"My spiritual likeness? What Seeker pap!" Crealora laughed bitterly. "My likeness, taken flight to do mis shy;chief at the behest of evil gods? If I have such a like shy;ness, Hederick, it surely was asleep at home beside me that night."
Dozens of onlookers gasped. Several men snickered. Hederick looked over the crowd, noted the overly merry ones, and used a quill to scrawl on a parchment. He dropped the paper from the pulpit. Dahos hurried for shy;ward, retrieved the fragment, bowed to Hederick, and conveyed the note to two guards near the double doors. The snickerers sank back into the press of bodies, cower shy;ing; no hands reached to comfort them.
"And why would I slay my neighbors?" Crealora demanded.
"Marka Uth Kondas and others witnessed your ire when the Bayard pigs trampled your garden early this summer."
'Tor a parcel of ruined flax, you think I would kill?"
"The logic of witches is not the logic of the pure and holy." Hederick gazed piously upward. "And why else would little Elia Bayard, a child of only five years, cry out your name as she lay dying, if you were not the guilty party?"
"I'd often taken herbs to the child when she had minor ailments. If anyone could help her that night, it would have been me. Elia knew that. It was only natural-"
"What? You claim to be a healer now?" Hederick exclaimed as though outraged. "Many have said that except for the miracles wrought by the Seekers, there has been no true 'healing' since the Old Gods abandoned Krynn at the time of the Cataclysm. Clearly you are no fol shy;lower of the Seekers, yet you claim now to be able to heal. What new sin is this?"
Crealora knew she was doomed, but perhaps there was a reasonable person here who would recall her words later. "That's no sorcery, heretic Hederick," she said loudly. "Nor is it a miracle. Certain plants are able to effect certain cures-of minor complaints. And the only gods who can claim responsibility for that are the old, ancient gods, who created the plants and their wonderful proper shy;ties in the first place."
Hederick snorted, inspiring another flicker of titters from the crowd. "Those gods are long gone, Dame Senter-nal. There are only the Seeker gods now. And if you claim to heal and are no Seeker, the only possibility left is that you are a witch."
"You killed the Bayards, Hederick!"
Onlookers cried out as Crealora let the accusation burst forth. "Sethin Bayard had complained loudly because you cut down the vallenwoods he treasured. You had plenty of reasons to want him dead. I say you sent the bowmen who slew the Bayards in the night. You are responsible for the arrows that pierced the hearts of five-year-old Elia Bayard and her parents. And because I, too, have criti shy;cized you, you use this farce of a trial to rid yourself of me as well! Who's to say that you didn't have a hand in the slaying of my husband, as well? Kleven's low opinion of you was well-known in Solace."
Hederick went white, then red. He clutched the railing so tightly his nails bit into his palms. "You dare to speak thus to one of the Seeker high ministry? Surely this is proof of your heresy!"
Crealora turned to face the crowd. She tried vainly to raise her chained hands as she addressed the mass of people. "Why would I want the Bayards dead?" she cried. "They were my neighbors. As most of you are!" Her voice rang out over the rising noise of the assembly. "Can you truly believe that I would hurt you?"
A pall fell over the crowd. No one met her gaze. Too late, Crealora recalled the exchange with the Domroys. A moment of frightened vengefulness on her part, and look at them now. Of course they feared her-they'd "seen" her put the evil eye on an unborn baby! By the time the child was born, strong and healthy, she would be dead, and it would no longer matter what they believed or thought they'd seen. Tears in her eyes, she turned back toward Hederick, her chin high.
"It has been proved to this court's satisfaction that you, Crealora Senternal, killed the Bayards with magic light shy;ning. The penalty is death." Hederick smirked as he leaned over the railing and motioned to the guards.
At his signal, one of the men tied a gag over her mouth. Hederick triumphantly went on declaiming, but Crealora barely heard him. "Bind her to the vallenwood stump … the courtyard.. until dead." She was hustled roughly from the room to the sun-splashed courtyard, the eager crowd pushing and shoving behind her.
Four guards clambered up onto a small platform in front of the vallenwood stump. They bound the woman's feet to two pegs jutting out four feet above the ground and her hands to iron rings placed in the stump almost seven feet above that. She was so short that her feet barely reached the pegs. Crealora looked for tinder, for dry sticks, at her feet, but there was none. How did Hederick propose to burn her without tinder?
Only a handful of spectators remained in the central courtyard. The rest had been shoved back behind a stone wall nearly as tall as the stump, with risers behind it so people could watch the show.
When the temple guards finished guiding the onlook shy;ers to their places, five men remained in the courtyard with Crealora. They were the five who had tittered when she'd ridiculed the High Theocrat.
Metal creaked. Crealora and the men turned their eyes toward the temple. Hederick, on a viewing stand behind the barricade, gave directions to some novitiates. The priests-in-training pulled the chains that opened a portal near the side of the temple doors. Something large slid into the courtyard, and the gate banged shut behind it.
"By the Greater Pantheon! What is it?" cried one of the trapped men.
Crealora could have told them. She'd heard Kleven describe materbills; he'd thought he spied one only a week before his death. Two or three times the size of a lion, he'd said. Retractable claws the length of her arm. A leonine mane in the colors of flame-orange and gold and red and black. And when the materbill roared, real flames burst from its mouth.
Reason denied that there could be two such rare crea shy;tures suddenly near Solace. This beast, Crealora knew suddenly, was the one that had slain Kleven; it would now likewise slay her. She tried to scream, but the gag almost choked her. The five men who shouted and ran to the wall, imploring friends on the other side to rescue them.
The monster paused just inside the courtyard gate. It stopped and, catlike, gazed around in a bored manner. It licked one huge front paw, then the other. Then it licked its chops.
The trapped men doubled their entreaties.
Hederick, brown-and-gold robe fluttering in the afternoon breeze, stood confidently on the viewing stand high above the crowd. The rest of the viewers shrank back from the inner wall. Several people tried to force their way through the main gates to the outside path, but armed guards and goblins prevented them from leaving.
"People of Solace!" Hederick cried, his voice rebound shy;ing off the stone walls. He slowed the tempo of his words, adjusting to the echoes. "A lesson." The High Theocrat pointed at the monster. "This is a materbill." Several people cried out in surprise. "Yes, a creature of legend, delivered out of myth by the New Gods, the Seeker gods, to help us find the way to truth."
He waited for the commotion to subside and continued. "Sauvay, god of power and vengeance, has presented me with this gift, this proof of his approval of my mission in Solace. I will weed out all who waver in their allegiance to the Seekers. I will keep the community safe for those who are pure of heart and true to the New Gods!"
His hand went to his chest, and he patted something under the front of his robe. Not a whisper rose from the crowd. Even the five men at the opposite end of the courtyard seemed mesmerized. Crealora felt her willpower drain from her as though the beast-or more likely Hed-erick himself-had deftly absorbed it.