Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  To his great relief he found that Pallas had arrived at the hangar to check on the new air-chariot’s construction. Tymon grabbed the other youth by the arm and, with a whispered plea for silence, dragged him into the covered workshop.

  ‘You’ve got to get me away from here,’ he hissed, when they were out of earshot of the others. ‘These people are mad! No one cares about the Kion. It’s like she’s already dead — that’s the way they talk about her. The rebels hate her anyway. The judges are too cautious to help. The Focals think she’s going to set off their End Times so they can strut about making sad sermons about resignation, and we’ll all listen.’

  This was not true: his instincts told him the Focals were anything but calculating. But he ignored the insight. He was too wrapped up in his own anger and frustration to care if he maligned others.

  ‘There was a woman in the meal hall just now who said she’d refused to help Samiha in Marak,’ he fumed, as Pallas gazed at him in consternation. ‘No one thought the worse of her for it. I swear, she might have confessed to murdering the Kion, and they would have forgiven her and patted her on the back. Because she “has faith”, it’s alright. The Kion’s future is all mapped out and no one can change it. Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?’

  ‘Maybe not the only one,’ said Pallas. ‘If you wish to leave us, friend, I help you. But what will you do? Where will you go? In Marak they search for you.’

  ‘I’m not going to start a new life.’ Tymon took a deep breath and looked straight into his companion’s eyes as he spoke. ‘I’m going to ask you a big favour, Pallas. I want you to take me over the Gap to the borders of the Central Canopy. It’ll only cost you a day’s detour on your next scouting trip. I’ll make my way to Argos city from there.’

  ‘You try to save Kion!’ blurted the young guard, shocked, before hastily lowering his voice. ‘Maza Sav — I think that is worthy. But you cannot get there in time. On foot across Central Canopy journey takes months. Trial will be over.’

  ‘I’ll find a way to get there faster,’ muttered Tymon.

  He paced restlessly about the workshop in an unconscious imitation of the Samiha in his vision, brushing his fingers across the sketch-leaves that littered the central table. The sound of hammers and the good-natured banter of the team outside echoed through the windows of the workshop. Galliano’s querulous voice could be heard complaining that all these lunch breaks put their schedule back something terrible.

  ‘It must be possible,’ he breathed distractedly. ‘There must be another way to do it. I was there in the prophecy: it has to happen.’

  Even if Samiha’s life did unfold exactly as shown, he thought, he had not witnessed every hour, every minute of her days. He had not actually Seen her die, only fall into the West Chasm. He remembered that during his previous Reading, he had witnessed the moment of execution from several different angles. The dangerous position by the dock predicted by the Oracle was only one of them. It seemed to him the prophecy left room for interpretation.

  ‘But you yourself say Kion’s actions are will of Sap,’ objected Pallas, as if he had been listening to Tymon’s ruminations. ‘Did you not See her future, friend?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Tymon. ‘And it does seem like it’s all decided in advance. But I have to try, all the same. The Oracle said parts of her destiny could be altered. She Saw me going back to Argos city to try to help.’

  ‘Oracle Saw you go?’ asked Pallas, sharply.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  There was a moment of tense silence as the two youths faced each other across the table. The hammers paused outside and the voices of the men ebbed away. Pallas leaned forward, resting his hands on the crackling sketch-leaves.

  ‘You are right,’ he said in an undertone. ‘I also cannot bear to wait, listening to sermons while Samiha dies. She will die because of me. I took her to Marak. So I help you. I repair mistake. But I think you go about this wrong way.’

  ‘Is that so?’ replied Tymon, taken aback. ‘What would you suggest, Pallas?’

  ‘I suggest,’ murmured the guard, ‘there are two machines in hangar, almost complete. More being made at other Freeholds. Judges will not be crippled by loss of one. Fuel and provisions are already in Maia, enough for two weeks. It is only way to reach Argos city in time.’

  Tymon stared as the other’s meaning sank in. ‘You’d steal the Maia?’ he breathed. ‘I suppose it’s the best way of getting there in time, but I’d hate …’

  ‘Not steal,’ put in Pallas. ‘Borrow. Without telling. We bring it back.’

