Powers of Detection

by Dana Stabenow

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” the Defender apologised. He was confused again. He looked at Anaya where she stood perfectly still. Her face was white, as if exhausted by plunging from hope to despair, and back again. Her shoulders drooped, as if the courage of a few moments ago had slipped from her. He had promised her that he would do his best, and so far he had been pathetic. He must do better.

  He took a step towards her, waving his hand. “We have heard that Anaya,” he used her name self-consciously, “liked to make Bertil laugh. She helped him in his work, because she was clever, and inventive. Is that true?” He knew that Enella would agree that it was, her husband had already said so, and she would never contradict him.

  “Yes,” she said unhappily.

  “She made new suggestions for efficiency and skill, things that had not been done before?” he pressed, beginning to see a tiny light of hope.

  There was only one possible answer, to have denied it would have been ridiculous. “Yes.”

  “So she was cleverer than Korah, or than any of you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Or you would have thought of them for yourselves, before she came?”

  “Well . . . yes, I suppose so.”

  The Defender was beginning to feel better. He looked at the Judge and saw a spark of hope in his eyes also, a slight straightening of his shoulders and easing of the muscles of his jaw. It gave him courage to go on. He felt less alone. “Surely it must be true?”

  Enella said nothing.

  The Defender was sorry for her, but he could not let her deny it.

  The Judge looked at her, his face gentle. “You must answer,” he told her.

  “Yes,” she said very quietly, her face filled with unhappiness.

  “Thank you,” the Defender acknowledged. “So Korah had to have seen it also?”

  “I don’t know!” It was a lie, and the scarlet guilt flooded up her face. She must have felt its heat. “I imagine she did.”

  “Perhaps she was angry? Could that be what the quarrel was about?”

  “I don’t know!” That was the literal truth, the letter of the law if not the spirit. She hid in the safety of that, looking to the Judge for protection, and from the easing of the rigidity of her body, believing she received it.

  The Defender thanked her and gave her leave to go.

  The Prosecutor called Korah, handsome, angry, thin-lipped. She walked into the Square knowing exactly what she was going to say. It had been sitting in her heart like a black weight since the first time she had seen Bertil laughing with Anaya and realised that while loyalty would hold him to Korah, but, if not yet, then soon, it would be Anaya he loved, Anaya who touched the man within and awoke his heart and his dreams. In that day her hatred was born.

  The Prosecutor faced her, arrogant and angry. She faced him squarely, meeting his eyes. He would not treat her as he had cowardly, obedient Enella. Korah was not funny or imaginative, or beautiful, but she understood people. She could see right through the façade, the pretences, to the weakness within. And the Judge would help. She had been watching him, the high, thin face, the tight mouth. He was just like her. He understood what it was like to be mocked, to be left out, even in your own home. He could see the need for justice. It was not revenge, it was what Anaya deserved, not for witchcraft—there was no such thing—but for theft.

  “Anaya is your brother’s widow, and after his death you took her in and gave her a home?” The Prosecutor was repeating the important facts, just to remind the crowd, and the Judge.

  “Yes, I did,” Korah answered. Never say more than you need to, that was the way to make mistakes.

  “And she repaid you by helping in the house and on the farm?”

  “Yes. She was very skilled at it.” Be generous. It sounded better than grudging praise. And it was the truth.

  “Better than you?”

  “In some ways, not in others.” Don’t let them see the envy. Don’t look at Anaya in case your thoughts are there in your face, in spite of all you can do. She looked instead at the Judge. He understood; it was obvious in his expression, the eyes, the lips. Perhaps he too had been betrayed? It must have been long ago. He was dried up now, desiccated, withered inside.

  The Prosecutor was talking again. “Was your husband a handsome man, charming?”

  “Yes.” Oh yes, that was true. “Everyone liked him. It was far more than looks. It was his manner, his honesty, his warmth, his laughter, his kindness.” All that was so painfully true. It hurt to say it now for all these prurient, superstitious people peering at her. Damn Anaya! They should burn her! Let her feel the fire on her body, consume her flesh and destroy it, even if they could not make it burn her soul on the inside.

  “So you were not surprised when your sister-in-law was attracted to him?”

  In spite of herself, Korah’s eyes were drawn to Anaya, and for an instant they looked at each other. Korah saw faith struggling with fear of pain, of failure, of utter loneliness, and victory was like honey on her tongue.

  “No,” she answered. “I believed she would honour her place as my sister and my guest. I had no idea she had . . . powers.”

  The Prosecutor had seen the exchange. “Bertil rejected her?” he asked.

  “Yes. He was very distressed by it. He found it grossly dishonourable. He was revolted.”

  “What did Anaya do?”

  Korah smiled very slightly, just a tiny movement of the lips. “She said that if he did not change his mind and come to her, then the barn roof would cave in and crush him to death.” No one could catch her out in that. They were not the exact words, but the meaning was the same. Timour had heard her say it, and he could testify. He was so transparently honest, everyone would believe him.

  “And did he change his mind?”

  There was a silence in the room as if no one breathed. The sunlight outside seemed a world away.

