The Pillars of the World

Chapter Seventeen

Eight of his Inquisitors stood to one side, watching the two in the rowboat that floated in the center of the pond. Beside him, the village magistrate cringed as the woman was pulled up, again, from beneath the water. She gasped for breath, a harsh sound that carried clearly in the still morning air.

“Do you admit your guilt and confess your crimes against your neighbors?” the Inquisitor holding the rope asked in a loud voice.

“No!” the woman gasped. “No! I—”

The Inquisitor let the rope slide through his gloved hands. The woman disappeared beneath the water. Again.

She’s been in that pond for close to an hour, and she’s still fighting, Adolfo thought, sharply watching the way the rowboat rocked on the water. But she won’t last much longer. Very soon she’ll understand there’s only one way she can end her punishment. And then we can leave this place.

“Master Adolfo,” the magistrate said, casting an anxious eye toward the other villagers who had been summoned that morning to gather around the pond. “Master, my wife’s cousin is a good woman. She couldn’t have done such malicious things.”

“Are you saying these people, who look to you as a leader in their community, are liars?” Adolfo asked quietly. “Are you saying that the women who freely confessed in order to unburden their spirits couldn’t name the others who had been drawn into the dreadful snare of the witch’s magic, and became witches themselves?”

“Witches?” The magistrate sweated. “No, no, Master Adolfo. They weren’t witches.”

Adolfo looked at the man until fear did its duty and the man’s will crumbled beneath it.

“I am the Witch’s Hammer,” Adolfo said. “I have spent my life studying these foul creatures, these whores of the Evil One. I know its stench—and theirs—when I smell it. Do you deny the troubles that have come to plague your village? Do you deny that two of my Inquisitors have died here in a matter of days? Two men trained and prepared to deal with the Evil One’s servants were overwhelmed while staying in this place. The only way such a thing could happen is if the Evil One found vessels to give it roots here, vessels who had remained hidden from the good people of this community.”

He paused long enough to nod to the Inquisitors in the boat. The one holding the rope pulled the woman up to the surface again.

“Perhaps,” Adolfo continued softly, “you protest this cleansing of evil because you fear what we might be told during a confession. Perhaps you have had lustful thoughts about your wife’s cousin. She is a beautiful woman and bold with her opinions. Perhaps you are close to being ensnared into the Evil One’s service. Perhaps. It is not always as easy to tell with men when the Evil One’s hold on them is still weak. Softening the flesh is the only way to discover such things. But you and I have not talked about such things in private, have we?”

The magistrate turned pale and swayed on his feet. “I didn’t . . . I never . . . But . . . can’t you simply let her die?”

Adolfo could almost smell the man’s fear. It didn’t matter if the magistrate had done nothing more than allow his thoughts to wander or had actually indulged in fornication with his wife’s cousin. Now he simply wanted the woman silenced before the Master Inquisitor found a reason to look at him more closely.

“She must have a chance to redeem her spirit,” Adolfo said gently. “Otherwise, the Evil One will have her in death as it had her in life, and she will endure unspeakable torment in the Fiery Pit.”

The Inquisitor in the boat let the woman sink, then pulled her up quickly. After a couple more dunkings, when she didn’t have quite enough time to draw a breath, he pulled her up, let her gasp for a moment, then said, “Do you—”

“Yes!” the woman screamed. “Yes! I confess. I did what you say I did. I confess!”

Adolfo nodded.

The Inquisitor released the rope. The woman sank to the bottom of the pond, weighed down by the sack of stones that had been tied to her legs under her dress.

Everyone waited. Finally, the oars were set and the Inquisitors began rowing back to the shore.

Adolfo raised his voice enough to reach the silent crowd. The persuasion magic flowed through him, turning his words into hooks that would capture these people and never quite let them go. “It is done. The Evil One’s servants have been cleansed from this village. The foul magic they released on their neighbors may continue a little while longer. There is nothing we can do to prevent that. But it will cease, and then you will be free of it—as long as you men remain vigilant. Look around you carefully and take note of the other honest folk who came to witness the end of evil—and remember who stayed away. Keep watch over the women who are beholden to you. Do not shirk in your duty to discipline them. If you do not wield the strap with enough strength to help them remain modest and chaste, you do nothing less than thrust them into the Evil One’s embrace. Beware the sharp-tongued woman and the one who is bold with her opinions. They weaken men. Beware the woman who enjoys the carnal duties of marriage too much.

