Nathan felt the magic squirming within him, ducking away like a snake slithering into a thicket. What did it matter if he unleashed it now and the spell backfired? What greater harm could it cause than the harm he was already facing? Even Nicci had been trapped in stone, and Bannon, poor Bannon, was already paralyzed in endless anguish.
Nathan had nothing to lose. No matter what unexpected backlash his magic might trigger, if he could release it and strike back, even in some awkward way, at least that would be something.
His lungs crushed down as the stone weight of guilt squeezed him, suffocated him, but he managed to gasp out some words. “I am Nathan … Nathan the prophet.” He caught one more fractional breath, one more gasp of words. “Nathan the wizard!”
The magic crawled out of him like a fanged eel startled from a dark underwater alcove. Nathan released it, not knowing what it would do … not caring. It lashed out, uncontrolled.
He heard and felt a white-hot sizzle building within his body. For a moment he was sure that his own form would explode, that his skull would erupt with uncontained power.
In front of him, the statue of Nicci seemed to be changing, softening, with countless eggshell cracks all over the white stone that had captured her perfection. Nathan didn’t think he was doing it. His own magic was here … boiling out—and spraying like scalding oil on the Adjudicator.
The grim wizard recoiled, staggering backward. “What are you doing?” He raised a hand and clapped the other to his amulet. “No!”
The petrification spell that the Adjudicator had wrapped around Nathan like a smothering cloak now slipped off of him, ricocheted and combined with Nathan’s wild magic. Reacting, backfiring.
The dour man straightened, then convulsed in horror. His lantern jaw dropped open, and his expression fell into abject despair. His water-blue eyes began to turn white, and his robe stiffened, changing to stone. “I am the Adjudicator!” he cried. “I am the judge. I see the guilt…”
With a crackling, shattering sound, Nicci fought her way out of her own fossilization, somehow using her powers. Nathan’s vision became sharper as he felt the intrusive stone drain out of his body like sand through an hourglass. His flesh softened, his blood pumped again.
Nathan’s unchecked magic likewise thrashed and curled and whipped. The Adjudicator writhed and screamed as he gradually froze in place, even his robe turning to marble.
“You. Are. Guilty!” Nathan said to the transforming Adjudicator when he could breathe again. “Your crime is that you judged all these people.”
Stone engulfed the Adjudicator, crackling up through his skin, stiffening the lids around his wide-open eyes. “No!” It wasn’t a denial, but a horror, a realization. “What have I done?” His voice became scratchier, rougher as his throat hardened and his chest solidified so that he couldn’t breathe. “All those people!” The stone locked his face in an expression of immeasurable regret and shame, his mouth open as he uttered one last, incomplete “No!” He became the newest statue in the town of Lockridge.
Staring at the stone figure, Nathan felt his rampant magic dissipate. Just like that, it was no longer available to his touch. He sucked in a deep breath and felt life flow through him again.
CHAPTER 33
When the Adjudicator himself turned to stone, his spell shattered and dissipated throughout the town.
No longer petrified, Nicci slowly straightened and let out a long breath, half expecting to see an exhalation of dust from her lungs. Her blond hair and the skin of her neck became supple again, the fabric of her black dress flowed. She lifted her arms, looked at her hands.
Through her own determination, she had broken the fossilization spell that ran throughout herself, but Nathan had defeated the farther-reaching stranglehold of the twisted Adjudicator. Now, the old wizard flexed his arms and stamped his legs to restore his circulation. He shook his head, bewildered.
Nearby, the statue of Bannon, his expression locked in guilty despair, slowly suffused with color. His pink skin, rusty freckles, and ginger hair were restored. Instead of being amazed to find himself alive again, though, Bannon dropped to his knees in the town square and let out a keening wail. His shoulders shook, and he bowed his head, sobbing.
Nathan tried to comfort the distraught young man, patting him on the shoulder, although he did not speak. Stepping close to Bannon, Nicci softened her voice. “We are safe now. Whatever you experienced was your past. It is who you were, not who you are. You need have no guilt about who you are.” She guessed that he continued to suffer over losing his friend Ian to the slavers.
But, why had he uttered the word “kittens” as he turned to stone?
In the streets and square around them, a low crackle slowly grew to a rumble accompanied by a stirring of breezes that sounded like astonished whispers. Nicci turned around and saw the villagers trapped in stone by the Adjudicator’s brutal justice: one by one, they began to move.
As the gathered, tortured sculptures were restored to flesh, they remained overwhelmed by the nightmarish memories they had endured for so long. Then the sobbing and wailing began, rising to a cacophony of the damned. These people were too caught up in their own ordeal to look around and realize they had been released from the terrible spell.
Bannon finally climbed back to his feet, his eyes red and puffy, his face streaked with tears. “We’re safe now,” he said, as if he could comfort the villagers. “It’ll be all right.”
Some of the people of Lockridge heard him, but most were too stunned to understand. Husbands and wives found each other and embraced, clinging in desperate hugs. Wailing children ran to their parents to be swept into the warm comfort of a stable family again.
The disoriented villagers finally became aware of the three strangers among them. One man introduced himself as Lockridge mayor Raymond Barre. “I speak for the people of this town.” He looked from Nicci, to Nathan, to Bannon. “Are you the ones who saved us?”
“We are,” Nathan said. “We were just travelers looking for directions and a warm meal.”
With growing anger, the townspeople noticed the grotesque, horror-struck statue of the Adjudicator. Nicci indicated the stone figure of the corrupted man. “A civilization must have laws, but there cannot be justice when a man with no conscience metes out sentences without compassion or mercy.”
Bannon said, “If each one of us carries that guilt, then we are living our sentences every day. How can I ever forget…?”
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“None of us will forget,” said Mayor Barre. “And none of us will forget you, strangers. You saved us.”
Other townspeople came forward. An innkeeper wore an apron stained from a meal he had served an unknown number of years before. Farmers and grocers stared at the ramshackle appearance of the village, at their broken-down vendor stalls, the remnants of rotted fruits and vegetables, the dilapidated shutters around the windows of the inn, the collapsed roof on the livery, the hay in the barn turned gray with age.
“How long has it been?” asked a woman whose dark brown hair had fallen out of its unruly bun. She wiped her hands on her skirts. “Last I remember, it was spring. Now it seems to be summer.”
“But summer of which year?” asked the blacksmith. He gestured toward the hinges on the nearby door of a dilapidated barn. “Look at the rust.”
Nathan told them the year, by D’Haran reckoning, but these villagers so far south in the wilderness of the Old World still followed the calendar of an ancient emperor, so the date meant nothing to them. They didn’t even remember Jagang or the march of the Imperial Order.
Although he was as overwhelmed as the rest of his people, Mayor Barre called everyone into the town square, where Nicci and Nathan helped explain what had happened. Each victim remembered his or her own experience with the Adjudicator, and most recalled earlier times when the traveling magistrate had come to judge their petty criminals and impose reasonable sentences—before the magic had engulfed him, before the amulet and his gift had turned him into a monster.
One mother holding the hands of a small son and daughter walked up to the petrified statue of the evil man. She stood silent for a moment, her expression roiling with hate, before she spat on the white marble. Others came up and did the same.
Then the innkeeper suggested they use the blacksmith’s steel hammers and chisels to smash the Adjudicator’s statue into fragments of stone. Nicci gave them a solemn nod. “I will not stop you from doing so.”