The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (16 page)

‘Put out his eyes,’ said another woman, her own black eyes
flashing in the firelight.

‘Sear the mark of the traitor bone-deep across his brow,’
said a third.

‘No!’ cried Maelys. She should have turned and run for her
life, but she still thought that, if she could just find the right words, she
could sway them. ‘You’ve got to listen –’

The headman held up his hand and the crowd hung back like a
pair of dark wings unfurled behind him. ‘The rebel must be taught a stern
lesson, but he must also live, that the God-Emperor hear of our loyalty, and
how we repay those who dare to tempt us. We
shall
burn the mark of the traitor bone-deep into his brow, and beat him too, though
not badly enough to cripple him. Take the scoundrel.’

It was hopeless. Maelys whirled and bolted, but hadn’t gone
ten paces before she was tackled by a flying youth. She hit the ground hard and
felt her binding cloth slip off. She tried to scramble to her feet but the
youth’s hand locked around her ankle and before she could kick free two more
lads piled onto her.

Maelys stopped struggling, for they were strong farm-hands
and any one of them was her match. She went limp, hoping that they might relax
and give her an opportunity for escape.

The first youth twisted her arm up behind her back until she
had to bite her lip to avoid crying out, then turned her around and proudly
forced her into the light. It was brighter now, for the lantern-bearers had
closed into a circle around her. Her breasts bounced with every movement and
they couldn’t possibly miss it. Under the God-Emperor’s rule, women were seldom
beaten as harshly as men, but they were punished in other ways …

The headman stared at her, an unnerving gleam in his eye. He
gestured to the youth, who let go of her arm and moved back, though only a
step.

‘A girl,’ he said wonderingly, reaching out towards her
chest but dropping his hand at the last moment. ‘That’s another matter
entirely.’ He licked his flaking lips. ‘I can use a girl.’

Maelys took an abrupt step backwards and came up against the
youth, who thrust her forwards again.

A bent old woman, even more aged than the headman, came
lurching out of the crowd and delivered him a blow to the side of the head that
sent him staggering sideways. ‘You’ll use her for nothing, you old fool,’ she
said in a cracked hiss.

She stared at Maelys as if she could see into her soul.
Reaching out with a dirty, trembling finger she touched Maelys on the lower
lip, but whipped her hand back smartly. Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s no innocent
maiden, but a witch-slut sent to tempt drooling old men and weak-minded
youths.’

She glanced over her shoulder towards the shadows to the
left of the bonfire, and Maelys’s heart gave a lurch. Her eyes had been dazzled
by one of the pole lanterns and she’d missed it before, but from this angle it
was terribly clear – a wisp-watcher mounted on a tall post was pointing
directly at her. How could she have been so careless?

The headman began muttering to the crone, though Maelys
couldn’t make out what he was saying. She ran through her options.
Wisp-watchers could see but not hear, and she didn’t see a loop-listener
anywhere. Since Jal-Nish didn’t know her name and hadn’t seen her face, why
would he be interested in some little conflict in an insignificant village? On
festival nights, full of drunkenness and revelry, there must be thousands of
fights, so she hadn’t given Nish away, yet.

‘She’s a temptress,’ the crone hissed, prodding the headman
in the chest with brown-stained nails, ‘and if we don’t get rid of her she’ll
destroy us all.’

‘What do you mean, Gyghan?’ said the headman, giving the
wisp-watcher a fearful sideways glance. It was slowly rotating so its
unblinking gaze swept across the village centre every few minutes.

‘The God-Emperor must have sent her to test us, to see if we
remain faithful to him no matter what the temptation, and already you fail the
test. Men!’

‘What are we to do with her?’

‘Kill her!’

Maelys’s blood turned to ice. What a fool she’d been. Why hadn’t
she listened to Nish? How could she have thought to come here and manipulate
him so crudely? She was doomed as surely as if she had fallen into the
God-Emperor’s hands.

The headman’s eyes kept flicking back and forth between the
crone and the wisp-watcher, with occasional furtive glances at Maelys’s
breasts. He kept shaking his head. ‘But … but if she has come from the
God-Emperor – we can’t kill one of his servants.’

