“Fill it in,” Adolfo said. “Begin at the feet and work toward the head.”
He and the baron watched in silence as the men shoveled dirt into the grave. When the first shovelful of dirt finally hit the wooden box, they heard her scream.
“I wouldn’t have thought the Master Inquisitor was a compassionate man,” Hirstun said quietly. “What difference does it make if the bitch gets dirt in her eyes?”
“I am a compassionate man,” Adolfo said just as quietly. “If I were not, I wouldn’t have taken up the task of freeing good people from these wicked creatures. The box will hold a little air after the grave is filled in. That will give her time to repent.”
Hirstun eyed him warily. “And how will anyone know if she does repent?”
Adolfo smiled sadly. “True repentance comes at the moment before death. If she was spared at that moment, she would swear that she had repented, but it would be a lie. Death is the only freedom these creatures know, Baron, and even that isn’t freedom since their actions in this world have condemned them to the Fiery Pit that awaits the Evil One’s servants.”
They said nothing more until the last shovelful of dirt filled the hole.
“Well, it’s done,” Hirstun said, watching his servant pass out copper coins to the men who had assisted. “You’ll come back to the manor to … settle things?”
“I’ll be along shortly. I want to maintain watch for another minute.”
“You are most diligent in your task.” Hirstun walked away, his servant and the common men trailing behind him.
“Yes, I am,” Adolfo said softly once there was no one close enough to hear. “I will not suffer a witch to live.”
She lay in the dark, feeling the weight of the earth pressing down on her. Not much air left, not much time.
She’d tried to summon the power, had tried to move the earth so that she might somehow escape. But it was water, not earth, that was the branch of the Mother from which she drew her strength, and her efforts had gained her nothing.
Why had things changed? Why? For generations, the women in her family and the rest of the people in Kylwode had lived and worked peacefully in each other’s company. How many of the common villagers and tenants on the baron’s land had been helped by her grandmother’s simples when they didn’t have the coin to pay the physician, who was really only interested in tending to the gentry and the merchant families in the area? How many had she helped by showing them where to dig their wells? And this was how they showed their gratitude for all the help that had been given?
She tried to breathe slowly, tried to make the air last, knowing it was useless to hope, and still unable to keep from hoping that some of those men — any of those men her family had helped over the years — would defy Baron Hirstun and return to free her.
Why had resentment begun to simmer in Kylwode? Was it because people had looked at the sparse crops they were scraping out of their own overused land and then had turned envious eyes on the rich meadows and forests — and the game that lived there — that belonged to the women of her family since the first witch had walked the boundaries and marked the Old Place that was in her keeping?
How many years had they been telling people, over and over again, that the Mother was bountiful, but one must give as well as take? The people in Kylwode simply didn’t want to listen. The Mother gave — and should keep on giving and giving. And lately, the response to any suggestion of giving something back to the land was, “witch words,” followed by uneasy, suspicious looks — and the suggestion that the “giving” was some kind of blood sacrifice. And that the bounty of her own garden was payment from the Evil One for carnal pleasures.
She’d never heard of the Evil One until Master Adolfo came to stay with Baron Hirstun. But she knew with absolute certainty that there was such a creature, that the Evil One did, indeed, walk the earth.
And its name was Master Inquisitor Adolfo, the Witch’s Hammer.
He was the very breath of Evil with his quietly spoken words and the gentle sadness in his eyes. Those things were the mask that hid a rotted spirit.
Oh, yes, treat the witch gently so that she may repent. Don’t look upon her limbs so that you won’t be swayed by lust.
The soul-rotted bastard just didn’t want those men to see the welts, the cuts, the burns he had inflicted on her to “help” her confess. The hobbles provided a clever excuse for why she couldn’t walk well. And he certainly hadn’t hesitated to indulge his lust. His rod was as much a tool as the heated poker and the thumbscrews.
Three times he had led her to the small writing table in the hated room in Baron Hirstun’s cellar that he had changed into his Inquisitor’s torture chamber. Three times he had insisted that she must confess her crimes against the good people of Kylwode.
Twice she had refused to sign the confession he had written out, had even demanded the first time to know who had accused her of doing harm. She had done none of the things listed as her “crimes.” Harming others was against the creed she and her family lived by.
Twice she had refused. But the third time, he had shown her the other bridle, the one she would force him to use if she continued to resist his attempt to lead her to repentance. That bridle had what he called “witch stingers” — spikes that would pierce the cheeks and tongue. He had shown her the other things that would have to be used to persuade her to “freely” confess.
When she finally signed the confession, he told her he was grateful she had relieved him of the burden of continuing such an onerous task. And by signing, it was she, and not he, who had condemned her to this death.
Bastard!
Tears filled her eyes.
So hard to breathe now. So very hard.
She was glad her mother and grandmother had gone to a neighboring village to help with a birth when the baron’s men — and Master Adolfo — had come for her. She hoped one of the Small Folk had warned her family while they were still on the road home so that they could flee.
Not much time now. Her body struggled for air.
