Gretchen’s cheeks burned, and the brother shuffled out of the room.
“Oye.” She dropped to the narrow bed and leaped up with a hiss at the sting. “I should just take these mushrooms and skedaddle, Mulligan.”
Her breath caught when she looked down to see her familiar absent. She reached for the salve with a sniffle and peeled off her scorched dress.
After plastering on the pungent ointment, she reached for her pouch with a shiver. The air in the fort was icy, but she always kept a warming stone on hand. After rubbing it and muttering an incantation, she set it on the dresser and huddled close as she took up her skirts and threaded a needle with what looked like catgut. With some careful alterations she closed the hole, though her skirts, although, they rose almost to her knees at the back. Her hose was more forgiving, but she hung them over a ladder-back chair to save her smarting rear end while she rested.
The warming stone soon had the small room toasty, and Gretchen’s eyelids drooped. Secreting her bag of mushrooms under the bed and tucking her pouch in her hat, she stretched across the straw mattress on her belly and nuzzled into the pillow.
When she opened her eyes again, the room was pitch black and stifling. Fumbling around for her hat, she stubbed her toe on the bed end and bit back a curse. She scooped up her hat and felt around her pouch for the familiar stoppered jar. When she grasped it, she whispered a victorious incantation.
A cheery glow enveloped the room and Gretchen zeroed in on the offending hot rock. The tabletop underneath had scorch marks burned into it and she waved a hand over it with a murmur. She sank back on the bed, and her eyes widened when she remembered her injured condition. She wiggled her sitting parts on the mattress in surprise.
“Well hot dang,” she croaked. “Those boys must know what they’re doing to brew a salve like that.”
She held her parched throat and swallowed with a grimace then snatched her hose and skirt from the chair. After lacing her boots, she strode with purpose into the hallway and crept down the stairs.
“There must be a well down here somewhere.”
She held her luminescent jar ahead of her and startled when she stepped into the open air. Sir Courtenay remained petrified in the white mist which gave off an eerie phosphorescence and brightened as she got closer. She held the jar up to his face and snickered. “Serves you right too, buddy.”
His eyelid flickered, and Gretchen clucked her tongue. As her fingers neared the enchantment, they grew cold and slowed. She snatched her hand back with a frown. “I need to get me some of that. If I can filch enough of it, I could probably replicate the recipe.”
With a small sigh, she turned from the knight’s icy enclosure and circled round the fort looking for a source of water. What she found was a stinking well which seemed to have its fair share of birds decomposing in its depths. She groaned and traversed back into the fort in search of a wineskin.
The wagon driver seemed to know what he was talking about when he said the fort was mostly dust. The kitchens held an assortment of rusted out cauldrons and kettles, and the pantry beyond was host to a colony of mold. Certain that the party weren’t stranded without sustenance, she tracked through the vacant rooms in search of the crates that she’d seen stowed with care on the wagons. With the ground floor clear, she eyed a set of stairs leading underground and huffed.
“That’d be right. I’ll bet those trumped up entertainers are curled around their stash.”
She crept down the stairs shielding her light jar to keep the glare from traveling. Underneath, the space opened across bare dirt floors with foundation pillars holding the fort above. Two bulging hammocks hung between a pair of pillars, and the only light emanating was from Gretchen herself.
Crates littered the floor with lids pried open, and Gretchen tiptoed over to fetch a full wineskin and a wrapped loaf. She was almost clear when one brother mumbled in his sleep. Wincing, she froze and counted to twenty. Assured by the sound of heavy breathing, she hustled up the stairs and onward to her bastion on the first floor. Another doorway caught her eye as she approached her room, and she took a swig of spiced wine, considering. Curiosity won out and she tentatively pushed it outward; like the other door, it made no protest as it swung open.
The door led to the walls surrounding the fort, with well-placed holes to fire arrows at a prospective army. Gretchen wandered out craning her head to peek at the clearing below. She tore off a hunk of bread and chewed idly as she meandered along.
After navigating most of the wall, her eye caught on a figure behind her, and she did a double take. Scorched on the wall was a silhouette she recognized. Unmistakable with a pointed hat, there was no other evidence of her peer’s incineration. Not a single bone littered the ground, and when Gretchen held her light closer, she saw a deep red tinge on the ominous shadow.
“Holy smokes!” Gretchen backed into the wall behind her, her mind reeling. A replacement witch. She never found out what happened to her predecessor.
Turning on her heel, she fled inside and down the stairs. Keeping up a breakneck pace, she flew past Sir Courtenay, out the gates, and along the trail back into the woods. By the time she stopped to catch her breath, she realized the treetop canopy obscured the moon completely. The small pool of light from her jar seemed inadequate.
With her hands on her knees, she slowed her breathing and tried to piece together the information presented to her. Fish guts and goat’s blood. The pyrotechnic triplets. A prince whose mission it was to skewer her. Burned witch on a wall.
Turning, she tried to get her bearings. In her terror, she hadn’t heeded which direction she’d gone in. She only knew one way was forward and the other back to the keep. Drawing a sharp breath through her nose, she marched forward, determined to get as much distance between her and that freak show by morning.
In the dark, time was meaningless. When her feet started to ache, she began casting around for a likely place to hide. Her spirits lifted when the trail skirted past the edge of a rocky outcrop.
“Finally,” she grumbled.
The jagged rock threw ominous shadows as she followed it around to find an accommodating crevice. She stopped short when she rounded a corner, her meager light ending in pitch black. After taking a few steps forward she gulped.
A cave.
Chapter 7
The vacuous feeling paralyzed Gretchen where she stood. Witches and caves didn’t mix. There was something alluring about the deep underground, something that sung to a witch's soul and serenaded them ever deeper. Like Great Aunt Esme. Sometimes Gretchen took comfort in the thought she may still be wandering with subterranean creatures in the dark recesses of the earth.
But then there was getting reduced to ashes. It was only a night. In the morning, she could find her way off the stupid mountain and be on her way home.
A rumbling inside the cave broke Gretchen from her stupor making her shriek and turn back to the trail. At the cave’s edge the vibrations took on a familiar tenor causing Gretchen to spin and peer into the darkness with narrowed eyes. She held her light jar aloft as a serpentine shape trampled forward, upsetting the dust around Gretchen’s feet.
“Viragh?”
“Witchling. What brings you to my abode? “Flame flickered from his snout and caught on a stack of dry kindling. As it took, Gretchen inspected the wide cavern.