Hammer of Witches (7 page)

“That is correct.”

The fiery letters burned through my memory.
Ameth.
Truth.

“You mean witches . . . like me.”

My uncle’s eyes twinkled behind their spectacles. “And me. And your Aunt Serena. And your father.”

There was that word again. Father. Why did I taste bile whenever he said that word?

“Is that why the priest last night called me lukmani?” I asked.

My uncle clapped his hands on his knees. “He did, did he? I haven’t heard that word for a long time. I’ve always called us ‘Storytellers,’ but the meanings are about the same.”

“Why Storytellers?”

“Come now, Bali! You don’t think I told you all those stories for my health, do you? Not that I don’t like them, of course. I wouldn’t be a good Storyteller if I didn’t. But there was another reason too. I wanted you to be prepared, just in case. Perhaps I should have taught you to harness your powers when you were younger, but I didn’t want to risk raising suspicions with the neighbors.”

Before he could continue, three huge bangs pounded at the front of our house. “What’s all this noise?” I heard my aunt announce from inside the kitchen.

A man’s voice boomed back at her. “Open the door in the name of Their Majesties King Fernando and Queen Isabel!”

“Did you say the king and queen?” Aunt Serena called back. “How nice! Just give me a moment to move this stew before it bubbles over. Then I’ll be right with you.”

Diego glanced at my bedroom door. “I thought we had more time. The Malleus Maleficarum. For all their ranting about the sins of sorcerers, they always seem to have some magic up their sleeves whenever it’s convenient for them. Come, Bali. It’s time to go.”

The old man helped me stand, but I felt like a golem who had come to life before the clay had set and had to grasp my headboard to support myself on wobbly feet. “What do you mean, ‘go’?” I said. “You just said we’re sorcerers. Let’s go out there and fight them!”

My uncle breathed out some air in a kind of bleak chuckle, and his eyes went very wide. “No. They now know you are a Storyteller, which means they will have sent far more men than we can handle. And I will not risk your being captured again. Their methods of torture are too brutal to think about. They say they have perfected a way of drowning a man so that he does not die, only languishes in the agony between life and death, wishing that his lungs would burst. And they say —”

But Diego could not continue. He closed his eyes briefly, shook his head, and stole a leather bag from beside his chair. He stuffed the priest’s parchment into that bag and thrust the thing into my hands. “You must go. There’s a coin purse in here, and the scroll you can finish reading later. Some of your aunt’s bread is in here too. Not enough for a long journey, but that’s what the coins are for.”

“What journey? Where are we going?”

“Not ‘we.’ You. Don’t worry about us. You just worry about running.”

The banging at the front of the house was growing louder now, as was Serena’s scolding of the soldiers. “Run?” I said as if the word were unknown to me. “What do you mean? Run where?”

“Anywhere. Your aunt and I will hold them off as long as we can. Just run. Spain is no longer safe for you.”

With one hand my uncle pushed me toward the window, and with the other he swiped my hat from the foot of my bed and shoved it under my arm. He checked out the window and saw the way was clear. Then he ruffled my hair around my ear.

“I’m so sorry, Bali. I had hoped we could spare you of this. But in real life stories don’t always go the way we hope. Still, one good thing might come of this. You can find your father. There must be a reason he came here — not just here, but to
your
room, to
your
window. You must find him. You must find out —”

“Cariño
,” Aunt Serena called from outside my door. “There are some nice men here to see you!”

“I believe your aunt is calling me,” Diego said. “Quick, out the window. Oh, I nearly forgot.” He removed a thin golden strand from around his neck and pressed it into my hand. “It’s from your father. For your protection, he said.” Diego paused as if remembering some joke from long ago, and he exhaled a
dark laugh. “Although now that I think about it, maybe he said
you
should protect
it.
That would make more sense. At any rate, do not lose it. Now go. Go and find him.”

I stuffed the necklace into Diego’s bag, secured its strap over my chest, and clambered out the window. “But how?” I asked him. “If the Malleus Maleficarum can’t find al-Katib, how can
I
find him?”

