He’d been confident of achieving success before Aislinn got back with the herbs, but the crone is holding out beyond all expectations. She knows, of course. Of all the local women who dabble in a little white magic, this one has the reputation as the most experienced, the one who will understand without a doubt exactly what is meant in the grimoire by potent powders of summoning. But this wrinkled ancient with her parchment skin and her crooked fingers isn’t giving the secret up easily. Perhaps she is so old she no longer fears death; she may be using what arts she has to dull the pain. She’s already endured techniques that would make grown men soil themselves.

He’s conducted such interrogations before, though not often. They follow a logical sequence. If a person holds out to the point where one risks losing him without a result, it becomes more effective to transfer one’s attention to someone else, someone with whom one’s subject has a bond—the husband or wife, a child, an aged parent.There is a weak chink of that kind in the strongest armor. But this old woman has no family. She’s lived by herself in the woods for years.

He sighs. His hands are filthy. It will take vigorous scrubbing to get the blood out from under the nails.The crone’s breathing is a squeaking rustle, another irritant. He doesn’t look at her; such disorder offends his eye. And now Aislinn is coming back, he can hear her at the door.

“Are you done, my lord?” the girl asks politely, coming in and locking the door after her. She is thorough as always; he has trained her well.

“I haven’t got a thing.” There’s no need to pretend with Aislinn. She knows everything about him, to the extent that a simple village girl can understand a mind like his, a mind that soars above those of ordinary folk like a great eagle above the creeping, crawling creatures of the earth. His thoughts reach for the high, the impossible, the stuff of dreams and visions. “I don’t want to kill the witch before she’s given me the answer—I can’t understand why she would hold it back, she’s near death anyway, why take such valuable information to the grave?”