Tymon's Flight

by Mary Victoria

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ Bolas muttered in Tymon’s ear as the students swung into step with the beat of the drum. ‘You really want to be barred, don’t you? Well, go ahead. I won’t try and stop you next time.’

  Tymon could have laughed aloud. To be barred, expelled from the Rites, none of it held dread for him any longer. He almost welcomed the chance to break free of the whole wretched charade. It was ironic that Mossing had chosen this moment to fulfill his promise of protection, when the boy no longer cared for it. But he was grateful to the priest for one reason: he needed to stay on the quays. Rede would have sent him back to his dormitory and dashed all hope of speaking with the pilgrim girl. He murmured a clipped apology to Bolas as they marched, and lapsed into silence, his eye on the enclosure at the eastern end of the docks.

  Before long it became impossible to talk to the other students, even if he had wanted to. Every few steps the heralds’ trumpets emitted a piercing cacophony. The gongs clattered and crashed, obliterating all other noises. Tymon’s ears rang. Between the horn blasts he could just make out the cheers of the crowd, as if from another world. The column moved more quickly than he had expected. In hardly any time at all they had passed the city gates and were skirting the first bleachers. The sound of cheering escalated. The townsfolk were chanting a refrain, a single word.

  Go.

  Tymon had shouted the same thing in previous years, bleated out the thoughtless directive with the rest of the audience in the stands. He knew all too well what would happen now. The procession would come to a halt at the pilgrims’ enclosure, where the Dean would read aloud the Leaf of Summoning, the sacred invitation to the Rites. He had watched every year, in awe as a child and with a degree of macabre fascination when he grew older, as a figure inevitably detached itself from the knot of foreigners and stumbled forward in answer to the summons. He both dreaded the crucial moment and longed for it to be over, for the affair to be done with.

  Go, chanted the crowd. It was no hymn, no grand statement of belief—just a crude command, the collective desire of a group willing one person to death.

  The head of the column approached the enclosure. Bands of sweat broke out on Tymon’s chest and neck. He squinted beyond the ranks of green-robed novices, past the rough fence that separated the pilgrims’ corral from the bleachers, seeking out the thin figure with red hair. At last he glimpsed the pilgrim girl sitting near the edge of the pen. As if to prove Fletch right, she accompanied the simpleton, who squatted at the base of the slatted fence. She had her arm about her friend’s shoulders. She was infuriatingly close. If Tymon had stood a bare thirty feet further down the quays he would have been able to sign to her through the slats.

  But the procession was slowing down already. The horns gave a final, jarring wail and the drums rolled once before falling silent. The top of the column halted beside the enclosure gate. An instant of disorder followed as the back rows stopped marching slightly too late and the students came up short against their tutors on the narrow boardwalk, caught between the bleachers and the gulf. They were forced pell-mell to reorganise themselves. Tymon found himself separated from Bolas in the resulting confusion, pushed farther up the column and to the left, almost to the beginning of the fence. His pulse quickened; he could do it now, he realised. If he could just work his way a little further forward, into the next row, he might be able to exchange a few words with the pilgrim girl during the invitation ceremony. He pushed his way through the line of novices, ignoring his schoolmates’ protests.

  And still it was not enough. He had arrived at the corner of the fence but he could not capture the girl’s attention. She was looking the wrong way, her gaze trained on the Dean, like everyone else—everyone, that was, except the Nurian youth beside her, who stared at his toes. The heralds had stepped to one side leaving an empty space before Fallow at the enclosure gate. The Dean unrolled a long parchment. The cheering of the crowd died away.

  ‘Nothing is free,’ announced the Head of the College in the expectant hush. ‘We receive life and grace from the Tree. Without Her, all things would cease to be. Should we not expect to give something in return for so great a favour?’

  Fallow paused to allow his words to sink in. High above, dock birds wheeled and screamed mockingly in the silence, launching themselves from their nests in the trunk-wall.

