Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  Such anxieties did not make for a peaceful night. After a fitful slumber troubled more by the dreams of loss and emptiness, Tymon awoke in the grey light of morning and leapt up, convinced they had missed the trial.

  ‘We’re too late!’ he cried out to Pallas, still slumbering beside him.

  Of course they were not too late, a fact that sank in for Tymon once the groggy vapours of his half-remembered dreams had dissipated. The sun had barely risen enough to angle through the eastern leaf-forests when they made their way up the main causeway, munching on a breakfast of bread and vinefruit kindly provided by Jocaste. The city streets were full of hurrying figures, freed from work to enjoy the winter’s holiday for the Day of Atonement had begun. Halfway into the second tier the two friends found their way blocked by a procession on the causeway. The sound of chanting rose up, punctuated at regular intervals by the insistent crashing of a hardwood gong. After a moment of disorientation, in which he expected for some reason to see Nurian pilgrims on the ramp, Tymon recognised the scene before him as a ‘witnessing', one of the many public rituals of purgation that would take place in the city over the holiday. He groaned in annoyance.

  The cavalcade now in full swing before the two youths was an entirely different affair to the Rites parade in spring. The latter was a select event open to only a few privileged citizens. The witnessings, by contrast, were outpourings of popular fervour beloved to the ordinary people of Argos. A citizen might visit a Jay brothel one night, perform penance the next day and receive a general pardon from the Fathers on the third. As a novice, Tymon had neither been permitted nor inclined by temperament to join such gatherings, though he had passed the marching columns in the streets many times. They were usually made up of men, stripped to the waist and thrashing themselves with bundles of thorny fireflax till the skin hung in strips from their backs. The penitents would perform their atonement in front of a crowd of screaming onlookers, most of whom were women. The event prompted hysterical confessions from the audience, who beat their breasts and tore their hair in accompaniment to the procession.

  The affair on the causeway had evidently just begun, and not yet had the time to work itself into a bloody frenzy. The men stolidly flayed themselves, chanting and crashing their gongs as they wound up the street. Tymon and Pallas were obliged to weave painstakingly after them through the bystanders.

  ‘Sav vay!’ muttered the Nurian youth. ‘Why they harm themselves? Your people are mad, Syon.’

  ‘Things like this happen in Nur, too,’ noted Tymon glumly. ‘Remember that woman I told you about in Farhang — Tanata? That was a witnessing, if ever I saw one.’

  They passed the obstruction at last, and continued up the causeway to the temple buttress, joining the crowd waiting at the foot of the main stairs to the Hall. The day promised to be bright and cold. Tymon and Pallas pushed through the throng on the street, intent on placing themselves near the top of the steps, where they might be among those allowed into the hearing. But every other citizen seemed to have the same goal in mind. The crowd surged behind a cordon of soldiers, going nowhere, and Tymon could not even reach the stairs, let alone climb to the top.

  He craned in vain over the heads of his fellow citizens, desperate to catch a glimpse of Samiha when she arrived. People lined both sides of the street, beggars and noblemen rubbing shoulders in their eagerness to gawk at the foreign queen. The coming of the Kion had filled the city with a mysterious excitement. Tymon felt it, too. His heart beat light and fast in his chest, jumping with each faraway crash of the witnesses’ gong, leaping with the fear of losing Samiha.

  ‘Death,’ cried the people about him. ‘Death to the whore of Nur.’

  And then, as if in answer, she was there.

  A caged cart rolled to a halt at the bottom of the steps, frustratingly difficult to make out from where Tymon stood. He could see only one section of the vehicle betwen the rows of people, enough to note that a canvas sheet had been drawn over the bars. The prisoner must have been visible to some, however, for the clamour in the street mounted in pitch. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Samiha as she stepped out of the cage, a slight white figure with a wisp of red atop her head. She began the ascent to the temple flanked by four guards, evidently present more to ensure her protection than her containment.

