Sephirot, p.18
Sephirot, page 18
Duncan just stared.
“Kind of glad you happened along. Been a while since we had a nice beheading. Good for business, you know? People set up booths with food and trinkets and such like. Hangings just don’t have the same draw, although they are a good bit easier to clean up after.”
“This is fucking ridiculous,” he began, but was cut off when the fat soldier slapped him hard across the face.
“I told you, you talk nice,” he said, and his grin was undiminished. He wagged a finger underneath his nose. “Talking foul like that ain’t gonna get you anywhere. Maybe to the block faster.”
“Someone’s got to listen to me.” He tasted blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, they’ll listen, all right,” the soldier said with a chuckle. “Won’t change the outcome. But they’ll listen to whatever you got to say.” He gave a jerk of his head to the two who held Duncan. “Let’s get him where he’s going. Sooner we do that, sooner we’ll be at breakfast.”
Gade, who had been standing behind them, said, in a tremulous voice, “What about my payment? You promised me.”
“Oh, right!” the fat soldier said. “How much did I promise?”
“Thirty silver pennies,” Gade said.
“That’s right.” The soldier reached into his pocket, and pulled out a handful of coins. “Here’s ten copper. We’ll call it even, won’t we?”
“You said thirty silver…” Gade started, and then stopped as he looked into the soldier’s small, piggy eyes.
“Maybe I did. You want to bring it up to the judge, ain’t no skin off my back. Why dontcha wait until Judge Bevans has done with this young fellow? I’m sure he’ll be in a good mood after that. Complain away.”
Gade swallowed. He still wouldn’t meet Duncan’s eyes. “No,” he said in a defeated tone. “Ten copper is all right.”
“Thought you’d see reason. Most men do, given enough information.” He let the coins drop, jingling, into the old man’s hand, then gave another jerk of his head. “Off we go, boys.” To Duncan he said, “Don’t try to escape. Don’t even think about it. Be a pity if one of my men had to cut your throat before we even got to town.”
They hustled him out of Gade’s shack, leaving the old man looking after them, his face twisted in a mix of shame and impotent anger. But soon it was lost to view as they turned down the road back toward the town, past stony fields overgrown with gorse and blackberry, a few more houses even more tumbledown than Gade’s, and finally, some stone façades of sturdier buildings. A crooked wooden sign marked the entrance of a pub called the Shield & Spear, but it was empty, with shuttered windows and a closed front door. They turned and went uphill, past the clanging din of a blacksmith’s shop, an enclosure that held several pigs, and a house where a slovenly-looking woman was putting out laundry to dry. His nostrils were assaulted by the rank combination of smoke, sewage, cooking food, and rot.
Another turn and they walked past a pair of heavy upright timbers with a long crossbeam. Hanging from them were two bodies, a man and a woman, hooded, ropes tight around their skew necks. Their hands were tied behind them, but their feet dangled free, toes pointing toward the ground.
His gorge rose, and a shudder vibrated its way up his spine.
“What did they do?” he said, wondering if even asking the question would earn him another slap, but the fat soldier responded cheerfully.
“Them?” He stuck a thumb in the direction of the two bodies. “Petty thieves. Also caught fornicating without being married first. You know. Can’t allow such immorality. Either one alone, they probably wouldn’t‘a got hanged for it. But both together was too much.” He looked up at them. “Least, they both went out of the world together. Wouldn’t be fair, leaving one of ’em to grieve. Romantic, ain’t it?”
Duncan fought off the urge to vomit, but the rest of the walk into the town was spent in a lightheaded daze, a feeling of surreal horror.
I’ve got to find a portal. Or make one. I’ve got to. These people are going to kill me.
But no portal appeared.
“Here we go,” the fat soldier said, approaching a heavy stone wall, pierced by only a single, heavily-barred gate. He unhooked a set of keys from his belt and unlocked the gate, then they all passed through and into a broad, flagstone courtyard lined with more, but smaller, barred doors.
“Let’s put him in number three,” the fat soldier said to Duncan’s captors. “That’s the most elegant cell we got, don’t you think?”
One of the other soldiers cackled, and then he was pushed forward. The fat soldier unlocked the door, and they thrust him into a tiny dirt-floored room with a wooden cot and a stone basin as furnishings. The door clanged shut behind him, and there was a click as the key turned in the lock.
“Relax, Mr. Kyle,” the fat one said, his smiling face peering into the barred window of the door. “You might want to spend some time thinking up some good last words. Always gives an air of majesty to the proceedings, that does. I know the spectators would be much obliged if you could do the occasion justice.”
He spent the next few hours intermittently sitting on the cot, lying down and trying to sleep, and pacing back and forth in the cell, a distance of only about six feet. He was famished and thirsty, and pounding on the bars and demanding to be fed elicited only a cracked wooden platter shoved through a slot at the base of the door. The platter held a cup of tepid water, a piece of several-days-old bread, and a piece of meat of such uncertain provenance that he decided not to eat it until he was a great deal more desperate than he currently was.
