You will investigate the disappearance of two individuals: Kenver Edwards, 57, last seen four days ago; and Sewena Toll, 22, last seen yesterday morning.

Finally, after a ride that seemed like an eternity, a house came into view. Then two houses. Then, after a twist in the road, rows of buildings stood along each side of the path: a general store, a pub, an open marketplace with two food-stalls, a town hall.

The village was shut up tight. No one was outside. The windows were locked, the blinds closed.

"Welcome, representatives of Tin Dragon. I am Mayor Casworon Toll."

"I don't know much about the mayor's daughter, poor girl -- but Kenver, well he was my boss until he up 'n vanished. We stayed the night here on our way from Four Stones with a delivery of skiurium ore -- that's the reddish shiny sorta stone that the mechanikers use, rare stuff and expensive -- so when we got up in the morning and part of our supply was gone, Kenver had a right fit. He went tearin' across the village, bangin' on doors, demandin' his supply back." The wagon driver flung his knobby hands in the air to emphasize just how crazy Kenver had got over the loss of his merchandise.

"Well, just when I was suggestin' that maybe we should just report the theft an' let the authorities deal with it like they properly should, Kenver he pointed out at the woods -- right here," He stretched out an arm and pointed into the forest across the road, "and he said, 'Hey Breok,' he says to me. 'Breok, you see that guy out there?' And I looked, and there indeed was somebody peeking up over the edge of that boulder out there, starin' at us. I couldn't tell much except he had kinda wild reddish hair -- kinda like mine, only on his head." He stroked his scraggly beard with a chuckle.

"And Kenver yelled out to the guy, spittin' mad, and when we got no response he ran out into the woods and around that boulder to snag him." Breok scratched the back of his head and huffed a sigh. "Well, I waited a bit, and he didn't come out again though I called him. And I went over around that rock and he'd gone." He turned up his palms helplessly. "Kenver was just gone. Me an' a bunch of the villagers, we combed through this forest, but we didn't find anything at all."

"My daughter, Sewena." The name triggered a desperate passion in the mayor, who finally unclasped his hands from behind his back and flung them with his words. "I should have been a better father! I ignored her most of her life, always working, always locked in with my letters, barely saw her face. She resents me. She told me so, the day before she . . . when I told her I didn't approve of her boyfriend, Jory's his name." His expression flashed with anger.

"We've pounded on Jory's door -- he lives at the end, in the house with the fox-statue out front," he pointed down the dirt road, "but there's no response and the door's locked, which is quite unusual for this town. No one has seen a hair of him since Sewena didn't come back from the woods. I fear he has her! My daughter's missing and in trouble and she hates me and I'm a useless old man."

Once he'd caught his breath again, he had one other thing to say: "I was only told secondhand how she didn't come home. Miss Tregonning knows more than I do. She rents a room to Sewena, next door."

The woods were full of pine trees, fragrant and sappy, and hard with rocks and boulders between them. The boulder in question came up to about Uwen's waist -- to an average sized man, it would still only come up to chest height -- but was wide and cumbersome to wield. Uwen, as strong as he was, would certainly find a way to take the boulder out of the way of the investigation.

The soft dent in the earth where the boulder had been was crawling with beetles and larvae and ants, but there wasn't anything particularly fascinating about it. There was now a very good view, however, of the footprints and scuff marks that had been made by several different pairs of shoes and a couple of bare feet, marked in the shallow dirt. After Kenvar had gone missing, a few of the villagers had walked around the boulder trying to find him; they had obliterated any evidence that might have been left there. There wasn't even a hair nor a thread of cloth here left of Kenvar.

After considerable examination, however, one might discover a very different footprint left in the loose dirt at the far side of the clearing: it looked like an enormous pawprint, perhaps that of a very large cat, pointed toward the deep of the forest.

"Are you insinuating -- do you imply that my daughter has anything to fear from me, her loving and doting father?" His voice cracked in the wake of a lie. His mouth trembled, though his eyes flared defiantly. He had thought of a very good reason his daughter might be hiding from him -- but he was very certain it wasn't something these detectives needed to know. "I want only what's best for her! She knows that! We've moved on from the past!"

The pawprint, upon investigation, might prove to be that of a lion -- or of any creature that might take a lion's form.