Magic has waned in the world. In the past, magic was a prevalent and powerful force, wielded by individuals and groups who held significant influence and power. However, as time has passed, the use and practice of magic has diminished greatly. The number of individuals who possess magical abilities has greatly decreased. The remaining practitioners of magic are mainly limited to a small group of women, known as witches.
One such sisterhood of witches is Meridin, Lenore and Romlyn
***
Romlyn had woken Colm at dawn, just as she had the last three days. She was strict and methodical as a taskmistress. She'd repeated more than a few times that she didn't want to leave a single stone in the town unturned and had then laughed to herself at the sheer preposterousness of what she'd just said. Wilton was an alpine town. The ground was strewn with granite rocks and stones in every direction. Checking under all of them would take a lifetime.
Colm sighed as he got dressed and headed out to help Romlyn and Lenore begin their search for the day. Thus far, their search for any clues that might help them discover the causes of the earthquakes had been fruitless.
As Colm walked out into the cold, misty mountain air, he momentarily wished he was in the other search party, with Meridin and her other thrall, searching the hills. Meridin had explained her rationale for splitting their group of five into two groups, and while it did make sense to him, he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like in the mountains with Meridin and Gaven.
The terrain around Wilton was rough. Rocky, steep, and with mountains on all sides, the land around the town was thick with alpine pines, but very sparsely populated. Looking around at the mountains surrounding the town, Colm understood why Meridin thought it best that she and her other thrall, the athletically built Gaven, should be the ones to explore the mountains surrounding the town; they were the two most physically fit of their crew, after all. Part of him understood that his people skills, honed from years working as a concierge, made him perfectly suited to questioning people, not scouring mountaintops. He just wished he didn't have to do it under the orders of Romlyn, the Red Witch. The other witch in their party, Lenore the Woodland Witch, he quite liked; although she was occasionally scattered, her innate curiosity and her earnestness in pursuing new knowledge above all else lent her a certain charm.
Romlyn was a different story. Colm found her a little bit scary, although one wouldn't think that to look at her. Everything about her was petite apart from her anger. The red dress and hat she wore everywhere was the only hint of her barely concealed fury. Despite her tiny frame, even the roughest-looking timber workers of Wilton had found her intimidating. Colm was very glad to be on her side, rather than up against her.
They'd started their investigation down at the lowest-lying areas of the town, by the river. Although the area itself had very few trees, its location next to the river made it a local industrial hub, with a sawmill and timber yards that produced timber to be sent downstream to the larger cities. Their search of the area yielded nothing helpful, and Romlyn had to sharply remind Lenore that they were there to find the source of the magical earthquakes, not write the history of timber production.
Colm found his eyes drifting uphill as he listened to Romlyn's biting remarks The thought of having to scale the sheer granite bluffs took the edge off any jealousy he was feeling towards the other group.
Despite being an unlikely crew, the trio fell into an easy habit. Colm would start the conversations; his gentle nature would put people at ease while he and Lenore questioned them. Colm made sure to ask them how they felt and entertained the rumours they'd heard and speculation they'd engaged in about the earthquakes, the nearby hills, and anything else they considered to be strange. Lenore studiously wrote down every detail in a notebook with "Investigation" scrawled down the spine. She carried it with her everywhere, but Colm had often seen her pull out other notebooks, seemingly out of thin air, whenever she'd found anything else interesting. She seemed to have a book for everything. In the last three days he'd seen her pull out volumes for trees, birds, and flowers.
Romlyn, the focused, standoffish Red Witch, would listen intently from a somewhat greater distance - and a little off to one side - as people answered, listening intently for any gaps or inconsistencies in their stories. Though she would never admit it aloud, she came to appreciate the benefits of Colm's approach, and of him being the trio's face and primary voice during interviews.
The people who lived in the low area of town by the river offered little useful information. Their lives were centred on the river, so the tall tales they'd heard from the nearby mountains were always secondhand at best. They, like everyone else, had felt the ground rumble, but their stories were no different to the hundreds of similar accounts Lenore had already collected in her notepad from dozens of other interviews she's conducted in her month-long travel up the mountain range.
It was midmorning before they heard a version of events that differed from the one they'd been hearing all day. They were talking to a man named Chet, a retired timber mill worker. Once again, Colm tried to put the man at ease and get him engaged by asking about his personal experiences first. Most people loved to talk about themselves; he'd learned that very early in his former career.
"How have you been dealing with the earthquakes?" he asked.
The man shook his head and downplayed the effects on his life, as many old men do. "Oh, I can't complain. Five moons of the ground shaking isn't enough to rattle old Chet. People around here are made of stern stuff, you know. You have to be, to survive up here."
Romlyn had been standing on the periphery of the conversation, but suddenly launched herself into the centre of it, sensing she'd caught the man in a lie. "Did you say five moons? Everyone else has reported that it's been three months or three moons since the earthquakes started. And now you're saying you've been feeling them for two whole months longer than everyone else? Explain yourself." To Colm's ear, Romlyn's tone conveyed a sense of impatience similar to how an adult may sound when frustrated with a child's inability to accomplish a straightforward task.
The old man was visibly shaken. His face jumped back in fright, making his wrinkles momentarily disappear. The old man took a deep breath before trying to de-escalate the situation. "Three moons? Maybe that's what it was. Time gets a bit harder to judge at my age. If other people are saying it was that long, go with what they're saying. Don't trust an old man like me."
Colm shot him a look of apology. "No worries Chet. We all make mistakes from time to time. You have a good day, now." The old man began to shuffle away, and Colm breathed a sigh of relief when Romlyn didn't doggedly pursue.
As they watched the old man shamble down the road, Romlyn muttered under her breath. "Using his age as an excuse; if he only knew."
A thought occurred to Colm: if Meridin was over 200 years old, maybe Romlyn could be the same age, or perhaps even older. It occurred to him that Romlyn might very well feel like she was dealing with children, because, in a sense, she was. That thought caused new respect to blossom for Meridin in his heart.
She must feel a similar level of impatience,
he thought,
but unlike Romlyn, she at least hides it.
The rest of the morning passed without any incident, and by midday, they found themselves back in the middle of the town where the inn sat. Its obnoxiously large size and stone walls made it stand out from the timber-built town. Opposite the inn was the market square, with stalls lined with local produce.
Frustrated at another day without a single lead to go on, Colm paced around the market square. Something felt not quite right with the market, he couldn't quite figure out what, so he kept pacing - not searching any stall in particular, just for anything out of place. Between two cool-climate vegetable stalls - beets and broccoli on one side, pumpkins and potatoes on the other - sat one that was completely empty. Colm searched his memory and realised that it had been empty for the entire week his trio had been in town. Some other stalls had closed for a day or two here and there, but only that one had been vacant the whole week; that was unusual.
Colm went back to the witches and asked Lenore to come with him while he investigated further. "I think I might have found something. Or rather, not found something. Each morning, we walk past the market square, and I've noticed one stall has been empty every single day. Something about it just doesn't seem right to me. Did someone just abandon their stall? Or did they go missing? Let's ask around."
