You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.
I think I’d have minded less if I’d committed a truly heinous crime. Something that warranted death. Or even if I was the kind of person who would enjoy flinging a last defiance at my execution.
It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.
There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.
“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”
The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”
The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”
“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”
I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick.
For years people tried to come up with something the Sorcerer couldn’t do. They wished to drown on dry land, or to be slain by a fantastical beast, or whatever their desperate minds could conjure up. It had never worked. But the spectacle brought people back, kept people afraid, and convinced everyone he was all-powerful. No, I was resigned to death. I was only angry that my death would be so meaningless. If I’d known, I’d have killed that sheriff, and had the satisfaction of it. At least I wouldn’t let him make a fancy show of my terror and my death.
The brawler was unshackled from beside me, and dragged to the front of the platform. Beside me, the pickpocket rocked and sobbed.
The Sorcerer didn’t look evil, to people who expected black robes and gleaming eyes and wicked laughter. No. His was the face of real evil. The face of a wealthy bureaucrat, that has never seen toil in the hot sun, with well-groomed greying hair and soft hands that have never lifted anything heavier than a flagon. The face of a man who measures the worth of a human life by the service it can be to him, the work it can do for him, the coins in tax revenue it can bring him. It was the smooth, serene face of a monster, and I called down every curse I can think of on it as I watched him, though I know it will do no good.
Every year, there were seven prisoners. Seven examples. The brawler was the fifth. When he was dragged up to face the Sorcerer, his feet scrambled through a vile mud of blood and ash and the scattered shards of broken clay that had once been a man. He was still defiant, and stared into the Sorcerer’s face while his arm was drawn forward and the magical shackle locked around his wrist.
The Sorcerer smiled, the faint, pleased smile of a clever man faced with someone he knew was poor and uneducated and couldn’t outthink him. “And how will you die, treacherous one?” he asked.
The brawler spat at his feet. “Of old age,” he growled.
I averted my eyes. I’d seen this tried before, and I didn’t want to see it again.
When the screaming stopped, they came for me. I tried to walk, to approach my death with dignity, but these were old hands. I’m sure no-one saw one of them kick my feet out from under me so I could be dragged, struggling to stay upright, before the Sorcerer. I, too, stared into those eyes, empty of emotion, while the enchanted manacle was placed around my wrist. He didn’t even look pleased. After so many years, it wasn’t even amusing for him anymore. Just another task, perhaps mildly interesting, perhaps dull. I looked down at the withered, ancient corpse that had been pushed to one side, then back up at the Sorcerer. All this show was meaningless, even to him.
Meaningless.
“And how will you die, treacherous one?” the Sorcerer asked, a faint flicker of interest showing in his face. Maybe my expression showed that I was thinking, not only frightened or defiant.
Meaningless.
“I wish to die,” I said slowly, wanting the words to be right, “in the service of my people. A meaningful death, that betters their lot.”
He blinked twice. I’d never caught him blinking even once. Then he smiled. “A dramatic death, then, to show them the perils of crime,” he said smoothly, and raised his hands. Fire formed around them, and I had time to flinch, to step back, to curse myself for not taking the easy way as the fire roared towards me…
And washed around me like a warm breeze, stirring my hair and prison tunic, but passing without a scorch, without a burn.
I looked down at the enchanted shackle, then back up at him. “I said a death that serves the people,” I said slowly, not quite believing it had worked. “Not one that serves you. A death that betters their lot, not one that keeps them in fear.”
He tried again and again. Serpents came for me with poison dripping from their fangs, and bulls tried to trample me. Water rose up to drown me, and knives of ice plunged towards my breast. I could feel the dry brush of scales against my bare feet, the hot breath of the bulls and the wetness of the water, but nothing harmed me. A dark miasma rose up around me, and I smelled a foul odour, but when it passed I was unharmed once again.
Then he called for his guards, and they came for me with swords and spears. The weapons passed through my body like smoke, and their hands slid off my body as if it were smooth ice.
