The Temple

by Jean Johnson

  Dulette nodded. “Good choice. Letif thinks the Domo’thio’s rants about this whole matter are nothing but goatspit, too. Shall I take Gayn from you now?”

  “That would be perfect. I know you normally exercise for another hour, but . . .”

  The younger doma shook her head. “It’s his arm that’s injured, not his knees, right? He can kneel or sit, and watch while I work out. Patience can be a punishment for the arrogant, as can anticipation of what I could do to him . . . though I’ll know more for certain what I should do when my tattoos fully assess him.”

  “Same. I’m going to keep one of the brothers for myself; I can do that and handle being Tipa’thia’s successor,” Pelai stated. “The Goddess will let us know how to punish them for a month.”

  “Who are you going to assign the eldest?” Dulette asked, curious. “Or are you going to keep Puhon Krais for yourself?”

  Looking down at the list, Pelai tried to think of a good candidate. It wasn’t the available Disciplinarians that decided her, however. A glance to the side, seeing the two younger waiting with signs of boredom or impatience, while the eldest simply knelt there, looking rather meditative, made up her mind. “I will take him. There’s something going on with him. I don’t know what it is, but I intend to find out. And given he’s as stubborn as I am, I’m not sure anyone lesser-ranked would be able to dig out the truth.”

  “I wish you good luck with that. Summon Gayn over here, will you?” Dulette asked, moving to put the cane still in her hand back on the tool rack attached to the wall. “I’ll take him now.”

  “Puhon Gayn!” Pelai commanded, raising her voice. “Come here.”

  The youngest of the brothers, barely over twenty, rose awkwardly, cradling his arm at the elbow to keep it from being jostled. He stared at her—resentful of his punishment, resentful of it not beginning, Pelai did not know. The important part came when he stopped and asked politely, if tersely, “Yes, Doma?”

  “Hold this list, and kneel. From this point forward, your punishments will be overseen by Doma Dulette. Kneel.” She waited for him to take the writing board and drop to his knees. Once he did so, Pelai moved in front of him. Placing her hands on his shoulders close to his neck, she leaned down a little. He gritted his teeth, but stayed in place while Dulette moved behind. Her hands pressed onto his shoulders at his deltoid muscles.

  Pelai waited until she felt the other doma’s strength suppressing Gayn’s innate magics. He struggled to breathe, his good hand going up to the base of his throat. Easing off her own pressure, she removed her unseen control with a nod.

  Squinting a little, Pelai studied the aura of energies wrapped around Gayn. He looked stable. Removing her physical hands, she took back the board and its list from him, and wrote down Dulette’s new penance subject with the attached pencil. Ink was far easier to read, but pencils were more portable. “The disciplining of Puhon Gayn is now your responsibility, Doma Dulette. Uphold the honor and the laws of your calling.”

  “I accept this responsibility, and will discipline Puhon Gayn according to the weight of his crimes and the strength of his penitence,” Dulette agreed.

  “I’ll put you down as having charge of him on the other lists as well, and block out one of your slots for the next two months. You can handle two of his strength, right?”

  “Two, correct. I have nothing scheduled for the next week for certain. You said it’s for two months?”

  “Yes. They did fail the Hierarchy in their task, even if the Gods Themselves were against it,” Pelai replied dryly, as she finished writing. “Pace your punishments accordingly.”

  “Of course. Puhon Gayn,” Dulette commanded. “You will return to your original position on the practice mat. But you will face me, and you will observe.”

  Satisfied, Pelai headed back to the other two. “Puhon Krais, Puhon Foren, rise and follow me.”

  “How long do we have to keep following you?” Foren complained under his breath. Pelai stopped in her tracks and stared at him. Stared him down, until he mumbled, “I apologize, Doma . . . it is not my place to question you.”

  “Are you that eager to be beaten?” she asked him, curious.

