A Thrust into Darkness

I saw my mother alive for the last time the next day. We had both been warned that we were not to speak to each other, nor were we to shed a tear at what we had been brought to witness or to look away from it.

The scaffolds that my uncle used for his periodic impalements of "enemies" stretched to the banks of Torment Lake and could hold a hundred myn. I let my hatred make me strong, and stood there with my head up and shoulders back.

A cart rolled up to the scaffold, and my father was brought forward from it. He stumbled on the steps, his hands spellcorded behind him, forcing two guardsmyn to support him and half carry him up to the center place. I frowned at that for my father had always been a brave mon, and I could not imagine that fear made his legs weak – although it would anyone else's.

A herald unrolled a parchment and read from it my father's crime: treason.

The herald withdrew and the guards stripped him of his clothing, leaving him completely nude. My stomach clenched and soured, sending burning bile into my throat: my uncle had tortured him; that was why he had so much trouble on the steps.

Guards lifted him to a table and tied ropes to his ankles. His legs were pulled so far open it looked as if his hips must soon be torn from their sockets. Then the executioner came forward, wearing a black mask over his features. He was as muscular as a prime bull. His assistant held a thick pole with a sharp steel head. I shuddered inwardly and my sphincters tightened. I swallowed and hoped the soldiers guarding me did not notice.

The executioner nodded and his assistant began greasing the head, while he examined my father's anus. He took out a short, broad blade and opened this entrance for the pole wider with small, considered cuts. My father flinched at each quick slice.

"Galee!" he screamed. "Galee, my scions will cast your soul to the winds!"

Galee? That was the name of Waejonan's mentor. What had my father known that now he would never be able to tell me?

Revulsion tightened in my guts, but I could not look away. Horror held me prisoner.

A sa'necari moved to the front of Isranon Dawnhand, placing a hand on his shoulder to Read him as the sentence progressed and make certain everything went properly, that the most important internal organs were not touched. Then the executioner pressed the pole into Dawnhand's body and moved to the butt-end with his hammer. He began to give it little taps, glancing at the sa'necari between each set and, at his nod, would start again. Dawnhand writhed convulsively and screamed. His bowels let go, followed by blood and fluids. As the pole progressed deeper it stiffened his body out. A bulge appeared in his right shoulder like a huge swelling beneath the muscles. The sa'necari signaled a halt, pulled his blade, and sliced the bulge. Blood and fluids gushed from it. The sa'necari nodded and the hammering began again. The steel head emerged from Dawnhand's shoulder, streaked in gore, and glinted in the sun. Once it had gone far enough through him, they tied his ankles to the pole and, with great care not to jostle him, sat it in place upon the scaffold, nailing the bottom to the frame between two beams and securing the top with a short strut. Dawnhand twisted and groaned.

The crowd cheered; adults and children threw filth and garbage at Dawnhand. Waejonan kept me standing there until nightfall, watching my father convulse and still, convulse and still, until finally his head fell back and his eyes stared unseeing at the stars.

Two years passed during which my uncle had his acolytes train me up in the ways of the sa'necari. My Uncle Brandrahoon was outlawed, since Waejonan could not catch him. Word reached me three years after my father's death, that my mother was also dead. Waejonan had gotten her with child and she threw herself from a balcony. I got hold of her body and buried her in a secret place. The year after that it was Bethie – poor Bethie – brutalized and murdered by a drunken soldier in the brothel she was confined to. I buried her beside my mother. Somehow, despite all of that, I managed to fall in love and marry. On that day, Waejonan returned my father's estates to me.

After four years of trying to capture Brandrahoon, Waejonan rited his seven children, my cousins.

I never stopped looking for Soreeh and Risha, and I continued to postpone my entrance into the rites of the sa'necari. I did not want to become a monster, but I suppose that, in my secret heart, I was a monster already. My life was dominated not by the love of my wife, but by my hatred of my uncle and everything connected to him.

GODWAR CENTRAL

A Thrust into Darkness