“I walked up that road, between those poles as those still alive watched me, hoping that I, their trusted sorceress, could do something for them. Some cried out with their last breath for help.

“Inky black ravens perched on the poles, warily watching me as I came up the road, waited for me to pass before they resumed the feast. Some cawed loudly, hoping to drive me away from what they had claimed as theirs.”

Isidore’s head turned to the side a bit, as if she was staring off into another place in her mind’s eye. Her breathing was ragged and labored.

“What did you do about the people on the poles who were still alive?” Magda finally asked. “Could anything be done to help them? Could you use your gift to save some of them, at least?”

Isidore sat motionless for a time, staring at nothing in her lonely blindness, as if reliving the vision of what she had seen that terrible day.

“They were beyond healing,” she whispered at last. “Those still alive used all their strength to beg me to deliver them from the unendurable pain. They begged for death.”

“Could you heal none of them?”

“All but one were well beyond healing of any kind, even from wizards far more talented than me. There was nothing I could do to save their lives. Nothing.”

Magda leaned in. “So what did you do, then?”

Isidore turned blindly toward Magda. “All I could do was spare them their remaining suffering so as to ease their souls’ final journey into the spirit world. As I hurried up the road, I first used a slash of my power to sever the ropes holding each of them up on the poles. Hanging there like that had made it difficult to breathe. Many of the dead had suffocated. Each person in turn collapsed to the ground as I parted the ropes.

“Then, I went from one of those still alive to the next and held their hand for a moment as I offered each a few quiet words of comfort, sympathy, and a promise of a gentle end to their agony.

“It felt as if I were outside my own body, watching myself moving from one person to the next, holding their hand, offering words of comfort, and then stopping their heart. I couldn’t believe I was doing such things. I had never envisioned my abilities being put to such a use as to have to end the lives of those I was supposed to be protecting.