The Third Kingdom

CHAPTER 19

“What do you mean, we’re all running out of time?” Richard asked.

She took a deep breath as she gathered her thoughts. “Well, there were other gifted people here, but they’re all gone, now, so I guess that no matter how ill prepared I am for the task, it’s up to me to explain it all to you.”

“There were other gifted here? You mean besides your mother?” When she nodded, he asked, “So what happened to them?”

“I had three aunts, all gifted. Two were my mother’s sisters, the other was my father’s sister. They were all sorceresses serving our people.

“My father’s sister, Clarice, was much older. She had never married. While among the gifted here in Stroyza there is no official leader, as such, it always seemed that she was our matriarch. She was the elder gifted and everyone deferred to her judgment. It had been that way my whole life. It seemed the natural order of things.

“Some time back, a little over a year and a half ago, she was found dead in the woods not far from here. People assumed that she must have died because she was old. Everyone in Stroyza was shaken by her passing.”

“Did she really die of natural causes?”

“I don’t know. At the time we all thought so—we didn’t have reason to suspect anything else. Now, I’m not so sure.

“After she died, people turned to my mother to fill Clarice’s place.” Samantha gestured around at the room. “That was when we moved in here. These quarters are where the foremost of the gifted of our village lives. It’s an ancient tradition that is part of our ways.

“Not long after Clarice’s death, when my parents and I moved in here, we first started hearing rumors of people encountering a strange woman with her lips sewn shut. It was only later that we found out that she was called Jit the Hedge Maid and that she had a strange lair in Kharga Trace. We didn’t know where she’d come from or even how long she had been back in the Trace. We weren’t even sure of exactly what she was.

“From traders passing through here who visited many of the people of the Dark Lands, we heard all kinds of rumors about Jit. Some thought she was death come among us, marking the end of time. Some thought she had remarkable, even miraculous abilities to heal those who could not otherwise be healed.

“My mother was able to learn that Jit used some kind of magic that was unlike ours, some kind of occult power that we had never encountered before.” Samantha looked up at his eyes to make sure he was paying attention. “Some kind of magic that could maybe do things we never knew could be done, like maybe make the dead walk again.”

“You mean like those walking corpses who attacked the other night?”

Samantha nodded. “There were rumors of such things, of bodies stolen from graves. Rumors of the dead walking the Dark Lands.”

Richard wondered if Jit was the one who had reanimated and sent the dead men to attack the village. He wondered, even though he had killed the Hedge Maid, if there were more of her dead minions wandering the countryside.

“My two aunts Martha and Millicent were convinced that Jit could be nothing less than some kind of evil creature that had escaped from beyond the north wall.”

Richard leaned forward. “The north wall?”

Samantha briefly gestured in that direction. “I’ll get to that. Anyway, after they’d heard enough worrisome stories, my parents, two aunts, and their husbands all decided that since we were the closest village to Kharga Trace and were the ones potentially most at risk, we needed to investigate and find out the truth.

“Aunt Martha’s husband was gifted. Not a wizard, as was explained to me—I’ve never met a real wizard, neither has anyone I know. Aunt Millicent’s husband Gyles was supposedly gifted as well, but in a different way. He was mostly given to small prophecies, or at least so he said. No one much believed him, though. My mother humored his claims.

“But Uncle Gyles was one of those who had long been warning of a dark force he said would one day come into the Dark Lands. Then we heard about Jit having built a lair in the Trace. Gyles thought it was proof of his prophetic abilities.

“My mother always said that if you predicted rain long enough, sooner or later you would get wet and be proven right. She said that there were good times in life and bad, and if you predicted bad, you would eventually be proven right, but if you predicted it loud enough, you would be proven a prophet.”

Richard smiled at that. He had always thought much the same thing.

“What kind of stories were your people hearing about Jit?” he asked before he became lost in the family tree.

Samantha shrugged. “The stories were mostly whispered to my parents and aunts and uncles behind closed doors. My mother never told me what was said, but I knew that she was concerned.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“No. I knew better. When my parents wanted me to know something, they told me. If they didn’t tell me, I knew that meant I wasn’t to ask, that it was an adult matter. The six of them—my parents, both aunts, and both uncles—discussed such matters privately, between themselves. Especially if it was a decision about the safety of our people.”

“The gifted rule here, then? Even if informally?”

“Not exactly.” Samantha squinted in thought, looking for the words. “The gifted have always been the ones people of Stroyza turned to. I don’t know that you would say they rule, exactly. We’re a small place, not an empire, and it never much seemed that we needed someone to rule. Maybe to settle arguments, occasionally, but not really to rule.

“It’s always been more like the people here respect the gifted and seek their advice, much like people respect elders and seek advice from them, but don’t necessarily want to be ruled by them. When something needed deciding, people would often come to one of the gifted—my parents or aunts and uncles—seeking advice, and on occasion, a decision.”

“You mean like when we were first brought here, they sent for you because they respect your ability, but they wouldn’t expect you to think you could rule them.”

