Twenty Souls
Trevor Brogan
A lad at that awkward age between boyhood and manhood walked
through the town toward the market square.
He wore soft leather leggings, a white wool tunic, a vest of some
indeterminate brownish hue, sturdy yet well-used boots, and a little sack slung
over his shoulder - exactly the kind of outfit for blending into a crowd
without trying. As he entered the square,
he dug around in the money purse at his belt and extracted a silver royal crown. He frowned at the coin, then shrugged and
made for the stalls selling roasted meat.
A brown, wedge-shaped head with large golden eyes stretched out of his
pack on a sinuous neck and regarded the coin.
There’s no way you can
get rid of that, you know, the dracling’s mental voice intruded on the
lad’s thoughts, tinged with amusement and challenge.
The lad pushed the dracling’s head back into the sack,
casting his eyes about warily to see if anyone in the crowd had seen it. “Well you’re not going to spoil my chances by
getting me arrested for consorting with a scion of the infernal pits,” he
whispered back. “Again.”
Oh, I’m a scion now?
the dracling asked teasingly, barely poking his head back out into the
open. ‘Very well lad, have your fun.’
The lad ignored the dracling and walked up to a stall set up around a
fire-pit over which large slabs of beef were roasting.
“Two slices please,” the lad said to the man running the
stall, casually placing the silver coin on the countertop. “From the ends.”
The meat vendor looked at the royal crown with surprise, and
then at the lad with suspicion. “You got
any idea what this is worth?” he asked.
“At least two slices of beef, I hope,” the lad replied,
putting on an innocent expression.
The vendor narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, trying to
decide if the plain-looking lad was simple in the head, or at least gullible
enough to be cheated. What he finally
said, however, was, “I ain’t got the coin to make change for just two slices.”
“I find that difficult to believe, my good man” the lad
said, dropping the innocent act. He
gestured at the crowds milling about the square, and then at the roasting meat
and said, “That heavenly smell and the many marks of a knife on your beef leads
me to think you’ve had plenty of customers before me, and not many of them
would’ve paid you in silver crowns.”
“You’re right on that last part, lad,” the vendor replied
humorlessly. “Matter of fact, I ain’t ever
seen a silver crown in hands like yours.
Where’d you get it, lad? I won’t
accept no stolen coins.”
“It isn’t stolen,” the lad said in chagrin. “I earned it with honest work for some noble
lady passing through town.”
“A likely story, lad, but I ain’t taking the risk. Be off with ya.”
Oh, too bad, the
dracling mocked as the lad turned away and started heading down the row of
stalls. Perhaps your speech was a little too good for your looks. The lad ignored the mental teasing and approached
a stall selling parts of roasted bird.
He drew close enough to get a good look at the stall without forcing the
vendor to engage with him immediately.
The man had rather foolishly left his cash box out in plain sight and
open, showing a respectable collection of coppers and small silver coins that
totaled much more than the lad’s single crown.
It seemed like a favorable sign, but before the lad could try his luck
the dracling hissed and withdrew completely into the sack. Nice effort,
but the witchers are a-coming.
Sighing, the lad put his coin away and turned to look out on the square
as a whole. The crowd was both growing
thicker and parting to let a procession of grey-clad priests escorting a wagon reach
the high wooden platform at the square’s center.
Inside the wagon, her hands tightly bound to the side to
keep her in full view of the murmuring crowd, was a raven-haired woman with a
very pretty face marred by tears of despair and outrage and clad only in a thin
white shift that left little about her shapely figure to the imagination. The derisive comments shouted from the crowd
and appreciative whispers passed between neighboring men bore testimony to her
beauty, but the lad remained unmoved by it as he pressed himself into the crowd
and silently coaxed the dracling’s head back out.
Oh, like you really
need me to tell you she’s innocent, the dracling said, hiding away after a
quick look at the woman.
“It’s always possible they aren’t,” the lad muttered back.
Who’s in charge of this
spectacle? the dracling asked.
The lad went up on his toes to get a better look and quickly
found the more ornately-dressed priest mounting the platform ahead of the
group. “Father Bernholt,” he said with an
inward sigh.
Well that ought to
tell you everything right there, the dracling replied. Never been
an ugly witch burned since he took his place at the church, and more than a
couple have been saved at the last second after renouncing the devil and
accepting his requirements for ‘penance.’
Lecherous goat. The lad
quickly smothered the smirk that came unbidden to his face.
Two of the lesser priests untied the woman from the wagon
and hauled her bodily up onto the platform, where other priests were setting
the stake in place and laying out the bundled straw an sticks while Father
Bernholt lit a torch and waved it to draw the crowd’s attention. “Brothers and sisters,” he proclaimed,
“faithful servants of God the Almighty, I stand before you now to declare the
fruit of your diligence. By your
faithful efforts we have found out a witch; a damned servant of the infernal
pits who blighted our lands and cattle!”
Hogwash, the
dracling hissed. There’s barely even a small drought going on now. The crowd, however, greeted Bernholt’s words
with cheers and cries for death. The
lesser priests, having bound the accused woman to the stake, descended from the
platform and surrounded it to keep the mob at bay.
“This foul
enchantress,” Father Bernholt continued, “had refused to confess her guilt even
in the face of honorable witnesses.”
“Those witnesses being jealous neighbors or something,” the
lad murmured, unheard by those around him.
“But God is merciful,” Bernholt continued, expertly lulling
the mob to silence with his words. “We
must extend every opportunity for repentance. Therefore,” he turned to address
the woman, “you have one last chance.