  Tymon elbowed frantically through the throng, terrified of missing his chance. If he could just get to the front row — if he could only catch her eye as she mounted the steps — it would be enough. But Samiha was gone slipping away, too far up the stairs to see him. Exasperated, he almost cried aloud. He could make out the Hall doors opening high above but nothing else. Ceremonial horns blasted out a cacophony and the crowd roared in triumph.

  ‘This is pointless,’ sighed Tymon, turning to Pallas.

  But the Nurian youth was no longer beside him, standing some distance away at the edge of the street. Most of the spectators were now pressing eagerly against the soldiers’ cordon at the foot of the steps; Pallas held back, beckoning to Tymon as he caught his eye.

  ‘Death to the whore of Nur,’ the scout shouted with cheery conviction, as his friend reached his side.

  The reason for Pallas’ enthusiasm soon became clear, for a group of Fathers strolled down the street from the direction of the seminary, accompanied by a fat-faced captain of the guard. They appeared to be inspecting the crowd, for they stopped every few paces to point out certain spectators. The captain would shout an order, and the soldiers would allow the chosen ones to walk up the stairs to the temple.

  ‘Death to the heretic,’ sang Pallas waving excitedly to the priests. He did not speak like a native of the city, but might have sounded like a Jay to an untried ear.

  ‘ … To the heretic!’ Tymon added belatedly, as the party swept by.

  At first he thought they would be passed over. Ranks after rank of the priests passed without glancing at them. But finally one of the Fathers near the end of the line, a bearded hulk of a man Tymon remembered from his anatomy lessons, halted opposite them. He showed absolutely no sign of recognition as he waved Tymon and Pallas onto the road, and they climbed up the steps, ogled by the envious throng straining on the other side of the cordon.

  Glancing about him at his fellow elect, Tymon was astounded at the priests’ selection. He had expected the solemn proceedings in the Hall to be open to the great and good of the city — to those with money, power or education. But the Fathers’ handpicked crew appeared to be composed entirely of beggars and rakes. They were all young, all male, and in various degrees of penury. They were certainly not the sort Tymon imagined might provide an orderly or peaceful audience at the trial. They leapt up the steps, calling to one another and shouting taunts to the other spectators. They smelled — much as he must do himself, he realised, after weeks of only the occasional rain-bath. Tymon smiled. On the surface of it, he fit the priests’ peculiar bill perfectly.

  He shuffled after Pallas into the smoky, candlelit Hall, herded by the Fathers to the standing space at the centre of the floor. A whiff of stale incense hung in the air. He had forgotten how dark the temple could be, how cold and oppressive. It was built precisely in such a way as to make a person feel small, cowed by the columns and the heavy dome, the looming icons of the saints. A man would be hard put to stand tall there, sure of his rights. A lone girl was an immediate target. The soldiers had escorted Samiha to a raised dock near the box reserved for the Dean and members of the jury, none of whom had yet arrived. It was the first good view Tymon had had of her since his arrival and the sight shocked him to the core.

  He hardly recognised the pitifully thin, ugly woman in the dock. Her hair had been hacked off until it stuck out in uneven tufts from her head, and her sallow skin was stretched tight over her skull, her eyes ringed with shadows. She sat crouched on a stool, evidently exhausted, dressed in her white prisoner’s shift. She did not glance up as the audience cried insults at her from the floor. If Tymon had not known her until that moment, he might have beli
eved Samiha was truly guilty, for she appeared a hard and unrepentant character, a miserable criminal going to a miserable fate. But he had known her. And the knowledge of all that had been, and all that was now lost, rose up and choked in his throat. He struggled to contain his rage and distress as a small door opened in the panelled wall of the jury box, and the reborn Saint strode out ahead of a meek line of priests.

  Tymon gazed on in disgust as the man he had known as the Dean was conducted with much overweening dignity to a chair equipped with a green cushion at the front of the box. Fallow’s white robes had been adorned with starched frills for the occasion, and a pointed hat sat like a three-tiered cake upon his head. As he sat down, the horns gave another deafening blast. Tymon experienced a fleeting sense of unreality: the scene in the jury box could not possibly exist. It was too absurd. The Saint held a long white staff adorned with bouncing objects that looked suspiciously like pom-poms. These he shook and rattled in the air to obtain silence as the other members of the jury perched themselves nervously on the benches.

