Hunt of the Bandham (The Bowl of Souls: Book Three) (8 page)

“I know that and so does
Randolph
. I don’t know how he is going to get around that fact. But he could decide to implicate your father. He could have fed the body to the Perloi after Justan had gone, trying to protect him.”

“But you said that you knew who did it,” she said.

“I do. I do. At least I think I do. It just never hurts to look at all angles. It’s part of the job as Wizard of Mysteries.”

“That sounds reassuring,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

They waited until
noon
, while Vannya jotted down theories under his watchful eye, before walking back to the center square. Each pair of students had returned from their fruitless search. They all looked sad and on edge. A few of them looked rather shaken. Vannya supposed that searching around with the possibility that you might stumble upon the corpse of your friend would be bad on the nerves.

Locksher gathered them all in front of the fountain again. “We are waiting for a few more guests, one moment please.”

Vannya was surprised when they were soon joined by a few wizards including several members of the high council. Her father, Wizard Valtrek and Master Latva were there along with Wizard Randolph and Wizard Beehn in his chair on wheels.

Locksher cleared his throat. “I want to thank all of the students that helped in my search today. It is my sad duty to announce that we know the location of Piledon’s body.” There were several whispers and everyone in the gathering waited anxiously for his next words. He paused for a moment to up the tension.

“We have discovered that he was fed to the perloi.”

As he spoke, Vannya took more notes, watching his facial expressions and the way he moved as he manipulated the crowd. There were gasps and astonished glances among the students and the wizards leaned their head together talking in urgent whispers.

“I would like to thank Mage Vannya for pointing the possibility out for me,” he added.

Vannya’s face turned a bit red as everyone looked at her. Why was he giving her the credit? How did that help his case?

He continued, “I am also glad to announce that we shall know the identity of the murderer soon. I have had a sample perloi brought up to my study and with some new techniques I have learned, the killer shall be caught. I will announce the results in the council meeting this evening. Please return to your regular class schedules. We will make more announcements after the meeting.”

Vannya furiously jot down ideas and questions in the notebook. Who could it be? She went over all the likely culprits in her mind and had it narrowed down to three or four possibilities. All of them were unpleasant.

“Vannya,” Locksher said. “If you would wait for me at my study, I have some things to discuss with you. I will rejoin you shortly. It seems I have some tempers to settle.” He turned and joined the council members, all of whom looked quite angry.

Vannya went back to his rooms as requested. He took quite a bit longer than expected and that was fine with her because she had a surprise to set up for him.

Three hours later, Locksher arrived in quite an irritable mood, mumbling to himself. He threw the door open and stopped on the threshold, a stunned look on his face.

“What have you done?”

His rooms looked quite different from the condition he had left them in that morning. The piles of books were gone from their haphazard stacks all over the floor and in their place were four free standing bookcases each one eight-feet-high, double-sided and made of fine wood. The entire place had been thoroughly dusted.

“You took so long, I let myself in,” Vannya said, clutching her robes in excitement and looking at him expectantly. “Do you like it?”

“My books! My system! How will I know where anything is?” he said in a panic, each hand grabbing a handful of the silver specked hair at his temples.

“Wait, wait! Before you get mad, look.” She hurried over to the shelves and pointed to the end of each shelf. They were lettered the same way that the stacks on the floor had been. “Your system hasn’t been changed, I took careful accounting of every stack, and each one has its own shelf on the book case with room to grow. Don’t worry, they are in the same order you left them in. They have just been taken off the floor. Nothing is out of place, I promise!”

He rushed over to the shelves and ran his hands along the spines of the books, counting them in his head. When he finally looked back at her the anger was gone. A slight grin began to spread across his face. “How did you do this?
When
did you do this?”

“Yesterday after you left, I spoke to a few of the carpenters working on the tower. I paid them a little extra to get the bookcases finished and treated that evening so that they could cure overnight. I asked them to bring them up here while we were gone. I was going to leave the bookcases in the corridor as a surprise, but you took so long to get back . . . Luckily a couple of other mages were sweet enough to help me move them in. I had everything done just ten minutes ago.”

“Did you touch anything else? My magic items on the walls, the things in my desk?” He rushed around the rest of the rooms, checking everything.

“No!” she said, quite offended at the suggestion she would rummage through his things. “Just some light dusting is all.”

“Vannya, I-I don’t know what to say. I suppose the real question is why did you do this?” He walked back to the bookcases and ran a hand along the wood. “This must have cost you a fortune.”

“This is thanks for taking the time to help me prove Justan innocent. You were the only one willing to help. And you let me be a part of it. I really needed that. I have been quite tired of everyone treating me like a child.” Vannya’s voice was heavy with gratitude. “Anyway, don’t worry about the money. I made a lot healing at the
Battle
Academy
last year and I never have anything to spend it on. Just, please . . . accept my thanks.”

“Thank you very much Vannya,” he said sincerely, and seeming a bit uncomfortable, motioned towards the desk. “Can you take a seat, please? We have a lot to discuss.”

“What is it?” she said as she sat down.