He was lying on his back on the cot, in a light doze, as the minimal light coming in through the window in the door was fading into evening, when there was the sound of the key turning in the lock. He came awake instantly, but any thoughts of a sudden rush and escape were dashed when he saw a pair of guards with drawn daggers, either of whom alone could have successfully blocked the door.
“You’re wanted,” one of them said, gesturing with the dagger. He had an unpleasant smile on his face. “Judge Bevans wanted to see you right away. Guess you’ll be getting it over with sooner than most.”
He regarded him with wide eyes, and didn’t respond.
The soldier laughed. “Come along, then. Ain’t dignified if we have to drag you.”
He stood, knees wobbly with fear.
Every time he’d been in serious danger, a portal had appeared. He had to count on that happening again. If they tried to hurt him or kill him, he’d just disappear.
Hopefully.
He went to the guards, who tied his hands behind his back with a leather cord and propelled him along through the courtyard and then up a set of stairs on the other side. There was a broad flagstone patio, and beyond that a much more sumptuous pair of doors, made of some dark wood, carved and embellished with figures and symbols, including a blindfolded Justice, holding a pair of scales, and a woman kneeling and holding shut a lion’s mouth. In another corner, a sickle moon presided over the image of a howling wolf. Most disturbingly, along the door frame was the figure of a man hanging by one foot from a scaffold. His other leg was folded behind him, and his eyes were closed, but whether in death or sleep or trance was impossible to tell.
One of the guards opened the door with a key, and they entered a long, stone-floored corridor lit by red torchlight. Chains hung from the walls. The whole thing looked more like a torture chamber than a court of law.
Which was very likely what it was. To listen to those guards the previous night, it could well be a five-minute mock trial and then Duncan’s head on the block.
Still, the thought that he’d escaped from dangers at least this dire was a comfort. Diana, and the Jackal Man in Hod, had certainly intended to kill him, and both had failed. It was with that optimistic thought that he was shoved through a door and into a wide chamber, where other guards stood along the walls in the shadows. Vaulted ceilings rose out of sight in the gloom, and on the near wall, the only one he could see, were rings and chains and what looked like cuffs for wrists or ankles. The place smelled of mildew and old blood.
There was only one thing in the room that was clearly lit, and it was a man. The light from a trio of torches fell full on the face of a scarlet-robed figure standing on a dais in the front of the room, watching Duncan with the effortless, malignant patience of a spider.
He was middle-aged, jowly and running to fat, with short, salt-and-pepper hair peeping out from underneath a square red cap that apparently was a mark of his office. His face was deeply creased, set in a disapproving frown. He had his hands laced on the lectern in front of him, and regarded Duncan with an expression somewhere between distaste and outright loathing.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise by now, but it always was.
And he said, in a thin voice, “Gabe?”
“Silence!” the man thundered. “You will speak when you are asked a direct question, and not until.”
“You are speaking to Darick Bevans, High Judge of Gevurah, you scum,” said one of the guards who had brought him in. “Speak civil. He holds your life in his hands.”
He stared up at the man’s humorless face.
It was Gabriel Carthen. Duncan’s boss. Who judged the whole world. Who kind of hated everyone.
And Duncan thought, I’m screwed.
Of course it wasn’t actually his employer, but he’d had enough experience with the people he’d met in the Sephirot that any hope he had for his safety and freedom died.
Maria, Duncan’s sister, had been enigmatic, sarcastic, and clever; so was the Sphinx.
Antonia Syriakis was gorgeous, sexy, and batshit insane. So was Diana, the huntress of Yesod.
Each time, there had been someone who had come through into the new world, some person from his old life—which was increasingly seeming like a distant dream— who had kept the essential part of their personality here.
If that was true, it was no cause for optimism. He recalled a financial consultant who had been one of his coworkers and who had been summarily fired when Gabriel Carthen found out the man had been sleeping with Gabriel’s daughter Emily.
And she’d even interceded on his behalf. Told her father that she’d been a willing participant. No good. The man’s desk was cleaned out the following morning, like he’d never existed.
He was pushed forward, and stumbled a little, but kept his feet. He looked up at the familiar face scowling down at him.
“Your name is Duncan Kyle,” Judge Bevans said.
“Yes.”
“You came in from outside.”
There was no possibility of denying it. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was trying to escape being killed.”
There was a rumble of laughter from the people who watched.
“And you brought a demon with you?”
“He wasn’t a demon.”
Judge Bevans’s scowl deepened. “And what kind of infernal creature was it, then?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You speak as one as clean of sin as a newborn baby, and yet you were seen talking to the beast. Kneeling next to it, asking it questions, listening to its counsel. If you know nothing about it, why were you holding conversation with it?”
He shook his head. “He didn’t look like that in the world we’d come from. And he did nothing evil there. In fact, he saved my life…”
“You owe your life to such a creature, and yet you expect me to believe you have no knowledge of its doings? One need only look at it to know that it is a creature of darkness. What good and honest man looks like that?”
“He was a man before we jumped.” His voice was becoming desperate.
The Judge nodded. “You used his evil power to come here, not knowing that we were protected against such intrusions.”
