The Witch Hunter

by Virginia Boecker

  “Blackwell didn’t spend much time tucking me in and reading me bedtime stories, so no. I’ve never heard of it.”

  Schuyler raises his eyebrows. “Funny. Because it was Blackwell who hired me to bring it to him.”

  Fifer and I exchange a rapid glance.

  “Perhaps hired is the wrong word,” Schuyler continues. “I think his exact words were ‘bring it to me or I’ll drag you to the gallows in chains, hang you ’til you’re near gone, then slit you from breath to belly, pull out your innards and set them alight while you watch—’ ”

  “Stop,” Fifer whispers, her face ashen. “Stop.”

  “What does Blackwell want with this sword?” I say.

  “They say this sword is the most powerful of its kind in existence,” Schuyler replies. “It can cut through anything. Stone, steel, bone—” He breaks off with a nasty grin. “They say whoever possesses it can never be defeated. Not by weapons, not by magic, not by anything.”

  “The most powerful of its kind in existence?” Fifer glances at the sword. “What kind?”

  Schuyler flashes her a look. “The cursed kind, of course.”

  Fifer lets out a squeak.

  “You can’t be cursed just by holding it,” he says. “You have to use it. That’s how the sword works. The more you use it, the more powerful you become, until you’re invincible. That’s when the curse takes hold.”

  “How so?” I say.

  “The sword starts to take its power back. It gets stronger, the man weaker, until he’s dependent upon it to survive. Once our knight here realized that, it was too late. Because the only way to get rid of the curse is to get rid of the sword. And the only way to do that is to lose it in battle. Only he couldn’t do it. He was too powerful.”

  I’m drawn into the story despite myself.

  “So how did it end up here?”

  “Dying with the sword is the only other way to break the curse,” Schuyler says. “So the knight found a witch, had her entomb him here, even had her put a spell on it so that no one could free him as long as he was still alive. I suppose that was in case he changed his mind.”

  I give an involuntary shudder.

  “What does Blackwell want with a cursed sword?” Fifer says.

  Schuyler shrugs. “I don’t think he cares about being cursed. At least not as much as he cares about being invincible.”

  “You can’t let him have it,” I say.

  “Interesting request, coming from a witch hunter,” Schuyler says.

  “She’s right,” Fifer says. “You can’t.”

  “You want me to die?” he fires back.

  “Of course not!”

  “What would you have me do, then?”

  “Leave it! Just leave it and walk away.”

  “And go where? If I don’t bring him this sword—”

  “You might live,” Fifer says. “But if you bring it to him, he’ll kill you anyway. Surely you know that.”

  “He gave me his word,” Schuyler says.

  Fifer whirls to face me. “Elizabeth, what do you say to that? What is Blackwell’s word worth?”

  I hesitate. I was loyal to Blackwell for so long that even now—even after he threw me in jail and sentenced me and turned his back on me, after he lied to me—I still hesitate to speak against him.

  So I just shake my head.

  Schuyler swears under his breath.

  “And is that what you really want?” Fifer continues. “For Blackwell to become invincible?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” Schuyler says. “I have to do this.”

  “No, you don’t!”

  Schuyler marches toward us. Eyes narrowed, reaching for the sword. A thrill of fear rushes through me as I reach over, plunge my hand into the bag of salt hanging at Fifer’s waist, and fling a handful of it in Schuyler’s face.

  He lets out an agonized shriek—uncomfortably reminiscent of the sound that ghoul made when I threw salt on him, too—and falls to the ground, covering his face and rolling around, his movements slow and sluggish from the salt.

  Fifer looks momentarily stunned. She grabs another handful and flings it at him, then drops beside him and pulls out a fistful of something green and sweet-smelling—Is that peppermint?—shoving it down his shirt, into his boots, even down his trousers. Eventually Schuyler stops moaning and falls still.

  She puts her mouth to his ear. “I’m doing this for your own good,” she whispers. Then she jumps to her feet. “We’ve got about twenty minutes before he comes to. Believe me, we want to be long gone before he does. So grab that torch and let’s go.” Clutching the sword, she dashes to the door and slips through the opening.

