A Storm in the Desert: Dragonlinked Chronicles Voume 3 (5 page)

She shifted position to above the corpse’s head and spent a few minutes examining the neck. She said, “What can you deduce about the wounds?” She placed one hand on the forehead and the other on the back of the head and carefully turned it face-down to the floor to better reveal the slashes on the right side of the neck for Gregor.

The healer, leaning over the body, studied the cuts. “I’d say they were produced by a sharp instrument of some kind, a dagger or knife perhaps.” He prodded the slashes. “They are deeper nearer the floor, as if someone leaned over the body, as I am, and inflicted the wounds. When you pull up with a blade, you tend to curve it away from your own body, which would leave a shallower cut at the top, as we see here.”

“Good.” She returned the head to its former position. Then her brows drew together, and she shifted her hand on the back of the head, probing it with her fingers. “Gregor, feel here.”

He reached over. “Hmm. He’s got a lump. It’s small in circumference, but tall.”

She grunted. “What about his expression?”

Gregor frowned. “His expression?”

The Guildmaster nodded. “Describe it.”

The healer looked at the man’s face. “Ah, yes. I see what you mean. There is no expression. It’s blank, as if he were sleeping.”

“Exactly.” Her attitude changed, became more brisk. “Alright, we’ve examined all we can on the outside. It is time to see what we discover inside. If you could start with the feet? We’ll look at each one, going up the leg to the abdomen, then we’ll do the hands in similar fashion.”

Gregor nodded.

Fillion felt a pulse of power and a ghostly image appeared, floating a foot over the body.

Master Gella let out a quiet grunt, but merely watched the glowing likeness.

“His right foot and leg first,” Gregor said.

He and the Guildmaster studied the projection intently before it was adjusted higher up the leg. Bone, tendon, muscle, fat, veins and such, all were clearly visible. Everything got a once-over by the two. When the legs were done, they moved on to the arms, then the torso, and lastly the neck and head.

Fillion vaguely recognized some of the internals from Animal Craft lessons, but most of what was shown in the softly glowing enchantment was only familiar to him in a general sense. He’d have no way of knowing if anything were out of place.

“Hmm.” Gregor frowned at the image, then looked down and pressed the man’s cheek. “What’s this?”

Fillion couldn’t believe what Gregor did next.

With an expression of curiosity, Gregor pried the jaws open and stuck his fingers in the dead man’s mouth, fishing around inside. “There’s something tucked between the teeth and right cheek . . .”

Fillion shivered and let out a quiet sound.

“What have we here?” Gregor removed a small item.

Master Gella stepped closer. She looked surprised and intensely curious.

With his other hand, Gregor dug around in the examination kit and pulled out what looked like gauze. After wiping off the mystery item, he proceeded to unroll it, or unwrap it.

“It’s falling apart,” he said.

“Be careful!” Master Gella knelt next to him.

He placed the soggy item on the floor and, with two wooden probes he removed from the kit, carefully spread it open.

“It’s two pages from his notebook,” Master Gella said. “But they’re disintegrating, dissolving with his saliva.”

Guildmaster Millinith’s brows drew together. “Notebook?”

Master Gella stared at the pages a moment, then turned to the Guildmaster. “Is your examination of the body complete?”

“Yes, though we found nothing out of the ordinary beyond the lump on his head and that.” The Guildmaster gestured to the wet paper scraps.

“I see,” Master Gella said. “Then you should examine the nahual tracks outside.”

Guildmaster Millinith looked surprised. “There are nahual tracks?”

“I assume that is what they are.” Master Gella stood. To Gregor she said, “Leave those for now. Once they’ve dried a bit, we can examine them further.” With that, the investigator walked out the open door to the back yard.

Fillion followed Guildmaster Millinith and Gregor outside.

“There aren’t many, there’s almost no snow, but there are a few there,” Master Gella pointed to a woodpile, “and at the fence line there.” She indicated the back of the yard. “There are also some on the other side of the cottage, as if it were circling the house, stalking.”

Guildmaster Millinith twisted her lips. She and Gregor headed to the tracks at the woodpile. They walked back and forth along the short strip of snow for a while, then moved to the tracks by the fence. Why they had to study them for so long, Fillion had no idea. His stomach rumbled and he wondered how long past noon it now was.

The countryside around the cottage was actually kind of beautiful. There were plenty of wooded areas nearby, they dotted the land here and there, and if he remembered right, there was a small stream off in . . . that direction. He turned toward a tall line of cottonwood and cedar. Well, the creek had appeared small from hundreds of feet in the air, anyway. However big it was, people could catch some fresh fish in it and crisp them up for a tasty dinner.

These tracks smell funny.

What?
Fillion turned toward the house. Coatl had been in the front.

There are some behind a stump next to where I am sunning. They smell like Soot.

Smell like Soot?

That smell I told you about. You said it was from . . . chemicals?

Fillion’s brows rose. “Coatl says the tracks smell like my stuffed pet.”

Master Gella turned to him. “Who’s Coatl?”

“My dragon. He says there are tracks next to him that smell like my pet raven, Soot.”

“Your dragon can talk?”

“Yes, in my mind. He sniffed the tracks and told me they smell like my stuffed raven.”

“The tracks smell like a raven?” Master Gella’s brows were drawn together.

“Like his
stuffed
raven.” Guildmaster Millinith walked over.

“Exactly,” Fillion nodded. ”He says the tracks have the same chemical smell Soot does.”

“Which makes sense, as these are not nahual tracks.”

Master Gella turned to the Guildmaster. “They aren’t?”

