Free If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) by Aimee Gross Page B

fish.
    Annora also instructed me to gather spider webs to staunch a bleeding wound, and what herbs to crush in what reagent for treating stomach complaints, wheezing, trouble passing water and a whole host of other ailments I had never heard tell about. It’s a wonder people don’t tip over dead at every turn , I thought, as I pressed dew-spangled webs onto a square of linen.
    I groused as I tried to learn it all, unsure how any of it would help with soldiers shooting arrows at me—until I thought maybe my mum would be the one teaching me if anyone had known how to cure lung fever that year.
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    The highest cave being too far east, I could not overlook the pass every day to check for the invasion’s onset. I expected snows to close the northwest route any day, but still the weather held, cold yet clear. I worried we would run out of food. I worried about the stock foraging for themselves at our place and at Virda’s. I wanted to take Wieser and the crow down with me to gather more supplies and check on the animals, but Annora and Virda would not hear of being left with Morie in the cave waiting to see if I made it back.
    When the last bit of flour had been baked as a stick of bannock, and only a couple of dried pears remained in our tin trunk, there was no denying we must make a foray, at least to the middle cave.
    Virda and Morie were persuaded to stay close to the cave and check the deadfall traps I had set. Annora and I set off with Wieser between us on the path. The black shadow of the crow spiraled across the track as the bird circled and banked over our heads.
    Careful approach to the cave below raised no caws or hackles. My feeling of being watched on the way up from the first cave did not haunt me again. We found the cave the same as I had left it, and we took everything we could carry. Before we departed, I stepped into the sparse trees, where the mages earlier paced along the ley lines. I had no sensation of anything uncanny, nor any residual sense of menace from their having been there. The horse droppings left by the soldiers’ mounts were of an age to suggest they left the same day and had not returned.
    “Annora, can you feel anything amiss here?” I gestured her to come closer.
    She walked to where I stood, shifting the packs of dried squash and barley meal in her arms. “I would have to stay here quiet for a time before I could feel the deep power. But I don’t sense anything disturbed or rankled.”
    “Whatever they were doing, they must have done it and gone on. Where to, I’d like to know. Tomorrow, I’m going to come down again, and check the pass. Don’t look at me like that, I have to know what’s coming, or I can’t do what Da charged me with.” I had determined my next step, and would not allow her to turn me from it. Quick-minded as ever, Annora did not try to talk me around, and quietly held up for me when I told Virda my plans.
    I prepared to set out early with Wieser and the crow, with my walking staff now decorated with a shed black feather from my winged lookout.
    “Your bird needs a name,” Morie informed me.
    I drank the last mouthful of my morning tisane, blessedly still hot. “Maybe you’d like to pick his name. You did fine with Murr and Iggle. They like their names. Wieser, too.”
    Morie gave the crow an assessing look, returned in kind. “His name is Gargle,” she pronounced.
    When I snorted, she said, “It’s that noise he makes. Murr says “murr” when I pet him.”
    “What does Iggle say?” I teased, but Gargle seemed to suit the bird. He came when called by name, though not to put too fine a point on it, he had made a habit of accompanying me anyway on my forays. I did like a name better than calling him “the crow.”
    Gargle, Wieser and I took our leave, and I realized as I walked into the misty morning that both my animal aids were solid black. Although, I had never been one to believe in omens, as a rule.
    The woods were full of the usual bird calls