  ‘All things have a price,’ resumed the Dean. ‘The Tree is merciful. For the sake of all, She accepts only one. Here, on this blessed occasion, we repay our debt. She giveth and She taketh away,’ he read from his scroll. ‘Hath brought forth all, and will devour all again.’

  A sound like a faint sigh went up from the crowd. Tymon eased his way past yet another row of boys, the second to last before the professors’ ranks. Someone swore at him in muted and colourful language. He squeezed beside the fence.

  ‘Kings She consumed, their pride to ashes blown…’

  He was barely five feet away from her now. Though the enclosure fence was the height of a man, it had been hastily built, the slats placed almost a hand-width apart. The pilgrim girl and her companion were clearly visible. He could catch the bubbling monologue of the lunatic, smell the acrid sweat coming off the young man’s body. He decided to risk speech.

  ‘Pilgrim!’ he whispered through a gap in the boards.

  ‘Saints hath destroyed, and martyrs’ bodies hewn.’

  She had not heard him. He tried again.

  ‘Lady!’

  The dangerous word finally caught her notice. He saw her eyes dart towards him, a slight frown appearing as she registered who he was. He beckoned to her through the gap. Slowly, unwillingly, she shifted position so that her head was nearer the fence, her face turned away from him. He leaned against the enclosure so that it seemed from the outside as if he was resting. Then he breathed:

  ‘I can get you out of here.’

  ‘Who among us joins their ranks?’ continued the Dean.

  ‘Must be going, must be going, must be going,’ babbled the light-headed Nurian youth. The girl sat silent beside him, her head bowed. Tymon began to wonder whether she had heard him after all.

  ‘What makes you think I want to get out of here?’ she muttered at last.

  The birds still circled in agitation over the main terraced road up the trunk, almost obliterating her words with their cries. Tymon leaned closer.

  ‘Listen. I’m serious. We can work out a plan, escape together—’

  She cut him off. ‘I already have a plan of escape.’

  ‘Who among us walks the Path?’ Fallow’s question rang out over the stands, imperative.

  ‘You do?’ Tymon stared at the girl, both relieved and nonplussed. ‘Can you get out of the jailhouse tonight?

  ‘Maybe. What’s it to you?’

  The birds, Tymon noticed distractedly, had increased in number. He scowled briefly up at the trunk-wall. They were wheeling over something on the main road: figures hurried along the ramp above the air-harbour, where it made its first zigzag turning up the trunk-wall. He could hear faint cries coming from overhead. He pushed the anomaly from his mind, concentrating on the affair at hand.

  ‘The things you said last time. You were right,’ he whispered through the slats. ‘I want to stop being a collaborator. I want to help.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ The girl’s answers were terse, inattentive. She kept her eyes fixed on her friend. The simpleton seemed increasingly distressed.

  ‘Who will go and make the Sacrifice?’

  The air-harbour echoed with Fallow’s call. Even the dock birds had subsided, quelled into submission by the hypnotic, recurring questions. Tymon’s limbs twitched with the irrational urge to respond, to run to the front of the procession and offer himself up to the Dean. A great shout welled up from the crowd and ebbed away again.

  ‘If you can get away, do it after the Rites,’ he pleaded hoarsely through the din. ‘The city postern should be open all hours for the Festival. Meet me on the main road, at the crossroads to the first bra
nch, at midnight. I’ll take you to someone who can fly you out of the canopy…’

  He glanced up again as he said it, towards Galliano’s branch. There were still people on the main ramp; the birds circled over them silently. Whatever the altercation was that had originally attracted them, it had now ceased. The company on the road was dispersing. Most of the figures were making their way down towards the air-harbour. They were Council guards, Tymon saw suddenly. He recognised their long pikes. One figure was left on the road. It mounted the ramp slowly.

  ‘Who will go and feed the Grace?’ trumpeted the Dean.

  ‘Must be going, must be going, must be going…’

  The Nurian youth’s raving had mounted in pitch. Tymon was about to speak to the pilgrim girl again, to ask her if she had understood his directions, when the simpleton moved. He half rose from the floor of the enclosure and remained in a crouched position, swaying on his haunches, his face anguished. The girl took hold of his arm in an attempt to calm him. She left the side of the fence to do so, murmuring in the youth’s ear. Tymon seethed with annoyance at the interruption.

