The Sage Seed Chronicles: The Unraveling (25 page)

The two city leaders reentered the mayor’s
office and resumed sitting. Everyone was silent. Wras and Targ were
visibly getting restless. Finally Targ spoke up. “So are you
finally going to admit that you have falsely accused us? That’s why
you aren’t talking, right? You know that you’re stuck. You are
blaming us of making people sick. Look at us. We’re the picture of
health! How can we possibly make people sick! Let us go on our way
and we won’t even tell Bure that you falsely accused us of murder,
of all things, or that you held us against our will.” Wras nodded
in agreement of everything Targ said.

The mayor sat calmly and looking at Wras
asked “Why would it make any difference if Bure found out that we
were having this discussion? He’s not here.” and he shrugged in a
dismissive manner.

The big man with the brown beard shook his
head an though his cousin was the one who had been asked he blurted
out an answer. “Oh, he wouldn’t like family to be held and accused.
Not at all!” said Targ.

Wras nodded, adding, “You don’t want to make
Bure mad.”

The mayor shrugged again. “Where is he?” and
he looked around his office, even glancing under his desk.

Wras spoke up quickly, “He was going to meet
us at home. We wanted to go to the gather and now you are going to
make us late.”

“Well, he isn’t here, now, and I still need
to talk to you, so he’ll just have to wait.” said the mayor
quietly. His tone seemed to disturb the two cousins and they
exchanged nervous glances.

It was early evening when mayor had finally
moved to have the two searched. “Empty your pockets, you two.”

Both men instantly spoke up in protest. “How
dare you!” and “You have no right!” overlapping in combination of
outrage with a bit of panic.

The legist spoke, “We do have a right. It’s
spelled out in our realm charter and if you refuse we also have the
right to forcibly search you.”

Wras quickly glanced at Targ. “You wouldn’t
dare! Bure will hear about this!”

The city elder looked at the two men in
studied curiosity. “You keep bringing up Bure. What’s with that? Do
you do everything he says?”

Wras said defensively, “We’re family and he
wouldn’t want you being mean to us.”

The mayor looked bored. “So empty your
pockets and we won’t be mean to you.”

Wras crossed his arms over his chest and he
said, “Won’t do it. It’s none of your business what I have. You
just want to steal my belongings.” Targ looked at his cousin,
proudly, but kept silent.

The mayor glanced up at the loggers leaning
against the walls and nodded. They converged on Wras and hauling
the slender man over his chair patting him down, and with gloved
hands reached into pockets. Wras was screaming and fighting. His
long thin hair sticking to his sweaty face as he thrashed. “Gently
guys. You don’t want to hurt him.” said the Mayor. Targ looked
alarmed and Wras’s screams had a frightened, panicked quality. They
finally had all of his pockets turned inside out and the contents
in a pile on the mayor’s desk. They had taken off his boots and hat
and searched them completely.

Wras was back in his chair, choking back sobs
and muttering, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Targ was looking quite alarmed as the mayor
turned his eyes on him. “Your turn, Targ, your choice on how it’s
done.” The room was completely silent except for Wras sniffing.

Targ looked at his cousin. He was clearly
torn as to what to do. Finally he slowly stood up. Wras looked at
him, clearly terrified. He took off his hat and boots and handed
them over to be searched. He reached into his pants pockets and
drew out items, placing them on the desk, and turning the pockets
inside out. He patted down the sides of his jacket and emptied
those pockets also. “There, are you happy! You have upset my cousin
and humiliated us. I am watching your hands closely as you paw
through our stuff. You’re not gonna steal from us!”

The mayor looked at him calmly. “You haven’t
emptied all of your pockets, Targ. Do so now!”

“What do ya mean?” he blustered. The mayor
held his gaze then he raised his hand to gesture to the loggers.
“All right. All right. Don’t touch me!” he said, his normally gruff
voice going up in panic. He reached into the inner pockets of his
jacket and reluctantly pulled out a vial of a somewhat grey oily
looking substance. He didn’t seem to know what to do with it and
just held it in his hand for a moment.

