The second son was forced to honor his vow or lose his crown. Lukin’s head was placed upon a golden platter, and from it, he dispensed advice to the new king for the entirety of his rule, which was long, just, and miserable.
Sankt Lukin is the patron saint of politicians.
SANKTA MAGDA
There have been many bad years for Ravka, and in one of these bitter years, the crops failed and the cattle died off, leaving the people to starve. As so often happens in these dark times, a woman was accused of being a witch and bringing this desolation upon her village.
Her name was Magda and she had long lived at the edge of town, offering cures and potions of all kinds, delivering babies and feeding them her porridges and tonics when their empty-bellied mothers could give no milk.
She had never taken a husband and had no family to protect her, and her home was on a very nice plot of land much coveted by some of the most powerful leaders of the town. So Magda was not surprised when one of their wives pointed a bony finger at her and accused her of consorting with demons for the sake of making trouble for the good and righteous people of the town.
Magda did not wait to smell the torches being lit. Before the mob could knock down her door, she fled to the woods where she had long gathered herbs and plants to make her cures, and which she knew better than any hunter.
The town leaders congratulated themselves on having rid their village of a witch, and the people rested easier in their beds, sure that their troubles were now over. But rain did not fall in the spring, and frost came early in autumn, and the remaining cattle and sheep had no place to graze, so they sickened and died. Babies—some of whom Magda had delivered—wailed their hunger from their cribs, and mothers smothered their own children to end their suffering.
The town grew restless, the people wild-eyed. As another terrible winter set in, people began to wonder. Perhaps Magda had not been the only witch in their midst. Two sisters were accused of making dark bargains with creatures from the other side—the cold woman who lives at the bottom of the river, the shadow man who is found behind doors.
Lacking the courage to run into the darkness of the woods, the sisters took shelter at home. “Surely our father will protect us,” they whispered as they shivered in their narrow beds. “Surely our brothers will.”
Instead, their brothers stole their sisters’ shoes and their father took away his daughters’ coats so they could not run from the house.
The sisters went to their knees and prayed to the Saints for someone to help them, and to their surprise, a vision appeared at their window—it was Magda, though she looked younger than she had when she’d left the town.
“Come,” said Magda. “Come with me now and live as free women.”
“It is winter,” protested the elder sister. “You wish for us to run barefoot in our nightclothes, out into the forest, where we will surely die of the cold? You are a friend to demons, and no holy woman. Go back to the bottom of the river, witch!”
But the younger sister knew that salvation must sometimes come with sacrifice. She recognized Magda as a messenger from the Saints. She begged her older sister to come with her, but when she would not, the younger girl climbed out of the window alone and followed Magda into the night.
The forest floor was damp and hard, and the branches and stones cut into her bare feet. The wind sliced through her nightclothes and she wept for the misery of it.
At last Magda spoke to her. “You weep and your feet bleed. Your skin is blue with cold. Do you wish to turn back?”
The girl shook her head. “I will die in the woods, a free woman in the company of the trees. Better that than the pyre.”
As soon as she spoke these words, she felt herself lifted and sped along, her feet no longer touching the forest floor. Before she could blink three times, she was seated inside a hut, beside a fire, wrapped in furs with a pot of soup before her. There were women all around, stoking the coals in the oven, drying herbs, tending to the garden in the light of the moon—a garden that had no business blooming so late in the year.
The girl knew she had come to a place of salvation. She said prayers of thanks and drank her soup.
As for her older sister, the mob came to the house the next morning, and neither her father nor her brothers barred the door. She told them of the witch who had appeared at their window and taken her younger sister away. She pled her purity and righteous soul, but she was still tied to a stake and died upon the flames.
Her father and brothers went into the woods to hunt for Magda and the sister she’d stolen. When night began to fall they smelled baking bread, meat roasting over a fire, figs stewing in wine. They went mad with it, stumbling deeper into the trees, and have never been heard of since. The same fate has befallen many a hunter in those woods.
The village continued to starve no matter how many girls they put to death. But the girls who prayed to Magda would often find themselves swept up and carried into the heart of the forest, and so she is known as the patron saint of abandoned women, as well as bakers.
SANKT EGMOND
From the time he was a boy, Egmond had a gift for drawing and building. When the church tower in his village began to slump to the
