Gherem

by Mike Allen and Charles Saplak

Gherem’s right foot slipped on one of the loose, damp stones, and he nearly fell face first into the mud. He went to one knee, giving himself yet another bloodless cut. He broke his fall with his left hand, but with his right he continued to hold the wrists of Withered Nassissia, the tiny, dark-skinned witch he carried on his back.

“Idiot!” she hissed. “Are you so weary you can’t take care how you’re stepping?”

Her voice was strung taut, not simply with anger, but also with pain. When Gherem slipped, he jarred her and her shattered legs, where broken shinbones poked through her ebony skin.

“I am weary.” Gherem muttered. “When I became a soldier they failed to tell me how to live without sleep. Or food. Or water.”

“Now is not the time to stop,” Nassissia said. “Didn’t they ever teach you soldiers that stopping to sleep or eat sometimes means that you never get up again?”

“Oh, they taught me so much,” Gherem groaned. “Most of which I’d rather not have learned.”

Nassissia didn’t seem to be listening to him. Her head cocked to one side as she glared back into the forest, toward the battlefield. Was she thinking of the carnage there, where the soil was now dark with blood, where birds picked eye sockets clean, where mice feasted inside cages of rib, where wolves gnarled over fingerbones and shinbones? Where the grass would be green and the flowers bright for years to come, now that nearly seven hundred men were turning to soil, men who began the day as Brinnish and Husterran soldiers and ended as a harvest of corpses?

Or was she brooding over her own fate on that field where, as she fled from the Brinnish Coven’s burning tent with the Vicinage Poppet tucked to her bosom, a battle cart had rolled over her legs — turning proud Withered Nassissia, greatest of the feared Husterran witches, most powerful woman in the Royal Court of Treblas, into a helpless cripple, who now had to rely on the aid of a mere peasant such as Gherem?

But would a witch be so abstract? Perhaps she had a more pressing reason for staring into the forest….

“Couldn’t we stop here to rest?” Gherem moaned.

“No,” Withered Nassissia snapped. “Onward. Through the forest, Gherem. To Leiple River; to the cliffs, the Plain of Stones, to Vantahusterra. To home, Gherem. Home.”

*

II

Gherem’s mind wandered as he followed the creek bed downward. His bare feet were as icy as the water, and his crude trousers and tunic were caked with mud. But he could shut out the pain, and the weight of the Dark Sorceress on his shoulders. He concentrated on the water itself — something he’d never appreciated before.

For the first time Gherem noticed the music it made, millions of voices blended, singing as the stream journeyed to the sea. Once an old man had explained to Gherem that every bit of water sojourned to the sky, lifted by the sun, and after drifting there, fell as rain. It sought its level, wearing down mountains as it did so.

Why had he never noticed this? Why had he never felt this way? Had a day ever passed when he hadn’t worried about whether the turnips and rye and millet he’d worked for Lord Treblas had enough water? When he hadn’t had to shoulder a yoke and worn oaken buckets to fetch water fit to drink? And when, in recent months, as Prince Treblas had been cursed and crops would only grow in the outlands, he’d been put to work in the mud of the irrigation ditches with others of his class.

But Gherem had never noticed the miracle of the stuff. Well, by all the Gods and Dragons, from now on he would. He’d tilt his head back and let the rain tease his face with wet fingertips. He’d sit by a stream and listen to its song, listen for hours until he could understand it. He’d gather up Trelinna and Jad and the three of them would walk to the sea! What was there to stop them?

“Faster,” Withered Nassissia hissed, breaking his reverie.

“I’m pacing myself,” Gherem puffed. “I can walk like this for hours.”

“Admirable,” the sorceress said. “But we must cover more ground. We must get this boon to Vantahusterra faster.”

“We can rest,” Gherem pleaded. “We can eat. We can hide and sleep, and continue in the morning. I’ll feel alive then.”

Nassissia cackled, and at first Gherem thought he was seeing a tinge of humor in the ancient witch, but when she spoke her voice dripped bitterness.

“Selfish One,” she said, grimacing. “But we may stop soon. This stream goes directly to the Leiple River. I sense that. We can stop, but only for a moment. I would have you gather some things. Home, Gherem. Think of home.”

Even as she spoke of “Home,” her eyes narrowed, and, fingering the Vicinage Poppet she carried in her cloak, she looked back again, searching the forest.

