Chapter 6

“THIS IS the place.”

Hushed by the reminder of her loss, Hedda’s voice was hardly louder than a whisper. It was the second time she’d been back here with her husband. The first time had been to point the way out to a skilled tracker. That man had managed to find a human footprint pressed into the loam where the hollow-eyed girl had once stood, which had set Hedda’s heart pounding with hope, but in the end he’d lost the trail as it wound up into the mountains. Too much bare granite, he’d told the grieving mother. Too many other animals scuffing over whatever traces had been left behind, in the time that it had taken Hedda to hire him.

One more thing to feel guilty about.

Merely coming back to this place made her feel overwhelmed by guilt. Never mind that her husband had stood by her side through all of this, without a single note of accusation crossing his lips. “We’ll find the trail,” he assured her, squeezing her tightly against his side. Dura was a stonemason in Lord Cadern’s service, and his strong, calloused hands raised prickles along her arms as he rubbed her briskly. It had been hard for him to get a day off from his current project to tend to this matter, she knew, and he’d had to go deep into debt to pay for a witch to come all the way out from Esla to help them. But she knew he would offer up the very blood in his veins to get his son back, if that’s what the gods required of him. And thus far he seemed to believe her story about what had happened.

Unlike the rest of the townsfolk.

She’d heard the whispering, of course. How her baby had fallen into the river and drowned. Or he had crawled off a cliff while she wasn’t watching. Or he had died of some illness that she’d failed to detect in time. Now she was just covering up the truth by making up a crazy story about some dirt-covered waif stealing him away, so that her husband would not turn her out of the house. Poor Dura, they whispered. How long would his faith in her last? How much evidence would he need to see before he realized he’d been duped? Crazy Hedda, pressing him to hire a witch who could well reveal her little plot! Did she think he would just go along with her little game?

And now they were here again, looking for her baby, and the witch was picking his way through the piles of branches that a recent windstorm had brought down, using his powers to search the ground for any sign of Hedda’s mysterious visitor. He was surprisingly young, to her eyes, barely past the age of puberty, and clearly he was not very experienced in this kind of investigation. But witches were few and far between in the region, and most of the good ones restricted their efforts to healing the children of rich lords, where bringing a moderate fever down a few degrees might earn them enough coin to feed their own families for a month or more. Had Dura been able to meet this witch’s price, or had the youth agreed to take less than usual out of compassion? Hedda didn’t dare ask.

She watched for what seemed like an eternity as the boy scoured the countryside, squinting intently as he turned over nearly every stone and twig in the area, searching for what he called “an anchor.” He seemed particularly interested in the place where Hedda had left food for the strange girl, near where the tracker had later found a partial footprint that he said might belong to her. But after contemplating that location in silence for many long minutes, the witch finally shook his head in frustration and moved on. What exactly was he looking for, Hedda did not know. When the tracker had gone over this turf with his hounds, she’d understood the goal. Scent might still cling to the earth. Broken twigs or scuffed earth might mark the flight of a human girl (or something else?) carrying an infant in her arms. But this random-seeming search, this strange dance of ignorance . . . try as she might, she could not decipher it. She could only watch in abject misery, huddled against Dura’s side, praying silently to her gods. Give me back my child, she begged them, and I will do whatever you ask of me. You can even have my life, if you want it. Just bring my son back safely.

By the time the witch finally turned back to them the details of the surrounding landscape were beginning to fade, as day slowly prepared to give way to night. The minute Hedda saw his face she knew what his answer was going to be, and something within her heart that had been clinging to hope since her son’s disappearance finally, irrevocably, let go its grip, and plummeted down into the abyss of absolute despair.

“I am sorry,” the witch said softly. Only that.

“Nothing?” Dura’s voice was desolate, echoing as if in an empty cave. “Nothing at all?”

The witch shook his head. “There’s no good anchor. I found a few traces of a female presence that might or might not belong to the girl you told me about, but nothing clear enough to focus witchery on.”

“Maybe it’s not the traces that are lacking quality,” Dura said, “but the witch.”