She will be tempted too easily to enjoy a handsome stranger, and the Evil One’s face is always handsome when he seduces such a woman. Once she has fornicated with evil, she will become the vessel that will be able to ensnare you. Stay vigilant, do your duty, and the Evil One will not be able to touch your families again.“

The villagers shuffled their feet uneasily. There was fear in the women’s eyes, which satisfied Adolfo.

He strode away from the pond, his Inquisitors following. He didn’t stop until he reached the inn. His carriage was out front, already loaded with his trunks. The guardsman, who was his new coachman, nodded to indicate everything was ready for the Master Inquisitor’s departure. A surly man who did not welcome conversation, Adolfo found him to be an adequate replacement for the previous coachman. The fool who had tried to trick him into being on the road during the Summer Moon was dead. One of those unfortunate accidents that could occur on an unfamiliar road in a strange country—especially when the accident was arranged.

“It will be good to leave this place,” one of the younger Inquisitors said quietly, looking back toward the pond.

“Yes, it will,” Adolfo replied.

The young man looked at Adolfo with troubled eyes. “Master Adolfo, we have lost four of our brothers in the past few days, and others have been injured badly enough during the time we’ve been in this land that they’ve had to give up our great work.” He hesitated, then the rest of the words came out in a rush. “This isn’t our land. These aren’t our people, our families. Why do we have to be here?”

Adolfo had wondered when that question would be asked. “We are here because of our land, our people, our families. If we do not cleanse this foul witch magic from Sylvalan, it can creep over the border and root again in Wolfram. There are already indications that the cleansing was not as thorough in Arktos as we had thought. You’ve already seen that the power here is stronger than anything we’ve stood against. The Evil One embraces many here.”

He studied his men. They were already tired, and they were frightened. The Small Folk didn’t have more than what was considered mischief magic, but even that kind of magic could become deadly when the Small Folk banded together. They hadn’t been able to stop the cleansing of the witches from the Old Places simply because they hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late. Even so, in Sylvalan they were a force to be reckoned with, and the Fae’s presence was stronger here as well. He had no doubt that this land could be cleansed of the magic that kept men from their rightful place as master and ruler, but the work was proving to be more dangerous here.

“The safety of Wolfram rests on our shoulders. We cannot put down the task we have been given. However, from now on, you must work in pairs so that you can keep watch for each other. You will continue your search for the witches. But seek only the witches. Do not concern yourselves with the females who embrace the witch’s ways and do not conduct themselves with proper chasteness and modesty. They have no true magic and can be dealt with later. Use the power of the Inquisitor’s Gift to seek out the real witches. Crush their magic swiftly, and go on before anything has time to rally against you. At the end of the summer, we will all meet again at Rivercross—and we will go home for the cold months of winter. We will go home to rest and regain our strength so that we may continue our great battle against the Evil One and his whores.”

He had said the right thing, Adolfo decided as he saw the determination in his Inquisitors’ eyes. They would cleanse the eastern border of Sylvalan to keep Wolfram, their homeland, safe. Then they would go home. And he would never tell them that it wasn’t consideration or concern for them that had decided him; it was the woman on the dark horse who had ridden out of the woods and snatched his nephew’s spirit from his body. He knew the stories about the Fae who were called Death’s Servants. They could guide a spirit that had already left the dead flesh, but they couldn’t take it while the flesh still lived. But there was one who was Death’s Mistress, one who could ride through a village and leave nothing but corpses in her wake. Having Death’s Servants picking around like crows on a battlefield was one thing; having the Gatherer become curious about the deaths around the Old Places was another.

So his men would do their work until the seasons changed, and then they would go home to a land where magic had been choked back to a whisper. Hopefully, by the time they returned in the spring, the Gatherer would have moved on to some other part of Sylvalan.