The prisoner's blood tasted coppery. Elias spat the scarlet taint on the ground. "This one's soul," he indicated the whimpering man on his knees in the courtyard before the tribunal. "Black with sin. He knows murder, adultery, paganism."
The judge made a mark in a book and nodded to two soldiers who dragged the emaciated, ragged man away. A red trail from his slashed wrist followed, mingled with the bloody streak left by those who'd gone before him in the long, hot afternoon.
A soldier pushed another prisoner to his knees before the tribunal. The soldier slashed the man's arm with a short sword. The prisoner hissed in pain. Elias stifled a yawn--it had been a long day--bent to the proffered font, and sucked.
He stood. King Nathan the Just's soldiers peered from their positions at the ruined gate, around the prisoners' keep, and along the crenelated walls of the vanquished Duke Onan Shear's former castle. Slaves fluttered fans to cool the sweat on the brows of the three tribunal judges, who sipped cold drinks. The prisoners, huddled in a corral in the open courtyard, sat or lay in mute fear, waiting their turn before the Soul Taster.
The white sun burned down through a merciless, windless sky, heavy with the stench of fear and death. Crows called among the piled dead in the battlefield beyond the castle walls, at the walls and broken gate, and in the smoking debris around the inner courtyard.
Elias swirled the prisoner's salty essence in his mouth, as if tasting wine. He spat. He wiped his chin with a blood-soaked towel and nodded to the tribunal.
"Sin, black as night. He knows murder, theft, deceit, dishonor to family and lord, blasphemy, witchcraft. Much more. This one is--"
"No, please," the prisoner wailed. "I beg you. Spare me. For the sake of my wife and my unborn child."
Lord Illin, First Judge, raised an eyebrow. "You beg for mercy in the name of those you have dishonored?"
Elias sucked at a bit of gristle between his teeth. He frowned. Something about the taste of this prisoner nagged at him.
"In God's name, my lord, I have not--"
"Silence."
)
