by Janny Wurts
Daliana showed the dangerous conduct her back and brazened her way forward in clanking steps to the head of the stairway.
A wall of sound slammed her. Shrieked curses and catcalls, obscenities and vilification: the sheer volume of noise made her weak at the knees. Vivacious, endearing, quick-witted in scrapes, Daliana had never imagined such horrendous spite existed in the wide world. Debased as an icon, she dared not give way. While the sky overhead seemed to spin, and the icy cuffs gouged her flesh, she shut her eyes to the howling mob and wrestled the drag of the chain in descent. Someone hurled a rotten onion. It splattered the carved lion atop the left balustrade, while tossed stones rapped and belled off the plumed helms of her immaculate escort.
The harassed captain bellowed, ‘Close ranks!’
Armoured guardsmen eclipsed her from hostile view and shielded her awkward course down the stair to the street. When the high step into the wagon defeated her, Daliana sustained the rough grasp that hoisted her, then fastened her upright against the cross-bar. Throughout, the restless crowd chanted abuse.
‘Shadow’s whore!’
‘Servant of Darkness!’
‘Burn for your crimes! Seethe in flames for eternity!’
She endured, while her quilted mantle was yanked away from her shoulders. A sword sliced the laced ties of her girdle. After the stiffened green velvet dropped from her waist, her embroidered silk over-dress was as ruthlessly ripped from her body. Left to shiver in her thin linen shift, she watched, horrified, as the temple dedicates tossed her rifled clothing to the ravening crowd. The few decorative seed pearls did not explain the explosive, mad scramble, or the feral hunger that shredded the fabric like jackals set on a carcass.
Veiled as the wind caught her snarled brown hair, Daliana heard the crack as the reinsman whipped up the harness team. The felon’s cart jerked and rolled her ahead, the rumble of the iron-rimmed wheels lost into the howl of the crowd. Daliana fixed her gaze upwards. Dawn stained the sky overhead like a bruise. A raucous flock of scavenging crows wheeled above the slate rooftops, notched by Etarra’s peaked gables and carved cornices, and smeared by hazed smoke from the chimney-pots.
Across the teeming throng in the plaza loomed the timber frame of a newly built scaffold. The corner posts snapped with the temple’s white streamers, and the True Sect’s Sunwheel banner replaced the mayor’s device on the flagstaff. More snowy bunting streamed where the plank stair on the platform led upwards to the stacked pyre. Laid across a gold-cloth on a ceremonial altar, the silver sword of the Light’s executioner waited to pierce her through. Daliana shuddered, chin turned to escape the nauseating reek of poured oil that thickened the breeze. She prayed the ordeal ahead would end quick, before horror unravelled her dignity.
But the ghastly procession dragged on without mercy. Down the main thoroughfare, lined on both sides, gleaming rows of horse-lancers braced back the excitable spectators, while Shadow’s captured minion was paraded past as a trophy. If her loosened shift spared Daliana’s modesty, the brisk wind cut through the thin cloth with relentless cruelty. She shivered as much from pure gall, that her steadfast effort should be so reviled, then used as the visceral ploy to engage the masses. The Light’s priesthood would reap today’s raw fascination, a palpable force fanned incandescent by the barbaric prospect of a blood-sacrifice. Lord Lysaer’s integrity was already lost. Hounded to war by Desh-thiere’s raised curse, he ceded the mayor’s seat to a temple usurper. No Etarran possessed the authority to resist. The faithful would riot if anyone tried. The mounted company that backed the Light’s Hope held their ironclad files, splendid as heroes, the polished threat of their sharpened arms more than a ceremonial display.
Compelled to bear up, Daliana refused to acknowledge the crowd. The dashing male partners who once had shared her exploits in the taverns or taken her dancing under the lanterns at midsummer, all too likely stood alongside her accusers today. She would give such betrayal no satisfaction. Drama would only fuel the cause of the Light’s opportunistic recruiters. More potent than coin or a jack of strong whiskey, the intoxicate promise of glory swayed the town’s impressionable bravos. Appalling, how many signed up to bear arms, swept away by the temple’s pageantry.
Daliana watched the new day unfold, the sky egg-shell blue and shell pink as the clouds ignited with brightening sunlight. Flocks of birds soared like gilt flecks on the breeze. Life endured, despite her harsh misery. The Sorcerer who had requested her service never promised her a safe outcome.