  Blushing wasn’t as easy to see on a Mendhite’s sun-brown skin as it had been on the pale peach hides of those ex-Mekhanans she had visited, but Foren did color a bit at her blunt question. So did Krais. A muscle flexed in the eldest brother’s jaw . . . but he said nothing.

  “You will have two months of punishments to endure, Puhon Foren,” Pelai reminded him. “That time frame cannot be altered without the will of the Elders. I doubt they will change it, so do not be in a rush to cram more punishments into that length. Now, follow me, both of you.”

  Chapter Four

  Foren hated the kneeling. Not so much when he’d done it on that felted mat, but here on the hard granite floor of the Index Hall? He couldn’t even lessen the burden with the twitch of a muscle, the activation of a tattoo to cushion his flesh and bone from the unyielding stone. With Gayn and Krais both gone, he had nothing to occupy his time but staring at Domo Anso’s kilt as the Disciplinarian searched through files to prove some stupid point of cataloguing.

  The older male was supposed to be attending to Foren’s disciplining. After the Second Disciplinarian left, however, Domo Anso and Domo Galen had gone right back to their arguing over the cataloguing of the Thelaiza Technique. Foren vaguely remembered it from his training days, some sort of behavioral alteration method, using sounds associated with tangible rewards to retrain penitents, until the sound alone could correct the behavior. Rather like how animal handlers trained their charges with whistles or clicks or barked commands mixed with treats and tribulations. Embarrassing, to think of it being applied to him.

  Clearing his throat when the two men took a break from the current ledger books being examined, he asked, “Domo Anso . . . may I use the refreshing room? And get a drink of water?”

  There were rules about such things, even for Hierarchy-disappointing penitents.

  “I think we’ll be here a few more minutes,” Domo Galen murmured. The thinner of the two Disciplinarians, he had more white hairs among the black on his scalp than Anso, but his had been cropped short.

  Domo Anso nodded, his gray-shot braid sliding along his shoulder. Meatier in shape, the Disciplinarian in charge of the middle Puhon brother stood like he should have been on the deck of a ship plying the waters around the many islands of southeastern Mendhi. Strong, stable, and unmoving. His fingers, however callused, handled the pagers of the index ledger he examined with a delicate touch. “You may go and refresh yourself. You must return promptly. If we have moved on before you return, you will have to find us . . . and your first punishment will be doubled.

  “If you fail to return in a reasonable amount of time, I will drag you back here by your own magics,” Domo Anso added.

  As if Foren could forget how the old man had a metaphysical leash on his life-energies. Rising, he bowed, backed up, and turned to orient himself in the Hall. All of the various Library buildings—the ones housing actual books and scrolls and other forms of written records—had constant low-level illumination thanks to tediously grown suncrystals laced through the ceilings and pillars. Those crystals only partially lit the rows upon rows of sturdy shelving lining the hall in neat, orderly formations, to keep from sun-fading the many scrolls and tomes.

  Still, enough light fell down on the slanted desks standing like flattened rooflines between each set of shelves that one could write on a complementary chalkboard with a bit of chalk from one of the bins on the tops of the desks, as Domo Anso and Domo Galen were doing.

  Individual lightglobes and mage-lamps of different origins and manufacturing methods sat in brackets spaced every two vertical supports along the rows of shelving, but those only lit when a book had been removed from the shelf, and shut off when all books were returned. The color they turned al
so had special meanings, making them part of the security system as well as the organization system; apprentice librarians could see in an instant if a book was out of order, missing . . . or damaged. An entire cadre of junior Disciplinarians stood duty in the various Library buildings, ready to act at a librarian’s command—Mendhite horror stories included a thousand and ten tales of different ways to be punished for damaging a precious book, after all.

  Bronze frames clipped to the shelving held strips of paper at various points, describing what subjects could be found within the indices stored on those shelves. These particular books might look like tomes and scrolls filled with precious information, but every single one was merely a ledger holding the location of another book or scroll, or even just a folder of associated papers. Which explained the plain covers of the tomes.