“The council has instituted a lock down of the school. We don’t want to give the killer a chance to escape. Right now whomever it is must be out of their mind with fear. The council wasn’t happy with me for flushing them out in this way. Wizard
Randolph
still insists that it was Justan, but the others are afraid that the killer may strike again in an attempt to escape. I don’t think it likely, but . . .” He shrugged. “They could be right about that one. I sure hope not.”

“I think I know who it is.” Vannya blurted.

“Oh really?” He leaned back and grinned. “Who, pray tell?”

“Well I was thinking about it quite a bit and gathering all the evidence together, I had four possible killers. It was either Justan, my father, Pympol, or Arcon.”

He nodded. “Wonderful, though you left out two possibilities.”

“Whom?”

“Wizard
Randolph
for one.”

“Really?”

“Sure. For one thing he has been too intense in his attacks on Justan,” he explained. “What had the boy ever done while he was here to invite that? He had the time, the capabilities, and the clout to cover it up too. The motive is a bit shaky though. Maybe if Piledon caught him doing some underhanded deals or something . . . Anyway, it wasn’t him. Go on. Why those four? ”

“But who was the other one I missed?”

“Well, you of course,” he explained.

“But it wasn’t me.”

“I know. Go on with your explanation.”

“But if you know it wasn’t Wizard Randolph, then why go through that whole explanation . . . never mind.” She shook her head and continued, “The rest of the students were either too inexperienced to understand how to awaken the perloi or just too stricken with sadness over Piledon’s death to be the killer. Pympol and Arcon were the only ones to give any hint of fear that they might be suspected.”

“Okay, so narrow it down for me,” Locksher said.

“Once I had the four main suspects, I eliminated Justan from consideration because of his personality, lack of ability to cast the spell on the perloi, and the . . . letter he left me. Some of the things he said in that letter could not possibly have been written if he had just left because of murdering someone.”

“Are you sure that you won’t let me read it?” Locksher pleaded.

“No! Next I eliminated my father. You might find my reasons suspect, but first of all, he is my father and though I know him to be capable of many underhanded things, he cares too much for the students in this school to kill one of them. Besides, if he was going to kill someone, he wouldn’t have murdered him in his bed with a knife or something. Blood is too easy to trace. He would have talked Piledon into walking with him to the edge of the moat and put a paralyzing spell on him before pushing him in with the perloi.”

“My, you do know your father well.” Locksher had leaned forward, his elbow on the desk, his head resting on one hand, enthralled with her explanation. “So tell me how you decided that it was one of the other two.”

“Well, I feel bad about it, because they are both friends of mine. But Pympol and Arcon along with Piledon were the ones responsible for that golem catastrophe last year. They were always around Piledon and if he knew something about it that he hadn’t told the council yet, they might have had reason to kill him. They were also both mages before their demotion and both had the skill to use the spell on the perloi.”

“True,” he said.

“Both of them were given a lot of extra duties around the school as punishment. That includes helping to feed the perloi, and extra library duty which would have given them the opportunity to study how to awaken them. Now Pympol hates Justan. He never liked him from the moment they met. It got even worse after Justan told the council about his involvement with the golem. That gives him an edge motive wise if he felt that he could frame Justan for the murder.

“Arcon on the other hand, had extra cleaning duty and would have had the opportunity to switch the mattresses in Justan’s room to try and cover his tracks.”

“Amazing. Well done. Well done indeed. You made good use of the evidence available and puzzled it out. So who do you think did it?”

Their conversation was interrupted by a loud knock at the door. They looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Locksher got up to answer it, but Vannya whispered after him urgently.

“Wait! What if that is the murderer? Right now, since he can’t leave the school, the best thing for him to do is make sure that you don’t live to reveal him!”

“True,” he said. “But I am not defenseless.”

He opened the door and Vannya’s father barged in.

“It was Arcon!” Valtrek blurted. “I couldn’t believe it, but he went missing an hour ago. One of the guards saw him on the wall and he disappeared over the edge. They are out looking for him now. I-.” He paused. “It is quite clean in here, Locksher.”

“I knew it!” cried Vannya. “That’s what I was going to say!”

“I had confirmed it too,” Locksher said. “Just before I came up here I spoke with Professor Beehn and confirmed that Arcon was the student on cleaning duty at the cadet dormitory that week.”

“Vannya?” Valtrek said. “What are you doing here?”

“She has been helping me with this mystery, Valtrek. And she has done an admirable job too, I might add,” Locksher said. Before Valtrek could say anything else, he continued, “I still have some questions for you regarding Justan, though. Why did you send him away? Where did you send him? I have crucial information for the boy regarding that frost rune on his chest.”

Valtrek sighed. “I might as well tell you now. I was going to tell everyone at the council meeting tonight anyway. Justan has had plenty of time to arrive at his destination by now.”

He told them everything from Justan’s unexpected naming at the apprenticeship ceremony, to his bond with Gwyrtha and his journey to find Master Coal. Vannya was stunned, Locksher was ecstatic.

“Of course! By the gods, why didn’t I figure it out before? The way the council has been avoiding calling Justan, er, Sir Edge by name and the rogue horse incident . . .What a fool I have been!”