18.5
Jewel never would have thought that lacking in criminals or those sentenced for death in her demesne would ever be an inconvenience, but the way that Erhard’s mood had been seeping off the wizard when she informed him there was no ‘suitable subjects’ for their tests you’d think that her lands being peaceful and secure was a personal insult to him.
Even the Archpriestess of Asherah had been visibly annoyed at even the suggestion that they should have to travel to Kaeketeh to actually be able to test her ritual. However a quick message sent by bird to Adelyne had assured Jewel that a suitable trio of criminals found deserving of death were available and would be sent under guard to her manor.
The Archpriestess and Wizard however did not seem like they would be content with only one batch of executed criminals. They seemed intent to remain in her home until the solution had been resolved and developed to a point that they would need no further adjustments to Jewel’s contributions.
It was inconvenient, but they and the Halberdiers were the epitome of good guests. In fine spirits and ever polite and courtly with Jewel’s serfs and staff.
Erhard had even been content to allow Smithson and her footmen to make use of the sorcerous armor, although apparently the wizard was required to fit each suit exactly to its wearer or else it risked serious injury. That had given Jewel an opponent that could best the triplets even when they outnumbered a Halberdier!
And while it did not seem to satisfy Erhard the same way continuing the Leuhtą project did he was at least kept amused by maintaining and adjusting the armor while he waited for the criminals to arrive.
As they were today.
For the occasion her dining hall had been made ready for judgement and acts of justice in her capacity as Countess of Viznove. The table had been removed, leaving plenty of space for the guilty to stand. The usual colors of house Rochford joined with that of Bathory and Viznove in hanging on either side of her place at the end of the hall.
Furthermore the yellow and black of Cantor Reborn were further added to represent the involvement of the Court Wizard and Archpriestess of Asherah in their responsibilities.
Erhard was on her right, while Ursula took up her left, both standing several feet ahead of where she primly tucked her foreclaws in at her sides, the rest of her coils only slightly uncomfortably bent so that she presented her size as an artful framing of looping arched scales rising behind the Archpriestess and Wizard, keeping her mane upright all the way down her length, tail tip on her right a foot behind Erhard’s stoic posture.
“Announcing the convicted, Mehmed of the Lands of Bledeten and Pyrenean, found guilty of laying hands with ill intent upon the daughter of the Lord Mayor of Light’s End and striking the house guard of the city’s office. Sentenced to Death.”
A man with a Magarskan sun darkening to his skin was guided into the hallway, he wore plain cloth and smelled of a broken sort of dejected terror. His face bore signs of blows only recently healed and he breathed with an unevenness to his ribs that obviously caused him pain.
Jewel considered the figure before she spoke. His eyes showed no recognition of the Ridgevaulic speech being said around him.
“Erhard, see that he is healed, I would not have him perish before his justice is served.”
Further confirmation, he stiffened as she spoke, his eyes shot around him to look upon the Archpriestess and Wizard before him, but most of all they lingered on Jewel, on her teeth especially.
She tried the Court’s Tongue of Magarska.
“You are Mehmed? Come to me from the Twin Cities of Bledeten and Pyrenean?”
He gaped at her then nodded, Erhard gestured and the man collapsed to his knees, voice peeling out into the air with shocked agony and the sound of bones cracking.
His words broke out between the pain, in the court’s speech of Magarska, although it was rough, the accent much as she remembered in some of the villages further south.
“Yes! Yes oh Shining Doom! I am Mehmed!” the man gasped heavily after the sorcery finished with his face and chest. Blinking hard, face bursting with sweat, before he paused, reaching up to touch his chest.
“You were sentenced to death Mehmed, you laid hands upon the daughter of the lord mayor?”
He shuddered and spoke to the ground, not raising his eyes to look upon Jewel.
“I did, but I was mistaken, she was dressed like a whore, I meant to compliment and inquire about her prices for the evening!”
Jewel frowned, she listened to his words, to his heart beating in a panic, to the strain of his words. Before judging that he was speaking the truth.
“I see, and you have done no other crime within the lands of Viznove? Did no greater harm than insult and mistaken identity in the city of Light’s End?”
She heard him stall a moment, felt his heart skip, his breath catch, felt the face’s muscle twitch even as it was turned to the floor and the way his voice had to strain before it became natural.
“O-ofcourse! I’m an honest man, traveling the shining doom’s roads as her s-”
Jewel spoke with enough force to make the banners tremble.
“Liar, speak the truth of your crimes and there may yet be mercy for you, lie to me again and there will be none.”
Mehmed licked his lips, shuddering, shivering before her, his throat struggling to speak but only clicking with half voiced sounds for several aborted attempts. Finally he found words, his tone even more desperate, pleading.
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“Ah, I’ve stolen on the road from fellow travelers when they were none-the-wiser, I-I’ve left a house that offered me respite before dawn without settling my accounts, but nothing of any harm.”
He spoke the words and Jewel sighed heavily then turned to Erhard.
“Again he lies, Archpriestess, Erhard, you may proceed with the ritual and execution.”
Asherah nodded and took the wondrous pulsing white ‘stone’ from a pocket bag at her waist. Held it aloft before him and intoned words to the Goddess.
