by Craig Davis
Chapter XV
Begietan ran, foul and fleet of foot, through the darkness. He knew the choking blackness would make Domen only easier to seek out. Any light intruding upon his thoughts drove Domen further into vile solitude. A night like this — drowning in ink — and what might lie hiding in its depths, would lure him into the open, to embrace in base copulation.
Lost in single-mindedness, Begietan ran like gearworks, blindly dodging trees and jagged clefts. All he had once desired for himself — wealth, power, adoration — these he now desired only for his prince. Like a mule, thoroughly bought and bridled, Begietan labored, emasculated before his master. I turned almost sorrowful to see what he’d become, but my near pity for him quickly found cure; his cloak of arrogance before the people made cause to revile him all the more. Never a single act, nor word, nor thought passed from him, without he first consider his sovereign’s backlash. Now he lurched through the forests, refusing to requite the aching of his legs and lungs, bursting into Domen’s haunt.
“Rebellion roils in the mists, Lord,” he reported to the border of Domen’s wooded lair, upon his knees, his head low. Begietan could not see his master, but rasping breath birthed from the dark betrayed his presence. Swallowing hard, Begietan struggled to keep his panting low. “An encampment grows in the eastern moors. The quarry worker Cirice entices all men to take up arms and conspire against you.”
“Very well — if they so believe in death,” Domen thought out loud. Begietan heard his pacing steps upon the forest bracken. “The island lies in my hand, this island is mine, so has he said. Means abound to foil this little plot, many means. The right play of our hand will cause it to die of itself. The fools hang ripe for spoilage. First we must infiltrate — send the least of our recruits into its midst. Their stupid innocence will mask their mission, to be as a thorn in the rebels’ flesh. Even should we lose a few to Ecealdor’s cause, we still can corrupt whatever ideals this simpleton Cirice upholds. We will make their thoughts muddled and soft, and their threat to me will fade to nothing. Then Cirice too will disappear — I allow no other leader here; I will be king, I am just as he is. Later we attack, when they least suspect; we can bide our time, only then to sweep in and scatter them.”
Domen turned his attention to Begietan, rapping his knuckles stoutly upon his bowed head. “Hear my bidding: Send spies into the rebels’ camp, birds to pick at this seed of revolt. Plant lies among them. Raise doubts and arguments, empty debate, the more trivial the better. Strike at their unity through their weakest members, those who count themselves strong. Even only a grain of sewage added, and their fountain will flow poison. But first fetch your father to me, boy.”
Dutifully Begietan ran to his assignment. The eastern horizon had only begun to glow pink with the rising sun as he reached the Feohtan hovel. Roughly he shook Beorn awake, barking “Domen wants you,” without pretense of whisper.
“At what god-forsaken hour? Now? What for?” his voice bruised, his mind muddled. He glanced to his sleeping wife.
“Domen wants you — need you know more? Do you think I’ve stayed waking all night for the joy of it? What’s good for me is good as well for you people,” and Begietan ripped the bedcovers off, exposing mother and father to the chill air.
Beorn snugly returned the blankets around the stirring Cwen, hurriedly dressed and followed Begietan. The night surrendered its sword to the dawn, but the light gleamed dim still: Beorn, left alone, would have had no hope of finding Domen. Though Begietan’s years of combing the island served him well in these difficult conditions, he calculated his long, determined strides this morning to make Beorn’s trek difficult nonetheless, and so succeeded.
“Here,” Begietan snapped at the copse edge. “You’ll find him here, or he’ll find you, more likely. I have work elsewhere.” He disappeared into the tangle of trees, toward the village, where fate would have him meet me, and I destiny.
“Come to me,” a ragged voice called from somewhere behind Beorn. “You have ascended an important man upon Feallengod, no? You have earned high respect within the village?”
“Yes, now. For now,” Beorn halted, searching among the limbs and leaves for the voice. “Not long ago the people cared nothing …”
“Nor I. I have work for you now. Treachery takes root to overthrow me. A pitiful band of men plots my downfall. Do you join with them?” the voice demanded.
“No! No, by stone, I swear ...”
