Someone Else's Kingdom, BOOK II - Scene LXXIX

Coulema Galina lay there in a pool of blood. The rain on the wet stone intermingling with the washed out gore. It pained Drua Maleeva to see the tall sturdy Tunidan lying dead on the ground, but she put it beyond her mind as she calmly walked past his body. Instead, she looked up at the greying sky, and out at the dampened castle courtyard. "Even from a dungeon cell her malevolent powers spew forth," she said aloud, as she appraised the dour scene.

As she entered the courtyard proper she found King Mizmeam and his array of aides standing impatiently in the cold. Mizmeam too felt an uncomfortable ache that Galina had had to pay the price for his treason. With no heart to prolong the torture, the king had ordered that he be dispatched quickly and unceremoniously on his way to the execution. A sharp knife in the back; the dark crimson of his clothing darkened further with the wine-coloured effusion; the whites of the Tunidan's eyes unseen and unmet.

The king spared no heart for the other maker of treachery, however.

As the sea-swept woman was dragged before the small assembled crowd she struggled and kicked. Squirming with animal verve. Completely unwilling to accept her fate. Ideally, she would've been executed before the entire kingdom, but fears of the public effect kept it to a small coterie of notable onlookers. As the king's guards tried to tie her to the stake she violently thrashed her body around, wrestling against the temporal power; her clothes ripping and coming loose as they pinned her down to finally tie her hands. Her wild and mottled hair wailing in the wooden hoarding. Maleeva and the attendants watched on, as one would watch a snake or a dragon, being accosted by its slayer.

Finally, fixed in place, the guards stepped back. Even throttled to the timbers she continued to fling herself back and forth; her naked body writhing. Her living figure beautifully alive against the dead wooden stakes.

Then one of the guards lit the fire.

It blushed into combustion. An explosion of fizzing red, and flickers of black ash. The heat instantly manifest on the faces of those watching the trauma. The supernatural woman undulated even more manically, though more in contempt than in pain. Her truculent skin, revealing its blue-blooded glow, through the beaded, snaking sweat; the blaze of the orangey fire reflective in the slimy glimmer.

Then she stopped her motion and shrieked.

"Hear the wild waters, the very sea bids thee: obey. Sunken worlds, a white cold virgin snow dashes out the Sun. The hour will soon come.."

King Mizeam stood and watched the flames consume her with a stony heart. Her twisted mutterances only adding certainty to the necessity of her execution. Drua Maleeva too looked on with detesting eyes, willing herself to share the same hardened conviction. Yet, in the pit of her stomach she felt a nag of unease. She looked up at the sky again, and wondered if the strange incantations of the woman would somehow free her from her torment. The clouds seemed to threaten rain, but none came.

Very soon Maleeva would be heading north beneath those clouded skies, to douse the half-tails with a similar fire. Everything was falling into place, but there was a thread of displeasure that she couldn't quite put her finger on, marring her clear-sighted vision. She thought of Seaspell, recovering in his bedchamber. Still delirious, but now healthy and vital. It elbowed the thread of doubt aside. Things were going to plan she thought.

At last, the sea-swept woman fell silent, as the fire cackled high into the air. A treason had been extinguished.