The Society Sheet of Silverymoon, Gem of the North
— A Single Copper, Where Sold —
NO TROLLS AT FERNLOW
A Hag, Not a Horde: Silverwood Scare Ends Without a Torch Lit
The village of Fernlow, on the west bank of the Rauvin, has spent three weeks certain that the trolls were back. Goats vanished in the night. Fence posts were clawed. A woodcutter, one Edric Dunmore, walked into the trees and did not walk out.
The Quill can report that there were no trolls. A party of travelers out of Silverymoon went into the deep wood and found a hag’s den in a hollow the woodcutters call the Sink. The hag is dead. Master Dunmore is home, thinner, and by his wife’s account not permitted out of her sight. The missing goats were found penned and bleating.
Reeve Hal Brannock, who had called a meeting to send men into the thicket with fire, has called it off. “We were a day from burning the wood,” the Reeve told a ferryman. “I’m glad we waited.” The Quill notes that the last time the river villages did not wait, it was Olostin’s Hold that paid for it.
CLEARED, AND STILL UNWELCOME
The Herbalist of Fernlow
Fernlow’s troubles had a second suspect. Three goats died in the walled garden of the village herbalist, Tamsin Brierly, and when the miller’s young son fell sick, the village did not look far for someone to blame.
The boy is well, and for how he came to be well we have only the word of his father. Tobin Marsh was the one witness, and he will tell it to anyone who stands still. By his account, one of the travelers had only to glance at the boy’s fingers to name the poison and the bog it grew in. A second laid a hand on the child, and the mill lit up from floor to rafters like noon at midsummer. The boy sat up, asked for his supper, and ate an entire loaf and a bowl of stew that one of the travelers warmed for him from their own pack. The Quill makes some allowance for a grateful father, but is assured the loaf and the stew are true.
What is certain is that it was no plant from the Brierly garden. It was a bog fungus from the Evermoors, carried in by the hag.
One might expect an apology. Fernlow offered a condition: the herbalist was innocent, and the garden must go all the same. “We were wrong about the well and right about the goats,” said the widow Dagny Holt, who keeps bees and does not waste words. Miss Brierly has declined to pull up a single root. She left Fernlow with the travelers and is understood to be in Silverymoon.
THE ARGENT QUILL
WHISPERS FROM THE RAUVIN ROAD
— Who were the travelers? Master Marsh, so free with the miracle, is less sure of their names than of their virtues. They may have their flour ground free for as long as his wheel turns.
— A young woman with green-stained fingers was seen crossing the Moonbridge behind a handcart of covered seedlings. She did not stop to chat. The Quill wonders which household in this city has room for wolfsbane.
— A ragpicker’s cart stands unclaimed at the Fernlow ford. No one will touch it, and the village dogs will not go near it.
OUR READERS REPLY
The Quill asked which tent of the vanished Bazaar its readers most wished they had seen, and which of the Spit & Spark’s skewers they would have dared.
The tents. The Bottled Choir leads comfortably; half the city, it seems, would pay for a vial of someone else’s laughter. The Misplaced Hour comes second, chiefly among correspondents who are late with something. A lady of the Northbank asks only for the Hollow Chime and its bell that rings at lies, “for use at my own table.” The Glass Garden has a single vote, unsigned, in a careful hand.
The skewers. Roast boar is the people’s choice, which the Quill considers a failure of nerve. Seven readers claim they would have eaten the displacer beast loin; we believe two of them. Nobody admits to the giant rat, though at a copper apiece somebody bought them. On the phoenix-ash glaze, opinion divides between those who say it cannot be real and those who say it was worth eight gold. A cook of long service in this city writes that she would have tried none of it, and that “mystery” is not an ingredient.
NOTICES
HAWK’S NEST still seeks able-bodied folk for the winter watch on the Sundabar Road. Apply to Commander Hespera before the snow closes the pass.
THE PROPRIETOR of the Bellweather Trading Post now offers a reward for the return of his scarf. No questions will be asked, though he has several.
TO OUR READERS
Has your neighbor a garden you would rather they didn’t? The Quill would hear of it.