by Nat Russo
Panic turned to terror, and he felt the blood drain from his face. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to pass out or throw up. He was suffocating. One of his knees gave out, and he fell. The guard standing next to him grabbed him under the arm and hoisted him to his feet. He tried to draw power, but the energy wouldn’t respond.
“Guards, prepare the prisoner for execution,” the scribe said. “And notify Captain Saren.”
“Have him flogged, first,” the magistrate said. “If there are any other necromancers lurking about, we would do well to discourage them. Double the number of lashes of the other prisoner.”
“Yes, Magistrate.”
Nicolas’s knees buckled and they dragged him out of the grand room.
The bell reverberated like a deep gong being struck every few seconds as the sandy plaza filled with people. Every strike threatened to penetrate the comforting numbness that had settled deep within Nicolas.
The guards led another prisoner into the plaza, and the man trembled and cried. Like Nicolas, he was bound at the wrists and ankles, and chains extending between his bindings made it difficult to walk.
Nicolas recognized the other prisoner. He was the man the guards had chased through the plaza a few days ago.
The crowd grew louder as a man in a simple gray robe climbed a platform in front of them. Guards escorted Nicolas and the other unfortunate man onto the platform with him.
The robed man turned, and Nicolas recognized him. It was Captain Saren, the Shandarian Ranger who had arrested him and Mujahid. Saren wasn’t wearing the Arinwool that rendered Rangers invisible, but there was no mistaking the feline eyes reflecting the yellow light of the Great Barrier above. A white stole swept from Saren’s left shoulder down to his right hip, and it was covered with images of red adda-ki in different poses.
A hush settled over the plaza, and the bell rang one last time.
“People of Caspardis,” Saren said. “The men you see before you have been found guilty of crimes against the Union. They are sentenced, in part, to public flogging.”
A cheer rose, and Saren gestured for silence.
While the crowd settled, Nicolas used to the growing quiet to calm himself, but his heart wouldn’t cooperate. It raced and pounded as the inevitability of what was about to happen grew more and more real.
“Take the first one,” Saren said.
A guard grabbed the other prisoner by the arm and led him to two poles jutting from the ground. He refastened the man’s chains to the tops of the poles, one wrist bound to each pole so that the prisoner’s arms were spread out, and he dropped a cloth sack next to one of the poles, toppling it with his boot.
As the sack spilled some of its crystalline contents, the last of Nicolas’s numbness vanished and he became aware of every detail. He saw the smiles on the faces of the people in the crowd. He heard the clinking of the prisoner’s chains against the poles and every creak and groan of the nearest guard’s leather armor. He smelled sweat and something else. Urine?
The guard who knocked the cloth sack over tore the bound prisoner’s robe down to his waist, exposing his back. When he turned, Nicolas saw something in the guard’s belt, and his stomach quivered.
A scourge.
Nicolas knew too much about history to pretend that thing couldn’t kill him. A wooden pole, twelve inches long with leather strips attached to the end, and each strip tipped with a metal or stone bit. The leather strips alone would slice the skin. But those bits of metal…they would rip the flesh right off his bones.
“The first convict has been found guilty of violating the Shandarian Merchant Statutes,” Saren said. “He’s sentenced to fifteen lashes by loaded whip. Proceed at will, guard.”
The guard carrying the scourge detached it from his belt and raised it back over his shoulder. The crowd was silent.
The scourge struck the prisoner and blood sprayed backward, covering the guard’s face and armor. A gurgling scream escaped the wounded prisoner’s mouth. The guard pulled the scourge away, tearing bloody chunks of flesh from the man’s back and scattering them into the crowd.
The cheering crowd drowned out the suffering man’s plea for mercy.
Nicolas shook, and his heart drummed in his ears. He was next. Food rose in his throat, and he vomited onto the platform.
He felt a splash of water. The other prisoner had lost consciousness, and a guard was emptying a bucket of water on him.
The man returned to consciousness and screamed. His back was unrecognizable. It looked like a piece of striped meat rather than human skin and flesh.
The scourge struck…over and over…tearing flesh and sinew from the man’s back. The man opened his mouth, face contorted in agony, but no sound came out.
The guards left him unconscious for the last few strikes, and he hung limp from the posts, bleeding and drawing ragged breaths. Blood and torn chunks of flesh covered the onlookers.
“Take him back to the dungeon,” Saren said.
Blood ran down the guard’s face as if he had bathed in it. He dropped the scourge and approached the post, where he unlocked one of the binding chains. Something stopped him.
“He’s dead, Ranger,” the guard said. “Or close to it. Odd for fifteen lashes.”
Saren glanced at Nicolas with a look of concern.
Nicolas felt hope when the guard pronounced the prisoner dead. His fear overpowered any sense of right and wrong. He wanted the man to die. Death meant necropotency, and if he had the chance, he’d kill the guy himself to get it. But it was no use. The prisoner clung to life with a tenuous grasp. There’d be no surge of power to use for escape.
“Remove him and make way for the next prisoner.”
Saren pointed at Nicolas and raised his voice over the crowd. “This man is a convicted necromancer.”
Murmurs spread throughout the crowd.
