“No, the council of the chiefs has decided that you are both Korsars and that you must be destroyed.”
“And when will that be?” asked Stellara.
“As soon as the hunters return with food. We are going to have a great feast and dance, but I shall not enjoy it. I shall be very unhappy for I do not wish to see Tanar die.”
“How are they going to destroy us?” asked the man.
“Look,” said the girl, pointing through the open doorway. There, in the distance, the two prisoners saw men setting two stakes into the ground. “There were many who wanted to give you to the Buried People,” said Letari, “but Zural said that it has been so long since we have had a feast and a dance that he thought that we should celebrate the killing of two Korsars rather than let the Buried People have all the pleasure, and so they are going to tie you to those two stakes and pile dry wood and brush around you and burn you to death.”
Stellara shuddered. “And my mother taught me that you were a kindly people,” she said.
“Oh we do not mean to be unkind,” said Letari, “but the Korsars have been very cruel to us and Zural believes that the gods will take word to the Korsars that you were burned to death and that perhaps it will frighten them and keep them away from Amiocap.”
Tanar arose to his feet and stood very straight and stiff. The horror of the situation almost overwhelmed him. He looked down at Stellara’s golden head and shuddered. “You cannot mean,” he said, “that the men of Amiocap intend to burn this girl alive?”
“Why, yes,” said Letari. “It would do no good to kill her first for then her spirit could not tell the gods that she was burned and they could not tell the Korsars.”
“It is hideous,” cried Tanar; “and you, a girl yourself, have you no sympathy; have you no heart?”