  I retract the knife and slip it into my boot. As I pass the tomb to get the torch, I pause to look. Inside is the perfectly preserved body of a knight. True to his name, he’s completely green: green hair, green skin—even his armor is green.

  Fascinating.

  Fifer sticks her head back in the door. “Elizabeth!”

  “Coming.” I snatch the torch off the wall, and, as I pull away, the flame lights up the stone slab enclosing the knight’s tomb, and I notice something I didn’t see before. Markings. Etchings of some sort. Some are letters, some symbols. Runic alphabet, I suppose, very ancient magic. I don’t understand them, though their meaning is clear enough: This knight was buried beneath a curse tablet.

  I slip out the door, and Fifer and I start running, out of the tunnel, over the stones, and down the hill.

  “That was quick thinking,” Fifer says. “With the salt. I thought we were done for.”

  “What was that you stuck in his trousers? Was that peppermint?”

  She nods. “It gives him terrible hives. He’ll be covered in a rash for weeks. And in a very painful place, too.”

  I start laughing then. I can’t help it. After a moment, Fifer joins in.

  We stop a moment to get our bearings. We’re somewhere halfway up the hill now. Below us are the lake and the party beyond, still going strong.

  “Well?” Fifer holds up the Azoth. “This is it, right? The thing you were supposed to find?”

  I shake my head. “No. Nicholas said I’d know it when I saw it, and this sword doesn’t mean anything to me at all.”

  Fifer looks from me to the sword then back again. “Are you sure? Here. Take another look.” She thrusts the sword at me; I take a quick step back.

  “Watch it,” I snap.

  “Sorry,” she says, not sounding the least bit. “But—the prophecy. What he holds in death will lead you to thirteen. The knight was holding the sword. And it’s the reason Schuyler is here.” Fifer makes an exasperated noise. “This has to be it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But this isn’t it.” Fifer looks so disappointed I almost feel sorry for her. “Look,” I continue, “it’s not all bad, is it? Blackwell wanted it, and now he’s not going to get it. Especially if it really does what Schuyler says it does.”

  “I guess.” Fifer shrugs. “What should we do with it? We need to keep looking, but I don’t want to drag it down there with all those people. Even if they don’t know what it is, they might take an interest in it for no other reason than all these jewels.” She twists the Azoth in her hand, the emeralds glinting even in the muted torchlight.

  “Let’s take it back to Humbert’s,” I say. “We can leave it in the cathedral and come back. How long does this party go on?”

  “A while,” Fifer says. “Especially on the last night. Could go ’til dawn, at least.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I don’t know what we’ll do about Schuyler—”

  “I have more peppermint,” Fifer says. “And more salt. I brought enough to stun a revenant army. And I’m mad as hell. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay away.”

  WE MAKE OUR WAY THROUGH the woods, back in the direction of Humbert’s. I toss the torch on the ground and stamp it out: If Schuyler does come to, there’s no sense in making it easy for him to follow us.


  Fifer walks beside me, swinging the Azoth back and forth. Maybe I should be thinking about Blackwell, about his wanting the sword, if it really does what Schuyler says it does. But for some reason, my mind is on the knight, still and green in his tomb.

  “Why do you suppose he was so green?” I say. “The knight, I mean? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  “Me neither,” Fifer says. “But it was definitely a curse. Either from the sword or from the witch who entombed him. Did you see that slab on top? All the marks on it?”

  “Yes,” I say, shifting my attention to the treetops ahead of us. I just saw a pair of owls shoot into the sky. Might be nothing; owls hunt at night. But birds flying out of trees are also nature’s way of telling you there are people nearby. Maybe it’s just us. “It was a curse tablet.”

  Fifer nods. “You never see them disposed of that way. They’re usually thrown in wells, dumped in lakes, rivers. The ocean. You know. But to put one in a tomb—”

  I feel a jolt of warning down my spine.

  “Tomb?” I stop and grab Fifer’s arm. “What happens if you put one in a tomb?”

  Fifer frowns. “For one, it makes for a more effective curse. The tablet draws upon the dark energy of the dead and strengthens the magic. Especially if the person died violently.”