And then, as I stared at him, I finally saw the Sorcerer crack. His rage shattered, and there was only fear in his face. “You can’t hurt me,” I said, and it wasn’t loud, but it rang out in the terrible, hopeful, eager silence that had fallen. “Not with magic. Not with men.”
No weapon could harm the Sorcerer, that was well known. No magic, either. But I had no weapon, and I had no magic. I leaped at him with nothing but my bare hands.
He could resist me, hand to hand, body to body. He could fight me, and he made a good attempt. But he wasn’t prepared for this. He was was more than twice my age, an aging man who’d never worked a day in his life. I was young and strong, with the muscles of a washerwoman and a heart full of fury.
The crowd made no sound, while we fought. But when I brought him down, when I pinned him and wrapped my hands around that soft neck, I heard hundreds of people draw in their breath at once, a thousand tiny sounds combining into a soft gasp that seemed to echo in that stillness.
“Whoever… kills me… will die…” the Sorcerer gasped, his face darkening, his soft weak hands scrabbling at mine. He didn’t even know enough about fighting to reach for my eyes or my nose, the fool.
I tightened my grip. “And that,” I gritted out, “will be a very meaningful death.”
They were the last words I spoke.
*
It seemed like only a moment later that I got to my feet. But the crowd was gone, and the sorcerer was gone, and instead of noon sun I looked up at a sky full of stars. “I am dead, then?” I said aloud, wondering.
Yes.
It wasn’t a voice, and yet I heard it. When I turned, a slender, sexless figure stood before me, robed in undyed linen. It had the form of a person, but it was… something else. Something more.
“Did I kill him? Is the Sorcerer defeated?”
Yes.
“Good.” The shock of it all should be hitting me, now… but I no longer had a body, no heart to race, no skin to sweat, and I only felt a great calm settle over me. “Then I am satisfied. It was a good death.”
The figure smiled, and the smile was as tender as a mother’s, as sweet as a lover’s, and as patient as the sun itself.
You have done well. Come. Let me show you.
It took my hand, and then we stood in sunlight again.
It was the same great square, at the heart of the capital. But it looked different, now. A bustling market filled it, and the few armsmen I saw did not wear the Sorcerer’s blue and black, but simple brown. The banners that fluttered at the corners of the square did not show the black sun on blue, but a raised white hand, palm out, with a silver band ending the wrist, on a field of grey.
I turned to look at where the execution platform had been, and saw a statue where it had been, in the pale beige stone common to this country.
It stood on a plinth taller than I was, so I couldn’t look very closely. It certainly didn’t look much like me, even at a distance. But I looked at the raised hand, with its silver manacle, then down at the memory of my own wrist, where a shadow of the enchanted manacle still rested. “That is meant for me, isn’t it?”
Yes.
“The banners too?”
Yes.
“I didn’t… I didn’t know that would happen.” I would have cried, if I’d still had tears. Instead I went closer to the statue, to look at the words inscribed on the plinth. I knew the look of writing, though I’d never learned to read. “What does it say?”
The figure drew closer, laying a comforting hand on my shoulder. No life without value, it said without speaking, the words simply pouring into me like water into a cup. No death without meaning.
I liked that, and I laid the memory of my hand against the letters for a moment. “That’s better than I said it. I like it.” I sighed. “I wish I’d been able to tell someone, though. Why I did it.”
The figure looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded slowly.
Yes.
So that’s why I’m here, talking to you in this dream. It said that you’ll remember this, and write it down for me. You’ll have to say it’s a made up story, of course, and maybe you’ll even believe it. I just wanted someone to know. I wasn’t a saint, or a martyr. At least, I never meant to be, I didn’t plan any of it, and I never thought until I had my hands on him that I’d actually stop him.
I just knew I was going to die, and I wanted it to mean something. To do some good. Given a choice, I’d have rather live for something that mattered, done good and lived to know of it, but I didn’t die for nothing. That’s something.
Put that in, please. You should do good while you’re alive, not wait until you’re about to die. But keep going up until you’re dead. Never give up.
Never stop trying. Not until your last breath.