“The village will confide in you, man of Feallengod. I have given this to you. In return, you must number all who would fight for me against followers of Coren.”
“Do you prepare to shed blood?” asked Beorn.
“I do only what I must, whatever I please. Even now my enemies devise an ambush in the marshes. I must know my disciples, and those who fail me. Beat them, threaten them, bribe them from your rotten heap of fruit if you wish, but bring to me all the names.”
“But I fear my son has drifted into the moors, perhaps among the Coren-Ans.” Beorn spoke the name the village commonly used, always in hushed tones, for Cirice’s separatists, telling Domen more than Begietan had: The movement had unfurled into a presence, and identity among the people.
Beorn persisted, knowing that Hatan’s name on paper would fill in his death warrant. “Already you command allegiance from almost everyone. Why must you number them? Why must you sift out the Coren-Ans? Allow them to go their way without bloodshed. Do not gather your forces against them!”
“Do not dare spew that cursed name again! Why stand you there? Will you end your days here, or obey?” and Beorn finally spotted Domen, red eyes glowing from the shadows. “I give you a command: Count the men who will draw swords for me. Tell me the number, and compel them to prepare. Count those who turn traitor! Hesitate, and you will witness bloodshed sooner still than either of us bargain for.”
Beorn started as if to speak again, but thought better, nodded silently, and slowly turned on his heel. The walk to the village – long, unpleasant, repugnant – offered no path to his thoughts. He had not anticipated war. He had not prepared for delivering up neighbors, nor singling out his son; this greater wickedness overshadowed anything he could have foreseen. But his vow to support Domen remained. His word tied his hands to Domen’s lash, and he could not, would not break it.
I remember the morning well — Gastgedal and I walked through the village into the forested lands, where a simple cutting job awaited. My stomach ate a hole in me as I sucked my own spittle out of a piece of straw. Leafy underbrush crunched underfoot as we entered a shady grove. My thoughts fell scattered to every side until a hand came down upon my shoulder so gruffly, I spun to its grip ready to throw a punch. Only then did I see its owner to be Begietan. He smiled so as to show his equal eagerness to buy me drinks or leave me bleeding in the street. My gut turned at the sight of him.
“You! You know the islander Cirice, do you not?” he demanded.
“Yes, I know him,” equally confronting. “Less happily you as well.” My foolishness blinded me to all those, willing or no, who could end my time upon the island with not much more than a thought.
“The strutting rooster, just as you said! Welcome, cock fowl!” Gastgedal gleefully threw kerosene on tiny flames.
“Shut up!” I said as one with Begietan.
“The day comes quickly when your words will change,” Begietan continued. “Cirice makes himself a traitor, sentenced to die. Declare you traitorous designs also?”
“No, I stand loyal,” I said. I was loud, and a fool, but not a loud fool. Indeed I spoke truthfully as well, but not adding that my loyalty remained only to myself, never to buttress hollow despots nor empty promises. Yet did I grow still more hollow myself.
“Then Domen lays a mission upon you.”
“I’ve had all the missions I want from him,” I remembered well the foul work of Fulwiht’s prison cell.
“You volunteered that service,” Gastgedal eagerly reminded me.
“Shut your trap,
” I suggested, then turned to Begietan. “Get some other stooge to do your dirty work, whatever it may be.”
“You are the only stooge who’ll do. You people seem not to understand – you have no choice in work done for Domen.”
“Slavery does not befit me. I will pick and choose my doings. I will be my own master.”
“Master me! Master me!” Gastgedal cackled. “One man’s master is another’s rebel.”
“Shut up, I said!”
“You’d best not turn rebel,” Begietan glowered.
“I said I stand loyal. I just prefer my own work.”
“Domen’s work comes first. All work is his now, and his pays best. Complete this task well and you will reap rich reward.”
“Listen to him – he makes good sense,” Gastgedal broke in.
“How so?” I asked both the men.
“Recall the festival of death? May you pass every day just so.”
I did remember parts of the festival, enough to prefer such indulgence over hunger. “What does he demand of me?”
“Stamp out those followers of Ecealdor — you confess to knowing their leader. Go into his camp and inform on what you see.”