  The scroll snapped shut in the Dean’s hands. ‘Who will go?’ he challenged, sweeping the bleachers with his gaze.

  The foreign youth was struggling to stand up now. The girl held on doggedly to his arm and reasoned with him in a breathless whisper.

  ‘Who will go?’ repeated Fallow, his voice thunder. He hardly spared a glance for the pilgrims. He was speaking to the townspeople, for their benefit. ‘Who will be Eaten?’

  The audience roared. Hairs prickled on the back of Tymon’s neck.

  ‘Must be going!’ the madman cried. He leapt to his feet, almost knocking the girl over in his haste. She tried one last time, desperately, to catch hold of him, but he eluded her and hurried towards the enclosure gate. His voice was clear and bright, assured.

  ‘I will go!’ he called out.

  There was an instant of dead calm. Then the crowd erupted, bellowing its approval. Screams, celebratory whistles and the din of hand-held clappers fed the fray. The pilgrim was allowed out of the enclosure by the Council Guards. He stood straight and smiling before the Dean, no trace of his former agitation showing in his face. The students beside Tymon craned forward to catch the conclusion of the ceremony. The pilgrim girl crouched at the foot of the fence, staring blankly at the spot where her friend had been.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Tymon queried in an undertone. She gave no sign that she understood him.

  ‘I accept your offer, on behalf of the people of Argos and of the faithful in the Four Canopies,’ Fallow pronounced, at the head of the column.

  There was a murmur of approval from the spectators on the bleachers. Tymon avoided looking in the same direction as his companions. The Dean would be anointing the pilgrim’s forehead with sap, he knew, taking the crimson cloak from its special box and placing it on the man’s shoulders reverently, as if he were a prince. A knot of distress twisted in his stomach. He did not want to watch the ritual taking place at the front of the procession. He did not want to see it, and he did not want to think about it.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he complained to the girl. ‘Don’t you understand what I said?’

  She did look at him then.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she repeated, low and fierce. She brought her face close to the slats. He felt her hot breath on his hand. ‘What’s wrong with me? Maybe it bothers me that this whole town is sick with evil. You must be sick, or stupid. Why else would you think that I’d abandon my people and go with you just to save my own skin?’

  Tymon was speechless. In all his planning and scheming, it had never occurred to him that the pilgrim girl would refuse his offer of help.

  ‘It’s incredible.’ Her harsh whisper jarred in his ears. ‘Don’t you realise I might have my own business to attend to? I don’t need you to save me, novice.’

  ‘But,’ he managed at last, ‘you’ll be sent away to the Tree-mines tomorrow. It’s impossible to escape—’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to escape,’ she retorted, her voice ragged with emotion. ‘I have a job to do here. If need be, I’ll do it in a Tree-mine.’

  Tymon bit his lip. The discussion was not going at all as he had intended. Dimly, he was aware that the Dean had finished his oration. The ranks of the procession were re-forming in anticipation of the second half of the journey to the Mouth. The pilgrim girl drew away, evidently considering that their exchange was over. But the boy lingered by the fence. He was unwilling to admit defeat, to simply go on about his business, no matter how little she seemed to need him. Despite the risk, he hung back in an attempt to convince her. It rankled his pride that she would not accept his help.

  ‘Please,’ he implored her. ‘Just consider the offer. I’ll be at the crossroads.’

  She only shook her head at him. The heralds’ horns blared out. The drums thundered to life again and the first rows of the procession swayed forward. She rose to her feet and dusted off her grey tunic.

  ‘You have somewhere you need to be, I believe,’ she said coldly.

  He stared at her in dismay. His classmates were now marching on without him and his inactivity drew curious glances from the other students. He heard his name hissed through the ranks as the novices tried to recall him to the moving column. The girl began to weave her way through the seated pilgrims, towards the rear of the enclosure. Tymon pressed his forehead against the slats. She could not simply leave him there. It was unbearable. In a fit of exasperation, he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. It was a word, a name, an act of desperation.