*

III

At a flat spot by the stream, Gherem knelt and eased Nassissia to the mossy soil. The sky darkened with night, so that the canopy of branches overhead knit together like a spider web of blackness.

Even in the dim light, Gherem could see the split flesh and splintered bones of Nassissia’s lower legs. Her blood was dried; perhaps it was some power she had, some way to use her mind to stop the bleeding.

She groaned and looked at Gherem.

“Is it ugly to you?” she asked, the bitter smile playing across her lips.

Gherem shrugged. “I wonder if the flesh of one of you is like the flesh of one of me.”

“Flesh is flesh,” Nassissia said. “Spirit differs. But that is talk for another day. Do you know henbane?”

Gherem gave the witch a blank look.

“Could you find me verbanna? Could you dig mandrake roots for me? Would you know toadflax if you saw it?”

Gherem shrugged and shook his head. “I’d do better if you sent me after a radish, or a potato.”

“Ignorant One,” Nassissia hissed. “Since you can’t help me, simply let me rest. Be quiet. I would sit here. If you see me lying down, or slumping over, wake me immediately. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Gherem said. “I understand that because you don’t want to sleep, I’m not to be allowed to sleep.”

Withered Nassissia took the Vicinage Poppet from within the folds of her cloak. Gherem could see that it was a carved wooden doll, a likeness of Prince Treblas it seemed, and bound from shoulder to shin in a weave of tightly knotted, brightly colored cords. Such a small thing had cost so many their lives!

Gherem sat and propped himself up on his elbows. He wanted to look at anything besides the witch, so he lolled his head back and looked at the sky.

The moon had risen, and the stars were now drops of dew on the cobweb of night. They were glowing eyes of distant gods! They were flames around which lost souls danced!

Why had he never looked at these stars with Trelinna and Jad? Were these not the same stars which whirled over his mean little hut on the moors of Lord Treblas? Oh, when he returned home, things would be so different.

“Jad had been proud of me,” Gherem said out loud. “His father was a soldier. Not merely a serf; a soldier. Why would an army want me? The things I told him….”

He remembered his son’s enraptured eyes, looking up at the clean military tunic his father wore. When he told Jad the tales of Brinnish atrocity, how a bewitched night bird had drawn the Prince’s blood as he slept, how the Brinnish Coven had used that blood to create the Poppet that cursed Treblas and stopped the crops from growing. He remembered how his son had looked out the window at the barren soil and said, “Da, I hope you kill thousands of Brinnish soldiers.”

Gherem suppressed an urge to groan. “I told my son how he should love Prince Treblas, love his country. That someday he could be a soldier. But I notice that Treblas didn’t see fit to take part in this campaign.”

Withered Nassissia eyed Gherem in the moonlight, her lips drawn back as if regarding a bug. “And what would the unwashed conclude if Treblas had left Vantahusterra and flowers bloomed again, fruits ripened, vegetables grew? Would he return to meet an mob of peasants wielding shovels and axes?”

Gherem shrugged and stared at the ground.

“That is exactly what the Brinnish have hoped for, Foolish One. The reason why they cursed your Prince. The reason why we fought to take the Vicinage Poppet. The reason why we must undo this curse. The reason why you took up arms.”

“I just want to see my son again,” Gherem said. “I want to tell him that it’s all hogwash.”

“Careful, Slow One,” Withered Nassissia cooed. “Loyalty.”

Before Gherem could answer a change came over the witch’s face. She raised a hand, palm up, knobby fingers extended; her eyes darted from side to side.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered.

Gherem sat silent for a moment, concentrating on the normal night sounds of the forest — crickets’ chittering, frogs’ croaking, leaves rustling, birds’ trilling.

“There! Again! A heavy foot falls,” Withered Nassissia said. “A following foot.”

“Stay here,” Gherem said, immediately realizing how ridiculous his order was to the woman with shattered legs.

“Don’t leave me,” Nassissia said, her words very deliberate, neither hissed nor shouted nor pled.

Gherem didn’t answer.

“Don’t go far from me!” she said, more urgently this time. Gherem recognized fear in her voice.

He waved casually and pushed his way into the forest.

He wasn’t sure he had heard anything — he just wanted to gather some teaberry or ground cherries, or even some honeysuckle blossoms to chew. He hadn’t eaten since this morning, before the battle.

Gherem stepped into a clearing, and as he did, he became acutely aware that something was not right. He felt that he wasn’t alone.

He forced himself to become as still as possible.

