Temur Ahmed Rurik's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Temur Ahmed Rurik, Chancellor of Rosenwald, pressed his thumb against the green patch on his jaw and waited for it to fade. It never did. The witch's curse had turned him into a frog years ago. A princess broke the spell by hurling him into a wall, and the wounds left these marks behind. They stopped spreading three years ago. They never left. He checked them every morning, and every morning he hated witches a little more. He wanted them gone. All of them. He wanted to stand before the court beside his brother Jani and Queen Snow White with clean skin, and stop feeling the eyes on his throat. So he rode out with his guards to the castle of the witch hunters. If anyone knew of a cure that did not involve a witch, it was the man who hunted them. Kwame Mensah Jäger met him in a cold stone hall. The Grand Commander of the Order did not bow low. He looked at the patches on Temur's jaw the way a hunter reads a track, plainly, without disgust. "You want them off," Kwame said. Not a question. "I want to know who can take them off," Temur said. "A healer. A physician. Anyone who is not a witch." Kwame was quiet. His apprentice stood near the wall, a young woman in a bright red cloak. She leaned forward, unable to keep still. "A curse like that only comes off with magic," she said. "Everybody knows that. Grandmother always said—" She stopped when Kwame raised one hand. "She is right," Kwame said. "No knife or herb will touch it. It is witch's work. Only witch's work undoes it." Temur's jaw tightened. "Then I will live with it." "There is one other way." Kwame chose each word like a man setting weight on a scale. "A dealer trades in magic without being born to it. He sells cures. He lives a few miles before the border of Dark Forest. His name is Rumpelstiltskin." The red-cloaked girl shivered at the name. Temur noticed. "A dealer," Temur repeated. "Not a witch." "Not a witch," Kwame said. "But hear me. He never asks for coin. He asks for what you love most, and he always collects. He was exiled from Rosenwald a hundred years ago for one bad bargain. Go to him desperate, and you go to him beaten." Temur touched his jaw again. He thought of the court, the whispers, the clean skin he had wanted for years. A man who was not a witch. A price not yet named. "Where is his cottage?" Temur asked. Kwame held his eyes a long moment. "You already decided before you asked." "I did," Temur said. He turned for the door. "Give me the road toward the Dark Forest."