“He’s been sentenced to death by drowning, under the Shandarian Justice Protocols,” Saren said. “Before this sentence is carried out, we’re going to give him thirty lashes by loaded whip.”
People in the crowd gasped, and incredulous cries of “thirty lashes” echoed around the plaza.
One voice in the crowd shouted “Drowning? He’ll never survive the whip.”
Nicolas was vaguely aware of guards leading him to the poles, dragging his feet through the muddy blood and sand. They tore his robe open and pulled it down to his waist, as they had with the previous prisoner. When they finished lashing his hands and feet to the posts, spread wide like the last prisoner, they retreated.
The scourge struck his back for the first time and the world exploded. The edges of the scourge dug into his right shoulder, tearing trenches down to his left hip, and he screamed.
When the scourge landed its second blow, it tore a path from his left shoulder to his right hip.
He had lost his voice from the volume of his screams, but screaming was involuntary now, and neither the pain nor his raw vocal chords would allow him to stop. Blood poured down his back as more flesh was ripped away, and he tried to pull against the right post.
He couldn’t feel his right arm anymore.
After the third blow he could no longer sense the pauses between strikes. He drifted into unconsciousness.
Water ran down his face, and he couldn’t breathe.
He felt every fiber of his back—every jagged tear, every empty hole, every sharp cut.
Something—a piece of himself—ripped away from the back of his neck. Pain spread across his body like liquid fire, always growing in intensity and never abating.
His vision went black and the image of Kaitlyn faded from his mind.
He coughed water out of his mouth and nose, and the feeling of molten metal pouring down his back returned.
The ambient power around him grew stronger, and he tried to reach out and touch it, but again he couldn’t.
I have to live.
He clung to the vision of Kaitlyn’s face, having no idea how many lashes remained. He cou
ld no longer tell if the scourge was striking him or not.
A guard walked passed his field of vision.
“He lives,” the guard said.
He heard a sound at his right foot and saw the guard opening the cloth sack. A small shovel, more a scoop than anything else, lay on top of a crystalline substance. The guard reached in and scooped up the powder and disappeared from Nicolas’s sight.
White hot torture spread across his back, but it paled in comparison to the torment in his mind. His life was about to end and he was powerless to change it. He’d never see his home again. He’d never see Toby again. He’d never see Kaitlyn again. He tried to keep an image of Toby and Kaitlyn in his mind as he began to pass out.
An armored fist struck his face, and his jaw shattered.
“We’ll have no more of that,” a guard said.
Agony defined his existence. Pain was no longer something he experienced. Pain was who he was.
A sword hung from the guard’s hip, and a brief glimmer of hope flickered through Nicolas’s mind.
He mustered as much breath as he could, and through vocal chords he thought would never work again, he uttered the two words that had the power to set him free.
“Kill…me.”
“Don’t worry,” the guard said. “We will.”
They untied him from the posts. One of the guards lifted Nicolas’s robe and covered his ravaged back.
He fell, face down, into a bloody quagmire of flesh and sand.
“Help him to his feet,” Saren said. “Carry him, if you must.”
Several guards cleared a path through the crowd as they led him away. His hair dripped with moisture from the spitting onlookers, but he was oddly at peace.
These people weren’t spitting on him. They were spitting on what he represented. Even now, though he was bound and minutes from death, they feared him. It was like the humans and the argram, only now he was the argram in their eyes—a vicious monster who would rip them apart if given a chance. These weren’t bad people. They were scared people.
When they reached the harbor, they led him up a gangplank to a waiting ship.
Bells began to toll throughout the city. People ran away, and what had been an orderly march became a chaotic stampede. Guards looked at each other as if they didn’t know what to do.
“Your duty is here,” Saren said. “The garrison will sort the alarm.”
Nicolas felt the smallest amount of power enter his mind as the boat sailed farther from the shore. It was faint, but he accepted it for what it was and drew as much as he could into his well. It allowed him to see Kaitlyn’s face, and that was all that mattered.
A small platform, large enough for three men to stand abreast, floated in the water no more than a hundred yards from shore. The boat came to a slow stop as it pulled up alongside it.
Crewmen lowered the gangplank and grabbed Nicolas’s arms. The slightest touch to his body caused him to convulse with pain.
Two guards draped large chains around his shoulders and shackled his ankles to two iron weights. When they were finished, they led him down the gangplank.
“Necromancer,” Saren said. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Nicolas tried to speak, but he had no voice left.
“If there is nothing more,” Saren said.
“He’s trying,” a guard said.
Nicolas was long past trying to summon a penitent. Even if he could gather the power, he’d never be able to subdue it.
He released some power into his throat, soothing his damaged vocal chords.
“You’re wrong about us,” Nicolas said. “But I understand. And I forgive you.”
“Do it,” Saren said.
Strong hands pushed against his back, reigniting the pain. Water rushed up to meet him as he fell off the platform. He inhaled as much air as he could.
He plunged into the cold water and sank, struggling against the bindings and chains, but it was clear he would never break free. As the weight dragged him deeper into the darkness of the water, images of Kaitlyn flashed brightly in his mind.
