" Ah, therein lies the beauty of my plan. First, though, satisfaction. And the rest, my dear lovely Zarella, I fear you' ll not live to appreciate."
She fought, but against overwhelming strength. He had his will, then left her corpse for the sheriff to find.
" Well, Sarn, tell me again!" barked the sheriff. It had already been a long night. Now the murder of Zarella turned it into an eternity. " I don' t care if you repeat it a million times."
The bartender swallowed hard, looking as if he needed a drink to steady his nerves. His eyes darted from the sheriff to the body on the bloodstained sheets, then back to the implacable sheriff.
" I: I saw one of the guards on the stairs. I thought he was asleep. When I went to awaken him, I found he' d had his throat slit." Sarn made a descriptive movement with his index finger, showing the exact location of the knife cut. His already sallow face paled even more until he appeared on the brink of fainting.
" I checked, and the other three were dead also. Kyn- alBin had come down earlier, and I' d seen the guard talking to him. Who could believe such a thing of kyn- alBin?"
" Just tell me what you did next. Never mind passing judgment on the customers."
" Y- yes, Honor. I checked a few of the rooms. There were customers in most of them. It was a good night. Then, th- then," he stuttered, " I f- found Zarella. Just like that! It' s horrible. I thought you were supposed to protect us from such things."
" Sometimes even a good sheriff requires more manpower," came a deep voice from the stairway. Lyk Surepta stood there, a smug expression on his face. " I hereby offer the services of my men in finding the murderer of one of this town' s leading entrepreneurs."
" You and your soldiers aren' t required in this, Kyn- alLykSurepta," said the sheriff tartly. " I am perfectly capable of handling the investigation."
" Have you performed the investigatory spells yet?"
" You can go," the sheriff told Sarn. " My deputies and I will do some conjuring and see what we can see. You did well in not staying long in the room. It would only blur the picture. Thank you, Sarn." The mousy bartender scuttled off, glad to be away from the scene of the brutal murder. " And your aid is not required, either, Kyn- alLyk. Go!"
" I would stay to watch the conjurations."
The sheriff started to press the issue, then tiredly nodded. The power of the grey- clad soldiers grew daily, and he wasn' t sure of the public response if he ordered Surepta away so peremptorily.
" All right. Everything ready?" The sheriffs experienced eye looked over the censers gushing out their fumes at each point of a pentagram around the body. He' d trained his deputies well. In less than a minute, they would see a reenactment of the murder.
The sheriff muttered the appropriate ward spells and settled down to let the chronoregression spell work. Surepta started to speak, but the sheriff motioned him to silence. A ghostlike figure, almost too dim to be seen, entered the room, closed the door, and locked it. The colors mingled and mixed constantly in a translucent haze, flowing from grey to brown to black.
A blur fell across the bed. A large jewel gleamed. Is lambent radiance washed out any picture of the murderer. A frenzy of activity on the bed, then the jewel disappeared. Left was a faint outline of a man dressed in a leather jerkin.
The sheriff began chanting. When he reached the proper resonance, he looked up into the face of the killer. With knife in one hand and body covered with the leather jerkin, Lan' s image swam into hazy focus. It lasted for a split second, then vanished in tangled tendrils of brown, garlic- smelling mist.
" Dar- elLan- Martak!" cried Surepta. " He murdered her when she denied him!"
" Silence!" bellowed the sheriff. He sighed, wiped sweat from his wrinkled forehead, and felt years older in an instant. Of all the people, he hadn' t expected Lan to be the one to kill Zarella. The sheriff sighed again, his frail shoulders slumped with the weight of evidence. He liked Lan, had thought better of him.
The rest of the sordid scene flickered in and out of existence. The death stroke released a murky aura around Zarella' s ghost body. No question remained as to the instant or manner of her death.
Choking on the fumes from the censer, the sheriff ordered, " Clean up this mess, and one of you track down the murder weapon. It' ll leave a trail a blind mage could follow. And be quick about it. Another death with the same knife and you' ll lose the trail!"
" My men will find him," said Surepta confidently. " The murderer will be brought to swift justice."
" None of that," snapped the sheriff. " You can hang all the brigands you catch out in the woods. That' s beyond my jurisdiction. But not this. I want Lan alive to stand trial."
" You' ve seen his guilt."
" It' s not conclusive. Before reduction, I must be certain." The sheriff wished to retire on the spot and let the younger men handle the case. But that would be shirking his duty. A man never let another do a distasteful job. The sheriff looked scornfully at Lyk Surepta and whirled past him. He would find Lan before the soldier. He felt he owed that much to Lan.
Lan looked at his half- sister incredulously.
" It' s true, I tell you," said Suzarra. " I was with Tan when the grey- clads were bragging to one another about it."
" You' re sure they claimed Lyk Surepta had killed Zarella?" Lan sat in the center of the crude log cabin, stunned. Zarella dead? It hardly seemed possible, yet he didn' t doubt for an instant that Surepta was capable of such a deed.
" And they put out evidence to implicate you," the girl said breathlessly. " They mentioned a knife and one of your tunics they' d found in a hut out in the forest."
" I did leave a tunic in my lean- to. But my knife is:" He reached and found only empty sheath.
" Surepta! He took it when he brushed into me outside the Dancing Serpent! No wonder he was so smug!"
" Flee, Lan. They have a web of evidence spun all around you. You can' t get free of it. Those vicious beasts are everywhere; lying and plotting."
" No soldier wilclass="underline" " He stopped in midsentence as he heard the hoofbeats of horses. " Someone comes."
" Hide! Out the window. No, they might be out back already. Down into the cellar, Lan. Hurry!" The girl frantically shoved him down into the storage cellar and slammed the heavy wood trap door above him. Just as the rug pulled across to hide the trap, he heard the cabin door slam hard against the wall.
" You, wench, where' s Dar- elLan- Martak?"
" What do you want of him, grey pig?" shot back Suzarra.
Lan heard his sister moan as if in pain. He started to go to her aid, then stopped. He had counted no fewer than ten pairs of boots entering the cabin. Against one he could prevail. Two would be a battle. Against ten- or more- was suicide.
" Speak!"
Suzarra cried out again in pain.
" He' s suspected of murdering Zarella."
" He murdered no one," gasped out the girl. " That one, KynalLyk- Surepta, he did it! I heard!"
Lan cursed under his breath, fingering his sword in the cool dampness of the black cellar. Silly, stupid Suzarra.
He heard nothing but low moans from above. Deciding it might be suicide to go to Suzarra' s aid, yet knowing it meant her murder if he didn' t, he tried to push up the trap door. The sinews on his arms bulged with the strain. The lock had been turned. The heavy timbers refused to budge. And the sounds from above were all too apparent now. He could never leave his half- sister to the soldiers.
His sword proved useless against the thick door over his head. Frantically looking around the dimly lit cellar, he spied a tiny window. It proved far too small for him to crawl through. Using his fine steel sword as a digging tool, he slowly, painstakingly slowly, widened the window, pulling down handfuls of dirt until his face was caked with sweat and grime.