Yermah picked up an iron-headed arrow, as the guard brought the prisoner forward. Leaning toward him, he drew a circle over Alcamayn’s heart, and then made a square around it with the arrow.
This was the death sentence.
“May the Father of Justice and Mercy claim the divine within thee, Alcamayn!”
The doomed man merely bowed his head.
“Let Saturn’s day witness the carrying out of this decree. Away with him!”
Yermah felt the words more keenly than the man to whom he had spoken them. Alcamayn’s thin upper lip curled in a sardonic smile, which did not leave his face while the badge of death, a square of sheet iron with a white enamel circle in the center, was being fastened to his breast.
The condemned man was kept in solitary confinement. Once the door of his cell closed upon him, he gave way to a frenzy of despair, butting his head against the wall with so much violence that the guards were obliged to tie him down to the floor.
Frantic hysteria closed his throat, and threatened strangulation, and when his teeth were pried open, he shut them on his tongue with such force as to nearly sever the end.
Shamans worked with him all night, but nothing save physical exhaustion quieted him. Under sentence of death, the miserable man was allowed to receive any consolation possible.
There were no restrictions placed upon the visit of friends, the only regulation being a complete and thorough search before and after the visit of both prisoner and caller.