  Tymon scanned their faces anxiously, dreading to see the Envoy among them. He had been on high alert since entering the Hall, aware that here, of all places, he risked an encounter with the Dean’s sorcerers. But neither Lace nor his young acolytes were anywhere to be seen.

  ‘Prisoner of the Law,’ pronounced Fallow, barely glancing in the direction of the dock. ‘You have been arraigned on this, the Day of Atonement, on charges of grand heresy and corruption against God—’

  ‘Nurry whore,’ interjected an irrepressible soul from the floor.

  ‘Corruption against God,’ repeated the Dean, with a slight frown. ‘The punishment for which is execution. The jury will now hear your confession. Prosecutor, arise.’

  The plump priest who jumped to attention at this command proved to be Tymon’s one-time ally, Father Mossing. The seminary tutor held a leaf of paper in his unsteady fingers. Tymon stared at it in dismay. He had not expected Samiha to submit in any way to the priests. How could she admit to ‘corruption’ against a God she did not believe existed? What did such an accusation even mean? It occurred to him that her confession would have been extracted under torture, and his heart froze. Hovering before the crowd, Mossing appeared somewhat overawed by his duties. He cleared his throat several times before reading from the sheet in his hand.

  ‘I, Sameeya of the House of Saman,’ he offered up, mispronouncing Samiha’s name, ‘also known as the Kion of Nur, do hereby state that I have worked closely with the Nurian rebellion to overthrow the government of the Domains—’

  ‘Nonsense. I never signed that confession,’ called a voice from the dock, clear and calm.

  The audience stirred and murmured in astonishment as the prisoner rose to her feet. Tymon fixed her with hungry eyes. Samiha had not given in, after all! A subtle transformation had come over the figure in the dock. She still looked like a haggard stranger, but her bearing was proud. The voice that echoed across the Hall was the dear one he knew so well.

  ‘These are false accusations,’ she announced. ‘I never worked against the colonial government—’

  ‘The prisoner will remain silent,’ snapped Fallow, half-rising from his seat in unconscious agitation. ‘Until she is requested to speak. One more such outburst and I will hold you in contempt of this court!’

  Slowly, Samiha sat down again. But her chin was held high. Mossing cleared his throat spasmodically.

  ‘I have also,’ he gasped, ‘sought to extend my influence by engaging in immoral sex acts with the sole purpose of deflecting souls from true Tree worship …’

  The audience erupted with whistles and catcalls, hushed by the priests. ‘We must move closer if we wish to signal,’ Pallas whispered in Tymon’s ear. ‘Not by south side. Maybe north?’

  The young man recalled their main purpose attending the trial, that of attracting Samiha’s attention. Pallas was right. The left-hand route around the crowd to the dock was out of the question; they would pass directly in front of the Dean’s box. But they might be able to work their way unheeded through the crowd on the other side of the Hall, skirting the great columns holding up the dome.

  ‘Thank you, Prosecutor,’ remarked Fallow, as Mossing finished reading. The proceedings were marred by a continual buzz of voices. ‘Please list the accusations brought against this woman by the colonial authorities.’

  Mossing bowed hastily, folded away the disputed confession and withdrew another scroll from the folds of his robe. It bore the flamboyant red seal of the Marak Governor. In the pause that followed, Tymon and Pallas sidled past the ranks of spectators toward the east side of the Hall, as if searching for a better view.

  ‘Item the first,’ fluted the priest. ‘The prisoner has conspired with rebels, aiding in the recent cowardly attack which caused the destruction of the Governor’s property.’

  ‘Rebel slut,’ called out several voices. The Kion opened her mouth as if to speak then checked herself, listening patiently as the two youths reached the shadowy colonnade and began working their way along the back wall of the temple. At that point, Tymon, who was walking a step or two in front of Pallas, froze in his tracks. Two familiar faces had come into view between them and Samiha. Jedda and Wick waited by one of the columns, their backs turned to the friends moving through the crowd. Tymon bit his lip in consternation.