  Tymon frowned. A year ago, six months ago, he might have jumped at the idea. But now he thought of the Freehold judges and the Focals, all those who had placed hope and trust in him. He remembered Laska.

  ‘We do need the Maia,’ he said to Pallas. ‘But I don’t think we should just take it. There’s another way.’

  He turned to the door of the workshop, where the tiny figure of Galliano had come into view, feeling his way through the entrance with the help of his cane. The old man was finally alone and approachable. He shuffled to the table, pulled out a stool and sat himself down with a grunt.

  ‘Apu—’ began Tymon.

  ‘By the bells!’ exclaimed the scientist, leaping up and knocking over the stool. ‘You tell a blind man when you’re there, young rascal! You almost did my heart in!’

  A cloud descended over Farhang Freehold, washing the twig-thicket and village in rain. Precious water trickled down gutters and into cisterns, carefully harvested for drier months. It clung to the waxed canvas of the refugees’ tents and pattered into the pots and troughs left out to catch the life-giving drops. Thick mist filled the abyss beyond the twig-thicket where a figure crouched, enveloped in a hooded cloak. The grey Nurian cloth was hard to make out in the fog. When a second figure stepped from between the twigs and crouched on the damp bark beside its companion, it seemed to emerge from sheer nothingness.

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t just stop him,’ said the newcomer, in Nurian. Noni’s voice was taut with anxiety, her shoulders hunched under her cloak.

  ‘You know the answer to that.’ Oren’s voice was muffled beneath his hood. ‘There’s a chance he’ll understand on his own, even in Argos city. We can’t make his decisions for him.’

  ‘You always have such faith in people,’ snorted his sister. ‘Especially when they don’t deserve it. We gave Jedda her chance, and we were wrong. It’s the same with this one. Our little Fifth is locked up in himself and likes his prison just fine. We’re always going to be incomplete.’

  ‘I think Tymon may surprise you,’ replied Oren, peering through the rain at the foggy abyss. ‘The five of us are twined now, for good or ill. And we didn’t Read the whole testament last night, you know. Some of it must be good. The Oracle chose him for a reason.’

  They both fell silent as a muffled thrumming filled the air, filtering through the rain. It became muted, distant, then faded away altogether.

  ‘Well, he’s gone,’ muttered Noni. ‘Couldn’t stop him if we wanted to.’

  ‘We don’t want to. We trust him. He’s the last disciple.’

  ‘And a deeply flawed one. His studies are incomplete. He doesn’t even want to continue them. He’s a liability, whatever the Oracle says.’

  Oren stretched his fingers out from under his cloak, allowing the droplets of rain to splash onto them. ‘The twins,’ he remarked, ‘think he might be the Witness.’

  His sister shrugged in dismissal. ‘The twins are worse than you are,’ she said. ‘Babes in the wood, the lot of you. Mystics and fools.’

  But her hand sought out his through the folds of her cloak, and she berated him no more, content to sit in silence in the drumming rain.

  22

  Raucous, strident, the festival horns blared out from the temple Hall in Argos city. They sounded repeatedly, filling the air with blast after blast so that the audience ranged on either side of the long stairs leading to the Hall was nearly stunn
ed by the noise. But this was no ordinary Green rite, nor was the time of year anything resembling spring.

  The month of Frost had lived up to its name. A biting wind ruffled the fur collars of the rich and somewhat deafened merchants standing near the top of the steps; it caused the ragged folk at the very base of the heap to pull their threadbare cloaks about them and peer anxiously at the far-off temple doors. Again and again the horns sounded. At last the doors were thrown wide and a figure emerged with measured gait. The Saint had been reborn. Father Fallow was dressed in robes of pure white, adorned by a fringed green scarf hanging down from his shoulders. Upon his head was an elaborate, peaked white hat. He paused at the top of the staircase that plummeted from the temple buttress to the city streets. The crowd below roared. Fallow held up his hands for silence.

