Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 31

Leaving the abandoned and disturbing farmstead, Nicci and Bannon continued down the weed-overgrown road past houses and farms. The lonely goats followed them for a time, but eventually gave up and wandered off into a wild cornfield that was more tempting than the prospect of Bannon scratching their ears.

Most of the dwellings they found were empty, and some also displayed more unsettling, anguished statues in the yards. Why would the people feel a need to own such decorations of misery? Nicci led the way toward the main town, growing more tense, fearing what she would find ahead. Though the land seemed fertile and the weather hospitable, these homes had clearly been vacant for years. “It makes no sense. Where did everyone go?”

Nicci paused in front of a large home with unruly flowerbeds, a scraggly garden patch, and drooping apple trees with half-rotted fruit ravaged by birds. Two more statues stood there: a boy and girl no more than nine years old, both on their knees, expressions full of despair, weeping stone tears.

While Bannon stared at the unsettling figures, Nicci was angry that some mad sculptor would revel in displaying such pain, and that these villagers had willingly displayed them. Nicci had felt no deep emotions when Emperor Jagang commissioned such sculptures, because she knew what a ruthless, twisted man he was. Only Nicci, with her heart of black ice, had been his match.

But this isolated village, far from the reach of the Imperial Order, had for some reason decided to depict a very similar misery. Nicci found it deeply disturbing.

They came upon a stream flowing down the wooded hillside, where a miller’s waterwheel caught the current and turned. Water sluiced over the paddles to rotate a grinding stone, but after years without maintenance, the wheel wobbled off center and made a loud scraping sound. Some of the wooden planks in the walls of the mill had fallen in.

She and Bannon reached the town itself, a hundred homes around a main square and marketplace. Most dwellings had been built for single families, but others were two stories tall, constructed with wood from the hillsides and stones from a nearby quarry. The entire town was simply deserted.

The open square held a stone fountain, now dry; a smithy fallen into disrepair, its forge long cold; a silent and empty inn and tavern. There were also a warehouse, several merchant offices, an eating establishment, a livery, and barns filled with old hay, but no horses. Around the square, wooden tables and kiosks showed the remnants of what must have been a thriving market. Shriveled husks and rotted cores showed what remained of the produce at farmers’ stalls. Feral chickens scuttled through the town square.

Although peripheral details sank into Nicci’s consciousness, her attention was fixated on the numerous statues in the square. Countless stone figures stood in the market, in the doorways, by the vegetable stalls, by the water well.

Bannon looked sick. Each of the sculptures wore the same look of horror and anguish, smooth marble eyes open wide in appalled disbelief, or clenched shut in furious denial, stone lips drawn back in sobs.

Bannon shook his head. “Sweet Sea Mother, why would someone do that? I always try to imagine a nice world. Who would want to imagine this? Why would someone do this to a town?”

A deep voice rang out. “Because they were guilty.”

They whirled to see a bald man emerging from a dark wooden building that looked like the home of an important person. Tall and thin, with an unnaturally elongated skull, he strode down the street. A gold circlet rested on his head just above the brow. The stranger’s long black robes flowed as he walked. The sleeves belled out at the cuffs, and a thick gold chain served as a belt around his waist. His piercing eyes were the palest blue Nicci had ever seen, as clear as water in a mountain stream. His face was so grim, he made even the Keeper look cheerful.

Bannon instinctively drew his sword to defend them, but Nicci took a step forward. “Guilty of what? And who are you?”

The gaunt man stopped before them, drawing himself even taller. He seemed satisfied to be surrounded by numerous statues of misery. “Each was guilty of his own crimes, her own indiscretions. It would take far too long for me to name them all.”

Nicci faced the man’s implacable, pale stare. “I asked your name. Are you the only one left here? Where did the others go?”

“I am the Adjudicator,” he said in a deep baritone voice. “I have brought justice to this town of Lockridge and to many towns.”

“We’re just travelers,” Bannon said. “We’re looking for food and a place to sleep, maybe to get some supplies.”

Nicci focused her concentration on the strange man. “You are a wizard.” She could sense the gift within him, the magic he contained.

“I am the Adjudicator,” he repeated. “I bear the gift and the responsibility. I have the tools and the power to bring justice.” He looked at them sternly, his water-pale eyes raking over Nicci’s form and then Bannon’s, as if he were dissecting them and looking for corruption within.

“Who appointed you?” Nicci asked.

“Justice appointed me,” he said, as if Nicci were the most foolish person he had ever met. “Many years ago I was just a magistrate, and I roved the districts by common consent, for the people required an impartial law. I would go from town to town, where they presented the accused to me, and I served as judge. I would hear the laws they had broken, I would look at the accused, and I would determine the truth of what they had done, as well as the punishment for their crimes.”

He pressed a long-fingered hand to the center of his chest, which was covered by the black robes. “That was my gift. I could know the truth of what someone said. Through magic I determined whether they were innocent or guilty, and then I decreed the appropriate sentence, which the town leaders imposed. That was our common agreement. That was our law.”

“Like a Confessor,” Nicci said. “A male Confessor.”

The strange man gave her a blank stare. “I know nothing of Confessors. I am the Adjudicator.”