  “Violently?” I feel cold, sick.

  “But it’s crazy,” Fifer continues. “I mean, it’s one thing in theory, burying a curse tablet with a corpse. Entirely another in practice.”

  “Practice?” I’m starting to sound like a popinjay, those ridiculous talking birds that pirates sometimes have. They can’t really talk, of course. All they do is repeat the last few words you say to them. Stupid, useless creatures.

  “Well, yes. Think about it. To do it you’d almost have to plan it all along—perform the curse, kill someone, and then bury the tablet in with the person you just killed. How would you do it otherwise? Not many people are going to run around town looking for freshly dug graves to put their curse tablet in, keeping their fingers crossed that the person buried there died a violent death. No one wants to get their hands that dirty, pardon the pun.”

  My head is spinning. Inside, words float around, disjointed and nonsensical. Curse tablet. Tomb. Violent death. Plan. Corpse. Grave. Dirty hands. But then they start to weave together like a tapestry, forming a picture I wish I didn’t see.

  Come third winter’s night, go underground in green. What holds him in death will lead you to thirteen.

  Fifer was right, but she was also wrong. It wasn’t what the knight holds in death; it was what holds him in death. Not the sword, the tablet. The stone slab that entombed him. Just like the stone slab that nearly entombed me.

  Suddenly, I know. I know where the Thirteenth Tablet is.

  “Fifer,” I whisper. My mouth is dry as dirt. “The Thirteenth Tablet. I know where it is. I—”

  I hear it whistle through the air before I feel it: the fist attached to the arm of the guard that just connected with my face. There’s a sickening crunch as my nose breaks and a gush of hot blood comes pouring out.

  Next to me, Fifer screams.

  “This was almost too easy,” the guard mutters, shoving me aside before going after Fifer. The skirt on my dress is so tight I lose my footing and stumble to the ground, sprawling face-first into a pile of leaves and dirt. My stigma fires hot against my abdomen as my nose snaps back into place. I barely feel it.

  Before I can get up, two of the guards flip me over and grab my wrists while a third clamps a pair of manacles around them. I recognize them immediately: They’re the guards we ran into on the road to Humbert’s.

  “Not so dangerous now, are you?” one of them mutters.

  I struggle wildly, trying to get to my feet. But my hands are bound in iron, my legs in silk. The guards force me back to the ground, one of them driving his knee into my spine, hard.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he says. “Except to prison, where you belong.”

  I struggle more. He slams my face into the ground; the force of it makes my head spin. “We’ll stay with her,” I hear him call out. “You go help with the other one.”

  I hear a shuffle of leaves, then Fifer’s panicked scream. I turn my head to the side and see the guards circle around her, taunting and laughing.

  “Get away from me!” Fifer shrieks, holding the sword in front of her. She jabs it at the two men but keeps missing.

  “Look at that little girl with the big sword!”

  “You know, witch, you’re lucky we caught up with you instead of Blackwell’s boys. Your pretty face would be roasting on the spit before sunrise.”

  “Isn’t that going to happen anyway?” the other guard says.

  They laugh some more.

  I’ve got to get us out of here. I’ve got one guard on my back, the other standing next to me. I’ve got that triple dagger in my boot, but since my hands are pinned beneath my chest, what good is it? I’m almost tempted to call for Schuyler. Then I remember the necklace and realize he won’t hear me. Which means I’m on my own. I’ve got to get out of these manacles, but I don’t know how.

  Then I get an idea.

  Quietly, slowly, I break my own thumbs. First one, then the other, gritting my teeth against the pain. I slip my hands out of the bindings, hear a quiet crack as the bones snap back into place. Then I go still. Have the guards noticed? No, they’re too busy calling encouragement to the ones still teasing Fifer. They’re such idiots. Now they’re going to pay for it.

  I flatten my hands underneath me. In a flash, I buck the guard off my back. Land in a crouch and yank the dagger from my boot. The guard who rolled off me, I grab him by the hair and stab him in the neck. He falls back to the ground, dead. Before the other one can open his mouth in protest, I pull the dagger from the dead guard’s neck and send it flying toward him. It lands directly between his eyes and he slumps to the ground. Also dead. The whole thing is over in seconds.

