Chapter 268 - A Shallow Grave

Siobhan 

Month 5, Day 13, Tuesday 3:00 p.m.

If she was going to make it to the other shaman’s house before everyone in the village died, she knew she needed to make a plan and set out quickly. But before that, she decided to pass by Rory’s house. Despite how annoying the young boy was, she didn’t want him to die. Or be infected by the curse. The thought of him wasting away with a little pregnant belly was so horrifying that she wanted to vomit. 

She had to avoid several cursed-touched villagers on the way, frightened to interact with or even be seen by them for some reason, though none of them had been aggressive—except for that man eating the dog. If they got hungry enough, she feared that they might crave her own innards. 

When she arrived at Rory’s small, run-down house, she hesitated outside, letting the strand of hair slip from her fingers and the bone bracelet deactivate. She picked it up from the ground and slipped it into the oversized leather coat’s pocket, mindful of Grandfather’s common admonition not to leave pieces of herself lying around. Even though, really, who here in the village would be able or willing to use it against her? 

Would Rory’s mother be angry if Siobhan knocked? Would they even open the door? Before Siobhan could muster up the courage to approach, strange sounds came from inside. Some banging, some crashing as if furniture had been knocked over, and then a child’s shrill scream. 

The hair on Siobhan’s skin lifted with a sudden chill. “No,” she whispered, running forward before she even realized it. She was just placing her hand on the knob when the door slammed open, catching her arm and swinging her off balance. 

Rory stumbled out, his face smashing into her chest and sending them both tumbling to the ground. 

Siobhan rolled with him a few feet, then scrambled to her hands and knees and grabbed his arm to drag him upright and further away from the house. 

Rory’s grandfather had stumbled on the door’s stoop and was climbing back to his feet much slower. His teeth and chin were bloody, which not-so-coincidentally matched a distinct, bleeding bite mark on Rory’s arm. 

“Pops!” Rory sobbed. “Stop, Pops!” 

Siobhan pulled the boy farther away and then moved to stand between him and his grandfather. She fumbled in her pocket, but couldn’t find the hair, so ruthlessly tore a few more strands away, in too much of a hurry to be careful with her scalp. She used one to activate the bracelet and snapped at Rory to pick up the rest. 

To his credit, he didn’t question, argue, or hesitate, immediately crouching and sweeping up the dark strands.

Rory’s mother came barreling out of the house with a broom in her hands, which she immediately used to beat Rory’s grandfather about the head. “Leave. My. Son. Alone!” she screamed, punctuating each word with a blow. She didn’t soften the force at all, and on the last hit, actually broke the wooden shaft of the broom over the old man’s head. 

Rory’s grandfather stumbled woozily, but his gaze held no reason, and he bared his bloody, crooked teeth at Rory’s mother. 

She jabbed the broken end of the broom at his stomach, placing herself between the crazed man and the two children. Rory’s grandmother limped to the doorway, and two of Rory’s older sisters looked out from behind her back. All of them sported minor injuries. The old man must have been stronger than he looked. 

He lunged at Rory’s mother again, and she reared back and kicked him straight in the chest, knocking him off his feet, then pinned him to the ground with the broken end of the broomstick. 

“You two run away. Get Mr. Tierney,” she ordered, breathing hard. Her arms were trembling, and her hair was a mess around her face. 

“I don’t know where he is,” Siobhan said. “But I can take Rory to my house. We’ll both be safe there.” 

His mom hesitated, then asked, “You have food?”

“Of course,” Siobhan replied. 

“Then go. Don’t come back.” 

“No, Ma!” Rory said. 

His mother threw him a glare over her shoulder. “We’ll come get you when it’s safe. Go! Keep the little girl safe.” 

Siobhan almost protested that, of all people, she didn’t need Rory to keep her safe, but she realized this was just an excuse his mother was using to make him agree. Things must be even worse at their house than she had feared, if the woman actually wanted Rory to stay with Siobhan, who she had never quite liked. 

“Don’t worry,” his mother added. “I can handle an old man like this.” She looked up to her daughters. “Get the rope!”

Siobhan allowed the bracelet weapon to deactivate again, then took Rory by the wrist and pulled him away. They didn’t speak until they’d left the village behind and he’d had a chance to secretly dry his tears. 

“What happened?” she asked simply. 

“We’ve all been staying inside the last few days. At first, we didn’t realize anything was wrong, but then the food started to disappear. Everyone said they didn’t eat it, but it was running out too quick. My dad and oldest brother left to buy more…but they didn’t come back. That was yesterday. This morning, my second and middle brother wouldn’t wake up, and we found out the food was almost all gone. They’d eaten it during the night. We’ve seen the people outside, and we were worried, so just in case, we tied them up in the back room before they woke up. But then, out of nowhere, Pops went crazy. He stole my food right out of my hand, and then he—he—” Rory stopped trying to explain and simply held up his still-bleeding arm. 

“Did Claudio go to your house like he said he would?” 

Rory nodded. “He did. But…he couldn’t finish casting magic on everyone. He collapsed right after trying to help Pops.” 

“He collapsed!?”