“They are, and they aren’t. Each individual print is from a nahual, but a nahual did not make the tracks. The gait is completely off.” She looked at Fillion. “Whoever killed the man inside must have used the back legs of a stuffed nahual to make these tracks.”

“So, you do not believe he was killed by a nahual.”

“He was not. Whoever did it knows a bit about how nahual kill but, apparently, not everything.”

Master Gella looked interested. “How do you mean?”

Guildmaster Millinith appeared to be considering whether to answer. Fillion wasn’t sure why she wouldn’t. This was a special investigator, after all.

“The man was face-down,” the Guildmaster finally said. She continued in a brisk matter-of-fact manner. “Not decisive on its own, but in nearly every case of a nahual attack, their victims have been laying on their backs. More importantly, he had not been cut open. If able to complete their attack uninterrupted, a nahual removes certain organs. That aspect of their attacks isn’t as well-known. Also, he had no expression on his face. Nahual victims tend to have happy expressions and their eyes are almost always open.”

Master Gella looked doubtful, or perhaps it was well-controlled shock and disbelief.

“It goes against what you might expect,” Gregor said, “but if you knew how a nahual proceeds to kill someone, you would understand why that is the case.”

“Then there were the wounds on his neck,” the Guildmaster continued. “They do not appear to have been inflicted by a nahual. Nahual claws are sharp, yes, but not
that
sharp. There is always a little tearing at the edges of the slashes. Those on this man’s neck were perfectly clean, as one would expect from a blade. And as if all that weren’t enough, there is Coatl’s discovery.” She glanced at Fillion. “It adds further confirmation. There are a few more reasons, but even with just these, I would be sure.”

“That seems like an awful lot of effort to go through just to kill someone.” Gregor crossed his arms.

“It does,” Guildmaster Millinith said. She turned to Master Gella. “At least for a random person. But this wasn’t just anyone, was it? He was another special investigator.”

Fillion raised his brows.

Master Gella glanced at him and Gregor, then looked at Guildmaster Millinith. “Let’s return inside.”

Fillion followed them back into the main room.

He would have thought an investigator’s home would be neater. Papers and various items sat on every available surface, except, he noted, the long, low table in front of the couch where Master Gella sat. She seemed to be mulling over something. Deciding, perhaps, whether to tell them more about the dead man?

Fillion took a seat in a large chair across the table from her. Gregor sat in another chair, and Guildmaster Millinith sat to the investigator’s right.

Unshielded wall sconces, as well as a floor lamp and two lamps on the low table, lit up the cold room brightly. There were a couple of desks in here, as well as more tables and three or four book cases. A lot of stuff for a relatively small room. A fat candle, perhaps four or five inches tall, guttered in the middle of the table. It was surrounded by a great deal of melted wax, most of it cooled.

“My information was correct,” Master Gella finally said. “You are expert in nahual attacks and very observant besides. Have you had any training in Investigation Craft?”

Guildmaster Millinith shook her head. “I have not.”

Master Gella grunted and continued. “Yes, he was a special investigator. I was supposed to meet him early this morning to discuss what he’d discovered. He was looking into some goings-on in the East and had just returned after several months. When he did not arrive for the meeting that he himself had set up, I grew suspicious and decided to check his home. I was careful about it, making sure I was not followed, and even waited outside, watching. After an hour, however, I saw no one and decided it was safe. When I entered, I found everything as you see it now.”

Fillion glanced over at the dead man. Someone had killed that investigator. With a shake of his head, he turned back and stared at the candle. Its tiny flame, moving slowly in response to unseen air currents, was mesmerizing as it added its feeble light to that of the two table lamps. How could someone just kill another person?

“I noted nowhere near as many discrepancies as you did,” Master Gella said, “but I also suspected that he was not killed by a nahual. It was just too much of a coincidence that the night he returned from Stronghold, the night he scheduled a meeting to discuss his findings with me, he should be killed, whatever the circumstances.”

She shook her head. “I searched the place, but could find nothing as to what he wanted to discuss with me and no clues as to who did this to him. And I don’t understand how that could be. He was an accomplished investigator. I would have thought he’d be more careful with his notes and any evidence he might have found. Was he caught completely unawares? Could he not leave any kind of clue as to what happened to him?”

Gregor looked toward the dead man. “What of those pieces of paper?”

Master Gella frowned. “Only a few words were legible, and they didn’t mean much by themselves. There has to be more. At least, I hope there is more.”

The candle guttered again, catching Fillion’s gaze. From the amount of hardened wax pooled around it, the candle must have been very big. It seemed to have been burning for hours and hours. That, or it had been used over and over for a long time. He glanced at the table lamp on the right. Its steady glow outshone the flickering candlelight. A glance to the left revealed the same for that lamp.

He looked again at the candle. “Did you unshield any of the lamps in this room while searching for clues?”

Master Gella turned to him. “No. They were all like this when I arrived.”

“Did you clean any papers or other things off this table?”

“No.” She glanced at the table and then around the room. Fillion knew she would find nowhere else as clean as this table.

“Did you light that candle?”

Master Gella looked at it. “No. There was plenty of light from—” Her eyes grew large and she looked up at Fillion.

He stared at her. “Exactly.”

After quickly blowing it out, Master Gella grabbed and lifted up the candle. The low table came with it and the two lamps fell to the floor. With an irritated sound, she set candle and table back down.

“Here,” Fillion said. He leaned on the table. Gregor and Guildmaster Millinith joined him in holding it down.

It took a little work, the hardened wax around the candle did not want to give it up easily, but Master Gella was eventually able to pull it free of the table. Everyone leaned in to see what it revealed.

There was nothing on the polished table in the roughly circular area pulled free of the wax dribblings.