  ‘I come among you,’ he cried, ‘to fulfil my ancient promise.’ Scattered cheers broke out as the newly minted Saint continued. ‘I come to usher in a glorious era in Argos. It is not my wish to take up this mantle for personal gain. I do so only because I am called. I am called by you, citizens of Argos. You have asked. I give my answer.’

  The people bellowed with approval. For a few moments it was impossible for Fallow to speak.

  ‘Today is a great day,’ he said again as the voices died down. ‘Today our proud nation reclaims its rightful place in the world. Soon, the Four Canopies shall be under our sway. They cannot resist the Lawgiver. They cannot resist God’s Chosen Ones.’

  The roar of the crowd became deafening. But among the spectators at the foot of the stairs, hidden behind the first ranks of clamouring beggars, a few audience members remained silent. They neither cheered, nor threw sprigs of mistletoe in the air, nor asked for alms of the priests who now descended the steps. One of the band was a heavyset young man dressed in the plain garb of a journeyman architect. Bolas stared in disgust at the bobbing tip of the Saint’s hat, just visible over the heads of the throng.

  ‘Some Chosen Ones,’ he whispered bitterly, to an associate. ‘A bunch of bleating shillee-pups, more like. It’s the ones we choose to lead us that I’m worried about. If Fallow’s the return of Saint Loa, then I’m a choirboy’s frilly white petticoat.’

  The youth he spoke to was staring away from the temple, toward the air-harbour. ‘Well,’ he noted, ‘the Saint can look forward to increased tithes, I suppose. That’s the second ship I’ve seen coming in from the East in a month.’

  Bolas glanced curiously over his shoulder as a missionary tithe-ship descended over the city and put slowly down in the docks. Its arrival went largely unnoticed by the crowd.

  By the time a caged cart creaked slowly up the main thoroughfare to the seminary later that day, however, word had spread of the arrival of a particularly reviled Nurian prisoner. The occupant of the cage was a woman and a heretic, a combination so pernicious that she had to be sent to Argos city rather than being imprisoned or executed in the colonies. The fact that her arrival coincided with the saint’s induction was taken as further proof of Fallow’s mandate. He had been voted into office by the Council to deal with precisely this sort of foreign menace. The townsfolk felt certain of the All-Father’s vigilance. He would know what to do with the sorceress of Nur.

  Inquisitive market folk gathered to stare as the cage passed by. The witch’s skin was bone-white, her hacked-off locks the colour of flame. She wore a white woollen shift. She sat calmly on the swaying floor of the cart, unmoved by the laughter and taunts of the onlookers. A few urchins took their cue from her obvious disgrace to dance behind the vehicle, throwing shards of bark and rotten vegetables in its wake. The bars of the cage kept most of the missiles at bay. It seemed an age before the cart creaked to a halt at the foot of the ramp leading to the seminary. The soldiers opened the cage and herded their charge up to the College. They used their long pikes to push her along, as if the touch of her were infectious. One of the men dropped a deep hood over her face as she passed through the doorway.

  Samiha was thrust unceremoniously into the Council’s main meeting chamber. The hood over her face was removed, and she found herself staring at a wall illumined with scenes from the lives of the Saints. Winter sunlight filtered through the high arched windows opposite, the frames set with mosaics of hardened sap — yellow, orange and blood red. The floor was carpeted in deep plush.

  The five old men about the table at the centre of the room lacked the pleasing proportions of the rest of the chamber. Noses drooped fearfully over chins, and the priests’ crested hats and stiff collars gave them a suffocated look, as if their frail bodies might be crushed beneath the sheer weight of ruffles and silk. Some seemed about to fall asleep. Those who were awake looked askance at the foreign woman stepping through their door.

  ‘We were horrified to hear of the treatment you suffered in Marak, Kion.’

  The voice of the Dean was both unctuous and sneering, undercutting his own apology. The most powerful member of the Council had not yet taken his place at the table. He still wore his white regalia from the morning’s induction ceremony; the peaked hat bobbed as he turned a key in a cabinet on the far wall of the chamber. He waved away the guards accompanying the prisoner and strolled toward Samiha.

