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1 Where are you infamous?
2 What made you infamous?
3 Who has suffered for your success?
4 What caused your downfall?
From the witch's own testimony, given at her trial*:
"Now stands before you Maela Wise
Who hails from where cold sun long flies
O'er frozen lands, her people's womb
Whose snow and ice, your army's tomb
You came to war, conquer, and burn
We welcomed; terror you returned
You burned my home, and tore my child
His long slow death, you 'justice' styled
And now, 'accused', you style me
And write your lies, for legacy
These words now, true, and whole, and fact
Now I record. You'll not redact.
I burned your armies. Sank your ships.
Blinded archers. Turned your whips.
When war-choice was not then unmade
I burned the beds where generals laid.
I blighted crops. I poisoned wells.
I cursed your queen with privy's smells.
I made a necklace, hangman's rope.
And hid acids in gentlest soap.
Your war went on, and so my crimes.
I burned your church, a dozen times.
And on the thirteenth, you'd prepared
And so, at last, I was ensnared.
T'was fairly done, and nobly sent
And I'd not harm that innocent.
T'was pure Fae law, that trap you lay
What witch set that? I'll know, one day.
I'll stand, or kneel, in chains, or free
I'll let you bind, burn, bury me
The debts I owe, I'll pay; I'll burn
But know ye all:
I will return."
*Bailiff were unable to lay hand on the accused while she spoke, though she was ordered gagged when she began rhyming. Her testimony was ordered struck by the Grand Inquisitor, but every witness present in the room remembered the words exactly, and when the witch was burned, the bonfire logs turned to handwritten copies of her testimony, which the updraft scattered across the city.