by R. Lee Smith
“Thank you, honored one,” breathed the man on the floor, still without moving.
Meoraq turned his eyes on the best-dressed of the men still clustered to witness all this nonsense. “Where shall I find the abbot?”
“I don’t…In the quorum?”
“He might be in sequester,” another man offered. “I think there was a vote tonight.”
“A sequestered vote?” asked the first, clearly surprised.
“One of the oracles died.”
“Orved,” said a third, timidly nodding in Meoraq’s direction to excuse himself for speaking. “He was on the roof when the fire went up and he fell down the stairs.”
“Oh. I heard about that but I didn’t know it was Orved.”
“Where do you think he’s been all this time?”
“The Halls of Judgment don’t exactly drip oracles,” said the first crossly. “I don’t see any number of people for days on end, but I don’t assume they’re all dead!”
Meoraq folded his arms and gripped his biceps very close to the hilts of his sabks, waiting.
He had their attention again at once.
“If he is not sequestered, honored one, then he should be in the quorum. There is a dispute in session…ah…Are you here for the dispute?”
Meoraq turned away without feeling any strong urge to answer, although he did spare a last glance down at the floor where the kneeling man still knelt. He had recovered only enough to close his eyes and that was just as recovered as Meoraq wanted to see him. There was a great rustling behind him as men made their salutes and bows, but Meoraq didn’t stay to witness them. He knew where the quorum was. It abutted the arena.
* * *
There was a man posted outside the quorum doors, swordless, with a brutal-looking hammer at his side. Not one of the warrior’s caste. A bailiff, then, and not one Meoraq knew or at least not one he remembered. He gave his name and went into the arena hold to wait. It was his right to hear any dispute where he might be called to challenge or champion, but he wasn’t in any kind of mood to hear the bickering that invariably accompanied legal disputes.
He was not alone in that, it would seem. There was a man in the arena hold already, sitting on the altar and leaned back against the wall, by all appearances asleep, except that no sleeping man’s breath was so precisely even. He wore nothing but a battle harness and a loin-plate, cinched tight over a ridiculously young and unscarred body. His sabks were metal and shiny, as young or even younger than he was. He rested one finger lightly on the hilt of each.
Unwilling to interrupt a brother’s meditations, Meoraq gave no greeting. He set his pack down and opened it, working quietly through his supplies until he came to his spare clothes, which were not much cleaner and not much drier, but some of each and worth changing into. He began to undress.
“I had a bath brought,” the other man said without opening his eyes. “Water’s cooled, but not too murky.”
Meoraq located the basin in an unlit corner of the hold and went to use it, grunting appreciatively. The other man acknowledged this with a grunt of his own, but that was all.
The water was indeed cool where it lay in the basin, but there was more in a closed pail and that warmed it some. It made for rather a deep bath, but Meoraq didn’t mind sloshing over. He didn’t have to clean the floors. There was soap in a sachet and several grades of brush and the bath was quite pleasant even if he had to do it himself. Oh, he could have sent for a servant, and really preferred to use one, but they always sent women and that was too distracting before a trial. A Sheulek was supposed to be the master of his clay and impervious to all temptation, but Meoraq had found that having a woman rub oil into his naked body had a tendency to arouse him regardless of how inappropriate the place or time might be. He was working on that.
Bathed and dried, Meoraq briskly oiled up and made ready for trial, if it came to trial. The other man finally slid his eyes open toward the end and watched as he whetted his sabks. Meoraq let him watch. They were good knives, made in the age before the Fall of the black, stone-like substance called qil, which no man could now duplicate. The knives had served his bloodline since the founding of his House and he never drew or sheathed them without this hot, fierce leap of pride, remembering how it had felt to take their weight for the first time and feel his father’s hands binding them to his arms. In all his lifetime, including his years of service as Sheulek, Meoraq had never seen a more intimidating set of honor-blades.
The other man hardly cowered at the sight, but he did tip his head and flare his spines forward in respectful admiration. “Ni’ichok Shuiv stands before you,” he said, and glanced down at himself, still very much seated on the altar. “Metaphorically. Sheulteb in service of House Arug.”