“But where are all the people?” Bannon asked. “If you passed sentence and the villagers agreed to it, where are they? Why did they all leave this town?”

“They did not leave,” said the grim wizard. “But my calling changed, became stronger. I became stronger. The amulet, by which I determined truth and innocence, became a part of me, and I grew much more powerful.”

The Adjudicator pulled open the folds of the black robe to expose his bare chest and an amulet: a golden triangular plate carved with ornate loops, arcane symbols, and spell-forms surrounding a deep red garnet. The amulet hung by a thin golden chain around his neck.

But the amulet was no longer just an ornament—the golden triangle had fused to his flesh. The skin of his chest had bubbled and scarred around it, as if someone had pressed hot metal hard into skin like pliable candle wax and let the flesh harden around it. Parts of the chain had cut into the Adjudicator’s collarbone and the tendons of his neck, becoming permanently bonded there. The central garnet glowed with a deep simmering fire of magic.

Bannon gasped. “What happened to you?”

“I became the Adjudicator.” His stony, accusing stare turned toward the young man. “For years, the crimes I judged were mostly small—assaults, thievery, arson, adultery. Sometimes there were murders or rapes, but it was here in Lockridge…” He looked up, and his water-blue gaze skated past them, over their heads, as if he was calling upon the spirits. “It was here that I changed.

“There was a mother, Reva, who had three fine daughters, the oldest eight years old, the youngest only three. The mother was lovely in her own way, as were the little girls, but her husband desired another woman. Ellis was his name. He cheated on his wife, and when Reva learned of the affair, she became convinced that it was her fault—that she paid too much attention to their three daughters and not enough to her husband. Reva was desperate to regain his love.” He made a disgusted sound. “She was mad.

“So, Reva smothered her three daughters in their sleep, to make sure that they would no longer come between her and Ellis. She thought he would love her more. When he came home that night, after his furtive passions with his mistress, Reva proudly showed him what she had done. She opened her arms and told him that her time and her heart now belonged only to him again.

“When Ellis saw their three dead daughters, he took a hatchet from the firewood pile and killed his wife, chopping her sixteen times.”

The Adjudicator’s expression didn’t change as he told his story. “And when I came to judge Ellis, I touched the center of his forehead. We all thought we knew what had happened. I called upon the power in my amulet, and I learned the full story. I learned his thoughts and his black, poisoned heart. I already knew the horrors of his wife’s crimes, but then I discovered what this man had done. Yes, he had killed his wife after she had killed his daughters. There was no question as to the murder Ellis had committed, but some even sympathized with him.

“Not I. I found within Ellis a most poisonous guilt, because he had not truly killed Reva out of horror that she had murdered their girls, as we all expected. No, I saw in Ellis’s heart that he was actually pleased to have the nuisance of his family gone, and he used it as an excuse to be rid of his unwanted wife as well as his children. He thought he would get away with it.

“As that guilt flooded into me, those crimes charged the amulet. The magic grew stronger, and I unleashed it with wild abandon. I was angry and sickened. I made Ellis feel the guilt. I made him experience that moment of the greatest, most intense, horror. It rose to the front of his mind, and I froze it there. I turned him to stone in that instant as he experienced the most intense, most painful guilt of his life, reliving that appalling moment.”

The Adjudicator let out a long sigh. “And releasing that magic freed me.” The wizard touched the scar where the amulet had fused to the flesh of his chest. “I became not just a magistrate, not merely one who uncovered the truth of the accused. I became the Adjudicator.” His voice grew deeper and much more ominous. “I have to protect these lands. That is my charge. I am to find anyone who is guilty. I cannot allow travelers to pass over the mountains into the fertile valley beyond. I must stop the spread of guilt.”

Bannon swallowed audibly and took a step backward, holding up his sword.

Nicci didn’t move, though she remained poised to fight. “And you judged all of these people as well?”

“All of them.” The Adjudicator turned his chilling, watery gaze on her. “Only those without guilt can be allowed to proceed.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what is your guilt, Sorceress?”

Nicci was defiant. “My guilt is none of your business.”

For the first time she saw the Adjudicator’s thin, pale lips twitch, in what might have been the distant shadow of a smile. “Ah, but it is.” The garnet in his amulet glowed.

She reacted by reaching inside herself, ready to release the coiling magic, but she suddenly found that she couldn’t. Her feet were frozen in place. Her legs were locked. Her arms refused to bend.

Bannon gasped. “What’s … happening?”

“I am the Adjudicator.” He took a step closer. The fused amulet throbbed in his chest. “The punishment I have decreed for all criminals is that they must experience their moment of greatest guilt. Continually. I will petrify you at that exquisite point, so that you face that worst moment for as long as time shall last.”

Nicci’s legs felt cold, leaden. She couldn’t turn her head, but from the corner of her eye she saw her arm, her black dress, everything becoming white. Becoming stone.

“You have nothing to fear, if you are blameless,” said the man. “You will be judged, and I am fair. I am the Adjudicator.”

He stepped toward them, and Nicci tried to find a way to fight, to summon her magic, but her vision dimmed. A buzzing roar built in her mind, as if her head were filled with thousands of swarming bees.

Though she could barely see him, she heard the grim wizard’s words. “Alas, in all these lands, I have yet to find someone without guilt.”