The flames smoldered and failed in the dampness. Darkness returned, leaving only a fearful afterimage of the materbill burning in Vakon's brain. Then claws clat shy;tered on the stones. Another roar split the silence.
The creature belched more fire as it leaped upon Mendis Vakon. The former mayor of Solace didn't even have time to scream.
Once Hederick was sure his former co-conspirator was dead, the High Theocrat made his way to a nearby stone column. He held his torch higher and examined a row of marks. Drawing the dagger he'd filched from Vakon, Hederick used the rapierlike point to scratch one more line at the top of a row of similar scrapes. Then he counted the lines.
"Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight," Hederick murmured with a self-satisfied air. "What a ferocious appetite the materbill has." He smirked as he remembered the terror on Mendis Vakon's unrepentant face. "How fortunate that there are heretics aplenty in Solace to feed him."
Chapter 5
At first glance, Crealora Senternal didn't look like a woman who had slain an entire family with evil magic at fifty paces. But these days you couldn't tell about someone by merely looking.
In Solace, only High Theocrat Hederick seemed to know for a certainty.
As men and women filed into Erolydon's gleaming val-lenwood-paneled Great Chamber, they stole glances at the tiny woman who stood awaiting sentencing. Her head was bowed, and her hands were clasped so tightly that her fingertips were white.
At least a dozen guards, swords sheathed but unbuck shy;led, stood at the edges of the room. Six novitiates tended incense burners in a ring around the woman accused of being a witch. A veil of flower-scented smoke hung in the air around Crealora. Few people in the room gazed long at her, but all stole cautious glimpses.
"Be careful, Gilles," a pregnant matron whispered to her husband as they edged through the crowd to a vacant spot. She plucked at his sleeve. "Don't meet her gaze, Gilles. They say the witch of Zaygoth can ensorcel a man with but a look!"
Gilles tut-tutted her but kept his voice low nonetheless. "That dried-up old stick? She's nothing but huge eyes and brittle bones, Susta. I've faced far worse monsters than Crealora Senternal, though it's a wonder her poor hus shy;band stood her oddities for so long. I've nothing to fear from such as her. You merely grow fanciful because of your expectant condition. I wanted to leave you home, but you'd have had my head if I suggested it."
"Gilles Domroy!" his wife exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. "If you think I'll miss the biggest spectacle in Solace since the Cataclysm, you're …"
Susta Domroy's shrill voice drew the attention of the prisoner. Crealora lanced the mother-to-be with a pene shy;trating stare. The prisoner's sapphire-blue eyes glittered, and her colorless lips began to move silently. Her hands shook despite the heavy chains at her wrists.
"A spell!" Susta gasped and snatched forward the ker shy;chief she wore over her hair, hiding her face. Her right hand shielded her belly, and she raised her left in the ges shy;ture that peasants believed averted witchcraft. She dragged the now stone-faced Gilles down onto the bench with her. People on each side quickly slid aside to give them more than enough room.
Crealora Senternal smiled grimly at the pair, then returned her gaze to the front of the room and the doors beneath the towering pulpit. "If I had magic for spells, would I be standing here now?" she muttered to herself. "Pah! I'd be winging my way across the forests of Ansa-lon." She looked around the room. "All these 'converts.'
Converted Seekers, indeed! Converted by Hederick's threats and goblins."
Let the Domroys believe that the long-despised witch of Zaygoth had laid a curse on their precious unborn heir. Crealora no longer cared what the people of Solace thought of her. She knew she had no more witchcraft in her than did the hammered iron links that bound her, sup shy;posedly to prevent her from completing the gestures nec shy;essary for spells.
"If one wet hair is out of place on the head of the Dom shy;roys' newborn babe, they'll place the blame at my door," she whispered. "Fools! I'll be at the side of my lord Pala-dine before long, and well beyond this farce." Still, she shivered.
The witch of Zaygoth waited on the subterranean floor of the semicircular room. Behind and above her stretched the packed benches of Erolydon's Great Chamber. Eroly-don's builders had constructed the Chamber in a pit dug deep into the sandy soil at the eastern edge of Crystalmir Lake. The top tier of seats, like Hederick's pulpit, was actually at ground level.
The burnished vallenwood glowed with a beauty richer than oak. Vallenwoods were sacred trees, and at one time the residents of Solace would never have dared to lay an axe blade to the great trees. No one knew how ancient the towering vallenwoods were, only that some people thought they'd existed on Krynn before any living beings.
Hederick had overridden that reverence in short shrift. He'd wanted vallenwood for his temple, and that was that.
Crealora coughed in the incense-choked air. Today was the last day of her inquisition. Today Hederick would pass sentence. There was no doubt about the verdict: Hed shy;erick had never acquitted anyone. The form of the sen shy;tence was the only mystery. Despite her fear, Crealora felt a kind of relief.
Hundreds of voices rose and fell. They throbbed and ebbed behind her like the roar of the ocean waves that pounded the shore east of her native land of Zaygoth, which had been her home for her first twenty years. Then a handsome but godless trader, Kleven Senternal, travel shy;ing through Southern Ergoth selling his wares, had glimpsed her and fallen instantly in love. As smitten as he-and bolstered by his oath that he'd not interfere with her worship of the Old Gods-Crealora had left her tiny village of fishers and netcrafters for the trader's home in Solace.
With her abrupt manner of speaking and her foreign ways, Crealora was always an outsider in Solace, but she'd lived there happily enough with her Kleven for fif shy;teen years. In the early years, before the Seekers had spread their new religion over the land like a poison, she'd been tolerated well enough.
Then only a few weeks ago, her mate had met the slash shy;ing claws and fiery breath of a mysterious beast after a trading run to the east. The creature, by some reports a materbill, had seared Kleven's horse with flames from its gullet and then ate the mount. It scattered Kleven's belongings and left Crealora's husband to bleed to death on the forest path.
One of the novitiates, a man of about thirty years, approached the witch and waved a curl of incense in her direction, his gaze carefully averted.
"Idiot!" Crealora snapped. "What can smoke do against sorcery? Were I a witch, could I not snuff a tiny ember, a mere arm's length away? Were I a witch, could I not snuff you just as easily?"
The man took a quick step backward, but made no response. None but Hederick dared speak to the witch.
Another yellow-robed novitiate cleared his throat. "All rise to honor Hederick, most reverend High Theocrat of Solace and judge of this holy court," he called. Hearing the shuffling of many feet as the spectators rose behind her, Crealora forced herself to breathe evenly. The High Theocrat would not see her quail.
"Hederick the Heretic, you do not frighten me," she whispered. She forced an insolent smile to her face as she studied the Chamber's portal. No sound came from the oiled hinges as two more novitiates pulled the double doors apart. The door beneath the pulpit was reserved for Seeker priests and novitiates; lay persons entered the Chamber for worship services through doors at each end of the topmost tier of seats.
The High Theocrat of Solace entered, regally dipped his head to the assembled crowd, and solemnly mounted the steps to the pulpit that doubled as judgment seat. The flickering light from ceremonial candles glinted off the gold threads interwoven with the mink-brown silk of the High Theocrat's robe. Dahos, Hederick's high priest, remained standing by the entrance.