“Must not be a very good hunter if he’s that hungry,” Miss Bay said acidly.

“My, but one forgets how much nourishment a young man requires,” her sister replied. “He must stay for supper.”

“S–supper?” said Thursgad. Sweat trickled down his temple anew. Supper sounded good—he could eat a couple moose about now. The tea dainties only served to whet his appetite. But this was complicating his mission. What of the seeker? He fingered the pommel of his sword, wondering if he should just kill them now and get it over with.

But he couldn’t. They were old and harmless. Well, Grandmother was old, but not harmless. Looks could be deceiving. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to draw his sword.

“He needs a proper cleaning,” Miss Bay said. “I will not sit at table with him until he has bathed.”

“Agreed, sister. Hunting is dirty business, is it not?”

Before Thursgad knew it, the ladies led him to a bathing room with a hip tub already brimming with steaming water.

“We shall rummage through father’s old trunks to find you something suitable to wear,” Miss Bunch said.

Thursgad reflexively glanced at his clothes, stained and caked with mud, damp with sweat.

“Enjoy,” Miss Bay said, and she swung the door shut.

He listened at the door as their voices receded.

“Where is Letitia?” Miss Bunch asked.

“I believe she is sweeping upstairs,” her sister replied. “The library needs particular attention.”

When Thursgad could no longer hear the ladies speaking, he found himself tempted by the bath. He dipped his hand in the hot, fragrant water. It would feel so good to be submerged in it, to let him warm his bones and relax his muscles. He sighed, the mere thought bringing on a sensation of pleasure.

Then he recoiled. Was he some kind of fool? Had the ladies bewitched him somehow with their chatter and tea cakes? What kind of place was this that appeared like a magic castle in the middle of nowhere? Not to mention he normally detested bathing.

Thursgad slipped his hand through his lank, greasy hair. Bewitched. I’m bewitched.

As much as the bath and thought of supper beguiled him, he must not fall any further under their power. He must complete his mission at all costs.

He squeezed his eyes shut and drew a deep breath. Then resolutely, he turned his back on the bath and headed to the door. He cracked it open to make sure no one was about. The corridor was empty. He tiptoed out, retracing his way through corridors hung with portraits of knights and noble persons and past rooms with fires lit in cobblestone hearths.

When he found himself back in the main entry hall, he glanced from side to side, and then trotted up the stairs to the second floor. The place was unnaturally quiet. Maybe the sisters had gone to take naps. That’s what old ladies did, wasn’t it? But what of the servants? There was at least one—Letitia. And how did these ladies maintain the estate without the help of men? Yet he’d seen no sign of a single servant. Were they invisible or something?

Thursgad snorted at the idea and decided not to worry about the servants. If he saw any of them, he’d kill them.

The upper floor was lined with doors. Would he have to open each one to find the seeker? He despaired of the time that would take, and the increased chance of discovery. If the sisters found him, he’d have no choice but to kill them, too, and he really didn’t want to.

The first door he opened revealed a comfortable looking bedroom with a canopied bed. The second door opened into another bedroom. When he opened the third, a cacophony of geese blasted him. He slammed the door shut, a few feathers drifting into the corridor.

“By all the hells,” he muttered, shaken. Then he saw the inscription on a brass plaque mounted on the door. He could read very little, but he knew these words: Goose Room. He scratched his head, and moved on.

He had his hand on another doorknob when the seeker swept down the corridor and circled and bobbed around him like a dog happy to see its master. It then flew back the way it had come and Thursgad charged after it.

The seeker paused before a door then darted through the keyhole. Thursgad hoped the door was not locked because there was no way he was going to fit through that keyhole. He twisted the doorknob. Not locked. Carefully he pushed the door open, hoping it wasn’t another goose room, or something worse. There was an inscription on the door, but he didn’t know the word.

All was quiet within, much to his relief, and he stepped into the room, which contained the most amazing array of books he’d ever seen. He’d never been in a library before, and never knew so many books existed. Walls of books. Books that would take a lifetime to read. If he could read, or at least read well. As Thursgad stood there, surrounded by leather bindings dyed in reds and greens, yellows and blues, with their silver and gold embossed lettering brought to gleaming life by the sunshine that filtered through a window, he felt very stupid, ashamed he was uneducated. Sarge was always calling him a “rustic bastard,” and here Thursgad knew it was true.

There were other objects in the room: a telescope pointed out the window, a fancy harp embedded with shiny jewels, a scrimshaw carving, and a ship in a bottle, all set out like artifacts in a museum, or so Thursgad could only guess, for he’d never been in a museum either.

The seeker, however, was not interested in any of those things. It bobbed up and down and pulsated to a deep red to catch Thursgad’s attention, then floated to a book and turned it aglow in red.

What I came all this way for, Thursgad thought.