  “Of course not,” Korah said. “I don’t think he was afraid, but even if he had been, he would rather have died than give in to such a thing.”

  A hundred voices in the room murmured approval, and sympathy.

  Anaya stood with her eyes closed, as if needing to summon all her strength just to remain upright.

  “It seems we have lost an exceptionally fine man with his death,” the Prosecutor said with relish. “Perhaps evil always seeks to destroy that which is purest and best.”

  The Judge seemed about to say something. He drew in his breath, then let it out again in a sigh, as if some inner resolution had prevailed.

  “Finally, Mistress,” the Prosecutor said, “how long had that barn stood with that roof safe and secure?”

  “Seventy years.”

  “Thank you.” He looked smug, totally satisfied with himself.

  The Defender took his place. He seemed even more confused than before.

  “I have nothing to ask you.”

  She stood down, glancing at the Judge’s pinched, unhappy face, and for an instant seeing her own future in it, old and alone, eaten by bitterness and self-disgust. Then she drove it from her mind and returned to her seat beside Enella, but a coldness remained in the pit of her stomach.

  The Prosecutor called Timour, who confirmed all that Korah had said. He looked trustingly at the Defender as he approached. He felt sorry for all of them, especially Anaya. He had liked her, as he knew Bertil had. She had seemed funny and kind and brave. He had had no idea that she had any harm in her, still less that she had knowledge of the black arts. He still found it hard to believe. But he did know barns, and he knew oxen. He said as much when the Defender asked him.

  â�
��œOh yes. It’s my trade,” he agreed.

  “Did you see this barn after it had fallen in?”

  “Yes. I wanted to know what had happened. It’s important, in case it should happen again.” He looked at the Judge to see if he understood. He seemed to. He had the air of a brave man, not only a strength in his face but a gentleness as well, as if he expected the best in people. He was the sort of man Timour liked, wise without arrogance, kind without sentiment. “I saw it before, you see,” he explained. “They had been keeping oxen in it for a long time, my lord. Big beasts, and very heavy, very powerful. They like to lean against the posts and rub their backs, scratch them, as it were. If you don’t keep an eye on them, sooner or later they’ll dislodge the pole from its base. I warned Bertil about it. He was a good man, and my friend, but he did put things off.” He glanced at Stroban an apology. “I’m sorry, but that’s true. Anaya saw it, and she warned him too. But he was always going to do it tomorrow. I suppose when tomorrow finally came, it was too late.”

  There was silence for a moment, a realisation, a wakening from a dream both good and bad. It was the Judge who asked the question, not the Defender. “Could the ox have pushed against it while Bertil was there, and knocked it over when it was at the most vulnerable?”

  “I suppose it must have done,” Timour answered. “I ran out just as the roof buckled and caved in. I got bruised by some of the falling timbers. He should have put it out before he began to work, but he can’t have.”

  “Witchcraft!” Stroban cried out, rising to his feet, his face flushed. “It’s still her fault!”

  “No!” the Defender said with sudden strength, whirling round, his robe flying, his arm outstretched. “A man delayed mending his barn until the post was seriously weakened. It is a tragedy. It is not a crime.” He looked to the Judge, raising his eyes to the high seat, the dark runes carried in the wood. “My lord, I ask that you pronounce Anaya innocent of this poor man’s death, free these people of the fear of sorcery, and allow them to grieve for their loss without fear or blame. She did not threaten him, she warned him. And tragically, he did not listen. If he had done, we should not be here today mourning him, seeing witchcraft where there is only jealousy.”

  Stroban looked desperately at the Judge and saw a man filtered by the details of the law and unable to see the greater spirit of it, a man who understood loss but not love. He was a small man, who could in the end become a hollow man.

  Enella looked at the Judge and saw a man who kept to the safe path, always, wherever it led, upward or down, and there was an emptiness in it that nothing would fill.

  Korah saw what she had recognised before, only this time it was not for an instant. It would always be there, whether she looked at it or not.

  The Prosecutor was angry. He saw a Judge whose arrogance had allowed him to lose control of the court. He did not know how it had happened, or why victory had inexplicably become defeat.

  Timour and the Defender both saw an upsurge of optimism. Hope had come out of nowhere, and vanquished the error and despair.

  The Judge pronounced Anaya innocent. The court was dismissed, and people poured out into the dark, gulping the sweet air, leaving the room empty except for Anaya and the Judge.

  He moved his right hand very slightly, just two fingers from the surface of the bench. The chains fell away. She stood free, rubbing her wrists and stretching her aching shoulders.

  “You did well,” he said quietly. He was smiling.

  “I doubted,” she answered. It was a confession.

  “Of course you did,” he agreed, and as he spoke his face changed, it became wiser, stronger, passion and laughter burned in it, and an indescribable gentleness. “If it were easy, it would be worth little. You have not yet perfected faith. Do not expect so much of yourself. For lessons learned hastily or without pain are worthless.”

  “Will they understand?” she asked.

