It was late morning before he saw the first abandoned farmstead. He drank from the well, sure no one would complain, and chased off two pesky goats who were hungry for attention. The hideous ornamental statues seemed bizarre and out of place, but Nathan had seen many odd and inexplicable things before. People often had questionable tastes in art, and these sculptures were indeed questionable.
The road took him past other farms and dwellings, all of them just as silent, all populated with anguished statues. Maybe some petty local prince fancied himself a sculptor and required each of his subjects to own his hideous work.
By noon, Nathan reached the town, a typical mountain village with all the expected shops and houses, a marketplace, a square, a livery, an inn, a blacksmith, a potter, a woodworker—but it was populated with hundreds more statues, stone people depicted at a moment of horrific nightmares.
Nathan cautiously walked ahead, scratching the side of his face, stepping carefully in his high leather boots, afraid he might awaken the eerie sculptures. He felt like an intruder here. Under normal circumstances, he should have been able to sense sorcery or danger, and he dug deep within himself, found the writhing, sleeping magic there, the frayed tangles that remained after his gift of prophecy had been uprooted. But his Han was restless and uncooperative, and he didn’t dare use it. He knew better.
At another time, he might have raised his voice and shouted out, but the hush was too ominous, even more so than at the ancient watchtower. The palpable horror and despair in the faces of these sculptures made his skin crawl. He saw people of all sorts: tradesmen, farmers, washerwomen, children.
In the Lockridge town square two fresh statues looked whiter and cleaner than the others, new creations made by the mad sculptor. The appalled expression made the young man’s face unrecognizable at first, but then Nathan knew. Bannon!
Next to him stood the beautiful sorceress, whose curves and fine dress would have been a work of art for any imaginative sculptor. Nicci’s face showed less misery than the faces of the other statues, but her expression still carried clear pain, as if her guilt and regrets had been smashed into numerous sharp shards, then imperfectly reassembled again.
A deep chill shuddered through Nathan, as he slowly turned around. Some terrible magic was at work here, and even though he could think of no spell that would have caused this, he was certain these were not mere sculptures of his friends, but Nicci and Bannon themselves, transformed somehow.
A powerful baritone voice cut through the crystalline silence of the town. “Are you an innocent man? Or have you come to be judged like the others?”
A tall black-robed man came striding toward him, his elongated bald head crowned with a gold circlet. The robes were open at his chest to display bubbling scars and waxy skin fused around a golden amulet.
On guard, Nathan replied, “I have lived a thousand years. It’s hard to hold on to innocence and purity for all that time.”
“A righteous man could do it.”
“I haven’t been overburdened with guilt, either.” Nathan was certain this grim wizard had created the statue spell, trapping or petrifying these victims—including Nicci and Bannon. “I am a traveler, an emissary from the D’Haran Empire. The roving ambassador, in fact.”
“And I am the Adjudicator.” The man stepped forward, and the deep red garnet on his fused amulet began to glow.
At another time, Nathan would have released his magic to attack, but he had no gift that would help him. His hand darted down to grab the hilt of his sword, but his arm moved slowly, lethargically. He realized his feet were rooted in place. Nathan guessed what was happening.
The Adjudicator closed in, his water-blue eyes fixed on him. “Only the innocent shall pass onward, and I will find your guilt, old man. I will find all of it.”
* * *
Nicci was frozen inside a petrified gallery of her life, the accusatory moments of her actions. She had no choice but to face the terrible things she had done, the darkness of her life … Death’s Mistress … servant of the Keeper. That psychological weight was far greater than tons of rock.
She had tortured and killed many as a necessary part of her service to Jagang. She had aided the Imperial Order, falsely believing that she served all humanity by enforcing equality, helping the poor and the infirm, redistributing the wealth of greedy manipulators. She felt no guilt for that.
From a long time ago, she regretted that she had missed her father’s funeral, but the Sisters had not allowed her to leave the Palace of the Prophets. Her father, an ambitious armorer, a good manager (she realized now), a man whose work had been appreciated by his customers until the Order ruined him. Nicci had been part of that downfall, as a dedicated young girl, brainwashed by her mother. She had become a believer, a wholehearted follower.
When one believed and followed something that was wrong, must there be guilt?
