Mistress of the Waterfall

A hundred tortured screams echoed through the night, shattering the silence of the starless, moonless darkness. The villagers of Čachtice huddled in their meager dwellings, cowering from the cries of malice and suffering that emanated from Csejte Castle’s parapets, as if the flimsy wooden doors and shutters could protect them from the pervasive evil. With trembling hands, Johann Weiss held the silvered cross hanging from his vestments, desperately searching through the darkness for a sign of his God.

“Steady, brother.” The grizzled voice of György Thurzó, the Palatine of Hungary and lead investigator into Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed’s atrocities, startled the young inquisitor. Nearly a dozen men, a magnificent gesture of force from the grand Inquisition, had made the journey from Rome to Hungary to be present for the arrest of the woman. Countess Elizabeth Báthory was an infamous name within the village, whispered only with fear and reverence as the blood countess.

“An evil stirs this night.” Johann’s hands quaked as he clung to the shimmering silver cross of the Inquisition. He had endured the Labourd witch-hunt of 1609, and heard the cries of the accused Basque witches as they were tried at Navarre. He could still smell the charring of flesh on the funeral pyre, could still remember the howls of agony as the vile servants of the darkness cracked and burned for their transgressions. Yet, despite all his experience fighting the servants of the dark lord, he found his faith ill prepared for the night ahead.

“Another heathen, brother Weiss.” Sebastian Barclay gave him an encouraging slap on the shoulder. A fellow member of the Inquisition. Sebastian had staked and burned his own share of witches in his nearly fifty years of service. He held a lantern of wrought iron, which illuminated the assembly of holy men with its dull orange glow. The cold hung in the Hungarian air, giving form to their breath in the night. “Nothing more.”