Page 21 of Witchcraft and Fury (Chronicles of the Divided Isle #1)
‘Look,’ said Pingot in a slow, reasoning tone as if speaking to a very young child, ‘I think that when Loveday mentioned a bond between the potion drinker and potion brewer, he meant that the drinker would hand over small things like a few spare coins if asked, not a silver mine or their daughter’s hand in marriage.
Besides, how could Gib poison a whole town?
That’s thousands of people! It all sounds a bit far-fetched to me. ’
‘But you saw Gib in the inn this morning! The other customers were practically dropping jewellery and valuables into his lap! It wasn’t just a bit of loose change,’ exclaimed Solar.
‘OK, OK,’ said Pingot with a tone of resignation, holding up his hands.
‘We know two things for sure: someone in this town is brewing Azure Euphoria, and some of the people taking it are dying. This Gib Ralston sounds like an interesting man and someone we should definitely be talking to, but let’s not go making accusations of daughter-stealing or mine-snatching just yet.
Let’s just talk with him, and then make a decision.
Now, where do you think we can find him? ’
‘I’ve got a funny feeling I know exactly where he is,’ replied Solar grimly, setting out again in the direction of The Cantankerous Mule.
*
Sure enough, Gib Ralston was still at the inn.
He was easy to spot with his feathered cap.
To Solar’s surprise, he was huddled round a table with Cal, Oswald and Wyman.
The three students were laughing into tankards of frothy ale at some joke Gib had cracked.
Cal looked up when the other three entered.
‘Solar! Bear! Pingot! Come and meet our new friend Gib. He’s a fine fellow,’ he said merrily, nodding to Gib and raising his tankard.
Solar, Bear and Pingot approached warily and pulled up chairs.
‘What’s got into you?’ Solar asked Cal, scowling.
Gib spoke before Cal could answer. ‘It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintances,’ he said, looking each of them over in turn. ‘Scree, three more tankards of ale if you please for my friends here.’
Solar looked at Cal, Oswald and Wyman. Was it her imagination, or had Cal completely lost his sullen manner? He was positively beaming into his tankard. The three students had almost finished their beers, and Gib had already drained a goblet of wine. Loveday and Binns were nowhere to be seen.
‘No,’ she said to Gib. ‘Ale doesn’t agree with us. We’ll have wine.’
‘I’m afraid I must insist,’ replied Gib.
‘You can’t say you’ve been to Ravenbridge if you’ve never tried the famous local beer.
’ Solar opened her mouth to protest, but Gib raised a finger.
‘No, really. I insist, Miss Carpenter. Yes, your friends have told me all about you: the common girl training to be a witch. What a remarkable story.’
‘Mr Ralston, where are our magic instructor and master-at-arms? They were here when we left ’em this morning,’ asked Solar, trying to ignore the feeling of unease in her stomach.
‘Your three friends here carried them upstairs at my suggestion,’ he replied, gesturing to Cal, Oswald and Wyman.
‘ The two of them had rather a lot to drink last night. I should know, for I shared their table for a while. I’m afraid I don’t imagine they’ll wake until nightfall.
Don’t worry, I understand the imps in your party are looking after them. ’
The landlord arrived with the beer. Solar shot Bear and Pingot a furtive warning look and kicked them under the table, but they slurped greedily regardless: it had been a long walk to the graveyard and back and they were thirsty.
They looked up from their tankards with fixed grins and glassy-eyed stares.
Solar was left in no doubt: Gib was contaminating the beer with Azure Euphoria. Most likely it had been in the drinks of Loveday and Binns the night before too. At a loss what to do with Gib sitting right in front of her, she pretended to take a swig of beer as well.
Gib returned the boys’ smiles. ‘Bear, isn’t it? That’s a fine brooch you have on your cloak. Give it to me .’
Without hesitation Bear took off the brooch, a fine piece of metalwork displaying his family’s coat of arms, and passed it to Gib. ‘Please, keep it, it’s not important to me,’ he said, his voice light and carefree.
Gib pinned the brooch to his own cloak and, as he was doing so, Solar emptied her tankard into a vase.
‘And now,’ said Gib, ‘Pingot, I would like you to give me a full account of what you have done today and what you have discovered.’
To Solar’s consternation, Pingot obeyed. She listened in horror as he relayed their investigations at the graveyard and the conclusion they’d drawn that the townsfolk were being poisoned with Happy Potion.
