Page 24 of Darach

Blondie,

I know you always forget to eat when you’re out and about, so here’s a stash of my fav candy. It’s as hard as a rock, so smash the bar on something before you open the wrapper to break it into pieces.

Also, don’t freak out about this chucklehead who’s been harassing you, okay? You’ve done nothing to deserve his crap. The OOP will nab him and he’ll go to jail, and then you and I will party until dawn. If you’ll lend me your black boots to go with my gray leather mini-skirt. I don’t have legs that go on forever like yours. Wait, why do I hang out with you, anyway?

Right––because you’re the best friend I’ve ever had in my whole life. Maybe I’ll start stalking you.

XOXO,

Z

Charlotte stared at the note for a long time. All the guilt that had been crushing her slowly dissolved, thanks to the reminder of how much the other artist had cared about her. She would always regret how Zoey had died, but she had been a loving friend. If the situation had been reversed, and her friend had found her dead, Zoey would never have blamed herself. The horrors the stalker had inflicted on her had made Charlotte forget that.

All right, so we’re good now, Blondie, her friend’s ghost whispered from her memories. Just remember what’s important: I loved you.

She placed the candy back in the pocket along with the note. “Love you, too, Zoe.”

Chapter Six

In the laboratorium at Dun Deigh, Master Sage Reothadh gazed at the ruins heaped atop the largest work table. Most of the distillation bottles and tubes had melted during the making of the disaster; a sizeable pile of glittering white sludge produced by it still gave off wisps of steam. Here and there he saw cooling stones had been dropped to contain the spillage, each crystallized now like rough diamonds. The work he needed done would now have to wait until this disaster could be remedied and the fixtures replaced.

The smell of the mess had mostly dissipated, but a trace of scorched metal, singed hair and panicked sweat lingered.

“Alert the other guards,” Reothadh told the two Carack who had rushed into the chamber with him. “The stench doesnae come from a fire.”

“Master,” a hesitant voice said as a young sage with soot-strained robes approached him. “I can explain.”

“My uncle had no head for alchemy,” Reothadh said as he bent down to pick up a piece of shattered tubing. “He near poisoned the other apprentices when he passed around the only tonic he ever concocted. Every scroll he handled became torn, smudged or lost. He wasted so much crystal the losses set back the enclave’s work for a full season. Yet for all the chaos he caused before leaving the enclave to shepherd, my brother never destroyed all that he touched.” He finally looked at the anxious young man beside him. “Should I send you tend sheep, when I ken you’re likely to kill off a full herd?”

“Too much sun gives me rash, Master,” Geamhradh said in an uncharacteristically timid tone. The tall, heavyset apprentice stood an arm’s length from Reothadh, and shifted his considerable weight from one foot to the other as he spoke. “Permit me explain. I reckoned to blend an elixir to crack stone. ’Twasnae meant to dissolve glass and crockery.”

“They’re the same as stone, you eejit.” His younger brother, Fuachd, made a contemptuous sound. Short, thin and rather unkempt, he came to the master sage’s other side to peer at the table. “I told you dinnae add the borecrystal to the white gold when ’tis roiling, but would you listen? As ever, no.”

“You ken naught of my methods,” Geamhradh snapped. “Nor could you, with your nose ever stuck in a scroll while I–”

“Guards,” Reothadh called out, and glanced over at the door as two Carack sentinels came in. “Drag these two dolts to the dungeons. Lock them in the same cell, for they may do me the favor of strangling each other before they starve. Then leave their bodies there for the rats and voles.”

As one of the men grabbed him Fuachd uttered a squeaking cry of alarm. “Master, please. I took no part in Geam’s nonsense.”

“’Twas by Lord Struan’s bidding I attempted the blend, Master, I vow,” his brother added quickly as the other guard clamped a hand on his shoulder. “He wished the elixir made.”

“Only he bid you tell the Master, no’ make the blend yourself,” Fuachd said.

Geamhradh swatted at the smaller sage. “Hold your tongue.”

Reothadh rubbed his brow, and then recalled a very good reason not to send the pair down to the dungeons. To the guards he said, “I’ve changed my mind. Take these eejits to the stable master. Say they’re now his, and set them to muck out the stalls and attend to any other work he wants done.”

“For how long should he use them thus, Master?” one guard asked.

“Until I no longer wish to kill them.” He looked at the table again. “Winter next, mayhap.”

Once the quarreling brothers had been marched off, the enclave’s wrights came in with several apprentices to clean up the mess and salvage any equipment that remained undamaged. For a time Reothadh helped, but what the stout sage had said kept echoing in his thoughts.

“I must go and speak to Lord Struan,” he told his wrights. “Dinnae discard the mixture yet. Once it cools place it in a wooden bucket. I wish to examine the stuff later.”

From the laboratorium Reothadh made his way down to the lower levels of Dun Deigh, where he followed a narrow passage to a room between two large cisterns kept full by channeling water from a nearby loch. They also cooled the chamber between them, where he knocked on the door and waited until a flinty voice bid him enter.

Inside the chamber Struan stood studying a map pinned to one wall. Covered in sweat, the war master wore only a pair of damp trews. Nearby several buckets of cold water stood, with sponges floating in them.