Page 20 of Witchcraft and Fury (Chronicles of the Divided Isle #1)

CORPSES AND CLUES

And if you have lived a good life, meet death with a smile, for untold pleasures await in the underworld.

(Plaque, Ravenbridge Graveyard)

It wasn’t difficult to find the main cemetery, which surrounded a temple outside the town.

They simply asked any passer-by who caught their eye and were pointed in the right direction gladly.

Calls from the merry townsfolk of ‘Good day’ and ‘Why not join the party this evening?’ followed them wherever they went, and one man even cheerfully asked them to pass his regards on to Thywal Twiggery, the temple’s gravedigger.

The final stretch of the walk was a steep climb in open country.

The trio panted and wiped sweat from their brows as they made their way, despite the winter chill.

When they arrived, they saw a stick-like man with a grey beard and weathered face digging a row of fresh graves.

Beside him, covered with sheets, lay four long shapes that could only have been bodies.

The man looked up when he heard them approach, stopped digging and rested on his spade. He looked at them suspiciously.

‘Mr Twiggery?’ enquired Solar.

‘Aye, I might be. And who are you? Strangers, and strangers bring nowt but trouble,’ snarled the old gravedigger through rotting teeth.

Solar had become so accustomed to the friendly demeanour of the people of Ravenbridge that she was caught off guard by the man’s aggression.

‘We are students of the wizard Gaderian Loveday, cousin to the king and senior field agent of His Majesty’s Magic Circle, here on royal authority to solve the recent murders of Ravenbridge,’ announced Bear, puffing out his chest importantly.

‘Gaderian Loveday? I’ve heard of him. Famous, he is.

But I’ve never heard of a female lawfully studying magic before,’ said Twiggery, squinting at Solar, but Bear’s aristocratic accent and clothing seemed to convince him that he was telling the truth.

‘Alright then, pretty boy, suppose youse want to look at the bodies?’ he said grudgingly.

He drew back the body sheets one by one with the tip of his spade to reveal the corpses.

Each dead face wore a chillingly joyful smile.

‘Beauties, aren’t they?’ said the gravedigger.

Solar shuddered, a tingle of unease running down her spine.

‘Mr Twiggery, forgive me, but you don’t seem like the rest of the townsfolk,’ she said. ‘They’re so happy and polite, but … but unnaturally so. And friendly, too. What’s going on down there? What’s wrong with ’em? And how come you’re not like ’em?’

‘Keep meself to meself, don’t I? Always have done, always will. I sleep in me cottage outside town, don’t go inside the town walls apart from on market days to pick up provisions. The place gives me the creeps, of late.’

‘Of late? Since when?’

‘About a month, give or take a week. Before then Ravenbridge folk were common-sense people, like meself. Worked hard and never celebrated except on holy days. Kept ’emselves to ’emselves, and were suspicious of outsiders such as youse lot.

Wanted nowt to do with the likes of you.

Now it’s feasting every night and any stranger what comes over the river is invited to the party. ’

‘And does everyone … umm … survive the feasts?’ asked Solar nervously, thinking of the Devoratrix’s habit of wining and dining its victims.

Twiggery gestured with his spade at the row of bodies.

Bear swore under his breath and gripped his sword hilt.

‘How?’ asked Solar, heart hammering in her chest.

‘No one knows, do they? Suppose that’s why a senior field agent of His Majesty’s Magic Circle has been summoned, to figure it all out,’ Twiggery replied sarcastically.

Pingot knelt and looked at the bodies. ‘There’s nothing at all to suggest they’ve been harmed in any way,’ he said to Solar and Bear.

‘And they were evidently happy when they died. It all really does seem to fit in with Loveday’s Devoratrix theory.

They must have drunk and eaten themselves to death at one of the parties in town. ’

‘I’m not so sure. The Devoratrix is said to consume her victims. We still need to do a bit more digging to unravel this,’ said Solar.

‘No pun intended, I hope?’ said Pingot, grinning up at her.

Solar threw him an impatient scowl. ‘Mr Twiggery, have you buried any locals within the past four weeks? ’

‘Aye, without a doubt. Lemme think, there was Mr Appletree, the money lender. Nasty piece of work, used to cheat all his clients. He was shortly followed by Mr Baker, the day after his daughter’s wedding as well.

Tragic.’ He licked his lips, as if savouring his recollections of those he had buried.

‘Then there was Sal Sumac, a known thief; she won’t be missed.