Suddenly the ground violently rocked.
Everyone in the room staggered and reached out for something to
hold on to. Targ was no different. Standing in front of the desk
holding the vial he automatically stretched out his hands to grab
for support. One hand hit the surface and slid. The other, holding
the vial, caught the edge of the desk. The glass vial shattered,
cutting him and spraying the contents over his hand and down the
sides of desk to drip on the floor and his stockinged foot. He
looked at Wras helplessly and groaned. His cousin reached out to
him screaming his name but afraid to touch him.

The room rocked again and Targ slid to the
floor. There was a horrified moment of silence in the room then the
mayor barked an order to the logger nearest the door to get the
healer then to bring the boy Terran. Wras had backed up into the
corner, sobbing his cousin’s name, in a terrified grief. The city
elder and the legist left the room to take care of the needs of the
Sherroton after the quake. The healer ran in and knelt by Targ,
careful to stay away from the small puddle. “Back away and give us
room to work! Darl, you have gloves on, get soap, water and rags
and carefully scrub down this area to rid us of that toxic stuff.
Don’t get any on you! Mayor give me the cup of water.” she fired
off orders. Erin came running in with the jar from Ree. Tempo was
still in the woods but coming quickly.

Tempo had started back to the city when the
quake happened then had heard her call. He was running from the
woods as fast as his legs could carry him. He followed her call and
slid to a halt at the mayor’s door. Erin had a bowl in her hand and
was mixing the paste as Tempo arrived. From his corner, Wras let
out a high pitched scream of fright at the sight of a skunk,
nightmarishly huge in his mind. Erin turned her back on the room,
shielding Tempo from Wras’s sight. The little skunk spit into the
bowl, discretely. Then stepped back. Erin looked up at the big
logger guarding the door. “This is my friend Tempo. He’s just
contributed a necessary ingredient to try to save this man’s life.
I would appreciate your silence and assurance that you’ll let no
harm come to my friend as he waits here.”

The man’s eyes were big. “Holm is my uncle.”
was all he said, and he nodded to her in complete understanding.
Tempo stood by the loggers feet out of sight of those in the
room.

Erin continued to mix the paste as if she had
never stopped. Targ was unconscious with a fever, lying on the
floor. The healer had donned gloves and had cleaned the cuts on his
hand and the infected areas on his arm and foot. She had mixed her
own paste which she combined with Erin’s mix and was applying it as
swiftly as she could. “I don’t know if we can save him because some
of the poison went directly into his bloodstream in the cuts. We
are doing everything we can.” Wras was keening in terror in the
corner. Once the poultice was applied and staying on his skin she
called for a stretcher to move Targ into the legalist's office next
door. Darl finished scrubbing down the spill and carefully left the
office with the contaminated rags. Erin started to leave but the
mayor asked her to wait in the hall.

He turned to Wras. “We are doing what we can
to save your cousin. Pull yourself together and answer some
questions. Why did you kill these people?” and he rattled off the
eight names, “Why did you try to kill Holm?”

Wras was sobbing. “He’s going to die. Targ is
going to die. Bure’s poison always works. Targ is going to
die.”

The legist had just stepped back into the
room in time to hear the last statement. He and the mayor looked at
each other. “Wras, why did Bure make the poison?” asked the mayor
gently.

“Gotta kill all of the witches! Clean the
realm of them and their familiars. All them evil witches and their
nasty skunks gotta die! Bure is smart. He can be the Great One.”
His sobbing was slowing down but he kept looking toward the door as
if expecting a demon to walk into the room.

The mayor looked at the list. “Wras, were
Hormis, Auntie Jes and Thera witches?”

“Yeah, all witches. Killed them.”

“Were Robse, Zinar, Drune and Holm all
witches?” the mayor continued.

“Don’t remember Drune. All witches. All dead.
Rid the realm of witches!”

The mayor looked at the list again. He didn’t
ask about Shamra as her death hadn’t necessarily been planned.
“Wras why did you poison your mother? Was she a witch?”

Wras was shaking his head. “Don’t say my
mother was a witch! She was a good woman. Bure said she caught a
late spring fever.”

The mayor looked at the man and sadly shook
his head. “Bure tried out the poison on her. That is how he knew
the dosage was correct.”

Wras started to shake his head then he put
the pieces together in his mind. “Bure had no call to kill her! She
was a good woman who raised him, sacrificed for him. She had been
asking questions about the dead wild animals in the area. He said
he would handle it and sent Targ and I to kill a nest of skunks we
had seen. When we got back four days later she had died. He killed
my mother!”