‘He would expect no less of us,’ said Gyghan the crone.
‘What cares he for one servant when he has thousands? But he cares very much to
know that his people remain faithful, no matter the temptation. The witch-slut
preaches blasphemy and treachery. Once the ritual purifications are done, she
must be slain as set down in the sacred books. The truth about her treachery
must be burned into her body from forehead to toe, then she must be bound with
chains and thrown in the river to drown.’

‘We have no chains.’

‘Then use rope and stones, idiot man! Begin.’

He stood there, hesitantly. ‘Can we not burn her on the
bonfire?’

‘Burn a witch-slut here and her soul will be set free to
haunt Byre until the end of time. Strip her down to a loincloth, before the Eye
of the God-Emperor, then lash her to withies bent into a great circle.

‘My women will mix a barrel of the red earth from the river
bank with thrice-blessed well water, and every man, woman and child must hurl
the sacred mud at her until she is coated with it. Only when the mud dries and
cracks from her slut-heat is she to be taken down and the words of treachery
burnt into her with the red-hot poker.’ Gyghan raised her voice. ‘Bring the
witch-slut to the Eye.’

Two brawny youths seized Maelys and hauled her after the
crone, who was hobbling around the left-hand side of the bonfire, walking on
the outsides of her feet as if it pained her to place them flat on the ground.

A young girl ran in, looking scared but determined. She
reached out, drew back, reached out again and pinched Maelys painfully on the
upper arm before darting away, grinning gleefully. Two more girls came from the
other side, not quite as scared this time, pinching and poking Maelys, and then
children ran from everywhere. Her arms were stinging by the time she’d been
hauled around to the other side of the bonfire, where a battered wooden post
protruded from the ground. It looked unnervingly like a whipping post and stood
in the direct view of the Eye.

The crone shooed the children away and motioned to the
youths to hold Maelys steady while four equally aged and snaggle-toothed women
gathered around, inspecting her like a piece of meat on a butcher’s block.

‘Please,’ Maelys begged, ‘you’ve got it wrong. I –’

Gyghan slapped her across the face. ‘Be silent, witch-slut.’

Shortly a group of men came up from the river bank, dragging
a number of willow boughs. The headman consulted the crone, who conferred with
her followers then selected two long, slightly curved branches. The men
stripped the twigs and side branches off, curved the boughs into three-quarter
circles and bound them together where they overlapped to form a hoop a span and
a half across, then tied it to the whipping post.

Maelys had to act now. Once they tied her to the hoop she
was doomed. Wrenching her right hand free, she thrust it into her shirt and
whipped the amulet out. Holding it out before her she roared, ‘Rurr-shyve,
Rurr-shive!’ The amulet’s jade eyes began to glow, picking out the tracery of
the flap-peter’s outline on the side facing her.

She rotated it so everyone could see, taking care to conceal
it from the all-seeing wisp-watcher, which had swung in her direction. It
remained silent, thankfully, but if it began to buzz, it would be
sending
what it saw to the tears.

The metal legs of the amulet unfolded, and the youths
holding her choked and backed away. The crowd back-pedalled as well; a child
began to cry. The headman stood his ground for a moment before taking two steps
backwards, then running. The crowd surged after him towards the houses, all
save for Gyghan.

‘Stand firm,’ she quavered. ‘This witch-slut has no power
over the god-fearing.’

‘Oh yes I have!’ cried Maelys. If they were to call her
witch, she’d act a witch to the best of her powers. She raised her arms to the
heavens and roared, ‘Rurr-shyve, come for me, and if anyone from this accursed
village stands in your way, smite them all the way into godless eternity.’ Her
words sounded desperate, so she attempted a wild cackle. To her ears it sounded
shrill, false and frightened.

However, the crone paled and turned to stare in the
direction of the pinnacles and the camp, invisible in the darkness. The amulet
grew warm in Maelys’s hands and for a moment she felt that sense of connection
she’d had when she’d ordered Rurr-shyve to fly, and it had obeyed. She strained
to reach it, to order it to come for her, though she felt sure she could not
contact it from such a distance. Nothing happened; the connection slowly faded.
Her arm shook and the tracery on the amulet began to fade. She’d failed and she
was going to die.