I cared not a farthing for Ecealdor, the sneering tyrant, but nor did I crave to sell out Cirice. “No – no. Why do Domen’s bidding, or more so, your bidding, you disgusting slug?” said I.
“Because I be my master’s servant,” said Begietan, drawing a dagger to prick at my ribs. “Because I serve my master’s edicts, and his edicts serve only himself. My master uses those he wishes and throws them away. Do you make yourself refuse? You should never have spoken to me today, for you have taken the hand of the new order. You dicker yourself either essential or expendable. Which do you choose?” He firmly gathered my coat around my back, tight under the arms, and pressed his point with sheer metal in my flesh.
“Let me go. You cannot make me,” weak words heralded my feeble struggle. I felt my heels rise slightly from the earth. My staff clattered to the ground, sounding like running footsteps. I glanced around for help and found Gastgedal missing.
“I can and will. I own you now. You will follow my command, or I will hunt you down to slit your throat like a hog.”
“Let go!”
He did, onto the support of the dagger; the blade entered my side. I gasped and pulled away as best I could. Quickly I knew I made no martyr. When one believes only in oneself, hardly any point exists to die for one’s convictions. The way Begietan knew the island, with the power he had attained under Domen, I knew I could never hope to escape him. Fully had I been bought.
“All right! All right!”
“You will do as I say, then?” Begietan pressed.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” He shook me violently, my head rattling.
“Yes, sir.” I despised myself.
Begietan dropped me to the ground and wiped his bloody dagger in my hair. I lay in the mud and tenderly tried to tend my wound. The blood pulsed, the pressure ached, and the choice of survival over pain came with difficulty. But in truth fear flowed more so than my gash, and the desire not to give over life to the whim of Begietan. “I expect a report in two days. Come to me, or I’ll come to you,” he explained. I entertained no doubt that he would.
Gastgedal, worthless, peered out of the cover of the underbrush, comically shrouded in scattered leaves. I scoffed under my breath at his impotent friendship. “You are of no good to me. You stay behind – Cirice does not like you.” Gladly I would escape his company, yet never did I feel severed from him.
So here now another part of the heart within me beat its last. First my love for Astigan, then for the wife of my bed; the wish for community, then for my king – all had died. Now the love I had for myself, so misguided it was, even that fell under the executioner’s blade. Vacant, paper man! I knew my wounded side would stand out like a badge, marking me a victim of Domen’s rule, false witness of my dedication to the Coren-Ans. The vile corruption within made perfect complement to the filthy crust of my clothing. So I exchanged my soiled attire for clean garments upon some innocent laundress’ line, and made for the moors. My new appearance of purity might succeed to fool some there, but certainly not me.
Beorn as well went about his foul bidding. From day to day, door to door, throughout the village he numbered men willing to spill blood for Domen, and men whose blood would spill. He listed anyone well old or young enough to lift a sword, tallied their weapons, calculated the horses and mules each could contribute. The days returned that baleful eyes met him at the doors and windows of the village. The townsfolk already knew it better to remain invisible in Domen’s kingdom, and Beorn’s rolls soon became a dangerously precise, tautly detested registry. Beorn also learned of a number who seemed absent from their homes lately, those who disappeared often in the evenings, not returning until early morning. Such men faded in and out of the mists of the moors.
“Many abide in the marshes,” he said to Cwen, fingering through his ragged sheets. “More than we suspected.”
“You give all your time to those lists,” she replied.
“Duty requires me. I have no choice. I don’t want to displease Domen.”
“I regret the day we first listened to him. He cares only for himself.”
“Do not say, Cwen. You believe me a shameful lackey to him, and rightly so. You must know he has posted spies and cutthroats everywhere. Do I make myself important to him? I tell you I’m not above suspicion. If he hears of you complaining against him, surely we will know his vengeance.” Beorn’s fingers fumbled nervously as his tongue.
“You think only of him now. I want you so devoted to me.”