“I know you’ll find a way. The necklace will help you. But there’s no more time for questions.” My uncle seized me through the window and held me close. “Please, Bali. Get as far away from here as possible. No matter what you hear, do not look back. Remember the story of Lot’s wife. She looked back at her home when she was running away, and look what happened to her. She turned into a pillar of salt.”

I could hardly believe what my uncle was saying. “That’s just a story. I’m not leaving without you.”

Distantly my uncle stared out the window, past me and through the neighbors’ nearby wall. “Maybe it is just a story,” he said, very quiet. “But it is true nonetheless. Now, please. Run. I promise we will find you.”

“What? No. I —”

Out in the kitchen I heard the metallic scrape of armor, and the heavy sound of boots tumbling over the floor. “No more stalling!” shouted one of the guards. “We know you have the boy.”

“Don’t go in there!” Aunt Serena exclaimed. “My husband does alchemical experiments in there. The chemicals, they’re
very dangerous! You shouldn’t —!”

There was the sound of a struggle, and I heard Serena scream. The door to my room banged open. My aunt was sagging against it, holding her stomach, now shredded red with blood. Wet webs of scarlet crisscrossed down the sword in front of her and dripped heavily onto the tile floor.

“Aunt Serena!” I cried, and Diego dived forward to push back the blades inching toward her neck.

“Run, Baltasar!” my uncle shouted, but a soldier grabbed him from behind and plunged a knife straight into his side. His eyes wide with pain or shock, my uncle groped for the doorframe to keep himself steady. Then he simply collapsed to the floor.

“Run, Baltasar!” he wheezed to me as he fell. “Don’t look back! Run!”

One of the soldiers yelled, “He’s on the side of the house! Get him!”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Aunt Serena grunted. Her long hair flew in cascades behind her as a series of letters flared up before her hands. “Come to me, Behemoth!”

At the same time my uncle shouted, “Go, Baltasar!” I gave him a last look and fled.

I tore up the hill that would lead into town, feeling a series of vibrations buzzing up against my feet. Then came a sound like an explosion. The force of it threw me up the hill.
Don’t look back,
my uncle had said. But I couldn’t obey that command. Spitting the dirt out of my mouth, I flipped onto my back so I could face my childhood home.

What I saw flooded me with horror. In the valley below me, our little cottage lay in ruins. My uncle slumped among the debris — alive or dead, I couldn’t say. A dozen soldiers ducked in front of him, gaping at the monster my aunt had summoned.

It was the Behemoth, a clomping black reptile the size of several houses. It had the black face of a lion. Spikes the width of tree trunks shot out from its stout body and atop its scaly head. Its tail whipped this way and that, sending rocky chunks of what used to be my house flying at the heads of the soldiers.

“Go, Behemoth!” my aunt cried, and the black lizard surged forward. Its teeth snapping at the soldiers, the beast ripped through the remains of the workshop’s floor, tossing up shards of tile and parchment as it went. The soldiers shielded themselves and scattered, throwing spears at the Behemoth’s armored back. A couple of them stuck in the monster’s skin. Most glanced off and rained back down on the soldiers.

They continued fighting each other, I’m sure, but I couldn’t concentrate on the battle. All I could see was my aunt staggering toward my uncle, cradling her bloody belly, and dropping to her knees. Finally she fell forward, reaching one bloody hand toward Diego’s.

Don’t look back,
I thought I heard my uncle say.
Run! Run, Baltasar!

So with tears in my eyes I ran, knowing that they had saved me.

My feet pounded over
cobblestones; the muscles in my legs tightened and burned. But I couldn’t stop running — not now, not yet. In another minute I was tearing through the port. Over my winded breaths I could hear soldiers shouting “Fan out this way!” and “He can’t be far!” My uncle’s voice still drummed through my head.
Run, Baltasar! Go! Spain is no longer safe for you!

Run. Yes, yes — but where? Portugal and France were too close; Diego had said I must run far. The Malleus Maleficarum was formed in Germany, and the Inquisition started in Rome.