‘And, Gib,’ finished Pingot with a hiccup, ‘Solar thinks that you are the potion brewer!’ He sat back with a contented smile as if he had just delivered excellent news .
Gib’s face was emotionless. He fixed Solar with a penetrating stare. Solar forced herself to look back with the most carefree smile she could muster, feigning that she was under the influence of Azure Euphoria.
‘Well, well, well, Miss Carpenter,’ he said. ‘You really are a most intuitive young lady. Quite extraordinary, unlike your dim-witted aristocratic friends here.’
The five boys’ gormless smiles grew wider at these words.
‘What made you suspect me, I wonder?’ he mused, looking intently into her eyes.
And then, with an immediacy and intimacy that was shocking, he was in her mind.
She had never been mind raided before, at least to her knowledge, and the touch of Gib’s consciousness was coarse.
She let out a gasp of horror and revulsion, a cold, clammy sensation filling the inside of her skull.
Her hands clenched as the sensation spread to the base of her neck and worked its way down her spine, and all the while the feeling inside her head did not abate at all.
Her consciousness detached itself from its usual anchor, and she suddenly found herself sharing Gib’s perspective as he flicked through her memories like the pages of an open book.
She had no idea what he was looking for.
At one moment they were observing one of her earliest and vaguest memories: Solar walking hand in hand with her father down a sunlit path, golden dust swirling in the summer breeze.
Then they were with Muck and Pepper, fleeing together over the rooftops of Falcontop after stealing wine from an upmarket dealer’s shop.
Then they were in Ravenbridge, watching Scree be quizzed by Solar, before jumping back to the strange combination of thrill and hatred Solar felt whenever she locked blades and eyes with Cal.
Solar felt a terrible pang of shame at her memories being so openly rifled through, combined with rage that Gib would so flagrantly do so.
And then, incredulous that it was even possible for her untrained mind, she sensed an opening.
Gib was so intently searching for the clues that had led them to him that he had left a weak point in his mind’s own defences – an opportunity so obvious it could only have been born of his lack of formal magical education and experience.
Trusting entirely to instinct, Solar pounced.
The ramshackle defences of his mind crumbled before her, their contents unfurling like a scroll.
Within moments she was mind raiding intently, pausing only to marvel briefly at how easily it came to her.
She was only dimly aware that Gib’s own attack on her was still ongoing.
At first, the memories presented themselves in a seemingly random order: Gib as an adolescent, watching jealously as the local lord’s son rode off to study in a magic encampment; Gib as an infant, making mud pies with his sister and casting ‘spells’ in the vain hope of transforming them into real food; and an adult Gib procuring potion-brewing equipment on the black market.
But, slowly, Solar began to orientate herself within Gib’s head.
It was only then that she fully appreciated the complete lack of skill with which Gib had mind raided her.
He had been clumsy, blundering, like a drunk stumbling through the dark.
In contrast, with this new awareness of herself in relation to her surroundings, she found she only had to think where to look and Gib’s mind revealed it.
An agitated, knotting sensation in her gut warned her that it was far from natural for her to have so easily acquired this new ability, especially when the older man’s own graceless efforts revealed just how difficult an art mind raiding truly was, but Solar was so caught up in Gib’s memories that she failed to do more than register the thought.
Gib was walking through the cobbled streets of Ravenbridge, mist hanging so thickly that, even if the moon had shone above, there would be no chance of its light aiding his path. But clearly he knew the way, for he walked with swift assurance, cloak pulled tight around him for warmth.
Then, as a baker’s sign loomed above him, suspended from a shop wall, he halted. He knocked thrice on the door and waited, expressionless, as a candle flickered into flame in the window above. Its light moved from window to window, then to the ground floor, and shortly the door was unbolted.
‘Gib?’ said a weak, reedy voice from within, the door open just enough to allow a sliver of candlelight to fall on the visitor’s face. ‘Gib, my boy, what is the meaning of this?’
‘I would like a word with you, Mr Baker – alone.’
‘Can’t this wait till morning? You know I don’t like to stay up late. I’ll be up at the crack of dawn.’
‘A moment of your time. That’s all I ask of you.’
The door was opened, a sure sign that Mr Baker was under the influence of Azure Euphoria. But, just to make sure, Gib offered to pour them both drinks from the man’s own pantry, and discreetly added an additional dose from a stoppered bottle within his cloak to Mr Baker’s cup.