“Well? What are you waiting for, you mutton-headed fool? Have I bewitched a simpleton?”
He looked down at the pot.
He looked at her.
She was about two paces away.
He threw the entire contents of the pot over her. It soaked her, wetting her hair into slick tangles, and running down her chest, arms and legs. An immediate look of horror on her face was replaced with a grimace of pain. She clawed her arms upwards, perhaps reaching for the boy, but only managed to raise them into a contorted grasp at the air. Allover her body, skin cracked and split: small wriggling twists of green crept out, and began to crawl everywhere. The boy involuntarily took a step back, even as he watched horrified and transfixed. A slick of dark greyness was passing over her flesh at the same time. An awful stone-on-stone grating sound cut the air as the witch did her best to crane her head. She fixed the boy with enraged, pain-filled eyes. Her lips trembled as she tried to curse at him, but failed. Within another moment she was still: a twisted, angry statue of grey rock and sprawling mosses. Then, the strangest thing happened–the moss all burst into flower. It was the same tiny, silver-white flowers that they’d passed outside in the garden.
The boy suddenly realised that he was loosely holding an askance pot that contained a few more drops of that liquid. A feeling of fear went through him. Carefully, he tossed the whole thing into the fire. The liquor flamed and hissed briefly, and gave off a noxious smoke, but soon burnt away. Passing the witch made into moss-and-stone, he was momentarily fascinated by her. It occurred to him that the real soothsayer, wherever she was, perhaps put people to sleep before dousing them out of kindness. None of the creatures or folks in the garden looked griped in agony.
Remembering Caewen and Dapplegrim, he dashed outside to find them both asleep and apparently unharmed in a patch of the last dusk’s sunlight. The sun was just settling behind the mountains that ran north-and-south to the west, and small chips and pools of red warmth were scattered here and there across the ground. Both the lady and her horse had a restful look about them. The boy was almost reluctant to wake them. Caewen was making a funny little sound that the boy eventually realised was light snoring. They both needed their rest, he thought.
But he knew they would be annoyed if he let them sleep away the hours, and he couldn’t tell if the enchanted sleep might somehow be dangerous all on its own.
So, gingerly, he got down on his knees and shook Caewen first, just lightly by the shoulder. Her eyes fluttered open. “What? Who? Child? What happened? Why was I sleeping?”
“She put a spell in the soup. You and Dapplegrim were both put to sleep.” He explained the rest of it, and together they woke Dapplegrim. He was angry, but more with himself than with anyone else. The boy had to reassure him a dozen times the seeress was dead, and even then Dapplegrim pushed his neck through the doorway to check for himself. The timbers of the house creaked against his bulk. The boy thought he might be able bring the whole structure down, if he wanted to.
“I don’t understand.” Caewen was sitting on a grassy mound in the garden. “The Seeress of the Grey Mountain has a good name. Nothing evil has ever been said of her. Not to me, at least.”
“I don’t think that was really her,” said Aneself. “She said something about how only the old seer-witch knew how the make the witching-moss brew? I think she was only pretending to be the seeress. And she could see too. She opened her eyes, and her eyes were weird, but she could see.”
“You kept your head about you, child? Dapple and I both owe you our lives. We’d certainly be dead without you. Did she say anything else that you caught?”
“She said something about someone, Athardoss, or Atherdoss or something like that? But it was just a complaint. I didn’t understand what she meant by it.”
“Does that mean anything to your, Dapple?”
“It sounds vaguely like a Sorthe name, hur, hurm. Can’t say as I know it though.” He then shook his head and added, “Now that I’ve stuck my head into the place, I can tell you that the smell of rot is worse inside the house. Hur. I suggest you look about. Maybe pull up floorboards.”
They found the remains of the seeress crumpled and folded up inside a big wooden chest in a storeroom towards the rear of the place. She had been dead a long time, months maybe, and was withered and mummified down to husk of skin and bone. Salt had been packed around her to stop her rotting too badly, but it had only half-stopped the eventual decay.
“Why keep the body?” Caewen mused.
“Maybe her murderer had some use for her? Something sorcerous?” the boy suggested.
Caewen looked at him oddly. After a long, slow and ponderous moment, she went and fetched a blanket. Then she stooped down, pulled the body out of the salt, and wrapped it in the blanket. Then, she carried it in her arms outside, and laid her out in the last light of the sun. The hollow skull eyes stared at the clear skies above. “I saw some of what I need inside,” said Caewen, but child, do you know Elfirin, Ail-weed, Wenlock, Blue Scart and Hazel Fewflower?”
“Yes. They’re mostly field and wasteland weeds. Fewflower’s poisonous for sheep. I think Ail-weed makes sheep sick too?”
“Go pick some of them, if you can find them.”
As the boy walked off, he heard Dapplegrim rumble deeply and unhappily. “You’re planning to work death-magic. You need to stop this, Caewen. Hurm. You have nothing to draw power from but your own blood and life. This is going to kill you eventually.”
“Once more,” said Caewen. “Just once more. We’ve had weird warths of the dead chasing us, and now we find that the woman we sought for answers about the Winter King has been killed and replaced. This is all too much like a trap set for anyone who wanted to consult the Great Seeress. This is too much like someone moving a step ahead of us. We need to know what happened here.”