Beorn remembered when he had been. He took Cwen in his gentle embrace, and felt her slip away. Her eyes brushed the floor as she held her arms stiff. What had made for this stillbirth — Beorn slow to do her wishes, or Beorn yielding weakly to her pressure, and that of Domen? Cwen couldn’t say what had grown to repulse her. Sorrowful, she knew not this man as one she could love, not in the way she wanted to love. Beorn let his hands drop, the sheaves of paper hanging perilously loose.
Some of the names from Cirice’s followers came as a surprise to Beorn, belonging to men who openly declared loyalty to Domen only days before. Begietan had chosen well, and these men he sent to work discord in the midst of the marsh. I made my name surety, witness to my prying obeisance. Within Cirice’s camp we wagged insolently of Coren’s death. We speculated that his body disappeared to symbolize power slipping from Ecealdor. We claimed to have seen him in dreams or visions, speaking new words of secret knowledge. We fostered hope placed in a stick of rooted wood, the one sign of life within the ashes, the one thing a man could put his eyes and hands upon. Words flew like arrows to find idle ears.
“His spirit lives,” a favorite greeting of mine.
“Yes, he must live!” might come the reply.
“I hear him rustling in the branches. His body matters not — but his spirit, it lives in all of us.”
“What do you mean?” A crestfallen tone always followed.
“His body can’t be alive. But no matter, he lives in the leaves. I saw him killed – his body fertilizes the tree. Good for the king! Now only his spirit lives, his memory, but lives forever,” I followed my teachers well. “What a wonder!”
“But, his body vanished from the ash heap! You do not doubt that?”
“Ha! Perhaps I know it; perhaps I don’t believe,” I replied. “I saw him killed. If this man from Gægnian can fall to humble death upon Feallengod, then I might as well be prince.”
“I choose to believe Witness.”
“Well you might. But he can’t claim sainthood himself. Don’t forget, he joined his family and kept the orchards’ food to himself. What secret agenda directs him now? He just enjoys the flattery of words, like anyone else.”
Yes, Hatan came under particular attack; Cirice’s spotty past also spawned much talk.
Only now do I realize
my putrid failure. Perhaps I can take consolation in a lack of commitment to my task. Regardless, my words had little effect. I remember not a single member of Cirice’s band falling away; still, argument arose and debate prevailed where listening should have reigned. The way I could twist truths and words, inspiration fails to describe. As the unity of the camp began to crumble, some began to wonder why they had traded one chaos for another.
“I suspect a snake in the grass, Witness. A weak attempt arises in our midst, to destroy our sanctuary,” said Cirice one afternoon. He now gave all his time to the moors, organizing and studying, and many of his followers as well. Those with families still spent days in the village, but Hatan and others had taken to remaining with Cirice.
“Domen’s wickedness grows yet more devious. He knows our feet tramp the moors, I am sure. He means to undermine us, and he will have us accusing each other if he can,” said Hatan. In his weeks of serving under Cirice, the forces’ numbers had grown and skills sharpened. Many found the comfort of labors focused their thoughts against the undercurrent of doubt. Armor and weaponry came to be polished, sculpture of delicate wood carving emerged, and the sights of beauty gladdened hearts within the cloud of the impending battle nobody doubted.
“I’ve heard the whispering. They count the prince dead. They call the king weak. He is only as weak as we are, and we are as strong as he is.” Cirice squinted into an indeterminate horizon.
“Domen will find the chinks in the fortress.”
“Better to meet him in the open, then, than to let him plant a cancer within us. I’d rather be killed by enemies than friends. Go find your father, young one. Tell him we march against Domen. Tell him one week — seven days and we march. That will bring Domen’s army into the moors. We’ll make ready, and perhaps leave the impression of a boot on his ass as we go down into death.” Cirice’s grim smile left no doubt: Prospects amused him not at all.
“Yes, I will tell him. Evening draws down, and he will arrive home by the time I get there. I might as well whisper into the ear of Domen himself.”
“Do not make of your father an enemy, Witness. He has fallen to deceit, and may yet come to his senses, if he does not see hatred in you. Do not let your heart fail.”
“Yes, you counsel well. I must remember. I’ll return,” Hatan said over his shoulder.
