The Third Kingdom

“I had three aunts, all gifted. Two were my mother’s sisters, the other was my father’s sister. They were all sorceresses serving our people.

“My father’s sister, Clarice, was much older. She had never married. While among the gifted here in Stroyza there is no official leader, as such, it always seemed that she was our matriarch. She was the elder gifted and everyone deferred to her judgment. It had been that way my whole life. It seemed the natural order of things.

“Some time back, a little over a year and a half ago, she was found dead in the woods not far from here. People assumed that she must have died because she was old. Everyone in Stroyza was shaken by her passing.”

“Did she really die of natural causes?”

“I don’t know. At the time we all thought so—we didn’t have reason to suspect anything else. Now, I’m not so sure.

“After she died, people turned to my mother to fill Clarice’s place.” Samantha gestured around at the room. “That was when we moved in here. These quarters are where the foremost of the gifted of our village lives. It’s an ancient tradition that is part of our ways.

“Not long after Clarice’s death, when my parents and I moved in here, we first started hearing rumors of people encountering a strange woman with her lips sewn shut. It was only later that we found out that she was called Jit the Hedge Maid and that she had a strange lair in Kharga Trace. We didn’t know where she’d come from or even how long she had been back in the Trace. We weren’t even sure of exactly what she was.

“From traders passing through here who visited many of the people of the Dark Lands, we heard all kinds of rumors about Jit. Some thought she was death come among us, marking the end of time. Some thought she had remarkable, even miraculous abilities to heal those who could not otherwise be healed.

“My mother was able to learn that Jit used some kind of magic that was unlike ours, some kind of occult power that we had never encountered before.” Samantha looked up at his eyes to make sure he was paying attention. “Some kind of magic that could maybe do things we never knew could be done, like maybe make the dead walk again.”

“You mean like those walking corpses who attacked the other night?”

Samantha nodded. “There were rumors of such things, of bodies stolen from graves. Rumors of the dead walking the Dark Lands.”

Richard wondered if Jit was the one who had reanimated and sent the dead men to attack the village. He wondered, even though he had killed the Hedge Maid, if there were more of her dead minions wandering the countryside.

“My two aunts Martha and Millicent were convinced that Jit could be nothing less than some kind of evil creature that had escaped from beyond the north wall.”

Richard leaned forward. “The north wall?”

Samantha briefly gestured in that direction. “I’ll get to that. Anyway, after they’d heard enough worrisome stories, my parents, two aunts, and their husbands all decided that since we were the closest village to Kharga Trace and were the ones potentially most at risk, we needed to investigate and find out the truth.

“Aunt Martha’s husband was gifted. Not a wizard, as was explained to me—I’ve never met a real wizard, neither has anyone I know. Aunt Millicent’s husband Gyles was supposedly gifted as well, but in a different way. He was mostly given to small prophecies, or at least so he said. No one much believed him, though. My mother humored his claims.

“But Uncle Gyles was one of those who had long been warning of a dark force he said would one day come into the Dark Lands. Then we heard about Jit having built a lair in the Trace. Gyles thought it was proof of his prophetic abilities.

“My mother always said that if you predicted rain long enough, sooner or later you would get wet and be proven right. She said that there were good times in life and bad, and if you predicted bad, you would eventually be proven right, but if you predicted it loud enough, you would be proven a prophet.”

Richard smiled at that. He had always thought much the same thing.

“What kind of stories were your people hearing about Jit?” he asked before he became lost in the family tree.

Samantha shrugged. “The stories were mostly whispered to my parents and aunts and uncles behind closed doors. My mother never told me what was said, but I knew that she was concerned.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“No. I knew better. When my parents wanted me to know something, they told me. If they didn’t tell me, I knew that meant I wasn’t to ask, that it was an adult matter. The six of them—my parents, both aunts, and both uncles—discussed such matters privately, between themselves. Especially if it was a decision about the safety of our people.”

“The gifted rule here, then? Even if informally?”