Trial of Intentions

by Peter Orullian

  The song wove on. She lost track of time listening to the bittersweet music. Sometime later it ended, and the young woman’s hands grew still. Mira was left looking into the faces of Eledri and Leelin, sad and thankful. Some few blossoms fell around them, plucked free by gentle winds. She didn’t dry her eyes or cheeks. She wasn’t ashamed of the tears wrought by the things that burdened her heart. She would simply have to turn them into new determination.

  “What did she say?” Sutter asked.

  “She said she cannot heal me,” Mira answered softly.

  It wasn’t until that moment that the full weight of her loss came to her—the inability to produce a Far heir, perhaps restore the Covenant Tongue … see her family again when she passed this life. Her flesh weighed heavy on her bones, and she sank down, shutting her eyes. She should be grieving more for her people, more for the danger of war the Far no longer had an answer for. But more than these things, she grieved at the loss of her inheritance, of meeting those who’d given her life and loved her first and best.

  A small smile touched her face at an ironic thought: Were her priorities all wrong because she was more human now than Far?

  She sat in the self-imposed isolation behind her eyes for a moment more. Then, she opened them again. “We’ll leave as soon as we fill our waterskins and find some flatbread.” Mira extended a hand to Leelin. “Thank you. You were kind to interpret for us.”

  He reached out a hand, and when Mira took it, he covered their clasped hands with his other palm, and gave her a searching look. “For what it’s worth, Mira Far, I don’t believe in any oath that robs you of its promise when the offending sin is sacrifice. The First Fathers may have left us to ourselves, but I’m not convinced they’re bastards besides.”

  She started to thank the man, when he spoke again.

  “I’ll ask you to remember that Eledri’s song wasn’t all sorrow and regret. Her hands also sang of the hope you brought with you to Laeodalin. I’m no great songmaster. In fact, it’s your good fortune not to have heard the songs of my rough, clumsy hands.” He gave an easy laugh. “But I’m wise enough not to ignore the notes of a song. On the roads away from here, I trust you’ll recall them properly. Will this be good enough?”

  Mira placed her other palm over her and Leelin’s intertwined hands, a particularly warm gesture, given the company.

  “I think you’re plenty wise,” she said.

  They all stood, and just before leaving, a question rose in Mira’s mind. “When we began, you said that the Laeodalin don’t go to war anymore.”

  “That’s right. And I’m grateful that’s not why you came. Might’ve had to get ugly with you.” He showed her a wry grin.

  “Was there a time when you did go to war?” she asked. “I’ve never read or heard of it.”

  Leelin took a deep breath, and the music in it occurred to Mira like a song of weary disappointment. “Yes, but the scola and biographers haven’t the ears for our contributions. So they aren’t captured in annals or authors’ tales.” He raised a hand and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “But we’re grateful for their deafness. Otherwise many would be tramping through our aspen groves looking to take something they can’t understand. You, at least, came with respectable intentions. I like that we met this way.”

  She smiled weakly. “Thank you. But it would be wrong of me not to say that we could use your help.”

  She took time to tell them more about Convocation, more about how she’d come to break her oath—going to Tillinghast. This last part brought worry to Leelin’s face. She decided not to relate the losses in the Naltus library. And stopped short of explaining where Tahn had gone.

  She looked Leelin in the eye. “If the Laeodalin can fight, you need to think about what you’ll do if the Bourne breaks free.”

  The man seemed to look through her, his gaze troubled and distant. “I never want to hear Laeodalin hands move that way again.” Then he focused on her, his eyes like those of a man arguing with himself. “Come with me,” he finally said.

  Mira and Sutter followed Leelin and Eledri through streets dappled by leaf-shadow. For the first time she noticed that a few of the residents had no hands; at the ends of their arms most of these had strapped likenesses of hands fashioned of wood. A few had attached simple, blunt implements—hooks, two- and three-tined prods, and the like. She guessed that even the mild Laeodalin had severe punishments for the abuse of their gifts.

  Eventually they came to the foot of the mountain, which rose abruptly at the city’s northern edge. Directly in front of them a corridor had likewise been chiseled into the rock. Looking up the cliff, she saw that several dozen square caves had been cut into the rock face. Leelin led them into the dimness, taking a lit handlamp from the wall as he went.

  Twenty strides in they veered left and began to climb a set of stone stairs. Every fifteen steps let out on a lamplit hallway running parallel to the cliff face. Several flights up, Leelin moved down one of these corridors, where stone doors remained closed every twenty strides. At one of these, their host stopped and grasped its iron handle. He motioned them forward, so both she and Sutter could look in. Then he slowly pushed the door open, whispering as he did, “Soriah Maal.”

  The heavy iron hinges groaned, and bright light flooded toward them from the open mouth of the square cave. At the center of it all sat a dark-silhouetted figure, statue-still. After a moment, it stood, seeming to unfold itself against the light as a flower unfurls in the warmth of the morning sun.

  And when it stood fully up—the smooth lines of its body showing no clothes—it raised its arms out from its sides. Against the brightness of the day beyond the cave, small appendages rose on its arms like long, elegant fingers. It gave Mira the vague impression of a bird stretching its wings and feathers. A moment later, more of the thin, smooth extensions rose from the Laeodalin’s shoulders. The unfolding struck her as beautiful. And terrifying.