He smiled when he remembered how they met, but his broken jaw forced him to stop. She didn’t like him at first but he was used to fighting for what he wanted. His life had been a series of fights—fights with the nuns over going to church, fights with the teachers over his behavior in class, and fights with himself over who he was and where he came from. Kaitlyn changed all that. He gave himself over to her, and she brought him peace.
Mujahid’s last words came to the forefront of his mind, and this time he understood them. The water was peaceful. It was a type of energy, in a way. It would release him from suffering and bring him rest, as Kaitlyn had released him from the trials of his former life and brought him rest. He should give himself over to it, as Mujahid told him to do…as he had with Kaitlyn.
He could smell her perfume and rose-scented skin, feel the softness of her kiss. He imagined her holding him, and as he sunk into the depths of the lake, her embrace soothed him.
When he lost his sight, the last image he saw was her face, and he smiled without pain.
I love you, Kaitlyn.
The world disappeared around him, and he dissolved into nothingness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mujahid sat up in bed, awakened by a gong-like bell tolling in the distance. It had been two days since he saw Nicolas, and he had no idea how they were going to get out of this.
His plan had failed. He was counting on them putting him in with the prisoners near the crypt. Instead, the guard captain isolated him in a room in one of the guard towers.
If that fool boy hadn’t called for the argram.
He shook the thought away. One way or another the rangers would have discovered the truth.
It wouldn’t be long before they sentenced the boy to death. The word of a ranger was considered infallible. If Nicolas were to survive, it would have to be by Mujahid’s hands.
He reached deep within his mind, past the diaphanous fog that crackled with energy and surrounded his symbols of power, past the symbols themselves that formed a sphere around his energy well, toward the symbol at the center of it all. The symbol of ascension. It was in the shape of a levitating human, legs crossed, arms spread outward as if to embrace. Resplendent white light illuminated its eyes from within. It simultaneously repelled and bound the other symbols together, and it allowed a Mukhtaar Lord to weave complex patterns of magic.
But Mukhtaar Lord or not, he needed power to cast like any other priest, and there wasn’t a drop of necropotency anywhere. If he could get closer to the crypt, he’d have all the energy he needed. But he didn’t think the guards would take him on an excursion any time soon.
His mind drew back, out from his well, out past the symbols and into the fog. The fog was still a mystery. It had appeared when he ascended, and only he and Nuuan could sense it.
He abandoned his futile attempt to gather power and instead, concentrated on the Talisman of Archmages that hung from a leather thong around his neck. It was guiding him toward the plaza in front of the fortress.
That’s not good.
He tried to sense the boy’s unique energy pattern, but it wasn’t there. He must be too far away.
The bell stopped tolling.
The door to his small chamber swung open and a guard entered. He was a burly man in a Shandarian soldier’s uniform—loose-fitting pants and pullover shirt, both dyed forest green—with the triple cat’s eye insignia of a sergeant. A skinny man dressed in gold-trimmed purple robes followed him.
A court official. Mujahid had dealt with them before.
The official cleared his throat and spoke. “Sinclair Thomry,” he said with a yawn. “Attendant to the provincial magistrate. He’ll see you now.”
Perhaps this was just the excursion Mujahid needed. He debated whether to start imprinting the man’s energy pattern in his mind—another benefit of ascension—but it would take days to become permanent. And if this wen
t to plan, Thomry’s remaining life would be measured in minutes.
Thomry dusted his robes with his hands.
Mujahid saw his opening. It won’t be difficult to provoke this fop.
“Mr. Thomry, is it?” Mujahid said. “I dare say those are the finest robes I’ve seen in some time. Pure silk?”
Thomry looked up from his preening and spread his arms. “A discerning eye. Spun from the finest shriller silk in the Sea of Arin. As soft as it gets.”
“Well, let’s be honest,” Mujahid said. “It’s not as soft as crag spider silk. Though, spider silk would be pricey for someone of your rank.”
Thomry looked baffled. “Are you daft, man?”
“I own several spider robes myself. Far softer. They hold the dyes better, as well. Not that yours aren’t…nice.”
Thomry gaped. He held out his arm and took a step toward Mujahid. “Feel this and tell me—”
“Hold, Thomry,” the guard said. “You may be good with a mirror and comb, but you’re shite around prisoners.”
Thomry stopped and lowered his arm.
Looks like I’ll have to do this the hard way.
Mujahid needed the guard alive and intact if this was going to work. He sprang for the guard and planted a boot in the man’s chest, taking care not to injure him. The kick sent the big man sprawling.
Thomry darted toward the door.
Mujahid caught him by the back of his robe, yanked him to the floor with one hand, and drew back a closed fist.
Thomry screamed and passed out.
Mujahid shook his head.
The guard climbed to his feet and lunged at Mujahid.
Mujahid put up a token struggle, trying to make it look as real as possible. After a few missed swings, he crumbled to the floor in a ball, feigning a moan of pain.
The guard helped him up and bound his wrists with cords. “That was about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, old man. Now I have to drag your decrepit arse to the dungeon.”
Mujahid felt a surge of relief. “What about my trial?”
The guard chuckled. “There’ll be no trial for you today once the magistrate hears about this. Move.”