A Glimmer of Silas

Subject: A Glimmer of Silas Fri Jan 30, 2009 7:27 pm

Howled curses provided an audible edge to the glimmer of rising, drifting embers. Their lazy, weaving rise contradicted the intensity of the voice entirely, casting it into the realms of ‘unimportant’. Beneath the meandering flecks of orange, the inferno flickered upwards and consumed the flesh and fabric so mercilessly tied to the wooden post. She cursed monks and friars, nuns and Abbots, and most frequently, the Deacon.

Another wailed, though in a very different kind of pain. She was dressed in the habit of the Sisterhood, and squealed through an unattractive combination of weeping and screaming.

The gathered crowd ignored her. They were only interested in watching the burning.

He couldn’t watch. His features were visible behind the twisting heat that writhed through the air in front of him, the chiselled, square-cut, narrow chin and its equally perfected line of dark facial hair interrupted and turned to a mirage. The tip of an angular, small nose remained above it, and the quivering, heated colours danced over entirely white eyes. Licking the corners of the colourless, visionless pair, the flames mocked their unseeing quality with their vibrant dancing. A seductive, crackling dance of elements that would never bait him in the same way as it did others.

But he heard the curses. He heard the nun’s screeching. He could hear every snap of fire-digested wood, every pull of charred hands against rope, every minute piece of flesh dropping and curling into ash. He could smell smoke, and skin, and burned hair. He could practically taste her melting on his tongue.

He thought her in front of him, by the voice that drew his precise hearing to her presence, and assumed her to be on her knees by direction. She begged. She pleaded with all the eloquence of a scholar, all the strategic logic of a politician. If he would but spare the burning woman – surely, now she had learned her lesson.

He had a voice of velvet-wrapped iron. Unforgiving and smooth in the same instance. Those ashen eyes bore down on her with a wraith-like piercing, unable to see, and somehow managing to make her feel more exposed than if she were naked in Confession.

“She must die,” he told her. “Be glad we are merciful. Give thanks to the Order for your salvation.”

“This is no salvation!” she shrieked. “I love her, do you beasts not understand? What’s more human than love? What’s more natural?”

“God is love,” he answered seamlessly. “God is nature. You have slighted Him. She will die.” And he knew well that her suffering was greater in living on after. A suitable Pennance. A suitable scarred memory. A suitable attest to his mercy.

“You bastard!” She lurched. Her arm came forwards. She reached out to strike the Valenti Deacon, and knew he couldn’t see.

His hand snapped upwards with unnatural precision. Long, gloved digits curled themselves around her wrist like an overgrown spider embracing before the bite. He twisted her, one arm catching across her waist, and the other pulling her arm up sharply to her shoulder blades. A moment later, the second set of fingertips pressed harshly into her jawline, and he forced her face up in the direction of all that heat and stench.

He leaned down, his hood irritating the back of her neck, and several tendrils of her hair bothering his cheek. He spoke quietly by her ear, with a slow, unnervingly beautiful sneer exposing white teeth, and exaggerated canines. “You will watch this,” he hissed. “And remember forever the mercy of God. You have been spared, and you will watch this.”

» Silas Valenti