Moving his eyes but not his head, he searched the forest, glancing up and down, from right to left, taking the time to resolve each branch, leaf, weed, and stone in his field of vision, in the dappled moonlight.

And suddenly he spotted it —

A panther crouched stock-still at the clearing’s edge.

Gherem saw a terrible beauty in the great cat’s curving back, the pads of its paws which rhythmically and soundlessly kneaded the forest floor, in the ears laid back against its sleek skull, even in the tail which slowly undulated.

For a while the moon followed its path, causing shadows to crawl across the forest floor between the two, man and cat, as they eyed each other in the night.

Suddenly the panther rocked forward, and silently made its way toward Gherem.

Gherem stared into the its eyes, which flashed translucent in the moonlight. He considered running, or screaming to try to frighten the panther. He did neither, but simply watched as the beast crept closer and closer.

Close enough to flick out one claw and open Gherem’s chest if it wanted, but there it stopped again, perfectly still except for its rhythmically flaring nostrils.

A sound entered Gherem’s consciousness like thunder — but it was a low sound, a throbbing — a heartbeat. Whether it was his own, or that of the cat, or the heartbeat of the world itself, he couldn’t know.

Its nostrils twitched and flared, and it snarled, revealing wicked teeth. From deep within it growled, a sound of distant mountains collapsing, and Gherem was sure the cat would in any moment be on his throat.

And then the panther bounded away, into the forest, almost seeming to disappear before Gherem’s very eyes.

Gherem exhaled — he seemed to have been holding his breath since he had first spotted the beast — and slumped forward. He gathered himself in the moonlight, then staggered back to the stream where Nassissia awaited.

“What was it?” Nassissia asked. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” Gherem said, crouching to reshoulder his burden.

*

IV

As the sky lightened with morning, as the moon set and the stars faded, the singing of the stream grew both more intense and complex. The stones themselves were larger, so that Gherem was no longer stumbling over so much as scrambling around them, then climbing them. Still he held the sorceress; still she held her Poppet. Presently the forest opened as the stream met the Leiple River, across which were sheer cliffs, and beyond them the Plain of Stones.

“There it is,” Gherem said.

Withered Nassissia, her eyes mere slits, raised her head to stare at the water.

“So it is…. One moment…. Only a moment. I would gather my strength,” she whispered.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” Gherem said. “It will be cold.”

Strangely, Gherem felt tremendous as he looked at the river, sparkling in the morning sun. He was close to home! He shrugged, readjusting the sack of bones on his shoulders.

“I’m ready,” the witch whispered, clutching the Poppet and resettling herself.

Gherem strode forward, and waded into the river.

It was cold, terribly cold, but it felt good to Gherem.

Withered Nassissia groaned and twitched as her feet touched the surface of the water. At least she still has feeling in her legs, Gherem thought.

As the two entered deeper water the witch was buoyed so that her meager weight was no longer such a burden around Gherem’s neck. He took little relief in this. His mind instead was filled by a memory of Trelinna, on a day far in his past, when the two were of fifteen and fourteen summers.

Gherem’s feet were off the stream bed; Nassissia, one hand clutching the Poppet no doubt, kept her other arm hooked around Gherem’s neck. Gherem slowly and steadily began to paddle his arms, not fighting the current, but simply directing himself to the far shore.

He closed his eyes and remembered that summer night, years ago, when he and Trelinna stripped naked and swam together in an unnamed stream which ran through Treblas’s farmlands south of the city walls of Vantahusterra. He could see her sweaty skin in the moonlight as she waded into the water; he could see her skin tightened and goosebumped as she climbed from the cool water into the night air. She had teased his face with wet fingertips….

What a sweet sight she had been — the forests and hills of her flesh, that was the country for a man to love.

And his feet again touched the muddy riverbed beneath him. He opened his eyes. The riverbank before him was a jumble of stones. This was a wild area, an evil place, unfished and unhunted, even by the barbarians who were said to lurk within these forests and hills.

He found his feet and waded through the rocks. The dripping hag was returned from the river’s hands to his shoulders.

Gherem staggered ashore, toward the first stone blunt and flat and broad enough to lower Nassissia.

Once she was safe there, he straightened up, stretched, and regarded her — greasy strings of hair in her face, shivering, wet cloak plastered to her bony frame, eyes ringed round by swollen circles — but the Poppet still hard in her claw-like hands.

“Onward,” she muttered. “Onward.”

