The Woods of
the Night Daughter
I
Chapter 01
Wisdomsaidonlyamadman would walk uninvited into a witch’s lair.
A madman, or a desperate fool.
The door to Semras’ hut slammed against the whitewashed stone walls, startling her away from her bubbling cauldron. Spinning to face the intruder, she dropped to one knee and pressed her palms to the floor, ready for a fight. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears; her hands shook against the rustic red tiles.
No one had ever entered her home without knocking before. No one. The few trusted souls she’d told where she lived knew better. It could only mean trouble.
A man stepped over the doorway, his dark silhouette illuminated by the glow of the late morning sun. A dark burgundy cloak, fastened over one shoulder by a twelve-pointed star insignia, covered most of his white finery.
Semras’ heart lurched. Those were the distinctive marks of an inquisitor—the judges, jury and executioners of the radiant god Elumenra.
Both a madman and a fool, then.
But not a lone one. Behind the inquisitor, armed men swarmed the grounds in front of her home, ready to step inside. Their deep reddish-brown capelet, thrown over a pale gambeson, identified them as Venator sword-bearers, another division of the Church of Elumenra.
“Stay outside,” the inquisitor ordered them. His gaze never turned away from her. “I shall handle the witch alone.”
Her breath shuddered out of her, blowing a strand of long white hair away from her face. So he knew what she was. It could mean only one thing.
The Inquisition had come for her.
She had committed no crime, but they wouldn’t care, and she wouldn’t plead for mercy. If they wanted to arrest her today, she’d give them a legitimate reason to.
The witch bit her lower lip, steadied her nerves, and began weaving magic. “Let’s see you handlethis,” she hissed under her breath.
Her fingers reached for the Unseen Arras—the invisible tapestry making up the fabric of the world. This was her home, and she knew its warps and its wefts better than anywhere else. With practiced gestures, she unravelled the world’s threads and wove them back to her will.
In front of her, from the depths far beneath, came the low rumble of disturbed soil. The floor tiles splintered, and brambles burst through the cracks in an explosion of clay shards. Their thorny arms speared through the air toward the intruder at a dizzying speed to restrain him.
They never reached him.
The briars recoiled almost instantly. With growing bewilderment, Semras watched flames spread along the branches, burning the threads she was directing them with. Slipping from her control, they thrashed against the round walls and vaulted ceiling. From wooden shelves, books and jars fellalong the brambles’ destructive path, littering the floor with glass shards and papers. The herbs hanging from the ceiling’s pine beams didn’t escape the violence of their dying throes as the branches ripped through them. Dried leaves and petals rained down before her eyes.
In a final wheeze of boiling sap and crackling wood, the charred remains of the brambles hit the floor, writhed, then stopped moving.
Semras stood, dusting with shaking hands the brown smock that covered her black dress. Wide-eyed, she stared at the smouldering embers. How could it have happened? Her first and only prepared line of defence—gone up in flames in mere seconds.
Had she wielded them too close to the fireplace’s flames? There was no time to linger on it—small fires had begun where the branches flailed through the room. They’d burn her house down if she didn’t deal with them right now.
With practiced movements, the witch wove the flames out of the Unseen Arras and discarded the hot, stinging threads into the fireplace behind her. Her yellow eyes never strayed away from the inquisitor standing in the doorway.
He stepped over the brambles with a smirk, hands hidden in his pockets with threatening nonchalance. From his belt, a broadsword hung next to a pair of witch-shackles. Their iridescent shine of cold iron sent a shiver down her spine, but it was his leer, his confidence, that shook her the most.
This man would drag her to the pyre with a smile on his lips.
Gritting her teeth, Semras grabbed a paring knife from her worktable. Old Crone be praised; even after being startled, she hadn’t forgotten about it. She stared at its dull edge, still soaked in the green sap of herbs, and grimaced. It wouldn’t injure anyone severely enough to act as an effective deterrent.
She needed something else. Her scrambling mind flickered through all her options, but nothing came to her. The inquisitor was blocking her only way out, and even if she could somehow slip past him, the men outside would catch her instantly.
She was trapped.