“He’s okay. He didn’t get Will-strain or anything. He just had to go home and rest. Maybe he couldn’t do a good job because he was so tired. But I think—I think it was probably already too late by the time Mr. Tierney got to Pops.”

Siobhan pursed her lips. “You think the curse is like a fever, festering inside for a while before it blooms?” It made sense. There were probably quite a few people still just having strange dreams or feeling abnormally hungry now. In a few days, they might be gnawing on themselves or their family members, or coaxing strange fleshy blobs to grow in the burnt husks of their house. And if the curse-touched had eaten all their food, that was another plausible reason that Rory’s mother wanted him to go to Siobhan’s house. At least there, he would be fed. 

“You’ve got that look again,” Rory said. “Are you plotting something?”

“I had an idea that might help. If Grandfather isn’t home in the next few hours…” She walked faster. “Shamanry is the craft of magic that deals with spirits, dreams, and divination. A good shaman might even make a passable curse-breaker, and they’re probably also the type of thaumaturge most likely to know how to handle a malediction.” 

“Mr. Tierney is a shaman.” 

“Yes. But not a very good one.” Before Rory could protest, she clarified, “I mean, he’s only good at the one thing. He’s hyper-focused all of his growth in the area he’s interested in, to the neglect of everything else, like an idiot without any shame.” 

Rory pouted. “But…”

“Sure, sure, he’s useful in one particular situation. But he’s only one person, and he’s not strong enough to deal with this. I want to go to Edelbrook and get the shaman there to help, too. Even if he can’t fix this directly, most shamans are pretty good at divination. He might at least be able to give us a clue about how to stop this. And at the very least, he would double the number of competent thaumaturges in the village.” 

“I’ll go with you,” Rory said immediately. 

“What? No. You’ll stay at my house, where it’s safe.” 

“I’m coming. Don’t be stupid, Siobhan. You might be two years older than me and already apprenticing as a sorcerer, but do you really think it’s smart to go traveling to a town two days away by yourself? Especially with what’s happening? What if it’s not just our village? I’m coming,” he repeated. “I’ll be a good backup if there’s anything dangerous, and at the very least I can act as a pack mule. That will make the overall journey faster for you. If I slow you down, I promise you can leave me halfway.” 

Siobhan hesitated, but remembered her earlier resolution not to go traipsing into potential danger by herself. “We’ll leave a note just in case we’re not back before this gets solved. So your family doesn’t worry.” 

Grandfather wasn’t back by the time they got home, and Aimee was still missing, too. A large part of Siobhan wanted to go searching for the young woman, but she reassured herself that Claudio wouldn’t let something happen to Aimee. They were probably working together somewhere down in the village. And even if that wasn’t the case, Siobhan couldn’t do anything about it. She wasn’t strong enough to save anyone on her own. All she could do was this. 

They tended to Rory’s wound, then packed a bag of supplies each. Siobhan pulled a map of the village from the study room, and she used it to calculate a quicker path directly to the shaman. Edelbrook was normally accessible by a road that looped around so far it took two days on horseback, or three on foot to reach. If they cut through the woods instead, they could be there by tomorrow afternoon, accounting for the slowed pace of traveling off-road. 

By the time they set off, the sun was already starting to set, but Grandfather hadn’t returned. This only firmed her resolve not to waste any time. She had a compass, a light crystal, and had split the other supplies between Rory and herself. She’d heard some of Mom’s old friends from the People that when traveling in a group, no one person should have a monopoly on any necessary supplies, in case they or their pack was lost. 

As they left, Rory filled the air with nervous chatter. It was dark, and they were walking through the forest by the light of a couple repurposed light crystals before he brought up what was really on his mind. “Do you think my family will be okay? You saw some of the worst cases, right? Is that…something a person can recover from?”

“Magical healing can fix quite a lot. As for the curse itself…” She clenched her teeth for a moment. “Magic requires balance. Every curse has a counter.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely,” she said, trying to imbue her tone with confidence she didn’t really feel, though she wasn’t sure who benefited more from this deception. “All the stories agree with me, too.” For the first few hours of the night, which came early this time of year, Siobhan retold every story involving a curse that she’d ever heard. Eventually, tired and a bit hoarse, she fell silent. She was weaker than Rory, but their packs were the same size. After a moment of hesitation, she mentally reviewed the instructions for an esoteric spell she’d learned from one of Mom’s visitors. 

It could allow her to ignore minor pain and discomfort. Grandfather had scolded her when he found her practicing it, and told her not to use it for anything except monotonous exercise, long carriage rides where her legs began to cramp up, or other uncomfortable situations where she was in no danger of either falling asleep or being distracted. It was not safe to be surprised while casting. Historically, large groups had used the spell while marching, periodically rotating out a few of their number to watch for danger. 

Throughout the rest of the night, she cast the spell three times, in half-hour increments each. That was all her Will could provide and all her body could withstand. Tired, in pain, and anxious, after the three hundredth cough or sniffle and the dozenth inane question from Rory, her stretched temper snapped. “Stars above, Rory, would you shut up!?”

