“Now then, can you find it, or not?” he asked, his voice no more than a whisper. Her eyes began to roll up into her head. He didn’t care; if she couldn’t help him, her life didn’t matter. There were others like her, should he need one.
“Yes,” she finally gasped. “Somehow, I will . . . find . . . a way . . . but must have . . . herbs . . . for flame . . .” What sounded like a final, rattling gasp slowly escaped her lungs.
He smiled. “That’s better.” He let her go, and she crashed unconscious to the floor.
Ignoring her, he walked to the open doorway and again gazed out over the smoking rubble. Thinking, he looked back to the woman lying on the floor.
He would need to find another herbmistress or herbmaster, so that he could steal the necessary ingredients. That much was certain. But where to look? Then something began to tug at the back of his mind.
Searching his memory, he tried to retrieve the details of the rumor that had long been whispered down the halls of the Redoubt: the hearsay describing the only transgression supposedly ever committed by the lead wizard.
At last he remembered, and his mouth turned up into a smile. If herbs were what his seer needed, then herbs were what she would receive. And then, after acquiring them, he would pay the lead wizard and the cripple in the chair a visit they would never forget.
He walked back to the woman and levitated her body into the air. Still holding the single scroll, he grasped her with his free arm and glided back out over the steaming, hissing rubble.