“What do you mean, “removed”?' Conrad asked, frowning deeply.

“Taken or stolen,” I offered some synonyms, thinking perhaps my word choice was to blame for the lack of comprehension. “I can definitively say the king didn’t accidentally misplace his own soul, so “missing” wasn’t the right word. Someone did this to him.”

“How is such a thing possible? Why haven’t the healers detected it?”

I chose to answer the second question first, “The healers working on the king likely didn’t have familiars,” I suggested. “Blackwing gives me the ability to sense souls and manipulate my own soul to a limited extent. Without a familiar, that would be impossible. A familiar is picky about who they bound with, but they mostly require someone with a large mana core, as they feed off the excess mana we generate. Healers almost always have small mana cores, because healing is more difficult the larger a person’s mana core is. This means they wouldn’t be an attractive partner to a familiar, and would lack any ability to detect soul-loss.”

“So the king’s soul is lost? Forever?” Conrad asked, deeply concerned.

“Well, it could be put back… if we can find it,” easier said than done, but I was sure that I could figure it out, probably. “The soul was removed intact, not destroyed or eaten, otherwise we’d see fragments. This was a clean removal, which means someone wanted to keep it safe. For what reason, I’ve no idea.” I explained.

I didn’t mention that an artifact capable of doing such a thing would have to have an enchant very similar to the soul siphon enchant on my staff. It seemed a strange coincidence that this rare nearly forgotten enchantment showed up right after the king’s soul was stolen. Was the dungeon trying to help me? Was my staff a clue? If so, perhaps I needed to study my staff’s enchantment if I wanted to figure out how to reverse what had been done to the king.

Conrad was silent, thinking through the implications of what I’d said. Blackwing flew back to my shoulder regaining her void black hue as the enchant settled back into her feathers.

“That’s disturbing,” Conrad muttered.

“The fact that the soul of our king is being held captive? Disturbing might be an understatement,” I replied somberly.

“Well, that, and also the way your raven’s feathers became blacker than night just now. It looked like your robe just ate him.”

“Her,” I corrected. Something about Conrad’s statement stirred a thought, but it slipped away as someone abruptly opened the door. A flustered looking older man with a long white beard and a wizard’s staff, the senior healer judging by his white robes with gold trim, burst into the room.

“Sorry to let myself in,” the man said, “but there was no response when I knocked.”

Oh right, the combination silence and anti-scrying ward I’d cast was still active.

Conrad handled the introductions, “Wizard Jason, this is senior healer Nigel, he is also a wizard, and he is in charge of his majesty’s care. Healer Nigel, wizard Jason.”

We shook hands, “My apprentice said you had an insight on what ails the king?” Nigel asked me with a mix of skepticism and hopefulness in his voice.

“I believe his soul has been extracted,” I said bluntly.

There was a long moment of silence as Nigel’s face went through a series of emotions, shock, doubt, thoughtfulness, dread, then resignation. “That is an extraordinary claim…” he said finally, in a heavy voice, “But it does fit the symptoms. It will need to be verified of course.”

“Can you verify it now?” Conrad asked.

Nigel shook his head. “I can not, as I have no soul-sight, all I can do is keep the king alive until his soul is returned. I suspect we can maintain his body alive for another month, at least. But I can request that specialized tools that would allow me to verify this claim be sent to me. It should not take more than a few days.”

Why hadn’t those tools already been sent for, I wondered. It’s been almost two days since the king has fallen comatose… Perhaps it was just that something like this was so unheard of, that a soul being taken was not something that the healers would think to check for.

“The correct course of action would be to call an inquisitor, they are trained in soulmancy, they should be able to confirm the court wizard’s diagnosis,” Conrad opined.

I felt my stomach sink. To bring in an inquisitor would be problematic. From what I’d read about them, and the infamous incidents involving them, they would try to take over the whole investigation. On the other hand, it would be a relief to hand this responsibility over to someone else. It would be a lot less work if someone else was in charge, I thought to myself.

“An inquisitor at this junction would be a political disaster!” Nigel objected. “They would immediately try to put every person who visited the king on the day he fell ill under an active truth spell. All of those people would scream bloody murder and demand a warrant. A warrant only the king can issue, as the suspects are all members of the nobility.”

“How can the issue be resolved without putting people to the question? The king’s life is more important than the noble’s petty squabbles. I will not take the blame for his death without exhausting every possible chance of saving him,” Conrad replied angrily.

“I don’t want the king’s death on my hands either,” Nigel said, “But better that one man die than thousands if this situation is not handled with care. If a noble house uses this as an excuse to rebel against the crown, then that might be a conservative number. My team can buy you one month, surely that would be enough time to do a discrete investigation? Why invite a bull to your pottery shop?”

“My duty is to the king, not the peace of the kingdom,” Conrad replied coldly. “I was willing to wait when I thought your team might save him. Now that we understand how grave the situation is, time is not on our side. If people must die in order to save the king, then so be it.”

I hesitated, then spoke up. “Let’s compromise, if we don’t make any progress on our own within a week, we can call an inquisitor.”

Both men turned to look at me. Conrad shook his head, “That would give the culprit even more time to flee with the king’s soul. Wizard Jason, forgive me, but I do not think the two of us can solve this on our own.” Upon saying that, Conrad looked away for a second. What Conrad really meant, I thought to myself, was that he didn’t think I could do my part; I was too inexperienced. “An inquisitor would be of great help, as they specialize in solving magic crimes,” He added.

“Five days?” I haggled. There was a large part of me that wanted to let an inquisitor step in so I wouldn’t have to deal with this mess, but Nigel had a point; inquisitors did not care about collateral damage.

“Three days,” Conrad said finally, “If we make no breakthroughs within three days, we will bring in an inquisitor and start questioning all the suspects.”