Jessa took a deep, shaky breath. “My mother, as the village earth-witch, took our grievance to the Zairdian courts. They did nothing. Two days after they declared the sorcerer’s son innocent of wrongdoing, an assassin killed my mother.” She looked down at him, meeting his eyes.
His brown eyes were wide, astonished, pain-filled. “Jessa.”
She placed fingertips over his lips. “It was a very long time ago, Gregoor. A very long time ago.”
He gripped her hand. “What happened to the sorcerer who destroyed this village?”
“He died.” She smiled down at him. It was a smile he had seen before—a slow, tight spreading of lips that filled her eyes with a dark light. He called it her killing smile. “He was the first wizard I ever killed.”
“And that is why we specialize in assassinating wizards?”
“That is why I do. I do not know why you do it.”
He stood eye to eye, no taller, no shorter than she. “I do it because you do it.”
“Ah,” she said and gave him what no one else had received from her in twelve years—a smile full of love.
“You took this job so you could come home, then?”
“I took this job because the sorcerer I slew had a mother, as I had a mother. It seems she has gone mad. The entire province wants her dead. The sorceress is Cytherea of Cheladon.”
“You have sent us to kill Cytherea the Mad, Jessa…”
She stopped him with a gesture. “She seeks her son’s killer, Gregoor, and has killed hundreds seeking me. I think it is time she found me.”
THEY came to the first town at dusk. A gibbet had been erected in front of the town gates. Three corpses dangled from it, moving gently in the summer wind. They had been hung up by their wrists, and there was no mark of ordinary violence upon them. No hangman’s knot, no knife, no axe had killed the three.
Gregoor hissed, “Mother Peace preserve us. I have never seen anything like that.”
Jessa could only nod. The corpses, one man and two women, had been drained of life, magic of the blackest sort. The flesh was a leathered brown, like dried apples. Their eyes had shriveled in their heads. They were brown skeletons. The women’s hair floated around their faces that were cracked with horror, mouths agape in one last silent scream.
Jessa shook her head: that was nonsense. The dead did not retain the last look of horror. The jaws had simply broken and gaped open, nothing more.
“Come, Gregoor, let us get inside.”
He was still gazing at the dead. “This is Cytherea’s work?”
“Yes.”
“And you have set us the task of killing her?”
“It would seem so.”
Gregoor pushed his horse against hers and grabbed her arm. “Jessa, I am not a coward, but this…Cytherea drained their lives like you or I would squeeze an orange dry.”
Jessa stared at him until he loosened her arm. “We have killed sorceresses before.”
“None that could do this.”
Jessa nodded. “She took their lives when she took their magic, Gregoor.”
He caught his breath. “I am only an herb-witch. I can’t tell. Did she steal their souls?”
Jessa shivered. Though she shielded her magic, protected herself, she could still feel the answer. She understood now why she had thought the corpses were screaming silently. “No. Their souls are still there, trapped in their bodies.”
“Verm take that pale bitch.”
Jessa nodded. “That is the plan, Gregoor, that is the plan.”
They were challenged at the town gates. A woman called down, “What do you want here, soldiers?”
Jessa answered. “A room for the night, food if you have it to spare, and stabling for the horses.”
“Don’t you know that you ride into a town that is cursed?”
Jessa kept the surprise from her face. “Cursed? What do you mean?”
The woman gave a rude snort of bitter laughter. “Did you not see the gibbet and its burden?”
“I saw three corpses.”
“They are the mark of our curse. You would do better to ride on, soldiers.”
Jessa licked her lips and eased back to speak with Gregoor. “I don’t feel a curse, except on the corpses, but I am shielding myself.”
He looked surprised. “You’ve been wasting energy shielding yourself, for how long?”
“Since we entered the edge of Cytherea’s blight.”
“Blight. What are you talking about?”
It was her turn to be surprised. “Look around you. Look at the plants.”
The summer trees hung with limp black leaves. The grass was winter dead at the side of the road, crumbling and brown. It was utterly silent.
“Where are the little birds, the brownkins? There are always brownkins.”
“Not here, not anymore.” Jessa wanted to ask him how he had not noticed, but she knew the answer. He was an herb-witch, a maker of potions; his magic was a thing of incantations and ritual. Her magic was tied to the earth and what sprang from it. This desolation wounded her in a very private way. This was blasphemy. And Gregoor had seen nothing in the summer twilight.
“If you will distract the guard, I will spy out the curse, and see if it is safe to enter.”
He nodded. “They might not be happy to see more spell casters after Cytherea.”
“Yes, I would rather not be advertised as an earth-witch.”
He rode over to the gate. “What has happened to your land?”
Jessa turned inward and did not hear the rest. She listened to the rhythm of her own body, blood flowing, heart pumping, breathing, pulsing. She came to the silence deep in her own body where everything was still. Jessa released her shield and swayed in her saddle. It took all she had not to cry out. The land wailed around her. Death. The land was wounded, dying. It was not just the witches on their scaffold that Cytherea had drained, but the earth itself. She had taken some of the life-force of the summer land. It would not recover. The town was doomed. It could not survive where no crops would grow. There were no brownkins because the birds had fled this place; everything that could had fled this place. Everything but the people. And they would leave soon enough. When autumn came and there were no crops, they would leave.
The destruction was so complete that it masked everything else. Jessa was forced to turn the horse so she could look at the town, concentrate on it, and see if it was indeed cursed. Her eyes passed the corpses and three sparks of life fluttered in the corpses, bright and clean. The souls wavered and struggled. Jessa turned away and stared at the walled town.
She stretched her magic outward, no longer flinching from the earth-death around her. The town was just a town. There was no curse. A curse would be redundant after what Cytherea had done to the land.
Jessa rode up beside Gregoor. She whispered, “There is no curse on the town. We can enter safely.”
The guardswoman called down, “What was your lady friend doing so long?”
Jessa answered, “I was praying.”
The woman was silent a moment. “Prayers are a good thing. Enter, strangers, and be welcome to what is left of Titos.”
There was one small tavern in the town, and they were the only strangers. The windows were shuttered, though the summer night was mild. An elderly woman muttered in her sleep, dreaming before an unnecessary fire. Jessa wondered if they thought fire and light would keep out the evil, like a child crying in the night. The place stank of stale beer and the sweat of fear. The tavernkeeper himself came to take their orders. He was a large beefy man, but his eyes were red-rimmed as if from tears.
The tavern sign had said simply, “Esteban’s Tavern.” Jessa took a chance. “You are Esteban?”
He looked at her, eyes not quite focused, as if he were only half-listening. “Yes, I am he. Do you wish to eat?”
“Yes. But more than food we would like information.”
She had his attention now. His dark eyes stared at her, full of anger, and a fine and burning hatred, like the sun burning through glass. “What kind of information?”
Gregoor brushed her hand, a warning not to press this man. But Jessa felt a magic in the room, untapped but there. It was not coming from the tavernkeeper. “A gibbet stands outside your town gates. How did it come to be there?”
Large hands knotted the rag he had stuck in his belt. His voice was a dark whisper. “Get out.”