Samantha smiled at the analogy. “I guess that’s a good way to put it. So in this matter that seemed to somehow involve magic, the gifted decided among themselves that Aunt Martha and her husband, since he was gifted too, would go look into what was happening in Kharga Trace, what this Hedge Maid really was, and what she might be up to back in that swamp.

“Last fall, when the water level was at its lowest, Aunt Martha and her husband set out for the Trace to look into it.”

“And they never came back,” Richard guessed when she brooded silence for a moment.

Samantha confirmed his suspicion with a shake of her head. “Our people searched, but my aunt and uncle were never found. The wilderness of the Dark Lands is vast so they couldn’t search everywhere, of course. More than that, though, people were afraid to go too far into the uncharted depths of the dark swamp of Kharga Trace.

“Then, this past spring, someone found their remains when the overflow of spring waters washed them out of the swamp.”

Richard knew that there couldn’t have been much left of the bodies. He tried to ask a gruesome question as gently as possible.

“After all that time, being out in the swamp and all, how could you be sure it was them?”

Samantha lifted a hand in a forlorn gesture. “My mother identified their bones. She said that the bones carried the telltale trace of the Grace—of the gift—and she recognized it as that of her sister.”

Samantha stared at her hands nested in her lap. “She also said that she could read in the bones that they had died a violent death. She said they had been murdered.”

Richard wondered if it was true that a gifted person could actually tell such things from bones, or if it had been grief speaking, trying to find blame. He didn’t know enough about the gift to know the answer to that question.

He did know, though, that the Dark Lands were a dangerous place, and Kharga Trace certainly more so. He had been warned about going into the Dark Lands by soldiers who grew up in that mysterious part of D’Hara. Given everything he knew, not only of the warnings he had heard, but his own experience, it was not at all unreasonable to believe that Samantha’s aunt and uncle had been murdered.

“Not long after,” Samantha said, “my other gifted aunt, Aunt Millicent, and her husband Gyles, were taken away by soldiers from the abbey.”

Richard frowned in surprise. “The abbey?”

“Yes, it’s a distant place off somewhere near the city of Saavedra. It’s run by Abbot Dreier. It’s a place that has something to do with collecting prophecy for Hannis Arc, who rules Fajin Province from his citadel in Saavedra.”

“What do you know about this place, this abbey?”

“Not much at all, really, other than that they collect prophecy, like I told you. I’m not sure anyone knows much about it. No one likes to talk about the abbey, or the citadel.”

Richard knew Abbot Ludwig Dreier, but he didn’t say so. Ludwig Dreier had stirred up trouble about prophecy at the People’s Palace. He had, in fact, turned a number of lands away from their alliance with the D’Haran Empire in favor of throwing their lot in with Hannis Arc, who promised to share prophecy with them, and reveal its secrets.

“Any idea why they would pick out your aunt and uncle to go to the abbey?” he asked.

Samantha idly rubbed the edge of the chair. “I don’t know, for sure. But Uncle Gyles was the one I told you about who claimed to have a bit of the gift for prophecy. Maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe they wanted him to speak of what prophecy says about our future.

“All I know for sure is that soldiers showed up and said that Aunt Millicent and Uncle Gyles had to go with them. The soldiers said that because they were gifted, they had been chosen to go to the abbey to help with prophecy. They said that it was for the good of the people of Fajin Province, that prophecy belonged to all the people.”

“And they never returned after helping with prophecy?”

By the way Samantha looked down as she shook her head, Richard got the point that no one ever returned from the abbey. He wondered why.

“That left my mother as the only gifted person left in Stroyza.”

“There’s you,” Richard said. “You’re gifted.”

Samantha shrugged one shoulder. “I guess. I guess I should say it left my mother as the only adult gifted person in Stroyza. Now, she is gone. That means the ancient duty we were given has fallen to me.”

Richard didn’t think he liked the sound of that. He flicked a piece of straw off his pant leg.

“Do you know what the name of your village, your people, means? What ‘Stroyza’ means?”

Samantha pushed back some of her black hair as she frowned up at him. “No. I thought it was just a name. I never heard anyone say that it meant anything.”

“It’s a High D’Haran word.”

“High D’Haran is an ancient, dead language. No one today understands High D’Haran.”

“I do.”

“Really?” Intrigued, she leaned in. “So what does it mean, then?”

“It means ‘sentinel.’”

Samantha’s smile ghosted away as her face lost its color.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered.

“Does that word in an ancient language have something to do with your ancient duty?” Richard asked.

Her eyes beginning to brim with tears, Samantha nodded.

“That’s what my mother had been doing. She had been keeping watch. My parents left Stroyza to report what she had seen, but she was never able to complete that duty. They didn’t make it far when my father was killed. My mother is missing and I fear that she has also been murdered.”

“We don’t know that, yet,” Richard said. “What was she watching?”

Samantha gestured toward the door with the Grace carved into it. “I need to show you.”