The brusqueness of her order didn’t bother Gherem. He rolled his shoulders, tilted his head back and examined the cliff face before him.

Four or five hundred feet, sheer rock face in the worst spots, steeply stacked boulders in the best. Such a place he’d never willingly climb under normal circumstances.

“Home,” he whispered, still looking up, as he bent down to extend a hand to the witch.

On the cliff, Gherem clutched the rock face with both hands as the witch swung from around his neck. “Home,” he chanted in a whisper, never looking down to the Leiple River, one hundred feet below.

Something flashed just on the border of his vision, clattered against the rocks to his right.

Gherem pressed himself against the cliff, and peeped upwards with squinted eyes.

“Hold tight,” he said over his shoulder to the hag. “There may be a rock slide.”

The witch punched him in the back of the neck, or perhaps butted him with her forehead; he couldn’t be sure.

“That was no rock, Gherem. Carefully look across the river. Look to the place where we were.”

Gingerly, Gherem turned his head. Back on one of the large flat stones upriver stood a man. He held a longbow, and even as Gherem watched he let fly an arrow which clattered against the cliff face, this time to the left of the two.

“Our pursuer,” Withered Nassissia hissed. “I’d sensed him all along.”

Gherem knew that they were at their most vulnerable in this position. Even if they were able to make the summit, so too would this archer, and on the plain of stones he would easily follow, and so long as he had arrows, he could attack from far away. Eventually he’d find his mark.

With utmost deliberation, Gherem edged along the rock until he was at a slight ledge. There he knelt down and tucked away the witch with her precious Vicinage Poppet.

“Don’t leave me,” she gasped, her eyes wide.

“He’ll fill us with arrows,” Gherem said, then he turned, hesitated for only a moment, then leaped outward, plunging into the river.

He scraped hard onto the rocky river bottom. Still, he kept his wits about him and opened his eyes. Through the murk, he oriented himself. The black plain below was river bottom; the sparkling plain above was the river’s surface. Clutching rocks when he had to, Gherem paddled himself along between these two plains. Grasses on the river bottom told him the current, and against this he pushed. He fought hard to make his way across the breadth of the river without surfacing.

Kicking and clawing, he pushed through the water. At one point a trout, mouth agape, eyes wide, darted right before his face. Then an arrow punched into the water from above, and the trout undulated away.

Meant for me, not you, Gherem thought. The weirdness of the situation struck him and he almost laughed. Fighting for his life, and he joked with a fish?

The plains of light above and murk below narrowed and converged. He was coming to the forested shore.

He peered upward and could make out the wavering figure of the archer. He couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing.

Gherem pulled himself along the riverbed on his back, half-expecting an arrow in the chest at any moment.

He got almost up to the rock where the man stood, and realized that the archer didn’t see him. Perhaps the riverbed camouflaged him; perhaps the sunlight on the water was in the man’s eyes.

Gherem seized his chance. He burst from the water and turned toward the man on the rock. The man had an arrow notched and drawn, but Gherem was too fast. With his left arm he whipped around, slapping the man’s feet from under him.

The man hit the rock hard, as Gherem pulled himself from the water. For a moment the longbow lay on the rock between the two. The archer, his eyes wide, grabbed for the longbow and got his fingers on it first.

But Gherem was too strong. With the heel of his left hand he drove a punch into the man’s jaw, with his right hand he twisted the longbow away.

The man lay stunned on the rock for a moment, as Gherem stood over him. Gherem raised the longbow over his head, and for a moment he looked as if he would brain the man, but instead of that he snapped the bow, and flung it into the water.

“Why do you bother with this?” Gherem wearily asked the man. “Why care about us? We’re going back to our home. You go back to yours. The battle is over. Put away your weapons and forget.”

The man rolled over, his eyes still wide, and stared at Gherem. “Forget? I’ll never forget. You Husterrian swine killed my brother there. I’ll never rest, until you and your kind are paid back for what you did. And that sorceress! Look at what she’s done to you! Abomination! And the sorceress has the Poppet! Don’t you know what good that boon could do? If you’re tired of starving, take that cowardly ape Treblas off the throne. Your land could be free of him, and your crops could grow again, and my homeland could be at peace.”

Gherem slumped and shook his head. “Your brother died there? Oh, pity. Oh, pity.”

To his own ears, if not to the ears of the man at his feet, Gherem’s words rang true. He didn’t know that feelings like this could be felt. Why should he care that a Brinnish soldier died? But he did.

