The Execution (52 page)

“
He lives! He is free!
But, not because you bargained. You spent the night with him, but
it is with me that you now barter!”

D’ata mumbled, overcome with the
horrid understanding of what the demon was saying. “I do it for—for
him.” His voice broke.

“
He would not accept the
choice, fool that he was!” The monster’s voice roared. “He would
not accept! You tricked him, to make him sleep as you
did.”

D’ata looked around urgently. Could no
one else hear the evil amongst them? He struggled, tried to free
his hands from the bonds and screamed aloud, “Ravan! Can you hear
me!” His mind raced as he panicked, not from fear of death, but
from his own doubt as to his true motivation. Did he do this for
his brother? Or, was it an excuse to step beyond; a selfish choice
to seek Julianne? Only God would know this, and D’ata had to be
certain.

The hangman, garishly out of place in
the bright red robe that announced his occupation, stepped forward
and urged D’ata over the gallows trap. The younger man struggled,
and it took two strong men to stand D’ata over death’s
door.

All at once, D’ata could hear the
crowd again, could hear the constable as he offered him the chance
to speak his final words. The officer crossed his hands in front of
him and waited for D’ata to speak.

The crowd hushed, and the young man
broke the quiet, but not to those gathered below. Instead, he spoke
to Satan, who he now knew had hidden outside the cell last night.
It was the feeling he and Ravan had sensed, when they believed
their stories had been intruded upon. The demon had been there in
the dark, hidden beyond recognition. But D’ata recognized it
implicitly now.

The devil’s voice was also silent, as
though it must hear the final words of its supreme device, its epic
accomplishment, its masterpiece.

D’ata trembled, but his voice did not.
“Hear me, God!” He looked up to the sky, his voice hoarse, torn, as
he spoke to the heavens, “Hear me now, if you have never heard me
before!” He fell to his knees in his final prayer. “I go
unwillingly,” D’ata closed his eyes; spoke calmly and with great
conviction. “I speak to you from my heart—I love Julianne, and I
love my brother. As I kneel here, yet alive, while my heart beats
and my soul stirs, I deny this demon.”

D’ata spat his final retaliation,
opened his eyes and cried out so that all could hear,
“Lucifer—fiend, monster—Diable of all that is black...I deny you
this death!”

In horrible recognition of its own
prideful folly, the voice suddenly wailed, a horrendous and awful
sound, but D’ata continued, this time to the crowd. “I deny it this
victory! I deny it this trophy, this triumph! As of this moment, I
do not step here willingly! And it is vanity, supreme boastfulness,
that foils the demon now!”

The young man commanded his stage, he
rang his message true even as the noose settled, heavy and coarse
around his throat.

The executioner snugged it so that it
fit cruel beneath the priests’ jaw on either side.

“
Nooo!” the voice
screamed, a shrill and terrible wail, as though it recognized its
own folly.

The priest stood again, and the crowd
silenced.

All waited to hear what the prisoner
might finally say.

“
I am D’ata! Father, son,
priest and man! I reject you, Satan, and the suicide that was
almost yours!” D’ata’s voice echoed across the heads of the
spectators, down the valley and into the fog beyond, and no one
heard—except one.

* * *

Ravan awoke with a thick and cottony
feeling in the back of his throat and a crushing headache. He
squinted at the overhead glare as the morning light stabbed through
the tiny window and suddenly noticed the door to the cell—standing
ajar. The empty brandy bottle lay nearby. Jumping to his feet, he
noticed for the first time the heavy robes that he wore.
“D’ata...No!”

He had no
time. The town square was too far away, but he ran. Up, up, up he
ran
—
up the stairs of the tower, and along the way he snatched
from a weapons rack a bow and single arrow.

In the distant square, an executioner
grasped the helve, wrapping his thick, meaty fists around the
stock. He stood by, ready to pull the massive lever and release the
trap.

The arrow flew from the tallest keep
of the very castle which had held Ravan captive. Nobody had stopped
the holy man from his terrible flight up the stairs. It was an
ungodly shot, farther than any man had ever made. From nearly five
hundred paces away, the aim was deadly and sorrowfully
true.

It was also the most awful and dearest
target of the mercenary’s life.

“
For you, my brother—thank
you,” he whispered to himself, exhaled, and released the horrible
dart. He knew the arrow would be true to its mark even before it
struck, that he would spare his brother when no one else
had.

The trap sprung and inevitability was
upon them all as the young man fell. D’ata never felt the rope yank
and bite cruelly into his throat. His body did not contort and
fight; there was no gaze in agony as his last moments were robbed,
suffocated from his sight. This was no suicide—there was no choice
whatsoever. Ravan now burdened it all as his arrow pierced his
brother’s heart just before the trap fell.

For D'ata—all was gone.

* * *

A day later, Ravan rode north with the
body of his brother. He had paid good money for the horses, sold a
very fine bow and arrows to afford them. He'd also bought a fine
bolt of cloth to wrap D’ata in, Cezanne cloth, although he did not
realize this.

Ravan found the Cezanne estate and
buried his brother next to the grave of his beloved Julianne. It
was just as D’ata described it, sitting next to him in the prison
cell only two nights before. The mercenary never alerted anyone. He
stole into the remote pasture on a clear and starry night and dug
the grave alone. It was a deep and good grave. When he was done, he
gathered stones and carefully laid them around it, so that it would
be marked forever, long after the cross was gone.

* * *

The young priest was gone, and no one
seemed to know how or where. He’d disappeared one dark night from
the tiny parish where he lived, and no one ever saw him again. Many
speculated that he'd died of a broken heart and truthfully, he had.
His heart had stopped, at the loyal hand of his brother.

No one ever again went to see
Julianne’s grave. It was too sad, so nobody ever noticed the fresh
grave next to it—save one.

Yvette rejoiced that the handsome
young priest had finally come home to her beloved Julianne. She cut
fresh wild flowers from the meadow and strung them into delicate
daisy chains to link the small wooden cross of the new grave to the
massive, white gravestone of her sister’s.

It was a pretty little cross, handmade
it appeared—rustic but strong. Strange, though...upon it hung a
lovely silver chain with a small copper ring on it, small enough to
belong to a boy just about her age.

PROLOGUE

†

D’ata

It was beautiful, warm and light.
There was no fear, and most wonderfully, no regret. He turned
slowly, arms out, absorbing the safe and tranquil space that he now
occupied, not just of body, but of soul.

D'ata closed his eyes. He sighed in
deep relief, sad nevermore, and marveled at the peace that this
space gave him. He could not recall the last time his heart
experienced joy like this. No—he'd never felt such happiness as
this!

His hands crossed involuntarily over
his heart. They brushed over the wound. The scar was painless and
beautiful, and he recognized the love that the one he called
brother held for him, to do such a thing for him. There was no
remorse. He breathed in deeply the sweet air which he almost seemed
to float on.

A hand slipped softly into his and a
sudden and strong current passed through him. It was a beautiful
collision, crashing against him like a summer storm. It was a
feeling that he’d only felt when he was with her.

He turned—and there she
was.

THE END