  Leelin didn’t have to explain. The handsong this creature could create, stirring the air in so many combinations, would be stunning, powerful. It left her with a feeling of beautiful menace. These were the handsingers that would go to war if it came to that. Mira imagined the dark dance and movement of these Soriah Maal as they wove silent strains against their enemies like a rush of cacophonous wind.

  Then the short appendages relaxed, giving the figure a more human form again. She never saw its face or eyes, as it remained in silhouette until Leelin pulled shut the door. He then led them from the mountain, through the town, and near to where they’d tied their horses—all without a word. There he and Eledri turned.

  “Thank you for the warning,” Leelin said, offering his warm smile. “We will talk about this. If the Quiet do come, I’m sure you won’t find us idle.” He shook his head and added, “And we’re sorry we couldn’t do more to help you.”

  He made a half bow. But Eledri stepped close and took Mira’s hand in an embrace that she would never forget. The touch of the handsinger’s fingers felt like … touching music.

  The two shared a long moment, searching each other’s eyes. Then the young woman gave Mira the barest smile, a peaceful thing she’d not soon forget. Shortly after, she let go and stepped back. The disconnection was almost painful.

  Leelin directed them to a spring and storehouse where they provisioned themselves before returning to the trees, gathering their horses, and descending out of the riven mountains through a forest of aspen.

  As they rode out, she took time to tell Sutter more about the Draethmorte sigil-glyph he carried. She cautioned him to find an opportune time to show it to the smith king. She explained it as thoroughly as she could, though her mind was elsewhere.

  She hadn’t found the answer to make herself whole again. She wondered if there was another way. But they needed to get to Ir-Caul and convince the smith king to join Convocation, and then on to Estem Salo. There was no time to even consider alternatives to mending her condition.

  She felt strangely mortal. As
a Far, she would have been dead in less than two years. No longer truly Far, she might live to old age. And the thought terrified her. But nothing hurt as bad as the loss of that moment of reunion she’d looked forward to all her life—reunion, after death, with her mother. Her true mother. That blessing was gone. The bone-deep grief was new to her. She now understood the crippling nature of it. The Far lived their lives immune to such feelings. Mira now thought she understood what drove men like Vendanj.

  She took away from the Laeodalin only the memory of a music rendered by beautiful hands, and the touch of a living instrument whose song, she now believed, played like her own personal accompaniment. She also took with her the memory of a silhouette—Soriah Maal—unlike anything she’d ever seen.

  She was still thinking about the handsinger’s song as they came to the base of the hills. Sutter pulled on his reins and dismounted—resting his horse and his aching back. He waited for Mira to find a place to settle herself before he came to her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mira removed her oilcloth and began to work at her blades. “I’d hoped to find a remedy here. Then it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “You should have trusted me,” he said, mildly reproving. “I would have kept your confidence.”

  Neither angry or smiling, Mira nodded. “You’re right.”

  “It’s more than that,” Sutter went on. “If you’d told me, maybe I could’ve helped.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mira offered. “I’m not quite myself.” She gave a slight smile at her own joke. “What’s your advice?”

  Sutter laughed, being caught without an answer. “Fair enough. Let’s get to Ir-Caul. Maybe there’s wisdom there to help you. Hells, I was starting to think all that back there was a just a big dumb show. Seen too many of those stupid things on the pageant wagons. Usually performed by the trouper who can’t memorize worth a tinker’s damn.”

  “The rootdigger speaks.” And she laughed with him.

  “Damn right.”

  Through the smiles, she guessed this was how men and women got through their grief—they laughed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Divestiture

  If man is like a violin, then let us mute a string or two.

  —Epigram inscribed into the cover of The Vibratory Nature of Life, an exploration of imparting silences as opposed to execution

  Thaelon sat at a table in the far corner room of the art gallery. Several books surrounded the chalk rubbings he’d made of glyphs carved into the granite stone deep inside the Tabernacle of the Sky. Glyphs that explained how a Sheason could be divested of the authority to render the Will.

  A few lamps burned, lending a yellow cast to everything he’d been reading—all his efforts to understand how this thing was done. Around him, on the walls of this gallery room, hung depictions of the first Trial of Intentions. A chaotic time not long after the Framers had left the world behind. A difficult period in which the Sheason had effectively split: some following Maldea into the Bourne; the rest remaining here, in Estem Salo. He hoped these depictions would lend clarity to his preparations. Or at least focus.

  He stood, stretched, and began to pace, taking a closer look at the paintings—maybe the first to do so in years. This room didn’t receive many visitors. The gallery had several floors, and this area was tucked away on its highest level, in its farthest corner, behind doors that remained closed, though not locked.

  Tonight, this room was Thaelon’s study as he tried to recover a lost practice. And maybe, in part, convince himself that the course he’d set was the right one. Surrounding himself with books and art often helped him do just that.

  A few moments after he’d started moving, Raalena entered quietly. “Pacing again?”

  “How long have you been outside the door?” he asked without looking at her.

