Denna nodded. “I don’t doubt he’ll turn this into another test to see how well I can keep my mouth shut.” She gave me a significant look. “Speaking of which…”
“I’ll make a point of being terribly surprised if we find anyone,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
She smiled nervously. “Thanks. I just hope he’s alive. I’ve invested two whole span trying to win him over.” She took a final drink out of my water bottle and handed it back to me. “Let’s go have a look around, shall we?”
Denna came unsteadily to her feet, and I tucked my water bottle back into my travelsack, watching her out of the corner of my eye. I had worked in the Medica for the better part of a year. Denna had been struck on her left temple hard enough to blacken her eye and bruise her well past her ear into her hairline. Her right arm was bandaged, and from the way she carried herself, I guessed she had some serious bruises along her left side, if not a few broken ribs.
If she had run into a tree, it must have been an oddly shaped tree.
But still, I didn’t make a point of it. Didn’t press her.
How could I? I too knew what it was like to have secrets.
The farm was nowhere near as gruesome as it could have been. The barn was nothing but a jumble of ash and planking. To one side a water trough stood next to a charred windmill. The wind tried to spin the wheel, but it only had three fins left, and it simply swayed back and forth, back and forth.
There were no bodies. Only the deep ruts wagon wheels had cut into the turf when they had come to haul them away.
“How many people were at the wedding?” I asked.
“Twenty-six, counting the bride and groom.” Denna kicked idly at a charred timber half buried in ashes near the remains of the barn. “Good thing it usually rains in the evenings here, or this whole side of the mountain would be on fire by now….”
“Any simmering feuds lurking around here?” I asked. “Rival families? Another suitor looking for revenge?”
“Of course,” Denna said easily. “Little town like this, that’s what keeps things on an even keel. These folk will carry a grudge for fifty years about what their Tom said about our Kari.” She shook her head. “But nothing of the killing sort. These were normal folks.”
Normal but wealthy, I thought to myself as I walked toward the farmhouse. This was the sort of house only a wealthy family could afford to build. The foundation and the lower walls were solid grey stone. The upper story was plaster and timber with stone reinforcing the corners.
Still, the walls sagged inward on the verge of collapse. The windows and door gaped with dark soot licking out around the edges. I peered through the doorway and saw the grey stone of the walls charred black. There was broken crockery scattered among the remains of furniture and charred floor-boards.
“If your things were in there,” I said to Denna. “I think they’re as good as gone. I could go in for a look….”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “This whole thing is about to come down.” She knocked a knuckle against the doorframe. It echoed hollowly.
Curious at the odd sound of it, I went over to look. I picked at the doorpost with a fingernail and a long splinter the size of my palm peeled away with little resistance. “This is more like driftwood than timber,” I said. “After spending all this money, why skimp on the doorframe?”
Denna shrugged. “Maybe the heat of the fire did it?”
I nodded absently and continued to wander around, looking things over. I bent to pick up a piece of charred shingle and muttered a binding under my breath. A brief chill spread up my arms and flame flickered to life along the rough edge of the wood.
“That’s something you don’t see every day,” Denna said. Her voice was calm, but it was a forced calm, as if she was trying hard to sound nonchalant.
It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about. Simple sympathy like this was so commonplace in the University that I hadn’t even thought about how it would look to someone else.
“Just a little meddling with dark forces better left alone,” I said lightly, holding up the burning shingle. “The fire was blue last night?”
She nodded. “Like a coal-gas flame. Like the lamps they have in Anilen.”
The shingle was burning an ordinary, cheerful orange. No trace of blue about it, but it could have been blue last night. I dropped the shingle and crushed it out with my boot.
I circled the house again. Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I wanted to go inside for a look around. “The fire really wasn’t that bad,” I called out to Denna. “What did you end up leaving inside?”
“Not that bad?” she said incredulously, as she came around the corner. “The place is a husk.”
I pointed. “The roof isn’t burned through except right by the chimney. That means the fire probably didn’t damage the second story very much. What of yours was in there?”
“I had some clothes and a lyre Master Ash bought for me.”
“You play lyre?” I was surprised. “How many strings?”
“Seven. I’m just learning.” She gave a brief, humorless laugh. “I was learning. I’m good enough for a country wedding and that’s about it.”
“Don’t waste yourself on the lyre,” I said. “It’s an archaic instrument with no room for subtlety. Not to disparage your choice of instrument,” I said quickly. “It’s just that your voice deserves better accompaniment than a lyre can give you. If you’re looking for a straight-string instrument you can carry with you, go for a half-harp.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “But I didn’t pick it. Mr. Ash did. I’ll push him for a harp next time.” She looked around aimlessly and sighed. “If he’s still alive.”
I peered in one of the gaping windows to look around, only to have a chunk of the windowsill snap off in my hands when I leaned on it. “This one’s rotten through too.” I said, crumbling it in my hands.
“Exactly,” Denna took hold of my arm and pulled me away from the window. “The place is just waiting to fall in on you. It’s not worth going in. Like you said, it’s just a lyre.”