Oh, then where else was there to go? The only other places I’d heard of were the imaginary ones listed in stories. Cathay, Arabia, Cipango, Zanzibar. But those were just names, weren’t they? Fairy tales. Even if those places were real, how could I hope to get to one with those men following two steps behind?

And how could I leave my aunt and uncle dying on the floor?

“Check near the ships!” I heard another Malleus soldier yell in the distance, and I ducked behind an overturned rowboat. My gaze ticked up and down the port, searching for something friendly, something safe. To my right stooped Palos’s salt-encrusted houses of ill repute. To my left the
Santa María
and her sisters waited to sail off on a suicide mission.

The
Santa María.

At once the face of Antonio de Cuellar flew up in my memory.
We’re going west,
the ruddy carpenter had said just yesterday. Suddenly that route didn’t seem so dangerous at all. The Malleus Maleficarum would never send their men that way.
Look for me at the Dark Sea Inn,
de Cuellar had said, so I fled across the street and into the tavern.

Once inside I slammed my uncle’s coin purse on the bar in front of the innkeeper, who took in the sight with gleaming, greedy eyes. A few coins bought me a tray of greasy soup, a lit candle, a painted pitcher of water — but most important, they bought me secrecy. The innkeeper said I could hide up in his attic, and no one would know I was staying there as long as the coins kept coming. And as for Antonio de Cuellar, the
Santa Marías
carpenter? I would be alerted the second he returned.

So I flew up the inn’s rickety back staircase and into my attic sanctuary: a room only large enough to fit a broken-down dresser, a few anxious moths, and a single lumpy bed. Some dusty light pushed in from under the slats of the window’s
shutters. They barely made a dent in the shadows that blanketed the slanted ceiling.

I placed my lit candle on the broken dresser and peered through the sliver of light that shone between the attic’s closed shutters. From up here I could see three helmeted figures gathered below near the
Santa María,
pointing back and forth, furious for information.

I gasped through my nose and jumped away from the window. But my heel stuck on a raised floorboard that sent me flying sideways. As I crashed onto the floor, soup sloshed across my tunic and water sprayed across my cheek. And when I next looked up, I saw my bag had spit its contents across the floor.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I tore my bag from across my chest and threw it across the room. As I did, I smashed my elbow against the bedframe. “Goddamn it!” I shouted, clutching at my throbbing elbow. I gritted my teeth and cringed, hugging my shaking shoulders. And then I could hold it in no longer. I beat my head with my wrists and wept and howled, thinking of Serena and Diego, and cursing them for leaving me lost and scared and alone. And I cursed myself for crying, and God and the Malleus Maleficarum too. But most of all, I cursed Amir al-Katib. For getting my family into this mess, for being a traitor and a Moor. For everything.

When I was done, I slumped against the side of the bed and rubbed the tears from my face with the heel of my hand. Distantly I looked upon my few remaining possessions. My
last piece of Serena’s bread had rolled into a pile of dust near the attic door. I brushed it clean and squeezed it in my hands before replacing it in my bag. I picked up my tray with the half-full pitcher and the remains of my soup and tossed it with a clatter onto the dresser.

Not far from the foot of the bed I found the Malleus Maleficarum scroll the priest had read to me in the monastery. Curious, I opened it. But the words “son of Amir al-Katib, the Moor” jumped out at me, and I flung the page from my hands as if it were on fire. Amir al-Katib — my father. No. No, I couldn’t deal with that information right now. First I would find that necklace that Diego had given me. It had to have landed around here somewhere.

I found it under the bed, a mess of glittering gold tangles that I unsnarled with my fingernails. In a fist I raised the necklace to eye level and watched drips of sunlight trickle down its chain. At the bottom of that chain shivered a golden charm in the shape similar to a teardrop or one of the flasks in our workshop back home. And like a flask, it appeared the charm could be opened. The top of the teardrop could be clicked back so you could put something inside it: a piece of a loved one’s hair, the relic of a saint, or even a drop of someone’s blood.