Blood of the Red

Chapter 7 - Shallo

Chapter 7 – Shallo

Smoke coiled around the woman at the stake. It clung to her like a lover, reluctantly parted when the wind spoke. Flames could now be seen amongst the kindling stacked about her feet. The crush of onlookers blocked the streets leading from the gates of Glorsa to the market-square, forcing Shallo to dismount. The unexpected commotion proved to be a stroke of luck, her arrival would go wholly unmarked amidst such festivity.

Shallo watched from the crowd, puzzled and ill at ease despite the opportunity to slip unchecked into town. She could taste the smoke and smell the excitement in the air. A bull-necked man elbowed in front of her, a baker by his garb, sour with sweat.

"Burn her!" his bellows joined the chorus, "Let her god save her!"

Shallo's fingers polished the pommel of her dagger. She considered ramming it into the baker's left kidney. She could see the folds of fat beneath his soiled white tunic, just above the hip. She narrowed her eyes and she ran the tip of her tongue under her top lip. The woman's first scream, and the echoing roar of the crowd, tore Shallo's attention back to the stake.

The flames had grown swiftly, licking up around the timbers, many tongues speaking the same language. Hot, crackling syllables of destruction. Shallo glanced at her own left hand. Between the thumb and first finger the skin looked smooth, a patch no larger than a coin, twisted at the edges as though her flesh had melted. At six years of age the fire had kissed her. She remembered the poker beside the fire, hiding its heat. She remembered the agony, the smell of burned flesh, and endlessly trying to draw air into lungs that had spent all their breath on one shattering scream. For night after night she lay with the hot kiss of the fire on her hand, wetting her pillow with tears, wanting her mother's arms... and never finding them.

One small burn and all that pain. Here a woman stood bound to the stake, standing in the middle of a fire. Dark scorch marks patterned her grey shift. Even at this remove Shallo could see the blisters on her calves. Her toes looked black.

"Burn her!"

"Where's your god now, bitch?!" the baker was still in good voice.

Shallo watched the woman's face. She wasn't as old as she had first seemed. Terror layered years upon her, but agony stripped them clear. Maybe thirty summers? Dark hair, long and streaked with silver, her face red, contorted with agony. She had been pretty once. Men had lusted after her. Maybe she had been loved. Did she have children? Shallo's scar felt hot - she flexed her hand and tightened her grip on her dagger.

The Red Priest who lit the fire now stepped forward. Shallo heard his named called among the crowd, "Jedax!" "Cook her slow, Jedax!" He still held the burning torch with which he'd set the flame. He stood enfolded in a dark red cloak, his face hidden behind the serenity of a crimson mask. The thunder of the crowd devoured his words but Shallo knew them nonetheless. The same question had been asked before the flames were lit, and then again as the heat and smoke began to rise.

"Do you repent? Do you seek the mercy of the Red?"

Even now the strangling cord sat black across the straining scarlet of the woman's throat. Shallo wondered if the priest truly wanted repentance - or would it spoil his fun? She looked at the woman's face, made ugly by her pain. Where was she now? To die for an ideal, to suffer such agonies for a principle... what was the point? Shallo furrowed her brow, half sympathetic wince, half confusion. She felt... what? She felt blind. She felt like a blind man on the edge of a chasm. Dimly aware of something huge, awed by its majesty, defeated by its complexity. She felt like a dog being lectured on alchemy.

"Scream bitch!"

Shallo drove her heel into the side of the baker's knee. The crack of bone was audible above the roar of the crowd. He fell like a sack of flour. A sack of shit. Adding his screams to the mix, squirming in the mud.

The Red Priest leaned toward the howling woman. Shallo smelled her flesh on the wind, roasting meat, pig or beef maybe. The flames reduced her to animal terror, animal pain, animal stench. The priest wouldn't feel the heat, the servants of the Red fear no flames. He listened for her confession. Waiting for her to beg.

Shallo had known this new faith bred fanatics, but to hold back confession amid the fire it must breed madness too. The High Church had long since subsumed the blood cults. With the new faith they preferred to stamp and to burn rather than embrace. Perhaps when a prophet calls his god Truth they should expect no less from The Church of Secrets.

The screaming took on a shriller note, harsher than Shallo had thought possible.

"Confess," Shallo spoke the words unbidden. Tears blurring her vision, "Confess." She remembered the poker. The heat beyond reason. Any confession, any! She would have said anything to lose the pain.

A rage grew Shallo, hot, as if flames were climbing through her too. In the sister-halls anger was not tolerated. Deaths were to be served cold. Even so it built. A rage that she had thought herself no longer capable of. Not since father crouched down beside her to explain how a sudden illness had taken her mother, but had no explanation for the blood spatter across his sleeve or the dark stains on the toe of his boot. She had been ten – it was all that saved him from her attack.

The screaming grew in volume. It had been screaming that brought servants to pull her away.

"Confess!" How stupid could she be? You're going to burn! Just confess and it will end. The stupid stupid cow! She's burning and all she has to do is ask for it to stop!

"Confess!" Shallo shouted so loud it tore her lungs, and still the woman burned and screamed and begged no mercy. In the face of her conviction perhaps even the Red Priest held an admission of doubt in the set of his shoulders.

Shallo's face ran wet. "confess," she whispered, her throat raw.

How could she die for nothing? How could she burn, simply to boast one lie above another? The Red Priests can sing their lies. Let them, it's just a game of power. Let them. Shallo knew she would say anything, do anything, to escape that heat. Some people might claim they would burn to save another – but even for her own mother, whose loss ran like a scar through the core of her, even for her, Shallo wouldn't have the strength or the madness of the woman at the stake. The sister-halls taught the importance of knowing yourself. They didn't explain how bitter a strength it was.

The woman on the stake pitched forward into the fire, her bonds burned through. The Red Priest danced before her, black against the glare, capering like a fool. Another follower lost to Dannan, the Green Man of the forests, the teller of truths. Another woman reduced to burning fat and charred bones.

Shallo turned from the crowd, lost in her thoughts, blinded by the sting of smoke. She stepped over the writhing baker. Others merely trampled him as the crowd began to spread. She found herself falling in step with a red-haired man, old, past forty. He fixed her for a moment with eyes of green and gold. They were bright with tears,

"Stupid woman. Stupid, stupid woman. Why didn't she just confess?" he asked.

Shallo had no answers, her legs stopped and shewatched him walk away.