  ‘Stuck,’ hissed Pallas softly. ‘Jedda: ay putar!’

  ‘Item the second,’ pursued Mossing from his post in the priest’s box. ‘The prisoner has been observed preaching heretical doctrine in the native Nurian shrine. She has persisted in this error despite receiving several warnings from the local authorities.’

  They could go no further. Tymon observed the pair of acolytes across the heads of the fidgeting audience. Wick seemed a bent and sallow thing next to the magnificently tawny Jedda. He caught a flash of his former schoolmate’s expression, watching the Nurian girl covertly as she craned her glossy neck to inspect the crowd; the quickly stolen glance was full of envy and thwarted desire.

  ‘Item the third,’ Mossing rattled on in the background. ‘She is accused of inflaming local unrest by writing poetry on the walls of the city.’

  There was something Tymon did not like about the spectacle of the two sorcerers by the column, a disturbing detail he could not immediately identify. Then he saw it. The figures of Jedda and Wick were those of two ordinary young people. But their shadows on the pillar were larger than they should have been, and the wrong shape. With a shiver, he noticed the pricked ears on the shades, their elongated, animal muzzles. Beast-shadows loped about the base of the column, nosing into corners: he knew, with the same certainty as had gripped him during his dream in Cherk Harbour, that one of the many things they sought for was him. Fear rose in him like a hot wave and he stared at the shadows in horror.

  ‘Are you well, friend?’

  Tymon looked up with a start to find Pallas bending over him, peering into his face with concern. Several minutes had gone by without him registering the passage of time. There had been a pause in the trial proceedings; Mossing stooped obsequiously over Fallow, who whispered in his ear. Though the shadow-beasts had disappeared from the column, Tymon found himself cowering on the floor, shrinking away from Jedda and Wick. He shook off the daze that had come over him and scrambled to his feet in alarm. He had felt that same leeching panic in the Envoy’s presence, the day of the attack on Sheb. The acolytes were using their powers!

  ‘Damn me for a fool,’ he muttered. ‘They’ll see me! I have to get out!’

  ‘See you? From so far away?’ answered Pallas, frowning. ‘I am not sure. If you really think you will be discovered, then we go.’

  But there was no way they could leave. The doors of the Hall were closed, flanked by the heralds and two watchful Fathers. There appeared to be no way out of his predicament. A little taken aback by Pallas’ unruffled reaction, Tymon cast about him.

  ‘Item the fourth,’ resumed Mossing in a loud voice. ‘S
he is accused of prostituting herself to gain converts, thereby contributing to the moral perversion of her co-citizens.’

  A ripple of delicious scandal passed through the audience at this latest charge. Catcalls erupted once more from the floor.

  Kill the whore. Make her pay, whispered a familiar voice.

  Jedda’s words had sounded clearly in Tymon’s ears, though he could see from her profile that her lips had never moved. She had fixed her attention on a man to her left, a slovenly drunk, half asleep on his feet. Tymon felt the hot pulse of the orah about his neck and the warning wash of nausea that accompanied an abuse of the Grafter’s power. He shuddered as the man shook his fist in the air and slurred out Jedda’s unspoken directive.

  ‘Kill the whore! Make her pay!’

  ‘Aye!’ cried other voices dotted about the Hall. ‘Make her pay!’

  She’s a liar. She deserves to die!

  Wick’s mocking tones accompanied Jedda’s as the pair exerted their control over the crowd. Tymon could almost taste their combined power, an acrid bitterness in the air. His old schoolmate’s head wagged from side to side like that of the shadow-beast as he searched out the weak-willed targets in the Hall.

  ‘She deserves to die!’ babbled another pawn, pushing through to the foot of the dock to jab an accusatory finger at the Kion. The guards about the prisoner did nothing to stop them. ‘Everything she says is a lie!’