Death Witch
Death Witch
Book Four of The Sacrosanct Records
M N Jolley
To Daniel, for all the long nights spent inventing worlds together
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
We know the cost of unity, no matter which way you want to count it. Whether in gold spent, or in cities sacked, or in blood spilled, the price is unparalleled. Never have more lives been lost in a single war, not in all of recorded history.
Should the realm be asked to pay it again, it would crumble. Be thankful, then, that we never will.
Excerpt, taken from a collection of postwar speeches given by President Lancaster
Adelyn’s tent was on fire.
It was just as well that she wasn’t inside it.
The camp they’d set up was a little too exposed for its own good. It was on the edge of a forest and sitting beneath a high ridge, making it easy to sneak up on and difficult to defend. That was, of course, the point.
“You think he’s in place?” Adelyn's father whispered. He never looked up from the sights of his rifle, lining up his shot. They’d been waiting on this ridge for a couple hours, ever since they’d set up their camp. The tent fire provided plenty of light, and the four bandits on horseback, the ones who had set the fire, were easy targets.
“He’s in place,” Adelyn confirmed. “The bastards won’t know what hit them.”
“Good. Cover your ears.”
Adelyn didn’t exactly do as instructed. Instead, she put a hand on her father and mumbled a few sacrosanct words, releasing magic into the air.
“What did you do?” he asked, keeping his aim steady.
“A spell to mute the gunfire,” Adelyn explained. “Nothing big.”
“Hmm.”
He fired, the gun made a dull popping noise and one of the riders collapsed from their horse. His body hit the dirt with a thud.
The other three scattered, realizing too late that they’d fallen for the trap. Before they could get far, a force of nature exploded out from the woods.
With a revolver in one hand and a simple bronze sword in the other, David was a terror. Three shots would have been sufficient for him, but he fired the gun only twice, then leapt after the third fleeing rider, a little burst of magic enhancing his speed and allowing him to overtake the horse. Grabbing the rider by the back of the shirt, David landed and dug his heels into the dirt, dragging them down to the ground together.
Both of them tumbled, and when they came to a stop David was on top, his sword pressed against the rider’s throat. The whole fight had lasted less than ten seconds.
Adelyn sat up, wincing at the pain in her side as she did so.
“Careful,” Papa chided.
“I know.” She couldn’t feel any blood, so she hadn’t torn open any of her wounds, but it still hurt to move too quickly. “We should get down there, find out if they know anything.”
“In a minute.”
“I’m fine, it’s—” Adelyn caught herself. “Right.”
They waited, looking down at the camp as Adelyn’s tent burned. Their trap had worked with surprising efficacy, but it was frustrating that she’d need to get a new tent and sleeping roll.
The night was quiet, until Adelyn felt a bright pulse of magic assault her spirit sense. It caused her no pain, but she winced anyways.
“What’s wrong?” her father asked, noticing her reaction.
“One of them just died,” Adelyn pointed at the rightmost bandit.
“How—” her father started, before remembering. “Right.” He looked askance, uncomfortable at the reminder of her powers.
Adelyn, meanwhile, was uncomfortable at the reminder of what David had started doing. It was a confirmation that his vows were a thing of the past. She’d known as much after he killed Jay, but had been trying to kid herself that maybe he would swing back around to his old self. Now, it was impossible to deny.
She felt a second pulse as the other person David had shot gave up the struggle. She didn’t much care that the bandit had died—he’d just tried to murder Adelyn in her sleep, after all—but she would rather that someone else had done the killing.
The pulses of spirit were so distracting that she didn’t notice the man sneaking up behind them until he had his gun out.
“Stop!” he yelled, clicking back the hammer on his revolver. “Don’t you open your mouth, or I’ll blow your brains out.”
Adelyn froze, glancing over her shoulder. He was scruffy and old, with a week’s worth of unkempt stubble and a frame that belied a lifetime of hunger. She trusted that his threat was genuine, and kept her mouth shut.
“I know how your magic works,” he said, flashing a toothy grin. “You gotta say your magic words to make it happen. So, you just stay nice and quiet while I say my piece.”
He was wrong, but correcting him would have been counterproductive and dangerous. Adelyn channeled power into her shield runes, and moved her fingers in a small circular gesture, so faint that he wouldn’t notice. Once that was done, and a hard barrier was built between them and the bandit’s gun, she raised her right arm to the sky.
“Both arms,” he said, using the gun to gesture. “Nice and easy.”
“Her arm is in a sling,” Papa said. “Her collarbone is broken. She can’t raise her arm.”
The bandit squinted at her for a moment and scowled when he made out the outline of her leather sling. “Now, when we took this, they said that in addition to our real prize, you had a lot of silver. Your old man is gonna tell me where that silver is, nice and easy, and in exchange, I’ll let you live. I ain’t interested in the rest, with that silver I could retire.”
