The woman - Anya - was sitting on one of the few intact chairs in the house's kitchen, staring blankly ahead of her. Anat stood over the counter behind her, mashing together some of the myriad herbs and oils he carried in his satchel with a mortar and pestle.
Behind him, Valdis and Thanos surveyed the room, eyes peering into every dark corner. Both looked discomforted. Matthias felt the same. It was the same feeling that came with wandering a graveyard at night, or sleeping alone in an empty house; not fear, exactly, but the unease that breeds it. There was a wrongness about the place, something he could not quite place, but that hovered in the corner of his mind's eye.
He realised that, without thinking, he had backed up against a wall and was looking nervously from side to side.
Shaking his head and taking a slow, deliberate step away from the wall, he watched Brother Anat scrape the preparation he had made from the mortar into a pot he had filled with water and placed over the fire he had set in the fireplace. The house had had no kettle that they could find; strange, for the farmers of the plains.
Thanos watched Anat slowly stirring the mixture in the pot, and shook his head. "We are wasting time. Valdis, novice, come. We will search the house while the Beneficar attends to his work."
In the corridor, Thanos indicated which rooms Matthias and Valdis were to search with a brusque nods, and then cautiously opened a door and stepped through. Valdis did the same.
Suddenly feeling completely alone, Matthias walked to the end of the corridor. The doorway in front of him was empty, the door that had filled it lying shattered on the floor of the corridor. Someone or something had broken out of the room.
Kneeling, he picked up a large fragment of the door and examined it. It was oak, thick and strong, without even a sign of damage from mold or mite. Whatever had broken the door had done so with incredible force.
Stepping into the small room, the first thing he saw was the bed. The sheets were a tangled mess, and the single pillow had been thrown to the floor, a good way across the room.
As he stepped across the room, he saw the broken shutters covering the glass less window; splinters and chunks of wood were scattered across the room. In through the window, out through the door.
He grasped the corner of one of the bedsheets and brought it to his nose. Burning sage; he wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell. Another of the Signs.
As he let the sheet fall to the floor, something fell from it; he knelt to pick it up.
It was a simple human figure, stuffed with straw by the feel, of it. Cheaply made, and well-worn, but lovingly repaired.
A child's doll.
"No..." whispered Matthias. Perhaps... perhaps it was a keepsake from the woman's childhood?
Heart clenched in his chest, he lifted the lid from the simple wooden box beside the bed. Inside were clothes. Pulling a tunic from the box and unfolding it, he gauged its size. It was a child's.
His head dropped to his chest. The woman's home had been destroyed, and her child... her child had been Taken.
Clutching the doll tightly in his hand, he turned from the room and walked slowly through the door.
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