Gherem looked up and down the riverbank. He saw an old stump of driftwood caught up in the rocks near them.

“Slit his throat!” Nassissia called from her place on the hillside.

Gherem slogged over and pulled the driftwood free.

“Listen,” Gherem said. “Go back to your home. Take care of your brother’s sons. Plow his wife’s fields. Surely you like her, and if she does not like you now, she’ll learn to. Your brother wouldn’t mind. He doesn’t care a bit about revenge now.”

Gherem reached down and pulled the man up by his shirt. He struggled as if he were loath to have Gherem touch him, but Gherem dragged the man and the stump out into deeper water and put the man onto the stump, to which the man clung against the swift current.

“Go home,” Gherem said, setting the man free to drift down the river.

“Home,” Gherem whispered, as the current took the man downriver, in the general direction of Brin.

“Home,” Gherem repeated, turning away, not waiting for the man to get out of sight before he started paddling back to the cliff where the witch waited.

“You should have killed the Brinnish bastard,” Withered Nassissia panted.

Gherem bent and offered his hand to the wizened one; picked her up and slung her to the familiar place on his shoulders. With her there he resumed his climb, and made the summit of the rocky cliff. He never looked down, and felt no fear of falling.

“Home,” he muttered.

*

V

The Plain of Stones lay southwest of the village of Vantahusterra, desolate and unthought of. As the rounded rocks crunched beneath his feet in hypnotic rhythm, Gherem kept his eyes on the distant mountains of Murnnann and Gethokht. It was the same view, from a slightly different perspective, that Gherem had faced all his life — but today, how different!

Withered Nassissia drew one hand back from Gherem.

“So,” Gherem said. “I carry you, and you carry that doll.”

Withered Nassissia gave no answer, save for a grunt.

He walked farther, carrying her — no, carrying them. The sun burned away the last vestiges of fog.

“It would have been easier for me to carry the Poppet, and leave you behind,” Gherem said.

Withered Nassissia thrust the Poppet over Gherem’s shoulder, into his view.

“Oaf,” she hissed. “This is what the battle was about!”

Gherem stared at the ugly thing — a carved image of Prince Treblas, wrapped with an intricate crochet of knotted string. He despised it. All the good men and women hacked open, pierced, bled out on one bleak morning — over this toy!

Perhaps Nassissia read his mind and knew that he hated the Poppet, for she snatched it back.

“Care, peasant, care,” Nassissia cooed. “Would you kill your Prince? The Vicinage Poppet must be taken apart with the utmost care to spare Treblas’ life. My sisters will handle the ritual. They will solve the weave and undo it and end the curse, and there will be nothing to keep us from reclaiming the Brinnish lands. But if the knots aren’t untied in order, and with certain words…. well, the crops may grow again, but your Prince would be no more, and for whom would you till the soil for then? The Brinnish King? Would you like your son to toil for the Brinnish King? Would you like that, peasant?”

Gherem didn’t answer — he pictured throwing the bag of bones off his back, stomping the Poppet to dust and strings, then leaving them both on the plain of stones. What difference which King owned their lives if their crops never grew again?

But he cast his eyes to the mountains and his home, and walked on.

The sun was high as the village came into sight. How strange, Gherem thought, how small! For many years, it had been his world — but it was not even a splinter in the edge of the world which was!

Gherem’s own shadow was small beneath him as he was close enough to the village to see figures moving around the failed fields.

Less than a quarter mile outside the village, Gherem and Withered Nassissia encountered three children yelling and playing. As they each noticed the man carrying the witch, they each fell silent, and stared, and then as a group they sprinted toward the village, calling ahead of them. A dog too ugly to have been eaten yet followed them with shrieking barks.

The sun was high above. Gherem didn’t sweat.

Alerted by the children, people began to trickle out of the village to greet the two.

Gherem continued forward, as people came from their shops and houses and from the outlying streets. A few, then several, then a mob. Everyone was similar. Each pushed forward, some jabbering and eager, then as each got within sight, each fell silent, their eyes wide, their mouths slack and open. Perhaps many of these had never seen a witch up close; perhaps none of these could imagine a witch with shattered legs, riding astride a peasant.

They were all shocked.

Gherem continued forward. He kept the witch on his shoulders, and moved toward Treblas’s castle at the center of the city, but as he did so he searched the faces of the crowd for either Trelinna or Jad.