Upon the well-worn paths of Feallengod, Hatan couldn’t outpace thoughts that this might prove his final journey to the home of his youth. The days past with his father in the orchards, the heavenly days under the leaves’ tender attentions, seemed a distant fiction. Games of his boyhood — riding upon Begietan’s back, springing out in childish attack from thinly veiled hiding — these vanities weighed especially absurd to him now.
As his feet bore him along, a voice in his head rose to a whisper, then into a nagging drone: “You are utterly alone, are you not, man of Feallengod?”
“No,” he insisted. “I am not.”
“You are alone, alone.”
“No, no.”
“But so you are. Soon your family will testify. You have separated yourself from them, and you are utterly alone.”
“No.”
“Do you expect your mother’s embrace? Will your father run to meet you on the road?”
“No.” Hatan’s steps slowed.
“On an island of thousands and thousands, you are utterly alone. You have separated yourself from all humanity.”
“No.”
“See them at their work? There in the fields, there along the road. They go about their lives without this worry and despair. Who are you to judge their ways? What wrong lies in the lives they choose?”
“They’re no different from me. It isn’t me that makes the difference,” Hatan thought.
“Don’t you long for their company, for their friendship? Don’t you desire love’s embrace? There — don’t you see her?” the voice said. “What about that girl — see the curve of her cheek? See her skirt sway against her moving? She looks at you — and now not, but she smiles still. Don’t you long for her touch?”
“Yes.” Hatan came to halt.
“Do you think her evil?”
“No.”
“She will make you happy. She at least will drive away your sorrows.”
“No. They will never leave me.”
“You just haven’t tried. Forget about what has happened. What’s past fades into dead memory. You must cling to what you see now, and live in the world born to you. Let go of the things you saw once, the things you no longer see.”
“No. I must remain faithful.”
“Don’t forget your failure. Don’t forget, you betrayed Coren. No one will have you. Nobody will stand with you.”
“I know I failed. I will fail again — nothing new. Cirice said so.”
“Cirice only uses you, to lead you into destruction. You shake with fear.”
“Yes. But I must trust him. I have no other – you say so yourself,” Hatan’s eye again caught the girl, her face brown from the sun. The smiled lingered.
“You have your final chance. She is not evil. See the softness in her eyes? Will you have a normal life? Or have you sold your soul?”
“Yes. I have a job to do. Cirice depends upon me.”
“You will receive no love in return.”
“I require none.”
“You are utterly alone.”
“So be it, then.” Hatan bowed his head, and again his feet took to the path, and his mind to his mission.
Hatan’s mind turned to another girl, his mother. He only vaguely remembered the times long ago, Cwen’s voice in the kitchen, her glad song lightening the toil of everyone within hearing. In those days her touch, gentle as a petal, could lift away tears and heartaches, and her healing words would anoint his young spirit.
Cwen spent her days now seeking busyness, any kind distraction from her crumbling house. She studied her hands far beyond their interest at whatever work they found. The days had long passed that she cared about the orchards, the pits and cores of vain sweetmeats. Her thoughts turned ever more in to herself, though out of mourning what she had lost, rather than selfishness and what gain might be had. Once she had coveted the good foods of the land; now she only wanted her sons. One dead and gone, another crazed beyond recognition, the third stolen away by strangers.
“Hatan!” her cry cut like a knife as he appeared in the doorway. Her sewing fell as she jumped from her chair, running to throw arms around his neck. At last he had come home, and she thought to retain him through weight of will.
“Mother, I love you,” he said, returning her hugs. For a moment they clung to one another like trees entwined together by the years. “I must speak to Father.”
“Oh,” she said simply, withdrawing her grasp. Her heart sank at the words. “He toils out back, replacing mortar fallen from the walls. Please make peace with him, Hatan. He needs you so. We so want you home.” Without thinking, she reached to her breast, but no medallion hung there.
“I must do what I can, Mother.”
“Hatan, your sword goes missing from the mantle,” her eyes spoke her worry.
“I know,” he replied. He exited the door; through one window and to the next, Cwen watched him round the house to the back where Beorn worked.
