Teza growled, “Yes.” She had a hundred other well chosen questions and opinions she wanted to add, but she was too bemused. Besides, her human memory reminded her, to disobey a witch was to ask for immediate death. If this witch thought Teza would be more effective as a dog, then that’s how it would be.

Grumbling to herself, she padded after the witch back to the front entrance. The door stood open.

“Chauntea go with you,” said the witch softly, and she shut the door behind Teza.

For a long while, Teza the dog stood immobile by the hail, her head lowered and her tail tucked between her legs. Of all the stupid, manipulating things to do to someone. At least the witch could have turned her into a horse.

This was all so bewildering. There were too many smells and too many sounds. Her vision was different and her body was aligned in a strange new way. Her perspective had changed, too. As a human she could look many people in the eyes, now all she could see were legs. Thankfully, the witch had made her a large dog, one people would not try to kick or eat or catch.

Just then the breeze wafted a scent toward her that even her dog sense recognized. She lifted her eyes to see a man walking along the road toward her-a young man in a shaggy coat and a jaunty knit hat and a smile that had melted her human heart on many occasions.

“Jereth!” she called as he passed.

The young man heard a woof. He glanced around at her, flashed his grin, and ruffled her shaggy ears. “Good day to you, too, big dog. Out watching the people? Well, maybe you’d better find another door to sit by before those witches turn you into a doorstop.” He patted her again and sauntered away, his boots crunching on the snow.

Teza watched him go, her ears cocked thoughtfully. Perhaps the witch’s spell had merit. If Jereth, a man who knew Teza very well indeed, did not suspect she was anything more than a dog, then no one else would either. Teza’s confusion melted away in the warmth of a growing curiosity. She had always been good at disguises, but this was the best one she’d ever had. This might prove rather interesting.

Hesitantly at first, Teza set out toward the Red Stallion Inn. As the witch pointed out, there were only three days to help Kanlara. So, dog or no dog, Teza decided she had better get busy. To her surprise and pleasure, her mind quickly adapted to the strange new ways of her canine body. Before long she was swinging along at a jaunty trot with her long tail high and her ears flapping. The distance to the inn vanished quickly under her long-legged pace.

The inn lay quietly in its shelter of trees with only a wisp of smoke from the kitchen chimney to show a sign of life. Teza trotted around the back and into the stable through the groom’s door. There were many more empty stalls this afternoon. A few ponies nibbled hay in a pen at one end and one horse dozed in a stall.

Teza inhaled deeply, astonished at the intensity and variety of the smells she could identify. The stall where Lord Gireth had died was all too easy to find by the intense, metallic scent of old blood. The bloodied straw had been removed, but nothing could disguise the smells that had soaked into the earth floor. Teza began a slow and careful search of the stall’s interior.

“New around here?” a husky voice asked. “I hope you’re not planning to stay.”

Startled, Teza looked up to see a large yellow tomcat perched on the wooden wall. “No, no,” she hastened to reassure. How she knew how to communicate with him so easily she never knew, but her speech was a richly varied combination of vocal sounds, body language, and an instinctive enhancement of mental images. It was remarkable, and it just seemed to come with the disguise. “The people think my friend killed this man. I want to find out who really did.” She continued to sniff around under the close scrutiny of the yellow cat.

There were any number of human scents in this stall, including her own and Kanlara’s. She also identified

Lord Gireth’s smell on the floor and on the door of the stall and two others that were quite fresh. “How many people have been in the stable today?” she asked the cat politely.

The torn ignored her as he settled down in the hay of the feed rack.

“Don’t pay attention to that lazy floor rug,” another voice squeaked. A small black rat poked her nose out of a hole under the hay rack. “He is older than this inn and just as set in his ways. If you want to know, ask me. There were three people who came in here last night to remove the body and one more who cleaned it out this morning. That was some excitement. We haven’t seen such goings on since the last midwinter festival.”

Teza lifted her lips in a dogish smile at the rat’s cheerful chatter. “Did you see anyone else before the man died?”

“Oh, certainly. There was the man, the selkie that met him, a guard, a woman who-”

“What?” Teza barked. “A selkie. Are you certain?”

The rat stuck out her whiskers and lifted her nose. “As certain as the darkness. Smell it yourself. She leaned against that wall.”

Teza sniffed and there it was, just as Lord Gireth had said, a whiff of the lake.

In the flick of an eye, the rat disappeared and like an iron fist a hand grabbed Teza’s ruff and hauled her out of the stall. “Here, you cur. Get out!” A man, tall and well dressed, planted a boot viciously into Teza’s side. Pain lanced through her ribs. She yelped. He pulled back his foot to kick her again, but this time her dog instincts took over.

Fast as a weasel she slipped around in her loose skin and sank her teeth in his arm. His scent and the smell of his blood filled her nostrils. A cry of furious pain escaped his lips. Teza wrenched herself free from his grasp. She caught one glimpse of his face before she whirled away and galloped out of the barn to the safety of the trees.

She went just far enough to get out of sight, then she stopped and sat thoughtfully staring at the road through the evergreens. That man had looked familiar. Somewhere she had seen him very recently. Then she had it. He was the lord in the communal longhouse who had watched the kohrtar with such interest. So what was he doing in the stable where Lord Gireth was murdered?

Without realizing what she was doing, Teza’s tongue lolled out and she started panting while her mind ranged over a hundred questions. Particularly, why was a selkie, a freshwater creature of the gentlest nature, in a stable with a murder victim? Why hadn’t Lord Gireth’s shade mentioned her?

Keeping one eye on the inn for the lord with the heavy boot, she searched the road and the paths leading to the inn for some tell-tale hint of the seal woman. The ground was frozen and the snow had been tramped by dozens of humans and animals, but finally, Teza’s keen nose found another trace of that odd watery smell. It lay along a frozen path seldom used that wound through the trees and made its way at an oblique angle to the river and the city.

Others had left their trails behind but here and there, clinging to the frozen ground lay that elusive scent. With the utmost care Teza snuffled down the path until it intersected the road at the low bridge. She trailed onto the bridge, her tail wagging, and came to a stop in the middle. The selkie apparently paused there, for her scent covered a spot on the low stone wall and two delicate feet had scuffed the snow along the edge.

Teza lifted her front paws to the stone wall and peered down at the swiftly flowing river below. What had the Selkie done here? Had she resumed her seal form and fled back into the water? Had she dropped something?

Thoughtfully, Teza went back to her search of the road, and there, beyond the bridge, the selkie’s trail continued. Teza followed it toward Immilmar and the section of the city where the large houses of the wealthy merchants and the lords crowded against the banks of the river. She was nearly among those houses when the road joined a larger thoroughfare and she lost the scent in a bewildering mob of smells from people, ponies, wagons, and other dogs.