She must cling to what strength still remained, while the cart rolled her onwards past the smithies, the confectioner’s shop, and the vintners, the bakeries, and the threshing mills, the weaver’s and the cooper’s, tucked chock-a-block in the side streets, familiar ever since birth. Each filled her nose with its distinctive scent: from the acrid reek of the tanners, to the floral bouquet of the perfumer’s wares, soaked into brilliant silk scarves that fluttered in the breeze for display.
Daliana wept then, unstrung by the sweetness of roses and mint, of patchouli, gardenia, and lavender. She ached to experience the gladness of spring and acknowledged the loss of her future. Nothing remained but to hold her head up until the sword’s point forced her silent.
A shadow swept over her, the sun’s stingy warmth eclipsed by the high, tiled roof of the magistrate’s hall. A lone raven perched on the spire, a sinister harbinger in most of the tales remembered from childhood. Daliana shuddered. The wagon came full circle too soon, with the hour of judgement upon her. Too swiftly, the crowd’s gaudy tumult fell back, dimmed as the temple officer’s orders cleared the staircase before the entry. The prisoner’s cart rocked to a stop. Men-at-arms with chipped-marble faces stepped up to the cross-post and unpinned her shackles. When Daliana’s numbed sinews failed to carry her weight, the impersonal grasp of golden-scaled gauntlets bore her up, colder than ice. Daliana reeled, near helpless, as the Sunwheel dedicates hefted her down.
The sullen beat of the crowd’s animosity hammered away at her back, dulled to an ominous growl as she passed beyond public view through the arch at the stair-head. The nervous guardsmen bullied her onwards. Despite her black-out faintness and the onerous weight of her chains, she mastered the clanking drag at her ankles and walked through the carved, double doors. The matched tramp of her escort punched echoes the full length of the grandiose passage beyond. Enveloped in the surreal tang of citrus oil and wax polish, Daliana received only a jumbled impression of tessellated floors, the gleam of fine marble like a closed tomb. The corridor’s end swam to her over-stressed senses, and the indoor warmth clogged her tight throat like wet wool.
A herald’s trumpet silenced the buzz in the magistrate’s hall as she passed the threshold. The hush left her painfully isolate. Her march between the packed rows of seating funnelled her to the forefront, where an overhead dome with costly, paned glass illumined the chamber of state. The solemn ranks of Etarra’s town council-men lined the circular wall. Centred upon the half-round dais, the magistrate’s panel perched at their bench, gowned like vultures in judicial black. If their robed severity failed to unnerve the criminal supplicant, the crescent array set the centremost stage for the mayor’s chair, carved from a block of stygian marble.
Lord Lysaer’s absence for the True Sect cause left the white-and-gold pageantry of the temple’s robed examiner atop that sovereign throne. Light juxtaposed against dark, aflame in the scintillance of gold braid and diamonds, His Radiance carried the bolt-lightning presence to command subservient awe.
The cry of the herald splintered across the expectant quiet. ‘All rise! Honour the truth and defend the meek innocent, let the day’s trial commence!’
The dedicates shoved Daliana into the railed enclosure beneath the examiner’s feet. Other guardsmen bolted her shackles. With no stool for relief, she stood in isolation, as though she were deadly, or dangerous. The escort secured the gate latch behind her and stayed posted on dutiful watch.
Then the herald banged his mace on th
e floor, aglitter in his ceremonial tabard. ‘May justice prevail, and divine Light defend the path of the righteous!’
The rustle of silk and stirred brocades breathed a mélange of expensive perfumes as the onlookers settled their finery and sat. Several coughs pocked the expectant murmuring. Daliana braced herself to endure. Dizzied and frightened past reason, she suffered the dissecting gaze of the High Priest Examiner, who pressed his charges of dark craft and murder against her.
As nothing before, his venomous survey crippled her courage with dread. Couched in waxy lids, those pale, granite eyes denounced doubt, until pity was absent. His statuesque posture and ringed fingers appeared bloodless as chiselled stone. For the Light’s glory alone, he existed. His creed wrote the world’s only script for salvation. His upright gold mace and the lot of the damned seemed as righteously unassailable.