  The undyed runes carved onto their leather surfaces linked them all together, Foren knew. He had no interest in being a librarian, but growing up on the Temple grounds, he had learned about the processes used. One went to the approximately right section in the Index Hall for the subject at hand, and checked the Subject Ledger, which indicated the categories that a particular subject—such as Thalaiza Technique—fell into, along with volume numbers on where to find more information. Then one went to that section in the local stacks, and looked for the book or books, yet more ledgers, listing the actual tomes and page numbers where the subject in question appeared, along with which building and row and set of shelves where the book currently could be found.

  The Master Scrolls could have been faster to use, because it contained all of that information in a magically interlinked heading, but there were only five of them. At least, here in the Index Hall. There was always one Master Scroll in any Library building containing books. But they were only ever used by senior librarians, who sat on tall, padded stools in front of the great scrolls, made out of entire scores of cowhides scraped into parchment, carefully shaped, enchanted, and stitched together.

  Since the nearest refreshing rooms he knew of lay on the other side of the Index Hall, that meant crossing three of the long queues of petitioners waiting to consult the Master Scrolls. They stood lined up in the sort of untidy clusters that always formed, chatting with each other. It killed the time, he knew, awaiting their turn at asking the librarians for help in finding exactly what they needed to know. Foren muttered apologies as he cut through the first line in his path, but found his way blocked by a large knot of foreigners in the second line.

  Such clusters were not unusual. The Great Library of Mendham was probably the most visited place in the entire span of the world, with scholars, historians, teachers, mages, craftsmen, even ambassadors making the effort to journey to its many halls from all the corners of the world. Such an undertaking was not easy these days, not with the magic underlying mirror-Gates damaged and shortened in how far they could span a particular patch of land. Certainly, the Portals of old were nothing more than a memory of centuries past. A how-to memory filed properly under Transportation Methods, subheading Magically Assisted Transportation, sub-subheading Portals and Gates, of course.

  This second line had a cluster of foreigners with motley collection of clothes being worn, but a sort of similarity in their faces. Pale-skinned, square-jawed but oval-headed, not Mendhite round. Eyes that ranged from hazel to green, not just shades of brown. Hair that was brown—where it wasn’t gray, white, or balding—but not a proper dark brown, and definitely curly, not straight or wavy. Clothes that were made from very travel-worn materials, including a faded, crushed velvet for the robes of two of the older gentlemen. As for their ages, a half dozen youths, a handful of men of young to middling age, and some graybeards made up the mix.

  Permanent dirt stained their clothes, the kind where no amount of scrubbing or spellcasting could remove those deeply embedded muddy stains from along the ragged hems. A newer garment here or there did show among the dozen or so figures, but the majority of it looked to be outlander clothes. Such as the trousers under the robes that hung open, not sensible air-cooled kilts. The main concession to the heat of Mendhi seemed to be a lack of sleeves among most of them. The armholes had been stitched neat, some displaying more needle skills than others.

  A few—the middle aged to older ones—had thread-of-copper stitching in something that looked vaguely like thermal runes, no doubt in an attempt to invoke cooling energies. And of course, all of them were shorter than Foren, or even most Mendhites, though Foren stood on the tall side of things. Unfortunately, these short foreigners just stood there, muttering amongst themselves about Gate magics and shielding spells and something about petitioning for something, he didn’t know what. They certainly didn’t part and make way for him, though he stood there pointedly. Giving up, Foren spoke aloud, trying to curb his impatience.

  “Pardon me. Please move.” Foren didn’t have to worry that they didn’t understand him. Even if he didn’t have the pale blue of a translation tattoo from his right eye to his right ear, and down to the right side of his throat, he could see that each of them had a hand-carved amulet strung on a cord around their necks, marked with the runes of a translation spell.

  A couple of them looked his way, and one of the youths spoke arrogantly. “The back of the line is down there, sir. You look like a local. You should know that.”

