23) Tinker

They were quick to gag her and bind her hands, and there was great debate about how to remove her from the tree. The lance head was buried deep in the heartwood, and the haft was made of ironwood intended to do battle with trolls or dragons. Indeed, some suggested that they simply burn the tree with her on the spot, but the Knight would hear nothing of it.

"We’ll chop the tree down and drag it to the village if we have to. For now, though, we’ve got her trapped.” They took away her knife, but the pouch and flask were trapped between her body and the tree, concealed in the folds of the cloak. She felt the bark give a little against her back.

A little monk came to sit with her as dusk fell. He tried to give her weak wine and a bit of bread, but the guard would not allow him to remove her gag. “It’s a sorry pass you’ve come to, woman. If you would renounce the demon and give up your heathen power, I would speak to the bishop. Perhaps we could arrange a comfortable prison instead of the stake?”

She turned her head to look at the earnest young man. He was soft, and there was kindness in his expression, ink stains on his fingers. She lifted an eyebrow wearily, working her jaw against the knot in her mouth.

“Yes, well, perhaps you’re right. Difficult to renounce anything if you can’t speak, I suppose.” He reached up to loosen the gag. The guard protested again. “No, Dion, every sinner deserves the opportunity to repent her sins. I’ll just be taking this off for a moment.”

“Speak anything but the truth, witch, and I’ll kill you here,” the guard warned, placing the edge of his spear to her throat.

“I never lie,” she replied as the knots were loosened.

“So, do you renounce your demon lord and swear to abandon your dark arts for all time?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about boy. Give me a moment and we’ll solve this problem without having to cut down the tree.”

The guardsman and the monk exchanged uneasy glances. She whispered to the tree, and with a great noise of cracking wood the trunk split open, separating to each side of her, leaving her pinioned to a pillar of living wood a head taller than she was, held upright by the soil beneath her feet. The Knight came over, sword drawn.

“What goes on here?” he demanded, and the guard looked abashed

“Your monk wanted me to repent and renounce, because that’s what monks do. Your guard is struggling between his loyalty to the crown and to the church, so you might want to speak to him about that. As for me, you have been wishing for me on a stake in your town square for burning, so I thought the least I could do was oblige you.” Clouds began to gather on the horizon, and her hands clenched with a spell that wanted to be cast, but she firmly pushed it back, shaking her head.

“How generous of you,” he replied, looking over the stake and the lance blade mostly bare to the world as it thrust through the post behind her.

“You have no idea,” she muttered, teeth gritted from the pain.

“Your pardon, witch, I believe this may hurt a bit.” He grasped the shaft of the lance, put a boot against her chest, and pulled it free. She screamed once and blackness eclipsed the world as consciousness fled.

The first thing she became aware of was the gaze of the wolf king from the shadows of a building opposite her. The next was the bite of ropes into her flesh. She was tied quite soundly to a post stacked high with firewood and bales of pitch soaked hay. A garrotte lay slack against her throat, and she realized that this township strangled its victims as they burned to death, perhaps as a mercy, perhaps to simply silence the screams early. She looked around at the torches in the square, and more than one salamander climbed among the flames, curious about the events unfolding.

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"Aodhan Tinker," she said softly. "If ever I needed you, or your counsel, now might be that moment." The benefit of being tied so soundly to the stake was she was not able to move enough to disturb her wounded shoulder.

A rock struck her hip, Alexy and Nestor standing near the front of the crowd and shouting with the rest of the mob. Alexy threw a second rock, and it hit her across the cheek.

"Silence!" a big chested man ascended the platform across from her. He wore the crest of the local lord embroidered on his doublet and a velvet hat at a jaunty angle on his head. After a long muttered moment the crowd hushed.

"Well, hag, do you have anything to say for yourself?" he asked. The little monk tried to whisper in his ear, but the lord shoved the monk.

The witch felt a deep pulsing vibration in her chest. It grew stronger, until her breath came in a great wheezing cackle. The crowd became uneasy. "Stop that, at once," the lord demanded, impudent.

She gasped for breath. "You want me to speak, little lord?" she asked, incredulous.

"Even a hag deserves last words before her execution," he said with great certainty.

"That might be the problem then." She reached deep into the skies. Clouds began to gather.

"I see no problem, woman, what are you going on about?"

"I'm no hag," she answered, and called down the first bolt of lighting on the high steeple of the kirk. The monk cowered from the noise and hurried off to make sure nothing was lit afire.

"Father, you fool, I told you to leave the witch gagged," the knight rushed forward, shrill fear making his voice carry across the din of the mob as they milled about, trying to decide whether to run or stay to witness the execution.

Alexy dragged a young boy away from his mother and put a rock in the child's hand. "Throw it," he ordered. "Stone the witch!"

"Stone the witch!" the little boy shouted and threw the stone, missing her by several feet.

"Stone her!" someone from the back took up the chant, and a hail of rocks and small objects fell down around her. The salamanders flickered on the torches as the night grew black. The deep rasping cackle rose again from her chest. The knight and the lord shouted for order, but fear and violence gave the mob a mind of its own.

Winds began to whip the trees, and the wolf king howled his challenge. His voice was joined by others, and the witch saw the three females who accompanied him. More and more singing voices joined the chorus and the shrieking of the wind, and hail fell from the skies to stone the villagers even as they had stoned the witch herself.

Salamanders grew large, toppling some of the torches.

"What is your bidding, My Lady Witch?" the largest one asked, eyeing the thatch of a nearby house. "Shall we burn them?

"What is your bidding, Lady Witch?" the Wolf King asked, regarding the soft flesh of the villagers. "Shall we hunt them with tooth and claw?"

"What is your bidding, Lady Witch?" the winds and the thunder rumbled. "Shall we wash away the town and blast the rock to glass?"

A forlorn howl rose above all of the noise, the mournful sound of a small dog who has lost his person. The God's Hound limped into the square, as tall in the shoulder as the Wolf King, fear and hope in his liquid eyes. The witch closed her eyes as blood dripped down her brow and into her lashes, and she licked her lips, tasting her blood and tears on her lips, salty on her tongue, helpless to wipe it away.

The magics rose in her, waiting to be unleashed upon the land, upon the people, upon the stupid boys who threw rocks at her. All of the pain and loss and horror of her years welled up in her heart, all of the wickedness she'd seen and the hateful things she'd done. She felt the hunger of the children whose family could not mill their grain, the pain of badly wrought tools breaking, the suffering of the cattle with bloat in their guts and empty dugs.

A hush fell, the world waiting, and with the great clamor suddenly gone she heard the beat of enormous wings and the softest buffet of air as something touched down before her. She opened her eyes when she heard the silver of bells, and Aodhan Tinker stood on the platform, the king fallen to the wooden floor in a faint.

"The choice is yours, Madame Witch," he said, deep sorrow in his countenance.

"Is it really a choice?" she asked, choking on her own tears and blood.

"It is always a choice," he answered, tugging a swan feather out of his sleeve.

"Have you always known my heart?" she whispered, gathering her will.

"Your heart is merely a song, and I know all of the songs that ever were," he answered, and lept to snatch her up as she called the lightnings down on her pyre.