Armor clanking, two of the city guards pushed through the crowd, barking at peasants and slapping them out of the way.

Not so many days ago, Gherem would have been intimidated by these uniformed guards. Now he noticed absently that these garrison soldiers were fat and stupid, and could probably never imagine horrors such as he had seen yesterday morning on that faraway meadow.

The soldiers yelled, but Gherem paid no mind. Where were Trelinna and Jad? First to get this hag off his back, then to find his beloved.

A nobleman appeared, easy to recognize by the fine fabric of his dress, by his jangling jewelry.

The soldiers nodded to the nobleman, who eyed Withered Nassissia. He seemed to look past Gherem altogether. The silly fool tried to act courageous, and wanted to be in charge.

Tilting his head toward Gherem the nobleman spoke to Withered Nassissia: “You rode that?!”

The crowd pushed forward. The soldiers, with peasants pressing at their backs, shouted and drew their rusted swords.

“Put her down!” one of the soldiers growled, but no one came forth to take the witch from Gherem.

“I release thee; I release thee … ,” Withered Nassissia chanted through clenched teeth.

Gherem looked for a place to set her down. The sunshine sparkled against a mud puddle at his feet; his eye was caught by something he saw.

The reflection there — something like a man, or something which had once been a man. The face was split, as if from a blow from an axe. The arms and legs were covered with strangely bloodless gashes and tears; the flesh beneath was dried. A broken shaft of an arrow stuck out from his neck, and at least one other that he could see stuck out from his back. A dark-skinned witch hung from around the creature’s neck like a sack of grain.

One soldier poked at Gherem with his sword, and he went to one knee, unceremoniously dumping Withered Nassissia into the mud.

The witch shrieked, repulsing the crowd as if the sound of her voice burned their ears, as if the sight of her wounds burned their eyes.

Gherem immediately bent to the witch, put his hands on her cloak, tried to gather her up, failed, and fumbled around with her as she moaned and shouted. Finally he withdrew his hands, and stumbled away.

He turned this way and that, and once again looked for Trelinna and Jad.

The crowd parted; two of Nassissia’s coven sisters made their way through.

“I release thee; I release thee…” Withered Nassissia chanted.

The coven sisters knelt at her side. From within the cloak of one, spidery hands dashed out to work on Nassissia’s legs. From beneath the hood of the other, a face even more wrinkled than Nassissia’s turned toward Gherem, dark eyes glaring at him.

Gherem kept walking. Everything in the village looked strange. He expected people to stay and gawk at the trio of witches, but it seemed as if as many were following him as were staying behind to watch them.

Gherem walked down the street. He could make his way to his home. Damn the mob which continued around him. Why wouldn’t they leave him alone?

Gherem passed an irrigation worker, stopped and snatched the man’s long-handled spade. No one tried to stop him. A cloud edged its way before the sun. It was difficult for Gherem to see. He had to hurry, in order to save Jad and Trelinna the trouble and expense. He needed to select a gravesite, and dig as much of his own grave as possible.

“I release thee,” Withered Nassissia had chanted. Now others in the crowd said other things.

“Don’t let it into the city!”

“Put it out of its misery.”

“Purify it!”

Gherem turned around, and one of the soldiers tossed a pot of pitch onto him. The oily tar hit him in the chest and soaked him down to his feet.

Gherem turned around again. Where were Trelinna and Jad? The crowd was backing away.

The other soldier rushed at him with a torch, and jammed it into his chest, igniting the tar.

Gherem dropped the shovel, and took one last look around for Trelinna and Jad. He would have loved to have seen them again, but he was glad they’d be spared the sight before them.

Flames crawled along every inch of his body, but he didn’t feel them.

His wife and son were not in the crowd, just the poor and ignorant who gawked at the spectacle.

And also the soldiers and the witches. Withered Nassissia still lay in the dirt where he had set her, her two coven sisters tearing through her cloak, tearing it apart thread by thread it seemed. The three gestured frantically and screamed at one another.

Flames were in Gherem’s face, but he glanced up and could still see the sun, and he thought how good it was, how good was the sun!

And then the three witches, and the soldiers, and the nobleman, all shouted and pointed at Gherem.

His legs were burning from beneath him, his clothes and skin were nearly gone. But he could still see. He raised his right arm. Withered Nassissia screamed and cried and pointed desperately toward him.

With the hand that held the now-burning Vicinage Poppet, Gherem waved goodbye.