  “That they were the ones on trial, and that the judgement was your own? Oh yes. In time. Whether they will pay the cost of change is another thing. But there is love, and there is hope. We are far from the end.” His cloak shimmered and began to dissolve. She could no longer see his shoulders, only his strong, slender hands and his face. “Now I have another charge for you.”

  She looked at him, at the white fire around him. All she could distinguish was his smile, and his voice, and a great peace shone within her. “Yes?”

  The Sorcerer’s Assassin

  SHARON SHINN

  When you work at a school for mages, I’ve learned, it’s wise never to leave your room unless you’ve cloaked yourself in a reflecting spell. That way, as you walk the long, high corridors of arched stone and stained glass, you can feel relatively safe in the knowledge that rancorous or embarrassing spells aimed your way (accidentally or otherwise) will simply bounce off your own enchantment and go sticking onto the perpetrator instead. I can’t tell you the number of students I’ve passed in these halls who have suddenly bloomed into a seven-foot-tall lotus or shrunk to an agitated frog. Yes, of course, I could with little effort reverse any such hex cast on me, but it’s so much easier to saunter out into the world knowing I am immune from ill-trained apprentices or maliciously inclined pranksters.

  Professor Morben, it was clear, had come to class that morning garbed in no such protection.

  I stopped at the doorway of the wide, clean room where he taught Illusions and Transmogrification. Ten or twelve students were huddled against the back wall, wearing their lilac apprentice’s robes and looking totally devoid of magic. Professors Dernwerd and Audra were standing over a shape that looked very much like a man who had crumpled to the floor. Dernwerd’s thin gray hair was standing up any old which way, as if he had been summoned from the mirror before completing his personal grooming. Audra, of course, looked perfect as always, her dark red hair wound into a tight bun, her gold robes hanging precisely over her sharp, narrow shoulders.

  They both looked up at me when I stepped into the room. “He’s dead, Camalyn,” Dernwerd said in a shaky voice.

  I was briefly annoyed. How many times had I told the other teachers to address me as “Headmistress,” at least in front of the students? Then the words registered. “Dead?” I repeated. “Morben? Is dead? That’s not possible!”

  Audra looked at me with her cool green eyes. She’s only a couple of decades younger than I am, but she looks at least fifty years my junior, and that’s only one of the many things I can’t stand about her. “Take a look for yourself,” she invited. “But I wouldn’t advise you to get too close until we’ve ascertained what happened.”

  I crossed the room in the stately way I’ve cultivated and came to a halt a few feet away from the corpse. Yes, there could be no doubt about it. Morben was dead. His face had a riven, petrified look, his mouth gaped in a silent scream, and his eyes gazed up at some unbearable horror. His hands were clenched around his throat as if to choke out his own life or claw at spectral hands bent on that very task. He did not move or breathe or radiate any life heat at all.

  I had hated the man, but I had certainly never expected him to come to an end like this. I stared down at him. “What happened to him?”

  Dernwerd gestured at the students. “They said he was in the middle of a class on Transmogrification when he suddenly started shrieking and pointing at something on the ceiling. They all looked, of course, but didn’t see a thing there. Then he started grabbing at his neck and contorting all around as though someone was squeezing the life out of him. Then he dropped to the floor and he died. In minutes, they said.”

  I glanced back at the students, a room away but obviously listening to every word. �
�€œIs that true?”

  They looked at each other and nodded. “Just like he said,” confirmed one girl who looked about twelve. I know that magic folk age differently than mortals do, and I’m 105 myself, so everyone looks young to me, but I cannot believe we are now admitting children to the school. She was probably eighteen and a very knowing girl, but she looked so young and so innocent that I moved a little to shield her eyes from a view of the body. “He screamed and screamed, until he started choking, then he kept making these terrible little grunting sounds. Like he was trying to tell us something. But we couldn’t see anything. We couldn’t do anything. It happened so fast.”

  I looked back at Morben, ghastly and terrified. What could possibly have killed one of the most powerful wizards in the kingdom? Despite Audra’s caution to stand clear of the body, I had decided to take a pace closer when the corpse abruptly disintegrated into a smoking pile of black ash. I stepped back hurriedly and brushed some cinder from my sleeve.

  “I think we’d better cancel classes for the day,” I said, keeping my voice steady to disguise my sudden shakiness. “Time to convene a council of mages.”

  -

  The Norwitch Academy of Magic and Sorcery had been founded three centuries ago and enjoyed great prestige and prosperity ever since. I was the seventh wizard to ascend to the top position in the school, a feat I had accomplished thirty-eight years before, and the first to preside over an investigation of murder. Not a distinction I particularly wished to claim.

  A staff of twenty professors reported to me, and between us we taught a student body of four hundred students. A countless number of cooks, laundresses, gardeners, and stableboys also lived on the premises, making sure life at the school ran smoothly. Thus, in theory, there were close to five hundred suspects in this unsettling murder case.

  In actuality, however, the number could be narrowed down to five without any trouble at all. There were, in the entire kingdom, only half a dozen wizards with the knowledge and power to cast a death spell that actually worked. All six of them worked at the Academy, and one was now dead.