“I didn’t use his evil power—”
“Silence. If you were not in league with evil, then why did you run? An innocent man does not run from other innocent men. He stands, confident in his righteousness.”
“The people in the town saw the beast, and were already accusing me of bringing in demons. I was afraid—”
“Because you knew it was true!”
“No! I—”
“You are in league with the infernal powers. Your very words give it away.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You have visited many worlds. Bringing death and destruction to every one. The same as you intend here.”
“I don’t have any such—”
“Silence.” Judge Bevans looked around him. He gripped the lectern with both hands. “Do you deny that you have visited other worlds before this one?”
“I have not harmed any—”
“Do you deny it?”
He looked at the Judge.
No matter what he said, it was going to be turned around to incriminate him. It was like the Salem Witch Trials.
“No,” he said.
“As I thought. And you brought evil into those worlds, too. You dare not gainsay me.”
“I have never set out to hurt anyone—”
The Judge nodded. “So say all who consort with evil. They never intended it. They only had the good will toward all, never wished to harm a soul.”
Again, there was a murmur of laughter from the guards and the others watching.
This was theater. Everyone here knew what’s going to happen. They were enjoying watching him squirm.
“We will allow you to confess,” the Judge said, opening his hands toward Duncan in a conciliatory gesture. “If you confess now, you will receive as much mercy as the law allows.”
He swallowed.
Confess? Confess what? Confess to a lie?
He shook his head, a convulsive, terrified gesture. “No,” he said. “I did nothing wrong.”
“And that is your sworn word on the subject?”
“Yes.”
Judge Bevans was unsurprised. “Very well. By lying under oath, you bring your punishment on yourself.” He gave a gesture with one hand to the shadowy figures standing watch, and Duncan was seized with rough hands and forced toward the wall to one side of where the Judge was standing. The cord tying his hands was undone, but his hands were forced upward and bound with leather straps to a pair of rings in the stone. His feet were kicked apart, and then his ankles were secured in the same fashion, leaving him spread-eagled, facing the rough stone.
He turned his head and saw a huge man, stripped to the waist, approaching with a drawn dagger. The man wore a hood over the top half of his head, and dark eyes glittered through eyeholes cut in the front.
“What?” he said, aware that he was babbling pitifully, but unable to stop himself. “Are you going to stab me? But I didn’t do anything…”
But the man used the knife to cut a slit in the back of his shirt. Then he tore it in half, pulling the pieces outward over his shoulders, exposing his bare back.
The man looked over at Judge Bevans. “How many?” he said, in a heavy, rough voice.
“Start with two dozen. Perhaps he’ll sing a different tune after that. You may administer the punishment.”
Duncan watched, heart hammering against his ribs, sweat running in rivulets down his chest, as the hooded man unhooked a many-thonged whip from a peg on the wall. He ran the leather cords through his hand, tentatively, and then gave it a low swing or two.
Now. He needed a portal now. Now. A portal. To anywhere.
The muscles in his back rippled, tensing, trying to prepare. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes. Then his thoughts were cut off by pain as the first lash landed.
He’d thought that the gash from Diana’s arrow had been painful, but that was a mere scratch compared to this. The man with the whip knew what he was doing, waiting a full, slow count of ten between each stroke. By the eighth lash he screamed every time the whip fell. By the eighteenth he was crying.
But finally it was over. The hooded man stepped back, as if to admire his handiwork, shaking droplets of blood from the whip thongs.
Duncan hung limply from the straps binding his wrists to the rings, still shuddering with sobs.
“You may consider your confession until the morning,” Bevans said. “That much mercy we will show, even to an acknowledged practitioner of hellish arts. If you are not convinced by the tale your back will tell you tonight, we have other, and worse, ways to persuade. Think carefully.”
The man who had flogged him rehung the whip on the wall, and then unstrapped his arms and legs. He nearly collapsed. He was close to fainting from the combination of adrenaline, pain, and blood loss, but managed to keep his feet. When he lowered his aching hands, the torn remnants of his shirt slid from him and crumpled to the floor, and he slowly turned to face the judge, who watched him with an impassive expression.
“Till tomorrow morning, then,” Judge Bevans said.
“And I die regardless.” He cleared his throat to try to steady it. “Either way, you’re going to have me executed.”
“As a practitioner of infernal arts who brought a demon into our world with foul intent, there is no other course. However, you can go to the block and be released from your suffering easily, or only find the peace of death after further… attention from my attendants. Trust me, a flogging will seem like nothing at all if you choose that way.”
He raised one hand to wipe away the tears and snot on his face. Even that motion caused his lacerated back to scream at him. He opened his mouth to answer, thought better of it, and just shook his head.
“Take him away, then.” The judge gave a motion of his hand to the soldiers who had brought him in. “Bring him back in at sunrise, and we will hear what the night’s counsel has told him.”
He was once again grasped, none too gently, and pushed back out of the room, down the hall, and out of the building, retracing his steps back to his tiny prison cell. The guards locked him in without saying a word, and he staggered to the cot and fell face first onto it.
