The House of Gaian

Chapter 6

Adolfo, the Master Inquisitor, watched two of his Assistant Inquisitors tie the old witch to the chair, then dismissed them with a sharp wave of his right hand. As soon as they left the room, he locked the door, something he'd never done before while softening a witch to confess. It wasn't that he doubted his ability to contain her, despite his dead left arm, but he didn't want anyone walking in and disrupting his concentration at a critical moment. Besides, the trembling crone was dependent on his mercy now and wouldn't dare try to summon her power and use it against him.

He'd already taken her eyes, her ears, her tongue. He'd taken her hands and feet.

And still he heard whispers among the Inquisitors that Master Adolfo, the Witch's Hammer, had become soft, had become diminished since he'd begun the extermination of the witches in Sylvalan. He drank too much. He'd ordered the witches recently captured to be brought to Wolfram, soiling the home country's land with the presence of those foul creatures.

Fools.

Even Ubel thought he'd grown soft, and that betrayal of unquestioning loyalty enraged him more than the whispers of the lesser Inquisitors. Ubel had been his finest warrior, his most trusted assistant in this war against magic and female power. He'd nurtured the hungry, beaten boy he'd found in a stinking alley one summer and had shaped him into an educated man with a great destiny.

Ubel could no longer be completely trusted, but there was no one else strong enough to lead, to do the things that must be done in order to win the coming war against Sylvalan.

Perhaps he did drink too much wine, but that hadn't clouded his thinking or softened his determination to rid the world of witches and the power they wielded. It hadn't softened his determination to rid the world of magic in all its forms. When the witches were finally destroyed, the Fae and the Small Folk would be destroyed with them. Then men would rule the world as was their right—and the Inquisitors would rule the men.

Hearing a soft scrabbling coming from the wooden cage in the center of the room, Adolfo walked over to it and lifted a corner of the cloth that covered the cage. The squirrel froze for a moment before dashing for another corner in an attempt to hide.

Dropping the cloth, he turned to study the old woman.

Despite what Ubel and the other Inquisitors thought, he had not grown soft and he had not been idle last winter. He had thought, he had studied, he had prepared. But he hadn't had the one thing he'd needed to try his experiments. He hadn't had a witch.

He walked a circle around the cage, murmuring the words of the spell he'd created for just this purpose. The protective circle wasn't meant to keep anything out, it was meant to contain what went in.

When he was done, he positioned himself slightly behind and to the right of the woman's chair, then placed his right hand on her shoulder. It gave him an almost erotic pleasure to feel her shudder at his touch.

He closed his eyes. Breathed slowly, deeply, evenly. And began to draw power out of her, just as he'd drawn power out of the Old Places. He felt her resist, felt her pulling the power back into herself. Calmly, he slapped the side of her head, where the wound from the missing ear was still raw. While she gasped from the pain, he clamped his hand on her shoulder again and sucked her power into himself. Sucked it up and sucked it up . . . until he sucked her dry.

He raised his hand, pointing it at the covered cage. As he released the power, sending it toward the cage like an arrow shot from a bow, he said, "Twist and change. Change and twist. Become what I would make of thee. As I will, so mote it be."

The squirrel inside the cage shrieked as the power he unleashed struck it. Shrieked and shrieked . . . and then went silent.

Adolfo lowered his hand. His throat felt parched, his bones felt hollow. He wanted to close the circle and pull the cover off the wooden cage. But power still swirled, trapped within the protective circle. He could wait.

He looked at the woman. Her head lolled to one side. Drool dribbled from one corner of her mouth. With proper care and proper nourishment, she might recover enough to regain some of her power. But not enough to be useful to him. He would give her to the apprentices. One could not learn to use an Inquisitor's tools without practice.

Two hours later, Adolfo returned to the room.

There was no sound from the wooden cage.

He spent several minutes trying to sense any lingering power from the spell he'd cast. There was none. Even the power he'd used to create the protective circle had been absorbed.

Gingerly taking hold of a corner of the cloth, he stepped back as he pulled the cloth away. Then he studied what was inside the cage.

When his men used the Inquisitor's Gift to draw magic from an Old Place and release it again to twist the things it touched, there was no control over what was changed. It might cause a new well to go dry, or a cow might birth a two-headed calf, or a field of grain might whither and die overnight. . . or something living might be changed into something out of a nightmare. A flesh eater. A soul eater. A nighthunter. But there had been no way to control that twisted magic, no way to use it for a specific purpose.

Until now.

Even though he was certain the creature was dead, he approached the cage cautiously.

The squirrel had changed into a nighthunter. Almost. One hind leg, or what was left of it, was still furred. Unable to escape from the cage to hunt for other prey, the nighthunter had turned on the unchanged part of itself, ripping through flesh, snapping bone… devouring while it bled to death.

Excitement shivered through Adolfo. There hadn't been enough power left in the old witch to complete the change. He would have to soften the next one faster so that her body was still ripe enough with power to provide what he needed.

Despite the creature's incomplete transformation, the experiment had worked. Before, it had been chance and the strength and number of Inquisitors drawing power from an Old Place that determined the creation of nighthunters.

Now he could create them whenever he chose.

The remains would have to be burned. He wasn't ready to share this with his Inquisitors yet. Which meant giving the task to someone he could trust to remain silent for the time being.

Ubel.

Yes. He'd have Ubel take care of it.

"And then, my fine Inquisitor," Adolfo said quietly, "once you've seen what's in this room, look me in the eyes and tell me I've gone soft."