Hollowed Ground

The Kincue's Answers

The carnival was empty as we made our way through the stalls and booths. Seeing the stands set up with no one there to buy things or play games was eerie. It was such a contrast to the busy, lively tent we had just come from. I shivered. The emptiness gave me the same feeling a village swept by the plague did. I'd traveled to a handful of those to help bury the dead.

Cythral led us to a thick wall made of thickets and brambles woven so tightly together I wondered if rain had trouble reaching the roots. He whispered something and the thorns and vines peeled open. We stepped through before and they closed again behind us. It felt a bit like being swallowed.

Conna broke a piece of vine from the brambles and put it in one of the vials hanging from her waist.

"This way." Cythral led us down a path cluttered with caravan wagons like Dirla's painted with bright, bold colored paint and designs. At last, we came to a cage near one of the wagons. A thin little girl with pigtails sat inside, weeping. Her wails echoed into the night like the moaning of a ghost.

"That's enough." Cythral said.

The girl's pigtails turned to feathers. Her face elongated and widened into a large beak, and we found ourselves staring not at a girl at all but the kincue who had shouted at us not to enter the Hall of Illusions before the mime had chased after it. It glared at Cythral.

"You are not the only one to mention Zabylna today," Cythral said. "Let us find some answers."

"Caw." The Kincue said.

"That's not Zabylna," I said.

"He's not," Cythral said. "He's a troublesome kincue who stole our mime's voice. I captured him this afternoon but before we made him give Candlefoot his voice back he said something about Zabylna and an Hourglass Coven. I discounted it as rubbish at first but when I asked my venerable bosses about it, they –well they looked pretty hot under the collar and insisted there was nothing to know, which means there definitely is."

"Someone is going to find out about this." The kincue said in a clear, delicate sounding voice. "They'll shut us down." "We agreed to this." He continued in a lower, rougher voice.

"We didn't agree to anything." Cythral said.

I stared at the kincue, trying to remember where I had heard that first voice before.

"There's a portal in this carnival," Cythral said. "Where is it?"

The kincue pointed to his throat then Cythral, glaring accusingly.

"Well, you shouldn't steal voices from people, but apparently you can still point. Which direction is the portal?"

The kincue pointed south and a little west. The direction of the Hall of Illusions.

"The frog figure disappeared into a mirror in the hall of illusions," I said.

"The hall of illusions." The kincue echoed in my voice.

"And the Hourglass Coven? Tell us about that." Cythral said.

"The hourglass Coven." The kincue echoed.

"Are they the wyrd three?" I asked.

The kincue shook his head.

"Maddrick just said to find Zabylna." Conna said. "He didn't say anything about a coven."

"Maddrick. Zabylna." The kincue said in Conna's voice." Then pointed to himself making a hissing whistling sound.

"You, Zabylna, and Maddrick are in the hourglass Coven?" Cythral asked.