I let myself be led away. “Your patron’s body might be up there.”
Denna shook her head. “He’s not the sort to run into a burning building and get himself trapped.” She gave me a hard look. “What do you think you’re going to find in there, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But if I don’t go inside, I don’t know where else to look for clues about what really happened here.”
“What rumors did you hear, anyway?” Denna asked.
“Not much,” I admitted, thinking back to what the bargeman had said. “A bunch of people were killed at a wedding. Everyone dead, torn apart like rag dolls. Blue fire.”
“They weren’t really torn apart,” Denna said. “From what I heard in town, it was a lot of knife and sword work.”
I hadn’t seen anyone wearing so much as a belt knife since I’d been in town. The closest thing had been farmers with sickles and scythes in the fields. I looked back at the sagging farmhouse, sure that I was missing something….
“So what do you think happened here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was half expecting to find nothing. You know how rumors get blown out of proportion.” I looked around. “I would have written the blue fire off to rumor if you hadn’t been here to confirm it.”
“Other people saw it last night,” she said. “Things were still smoldering when they came for the bodies and found me.”
I looked around, irritated. I still felt like I was missing something, but I couldn’t think of what in the world it could be. “What do they think in town?” I asked.
“Folk weren’t really talkative around me,” she said bitterly. “But I caught a bit of the conversation between the constable and the mayor. Folk are whispering about demons. The blue fire made sure of that. Some folk were talking about shamble-men. I expect the harvest festival will be more trad
itional than usual this year. Lots of fires and cider and straw men….”
I looked around again. The collapsed wreckage of the barn, a windmill with three fins, and a burned-out husk of a house. Frustrated I ran my hands through my hair, still sure I was missing something. I’d expected to find…something. Anything.
As I stood there, it occurred to me how foolish the hope was. What had I hoped to find? A footprint? A scrap of cloth from someone’s cloak? Some crumpled note with a vital piece of information conveniently written out for me to find? That sort of thing only happened in stories.
I pulled out my water bottle and drank off the last of it. “Well, I’m done here,” I said as I walked over to the water trough. “What are you planning to do next?”
“I need to look around a bit,” she said. “There’s a chance my gentleman friend is out there, hurt.”
I looked out over the rolling hills, gold with autumn leaves and wheat fields, green with pasture and stands of pine and fir. Scattered throughout were the dark scars of bluffs and stone outcroppings. “There’s a lot of ground to cover….” I said.
She nodded, her expression resigned. “I’ve got to at least make an effort.”
“Would you like some help?” I asked. “I know a little woodcraft….”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind the company,” she said. “Especially considering the fact that there may be a troupe of marauding demons in these parts. Besides, you already offered to make me dinner tonight.”
“That I did.” I made my way past the charred windmill to the iron hand pump. I grabbed the handle, leaned my weight against it, and staggered as it snapped off at the base.
I stared at the broken pump handle. It was rusted through to the center, crumbling away in gritty sheets of red rust.
In a sudden flash I remembered coming back to find my troupe killed that evening so many years ago. I remembered reaching out a hand to steady myself and finding the strong iron bands on a wagon’s wheel rusted away. I remembered the thick, solid wood falling to pieces when I touched it.
“Kvothe?” Denna’s face was close to mine, her expression concerned. “Are you alright? Tehlu blacken, sit down before you fall down. Are you hurt?”
I moved to sit on the edge of the water trough, but the thick planking crumbled under my weight like a rotten stump. I let gravity pull me the rest of the way down and sat on the grass.
I held the rusted-through pump handle up for Denna to see. She frowned at it. “That pump was new. The father was bragging about how much it had cost to get a well set up here at the top of the hill. He kept saying that no daughter of his would have to carry buckets uphill three times a day.”
“What do you think happened here?” I asked. “Truthfully.”
She looked around, the bruise on her temple a sharp contrast against her pale skin. “I think when I’m done looking for my patron to be, I’m going to wash my hands of this place and never look back.”
“That’s not an answer,” I said. “What do you think happened?”
She looked at me for a long moment before responding. “Something bad. I’ve never seen a demon, and I don’t ever expect to. But I’ve never seen the King of Vint either….”
“Do you know that children’s song?” Denna looked at me blankly, so I sang:
“When the hearthfire turns to blue,
What to do? What to do?
Run outside. Run and hide.
When your bright sword turns to rust?
Who to trust? Who to trust?
Stand alone. Standing stone.”
Denna grew paler as she realized what I was implying. She nodded and chanted the chorus softly to herself:
See a woman pale as snow?
Silent come and silent go.
What’s their plan? What’s their plan?
Chandrian. Chandrian.
Denna and I sat in the patchwork shade of the autumn trees, out of sight of the ruined farm. Chandrian. The Chandrian were really here. I was still trying to collect my thoughts when she spoke.
“Is this what you were expecting to find?” she asked.
