It was a sight that would haunt the Piper for many years. She could only watch in helpless paralysis as Miria was led up to the pillars by the pit. This was Baycalm* and worse, for death was certain here.
But Miria seemed calm and unafraid.
Miria was unafraid. Since girlhood she had watched countless Pirians go through this almost ritualised death. The only variable was the manner of death - quick, slow, painless, lingering, agonising, debilitating, disfiguring, you did not know until it happened. She had seen young boys and girls die squirming as they were constricted within invisible cocoons, men scream into death as acids ate into their brains, a woman shrivel deathward as she was dessicated by a hot beam of light; weapons percussive, electronic, enveloping, exploring, weakening. She only wished now to know her own death, then let her body, freed from the ropes that held her wrists to the pillars and her ankles to the stake, freed from life on Piriani, fall limply down into the pit to join those that had gone before.
'M....mii...rrriii....aaaa!!' Laneta stuttered from the little heap into which she had collapsed.
Miria did not respond. 'I am ready, Pleris,' was all she said.
'Um, yes.' Pleris seemed uncertain. Like most, Pleris was awed and afraid of a person that was unafraid of death. 'The gun,' he started to explain, pushing his fear aside, 'is a more powerful version of another invention of mine, the marker.'
Laneta shuddered.
'Using a narrow matter beam, it places a pellet into the nearest organic matter, even through armour, but produces no colouration. The pellet is a compact explosive rather than a toxin carrier; less effective for killing outright, for target areas on the body are decreased. With a toxin carrier, all you needed to do was to hit a blood vessel anywhere in the body. You could use this, however, to booby-trap dead bodies or even plants.'
He aimed at Miria and fired. Miria found that, suddenly, her nasal passages were blocked, and tried to pull a hand away to wipe her nose, but only succeeded in pulling herself over. She tried to right herself, but her arms were too weak to pull her into position and her legs were useless, tied as they were between the posts.
'Pleris,' she asked nasally, 'could you stad be up, please?'
'Why worry?'
'Is it so buch to ask frob a dyig wobad?'
'Did I get you in the nose, perchance?'
'You did.'
Pleris righted her, then picked up a box. An ultrasound box. Laneta knew what that was. Miria opened her mouth to say something, but no-one knew what, for Pleris pressed the button. The pellet exploded back through Miria's brain and forward, blowing a hole between her eyes, flowing red. She flopped forward, blood dripping from her head.
At that moment, Sepria found Laneta and fired the makeshift medprobe into the limp Piper. Strength returning, Laneta slowly stood, lifting her head to reveal eyes sparking with rare anger, reminiscent of the post-dream rage that Sepria had experienced in Gannita**, only now it was aimed at the controller.
But Laneta said nothing.
Miria was untied and turned onto her back and Laneta, tearful at last, closed Miria's eyes, kissed her head and lay her own head on the dead womans' breast. She did not stir from that position until the sun was fully down, then she lifted the body, fast stiffening, and lowered it into the pit. Then she sung the elegy that Pipers use in such cases...
Life, shortened.
Loved, parted.
Life, continued,
Miria, beloved sister,
Body, hail and healthy.
Body without life to sustain it,
Journey thou in peace to the place
Where dead go.
Loved, whole and gently.
Death, cruel reaper, that takes without leave,
Follow him in peace to the place
Where dead go.
On, living on, we remember;
To life and land we shall, you shall not, see,
Not found by any in the place
Where dead go.
In silence, we leave you to sleep,
Then to live, one day to meet at journey's end,
Living in peace in the place
Where all go.
Then Laneta fell silent, head bowed. After some time, she turned and walked away.
*Baycalm. An area of the land (or 'chamber') of Tillia in Southern Farol where various weapons of torture are tried out by the inhabitants. In the original text, it was in Tillia that Laneta received her wound, of which we shall hear later.
**Gannita. The second land or 'chamber' of Southern Farol, where the inhabitants were subjected to a transformation which was used to imprison people. Sepria was also subjected to this during the travels of Laneta and her company in this earlier chronicle.