Long ago, in an age when the world was lush and green, the Kingdom of Ha’Mekal was ruled by Xaan the Irenic, who enriched his people not through war and pillaging, but by sagacious husbandry and the establishment of a tremendous marketplace which drew merchants and traders from the farthest regions of the land.

But bandits came also, to prey upon buyers and sellers alike, and soon the marketplace grew desolate.

One day the king’s men captured Tavel Kra, a bandit chieftain renowned for his exploits of stealth and daring. Wishing to set an example, Xaan sentenced the great criminal to the public ordeal of Death by Torture.

A sportive type, Xaan would frequently offer a condemned man a choice of punishments. “You will now have your nose cut off and your left thumb mashed to a pulp,” he would say, “or you will be hurled into the Eye of Glomgor.”

Daunted by unknown horrors, the prisoner usually chose to be maimed. If he had the temerity to ask what, precisely, was the Eye of Glomgor, Xaan would reply, “You must discover that for yourself.” And so the prisoner would wail and endure nose-cutting and thumb-mashing. On occasion, a man educated in the culture and history of Ha’Mekal would unhesitatingly choose the Eye of Glomgor, knowing it to be an aperture in the massive idol of an ancient matrimonial deity whose interior had been filled with straw for the coupling of newlyweds while their chanting relatives pelted the stone face with ripe fruit and the excrements of young children.

But for the execution of this criminal, thought Xaan, a special frolic must be devised. He sent for Tavel Kra.

Dragged in chains from the dungeon by a pair of burly guards, badly bruised, his rat-bitten feet and ankles streaked with dried blood, the proud highwayman stood erect and smiling before the throne.

Xaan spoke: “Tavel Kra, you are a man who has brought much harm to my kingdom. Nevertheless, your clever ways have commanded my respect. And I cannot help but admire a man who remains dignified while suffering imprisonment. If only fate had brought us together under different circumstances…”

“Your words are kind,” said Tavel Kra. “I share your dismay at this harsh turn of events.”

“No matter,” said the king. “At the very least, I can offer you a choice that no condemned man has ever been given.”

“I am grateful,” said Tavel Kra. Though disfigured by beatings, his face wore a look of concentration. “May I ask the nature of this choice?”

“Alas,” replied Xaan, “It is a choice that cannot save your life. You must die in agony, for this I have already decreed. However,” he continued, “I hereby grant you authority to choose your torturer from among the entire population of my realm.” After a reflective pause, he added, “Naturally, whomever you designate must be of sufficient age and physical strength to carry out the sentence.”

Tavel Kra remained utterly still. At last a sigh escaped his swollen lips. “Then I suppose I must choose the most beautiful girl in the kingdom.”

“Wise indeed,” said the King. “I will put everything in order.”

Tavel Kra was thereupon returned to his cell to ponder this change in his affairs.

On the following day notice was given across the land: a contest would be held to discover the loveliest of all maidens. The winner would be constrained to perform the repulsive tasks of the torturer, but in recompense the girl’s family would receive a generous purse. Xaan himself would make the selection, aided by a panel of aesthetes.

Now came a time of great merriment. The streets of Ha’Mekal thronged with visitors. Shop clerks and publicans kept greedy watch as their coffers filled. In the marketplace comely young women and their families shopped and gabbled. Gawking lads and leering elders savored the bounty of pulchritude that fate’s cornucopia had tumbled into their midst.

The day of the contest arrived, and after brief deliberation by Xaan and the judges, Pelatrisse of Noyre was pronounced the winner. She was a girl of only seventeen summers, from a village in the far reaches of the kingdom, but there was no doubt among all who witnessed the contest that her loveliness had no equal. The eyes of men and women alike were as charmed by her beauty as their palates would have been by a rare and splendid wine. Indeed, when asked to create an ode describing Pelatrisse for the benefit of posterity, Dragomeel, the King’s favorite poet, could only stutter that when he gazed upon her features he felt as if he were drunk on a warlock’s blend of aged melancholy and the laughter of fauns. To stare into her sapphire eyes, he continued, was to drown in a whirlpool of ecstasy. The confluence of her limbs and torso, the gracile beauty of her hands and feet suggested caresses from the taunting ephemeron of a dream. In these matters the poet was correct. But her hair, above all, set her apart from the others. Lustrous and thick, it sparkled like gold drawn through an enchanted spinneret. It was a color Xaan had seen once before in his life, when as a young prince in exile he had gazed, in the golden light of sunset, upon the imposing cliffs from which the feared monarch Alchezerat the Foudroyant had hurled a thousand adulterers. The sense of ancient sorrow and death, his own longing for the meadows and forests of Ha’Mekal, and the remarkable transitory light had created a yearning that spread through his being like a dissolution, and was then lost—lost forever, he had thought—until the moment he saw the hair of Pelatrisse. Had he not been an aging king with a clamorous harem, he would have made the girl his queen.

