“Ry-shad, where are you hurt?” I looked up to see the captain of the guard peering at me with wide-eyed concern.
“I’m bruised but I’ll be fine.” I turned my head to try and find Grival and Sezarre, wondering why they had not been first to my side. I was more than satisfied with what I saw. Grival had Kaeska face down in the dirt, kneeling on her thighs as he tied her hands securely behind her back. Sezarre was using that cursed veil of hers to gag her securely, pulling her head up at a cruel angle with a hand twisted hard in her hair. The bitch, the whoring, murderous bitch; that poisonous enchantment had to have been her work. No wonder she’d been veiled. Too bad her tame sorcerer had fled his fate, leaving her condemned before all the Islanders to suffer who only knew what fate.
“Ryshad!” Shek Kul’s abrupt summons silenced the assembled Islanders so thoroughly I could hear the heedless chirping of the birds in a distant tree. Getting to my feet, stumbling slightly as my knees still seemed to be looking for someone else to give their instructions, I crossed the bloody sand to stand before him.
“The truth condemns the woman Kaeska and she will pay the price,” said the Warlord in an unemotional voice. “You are vindicated, but I find much to trouble me in this matter. This magician has singled you out and you say there has been much strife between his people and those that were yours before you came to this place.” Shek Kul’s voice grew a little louder, to carry his words unmistakably to the outer reaches of the avid crowd. “I truly believe that you are innocent of any taint of magic, the omen of Rek-a-nul declares this. However there is a very real danger that these men will seek you out, to avenge their comrade. I cannot keep you here, to risk bringing such pollution to the domain.”
Laio stirred in her seat, subsiding as Shek Kul’s head moved as if about to turn and look at her. I stared at the man, wondering what in Dastennin’s name he was saying. Shek Kul folded his arms as he studied me. “You will leave this place as soon as the execution is complete.”
Turning on his heel, the Warlord strode from the practice ground, Gar catching Laio under the elbow to force her along, Grival and Sezarre hauling Kaeska between them, cruel hands gripping her shoulders, not even allowing her to regain her feet when she stumbled, but dragging her along to score her knees on the gravel of the path. A hand from somewhere thrust a waterskin at me and I emptied it in a handful of parched gulps before taking a cup of thin wine from the steward whose wide smile was belied by the fear in his eyes.
“Come.” I followed the captain of the guard numbly to the barracks, where I stripped and washed in a quiet corner, my mind in turmoil at this unexpected turn of events. Finding everyone else keeping a constant arm’s length away from me, I was anointing my various bruises and scrapes with a selection of Sezarre’s ointments when a murmur of surprise made me look round. I turned to find that the guards had all melted away. Shek Kul was standing there, looking at me thoughtfully.
“Let me.” He held out a hand and I gave him the pot of salve, not knowing what else to do. Obeying his gesture, I turned and felt him rubbing the pungent balm into a vicious bruise on my shoulder.
“You have done me a great service, in many ways, by ridding me of Kaeska,” he remarked. “I always knew she would become ever more dangerous when her brother was killed. Once I no longer needed the alliance of her marriage she knew I would get the domain an heir and stop indulging her nonsense. In many ways, you are a very good slave. I know Laio thinks so and there would be much you could teach her, given time. Yet you remind me of a hawk I once had, taken wild too late and only trained with harshness. He was a fine bird, brave and fearless, swift to fly but always slow to return to the lure.” Shek Kul handed the little jar over my shoulder and I turned to face him.
“I could always see that bird looking for the mountain heights,” said the Warlord simply, “even when he was hooded and leashed in the mews. In the end, I untied his jesses myself and let him fly. I think this is the only reward I can give you that would mean anything to you.”
I opened my mouth but he silenced me with an upraised hand. “That would not be enough in itself to persuade me but there is the magic to consider.” His eyes were hard, searching my own. “There was something wrong in that fight, something ill omened hanging around you. I cannot say what it was, but were you any other man, had the great serpent not appeared when you stood alone on the sands, I would have you killed under suspicion of sorcery. As it is I am content to let you go, provided you swear on whatever you consider most holy that you will not return.”
I swallowed on a suddenly dry mouth. “I swear; may Dastennin drown me to cast me naked on the shore if I prove false.”
Shek Kul nodded, apparently satisfied. “This token will guarantee you safe passage across the Archipelago.” He handed me a gold and jeweled medallion that would pretty much guarantee me a safe retirement if I ever brought it home.
“My thanks,” I said, quite unable to think of anything else.
“Now dress and we will deal with the traitor,” the Warlord said grimly. “As her accuser, your responsibility only ends with her death.”
I dragged on my clothes and followed obediently at his heels, wondering with a sick sensation exactly what I was about to witness as we left the compound and headed for the foreshore. Kaeska was lying on a wide wooden platform fixed to stakes at the high-tide mark, her hands and feet spread and tied. I tried hard not to react when I saw her eyes and mouth had been sealed with wax, burns scoring her skin. Her nostrils flared as she drew what frantic breaths she could. Shek Kul regarded her impassively for a moment then picked a large stone from the black sand of the beach and placed it firmly on Kaeska’s breast bone. She flinched as if it had been a burning coal but could not dislodge it, pinioned as she was. As Shek Kul nodded to me, I reluctantly found a fist-sized rock and laid it next to his, averting my eyes from Kaeska’s blind grimaces.
“You stay until she is dead.” Shek Kul strode away without a backward glance and I found myself standing there as a succession of Islanders came to add their weight to Kaeska’s punishment, some in tears, some openly gloating, but all adding to the load that was slowly pressing her to death.
Gar came toward the middle of the afternoon as Kaeska was laboring to draw every breath, her color sickly.
“Are you all right?” she asked, coming to stand next to me in the shade of the shoreline after laying her own middling sized stone with a somber face.
I nodded. “Tell me, what is the purpose of all this?” I was struggling with the measured cruelty of the execution. “Why not just let me cut her head off.”
“Her blood would pollute the ground,” Gar shook her head soberly. “Her mouth is closed so that she cannot curse anyone and her eyes are shut so that her gaze cannot contaminate anything it falls upon. Kaeska has committed a high crime against the domain, against the people and the land, and in this execution all share in her death. When she is dead, all her belongings will be piled on the corpse and burned, to destroy everything that has ever linked her to this place. The sea will carry away the ashes and the defilement with them.” She sighed. “I know how you mainlanders speak of us, as bloodthirsty savages, always at war with each other. In truth, we value life, we value it highly, so when we have to take a life like this, we make sure the nature of that death makes its own statement.”
Gar, like Shek, did not look back as she left the beach, making her way back to the residence through the Islanders who continued to come to share in this incomprehensible rite. Laio came some while later as the line was thinning out somewhat. She was carrying a large stone that took her all her strength and both hands and it must have come from somewhere in the residence. Panting as she raised it in front of her chest, she dropped it hard on the heap now covering Kaeska’s torso. A feeble whimper escaped the tormented woman and Laio leaped backward as if she’d been bitten by a snake, looking around wildly. Seeing me, she came to sit on the dry sand beneath the fringed trees.