‘We are gathered today to destroy a grand threat to well-being, goodness, and innocence,’ the examiner opened. ‘The accused, you may think, wears a harmless appearance. Small, a mere snip of a woman, she may not appear likely to wield any subversive power as a minion of Shadow. That lie will be stripped before witnesses, here. The masquerade of such girlish meekness harbours an evil so monstrous, no upright citizen dares to speak as her advocate.’
‘Let me correct you,’ denounced an unruffled voice from the commoner’s ranks. A lean man arose, clad in plain scholar’s black, and limped down the central aisle. Outflanked by his mildness, the dedicate cordon had no cause to stop his advance. He tipped up a wide-brimmed felt hat and declared, ‘Let the magistrate’s record restate that Daliana sen Evend does have an advocate. More, the folk gathered here may prefer not to be swayed by unfounded rhetoric. Let us hear forthright questions. If this court is honest, and not a staged drama to heighten the thrill of an execution, I charge the panel to weigh the events that have called this tribunal in session.’
A livid pinch clamped the examiner’s lips. Inconvenienced, and cornered by the rote tissue of ceremony, he barked at the clerk’s sallow servant. ‘Fetch a chair for the prisoner’s advocate and let the proceedings resume!’
The intellect behind his needled impatience broke Daliana into a quivering sweat. Snared game before the scrapping of wolves, she feared for her volunteer ally.
‘Don’t do this,’ she implored him under her breath.
Her distress met eyes of limpid, warm brown, creased at the corners by laughter, and genteel silver hair, worn shoulder length, and tied with a velvet cord. A matching band of filigree adorned his dark hat, tipped back from clean-shaven features. The dome’s frosty light only reinforced the sincerity written into the weathered face underneath. The stranger’s scarred grip accepted the chair brought by the flustered chamberlain. Leaned on the back to relieve his game leg, the fellow refused to be hurried.
‘Daliana sen Evend, you are not alone,’ he declared, pitched only for her. ‘Never believe that hope has deserted you.’ The burled grain that roughened his voice was as water in drought, and lightened her heart like the glimmer of starshine.
Then the gavel banged on the magistrate’s bench. The Lord Examiner’s reprimand splintered across reassurance. ‘Silence, before the assembly!’
Unperturbed, the advocate turned the chair to face forward, and sat. ‘Please call me by Trey.’
Daliana’s breath caught. The name well might be the short-form for another, attached to a Fellowship Sorcerer: Traithe, whose dauntless work had cut off the Mistwraith’s lethal invasion through South Gate. The cost left him crippled, and scars from the trauma yet impaired his faculties. To show himself here posed a terrible risk. The limp posed a red flag to anyone versant in the particulars of Third Age history. Traithe had played no small part in the failed effort to restore s’Ffalenn rule at Etarra three centuries past. And Erdane’s older archive, sequestered with the temple, held the fullest account of his greater renown. The Sorcerer’s attributes were infamous there, with the Sunwheel priesthood aligned as the Fellowship’s inveterate enemies.
The intensity of the Lord Examiner’s glare suggested the advocate’s identity had been exposed. The man would close his trap on bigger quarry if he could, aware of the delicate vulnerability that had kept Traithe sequestered in long-term obscurity.
Though wise beyond measure, this was not Asandir, fit and able to outface a high priest’s tribunal without mortal risk.
‘Faith, brave one!’ Trey whispered. His sly wink brushed off Daliana’s dismay, that he walked naked into the snake’s den. ‘I do have a plan for redemption at hand.’
But the unspoken truth lurked behind the fact he had guaranteed no deliverance.
The cat-and-mouse gambit unavoidably thrust his life into jeopardy alongside hers. Daliana saw little chance of reprieve. From the buzzard’s row on the bench, Etarra’s magistrate called the first witness against her.
The apple-cheeked barmaid from the Red Cockerel minced forward. She curtseyed nervously before the dais, her holiday skirt clutched between work-chapped hands, and her lank, mousy hair tidied up with shell combs. ‘Your worthiness,’ she declared, ‘by the holy Light, hear the truth.’
Daliana all but collapsed with relief. Hattsey had been her fellow conspirator through more than one high-jinks scrape. Her reliable kindness had unbarred the back-alley door many times to lend shelter from hot-footed pursuit.
‘As I live and breathe,’ the barmaid declared, ‘what took place on that morning was witchcraft.’
The earnest betrayal denounced every vestige of former loyalty. Daliana stared in stark disbelief at a friend changed into stranger.