  “How long have you been here?” she answered.

  He smiled over this rote exchange. He then stopped, pointing to the painting before him. “They didn’t use divestiture at the first trials.”

  She came up beside him and regarded the painting. It showed a woman being held on each side by a Sheason, as a third figure raised a rendering hand. There was alarm in her face. There were bodies behind her. Sheason bodies.

  “Bad intentions met a final judgment back then, didn’t they?” Raalena observed.

  He looked around the entire canvas, which measured three strides on each side. “It was a different time. These dissenters had sympathy for Maldea. Their intentions were to follow him. Not much else to do but destroy them.”

  “A rather black view.” She gestured to the left, where it appeared the children of dead Sheason wept. “I think you’ve been at this too long. You should step away for a while. Get some food.”

  He shook his head. “The first trial is soon. I need to understand how this is done.”

  Raalena took gentle hold of his arm and turned him to face her. “I don’t think you’re struggling with how to do it, just why.”

  He smiled without any real amusement. “Let me first tell you how—as much as I understand, anyway—and then I’ll explain why.”

  She let go his arm, and he continued to walk, regarding the gallery paintings. Each told a Trial of Intention story. Lives lost. And other lives forever changed. After he’d viewed another handful of the paintings, he crossed back to his makeshift desk. As he stared down for several long moments at his rubbings, the glyphs began to take on clearer meaning.

  “One of our oldest names, what is it?” he asked, still staring down at his papers.

  “The Sheason?” Raalena asked. “Helpmate? Palamon’s own? Inner Resonance?”

  He looked up and wagged an encouraging finger at her. “Yes. Inner Resonance. Why do they call us that?”

  “Because you render the Will,” she said, squinting as though trying to see ahead to where their conversation was going. “Because you move things by drawing on your life’s energy.”

  Thaelon let his own thoughts settle. He wanted to state it as something irreducibly true. “It’s the vibratory nature of life. That’s why.”

  “Vibratory?”

  “Think of it as that which stirs us. As our capacity to be stirred.” He tapped the rubbings for emphasis. “A Sheason’s authority to render the Will grants him the power to cause the resonance between two things. He begins by causing the vibration of his own life’s Forda and then touches something outside himself with it.”

  Raalena came to stand opposite him at his table-desk. “It wouldn’t be only life, then, that has a vibratory signature, would it?”

  “No, it’s everything. And it wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a vibration. But it helps explain the possible connection between any two things.” He traced a few of the glyphs with his fingertips. “A Sheason’s control over his own Forda is unique. It’s something that must be studied and understood before it’s awarded. It gives him the power to manipulate his own inner resonance so that he can affect almost anything.”

  She looked around at the paintings surrounding them. “And kill, when necessary.”

  “But that’s not our course.” He turned the rubbings so that she could see them in their right order. “Divestiture is nothing more than returning a Sheason to the possibility of only one vibration, one resonance. The one he knew at birth.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Giving you another reason to hate Vendanj: He’s taken a young man to Tillinghast. A young man who was born dead. But revived, given the resonance of a Sheason in order to live.”

  Thaelon stared at her. Not with anger, but candor. “Tahn should never have been.”

  A long silence followed. A silence in which the paintings on the walls seemed perfect company. He didn’t need to explain further that the boy represented a violation of the Sheason way. Or that his life resulted from a misuse and misplacement of inner resonance. Or that Vendanj, and those like him, were dangerous because their moral compasses didn’t always point in the same direction, but chan
ged as their needs changed.

  She finally nodded. “It’s the difference between you and Vendanj. And why you’re going to strip the authority to render from those whose intentions are like his.”

  “It will go harder for them than that,” he said, his voice thick with regret. “Once a Sheason has rendered the Will, his own life’s resonance changes.” He thought a moment. “A violin doesn’t sound the same fifty years after it’s made, any more than the musician plays it the same way. Each is different after so much time and use. And they can’t be again what they were in the beginning.”

  She glanced at the rubbings, searching as if she might understand their meaning.

  Again he offered his weary smile. “When they lose this part of themselves, they won’t simply go back to the way they were before. In a real way, they’ll stop being who they are.”

  She nodded understanding. “They deserve to know the consequences before they stand trial.”

  “Ironic, I think.” He sat back down to finish his preparations. “The quality that brings them to trial will likely be the one that prevents them from being dissuaded by consequences.”

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  “Pride in their belief that they’re right,” he answered, and hunched again over his rubbings.

  He heard her say as she started away, “Doesn’t make them too different from us, does it?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Convocation

  We forget that Convocation failed the second time, until Sheason went into realm courts with grim threats and reminders.

  —From The Failure of Perception, a study of the divide between aspiration and reality, a book banned by the League of Civility

  Helaina tried to catch Dwayne’s eye, but the Child’s Voice wouldn’t look at her. He held his hand aloft, staring at the table in front of him. The boy’s vote had cost her the regent seat. Roth had succeeded with his political grab. She now understood the uneasy feeling she’d had at the sight of the boy with First Counselor Jermond. Dwayne had been coached, threatened probably. She wished she’d spent more time with the lad.