“Father, I come to speak to you.”
“Hatan,” said Beorn, working a trowel into large cracks where Begietan’s room pulled away from the rest of the house. He looked up from his labors and stilled his hands; the two men kept an uneasy distance.
“You must know I’m with Cirice.”
“Yes, I suppose I knew. I suspected no other thing could come upon me.”
“We know Domen has moved against us. He cannot stand to let anyone slip from under his thumb, and so he conspires to eliminate us. I give you warning, we will march against his forces in a week’s time.”
“Domen means you no harm, nor your people either,” said Beorn.
“Do you speak those lies, Fathe
r, or does Domen’s own voice creep from your throat? You know I will not believe such things.”
“I don’t know what I say, nor what I believe myself. It seemed the best way, the easiest way …” began Beorn.
“We will march within a week, Father, many men, with many weapons. I don’t expect you to join, but please do not cross blades with us. If you refuse to stand against us, perhaps Ecealdor will show mercy to you.”
“You still believe Ecealdor? Even after all your eyes have seen, you insist on still believing him?”
“Where else lies there to hope? Do you not feel the destruction awash around you? You don’t trust Ecealdor, Father — then perhaps trust your eyes. Look at the overthrow of Feallengod, the rape of the orchards, the village’s wreckage. See your own family, Father, it tears at the seams. Domen has his will with us! He has blinded your eyes, and you have preferred his darkness.”
“Hatan, I don’t begrudge your love for the old king, but you must consign him to legend. Recognize the folly of opposing Domen! I myself have counted his forces; he numbers surely ten to one against you. You have no hope of victory, no hope of survival. Men walk among you who will wait until battle enjoins, then slip their knives into your back. In deciding for battle, Hatan, you will rather choose suicide.”
“You force me to decide, Father!” Hatan fairly screamed through his bitter tears. “What about the hymns, the singing that filled the orchards? Do you not remember? Have so many years passed that you can’t remember? If those words only emptied the breath of your mouth, if they did not caress and carry your heart’s longings, then they bear a putrid odor to me. And you refuse him even that barren devotion now. You it is who forces me to decide, Father, and you force me to decide against you.”
Beorn dropped his tools to clasp his hands. “Please, Hatan, do not ride out with Cirice. So great a man of valor, still he can lead you only into the grave against these odds. No end awaits you in this but death.”
“Fine. Then I will share the same end as Coren.”
“Coren! Coren!” Beorn’s voice and anger rose to match Hatan’s. “That name has only poured out division upon Feallengod! Oh, how I yearn for Coren’s memory to forever disappear from this island! How I lament, that he might never have drawn this line in the dirt to make us choose!”
“The problem lies not in Coren, Father; your heart mourns its own divide. You never sought him, never thought of trusting him. In your arrogance you took insult that the king bowed not to your desires. From the first time your eyes fell upon Coren, you rejected him, though he begged and pleaded and even came into your home.”
“Please come back to me. Come back to me, Hatan,” Beorn threw his lot to hopelessness.
“My name is Witness,” came the reply.
A short pause seemed an eternity. “So you renounce your name.” Beorn’s countenance fell further, though hardly possible.
“I love you, Father, the father I grew up under; I can stand with you no longer. The day has passed when I would never go against you, when I defended you against even my own mother and brother; now I must declare you wrong in this. Go the way you must, but as for me, I will serve the king. I take a new name.”
Beorn remained silent. Retrieving his trowel from the ground, he lightly poked at the space between two stones.
“Please do not ride against us, Father. One week’s time.”
Witness stood there another moment, then moved to leave. With no farewell to his mother, his duty done, he wept each step of the slow journey back into the moors and the tender embrace of his friends.
Beorn went through the motions of his work, until his arms drooped. He leaned his head against the vain strength of the stones and wished himself dead. His thoughts pounded within his brain until he no longer knew them but for their pain. Minutes, perhaps hours, passed, he knew not where, and he heard only the sound of his own breathing. Slowly he stood erect, wiped his hands on his pants, and started upon the smoothly paved path out of the village and toward the malevolent gloom of Domen’s grave hideaway.