The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(81)

“I honestly have no idea what killed him,” Hadrian said.

“Don’t you mean who?”

“Seemed more like a what. All I know is he was dead, and his face was gone. It looked like it had been chewed away. I only knew it was him because of the clothing and the box he had been carrying. Didn’t seem like a typical murder to me.”

“He didn’t kill Nym,” Seton asserted again.

“And how in the bloody name of all that is holy do you know that? He spared your life; so what? He also butchered a pile of men; you said so. Your own words show he’s a killer, no innocent little lamb here. And his story about Nym missing his face is beyond belief.”

“No, it’s not,” Seton said, “and it’s not because he spared my life that I believe him.”

This caught the dwarf’s attention and he turned, revealing a little gold earring piercing his left lobe. Decoration? Mark of a sailor? Wedding gift? Hadrian knew so little about the small folk that he felt not only stupid but ill-equipped to help himself, much less his cause.

“So what makes you think he didn’t kill Erasmus?”

“Killings where people are mutilated the way he described have happened before.” Seton said. “That’s the reason the nobles wear blue.”

The dwarf shook his shaggy head. “Bah! The nobles are skittish. The streets are dangerous. Not every person butchered in the alleys is a victim of—”

“I’m not talking about the recent murders.” Seton’s voice lowered and grew several degrees more serious. Her eyes supported the shift in tone, growing solemn. Hadrian found it odd to see so much darkness in a face that looked so young. “I’m talking about Throm Hodinel.”

Griswold squinted his eyes. “Who now?”

“Throm Hodinel. He was the curator of the Imperial Gallery. Some said he was a relation to the Killians, a distant cousin or something. I saw his body the day they found it at the feet of the statue of Glenmorgan. And his face was a mess. They had to identify him by his clothing because . . .” Seton hesitated, her eyes focusing on Hadrian as if he knew the answer.

“Because his face had been chewed off,” he answered.

Seton nodded. “Actually, it wasn’t just his face; a large portion of the man had been eaten. But yes, his face was gone. So were a good number of his bones.”

“Sounds like wolves,” Griswold said.

“Inside the gallery?”

The dwarf stared at her skeptically. “I’ve never heard this story.”

“It happened before your time.”

The dwarf tilted his head and studied her more intently. “How old are you?”

She grinned at him. “Throm Hodinel died fifteen years before you were born.”

This raised the bushy brows of the dwarf. Griswold looked to easily be in his forties, maybe older. Seton wasn’t a teenager, wasn’t human, and if what she said was true, she was decades older than Hadrian. Adding these truths to the embarrassing fact that he hadn’t initially recognized her, Hadrian realized that while he had misjudged women before, this time marked a whole new level of stupidity.

“Throm Hodinel wasn’t the only one,” Seton went on. “Every few years someone dies the same way. It’s almost always a noble, or someone suspected of being an illegitimate child of one of the old-world dukes, usually male, and always within a few miles of Blythin Castle. The murders happen at night or around dusk in a heavy fog, and in every case, the victims are eaten. Some are only eaten a little, others are almost completely devoured, but their face is always gone.”

“You’re speaking about the Morgan. Villar told me that was a myth,” the dwarf said.

“Villar doesn’t know everything.”

“Where is Villar?” Hadrian asked.

“Don’t know.” He spoke the words slowly, not looking at either of them. The statement caused the dwarf to frown, and his considerable brows knitted the equivalent of a full sweater.

“Is something wrong?”

Griswold looked up but didn’t answer.

“Griswold, what aren’t you telling us?” Seton asked.

“Riots are a bloody business. If something went wrong, if our people were in jeopardy, we wanted protection. We needed a backup plan. So we could intercede, if necessary. But only if necessary.”

“Is that what the three of you were meeting about?” Hadrian asked.

“For the most part, yes. But I also needed to give Erasmus his supplies.”

Hadrian nodded. “The box. I found it with Erasmus’s body, but it only contained some rocks, just gravel. The way he carried it, you’d think it was dangerous.”

“In the hands of a skilled dwarf, dirt, stone, metal, and wood are all dangerous.”

Hadrian felt that rope ought to be included on that list, as his wrists were starting to ache and his hands throbbed. In binding him, the dwarf had exhibited a level of skill that his people were known for when creating stonework or anything mechanical.

“I don’t understand,” Seton said.

“Of course you don’t. How could you? It’s old magic. Older even than you. Older than Rochelle, older than Novron.”

“What are you talking about?” Seton asked.

“Do you think only mir hold the claim to ancient secrets? For all your age, our collective history goes back far beyond yours. Before Novron and his empire, before the mir, before humans, the Belgriclungreians lived and thrived. I’m talking about the days when only full elves and dwarves roamed the lands, when Drumindor was the world’s greatest forge. There was a time when we had a king, an age of greatness, an age of wonder. They say it was Andvari Berling and King Mideon who did it, but the magic predates even them. It goes back to the gods of the ancient giants, to the ones known as Typhins. They were prohibited from having children of their own, according to legend. But they found a way to bring forth life from earth and stone. A magic they used to create the giants themselves. My people discovered that secret, but because it was outlawed by the gods, it was forbidden. Only once was it attempted, and that was during the War of Elven Aggression when King Mideon saved our people. Elves had used their magic to crush the Tenth and Twelfth Legions on the Plains of Mador, and then Mideon called on the legendary Andvari Berling and asked him to crack the forbidden scrolls and make a weapon that could defeat the elves. Some say Andvari never succeeded; others claim he did, but that something went terribly wrong. They claim it was his failure, rather than the attack of the elves, that actually defeated the Kingdom of Mideon and laid waste to Linden Lott.”