Excerpt: Green Night By the River

Common knowledge held that a necromancer could be executed only on a bridge. He would be stoned, his throat cut, his body wrapped in a blanket and tossed into the water. Thus his blood would not touch the earth to leave ghosts to haunt those he had wronged. Morya knew from experience that this was false.

How he wished everything would stop moving. The wind blew the banners of Erisanich and its tattered sister city while the wooden bridge shook with the arrival of ever more horsemen. Morya's stomach churned harder with every tremor. The king had given him a large iron knife to carry out the execution of Morya's brother-in-law, should the women's judgement declare Eintyn guilty. The knife lay bare against his thigh. His horse jittered, and Morya feared he might accidentally cut his beloved gelding; the king had given him no sheath. His was not to be the hand of mercy.

Eintyn stood at the center of the bridge, where the boundaries of Eri and Lema Scha met. The hot noon sun cast a small but steady shadow beneath Eintyn's feet. The river cast dancing lights on the underside of his chin. He watched Morya with a broad smile. Fifty women of Eri Scha encircled Eintyn, rocks in their hand. They too grew restless. A little girl pelted her sister with the walnut-sized pebble she'd been given. All Eri women were given stones when they reached their seventh year. Eintyn's niece would never hold the most primal symbol of the Mother's Justice. just as well. The little stone bounced into Eintyn's circle of reach. He picked it up and lobbed it underhand back to the girl, laughing and saying something Morya couldn't hear.

Beyond the women, waited fifty horsemen, Morya among them, waiting to finish what the women decreed. After the women threw their stones.