Kept inside the Palace of the Prophets for so many years, Nicci had also missed the death of her overbearing mother. She had attended that funeral, however, although she felt no guilt over the loss of the abusive woman. In order to obtain a fine black dress for the ceremony, Nicci had surrendered her body to the groping, lecherous embraces of a loathsome tailor, but it was the price she had agreed to pay. She had done what was necessary. That held no guilt. And she had preferred to wear a black dress ever since.
As those preserved dark memories rose inside her mind, she felt a need to atone for abducting Richard from his beloved Kahlan, forcing him to go away with her in a sham partnership to Altur’Rang. That had been a terrible thing, even if Nicci had been doing it to convince Richard of the correctness of her beliefs. During that time, she had fallen in love with him, but it was a twisted and broken emotion that even Nicci didn’t understand.
The worst thing she had done, perhaps, was when Richard had rebuffed her advances, refused to make love to her, and so she had thrown herself upon another man in the city, letting him treat her roughly, slap her and rape her—though it hadn’t been rape, because she herself had insisted on it. And all the while she knew that because of the maternity spell that linked them, Kahlan would experience every physical sensation that Nicci felt … and Kahlan would believe in her heart that Richard had been unfaithful to her, that he was the one taking his pleasure on Nicci’s body, wild with lust.
How that must have hurt Kahlan … and Nicci had taken great joy in it.
Yes, for that she felt guilt.
But Nicci had already made her peace with it. Kahlan and Richard had forgiven her. That embittered, evil person might have been who she was a long time ago—Death’s Mistress—but Nicci was different now. She did not wallow in her past and was not haunted by the ghosts of her deeds. She had served Richard, had fought for him, had helped overthrow the Imperial Order. She had commanded Jagang to die. She had served Richard with relentless dedication and killed countless numbers of bloodthirsty half people from the Dark Lands. She had done whatever Richard asked, had even stopped his heart to send him into the underworld so he could save Kahlan.
She had given him everything except for her guilt. Nicci did not hold on to guilt. Even when she had committed those crimes, she had felt nothing.
And now in this new journey of her life, she served an even greater purpose—not just the man Richard Rahl, whom she loved, but the dream of Richard Rahl—and in that service there could be no guilt. Nicci was a sorceress. She had the power of the wizards she had killed. She had all the spells the Sisters had taught her. She had a strength in her soul that went beyond any imagined calling of this deluded Adjudicator.
The magic was hers to control, and the punishment was not his to mete out.
Her body might have turned to stone, trapping her thoughts in a suffocating purgatory, but Nicci’s emotions had been like stone before, and she had a heart of black ice. It was her protection. She called upon that now, releasing any spark of magic she could summon, finding her flicker of determination and her refusal to accept the sentence this g
rim wizard imposed upon her.
As her fury grew, the magic kindled within her. She was not some clumsy, murderous villager, she was not a petty thief. She was a sorceress. She was Death’s Mistress.
Inside and around her Nicci felt the stone begin to crack.…
* * *
The Adjudicator’s long face was sallow and dour, as if all humor had been leached away. He showed no pleasure as he explained Nathan’s punishment and worked the spell to trap him. “They are all guilty,” he said, “every person. I have so much work to do…”
Nathan strained, struggling to move his petrified arm. “No, you won’t.” His hand had nearly reached the sword, but even if he touched the hilt, it would do no good. The stone spell surrounded him and was rapidly fossilizing his tissues, stopping time inside his body. Nathan could not fight, could not flee, could barely even move. His only recourse would have been to use magic, to lash out with a retaliatory spell. But if he couldn’t light so much as a campfire, he certainly couldn’t fight such a powerful wizard.
Even if he summoned his wayward magic, though, Nathan knew he couldn’t control it. He could not forget trying to heal the wounded man in Renda Bay, ripping him asunder with what should have been healing magic. Nathan had only tried to help him.…
Maybe that was the moment of great guilt the Adjudicator would force him to endure for as long as stone lasted.
He heard the grinding crackle as the spell petrified even his leather pouch, along with his travel garments, and the life book. He could not breathe.
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…?”
“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.”
Death's Mistress--Sister of Darkness Page 23