Gyghan read her face. With a spreading, gap-toothed leer,
she said, ‘The God-Emperor’s beasts refuse to answer her call. It’s proof that
the witch-slut lies. Strip her! Bind her to the hoop.’ A gaggle of leering
youths and hairless old men rushed forwards. ‘Back!’ she cried. ‘No lustful fool
of a man shall touch the temptress.’ She gestured to her crones.

The men and youths retreated, torn between fear and
resentment. Six crones advanced on Maelys, avoiding her eyes. She turned to run
but a wall of youths blocked her way to freedom. She turned back, charged the
crones and knocked the first two out of the way, but someone tripped her and
she fell. Immediately the crones swarmed over her. She kicked and punched,
desperate to get away, but there were too many of them and, despite their age,
they were strong and wiry.

Two crones held Maelys’s arms until her struggles had
exhausted her; another two stood on her shins. The remainder tore the shirt
from her body, sneering as they exposed her, then cut away her other garments
until all she had left were the rags of her trousers. Perhaps exposing the rest
of her would prove too great a temptation.

They hauled her across to the hoop and bound her to the
withies by her wrists. Long cords ran from her ankles to the lower rim of the
circle, were stretched tight and bound there. They didn’t touch the amulet,
though. They seemed afraid of it.

‘Well you might be afraid,’ said Maelys, loudly enough for
everyone to hear, ‘for if you harm me you doom yourselves. My flappeter is
coming, and once Rurr-shyve is finished with Byre village, no one will ever
live here again.’

A great wail went up from the crowd but Gyghan raised a
shaking hand. ‘The witch-slut lies. The witch-slut must die. Prepare the sacred
mud.’ She turned to her fellows. ‘Headman, cleanse the pokers in the hottest
part of the bonfire so we can burn the corruption and evil out of her. All hail
to the God-Emperor.’

‘All hail to the God-Emperor,’ echoed the villagers.

Maelys jerked furiously, tearing the skin of her wrists, but
the ropes didn’t give an ell.

TEN

Nish was so immersed in his troubles that he hardly
noticed the passing of time. He ate some dried meat from the saddlebags, washed
it down with rank water from a water skin and resumed his vigil. Where could he
go that his father would never find him?

Unfortunately he had only the vaguest idea where he was.
Mazurhize and Morrelune lay in the southern section of the mighty mountain
chain that ran up the east coast of the continent of Lauralin, not far from the
coastal city of Fadd, but it was a land Nish knew only from maps. And after
days of flying, much of it in cloud or fog as they followed the winding
valleys, he was lost.

Maelys’s original destination of Hulipont was in the
mountains north of the ancient Aachim city of Stassor, but he must assume
Hulipont had been taken by his father by now. There was no refuge at Stassor
either, for the city had been forbidden to all outsiders for more than a
thousand years. Besides, after the destruction of the nodes and the failure of
the Secret Art, even eternal Stassor could have crumbled.

There must be places in Lauralin too empty, remote or rugged
for Jal-Nish to bother about. Many Aachim had gone to Faranda at the end of the
war but Jal-Nish probably held sway over them as well. However, Meldorin
Island, where the war began a hundred and sixty years ago, had been abandoned
to the lyrinx in the last years of the war and must still be a largely empty
land.

But Nish didn’t want to hide from Jal-Nish. He wanted what
ordinary people had – a measure of freedom to live their lives without
interference. He couldn’t live in fear of his father, constantly looking over
his shoulder.

There were more distant lands on the other side of the
world, where he doubted his father had ever been, but he had no way of reaching
such places. Rurr-shyve could cross small mountains and narrow seas but not
oceans, since it had to land several times a day to feed. And even if he could
take the flappeter, what could he do about Maelys? She had to be protected
until she could be returned to her family, though unfortunately Maelys didn’t
know where they were hiding.

Nish was immersed in these gloomy thoughts when Rurr-shyve
reared up so suddenly that the top of the small tree it was roped to whipped
back and forth, shedding twigs and leaves on his head. Lowering its tail, it
used it as a lever to raise its long neck as high as it would reach. Its head
darted back and forth, sniffing the air. Its compound eyes took on a ruddy
gleam in the firelight and it sucked air through its breathing tubes with a
revolting snotty gurgle. After holding that pose for a minute the gleam faded
and it sank down again.