Ah, Sheulteb. If a Sheulek was the Striding Foot, then the Sheulteb were God when He stood. Only one short year of training and one degree of rank separated them, and they shared many of the same duties, save that Meoraq served every city on his circuit and the Sheulteb were called to only one House, to act as champion if it had no lord born to the warrior’s caste. There were more of those every year, it seemed. Even Uyane’s line in other cities had Sheulteb now. The Age of the Warrior was ending, men said, and perhaps it was true. Too many of the old blades were broken.
Meoraq sheathed his sabks and went over for a brother’s tap—his open palm to Shuiv’s chest, Shuiv’s open palm on his own. Their hearts were already in sync.
“I do not recall the privilege of meeting one of Ni’ichok’s sons, but I know House Arug well,” said Meoraq when it was done. “He has had more than his share of troubles in recent years. What curse has he brought upon himself?”
“A curse of daughters,” said Shuiv, wryly smiling. “And neither wealth nor name enough to sell them all off. ”
“Sell them?”
“Not so boldly as to be criminal.” Shuiv flicked his spines forward carelessly, then leaned back against the wall again and closed his eyes. “But I had one waiting in my chambers the day I took oath for him, before any blade had been drawn on his behalf. And as soon as I had made her belly round, I found another.”
Meoraq recoiled with a disgusted hiss.
“My samr and I explained together to her father the laws against incest.” Shuiv flared his mouth briefly, showing the tips of his teeth in idle expression of meditative contempt. “But he has had one catastrophe after another ever since, it seems, and he tries to solve every one of them with the offering of marriage.”
“A foolish way to empty one’s House.”
“Oh, he’s emptied it,” said Shuiv with a snort. “The mediators have cited him for frivolous intent eight times this season alone, and each fault doubles his fine. He’s sold two fields already to pay them, not to mention his sovereignty over two hundred households, and low though it may be to repeat rumor, I could not help but notice that two of his creditors forgave his debts after a speedy marriage to his daughters. But he has a legitimate complaint this time,” Shuiv admitted, opening his eyes.
After so many years of judgment, Meoraq rarely bothered to hear complaints. They had a way of prejudicing a man’s mind and when he stood in the arena as an instrument of Sheul, his own will could only prove a distraction. Besides, the grand trials that pitted righteous but wronged men against corrupt and cunning powers that he had read about in his boyhood were just that: stories told by priests to impress and excite young minds. Men did not need reasons to indulge in acts of evil, just as they did not need evil enacted against them to send them crying to the courts for justice. Still, Meoraq tipped his head to an inviting angle, showing interest he did not particularly feel, and the young man before him sat up a little straighter.
“Arug’s debts have been such this year that he sought to squeeze in an extra harvest between riak’s reap and sweet-pod’s sowing. He couldn’t afford to compensate his farmers with coin, so he promised those who met his demands that they would have one-half the final crop of the year rather than the cu
stomary quarter. For a surprise, he held to his word. But one of the farming households under his sovereignty went out to find that most of his share of the field’s crop had already been harvested. He suspects a certain farmer, a man who had suspiciously great yield in his own rows, but there is no proof. Both men claim to be wronged, one by theft and one by slander.”
“And as Arug is lord over both, he cannot find for either man without appearing to show favor,” finished Meoraq. He glanced heavenward through the ceiling and sighed.
“Glamorous, I know.” Shuiv gave his spines a rueful flick. “He brought them both here so that they could see how assiduously he serves the interests of his protected, but really, he wants the mediators to make a ruling for him that neither man can hold against him. And probably offer them each a daughter in commiseration, ha. I know he’s brought a few.”
Meoraq grunted his disapproval, but felt his belly warm.
“They’ve made him sit all day in the antechamber while they heard every other dispute in the logs,” Shuiv went on, “but he’s refused to leave and now that you are here, the mediators will surely take it for proof that Sheul has a will in this matter and send the whole stupid thing to trial.”
“Surely. Yet trials have been called over smaller disputes.”
