The Adjudicator pulled open the folds of the black robe to expose his bare chest and an amulet: a golden triangular plate carved with ornate loops, arcane symbols, and spell-forms surrounding a deep red garnet. The amulet hung by a thin golden chain around his neck.
But the amulet was no longer just an ornament—the golden triangle had fused to his flesh. The skin of his chest had bubbled and scarred around it, as if someone had pressed hot metal hard into skin like pliable candle wax and let the flesh harden around it. Parts of the chain had cut into the Adjudicator’s collarbone and the tendons of his neck, becoming permanently bonded there. The central garnet glowed with a deep simmering fire of magic.
Bannon gasped. “What happened to you?”
“I became the Adjudicator.” His stony, accusing stare turned toward the young man. “For years, the crimes I judged were mostly small—assaults, thievery, arson, adultery. Sometimes there were murders or rapes, but it was here in Lockridge…” He looked up, and his water-blue gaze skated past them, over their heads, as if he was calling upon the spirits. “It was here that I changed.
“There was a mother, Reva, who had three fine daughters, the oldest eight years old, the youngest only three. The mother was lovely in her own way, as were the little girls, but her husband desired another woman. Ellis was his name. He cheated on his wife, and when Reva learned of the affair, she became convinced that it was her fault—that she paid too much attention to their three daughters and not enough to her husband. Reva was desperate to regain his love.” He made a disgusted sound. “She was mad.
“So, Reva smothered her three daughters in their sleep, to make sure that they would no longer come between her and Ellis. She thought he would love her more. When he came home that night, after his furtive passions with his mistress, Reva proudly showed him what she had done. She opened her arms and told him that her time and her heart now belonged only to him again.
“When Ellis saw their three dead daughters, he took a hatchet from the firewood pile and killed his wife, chopping her sixteen times.”
The Adjudicator’s expression didn’t change as he told his story. “And when I came to judge Ellis, I touched the center of his forehead. We all thought we knew what had happened. I called upon the power in my amulet, and I learned the full story. I learned his thoughts and his black, poisoned heart. I already knew the horrors of his wife’s crimes, but then I discovered what this man had done. Yes, he had killed his wife after she had killed his daughters. There was no question as to the murder Ellis had committed, but some even sympathized with him.
“Not I. I found within Ellis a most poisonous guilt, because he had not truly killed Reva out of horror that she had murdered their girls, as we all expected. No, I saw in Ellis’s heart that he was actually pleased to have the nuisance of his family gone, and he used it as an excuse to be rid of his unwanted wife as well as his children. He thought he would get away with it.
“As that guilt flooded into me, those crimes charged the amulet. The magic grew stronger, and I unleashed it with wild abandon. I was angry and sickened. I made Ellis feel the guilt. I made him experience that moment of the greatest, most intense, horror. It rose to the front of his mind, and I froze it there. I turned him to stone in that instant as he experienced the most intense, most painful guilt of his life, reliving that appalling moment.”
The Adjudicator let out a long sigh. “And releasing that magic freed me.” The wizard touched the scar where the amulet had fused to the flesh of his chest. “I became not just a magistrate, not merely one who uncovered the truth of the accused. I became the Adjudicator.” His voice grew deeper and much more ominous. “I have to protect these lands. That is my charge. I am to find anyone who is guilty. I cannot allow travelers to pass over the mountains into the fertile valley beyond. I must stop the spread of guilt.”
Bannon swallowed audibly and took a step backward, holding up his sword.
Nicci didn’t move, though she remained poised to fight. “And you judged all of these people as well?”
“All of them.” The Adjudicator turned his chilling, watery gaze on her. “Only those without guilt can be allowed to proceed.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what is your guilt, Sorceress?”
Nicci was defiant. “My guilt is none of your business.”
For the first time she saw the Adjudicator’s thin, pale lips twitch, in what might have been the distant shadow of a smile. “Ah, but it is.” The garnet in his amulet glowed.
She reacted by reaching inside herself, ready to release the coiling magic, but she suddenly found that she couldn’t. Her feet were frozen in place. Her legs were locked. Her arms refused to bend.