Hattsey wrung beefy hands and avoided the prisoner’s shocked face. ‘I’ve known Daliana sen Evend for years. Never took her for a pawn of the Dark. But I can’t say otherwise, your worships. Not now. I had a clear view when she threw her knife that day in the tap-room. By my own life, I swear the unnatural flash was a spell meant to murder the temple’s ambassador. More, I can vouch for the years Shadow’s evil required to refine her intent. Half the young men in Etarra have lost their purses to her deadly prowess.’
Simple, unpolished, the damning phrase hung.
While Daliana reeled with hurt, the magnanimous examiner blessed Hattsey’s courageous honesty, then invited rebuttal from the defender. ‘Will the advocate speak for the prisoner?’
‘Not at this time,’ Trey stated, crisp. His walnut brown eyes regarded the Light’s prosecutor with quiet interest. He had noted the subtlety: the barmaid received the Light’s leave to retire, a high-handed assumption of judicial authority.
While the scraping pens of the clerks filled the pause, and Hattsey tramped back to her seat, Etarra’s upstaged magistrate cleared his throat and intoned, ‘May the second witness for the case come forward!’
The Red Cockerel’s lanky bar-keeper stood up, wooden in his formal jacket. Steps pinched in stiff shoes with buckles, he stalked to the fore with his chin out-thrust and his beak nose pink with embarrassment. ‘I could not settle my conscience, your worships. Since our Lord Mayor Lysaer’s gone to war against Shadow, my part’s to come clean and speak for what’s decent.’
Daliana realized, horrified, that he, too, believed she connived hand in glove with the forces of Darkness. Of those turned out for the summons against her, the front rows were packed with people she knew. All avoided her glance. Even strangers turned from her, lest the sight of her face should spread the taint of corruption. One by one, from tradesmen to shop-girls, workaday folk stepped up and condemned her. Many were loath to risk their own necks, or seem involved by association. Others assumed she was guilty out of persistent ignorance. Confusion or malice, the difference was moot. Hatred and fear forged their devout sincerity into an adamant chorus.
As each statement finished, the examiner kept form and offered the advocate’s right to rebuttal; and each time, brief in courtesy, Trey waived the chance to argue for the accused. Disheartened and wrung by nervous exhaustion, Daliana wrestled her strangling doubt, afraid her Sighted in
stinct had been mistaken.
The scholarly fellow could not be Traithe come at risk, but a man: brave enough for a token gesture of comfort but too spineless to challenge the temple. He listened in silence, while the packed throng grumbled and squirmed in their seats. As morning wore on, their restlessness chafed through the stream of repetitive statements.
‘Get on!’ a heckler burst out from the rear. ‘Heard enough claptrap to know right from wrong! Let’s have the sentence and watch the witch burn!’
‘Bring on the torch! We’re tired of waiting!’ a matron agreed from the side-lines.
More clamour arose. While the magistrate rapped his gavel for order, and the dedicate guardsmen broke ranks to quell the offenders, the examiner sat motionless, jowls pouched over his gilded collar and his fleshy hand firm on his mace. A viper might lurk with such coiled stillness. If he appeared content to bear through the laborious detail, his chilly quiet acknowledged the tactic spun by his disarming adversary.
The case dragged to tedium without an enlivened spark of dispute. As the grind of procedure back-lashed, and the swell of high feeling edged towards rebellion, the examiner cracked out in reprimand, ‘Advocate Trey! If you make no appeal, I suggest your defense is a mockery that squanders the court’s precious time!’
‘You would stoop to a premature settlement?’ Trey stood, unassuming, more than a bit awkward as he favoured his crippled leg. Yet somehow his soft rebuttal shamed the fretful listeners for their impatience. ‘Should your verdict carry the least spark of doubt? A young woman’s life is at stake! Condemn her outright, or pass sentence on her before the last witness is heard, and what justice is served? Before stakes so final, I suggest that lost time is a trifling nuisance! Since when has an officious seat on a hard chair become so absurdly unbearable?’ Through titters and several muffled guffaws, Trey pursued with adamant gentleness, ‘For Daliana sen Evend, the outcome today weighs the sum of her living days. Is authority gone soft before the gravity of a charge of dark practice, or worse, does the temple’s creed bend its morals for mere mortal frailty?’