“Not a spear of grass grows save by His design, so my training master told me. And even Arug must serve Him in some way, I suppose. Yet I wonder if I see no more omen in you than a Sheulek coming in out of the rain.” Shuiv settled back against the wall once more, letting his eyes slide shut. “What did bring you, brother?”
“I received a summons. Many summons, to be precise. Commanding me by name. May I be safe in assuming they do not come from House Arug?”
“I shouldn’t think so. If secrets were teeth, Arug still could not keep them in his mouth and I would remember if I heard him utter your name.” A sly peek beneath heavy lids. “It is rather a well-known name.”
“It is not the sword, but the hand that wields it,” Meoraq replied, just as if he were not flattered. “I have been half a year ignoring these summons and so Sheul sent me one of His own.”
Shuiv did not ask his meaning, but studied him with new interest. “I was in meditation that night. I never saw it. They said it filled the sky.”
“I would not say so, but it was tall enough at its first rising to touch the clouds, to pierce them.”
“And you think it was set for you? Truth?”
“I think it was set by Sheul. I think it was tall enough that there might be a thousand men who saw it and believed it for their eyes alone.”
Shuiv waited, faintly smiling.
“It was mine,” said Meoraq.
Shuiv grunted, closed his eyes, and quite some time later said, “The man who has been summoned by Sheul’s own torch must have further to go than Tothax.”
“Then there will be some other sign to lead me on, if it was indeed for my eye. All things indeed serve Sheul, but I can’t think how the squabbles of two farmers and a few rows of riak could be dire enough to warrant a tower of fire on a rainy night.”
“It was gruu, actually.”
“Ah, well that makes all the difference then. For gruu, I should be surprised there wasn’t a hammer of ice to go with it.”
Shuiv snorted.
“I hear,” mused Meoraq, “there is also an exarch who wishes my audience.”
“An exarch in Tothax is rare enough that word has even reached lowly House Arug,” Shuiv replied, eyes shut. “But as he only arrived twenty days and some ago, I can’t think how he could have been sending summons half the year, as you say. As for the exarch himself, I hear nothing save that he has a scandalously gilded taste for drink and a free hand with the abbot’s coin, but there may be more envy in that than truth.”
Meoraq grunted, inviting the conversation to continue if it was the other man’s wish, although the politics of priests and farmers and the eternal rift between them were of no interest to him. Perhaps it would be different if he were a Sheulteb, shut up every day of the year in that common House with its common problems and common tongues forever flapping, but he was not.
“I used to wish for exciting trials when I was young and stupid,” Shuiv said after a companionable silence. “Well, younger. And less stupid. Then I had my first trial…” Shuiv hesitated a glance at him, seeking censure, but Meoraq merely waved at him to speak on. “And as proud as I was to burn with Him, I found myself wishing afterwards for a long, boring post. Which was given to me. And on the way here for—I don’t even know anymore—the sixth time? The tenth? I wished again that something real would happen, something meaningful. And here you are.” There was quiet between them and then Shuiv laughed a little. “It does not bode well for me in the trial to come. May I ask you a brother’s consideration?”
Meoraq tipped his head, knowing what was coming.
“My woman bore my child near the freshening of the year. If it opens a son, will you see him taken to my father? Knowing Arug, he’ll have married its mother off again before my bones are even black and I don’t think I can die completely if I have to worry over another man raising my son. Especially the sorts of men Arug’s been hawking daughters to.”
“My oath is yours, brother. If I stand in Sheul’s favor, I shall pass through Tothax in the early spring.”
“It should be proved by then. My thanks.”
The door opened. Not the door to the hall, through which Meoraq had come, but the door to the arena. The bailiff entered, bowing low. “Honored ones, the court of Tothax under High Judge Sen’sui requests your judgment at trial.”
Shuiv pushed himself off the wall, his smile broad and guileless, eager as only a young man could be. He offered his arm and they clasped shoulders, then left the hold. The bailiff lowered the stair for them. Meoraq descended first—the Swords were equal in the eyes of Sheul, but he reasoned that he had more years of service and if he didn’t take the initiative, they risked standing in the doorway saluting each other like idiots while everyone watched—and Shuiv came after, but they went together to the center of the ring and bent their necks.
