natural curiosity.”
Marool shook her head with an annoyed expression. “It wasn’t that! It’s as though something about their deaths has been nagging at me for years. I wanted to see for myself. However … “ She went on to describe her own experience, and that of her driver and Man of Business. “I suppose their bodies are there still,” she concluded. “The guard reported what happened to the guard post, but I’ve heard nothing more about it.”
D’Jevier cast a glance at her sister, which Onsofruct returned, furrowing her brow and clenching her jaw before replying, “We have all heard stories of Wilderneers and monsters. Such are common tellings during the Long Nights.”
“You mentioned picking up something, some artifact?” D’Jevier queried.
“I have it here,” said Marool, taking a packet from her bag, laying it upon the table and unrolling it. As she did so, a stench spread throughout the room, and both the Hags caught their breaths.
“You smell it?” demanded Marool, looking at their faces.
Both nodded. D’Jevier held her breath and took the article into her hands, keeping a layer of the wrapping between it and her skin.
“It looks more organic than manufactured,” said Marool. “Like a giant fingernail. That shape, at any rate, though far too huge. The bottom is ragged, as though it had been ripped away … “
D’Jevier rewrapped the article, obviously troubled. “It’s a scale,” she said. “From some sort of squamous creature.”
“It would have to be enormous!” said Onsofruct, her eyes wide.
D’Jevier grated, “I have no doubt it is. We are only now growing numerous enough that we can explore the wilderness in any systematic way, and as we do so, we hear more frequent tales about things or beings in the badlands. Did you see any kind of trail while you were there? As though something very large had been dragged along, pushing up the dirt at the sides?”
Marool nodded, though unwillingly, for she had thought to do all the enlightening herself. “I did, yes. Both an old trail and a newer one. So new that nothing was growing on it.”
D’Jevier went on, “We have had reports of such in the hills to the west. As though a very large serpent had crawled there, though the paths are straight or angular, not sinous. The witnesses are sober persons whose word I am inclined to accept, and there have been too many disappearances of livestock for peace of mind.”
“Then you have already planned a course of action,” said Marool.
The thin woman shook her head, her lips twisted into an unpleasant knot, as though she tasted something foul that she could not spit out. “Yes, and no. Reason would dictate that we enquire among the Timmys, who presumably once occupied that wilderness, whose relatives may do so still, and would therefore know what creatures are there. At this juncture, however, we cannot do so.”
Marool felt a strange frisson at this mention of the invisible people, a surprise reaction, though she knew that no subject was forbidden to the Hags when in Temple, albeit only there.
Onsofruct murmured, “We have been advised the Questioner is on her way. This is not a time we would have picked for the Council’s Hound to come sniffing among us, but the Hound does not sniff at our convenience.”
Marool furrowed her forehead, trying to remember what she had learned about the Questioner. “The visit constrains us?”
Onsofruct snorted, “Rather more than merely constrains.”
“What more?”
D’Jevier’s lips curved into a wry smile. “There were no Timmys here when we came, Marool. We forget this from time to time, but it is true. There were not on the surface of this planet any race of intelligent beings nor was there any mention of such in the records of the first settlement. The planetary assessment was rigorous before we came, searching for those monsters reputed to have wiped out the first colony. If Timmys had been here, the assessment would have picked them up, anywhere upon the surface of this planet.