Trial of Intentions

by Peter Orullian

  Roth had the presence of mind to keep the sword held up, to ward off another strike. But Vendanj had a different idea. He focused on the stone beneath the man’s feet, to change its form. But before he could do so, Losol leapt at him, disrupting his concentration.

  Grant swept in, forcing Losol back. The clash of steel rang loud in the chamber.

  Vendanj began drawing the Will again, when Roth rushed him, his blade held out like a shield. Instead of Roth, Vendanj focused on Braethen, who still lay unconscious in the hall beyond the door. He whispered a waking to Braethen’s mind.

  There wasn’t time to see the results, as Roth’s sword sliced down at Vendanj’s chest. He was too taxed to do anything more than step back out of the way. His legs threatened to give out. He stumbled, nearly falling over Artixan. The reminder of his dead friend brought new anger and energy.

  He drew what Will he had left and focused it on the ceiling above Roth. The stone shattered and began to rain down. Several large pieces struck the Ascendant, who scampered away. Vendanj glanced to his right, where Grant and Losol traded blows, neither dealing anything fatal.

  He dropped to his knees, panting, bone-weary. The sound of boots over rubble brought his gaze up to see Roth’s thin smile through the dust hanging on the air. He might have enough energy to do one last thing, but it wouldn’t be forceful, and his mind couldn’t lock on what might succeed against Roth’s blade.

  “How might it have been different,” Roth asked, with an executioner’s confidence, “if you hadn’t wasted so much energy trying to save Artixan?”

  Anger swept through him to think his friend’s death had been little more than a strategy to weaken Vendanj for battle. But it was a dull anger, lacking his ability to act on it.

  He’d begun to consider his last move, which he held little hope would save him, when a soft sound, like an eddy of wind that might stir a drape, shivered in the air. Braethen tumbled to the floor behind Roth, and looked up at them, disoriented.

  Vendanj liked the look of confusion in Roth’s face. The Ascendant had seen Braethen move instantly from one place to another. Vendanj would have laughed, if he’d had the strength.

  “This isn’t your fight, Sodalist,” Roth said coolly.

  “You made it my fight the night you killed E’Sau.” Braethen got to his knees and pointed his sword at Losol. “Call him back. And get the hell out, before I do this again and put my sword in your back.”

  Vendanj could hear the strain in Braethen’s voice, and could feel the strain in his spirit. Braethen didn’t have the stamina to withstand the effects of what he was doing. Not again. But Roth didn’t know that.

  The Ascendant considered for a long moment. “Losol.”

  The Jurshah leader pulled back as effortlessly as he’d been fighting. He’d suffered a healthy cut on one forearm, and seemed pleased to have been wounded.

  Roth looked past Braethen at Vendanj. “It’s inevitable. But have your graver’s moment.” Then he and Losol backed halfway down the hall, before turning and striding swiftly away.

  The silence of death took the room in its horrible embrace. Grief landed hard in Vendanj, sudden and gripping. The sense of irreplaceable loss struck him. Artixan, no. He looked up, wanting to plead, wanting to wail. He did neither. He only lowered his head again to his old friend and teacher, and found himself too weary even to weep. A long moment later he bent more deeply over his friend’s body and kept a private silence.

  In some ways, Roth’s coup was now most complete.

  He felt the hands of Braethen and Grant on his back in sympathetic comfort. The losses are too many, he thought. And I am tired.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  The Bourne: Requiem

  But who then saves a savior?

  —Dimnian thought riddle; such conundrums are believed to be more than exercises of inductive reasoning, but actual questions with precise answers—this riddle being one the Sedgel had concerned itself with since the Placing

  Kett Valan craned his neck up to watch Praefect Lliothan leading his children, Marckol and Neliera, by black leathers lashed to their wrists. He saw them with just one eye, the other damaged beyond use by the beating he’d received. He tried to get up, but the shattered bones in his knees tore at his flesh and sent waves of pain up and down his legs. More than anything, his helplessness and the helplessness of his children tormented him. He should have been protecting his little ones. His notions of freedom from the Bourne seemed suddenly foolish and selfish, and he cursed himself to think of the consequences he might have wrought.

  The praefect didn’t rush, walking in the breeze carried up and over the edge of the chasm behind Kett. Lliothan’s indifferent eyes remained trained on Jinaal Stulten as he came. Behind the praefect, the large manor rose up like a monolith against the slate sky. Kett was trapped. Not by the Bourne chasm behind him. Or Stulten. Or even the embittered city of Kael Ronoch. He was trapped by the threat being made to his small ones, and his own inability to stand and defend them.

  “Is he shelah?” Praefect Lliothan asked as he came to stand a few strides from Stulten.

  “Was there ever any question?” the Jinaal replied. “I think you mean to ask if his influence is finally given to Quietus.”

  Lliothan stared back, seeming to wait for Stulten to answer his own question.

  “No, he is not shelah. Nor did I expect him to rise above his petty Inveterae dreams. But we were asked to try, weren’t we?” Stulten then shifted his menacing glare past the praefect and toward Kett’s little ones. “They are pathetic looking,” he observed.

  “They are Inveterae,” Lliothan replied evenly.