A night of revelry followed, enjoyed most raucously by the family of Pelatrisse, and by certain other contestants whom the aesthetes had awarded monies in consolation. It was observed throughout the feasting and drunkenness that Pelatrisse sat quietly weeping, though whether from joy at her victory or from dread, none could say.

At noon on the day of his execution, Tavel Kra was brought by tumbrel to the scaffold. Onlookers packed the square. Not an empty rooftop or balcony could be seen. Children were lifted upon the shoulders of their fathers to better witness the spectacle. A full complement of assistants stood ready to guide Pelatrisse through the ordeal. While the crowed jeered, the prisoner was chained, spread-eagle fashion, to an upright slab of oak, which, being connected by a series of cams and shafts to an ingenious, foot-pedaled machine devised in a bygone age by the sinister Tabolo, would slowly revolve, allowing all to see clearly the progress of the torture.

Pelatrisse, clad in the scarlet jumpsuit favored in those days by the Royal Torturers, stepped forward to begin her ghastly toil. But she was halted by Xaan, who raised his hand to address the throng.

“Good people of my kingdom,” he said, “you see before you a maiden of unparalleled beauty, and a clever bandit who hoped to diminish his pain by having her constantly in his sight.” The crowd was hushed, expectant. Xaan held out his hand. A groveling factotum gave him a nightmarish instrument, half tong, half spoon. Xaan continued: “He has played our little game well, but the final stroke shall be mine.” He turned to the prisoner, whose head was now held firmly between the factotum’s large hands. Xaan brought the device up to Tavel Kra’s face. “I thwart your intent thus,” he said, and with quick, deft movements enucleated the eyes of Tavel Kra.

“It is done!” cried Xaan, moving aside to avoid staining his regal garments with gore. “The game is over. I applaud your effort, but I am the victor.” He chuckled, wagging an elegant finger at the sightless, thrashing man. “Do not feel shame,” he said. “I am known for my guile. You had no hope of beating me.”

Tavel Kra said nothing in response, as all his faculties were fully occupied by intense pain.

And so the execution proceeded. The girl, having herself been threatened with death by torture, followed the provided script with commendable precision. Though more accustomed to handling the implements of the vanity table, she managed the heavy knives and pincers with aplomb. At varying intervals, or following an especially brutal series of punishments, an attending surgeon would examine the victim, placing his ear on the heaving chest as if listening for the distant gallop of death.

Several hours passed. Pelatrisse continued her work. The rabble shouted with pleasure. Those nearest the stage would later argue whether her lovely cheeks were damp with sweat or with tears. Again the surgeon examined his charge, and this time stood to face the girl. He shook his head. Tavel Kra could take no more. The very next plunge of the knife or blow of the mallet would certainly drive the soul from this bloodied wreckage.

Pelatrisse dropped from her hand the truncheon she had been using on Tavel Kra’s shins. Her staring eyes, partly hidden by loose, damp strands of her golden hair, conveyed nothing.

By tradition, the right to administer the death-blow fell to the King, in a graceful coda that would demonstrate his compassion. Tavel Kra’s roars of pain had quietened to whimpers, but he managed to concentrate all of his strength for one last utterance. “Noble Emperor,” he began, “I implore you. Before you end my suffering, allow me a final speech.”

In the King’s estimation this affair had grown tedious. He looked distastefully at the ravaged, dying man and considered that the gravity of the occasion left him no choice. “Very well,” he said, without enthusiasm. “You may speak.”

The crowd pressed forward to hear the bandit’s last words. Tavel Kra coughed up a little blood, and said this: “With all respect for your exalted person, I must inform you that our game did not end when you darkened my sight. For although you deprived me of seeing the angelic Pelatrisse, you forgot—or perhaps it never occurred to you—that I would retain the capacity, through my olfactory sense, to enjoy her fragrance, a delightful intermingling of floral cologne, perspiration, and, if you will pardon my vulgarity, the tang of an unanticipated menstruation brought on by exertion, as I am told may occur in certain delicate types. At brief moments of respite from the torture I would inhale this pungency, and relish both the pleasure of it and the knowledge—and please understand that I say this with the greatest humility and respect—that I had conquered you in our war of wits, for a simple swabbing of my nostrils with a noxious fluid would have annulled this possibility.”

Having spoken, Tavel Kra died. Xaan the Irenic disdained the superfluous death-blow and strode silently to his carriage. When the King had gone, the crowd slowly began to clap. The sound grew to a thunderous applause.

Pelatrisse never married. Embittered, she lived out the dregs of her years in the solitude of a forest cabin. But for centuries to come, her beauty, forever linked with the clever bandit Tavel Kra, sprang to life in countless narrations of that memorable day.