“Down, in our camp,” her father said. “In a box, we buried it under our campfire.”
Adelyn eyed his gun, trying to estimate if her shield was strong enough. It looked like a three-shot design, that would fire steel slugs the size of her thumb. Probably picked out specifically to deal with magic. Probably not strong enough to deliver lethal force once it punched through the magical barrier she’d constructed.
She preferred not to put that to the test.
“Right,” the scruffy man said, nodding. “I ain’t going down there to get shot up by your war dog. You’ll go get it for me, and tell him that you’re all good and everything’s safe, okay?”
Her father started babbling, a panic that sounded strange and foreign coming from his mouth. “I—he’ll notice something’s up, when… please, she’s my daughter. Don’t hurt her, we can—”
The words coming out of his mouth were mostly irrelevant. What mattered was that his rambling covered the sound of footsteps until it was too late for the bandit to react. Mama stepped up behind the bandit and struck him hard in the shoulder, knocking his aim away from Adelyn. A stray bullet was fired, kicking up dirt a fe
w feet away, and he never got a chance to draw a new bead on Adelyn. Mama’s gun barked, and a bullet from behind punched a hole in his chest.
It was a low shot, where it’d be painful and debilitating but not instantly fatal. As he staggered, Mama wrestled the revolver from his hand, then kicked him to the ground.
The man seemed more confused than hurt. As Adelyn’s mother struck him one more time over the head and he dropped to the ground, Adelyn herself began getting clumsily to her feet.
“Easy,” Papa chided.
“I know, it’s fine,” Adelyn retorted, but as she said it, she felt little dots of power collecting in the bandages over her side. She’d torn her stitches and was bleeding again.
She tried not to react too dramatically. Surviving her fight with Jay had been incredibly lucky, and dealing with some healing after the fact was a tolerable price to pay for preserving her parent’s lives. It still frustrated her that, more than a week later, she was just starting to be mobile again and her family was still in immediate peril.
Papa peered over the ridge. “Think that’s all of them?”
“I can’t imagine that they were able to find backup while they were chasing us,” Adelyn said, counting on her fingers. “We saw five of them when we skipped town, and that’s five of them.”
“You’re probably right,” Papa said, “But I can’t imagine how they found us in town, to begin with.”
“If we can wake him up,” Mama gestured to the unconscious raider. “Maybe he’ll tell us. I’ll wait with him while you go get a horse to bring him down.”
The trek down to their camp was a slow one, made slower by her father insisting that they not walk faster than a slow shuffle.
“I hope that’s the last of them,” He commented, as they reached the bottom of the slope and turned towards their camp. David had put out the tent fire, so it wasn’t as bright or warm at the campsite, but the small cooking fire next to it was still glowing with welcoming warmth.
“Even if it’s not, I can make sure it won’t be possible for anyone to pick up our trail.” Adelyn looked at her father, watching closely for his reaction.
She knew him well enough to tell when he was picking his words carefully. “We won’t have to resort to that.”
Adelyn would have thrown up her hands, but her arm was in a sling and it just didn’t seem as effective with only one hand. “We’re not ‘resorting’ to anything, it’s just a bit of magic so they can’t keep following us!” Using magic was always a hard sell with her parents, but she couldn’t see any good reason to say no besides their religious objections, which… she put the thought out of her mind. That was a can of worms she didn’t have the energy to open.
“There’s nobody else following us.” Papa’s tone was firm as they walked into the camp. “We’ll talk about this in the morning. David,” he added in greeting, nodding to David, who was sitting by the campfire.
It was an obvious way to pass the argument off to the next day, but Adelyn was as eager as he was to avoid getting into it just then. Walking up to the campfire, Adelyn sat, careful not to tear her wounds any more than she already had.
Papa went to get his horse, still tied up where it belonged at the edge of the small woods. “I’ll be right back.”
“Love you, Papa,” Adelyn said.
“Love you too, Addy,” he said, his smile almost as warm as the fire.
She warmed her hands, looking at the scabs on the back of her fingers. waiting until her father had gone to sign at David. ‘One of my bullet holes started bleeding when I was up there. Can you help me heal it over again?’
David looked her in the eyes, mulling over the question for a minute. ‘You’d be better off with stitches at this point, or doing it yourself. My healing magic is no good.’
‘It saved my life,’ Adelyn pointed out. ‘And if we take the time to do stitches, Papa will notice I tore it again.’
Nodding, David got up and crossed, sitting down across from her. Adelyn unbuttoned her shirt, exposing the bandage that still had rounded, spiraling marks drawn onto it in black ink. A convenient place for healing runes, especially ones that would need to be reused for the same wound more than once.
