The Pillars of the World

Chapter Fourteen

Adolfo tied his weary horse securely to a tree before moving a little deeper into the Old Place. It would have been better if he could have hobbled the horse and let it graze in the meadow bordering the Old Place, but his nephew’s ghost kept beckoning to him from the other side of the meadow. He was certain the ghost couldn’t leave the meadow since the body was buried there, but he wasn’t certain about how much of the meadow the ghost could walk—and he wasn’t certain how much power Konrad’s ghost might have. So the animal would have to wait until he was done with what he had come to do.

The witch who had lived here was dead—Konrad had achieved that much—and Adolfo could feel the magic bleeding out of the Old Place. But power still thrummed in the land, in the trees, in the very air of this place. It grated against his bones even as it filled him with exultation.

As he walked, he brushed his fingers against the trees until he touched one and felt a dryad’s shriek of anger as a tingling in his fingertips. He smiled. Before she could gather her small magic to strike at him, he pressed his hand against the tree and poured his own power into it, binding her inside the trunk. Taking a step away from the tree, he sank to his knees. Placing his hands firmly on the ground, he used the witch magic that was his mother’s legacy to make the connection between himself and the Old Place. Then he began drawing the power out of the land, filling himself with it until his heart pounded and his body ached with the effort to contain it. And still he took in more and more, all the while murmuring the words that would change benign power into something malicious.

When he felt full to bursting, he released it all, letting it flood out of him as twisted ropes of magic that flew toward the village and nearby farms.

He heard the dryad scream as one of those twisted ropes struck her tree and consumed her.

He felt the land shudder as he took in more of its magic and released it, changed.

Finally unable to do any more, he broke his connection with the Old Place and slumped to the ground, trembling with exhaustion.

Power no longer thrummed in the land. It was still there. Nothing could destroy it completely in an Old Place. But it was a pale shadow of what it had been an hour before, and it would never again be more than a pale shadow—unless another witch came to live in the Old Place. Or the Fae. But that would never happen. The Fae only amused themselves in this world before returning to their precious Fair Land, and by the time he was done, no female would be able to set foot on this land without being condemned as a witch, whether she had any magic or not.

“And no man shall suffer a witch to live,” Adolfo whispered, rolling onto his back. “No man shall be at the mercy of any kind of female magic. We shall be the masters, the rulers, and what little power we grant we can also strip away. So shall it be.”

With effort, he climbed to his feet and slowly returned to his horse. Opening a saddlebag, he pulled out a flask of brandy and drank deeply. He followed that with hunks of bread and cheese. His strength returned, slowly—far more slowly than it once did. But he was older now, and it took more out of him to strip power from the land.

Finishing the bread and cheese, he drank his fill from the water canteen, then poured water into his cupped hand for the horse.

“That’s enough,” Adolfo said, shaking the last drops of water from his hand and tying the canteen to the saddle.

He walked the horse out of the woods.

His nephew’s ghost now stood halfway between its grave and the border of the Old Place.

Adolfo suppressed a shudder, viciously controlling himself so that nothing would show on his face.

A twist of released magic must have struck the ghost, turning it into a nightmarish image, all the more dreadful because it could still be recognized as the young man it had been. In time, the villagers might have become used to a handsome ghost prowling the meadow. No one would be able to look on this without fear.

“They will pay for your death,” Adolfo told the ghost. “That I promise you.”

He turned away, aware that Konrad trailed after him. He didn’t breathe easily until he was well beyond the meadow and Konrad could no longer follow him. Mounting, he settled the horse into an easy trot. He’d ridden hard to reach this place at the right time. Now he would stop at the first available inn to give the horse and himself a well-earned rest.

He couldn’t control what the twisted ropes of magic would do. He’d never been able to control it to that extent. He simply released it and let each rope find its mark. Over the next few days, the villagers would suffer unexplainable troubles. Wells would collapse, cows would suddenly go dry, chickens would cease to lay, a dog would turn vicious and savage a child, a healthy woman would be taken to childbed before her time and die in agony birthing a corpse.

And those ropes of magic caused transformations, taking something from the natural world and twisting it into something else. The nighthunters were formed that way. A few were always created when he or one of his Inquisitors, drained an Old Place of its magic. That didn’t trouble him since they mostly preyed on the Small Folk—or people who were foolish enough to walk through deep woods at night.

The villagers would still be reeling from Harro’s grisly death so soon after Konrad’s, and all the other troubles that would suddenly plague them would shatter any doubts they may have had about the existence of the Evil One and leave them at the mercy of what he had to teach them.

And he would teach them. In a few days, the other Inquisitors he had summoned would arrive at this village, as well as a couple of minstrels who found their purses well filled now that they played to his tune. He would return here as the Master Inquisitor, the Witch’s Hammer, and by the time he was done purging these people of all the Evil One’s servants, those who survived would spread a story that would leave no doubt about how thoroughly the Evil One could devour people wherever an Inquisitor died.