Or had it only been months? He couldn’t remember. The uncertainty forced him to consider another option. Could this predicament be his own fault? Had he simply fainted and fallen over the side?

No, he decided. There was something different at work here. There was the burning in his scalp. His episodes had never been preceded nor followed by pain, ever. This felt like someone had physically ripped the hair from his head.

But how could the warlock have done that?

His hands were bound.

He had tied the warlock’s hands, hadn’t he?

Surely he had done so.

The sudden rush of the real-time events brushed aside his fractured attempts at reasoning and flooded in to answer the question.

Eldon watched his hand as he sought to choke the life from the warlock hanging in front of him. He also watched, as well as felt, a smaller hand desperately clawing at his own bony fingers.

The warlock’s hands weren’t bound. They were free.

Had he been in such a rush that he had merely forgotten to bind the hands of the condemned?

No, he couldn’t have been that careless. He refused to believe it. He wouldn’t have forgotten to do so simple and necessary a task before hanging one accused of the heresy of WitchCraft.

Somehow the warlock had tricked him. He had conjured a glamour that made him believe he had completed the necessary tasks when in fact he had not.

But…that couldn’t be. He should be immune to the conjurings of the demonic, for he was righteous in his path. This revelation was almost as disturbing to Eldon as the fact that the warlock still lived. He felt certain that it bore a need for inner reflection and perhaps even judgment upon one’s self.

But not right now.

Not at this particular moment.