Water was her strength and her love. But they had planted her in the middle of a dry field on the other side of the village, too far away from the Old Place that had been her home to give her even that much comfort. If only she could feel water flow over her hand once more, maybe she could accept …
She dimly heard her own garbled, anguished cry.
* * *
Beyond the field, behind a stand of trees, the brook seemed to hesitate. Its bed shuddered and ripped. Then ripped deeper. The water poured into that rip, forcing its way between the trees’ roots until it found a newly made channel that continued to shiver open before it even as it spread itself beneath the land.
Her hand was wet. Not just damp from the earth, but wet.
The water found the open space of the box — and the brook sang to her as it had done so many times.
She closed her eyes and floated on its song.
The water caressed her. She no longer felt her body, no longer felt any pain. Just the water as it continued to rise to the surface — and took her with it.
“This will be enough?” Hirstun said as he studied the confession.
“It has been more than adequate in Arktos and Wolfram,” Adolfo replied. “Sylvalan has a similar law: any person convicted of a heinous crime against the community forfeits all property, which then goes to the highest-ranking noble in the community to dispense as he sees fit.” It was a law Hirstun knew well; at least three of his tenants had once been freeholders before one of Hirstun’s ancestors had found a “crime” against those families that allowed him to confiscate the land and add it to his own holding.
“There’s only one copy,” Hirstun said.
“I retain the other copy,” Adolfo replied. And that copy confessed to one other thing, which would only be brought to light if Hirstun proved to be a difficult man to deal with.
“I expect you’ll be leaving soon.”
That tone, both dismissal and c
ommand, infuriated Adolfo, but his voice remained mild when he said, “Unless there are others in Kylwode who are suspected of practicing witchcraft.” He made the words almost a question.
“Those three were the only witches in Kylwode,” Hirstun said coldly.
Which is not the same thing, Adolfo thought. Not the same thing at all. That was the error the gentry in Arktos and Wolfram had made when they had first started dealing with him. They had treated him like a servant once his duties had given them what they wanted. But they had learned, as the gentry in Sylvalan would learn, just how hard the Witch’s Hammer could strike a village, how far the frenzy of accusations could spread with the right incentive, how even a gentry family was not immune.
Hirstun opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a hand-sized bag of gold coins, and dropped it on the desk.
“When we first discussed the trouble in Kylwode, you agreed to pay two bags of gold for my services,” Adolfo said quietly.
“You only had to deal with one of them, not all three,” Hirstun said sharply. “And the other two won’t be coming back. Half the fee for one-third of the work seems more than fair.”
So that’s how it would be.
Adolfo sat back in his chair, turning his head just enough to look out the window at the baron’s children, who had gathered on the lawn with some of their friends.
“The Evil One is a pernicious adversary,” Adolfo said. “Sometimes a person becomes ensnared without realizing it until she — or he — is persuaded to open her soul and confess. Sometimes a person becomes Evil’s servant through carnal indiscretion. Pain is the only spiritual purge for someone who has been misled by a witch’s lust.”
Hirstun looked out the window, stared at his eldest son for a long moment, then swung back to face Adolfo. “Are you accusing my son of having carnal acts with a witch?”
“Were we speaking of your son?” Adolfo said mildly.
The way Hirstun paled was confirmation enough about why there was a resemblance between the witch they’d just condemned and Hirstun’s daughter.
A long, strained silence hung between them.
Adolfo waited patiently, as he’d done so many times before. He was a middle-aged, balding man who had the lean face of a scholar and the strong body of a common laborer. His clothes, as dull-colored and simply cut as a common man’s, were made of the finest wools, the best linens. His voice held the inflections of a gentry education as well as the roughness of a man whose education had been acquired in the alleys. People like the baron were never sure if he had been a younger son of a prominent family who had fallen on hard times or some backstreet brat who had spent years learning to mimic his betters until he could pass for one of them. While their lack of deference infuriated him, he understood the value of letting the gentry think they were dealing with a cur only to discover a wolf had them by the throat.
Finally, reluctantly, Hirstun pulled out another bag of gold.
“My thanks, Baron Hirstun,” Adolfo said. “I do what I must because it’s the task I have been given, but there are expenses to performing that task.”
“You seem to make a good living being the Witch’s Hammer,” Hirstun said, eyeing the small jewels that completely covered the large medallion Adolfo wore over a brown wool tunic and white linen shirt.
Adolfo brushed a finger over the medallion. “I have spent the last thirty years of my life doing this work. Each of these stones represents a village in my homeland that I cleansed of witches — and all other signs of witchcraft.”
“We understand each other well enough,” Hirstun said harshly. “I trust that understanding will continue.”
“That is my hope as well,” Adolfo said, gathering up the bags of gold. “If you will excuse me, Baron, I must send a message to my assistant Inquisitors.”
“Why?”
Adolfo smiled slightly. “The work we do is filled with dangers. It is our custom to inform each other of where we are as well as our next destination. That way, if something should happen to one of us, the others would know where to begin the hunt for the Evil One’s servant.”
“I see,” Hirstun said tightly.
You begin to see, Adolfo thought as he made his bow and left the room. For now, that is enough.