David pressed his gloved hand against the bandage, using the spirit in her blood to channel a hint of power and gesturing with his other hand in a simple series of sacrosanct runes. The injury sealed up in a heartbeat, and he took his hand away.
“Thanks,” Adelyn said aloud, before reverting to signs. It was hard to do without being able to move her left arm, but David had gotten used to the limitation and was good at parsing out what she meant. ‘Are you OK?’
‘The one who I didn’t kill is awake,’ David signed back, shuffling a few feet away. ‘You can probably get some answers out of him.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
Avoiding her stare, David nodded his head. ‘I’m okay.’
With that, Adelyn knew he’d broken two of his vows that night instead of just one. David couldn’t lie for peanuts, even now that he was trying to. She didn’t push it. If he didn’t want to talk about his problems, she wouldn’t force it.
‘Good fighting,’ she pointed out.
David shrugged. ‘It was easy. You could have done it.’
Adelyn gaped at the insult. “That was rude.”
Furrowing his brow, David hesitated for a moment, then blinked and shook his head. ‘Sorry, that’s not what I meant. I’m saying you don’t need me here.’
Slipping back into sign language, Adelyn argued, ‘I don’t need you to travel with us, I want you to travel with us. You’ve saved me so many times I need both hands to count them all.’
David shrugged. ‘I’m happy to be your bodyguard.’
‘You’re not my bodyguard. I’ve returned those favors a few times as well. We protect each other, because we’re friends.’ She made a bigger gesture than normal on the last word, even moving her left arm as much as she could, emphasizing it.
‘Most of my friends get killed when I’m around,’ David pointed out, watching the fire. ‘I’ve killed one of them.’
“Lords—” Adelyn started, throwing up her hands. “David, I’m sorry that one of your war buddies turned out to be a heretic, but that wasn’t your fault, and you can’t keep blaming yourself for it.”
David opened his mouth as though he were about to retort, then shut it.
“If you want to pout, I’m not going to stop you.” Adelyn got to her feet, crossing to the charred remains of her tent.
They hadn’t been stupid. All of her valuables, her clothes, anything that couldn’t survive a fire and wasn’t necessary for the trap, they’d hidden elsewhere. They’d needed the tent and her bedroll to sell the illusion, though, and both had been burned beyond usefulness. They’d be one short until they got to the next town.
David cleared his throat, and she looked back at him to see him sign, ‘I only mean that I’m here to protect you, as my first priority. It’s beyond friendship, I’m going to keep you alive.’
Adelyn opened her mouth to respond, but she closed it when she heard her parents returning, soft sounds of hoofbeats getting louder as they grew near, wounded raider in tow.
“He’s awake,” Mama called. “Hurt, but awake. Can you patch him up good enough that he can talk without whimpering?”
David stood, signing that he was.
Papa looked at the ground, where one of the bandits had been hogtied. “Is the other one awake, too?”
Again, David signed in confirmation.
“Once this one is healed, drag him about fifty paces up, out of earshot,” Mama instructed. “I’ll go with you, while Adelyn and Lyman stay here with the other one. We’ll compare notes once they start talking.”
“If they planned for this, it might not work anyways,” Papa added in a low tone.
“I should go with David,” Adelyn objected, standing mostly so that she wouldn’t be the only one sitting down. “We both sign better than either of you
. We can communicate silently if we need to.”
Her mother shook her head. “One magic-user with each.”
“But don’t use any spells unless you have to,” Papa added.
Adelyn pinched the bridge of her nose. “Papa—”
“Adelyn,” he interrupted. “The same beings that give you magic are responsible for… this.” he gestured broadly at their surroundings in exasperation. “It’s what nearly got you killed; it’s how we were taken. It’s wrong.”
“It’s also how I saved your life,” Adelyn pointed out. “A couple times, in fact, but I guess that doesn’t matter.”
“So, it fixes some of the problems that it was responsible for creating in the first place.” Papa shook his head. “Magic is a sword blade without a handle. If you want to use it, you first have to grab on tight, and then—”
“I get it,” Adelyn cut him off. “You stay here with David. I’m going to go with Mama.”
Her father sighed. “Adelyn…”
Adelyn shook her head. “Let’s just get this done.”
Chapter 2
Tuesday, the 14th, Third Planting
Cottonwood
Bandit activity is getting worse. I’ve sent word to the army asking for reinforcements, but they’re still too spread thin without recruiting more soldiers, and they’re hesitant to take overt military action that might spark unrest.
It’s just me and Marlene, then, to handle an area of countryside a hundred miles across. We’re aware of half a dozen gangs and groups of bandits across this space, hiding in the woods or keeping quiet when the law comes near.