The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [102]
“And how was your walk about the town?”
“A bit damp, but pleasant.”
“Did you go up to the dun?”
“I didn’t. Naught for a man like me there.”
But his answer struck her as too slick and his tone too oily, just like his smile.
Round the bend in the street, just past the coppersmith’s, lived the Widow Dacra in a wooden hut. Although everyone said she was a witch, she made her living by dispensing the common sort of herbs and, on occasion, applying a combination of hot baths, mead, and slippery elm bark to induce abortions for the local whores. With the beginnings of a plan forming in her mind, Glomer filled a leather bottle with mixed ale and went round to see her on the morrow morning. She found Dacra, a handsome gray-haired woman, picking over dried hoarhound at her table while at her little fire a pot of honey and water simmered together.
“A lot of coughs this time of year,” Dacra remarked. “The blacksmith’s lad is bad, his mother tells me, so I’m just making up a potion.”
“I’ve come to ask you a favor.” Glomer set the bottle of ale on the table.
“Indeed? Have you found some lad to lift your skirts and then leave you?”
“I’m not with child! That’s not going to happen to me, thank you very much, not until I’ve married anyway.”
“Huh. It’s the ever-so-fussy lasses like you, young Glomer, who generally find a bit of filth to roll in at the last. Think about that, will you? Before you give yourself such fine airs that you find yourself twenty years old and moaning because you’ve got no husband.”
If Glomer hadn’t needed her advice, she would have thrown the bottle straight at her head. As it was she forced out a smile.
“I’ll think on it, indeed. Now, I only wanted to ask you somewhat. Suppose someone was a sorcerer? How could you tell? I mean, do they have a demon mark on the palm of their hand or suchlike?”
“What? Hardly anything so easy and quicklike, my fine lass. Why do you want to know?”
“Oh, I was just curious, like.”
“Indeed? You wouldn’t be stealing your mam’s ale just to satisfy your curiosity.”
“I didn’t steal it! I’m worried about her, too.”
Dacra considered her for a moment with shrewd gray eyes.
“Well, I can see you’re worried, sure enough. Is it that lodger of yours?”
“It is. How did you know?”
“And who else new has come here in months and months?”
“True spoken. There’s just somewhat about him that doesn’t sit well.”
Dacra dumped a generous handful of crushed hoarhound leaves into the pot of honey and water, then stirred down the roil, slowly and carefully, with a wooden spoon.
“Well, that’s true,” the herbwoman said at last. “Though I don’t know what kind of man he is. A murderer, I’d say, more than a sorcerer, but you never know.” She took the pot off the fire and set in on a slab of stone at one end of her table to cool. “When he came to stay, he must have brought bags and packs with him.”
“He did. A peddler’s pack and then saddlebags.”
“Saddlebags for a man who walks for his living? Curious, indeed.” Dacra gave the pot one last stir, then went to a freestanding cupboard and began rummaging through it. She brought out a tiny square of parchment. “A long long time ago an old woman made me this good luck charm. You see? It has a five-pointed star, and then this circle of writing round it. Well, the old woman told me to always hold this parchment so the star has one point upward, never two. Two points up bring bad luck, she said, and it’s a sign of evil sorcery. If I remember rightly, she said that every sorcerer would have some bit of magical gear marked with the evil star.”
“Merryc goes out for long walks all the time.”
“Does he now? But be as careful as careful, young Glomer. Nobody wants to see you turned to stone or your soul trapped in a bottle.”
Especially not Glomer. She waited until the afternoon, when Merryc went out for his usual long walk before dinner, then fetched a big basket of wicker rattraps and a handful of stale bits of bacon