In the gray, predawn light, Morag let the dark horse pick its way across the sodden field toward the young woman sitting on a small mound of earth.
Seeing the fear and tension in the woman’s face, she reined in a few feet away and let a gentle silence build between them.
“You can see me,” the woman said.
Morag’s lips curved in a hint of a smile. “I am the Gatherer. I see all the ghosts.”
The fear and tension drained from the woman, replaced with something close to hope. “You’ve come to take me to the Summerland?”
She said nothing for a moment, not quite sure what to make of humans who spoke of the Summerland. This was her first extended journey in the human world since she had become the Gatherer less than a year ago — her first journey at all to the northeastern part of Sylvalan. Until recently, none of the humans she had gathered had asked about the Summerland. “I can guide you to the Shadowed Veil. The place beyond it has been called by many names. Perhaps it is many places. Your spirit knows its home. If that is the Summerland, then that is the place you’ll find.”
As she extended her hand, the sleeve of her black gown opened like a raven’s wing. “Come.”
The woman floated over the ground, floated up behind the Gatherer. Once she was settled, she asked softly, “Do you think I’ll see my mother and grandmother in the Summerland one day?”
As she turned the dark horse to go back the way she had come, Morag thought of the two women whose bodies had been left near the road that led to this village, the two women whose spirits she had gathered and taken to the Shadowed Veil. When the mound and field were out of sight, she finally said, “You’ll meet them there.”
Chapter Three
Ari tried not to sigh out loud as she set her heavy baskets on the floor of Granny Gwynn’s shop and sincerely hoped Odella and the other young women from Ridgeley’s gentry families would conclude their business quickly.
Seeing the movement, Odella gave Ari a sharp look before turning back to the small, wrinkled woman standing behind the wooden counter at the back of the shop. “Do you have it, Granny?”
Granny Gwynn huffed. “Wicked girl. You wound my heart, indeed you do, to think that I’d forget to make the fancy for my pretty misses. Of course I have it. You wait there.” She disappeared behind the heavy curtain that separated the storage rooms from the front of the shop. Odella and the others girls began whispering and giggling.
Trying to pretend it was as easy to ignore them as it was for them to ignore her, Ari waited. She should have heeded the strange feeling in the air this morning and stayed home. She should have worked in the garden or finished cleaning her cottage. She should have taken her sketchbook and colored chalks into the woods and spent the day quietly making the swift drawings that would be transformed into the woven wall hangings that provided her with some income.
But loneliness had slipped into her dreams last night, making her crave even the illusion of company. So she had rolled up the wall hanging Mistress Brigston had commissioned and the bottles of simples she had made to sell at Granny’s shop, packed her baskets into the small handcart, and made the three-mile walk to the village.
Granny Gwynn reappeared, her hands full of small items wrapped in brown waxed paper.
“Here you are, my pretty ladies. A little fancy for a little fun during the Summer Moon.”
Odella and the other girls leaned over the counter while Granny Gwynn unwrapped one of the packages. A couple of the girls gasped, then giggled behind their hands.
“Now tuck those safely away until they’re needed,” Granny Gwynn said after handing a package to each girl. She narrowed her eyes. “Where’s the last girl?”
Odella waved an impatient hand. “It doe
sn’t matter. What do we do with the fancy? How does it work?”
“It matters, Miss Odella,” Granny Gwynn said darkly. “Seven were asked for. Seven were made. Seven must be taken.”
“Then I’ll take the other one, too.”
Granny Gwynn shook her head. “There’s no way to tell what will happen if one is left or if two are taken by the same person.”
Odella paled a little. She glanced around the shop. A predatory look came into her eyes. “Then give the last one to Ari.” She made a come-forward motion. “Come on, Ari. It’s just a bit of fun to celebrate the first moon of summer.”
Ari studied the other girls, who were now watching her with avid interest. An inner voice whispered, Beware. Beware. They do not mean you well. The loneliness coiled around her heart, and whispered, It’s a chance to belong, even if only for a little while.
She stepped up to the counter.
“Hold out your left hand,” Granny Gwynn said.
When Ari hesitated, Granny grabbed her hand and tipped the package’s contents into her palm.
Ari hissed as a small jolt of magic shot up her left arm and stabbed her heart. A moment later, the feeling was gone. Then she looked at the fancy, and uneasiness washed through her.
Two pieces of brown-sugar candy. One was shaped like a full-bodied woman. The other was shaped like a phallus.
“Wrap them up now,” Granny Gwynn said, smiling slyly as she handed the brown waxed paper to Ari.
Ari hurriedly wrapped the fancy and would have left it on the counter if Granny hadn’t watched her closely until she tucked it into her skirt pocket.
“Now,” Granny Gwynn said, crossing her hands over her sagging belly. “The full moon rises in two days’ time. You must go out walking that night. Choose your path well because you must offer the female half of the fancy to the first male you see that night who isn’t close kin, and say, ‘With this fancy, I offer the affection of my body from the full moon to the dark. This I swear by the Lord of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon. May they never again shine upon me if I do not fulfill this promise.’ ”