Renounce your master the devil and return to the light.” He then leaned in close, supposedly to hear
her answer, but the lad could see his lips still moving in a whisper. The woman’s face contorted in disgust, and
she spit in Bernholt’s eye. Crying out
in pain, the priest pulled away and rubbed his eye vigorously. He then cast his torch at the woman’s feet,
shouting, “Witch, I condemn you to the infernal pit!” The crowd roared as the fire spread onto the
wood around the woman, drowning out her screams.
The lad remained still until the flames and smoke obscured
the dying woman, and then reached into his coin purse, pulled out the silver
crown, and threw it into the flames. A
couple of the people around him, thinking he had thrown a rock, knelt down and
picked up stones of their own. Soon the
whole mob was pounding the platform with rocks, forcing Father Bernholt to leap
off it and take cover, and the lesser priests moved out to try and restore
order. In the midst of the chaos, the
dracling slid completely out of the lad’s sack and slithered silently along the
ground toward the burning platform, its brown coloring helping to hide it from
wandering eyes. The lad himself made his
way out of the mob and left the square unobserved.
After the fire had burned out and the crowd dispersed from
the square, the dracling found the lad leaning on the shaded side of a
building, eating half a chicken. The
dracling dropped the silver crown, which now shone faintly, and looked up at
the lad smugly. I told you you wouldn’t get rid of it, it said.
“So I choose to be optimistic,” the lad said. “Can you really blame me?” He tore the leg off his chicken and set it
down before the dracling, picking up the coin in the same motion. “So, how many does this make for the good
Father now?” he asked.
That’s the last one,
the dracling replied, tearing into the chicken leg. The lad nodded sadly and reached into his sack,
pulling out a small cherry wood box. He
opened the lid and placed the silver crown inside with the nineteen identical
coins it already contained.
“It’s time then,” he said with resignation. “Time for Father Bernholt to reap the real
fruit of his labors.”
________________________
“Leave me be!” Father Bernholt snapped as he stormed into
his private chambers and slammed the door on his attendant monks. He was still smarting from the stray rocks
that had left their marks on him and was none too happy about the events of the
day in general. He cast his eyes about,
looking for something to vent his frustration on that he wouldn’t mind breaking
and saw something he didn’t recognize on his desk. It was a beautiful, small box made of cherry
wood with a rampant dracling carved on the lid.
As he picked it up for a closer look, Bernholt heard the clinking of
metal inside, and so he opened it up to discover twenty bright silver royal
crowns inside – a small fortune for a single church. The priest’s thoughts weren’t wholly on the
church’s coffers as he reached in to feel the coins and test their
validity. As soon as his finger touched
one of the coins, however, the room was suddenly plunged into a strange
darkness. He could still see the flames
of the candles on the walls and sunlight in the window, but they were no longer
sufficiently strong to illuminate the room.
The twenty coins jumped out of the box of their own accord and landed in
a semicircle around Bernholt.
“Behold your work, Father Bernholt,” a voice from the
shadows hissed. “Behold your reward.”
“What is this witchcraft?” Bernholt demanded. “Who are you?”
“Twenty witches have you found, tried, and burned,” the
voice hissed, ignoring the priest. On
the other side of the half-ring of glowing coins, a dark figure shaped like a
dracling emerged from the shadows, raised upright and with its small wings
furled. Above each coin appeared the
shadow of a female figure. “Twenty
burned, and more besides saved at the last moment by your will. Is this true?”
Bernholt leaped away from the coins and snatched the
crucifix off his desk. Brandishing it at the coins and shadows, he shouted, “In
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy host I command you to depart!”
“Is it true, Father?” the dracling hissed. The crucifix jumped out of Bernholt’s hand of
its own accord, and he dropped to his knees in fear.
“Yes,” he finally answered the query. “Yes I have, and each one who burned received
her just punishment.”
The dracling shadow suddenly grew larger. “See the truth,” it said. The female shadows then transformed into
figures of light full of angelic grace and with eyes hard with accusation. “Lecherous defiler of sacred law,” the
dracling continued, growing larger still.
“Is it not written that if a man looks on a woman to lust after her in
his heart, he has sinned? Countless
times have you lusted after a woman.
When you could, you turned public opinion against her to accuse her as a
witch, and then offered yourself as their only means of salvation. Twenty times were you rejected in this, and
twenty times you burned a soul far more virtuous and innocent than yourself.”
“Silence!” Bernholt shouted, wondering why the noise wasn’t
bringing anyone to investigate. “Leave
me and plague me no longer with these lies.
I am a man of God! A Servant of
the Almighty!”
The dracling finished growing and unfurled its wings, no
longer a mere dracling but a mighty Dragon.
“Silence, betrayer of the faith!” it roared. “Each coin here holds the soul of a woman who
perished in the flames of your lust, stored away to testify against you at the
Day of Judgment. And for you, Bernholt
the Lecher, today is that Day!” Each of
the glowing figures raised its eyes and arms to the heavens and let out a low
cry. One by one, each of them ascended
and vanished, taking a part of the remaining light in the room with them.
“No,” Bernholt begged.
“Please no. Forgive me my sins.”
“Judgment is passed,” the Dragon said. “For a murderer twenty times over without
remorse until damnation stares him in the face, there is no forgiveness.” The Dragon roared and leaped upon the
screaming former priest.
When the lesser priests finally worked up the nerve to check
on Father Bernholt, all they found in the room were his vestments and twenty
coins tarnished beyond identification.
Within the clothes they found a letter written in the priest’s own hand,
in blood, detailing his many sins, and signed with his name. Below the bloody signature was a witnessing
signature of shining silver. The
silvered name was Gabriel.
No comments:
Post a Comment