“It’s what I was looking for,” I said. The Chandrian were here less than a day ago. “But I didn’t expect this. I mean, when you’re a child and you go digging for buried treasure, you don’t expect to find any. You go looking for dennerlings and faeries in the forest, but you don’t find them.” They’d killed my troupe, and they’d killed this wedding party. “Hell, I go looking for you in Imre all the time, but I don’t actually expect to find you….” I trailed off, realizing that I was blathering.
Some of the tension bled out of Denna as she laughed. There was no mocking in it, only amusement. “So am I lost treasure or a faeling?”
“You’re both. Hidden, valuable, much sought and seldom found.” I looked up at her, my mind hardly attending to what was coming out of my mouth. “There’s much of the fae in you as well.” They are real. The Chandrian were real. “You’re never where I look for you, then you appear all unexpected. Like a rainbow.”
Over the last year I’d held a silent fear in my secret heart. I worried at times that the memory of my troupe’s death and the Chandrian had just been a strange sort of grief-dream my mind had created to help me deal with the loss of my entire world. But now I had something resembling proof. They were real. My memory was real. I wasn’t crazy.
“When I was I child I chased a rainbow for an hour one evening. Got lost in the woods. My parents were frantic. I thought I could catch up to it. I could see where it should touch the ground. That’s what you’re….”
Denna touched my arm. I felt the sudden warmth of her hand through my shirt. I drew a deep breath and smelled the smell of her hair, warm with the sun, the smell of green grass and her clean sweat and her breath and apples. The wind sighed through the trees and lifted her hair so that it tickled my face.
Only when sudden silence filled the clearing did I realize that I’d been keeping up a steady stream of mindless chatter for several minutes. I flushed with embarrassment and looked around, suddenly remembering where I was.
“You were a little wild around the eyes there,” she said gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of sorts before.”
I took another slow breath. “I’m out of sorts all the time,” I said. “I just don’t show it.”
“My point exactly.” She took a step back, her hand slowly sliding down the length of my arm until it fell away. “So what now?”
“I…I have no idea.” I looked around aimlessly.
“That doesn’t sound like you either,” she said.
“I’d like a drink of water,” I said, then gave a sheepish grin at how childish it sounded.
She grinned back at me. “That’s a good place to start,” she teased. “After that?”
“I’d like to know why the Chandrian attacked here.”
“What’s their plan, eh?” She looked serious. “There isn’t much middle ground with you, is there? All you want is a drink of water and the answer to a question that folk have been guessing at since…well, since forever.”
“What do you think happened here?” I asked. “Who do you think killed these folks?”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t know,” she said. “It could have been all manner of…” She stopped, chewing on her lower lip. “No. That’s a lie,” she said at last. “It sounds strange to say, but I think it was them. It sounds like something out of a story, so I don’t want to believe it. But I do.” She looked at me nervously.
“That makes me feel better.” I stood up. “I thought I might be a little crazy.”
“You still might be,” she said. “I’m not a good touchstone to use for judging your sanity.”
“Do you feel crazy?”
She shook her head, a half smile curling the corner of her mouth. “No. How about you?”
“Not particularly.”
“That’s either good or bad, depending,” she said. “How do you propos
e we go about solving the mystery of the ages?”
“I need to think on it for a while,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s find your mysterious Master Ash. I’d love to ask him a few questions about what he saw back at the Mauthen farm.”
Denna nodded. “I was thinking I would head back to where he left me, behind that bluff, then look between there and the farm.” She shrugged. “It’s not much of a plan….”
“It gives us a place to start,” I said. “If he came back and found you were gone, he might have left a trail that we could pick up.”
Denna led the way through the woods. It was warmer here. The trees kept the wind at bay but the sun could still peer through as many of the trees were nearly bare. Only the tall oaks were still holding all their leaves, like self-conscious old men.
As we walked, I tried to think of what reason the Chandrian could have had for killing these people. Was there any similarity between this wedding party and my troupe?
Someone’s parents have been singing the entirely wrong sort of songs….
“What did you sing last night?” I asked. “For the wedding.”
“The usual,” Denna said, kicking through a pile of leaves. “Bright stuff. ‘Pennywhistle.’ ‘Come Wash in the River.’ ‘Copper Bottom Pot.’” She chuckled. “‘Aunt Emme’s Tub’…”
“You didn’t,” I said, aghast. “At a wedding?”
“A drunk grandfather asked for it,” she shrugged as she made her way though a thick tangle of yellowing banerbyre. “There were a few raised eyebrows, but not many. They’re earthy folk around here.”
We walked a little longer in silence. The wind gusted in the high branches above us, but where we trudged along it was just a whisper. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Come Wash’ before….”
“I’d have thought…” Denna looked over her shoulder at me. “Are you trying to trick me into singing for you?”
“Of course.”
She turned and smiled warmly at me, her hair falling into her face. “Maybe later. I’ll sing for my supper.” She led us around a tall outcrop of dark stone. It was chillier here, out of the sun. “I think he left me here,” she said, looking around uncertainly. “Everything looks different during the day.”