  Foren frowned and pointed past them. “Yes, but the refreshing room is over there, and you are blocking my path to it. I am in a hurry.”

  “Refreshing room?” one of the men in his late twenties asked, perking up at that. “Where? Show me! Make way for him, all of you!” the man ordered, shooing the others out of Foren’s way with flicks of his hand, though he chuckled at the humor in his commands. “The man is in a hurry for a reason, and so am I!”

  With that, Foren found himself ushered across the middle line, and through the more loosely queued far line. The other fellow eyed him as they walked among the shelves. “You’re a native fellow, right? A Painted Warrior? Do you work for the Library?”

  “Yes, yes, and no, but I do work for the Hierarchy.” When not being punished unfairly, Foren thought sourly. Though technically he had not yet been punished, other than his aching knees. It felt good to walk, at least.

  “So then you still know some of the ins and outs of the Library. Excellent—I am Brother Grell, of the Order of the Traveling Brotherhood,” the fellow added, offering his hand. “Thank you for showing me to the refreshing room. What is your name?”

  Bemused but grateful for the courtesy, Foren clasped hands with him briefly. “I am Puhon Foren. Welcome to Mendhi.” He pointed up at a permanently embedded set of basalt symbols on the pale granite walls of the Index Hall. “That symbol up there means refreshing rooms are located here. There are three entrances,” he added as they cleared the last row of library shelves in the way. “Males to the left, females to the right, and everyone else in the middle.”

  Brother Grell snorted. “There isn’t anything else. The Gods made males in Their image, and then They made females from the scraps of the leftovers, and that was that!”

  Foren rolled his eyes. Outlanders had some very strange ideas, sometimes. Especially outlander beliefs where their religion hadn’t had access to thousands of years of speculation and discussion on such subjects. Worse, the fellow seemed to be unaware that females actually came first in the world—how else could there be babies being born without females to bear them?

  “I take it you are unaware of those born differently?” Foren asked dryly, approaching the refreshing room choices. Grell shook his head, and Foren gestured at the signs. “Well, they do exist, and they have existed since before even the First God, Fate, was born. Fate has always had no gender and all genders, all at once, simultaneously, for many thousands of years. Some people are born with the physical signs of both genders, placing them in a category between. Some are born with that same mix-of-genders feeling inside their skin, like they are more akin to Fat
e in the shape of their spirit than they are to anything about their body that seems solidly male or solidly female. Some, of course, are born with the spirit of one and the body of the other, blessed to understand multiple views of gender, while others don’t feel they have a gender at all. I take it you feel solidly male, Brother Grell?”

  “Very much so,” the outlander asserted. He changed the subject when they entered the room beyond, muttering, “I will never get used to these trench seats that have no privacy screens. I’m taking a cubicle for privacy, if you don’t mind.”

  “As you like,” Foren replied, unconcerned. Outlanders could get so fussy about things that were natural and normal.

  His own business took only a little time. Washing his tattooed hands at one of the sinks when he finished, Foren cupped them once they were clean and drank from his palms to slake the thirst that had grown in the last several hours. He hadn’t gotten much sleep, and he took a moment to scrub his face, too, in order to try to refresh some energy back into his body. By the time he finished wiping the water from his cheeks, the outlander stood beside him at the next sink, scrubbing his hands with the soap provided.

  “Right. Back we go,” Grell stated. He eyed Foren, and offered a wry smile. “If you’d be willing to guide me, that is. We turned a couple times in the stacks, and I’d be deeply grateful for the escort by someone who knows the way.”

  Foren debated brushing off the stranger. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he gestured sharply. “Come, then. I am here with others, and they will move on if I do not return promptly.”

  “Of course, of course; your time is valuable, as is your attention. You honor me with both,” Brother Grell added in flattery. “That you add your expertise in this setting only adds to my debt to you. Now . . . if I could ask one last question . . . “