The youth flushed. “If you want to hire someone better, you’re welcome to try.”

“My husband didn’t mean that,” Hedda interjected. She knew from the pain in Dura’s voice that he was just striking out blindly, venting his despair at the nearest target; later he would regret such cruel words. The young witch had offered up a portion of his own life-essence in order to help them, after all. “We’re both half mad with worry. I’m sure you can understand that.”

The youth nodded stiffly. His failure to garner useful information would not impact his fee, of course—a witch was paid for the life-essence he sacrificed, not for the quality of his results—but he seemed genuinely distressed that he had been unable to help them.

What was she supposed to do now? Hedda wondered. Put on a black veil and mourn her son as if she knew for a fact that he was dead? Even if he might still be alive, in the hands of some half-mad waif? What on earth did the girl want him for? The fact that she couldn’t even begin to imagine an answer to that question made her feel sick inside.

“There are others, you know.” The witch spoke quietly.

“Others?” Dura asked.

“Other children that have disappeared.”

Hedda blinked. “You mean . . . like this?”

“Don’t know the details. They’re just witch rumors, mind you. But I heard there’ve been a number of infants stolen, from towns all around here. Witches were called in a few times to look for ’em—that’s how I heard about it—but no one could find any clues worth a damn. What traces they could find led nowhere. Just like here.” A wave of his hand encompassed the surrounding woods. “Now that I’ve seen it for myself, I give more credit to such stories.”

“Did the others . . . did the parents . . . was a strange girl involved?”

He shook his head. “As far as I know, you’re the only one who’s ever seen anything like that. The other children just disappeared when no one was looking at them. One minute there, the next minute not. All outdoors, I think.” He wiped a long straggle of dun-colored hair back from his eyes. “That’s the rumor, anyway.”

Hedda struggled to absorb this new information. Did this mean that her own loss was part of some greater pattern? If so, what on earth was its purpose? Try as she might, she could not come up with any motive that made sense to her. It wasn’t unheard of for children to be stolen away by bandits, this close to the wild—one could get good coin from the slavers for a strong, healthy child—and Lord Cadern kept a wary eye on the woods surrounding his lands for that very reason. But it was rare for an infant to be taken, because a child that young would require too much care. Every now and then there were stories about some noblewoman who stole a peasant’s baby to replace one that had been stillborn, but even if those tales were true, it was at best a rare occurrence. Nothing like what this witch was suggesting.

If something like this was happening repeatedly, she told herself, then his Lordship might take note of it. The life of a single peasant meant little to him, but the knowledge that someone was persistently offending against the law and order of his domain . . . that might move him to act. And he had the kind of resources that Hedda and Dura could not possibly muster. Perhaps even access to a Magister.

A faint spark of hope took light in her soul. And she knew from the way her husband’s touch shifted on her arm that he shared her moment of insight, and his soul now housed a similar spark.

“Can you bring us more information?” Dura asked the witch. “About the other children who were taken? I’ll pay for it, of course.”

Again the witch flushed. “You don’t have to pay me. There’s no athra involved. I’m just sorry I couldn’t do more for you today. What information are you looking for?”

“Whatever you can gather. The towns that those incidents took place in. Name, dates, the circumstances of any incidents . . . .”

Please, Hedda prayed to her gods. Please let these crimes be within his Lordship’s domain, so that he will care about this. Give us that much, I beg you.

“I’ll find out what I can for you,” the young man said. “I promise.”

He glanced up at the canopy, where dark shadows were beginning to mottle the highest reaches of the treetops, random golden sparks picking out branches on their undersides. The sun would be setting soon. “We should be heading back,” he said.

“Aye,” Dura agreed, but he did not move.

Hedda watched as the young witch shouldered his travel pack once more, offered them a last parting glance, and then headed back the way they had come. And then, in his absence, the woods were still. So still. Only her breathing and Dura’s, the soft thud of their heartbeats, and the distant rustling of nocturnal creatures as they began to stir from their burrows, waiting for night to fall.

“We’ll find him,” her husband promised her. “I swear it.”