“Mother of men’s souls, Shining Light Asherah, knower of fate’s river as it flows over the lands of the world. In the light of this stone do I call to you, shelter this wayward child in its comforts, so that they may be kept safe and be known and live anew in time.”
There was a touch of miracles, sharp cutting things, coming down through the ceiling of the dining hall despite the early summer day. They touched the stone which pulsed between dull white and dark gray.
Then bent, twisted, curved back to wash over the cowering man, too terrified to even turn his face up to witness the ritual, spoken in old cantor words that by Jewel noted he also appeared to not know.
The Touch of Miracles faded, lighter than Jewel had expected, but with a lingering upon the man and the stone.
Erhard stepped forward then, words prompt and clear.
“For this first one, leave the stone revealed to witness the death.”
Ursula did not nod, simply keeping the pulsing stone made of ‘soul silver’ out resting upon her palm, like a slowly blinking eye facing the accused.
Mehmed finally turned up at the sound of the heavy iron footsteps walking towards him, eyes widening as the statuesque figure approached with a slightly rushed pace. Mouth opening to speak before his head was gone entirely.
No, not Gone, there was a terrible clash of iron upon iron, there were sparks of the forge and wave of fire. Erhard’s sorcery had struck without audible word or gesture, but she had seen him call his anvil, call his hammer, call the heat of his forge.
The head was still there, but pulverized into muddy ash, the stump of his neck was black as charcoal. The body collapsed forward, a tremor and spasm, ash and a single spurt of blood escaping the neck as the heart and lungs shuddered to a stop.
The spreading crimson on Jewel’s floors was gone with a scrape of metal and another flurry of sparks.
Jewel stared down at the stone held aloft in Ursula’s hands, when it was white it now seemed to almost glow, dimly a pale light almost like a distant star. Then it dimmed when the darker gray over took it.
“Is it done?”
Erhard nodded, Asherah leaned forward and whispered.
“Asherah, we call to you, let your child, held in comfort speak to us, may his voice ring aloud once more.”
Jewel saw the divine workings shift, a new sliver of cuts strike down through her ceiling and touch the faintly glowing orb in her palm.
Mehmed’s voice spoke, softly, with a dull confusion.
“Wah, what happened?! I was, I was-”
Jewel boggled, his body was gone, he was dead, the orb before her was a sorcerous trinket of shifting stone, yet she knew his words, she could feel them as assuredly as if she was still judging him before her.
He still spoke the Magarskan Court Speech, he sounded the same as Jewel had heard him. Although the fear was missing, he sounded if anything ever so slightly addled, Erhard leaned closer, voice taking to the words with a sharpness that fit poorly with the language.
“You died, executed for your crimes against the Nobility of Viznove, the realm of Cantor Reborn and their collective peoples, but now you live beyond, can you tell us, what do you see?”
The voice went silent for a moment, then whispered with tinges of disbelief, wonder, worry, and a dreamy kind of undercurrent of peace. There was no sound but his voice, yet Jewel could almost hear wind in fields of grain, feel a warmth on his face.
“I Died? But this is, It is... my mother’s gardens, the sun is low, I hear-”
Erhard interrupted him again, voice flat as always, but somehow far more intense in the Magarskan lilts. He was not gentle with the tones where he should have been.
“Is there any pain, any discomfort in your surroundings?”
Again a pause, then the voice holds a wonderment that had not been there before. Jewel had to hold herself steady, the assurance of the world that the voice that spoke to her held a body, one more youthful than it had felt in years, the sensation rising as the voice spoke.
“There isn't! It’s a perfect spring day, the wind from the east, I can smell the-”
Erhard nods to Ursula and she silently ends the miracle that had released the voice of the man just executed to speak after death. With the loss of his voice so too did the deep knowing of him she had felt, there was still a stirring of sorcery, of her own flame many steps removed and changed within it. But no longer could she say precisely what might be happening to the soul.
Jewel could however absolutely feel the delight, the accomplishment in Erhard’s voice even though there was none for the ears to discern.
“A good start.”
He glanced at the beheaded corpse of Mehmed, then waved a hand, whispering into sorcery, the body igniting and then burning away into ash and charcoal before it was swept away with another gesture to wherever the Court Wizard kept such things.
“Let us move onto the next execution, to verify if the souls can contact and engage with one another, let us also obscure the Leuhtą-un after the blessing is given, during the moment of death at the very least, I have suspicions that the ritual may have frailties there.”
Ursula nodded to him, with a firm evenness to every motion as she returned the ‘Leuhtą-un’ to its pocket at her side, but Jewel could smell and hear a rush of joy and deep relief underneath the stoic manner the Archpriestess was presenting.
Jewel took in a breath to settle herself, to recenter for her duty as Countess, banish the sensations that had come from the man’s voice, to quell her doubts, this was justice.
They were criminals, already judged to deserve this and worse, and this one had lied to her despite her express order not to. Besides from how fine the circumstances given by this ‘Leuhtą-un’ appeared to be for Mehmed’s soul?
Jewel could hardly call it anything but Mercy.