It was not a large room, really. They never were. A man could count off fifty paces if he crossed at its widest point, but only if he was sparing with his stride. The corners were rounded; the floor was bare stone, sloping toward its center where the drain was set, to make cleaning easier; the mediators and witnesses had no access to this level, but watched from behind a screen from the floor above. There were no furnishings, no banners, no embellishments. The one indication of this room’s singular importance was the window set high in the ceiling, round as an open eye and stained with colors. In the right hours of day, the light that fell through that window seemed to pour fire itself over the arena floor, but it was growing late now and the arena was mostly dark.
One panel of the enclosing screen slid open, revealing the witnesses’ box. Meoraq knew Arug by his garish clothing and the frantic way he was hissing at his manservant, who then left at a run. He could guess the reason easily enough, but did not dwell on it. What happened after the trial was not important. All his mind and body now belonged to God.
The high judge raised both hands, although there was only solemn silence around him to begin with, and said, “The trial of Ezethu, a man of House Arug, against Mihuun, a man of House Arug, is hereby brought to light before Sheul.”
The men were not identified, but Meoraq knew them for their staring faces, where horror painted itself as thick as awe. Simple farmers with a petty squabble, neither man could have possibly foreseen this dispute going to trial and both clearly feared the consequences—a sure sign that both carried some measure of guilt.
The bailiff came while the high judge read the formal charges, to paint the sign of the Sword in white upon Shuiv’s chest. Somewhere behind the high half-wall, one of the farmers was marked in the same fashion, just as the other would be wearing the hammer now being painted in red over Meoraq’s own heart. He acknowledged the b
ailiff’s murmur of apology for taking such liberties, but scarcely felt the touch. His muscles were tightening, anticipating. He had fought three hundred battles and more; they were all the first and only one.
“—and submit ourselves before You, great Father. We await Your judgment. Do the Swords of Sheul stand ready?”
Meoraq saluted. Beside him, Shuiv did the same.
The bailiff retracted the stair and shut the door to the arena hold. The high judge brought his hammer down against the top of the half-wall with a flat, unimportant rapport and closed the screen. He could see shadows moving as Arug and his farmers drew slightly back, unsure what to expect, and hear the stern rumble of a judge’s voice warning them to be still. He closed his eyes as Meoraq the man to clear his mind of these distractions and opened them again as Meoraq the Sword.
As the ranking warrior between them, Meoraq began, drawing his sabks. “I do not spill my brother’s blood,” he said, facing Shuiv. “I do not bare my blades for men. I am not Uyane Meoraq within this ring.”
“I am not Ni’ichok Shuiv.” Shuiv smiled as he drew his new, shining knives. There was already color coming in at his throat. “I have no heart and no will in this hour,” he said, now in unison with Meoraq. “I know no fear and no vengeance. I am no more than a sword in Your hand, O my Father. Let them behold me, drawn. And let Your will be done.”
Shuiv began with the same ritual movements they had been taught as children, stylized expressions of balance more than battle whose familiarity helped to focus and center him. Meoraq’s body knew just how to meet him; his mind drifted, counting breaths while he watched his hands work. Their blades clashed and scraped, clashed and fell, clashed and whirled. He knew no urgency, no fear, nothing but the heat rising in his throat and belly, and the simple pleasure that could always be had from indulging in something fine after a long and difficult day.
How long that first, formal stage of battle lasted, he could not say. Shuiv’s movements became steadily more ragged as the color at his throat grew stronger. Meoraq could hear his breaths falling roughly out of rhythm, see the fires burning high in his eyes. He knew the moment that Shuiv let go and became the sword in Sheul’s hand, but he did not soon follow. So perhaps it was not for him after all, he mused, parrying the younger man’s increasingly savage lunges and thinking of the tower of fire. Or if it had been, strange that it should have been all to bring him this far to Tothax only to end him in the arena over a few rows of gruu and some bitter words. Perhaps it was Shuiv who was meant to go on. For a young Sheulteb to take victory over a veteran Sheulek of so grand a House as Uyane was certainly the start of a damned good story.