  ‘Samiha!’

  He barely distinguished her look of shock as she spun round. A hand clamped down on his own shoulder and he was forced about in turn, his back against the fence. Father Rede gloated over him a long moment before speaking.

  ‘Well, Master Tymon,’ he remarked. ‘I believe that all your extra chances have run out.’

  If a spectator on the stands had examined the air-harbour in the wake of the invitation ceremony, he might have seen two figures hurrying down the empty quays in the opposite direction from the Rites procession. One was a green-clad novice, the other a priest. The boy was forced into a humiliating trot every few paces, prodded on by the professor who strode behind him, his mouth compressed into a thin line of disapproval—or possibly satisfaction. Few people noticed the shameful exit, however. The procession had begun its ascent of the Path of Sacrifice and the attention of the audience was riveted on the line of priests winding along the high ledge. The crimson spark of the pilgrim marched proudly at its head. Shafts of late afternoon sun gleamed on the guards’ polished pikes; their torches, now lit, were yellow flecks against the grey trunk-wall. The incessant din of horns and drums echoed over the air-harbour. Almost directly below the Path, the rest of the pilgrims sat in a huddle of identical attitudes, pale faces angled to the sky. They looked very much like their counterparts on the temple frieze.

  As far as Tymon was concerned the eyes of the entire town were fixed on him in his disgrace. He jogged along the quays, jabbed periodically by Rede’s bony index finger, his ears burning with embarrassment. But it was the ruin of his personal plans that was most bitter to him. Father Rede appeared to have every intention of accompanying him all the way to the College and making sure he stayed there. He would not be able to join Galliano for the test flight, let alone make his ultimate getaway, all because of one stubborn female. He had been a fool to want to help her, he thought. He berated himself for acting on impulse, for following the dictates of a dream. He told himself that he did not care if she was named Samiha, if she knew someone named Samiha, or if the preposterous coincidence would finally convince her to take him up on his offer. He would not be there, in any case, to assist her. He would be confined to his dormitory on the one night his hopes might have come true. Father Rede had already confiscated his College pass.

  The priest said nothing as they climbed through the quiet streets of t
he city towards the seminary. He had not questioned Tymon as to why he had been speaking with a foreigner. It hardly seemed to matter to the professor what the boy’s crime had been, so long as he was apprehended and the world was back to its familiar shape—tutor and delinquent in their time-honoured roles, all things as they should be. They mounted the ramp to the College in dreary silence. The warden was not at his usual post, but just as they were about to pass through the carved seminary doors, a stranger emerged from the shadows of the courtyard to meet them. He was an Argosian of middle age and middle build, dressed in a dull black surcoat that reached down to his knees, the uniform of a lay Father. His throat was swathed in a white kerchief. Tymon recognised the man who had stood at the head of the Rites procession with the Dean.

  ‘Greetings, Father,’ said the newcomer, acknowledging Rede with a calm nod. His facial features were coarse and unremarkable, yet the overall effect was one of sharp, supercilious intelligence. He gazed intently at Tymon. ‘Bringing home a troublemaker, I see,’ he said.

  Rede’s reaction was far less composed. He snapped to attention and his fingers gave a slight spasm on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘My—my Lord Envoy,’ he stammered. ‘What a surprise! Are you not on the quays? But of course you come and go as you please, as you please—’ the priest stuttered with horror at his own indiscretion before rattling on ‘—Yes, a troublemaker. Indeed, a repeat offender. He has no respect for the law. I caught him attempting to communicate—for some immoral and degraded purpose, no doubt—with an unclean foreigner!’

  ‘Is that so?’

  The man in black stared unblinkingly at Tymon. The boy found that steady gaze hard to meet. His own eyes slid away in sullen embarrassment. He did not know who the Envoy was but Rede’s reaction was a gauge of his importance. His tutor was almost tripping over himself to win the other man’s approval, bobbing obsequiously as he spoke.