  The sudden silence gets the other guards’ attention. Their eyes go from me to the two dead men and back to me again. They look stunned. I yank the blade from the guard’s head and start toward them.

  “Fifer, get behind me.”

  She stands there, dazed.

  “Fifer! Now!”

  Slowly, she steps around the guards, lowering the sword a little as she goes.

  “Don’t!” I shout, but it’s too late. One of the guards leaps forward, grabs a hank of Fifer’s hair and punches her square in the face. Then he drives his fist into her stomach and she drops to the ground. The sword falls limply from her hand.

  The other guard picks it up and rounds on me.

  I lunge forward and seize his free arm, twist it behind his back and jerk it upward, hard. I’m rewarded with a loud snap as the bone breaks. Still holding his wrist, I yank him to me and drive my dagger into his gut. He falls to the ground as the other guard leaps forward and snatches the sword before I can get to it. He swipes at me with it and I pull back. He does it again, then again, missing me both times.

  I drop to the ground, swinging an outstretched leg underneath his feet, swiping them out from under him. As he crumples to his knees, I jump up and smash my foot along the side of his kneecap. I hear a crunch and he screams in pain. He falls toward me and takes a final swing with the sword.

  The blade slashes across my abdomen, the cold silver red hot as it sears through the silk, all the way to my flesh. Immediately, it starts gushing blood. I feel the flash of heat in my abdomen and wait for the familiar, tingling healing sensation. But it doesn’t come. Just more heat. And a lot more blood. I clutch my hand to my side and feel it spurt between my fingers.

  It’s not healing.

  The guard lies awkwardly on the ground, his injured limbs sprawling uselessly beneath him. I stumble to him, snatching the sword from his hand and thrusting it into his chest. He gives a muffled grunt and falls back into the grass. Dead.

  I hear Fifer groaning. I stagger to her side. />
  “Are you okay?” Her eye is starting to swell, and even in the pale predawn sky I can see a bruise blooming under the skin.

  She looks at me, her pupils dilated so large her eyes look nearly black.

  “You’re hurt.”

  I nod. “I guess the sword has some power after all.”

  “Will you be able to make it back?”

  “I think so.” The blood is flowing hot and fast now, spilling through my fingers. I’m starting to shake. Fifer wraps her arm around my shoulders and, slowly, we make our way back to Humbert’s.

  I don’t speak at all. Whether from pain or terror, I don’t know. All I do know is that my stigma isn’t healing me. What does that mean? Is it just this wound that won’t heal? Or what if the Azoth has somehow undone the stigma’s power permanently? If I’ve lost my stigma, I don’t stand a chance of getting that tablet.

  I may as well die right here.

  Dawn breaks, weak threads of light pushing through the thick blanket of clouds that is already filling the sky. As we reach the edge of Humbert’s property, Fifer is practically carrying me. I’ve lost a lot of blood and I’m so dizzy I can hardly walk. The ground swoops in giant waves below me, and things start to blur around the edges.

  Soon we see the turrets of Humbert’s house in the distance, poking up through the treetops like tiny teeth. As we draw closer, I can see servants in the courtyard, already going about their morning business. And I hear Humbert shouting.

  “Keep your eyes peeled! If you find them, bring them to me, sharpish! I won’t have them ruining my roses again, climbing down the bloody wall—”

  Fifer shoots me a look. For the first time since we left the party, I start to worry about what waits for us inside. This might be bad.

  Bridget is in the courtyard as we walk up. She takes one look at me and screams.

  “Master Pembroke! Come quickly!” She rushes over to me. “Oh my goodness, miss, what’s happened to you? So much blood…” She clucks around me like an overexcited hen.

  Humbert comes barreling through the door, his plump face flushed with anger. He’s still wearing the clothes he had on last night, a bright silk doublet over a ruffled linen shirt, both now wrinkled and wilted. His spare gray hair sticks up at all angles, revealing patches of baldness underneath. He looks completely mental. I might laugh if I weren’t about to faint.