Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online Page A

guard for one of the less hated usurers in Forebridge. They also indicated where this usurer might be found.
    Reave the Just nodded once, gravely.
    Smiling as though they were sure of his gratitude, and knew they had earned it, the people crowding around him began to disperse. Reave walked away among them. In a short time, he had gained admittance to the usurer’s place of business and was speaking to the usurer himself.
    The usurer supplied Reave with the name of the widow Huchette. After all, Jillet had offered her wealth as collateral in his attempt to obtain gold. Despite his acknowledged relation to Jillet, however, Reave was not satisfied by the information which the usurer was able to give him. Their conversation sent him searching for alchemists until he located the one he needed.
    The alchemist who had conceived Jillet’s stratagem against the widow did not find Reave’s clarity of appearance and quietness of manner reassuring: quite the reverse. In fact, he was barely able to restrain himself from hurling smoke in Reave’s face and attempting to escape through the window. In his wildest frights and fancies, he had never considered that Reave the Just himself might task him for the advice he had sold to Jillet. Nevertheless, something in the open, vivid gaze which Reave fixed upon him convinced him that he could not hope for escape. Smoke would not blind Reave; and when the alchemist dived out the window, Reave would be there ahead of him, waiting.
    Mumbling like a shamed child—and inwardly cursing Reave for having this effect upon him—the alchemist revealed the nature of his transaction with Jillet. Then, in a spasm of defensive self-abnegation, attempting to deflect Reave’s notorious extravagance, he produced the gold which he had received from Jillet and offered it to Jillet’s “kinsman.”
    Reave considered the offer briefly before accepting it. His tone was quiet, but perfectly distinct, as he said, “Jillet must be held accountable for his folly. However, you do not deserve to profit from it.” As soon as he left the alchemist’s dwelling, he flung the coins so far across the hedgerows that the alchemist had no hope of ever recovering them.
    In the secrecy of his heart, the alchemist wailed as though he had been bereft. But he permitted himself no sound, either of grief or of protest, until Reave the Just was safely out of hearing.
    Alone, unannounced, and without any discernible weapons or defenses, Reave made his way to the manor house of the deceased Rudolph Huchette.
    Part of his power, of course, was that he never revealed to anyone precisely how the strange deeds for which he was known were accomplished. As far as the world, or the stories about him which filled the world, were concerned, he simply did what he did. So neither Jillet nor the widow—and certainly not Kelven Divestulata—were ever able to explain the events which took place within the manor house after Reave’s arrival. Beginning with that arrival itself, they all saw the events as entirely mysterious.
    The first mystery was that the mastiffs patrolling within the walls of the manor house did not bark. The Divestulata’s servants were not alerted; no one demanded admittance at the gatehouse, or at any of the doors of the manor. Furthermore, the room in which Jillet was held prisoner was guarded, not merely by dogs and men and bolted doors, but by ignorance: no one in Forebridge knew that the chamber existed. Nevertheless, after Jillet’s imprisonment had been measured by a dozen or perhaps fifteen thick candles, and his understanding of his circumstances had passed beyond ordinary fuddlement and pain into an awareness of doom so complete that it seemed actively desirable, he prised open his eyelids enough to see a man standing before him in the gloom, a man who was not Kelven Divestulata—a man, indeed, who was not anyone Jillet recognized.
    Smiling gravely, this man lifted water to Jillet’s lips. And when Jillet had