  ‘Believe us when we say such a travesty was never our intention,’ he gloated. ‘We wish these proceedings to be lawful and above-board.’

  The Kion did not respond to his comment. Indeed, she barely looked at him. She moved briskly to the table and without the least hesitation sat herself down in the Dean’s own chair. A rustle of shock passed through the room. Even the half-sleeping members of the Council blinked and shrank back, as if a wild animal had just leapt onto the carved furniture beside them. The colour drained from Father Fallow’s face. He darted a brief look at the closed door, evidently regretting his decision to send the escort away.

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ he snapped. ‘Come down from there at once.’

  ‘I am the beginning and the end,’ she answered. Her clear voice penetrated the dusty depths of the room, shaking its occupants awake. ‘I am the Sign, the trumpet call that puts you all to flight.’

  The men sitting at the table gawped at her in astonishment. Two of them, less decrepit than the rest, half-rose from their seats.

  ‘Guards,’ cried the supplanted Saint, striding over to the door in annoyance.

  ‘I am that which you fear most. I am both Prisoner and Judge.’

  ‘Green grace,’ spluttered Fallow, at the open door. The footsteps of the guards could be heard thudding down the hallway. ‘Who said you could leave your posts, you witless fools?’

  The two soldiers burst into the room and hurried over to the Dean’s chair, grasping Samiha’s arms. They pulled her roughly out of the seat and thrust her down on her knees before Fallow.

  ‘I am what I am,’ she said impassively, gazing up at him.

  ‘I thought we might converse like intelligent human beings,’ hissed the Dean, fairly spitting with rage. ‘I imagined we might come to some mutually beneficial arrangement. But Ferny’s right. It’s clear you’re a fanatic, incapable of reason. Guards, take her to the dungeons. I don’t want to see her again until the trial.’

  She said no more as the soldiers pulled her upright, but calmly held Fallow’s gaze as she was dragged out of the door. He slammed it shut on her heels, incensed.

  ‘Call for Lace,’ he snarled to one of the Council members who hovered, doddering, by the table. ‘He has some explaining to do.’

  He stalked back to his chair and threw himself down on it, slamming his white hat on the table in a fit of pique.

  ‘Mad or not, she does have a point. She’s the twelfth Kion.’ Fallow strode about his office in agitation, the tassels on his green scarf swinging wildly. ‘One of the Grafting Signs! Don’t tell me you didn’t know, Lace.’

  The Dean’s office was in a state of disorder. Half the effects were in boxes, about to be moved to a much larger and more lavish location near the Council chamber. Father Lace stood
silent at the centre of the chaos, his legs apart and his hands knotted behind his back. He appeared entirely unmoved by the Saint’s distress. Nearby, the figure of Jedda leaned against the wall, inspecting her nails with apparent disregard for the august company she shared. The Grafter-turned-acolyte, girl-turned-boy wore a priest’s tunic, her green cap perched at a rakish angle on her cropped hair.

  ‘I found out who she was about a month ago,’ grunted the Envoy. ‘It changes nothing.’

  ‘How can that be?’ objected Fallow.

  He was still on edge from his encounter with the Kion. His gaze strayed in annoyance to the objectionably confident youth accompanying Lace. He had already met the Nurian defector that morning, of course. He understood the boy named Jed had provided invaluable assistance to the Council’s agents in the colonies. But the damn Nurry might show a little more respect, especially since Fallow’s personal protection had been extended so generously over him. The foreigner’s presence created logistical problems: he would have to be kept privily in the College, his nationality explained away to the professors and kept secret as long as possible from the students. He might only be allowed out into the town at night and under escort. Indeed, he seemed not to understand the gravity of his situation at all.

  ‘The Grafting prophecies are tortuous and contradictory, but they all agree on one thing,’ the Dean huffed aloud. ‘The arrival of the twelfth Kion spells the end of the Council.’

  The Envoy looked at him out of fathomless eyes — eyes that always made Fallow’s heart skip a beat, as if he were looking into the depths of a black and empty well.