The shadows were growing longer.

The evil death-stench that had so long pervaded the Lands was rotting and sending up a smell that could intoxicate a loiterer, but no one dared roam about the heathlands at night; no matter how thick their skulls were, the Lands-people knew this: something was desperately wrong, and was soon coming to a climax. A shuddering still before the storm. The cloudy fog that hung over the heaths were red as blood, and crept into the houses like a thief in the night. Greenleaftime was well and truly over, for the invasion of Evil, subtle though it was, drove out all merriment and made it well nigh impossible to speak in a voice raised louder than a hissing whisper. Yes, the Lands-people were afraid; they had well cause to be that twilight as the folk of Crescent and Warwick gathered in an angry roiling mob in Crescent's town square. The red mists grew darker, bloody and damp, as furious shouts above the jangling harnesses of the King's soldiers.

"Hang him! Hang him!" they all cried out above the grunting farmers. Four of the King's horses paraded through the darkening alleys and garbage-strewn roads. In the center, being jerked along by four chafing ropes from each of the soldiers, was a young man barely sporting the stature of manhood. His tan face was bruised from the harsh blows of interrogators. For hours, they had beat him with rods and struck him again and again across the cheek, but he refused to recant his fatal decision: he would not serve in the King's army, even though he had been commanded so. Wenceslas the Second was so put out, he arrived in the town square just ahead of the prisoner escort to oversee the punishment and final sentence.

The Lands-people shoved his steed and grasped at his fine elaborate sandals and tore at his robes as he and Melchior, his tall eerie-eyed wolf of an advisor, rode along side of him on his lathered bay. The dust arose from the town, brining with it the stink of days-old garbage and rotting vegetables. A few Crescentfolk and Warwicks scraped the foul mash from the roadsides and threw it at the stumbling prisoner. "Hang him!" they demanded in angry, loud voices. "He deserves it!" Anyone who disagreed was soon silenced with a pelting of mucky rot. The twilight in the town square as the boy was forced through the streets, laughed at whenever he tripped and was dragged over the sharp cobbles, was soon invaded by thick ghastly fumes that made several young children ill. They were sent to bed with much protesting on their part; even the young things of the twin village-kingdoms knew how rare it was when someone, even an outcast, openly defied the King...and even rarer still, traveled to confess it in public. It was crazy! It was foolhardy! They could only savor the boy's stunned gasps each time he fell, his grunts as a blow from a soldier's rod struck him across the shoulders. Yet he endured it. He was as pathetic as the Hinterlanders with whom the Lands-people so often had fun with! They anticipated his undoing with morbid glee.

The sun had set behind the distant mountain peak where Evil itself, Northumbrio the exiled duke, was fabled to live when the soldiers finally rode into the square and halted their mounts before the King, who was sitting upon a portable throne. Melchior, his icy eyes glinting wildly, sat upon a throne just like the King's, signifying that he was now in a position equal to that of Wenceslas. The people hardly noticed, so ferociously impatient was their bloodlust. It was consuming their sanity and turning them into wolfish mongrels. The stinking wind howled through the several trees lining the side of Crescent's own square as the King whispered to his advisor and Melchior stepped forward, his long silver cloak trailing out behind him. The people grew quiet to watch the final interrogation. Melchior allowed a grim smile to reveal his soul-feelings as he stared at the hapless young man the soldiers were forcing to his knees. They cut the four ropes binding him and shackled his bleeding wrists together. The boy stared them all in the eye and gritted his teeth against a cry of pain as one of the King's men struck him a blow across his skull. So silent and concentrated were the Lands-people that they did not notice several hooded figures slip into the crowd to watch. Several newcomers, unfamiliar to the King's prying eyes as he watched them, strode in on foot and blended with the crowd. Wenceslas shifted in his makeshift throne and began to sweat; he wanted nothing to hinder this day, this example that was to be made of what happened to the unfaithful....he did not want to disappoint his master.

"So," came Melchior's acidic voice, "you are the unfaithful traitor to the King." The young man looked up, his bright green eyes filled with fear and pain and said, in a quavering voice that was nonetheless loud enough for all to hear and gawk at, "I am."

Melchior held up a spidery hand at the rush of exclamations and a good pelting of muck at this fatal statement. "Why do you scorn the offers your King makes to you?" continued the old man. His gray hair blew in the foul winds as several reddish black clouds swirled in the darkening sky. The boy threw his head back and glared defiantly at the King.

"What he offers is death and cowardice!" he shouted. The crowd gasped and was still. "That is no Life. A man should not live in fear that he is denying his king when he wishes to make use of his free will. Wenceslas has given us no choice but to obey him. This is wrong!" Wenceslas sweated harder. Several of the hooded figures were stirring, a few more were coming into the crowd. Several Crescentfolk and Warwicks looked at each other, suddenly wondering whether or not they knew everything about their young King that should be known.

"You speak poisonous lies!" screamed Melchior, his face livid. "The King is just and good to all his people! His life is the one you should have been living before you and your witch sister were cast out from our presence!" The crowd grew angry, but whether they were stunned at Melchior or the young man was uncertain. Wenceslas felt a prickling pain in his head and groaned. "Hang him, hang him!" He let the final word explode from between his lips.