The mayor asked him softly. “Where’s Bure
now, Wras?”

“He’s coming home from a trip. Needed more
ingredients. Targ had the last of the mix. I don’t know when he’s
coming but we’ve been expecting him. He was wrong to kill my
mother. If I knew where he was I’d tell you.” Wras’s voice was
becoming steadier but occasionally had hiccuping breaths. Wras had
wrapped his arms around himself and was rocking back and forth.

The legist asked, “Where does he go to get
the ingredients? Our healers may be able to save Targ if they knew
what the poison was made of.”

“Bure is smart. He should be the Great One.
He figured out this formula on his own. I’m a herbalist too but he
didn’t share the information with me.” He got a sly look on his
face and said, “But I know that part of it is from a certain spiny
fish. We use to live in Sawblen and there was this fish that if you
got scratched by it’s spines you’d get a fever. I think he might
use a sea cave mold that has a super absorption quality. Beyond
that I don’t know.”

The healer stepped into the doorway. She
shook her head. “We may have been able to save him if he hadn’t
have gotten the poison in the cuts. He just passed away. There was
nothing we could do to stop it. That is an extremely powerful and
toxic poison!”

Wras started to keen and his rocking motion
increased. “You get Bure! Make him pay! He killed my mother and now
Targ!”

The mayor
motioned to the loggers to take him to the empty root cellar in the
depths of the city and to lock him in. As they stood to escort him
away the mayor stepped to the doorway to talk to Erin. Wras saw
Tempo and recoiled in the grasp of the loggers, trying to keep as
far as he could from the skunk and making terrified high pitched
sounds. They quickly marched him past and he went limp in a faint.
They just picked him up and kept going. The mayor turned to Erin
and said quietly. “I recognize you, Erin. Your parents were dear
friends of mine. I didn’t know they had died and am truly sorry for
your loss. You’ve grown up into a remarkable person and they’d be
proud of you. I assume that you’ve become Terran because of Bure? I
will keep your secret. Thank you for trying to save that man’s
life.” He patted her on the shoulder and walked into the legalist’s
office.

Erin and Tempo walked slowly out of the city.
On one hand she was incredibly glad that they had stopped Holm from
being killed and that Wras and Targ had been caught. She felt
relieved that they had a confession and Bure had been named. Those
were all very positive things and in some way she felt relief. But
the other hand held very big negatives. Bure was still out there
and very, very dangerous and there was no telling what damage he
could do. Trying to figure out what a warped mind like his was
planning next was futile. Erin sat down on the far edge of the
entry steps. Tempo came up to her and putting his soft front paws
on her knees looked into her face. ‘Are you okay, Erin?’

She stroked him down his back then gently
rubbed him behind his ears. “I’m okay. It has been a rough couple
of days. I’ve heard, and felt, horrific stories from twisted minds.
The number of sages and skunks that have perished because of one
really unstable man, is astounding. That act, thirty years ago has
sent out huge ripples that are possibly catastrophic for our world.
Tempo, I don’t know if we can heal the damage. It is like putting
Ree’s poultice on Targ when I knew that the poison had gone
directly into his bloodstream.’ She shook her head as she lowered
it to her hands.

She felt a little cold nose trying to get to
her cheek. ‘If it can be done, we will do it together. We need to
get up and bring news to Lor. He is probably worried. Come on Erin.
You’ve got to get up.’

Erin nodded and Tempo slipped back to
standing on all four feet. She slowly stood up and put her little
friend on her shoulder. ‘Sorry, Tempo. This is the first time since
I left Ree’s home that I have let all this overwhelm me. Thanks for
being my friend, little one. Say, Tempo, did you find any
skunks?’

‘Yes! In all that has happened in the last
hour I forgot to tell you! I found Peri! He has an incredibly keen
nose and had picked up one of my small scent invitations from quite
a distance. He came to tell me where a small colony of skunks were.
They had run into several skunk bodies and knew that many of our
kind had gone missing so they had retreated way up in the hills. I
told him what I knew and they will be very cautious. I managed to
caution him about more quakes, and such, right before I felt one
coming. I will find him later when this is all over. Maybe next
spring Silk and I can go together. He gives me hope!’