He went quiet immediately. They walked in awkward silence for a couple more minutes, and when Siobhan called a halt to check their direction on the compass and examine the map, the discomfort compelled her to apologize. 

“It’s okay,” Rory said immediately, giving her a tired, strained smile. 

This didn’t make Siobhan feel better about her outburst. At least Rory was here with her. He wasn’t even her family, but he hadn’t abandoned her, even when he could have. 

By the time they broke out of the forest, it was late afternoon, and Siobhan’s soreness had turned into trembling, despite her preparations and the breaks she’d allowed them to rest and eat. She had guided them slightly off-target, and they had to find the road and then walk backward along it for about a mile before they found the shaman’s cottage, which was set off in a private meadow about an hour’s walk from Edelbrook. 

Grandfather would have called the cottage “quaint,” but it was obviously well-tended, with beds of herbs lining all four walls and little sculpted ornaments peeking through the grass. There was even a small clan of carved and painted gnomes frozen seemingly mid-battle in the front. But when they knocked, the shaman didn’t answer. 

“Maybe he’s down at the village,” Rory said uncertainly. “We can wait here. He should be back by evening, right?”

Siobhan ran her tongue across the backs of her teeth as she glared at the house. “I know something that will make him come back faster.” 

The front and back doors were both locked, along with the windows, and Siobhan hadn’t thought to bring her makeshift lock-picking kit along. So she picked up one of the gnomes and smashed it through the kitchen window, then used it to break all of the glass out of the frame. The ringing clatter of an alarm started up, and she nodded with satisfaction. If the shaman was any good, that alarm would have a secondary alert system that he carried with him while he was away. 

Rory kneeled on all fours, allowing her to use his back as a platform to clamber through the window. 

From there, she opened the front door for him, then found the bell and whistle combination that was making such a horrible racket. With her fingers in her ears, she examined the alarm’s spell array. She might have been able to understand and then pick it apart, given a half hour to work, but the sound was too annoying to put up with. Instead, she picked up the entire contraption and dashed it against the floor with a single heave. It shattered into pieces with a burst of released energy she felt wash against her skin, but thankfully fell silent. 

Rory stared at it. “Aren’t we trying to get this shaman’s help? But we’ve broken into his house and now you’re breaking his things? Aren’t you worried he’ll hex you instead?”

Siobhan shrugged. “I have very little to lose. And he should know my grandfather’s name and the consequences of angering him.” 

“Ah.” Rory nodded and relaxed. “I forgot you had a terrifying sorcerer to back up your crimes. At worst, this man can ask Master Kalvidasan for compensation.” 

While they waited, Rory collapsed, but as tired and in pain as she was, Siobhan couldn’t sit still. As she walked around the cottage, occasionally peeking out of a window in the hope of seeing the shaman’s approaching form, she noted a few concerning things. The fireplace was cold. The chickens in the back were out of both food and water, and were making do with a few puddles in their coop. Finally, there was a plate of mostly eaten food on the kitchen table that was beginning to smell. 

It was this last that most concerned her. Except for that one plate, the rest of the cottage was kept meticulously neat. “Rory…” she said. 

Her wary tone was enough to alert him. He scrambled up, looking around for danger. “What? Do you see the shaman? Or…a cursed person?” He ducked down and scurried to the window nearest her to peek out over the sill. 

She grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and hauled him upright again. “No, nothing like that. I think the shaman has been gone for several days. And he left in a hurry.” She almost collapsed at the announcement, her body suddenly feeling as if the weight of every limb had tripled. 

After a few minutes of despair, during which she ignored Rory’s panicked questions, she drew herself together again. “We’ll search the place for anything useful, or any relevant clues about where the shaman might be. Once we know more and have gathered all possible resources into a pile, I’ll make a decision about what to do next.” 

She was most interested in the alchemy supplies and small bookcase, while Rory searched through the rest of the house, snacking on the shaman’s food as he went. She was growing blurry-eyed trying to skim through the shaman’s books for any new knowledge about how to break curses when Rory screamed her name from the cellar. 

Siobhan dropped the book and bolted down the narrow stairs. 

Rory was standing on the dirt, hard-packed floor with the light crystal she’d given him shaking in his outstretched fist. 

She moved to stand beside him, following his gaze to the floor, where the earth had been dug up. The light wavered and threw dancing shadows as Rory trembled. Still, it was easy to see the bloated, purple human hand peeking out of a small spot where the loose dirt had been cleared away.

Author Note: Bonus Monday chapter for the patrons! 

In other news, the Typo Hunting Team for PGTS Book 6, A Builder of Dreams, is now open for applications. If you'd like to help me polish the book before publication in exchange for getting to read it early and a personalized paperback or gift card upon release, you can learn more here: https://www.azaleaellis.com/join-the-typo-hunting-team/

The link to sign up is also on that page. 

Weekly chapter discussion thread on the Alcove (and more random writing trivia from me): https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-268-weekly-discussion-a-shallow-grave/806

Also, the weekly Thursday chapter is a going to be little shorter than normal, which is part of why we're doing a Monday chapter this week, too.