Bannon gasped. “What’s … happening?”
“I am the Adjudicator.” He took a step closer. The fused amulet throbbed in his chest. “The punishment I have decreed for all criminals is that they must experience their moment of greatest guilt. Continually. I will petrify you at that exquisite point, so that you face that worst moment for as long as time shall last.”
Nicci’s legs felt cold, leaden. She couldn’t turn her head, but from the corner of her eye she saw her arm, her black dress, everything becoming white. Becoming stone.
“You have nothing to fear, if you are blameless,” said the man. “You will be judged, and I am fair. I am the Adjudicator.”
He stepped toward them, and Nicci tried to find a way to fight, to summon her magic, but her vision dimmed. A buzzing roar built in her mind, as if her head were filled with thousands of swarming bees.
Though she could barely see him, she heard the grim wizard’s words. “Alas, in all these lands, I have yet to find someone without guilt.”
CHAPTER 32
As the Adjudicator’s magic closed around her like a clenching fist, Nicci struggled, but her body wouldn’t move and her brain felt as if it had fossilized from the core outward. She could hardly think. She was trapped.
The dark wizard must have sensed her own powerful gift, because he struck in a way that she could not resist, with a spell she had never previously encountered. Her flesh tightened, hardened, and crystallized her body. Time itself seemed to stop. The warm tones of her skin turned to cold gray-white marble. She felt her lungs crush, her bones grow impossibly heavy.
Vision dimmed as her eyes petrified. Her blue irises crackled, hardened … and with the last hint of vision she saw young Bannon with his long red hair and his pale, freckled face. His expression had often been so innocent, so cheerful and unscarred by reality, that it set Nicci on edge. Now, though, his face filled with despair and misery. His mouth dropped open, his lips curled back, and even though her own ears roared with the sound of encroaching silence, she thought she heard him say “… kittens…” before he became completely fossilized, the sculpture of a man buried under an avalanche of unbearable grief and guilt.
When Nicci’s vision faded, all she was able to see were the nightmarish remnants of her own past actions. Her memories rose up, as if they, too, were preserved in perfectly carved stone. Horrific, tense memories.
* * *
Shaken from his encounter with the spectral army that manifested through the bloodglass, Nathan left the watchtower. Alone and wary, he made his way through the darkening, sinister forest as the sun fell below the line of hills.
He hadn’t expected his side trip to take so long, but the experience had been valuable for what he had
seen and learned, in a historical sense if nothing else. These lands of the Old World were soaked with the blood of centuries of warfare, petty warlords turning against one another after the great barrier was erected to seal off the New World during the ancient wizard wars. Reading history was one thing; experiencing it was quite another.
He picked his way through the increasing shadows, heading back in the direction of the faint road they had been following, but Nathan feared he would walk right past the trail in the deepening twilight.
Much as he would have liked to join Nicci and Bannon in a town, hoping for a fine inn and hot food, he decided to make camp where he was. He was eager to tell his companions about the sentinel tower, and just as eager to sample the local ale. Instead, he would have to spend the night alone in the forest. “Not all parts of an adventure have to be charming and enjoyable,” he said aloud.
He found a quiet clearing under a large elm tree, where he could use his pack as a pillow. As he sat under the branches and the night grew darker and colder, he pondered his lack of magic and what had happened when he had tried to practice en route to the tower. Right now, looking at the pile of dry sticks he had assembled, he could not help but think how it would have been so simple to make a cheery campfire, if he had magic to light the spark. He had never been good at using flint and steel. He didn’t have the patience or the skill; when had Nathan Rahl ever needed it, if he could simply twitch a finger and light a fire?
Resigned, he ate cold pack food and wrapped himself in his brown cape from Renda Bay for warmth, then bedded down to a restless, uncomfortable sleep. The homespun linen shirt that had belonged to Phillip also kept him warm.
He set off at first light, bushwhacking through low saplings and shrubbery, heading instinctively in the right direction, and when he finally encountered the main path, he felt a sudden flush of satisfaction. Now that he was back on the road again, he could catch up with Nicci and Bannon. According to the map, a sizable town—Lockridge—should be only a few miles ahead.