Hammer of Witches Read Online Free PDF Page B

black hill in front of us.
    “Strange place to have an interrogation,” the cloaked man behind me said. “What is it? Some kind of old monastery?” When the soldier didn’t answer, the cloaked man snorted. “And here I’d thought the Inquisition was flush with coin. Didn’t they just build a fancy new courthouse up in Cuenca?”
    The soldier answered gruffly in his helmet. “The Inquisition and Malleus Maleficarum are no long affiliated. And if you want to keep working for us, you’ll keep your questions to yourself.”
    Rain plinked against the soldier’s helmet as he dismounted his horse. He trudged up to us through the mud, pulled me off my horse by my tunic, and hurled me to the ground. I had only a moment to shiver in the dirt before he lugged me to my feet. Then he shoved me into the wooden mouth of the monastery door and down a spiral staircase.
    Down and down we went. We descended into gloom andfinally blindness. From out of nowhere, it seemed, the cloaked man lit a torch, a burning parody of the fire back home in Aunt Serena’s kitchen. The thought of it put a half-smile on my face, but the smile trembled under its own weight and shattered.
    I was going to die here.
    A dim orange light throbbed below us now, leading us to our destination. The narrow throat we had been traveling through gave way to the expansive bowels of the monastery’s underworld. To my relief the torches on this basement’s damp walls revealed no shackles, no metal spikes, no open-mouthed skeletons. Only huge stone blocks cowering in neat rows over the floor, each roughly the size of my bed back home. Nothing more in this cellar but a single chair and its shadow, which shifted spectrally under the torchlight.
    There was a priest, too — or at least, a balding man in the garments of priest. Above his long robe and short cape was a plain, pudgy face that might have been pleasant if it didn’t try to smile. But it did, and the sight of the man’s lizard teeth churned acid through my gut.
    The soldier removed the rope from my worn wrists, shoved me into the room’s only seat, and tied my arms firmly to the chair. “There is no need for roughness,” the man dressed as a priest said. His accent sounded German — quiet, high-pitched, and lyrical. “Allow me to apologize, Baltasar. Normally we wouldn’t have arrested you this way or brought you to such adistasteful place as this one. But due to the lack of insight of the current Inquistional administration, we are nowadays forced to do our work, shall we say, underground.”
    The frigid air of the basement clutched at my lungs, and my head was still ringing with pain. Through the agony and the wheezes I was somehow able to mutter, “Who are you? Why did you bring me here?”
    The priest rifled through a pile of papers sitting on the massive stone block behind him. “There is no need to worry, Baltasar. This is not a trial. You are not under arrest, officially. I will simply be asking you some questions, that is all. Now where is that — ah, yes.”
    The priest reached a ringed hand into his robes and removed a roll of parchment sealed shut with red wax. An image of a hammer was imprinted on that seal — printed on the diagonal, as if ready to strike. As the priest opened the scroll I noticed the golden signet ring he wore bore the same symbol. He plucked a quill from the block of granite behind him and dipped it into the inkwell next to his papers.
    “But first we must handle some paperwork,” the priest said. “So if you don’t mind, please state your full name for the record.”
    He had to be joking. “But you already know my na —”
    The priest cut me short by taking my swollen jaw in one hand and crushing it in his fingers. The pressure of his grasp sent pain stabbing through the insides of my teeth.
    The priest knelt in front of me and shook my head lovingly. “Oh, Baltasar, Baltasar! There is no time for arguments! Do you realize that at this very moment your