And of course old Lombur Knight, owner of the local silver mine not four miles from here. Then there was …’

‘ The adult Devoratrix hungers for the death of innocents ,’ Solar breathed in excitement to Bear and Pingot as the gravedigger continued his grisly list. ‘That’s what the book on demons said, remember?’

‘Mr Appletree and Sal Whatsaface hardly sound like innocents to me …’ pondered Pingot.

‘That’s my point! It can’t be a Devoratrix behind the killings!’ Solar hissed.

Bear knelt beside Pingot to inspect the bodies. He moved the head of the nearest to him from side to side, opened its eyes and mouth in turn, and then, grimacing, pulled out the tongue to look deep inside.

‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look at this!’

Solar and Pingot crouched next to him. The back of the corpse’s throat was blue and as vibrant as the afternoon sky.

‘Azure Euphoria!’ whispered Pingot. He proceeded to check the throats of the other corpses, revealing more blue stains, before whirling around to rush back down the hill at a fast walk. ‘We have to tell the others!’ he called back over his shoulder, flapping his arms dramatically.

‘Azure what?’ asked Bear, jogging with Solar to catch up.

‘Hey! D’youse want to hear who else I’ve been a-burying or not?’ called the gravedigger angrily at their retreating backs.

‘Azure Euphoria,’ continued Pingot, ignoring the man, ‘ it’s one of the potions that Loveday mentioned in our first brewing class, don’t you remember?’

‘Umm …’ said Solar and Bear together, racking their brains.

‘It’s a kind of happy potion – the kind, in fact.

That’s why the corpses all have those freakish smiles on their faces!

And overdosing on Azure Euphoria stains the back of the throat a bright blue.

Don’t you see what this means? Loveday was wrong!

It’s not a Devoratrix behind the murders after all.

Someone has been giving the people of Ravenbridge huge quantities of Azure Euphoria – Happy Potion! ’

‘Why would anyone want to give a whole bunch of strangers Happy Potion?’ asked Bear as they entered the town again and dodged a cart full of empty crates coming the other way. ‘I mean, it hardly seems like the work of an evil murderer, does it?’

‘Excessive consumption of Azure Euphoria causes the drinker to develop a magical bond with the potion brewer, a bond which compels them to grant anything that the brewer asks for,’ said Pingot.

‘Did you memorise that word for word?’ asked Solar disbelievingly.

‘Well, I was taking notes.’

‘You need help,’ said Bear.

‘So the question now is, who’s forcing bottles of Azure Euphoria down the throats of the entire town?’ said Pingot.

The three walked along in silence for a while, the commotion of the streets all around them: donkeys brayed, children darted this way and that, and silver exchanged hands at shop stalls.

‘Of course !’ said Solar suddenly, stopping dead in her tracks. ‘Do you remember the man in The Cantankerous Mule this morning, dressed in expensive clothes? The one the landlord said is the finest young man there is? What was he called again?’

‘Gib Ralston, I think,’ answered Pingot tentatively.

‘Yes, that's it! And did either of you notice what he had on his ring finger?’

Bear and Pingot shook their heads, thoroughly bemused.

‘Boys!’ said Solar, exasperated. ‘You don’t notice anything, do you? He was wearing a wedding ring, and it was clearly new. Either that or he polishes it every day.’

‘The gravedigger told us that one of the victim’s daughters had just got married the day before …’ said Pingot. ‘Mr Baker, that was his name.’

‘Exactly! Well, what if this Gib Ralston asked Mr Baker for his daughter’s hand in marriage? If he got the father to take Happy Potion, and I mean practically overdose on the stuff, then he’d be magically compelled to fulfil that wish!’

‘I don’t know, it’s a bit tenuous,’ mused Bear. ‘Besides, it doesn’t explain why the father is now buried in a graveyard.’

‘Maybe he woke the next day and, with the potion wearing off, realised that he’d given his daughter away to a monster of a man and then, distraught, decided to—’

‘What, kill himself? And who said that this Gib person is a monster anyway? You’ve never even spoken to him,’ said Bear sceptically.

But Solar was caught up in the thrill of her theory. ‘There was something about his look that I didn’t like,’ she muttered. Bear and Pingot exchanged glances, eyebrows raised.

‘OK then, how about the silver mine?’ she said.

‘The landlord introduced Gib as the owner of the local silver mine. Well, the gravedigger just told us that Lombur Knight, one of the people he’s just buried, was the owner!

What if Gib told Mr Knight to give him the silver mine?

Mr Knight must have been facing financial ruin after handing it away. Maybe he then killed himself too!’