He felt a sharp pain in his ankle. One of the clawed skeleton hands had grasped his boot like a vise. With a vicious kick, he flung it aside, then ducked as another ancient warrior charged at him. He realized he was yelling. He could barely see through the thick, almost palpable light around him.
Nathan lost track of his movements. He was in a wild fighting fury. Something about the magic of the bloodglass, the violence and the slaughter that permeated the history of this place, possessed him. He had no choice but to fight, to kill as many of these enemies as possible before his own blood stained the floorboards, before his own body lay here among the ancient dead, until he slowly became a skeleton just like them.
He charged across the platform, seeing enemies that were no more than crimson shadows, and he heard a shattering of glass like a crystalline scream. He whirled and attacked and slashed, but he couldn’t see the result. He struck and shattered, struck and shattered. His blood and his sword seemed to know what to do.
The hard clang and sharp shock of his steel against stone jarred him enough to dissipate the red glare around his vision. His trance was broken. The enemy was gone.
Exhausted, Nathan heaved great breaths. His arms trembled. The blood from his cut hand ran down the hilt and onto the blade—but that was the only blood he saw. When he blinked, the air cleared to reveal bright yellow sunlight again and open air. The bloodglass was gone.
In his fury, Nathan had shattered the remaining panes. The red windows no longer looked out onto visions of slaughter and murder, only onto an open landscape in the slanted afternoon light. The spectral army and the remnants from centuries-old wars had faded, and the spell from the bloodglass was destroyed.
He had been fighting against illusions. The skeletons lay broken and strewn about, and he couldn’t say if they had actually been reanimated, or if he had just been doing battle with his own nightmares.
He stood for a long time, catching his breath, shaking with weariness. Then he forced a smile. “That was an adventure. Quite exciting.” With his wounded hand he wiped sweat from his forehead, not caring that it left a smear of blood across his face.
He was alone in the tower, and the wind whispering through the broken glass sounded like the distant scream of ghosts.
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.”