Soul of the Fire

It was, after all, the reason he had released Serin Rajak: to rouse anger against magic. He needed people to be stirred up against those with magic, to see them as evil. Who better than a zealot to foment such hatred?

"And here is the witch!" Serin Rajak thrust his arm out to point at the woman whose hands were bound behind her, the woman Stein held by the hair. "She is the Keeper's vile tool! She casts evil spells to harm you all!"

The mob was yelling and screaming for vengeance.

"What should we do with this witch?" Rajak shrieked.

"Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!" came the chant.

Serin Rajak flung his arms toward the sky. "Dear Creator, we commend this woman to your care in the flames! If she be innocent, spare her harm! If she be guilty of the crime of witchcraft, burn her!"

As men threw up a pole, Stein bore his captive facedown to the ground. He pulled her head up by her hair. With his other hand, he brought up his knife.

Dalton, his eyes wide, was unable to blink, to breathe, as he watched Stein slice from one ear to the other, across the top of Franca's forehead. Her scream ripped Dalton's in-sides, as Stein ripped back her scalp.

Tears ran down Dalton's cheeks as blood ran down Franca's face. Shrieking in pain and immeasurable terror, she was lifted and bound to the pole. The whites of her eyes stood out from a mask of blood.

Franca didn't argue for her innocence or beg for her life. She just screamed in paralyzed horror.

Straw and wood were thrown up around her. The mob pressed in, wanting to be close, to see it all. Some reached out and stole a swipe at the blood coursing down her face, eager for a memento of witch's blood on their fingertips, to prove their power, before they sent her to the Keeper.

Horror dragging him by his throat, Dalton staggered partway down the steps.

Men with torches pushed through to the front of the roaring mob. Serin Rajak, wild with rage, climbed the clutter of wood and straw at her feet to shout in Franca's face, to call her every sort of vile name, and accuse her of every sort of evil crime.

Dalton, standing helpless on the steps, knew all the words to be false. Franca was not one of those things.

Just then, a most extraordinary thing happened. A raven swooped down from the gray sky, fixing its angry claws in Serin Rajak's hair.

Serin screamed that it was the witch's familiar, come to protect its mistress. The crowd responded by throwing things at the bird while at the same time Serin tried to fight it off. The bird flapped and squawked, but held on to the man's hair.

With such frightening determination that Dalton began to think that the charges it was the witch's familiar seemed true, the huge inky black bird used its beak to stab out Serin's good eye.

The man screamed in pain and rage as he fell from the tinder around Franca. As he did, the mob heaved on the torches.

A wail such as Dalton had never heard rose from poor Franca as the flames exploded through the dry straw and up the length of her. Even from where he stood, Dalton could smell the burning flesh.

And then, in her terror, in her pain, in her burning death, Franca turned her head, and saw Dalton standing there on the steps.

She screamed his name. Over the roar of the crowd, he couldn't hear it, but he could read it on her lips.

She screamed it again, and screamed she loved him.

When Dalton read those words on her lips, they crushed his heart.

The flames blistered her flesh, till the scream pushed from her lungs sounded like the shriek of the lost souls in the world of the dead.

Dalton stood numb, watching it, realizing only then that his hands were holding his head, and he was screaming too.

The crowd surged forward, eager to smell the roasting flesh, to see the witch's skin burn. They were wild with excitement, their eyes mad with it. As the mob pressed in, the ones in front were pushed so close it singed off their eyebrows, and this, too, they relished, as the witch screamed and burned.

On the ground, the raven was pecking wildly at the blinded, almost forgotten, Serin Rajak. He swung his arms, unseeing, trying to get the vengeful bird away. Darting in between his flailing arms, the raven's big beak snatched, twisted, and tore chunks of flesh from his face.

The crowd began pelting the bird anew with anything handy. The bird, finally looking as if it was losing strength, flapped helplessly as everything from shoes to flaming branches arced through the air toward it.

For reasons he didn't understand, Dalton, weeping, found himself cheering the bird against all odds, knowing it, too, was about to die.