The four soldiers came and hauled the young man to his feet. No one noticed, in their excitement, a young boy come slipping in and out between the Lands-people, his curly brown hair flipping into his big blue eyes.

"There must be more to life than this, what you are wallowing in!" yelled the young man. The soldiers dragged him to a raised wooden platform with a hangman's scaffold and began to slip the heavy rope noose about his neck.

"Wait!" cried Melchior, an evil sneer on his thin curling lips. The soldiers stopped and looked annoyed. "Let him first be whipped!" Melchior crowed triumphantly. The crowd began chanting and danced around, eager in their sin to see the outcast called Skerry suffer.

Skerry groaned inwardly as the soldiers laughed brutally and bound his chafed, bleeding wrists to the wooden post. They shackled his ankles to the platform so that he could not bolt away. He noticed one tall man in the crowd, surely not a Lands-person, lunge forward in a wild attempt to drive his sword into the guards, but several other strangers held him back. Skerry titled his head back to the sick black sky as he felt snaking, gripping fingers pull his shirt from his back. His blood red cloak had been taken from him; he could see it on the ground, being dusted and trampled underneath a hundred stomping feet. He forced himself to swallow the gasps that arose from his gut as a slashing whip was brought forth and handed to Melchior. Was this justice? The crowd silenced as Wenceslas rose from his throne.

"A dozen gold pieces to anyone who dares strike the unfaithful outcast!" he screamed in his high-pitched voice. "Two dozen if blood is drawn!" Skerry looked around in horror. What devilry was this? Forcing the townspeople to beat him and rewarding them for his blood? He turned again to the tall wooden post and hid his face from the wild feverish eyes and the clamoring Lands-people. They were sick, something must have poisoned their minds for them to act so. Man was not naturally thus vicious. He could only thank fate that Rhody, his dear beautiful sister with her tender spirit, was not there to witness his slow, painful death.

The first blow came dull and thudding against his bare back, knocking him breathless. The sharp iron shackles tore at his raw flesh as he straightened and prepared for the next blow. The people were frenzied as each took their turn, even women and boys young as Skerry himself. He worked hard to choke the gasping curses and pleas; it would get him nowhere. He did not want to become such as they. He chose this path, he knew it was right; he would follow it to the end.

By and by, the Lands-people grew fiercer with their blows. A few weak-stomached people turned away, their guts knotting, as the young prisoner clenched his teeth against strike after ferocious strike. Skerry refused to award their carnality with a shout of agony, yet agony was building up in his soul. The first blood was drawn by a burly farmer, who eagerly grabbed his two dozen gold pieces and held them aloft in bliss. Skerry felt the pain sear across his back and he twisted in convulsions as the whip cut repeatedly into his bare flesh. How long would they persist? Melchior was handing the sharp, heavy whip to everyone in the town square, and even children took pride when a small trickle of blood dripped onto the wooden platform after their strike.

Finally Skerry felt the whip slash into a muscle and he gave an agonized cry. The Lands-people hooted wildly in triumph and sought to slowly kill him with their blows. Blood spattered onto their smiling faces, they savored his screams as Skerry hung limp from his bonds to the post and warm blood poured over his back. He wished fervently as a blackness closed in upon him, that somehow the Redeemer Rhody had spoken of during their last night together was real. He needed someone, anyone, to pray to, to comfort him, to bring sense through his frenzied pain. The whiplashes were burning like coldfire across his back and shoulders, the Lands-people sounded like loud vapid monsters. His stomach churned at the blows and he fought the urge to release all of his pent-up grief and anger in a wail, but he would do no such thing in front of the weakling king. No matter what happened to him, Skerry was willing to suffer it all for the sake of defying the Evil that had slowly deteriorated Wenceslas's soul.

Timothy gasped. The crowd stood in a sudden dead calm as Melchior handed him the whip. What was this? Having a little boy strike the outcast? Was this going too far?

Timothy jumped back and shouted "No!" Wenceslas looked up, Evil fired in his pale dull eyes. "Strike the traitor, boy," he spat through clenched teeth. Was this, then, the mistake that would displease his new master?

Timothy stood as tall as he could. "What you are doing is wrong and displeasing to the Great One!" he yelled. "Have mercy upon this poor innocent!" The crowd immediately seized the young boy and threw him to the wooden platform, where a soldier grabbed Timothy's arms and chained him next to Skerry.

"Rebel! Beat him and kill him along with the traitor! He is a Shaddai-Truster!" screamed Melchior. Skerry pulled madly at his bonds, ignoring the spasms of pain that slammed into his senses and the blood streaming from his back.

"You must not harm a little child!" he shouted, but Melchior himself slashed the whip across his back so that it found bone. Skerry gave a low moan and leaned weakly against the post, wishing they would hang him and be done with it.

Melchior was advancing towards Timothy, who prayed out loud to the Great One for mercy and forgiveness upon his torturers, when a tall man shouldered his way through the crowd and released an arrow. It shot through the air with a twang and shuddered in the wood next to Melchior's nose hawkish nose.

The hooded figures jumped from the crowd, letting the cloaks fall fro their shoulders, revealing armed Fairies. The Shaddai-Trust also ran forward, led by the newest believer who felt every slash of the whip as if it had fallen upon his own back.

"That is enough, Evil," the Shaddai-Truster said. "Let the innocent go."