R. Salvatore - The Highwayman

Moving with a singular focus and complete determination, the Highwayman increased his pace, running purposefully but without any clear idea where he was going. And then he arrived, his head thrumming, the edges of his vision limned in red. Hardly formulating any plans, hardly considering any move he might make, the Highwayman looked out through a tangle of twigs and logs at the front of a tall, flat stone.

The buzzing did not relent.

Sometime later, he felt the heat growing around him, but it was as if the flames were not in proximity to him, but were distant. Without any conscious decision, the Highwayman's mind went to the drawer in the desk in the room above his hole. His fingers began to wriggle as if he were rolling a small stone in his palm, but he wasn't even aware of the movement. He felt the power of the gemstone as if he were holding a serpentine in his hand, though of course he was not. But somewhere within the buzz of his mind, the lessons of the Book of Jhest resonated, showing him the way to the same energy the magical stone provided.

And he needed it, though he wasn't even aware of the flames leaping all around him, devouring the twigs and logs. He sat there and stared out at the Stone of Judgment, peering around the yellow sheets of fire that flared barely inches from his face.

He knew the time drew near. He could hear the voices of people gathering around the bonfire, could see flashes of movement through the red shield at the edges of his vision. But they didn't matter. All that mattered was the stone before him and the man he knew would soon appear atop it. The sight of the great bonfire roaring to life elicited horrible memories in poor Callen, a clear reminder of that night so long ago, a night that she had hoped she would never, ever have to recall. The crowd was comprised of different people but it all seemed the same to Callen, the jibes, the spit, the almost gleeful shouts.

As if in a dream, she allowed the guards to shove her out to a spot halfway between the fire and the large, flat stone. Bernivvigar's stone.

The hoots behind her told her that the snake handler had arrived with the sack and the snake, and Callen felt her knees go weak. Darkness filled her thoughts, memories of the confining sack, and the slithering serpent crawling over her, sharp fangs hooking into her tender flesh and pumping in their deadly, burning poison.

With a growl of defiance, Callen dismissed those recollections and divorced herself from her terror. This was not about her; she was not important. And so she would die this night, and for a crime that she had committed two decades before, a crime of passion and not cruelty, a misjudgment of her heart and nothing of malice.

But so be it, because this wasn't about her.

This was about her poor daughter. Nothing else mattered to Callen. Not her pain, not the viper that would await her in the sack, not her own death.

Were her previous crimes now being visited upon Cadayle? Callen knew that her daughter had played a dangerous game and had, in fact, brought this tragedy upon them both. But Callen couldn't so easily dismiss her own guilt. Had she passed more than her appearance to her daughter? Was there something in them that allowed for such mistakes of the heart? The irony of it all wasn't lost on Callen, because, indeed, hadn't Cadayle's foolishness with this outlaw Highwayman been much the same thing as Callen's behavior when she had cuckolded her husband?

Strangely, a wistful smile made its way onto her face as she considered that long-ago encounter. She had been given in marriage to a man she did not love and had been offered no say in the matter. That was often the way of things in Pryd, in all Honce, where practicality almost always overruled love. Her affair had not worked out well for her, or for her lover, but did she really feel that it had been an error? That affair had produced Cadayle, the beauty of her life. How could she consider that a mistake?

The wistful smile disappeared in the blink of an eye. Cadayle, the beauty of her life, was in trouble, likely to be executed, and there was nothing, nothing, that Callen could do about it. Cadayle had allowed her heart to lead her into a place of beauty, perhaps, into the warmth of love and the tingling expectation of merely seeing the Highwayman. But it had also led her into danger, a deep and deadly hole from which there seemed no escape.

Callen didn't know who to blame; Callen didn't care about blame. All that mattered was that she was never going to see her Cadayle again and that her daughter, her beautiful child, was in danger.

And there was nothing she could do.

Her contemplations fell away as a tall and straight figure walked out to the edge of the flat rock, towering over the gathering, seeming identical to the man he had been twenty years before and certainly with as much, and more, power than he had then commanded. At his appearance, the crowd fell into a fearful silence.

Bernivvigar spent a moment surveying them, his cold gaze freezing with fear any it fell upon. He nodded to the side, and she heard the scramble as men behind her began to ready the sack and the viper.

"Callen Duwornay," the old wretch began, not a quiver in his powerful voice, "we gather to execute the sentence imposed two decades ago. You did not admit your guilt then. You were given your chance to speak, though you said nothing. Now, we will not ask you again. You are doomed by your harlotry, and may the Ancient Ones forgive us all for delaying their proper justice and the gift of your corpse."

He snapped a wave in her direction, and the men flanking her yanked her back so forcefully that they pulled her from her feet.

But they stopped abruptly, and Callen followed their looks to Bernivvigar; and then, with them and with all the others, she followed Bernivvigar's gaze to the bonfire, rustling and shaking and taking on a life of its own.

Callen's eyes widened in shock as she saw the dark form step forth. Surely the old Samhaist had summoned a demon! One of the dreaded Ancient Ones had come to Honce to take her body away! He saw the tall form of the old Samhaist but only in a strange silhouette, for sheets of fire rose up before his eyes. Even with his understanding and mimicry of the powers of the magical serpentine stone, Bransen realized that he could not remain within the inferno. If his concentration faltered for just an instant, the fires would set his hair and clothing ablaze and consume him.

But he did not falter. He thought of nothing but Cadayle, conjuring an image of her at the mercy of Laird Prydae. The buzzing in his head didn't lessen-quite the opposite-and even with the fiery yellow glow before his eyes, there remained that red haze at the sides of his vision, focusing him, directing the course of his rage.

That focus now was the solitary figure before him. Bransen stood up and the pile trembled, fiery branches falling down before him.

He thought of Garibond and the hideous wound inflicted on him by Bernivvigar, and the buzzing in his head intensified even more, like an angry bee trapped within him, prodding him with its sound and its stinger. Bransen's breath came in sudden gasps; he felt as if he would scream. His lungs burned as if they were on fire, as indeed he knew that they soon would be!

But he found his focus again, and he forced himself forward through the fire, ignoring the burning branches, ignoring the painful licks of flame. None of it mattered. None of his discomfort, his pain, his potential death mattered. All that mattered was that figure, now the focus of his ire, the symbol of all the injustices and all the hatred, of all the bullying and all the torture.

There he stood before Bransen, high on his rock.

Bransen crashed through the side of the bonfire. He heard the screams all around him; out of the corner of his left eye he saw Callen gasp and fall back, along with the guards supporting her.