The Last Enchantment

At sunset the king's men arrested Sereneth. They'd found her at last. She'd expected they would. After all, the first method of estimating the intelligence of a ruler was to study the men he has around him. His masters-at-arms were not fools.

Must have been the neighbours who gave away her identity when she'd saved the life of that last family’s newborn baby boy. Oh, how fickle is the temper of the populace! It is so easy to persuade them of a thing but it is hard to fix them in that persuasion. The people had, no doubt, been handsomely rewarded for their betrayal.

She was ready when the men burst through her cottage door and shackled her in iron. The cold metal made her shiver as it snapped shut around her ankles and wrists, trapping her essence within her, but she kept her silence. She didn't protest when they shoved her into the bone-rattling wagon and locked her in the dank palace dungeon. There wasn't any purpose in complaining.

Sereneth sat with legs crossed on the cold stone floor in the darkest corner of her cell. The iron bars couldn't constrain the freedom of her thoughts and the iron ring around her neck couldn't block the power of her patience. She didn't mind waiting, though it was a full five days before King Therand deigned to pay her a visit.

He arrived with pomp amidst an array of swinging lanterns, the stamp of boots and the jangle of keys borne by her jailers.

The sweet scent of roses tickled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and sighed. The queen had come with him. Phyrae the fair, the flighty, the frivolous. Quite the paragon: everything the king admired in a woman. Always gowned in pure white silk, dripping with pearls. Even approaching her middle years and having borne four children she still radiated the air of a naïve maiden.

Therand's gruff voice echoed down the vaulted passage. “Phyrae, must I command you again to be gone? You should not be here. The witch may be caged, but she is still dangerous.”

Sereneth smiled. He who wishes to be obeyed should know how to command. “My Lord, do you think curiosity will kill your cat? You will observe, at present, I'm not in any position to do anything to anyone. If my lady queen wishes to be here with you to gloat over my captivity and imminent execution she does it with impunity.”

Therand grunted and halted a pace from the cell bars, standing with legs apart and fists on hips. The fullness of his bejewelled scarlet doublet showed he'd put on a lot of weight. The king had been the most handsome man in the kingdom, once. But, time had not been kind to this 'fairy tale prince'. Over the past few years, his golden hair dulled to grey and his fresh face was now haggard. The cast of the lantern light and shadows made the deep lines on his face more pronounced—ogrish.

He'd always loved himself far more than either his wife, his children, or his people. Ah, love... He had no real idea what it was, what it meant, how powerful it could be...

“So, Mistress Sereneth, you have cast your last enchantment. You are the last of your kind; the last of the unnatural; the last witch to be exterminated. Tomorrow you burn. There will be great rejoicing. My kingdom will, at last, be free of your iniquity.”

Ignorant of both love and truth. At her death, the kingdom would be plunged into the darkest depths of his conceit. The people would rebel. There would be turmoil.

He'd outlawed sorcery, decreed magic evil and executed its practitioners simply because they might have used their arts against him. No matter the sorcerers' only purpose was to save lives and right wrongs. Never mind tradition and custom. King Therand hated the fact there were powers held by a few which he did not--could not possess. What was it he'd said at his coronation? “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

Treachery.

The queen took a lantern and approached the bars. The king stuck out an arm to hold her back. "Phyrae I said do not get close."

"But, my lord, she's nothing but an old broken-down woman. She looks so weak, so harmless."

"Don't be deceived. She's too calm, too sanguine--treacherous. Though, once she sees her pyre; her doom before her, in terror she'll shed bitter tears and will beg; pleading on her knees for mercy. Just like others."

King Therand didn't tarry. He'd said his piece. With a flourish of his cloak, he turned and swept away into the darkness followed by the retinue of lantern bearers.

Phyrae lingered for a moment, lifted her lamp so her face shone in its light and smiled as though it was the eve of her wedding day. "Yes, Mistress Sereneth, the fire tomorrow."

She too was gone.

The soft pattering and scratching of rats and an echoing drip kept silence at bay. Night and day, all one in the pitch dark dungeon; sleep elusive. Was it the terror of death which caused her wakefulness? No, not of the end itself. But the method, the process...ah there was something to fear if it was protracted, painful--agonising. Out of compassion, countless was the number of people had she saved from a fate like that...

The reason King Therand abhorred sorcery? Envy, greed and a complete lack of fellow feeling for his subjects. An already powerful ruler who craved all the power in the world for himself, but was denied sorcery, the most powerful gift of all. What was he to do except hate those who had what he could not have? Since he couldn't--wouldn't work with sorcerers. What else could he do but eradicate them?

Who was left who could oppose him? Not her. Not all alone. The queen was correct, she was an old broken-down woman. And tomorrow--there was the fire. But the king would not get to relish the terror of it in her. That would be her victory.

Sereneth was ready when the king's men came for her. She had nothing else to do but await them.

Unshackled from her iron bonds and instead bound tight with rope, they brought her up from the depths of the palace and into the morning sun. The brightness hurt her eyes and she blinked willing them not to water and make her captors think she wept.

They thrust her on her knees in an open donkey cart which jolted and rumbled along the cobbled city streets to the scaffold. The king wanted his subjects to see her--no doubt to jeer, mock, hurl filthy objects and abuse at her--the last of her kind. Although they might have willingly, or more likely had been forced to turn out to line the streets, the people stood still in silence as she passed. How else could they show their disapproval and defiance of such an injustice?

The whole half-acre of the palace courtyard, more crowded than the streets, was bedecked in bunting and banners more suited to a jamboree than an execution. Everyone who was anyone in the kingdom was in attendance and dressed in their finery. The king and queen sat in state on a high purple velvet draped dais, he grinning in his scarlet and she solemn in her white. A troupe of musicians played jaunty tunes as though expecting the throng to dance.

The scaffold erected in the centre bore her pyre which had been piled with bracken and green boughs so the fire would burn slow and smoky. In grim contrast to the otherwise festive appearance of the courtyard, five black-robed and hooded figures stood around its edge with lit torches. Everyone and everything was ready.

The murmur of the crowd died as her captors propelled Sereneth up the steps onto the pyre and tied her to the post.

The king's Constable-in-Chief, dressed in a purple hooded robe carrying his long staff of state mounted the scaffold. "You have been found guilty of the crime of sorcery and are condemned to die by burning. The king has bidden me to ask: do you have anything you wish to say before I give the order to light the fire?"

"He would have me curse him again? No, I have nothing more to say to him."

The Constable-in-Chief gave her a nod, turned and retraced his steps. At his signal, the black-robed figures dipped their torches and touched them to the pyre. The dried bracken crackled as the fire took hold of it and thick grey smoke billowed as the flames licked the wood.

A pop, then a woosh and bang. A firework exploded overhead in a shower of golden sparks. Phyrae's work. She loved theatrics.

It was time.

With a word, Sereneth dissolved her rope bindings. The smoke thickened and the king's Constable-in-Chief's spell gave it a purple cast. The black-robed torch-bearers chanted their incantation and in a flash, she was on the royal dais in the guise of a maidservant and the king was on the pyre.

Sereneth, Queen Phyrae, the Constable-in-Chief and the black-robed torch bearers--the sorcerers the king imagined he'd killed--turned their backs on the flames and his screams of agony. As they left the courtyard, the crowd must have realised the switch and sent up a cheer so loud she had to cover her ears.

The king had said: “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

Ah but then, she who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. And Sereneth did then, after the king's coronation, sow the seeds of her deception...

Sorcerers cannot be killed with fire. Instead, they can use it to transform. The king was kept ignorant of that fact.

Her last enchantment? No, there would always be a need for another.