  Marckol and Neliera looked at Kett. His little girl’s face was wet with tears of fear. His son’s eyes … Kett had never seen Marckol so afraid; the boy silently pleaded with him to save them. Roughened skin, rubbed raw in places, around his children’s wrists told of their struggles against their bands. The effort had seemed to teach them better of it.

  Again, Kett tried to stand, if only to show some dignity in front of his children. But only his right hand was of any use to him now, and the moment he tried to put any weight on his legs, the splintered bones in his knees again tore at his flesh. He dropped back to the hard stone of the courtyard. His only hope of helping his children was to try to convince Balroath that he could still be of some use to him.

  “There’s no need to threaten the lives of my little ones,” he began, trying to keep worry out his voice. “I was stubborn. I’ve been punished. I have no more will to oppose you. Instead, let me advise you. No more tests. No more visiting my friends with death squads. I’ll live under arrest, and I can provide you information to help you with my people.”

  “No!”

  Kett looked over and found his son staring at him in horror. Through his own fear, Marckol had spoken. “No, Father,” Marckol repeated. “Don’t help them kill the others.”

  Pride swelled in his breast at his son’s act of bravery. But behind his pride came a wave of self-loathing—he’d just offered to betray innocent lives to save himself and his children. And his son knew it.

  He averted his eyes from his son’s gaze.

  How far had he fallen from being the Inveterae who’d stood at his own tribunal and watched his beloved destroyed, and in those moments still plotted to use the trial as a way to further their plans of escape? Now, all he could think about was survival. Not for himself, but for Marckol and Neliera.

  “It would seem your son has inherited the same courage that made you foolish enough to try and deceive us, Kett Valan. These are good things to know about the young, no?” Stulten’s words carried an undertone of menace.

  “He’s a boy,” Kett said. “He doesn’t understand the way of things.”

  The Jinaal took a long look at Marckol. “He understands,” he concluded.

  “Stulten,” Kett said, desperate to get the Jinaal’s eyes off his son, “you could kill me now, and you could kill my children. But what purpos
e would that serve? Isn’t your function to find ways to use us to achieve your ends? Of all Inveterae, there are none better than me that you might use. You know this is true.”

  “Your usefulness is done.” Stulten raised a finger as one making a point. “But you make a keen observation: finding ways to use … a child. Yours, yes. We’ll come to that. But you might like to know that we have another child, a human child, a trouper, being held in one of the colonies.”

  Kett looked back at Stulten, confused.

  “This trouper boy means an awful lot to a particular labraetates, a singer. She is Leiholan, Kett Valan, and we believe she’ll come for him.” Balroath smiled. “Do you see how poor your timing may be? We could be walking south across the Pall this very cycle. We could be walking through a seam in the Veil rent by the power of this Leiholan’s song. But you won’t be walking with us, because you’ve clung to an old vision of who we are. A shame.” He looked around at Kett, his face placid, considering. “Because the last question, Kett Valan, is this: Will the Inveterae ever join us to march against the Tabernacle’s favored races? If, after it all, they will not … then death squads and any information you could give me are of no consequence. The only solution is annihilation of all Inveterae.”

  The words chilled him. He’d always believed that if nothing else, the Quiet would keep Inveterae around to run their camps and produce their crops to feed their armies. Though a bitter life, it was a life. And the Inveterae had learned to suffer it.

  But perhaps annihilation is just as much a liberation from the Bourne as escape to the south.

  An unexpected peace entered Kett’s heart, and he stared up at Stulten until the Jinaal returned Kett’s gaze.

  “Then do it,” he said, without fear or remorse or defiance. Just a simple reconciled reply.

  A flicker of confusion passed over Stulten’s eyes. Then a thin, awful smile twisted the other’s lips. “You truly are shelah, Kett Valan. Tell me, are you bold with the lives of so many because you believe the gods have prepared a reception for you when you pass through the narrow way?”

  The Jinaal didn’t want a response. He wanted only to deride him, cast him further into despair. But Kett had never really considered his own relationship with the absent gods when it came to what followed death. His only business had been escaping the tyranny of the Bourne alive. But without the ability to stand, the smell of death rising on the air from corpses that lay far down the face of the cliff, and with his children looking on, Kett found an answer to Balroath’s question that he hadn’t expected.

  He rose up on his elbows, and spoke more to his little ones than to the Jinaal. “I’m not the savior you think I am. I’m not one to give faith or hope.” He nodded just slightly to his children. “But acknowledging the Framers at all reminds us that death is not the end of life. And if that’s so, we have nothing to fear from you. Since the very worst you can do is to send us to our earth, where we will be free of your enslavement, and closer to those we care about.”

  His words seemed to comfort his children, if only a little. Just that much, coupled with the praefect’s vow to kill them quickly—should it come to that—was good enough.

  But his words hadn’t the same effect on Stulten, who started to laugh. When he’d finished laughing, he squatted near Kett, looking over Marckol and Neliera as he spoke in a low, almost affectionate tone. “Ah, Kett Valan, don’t you see? What I have in store for you is not so easy as that. Your punishment is not death, nor is it the annihilation of all Inveterae—though that is something we have already begun in the west. No, your punishment will be to live. To live with the images you will see here today. Images of your little ones, frightened. Images of them dying a very painful death while you watch, unable to help them.”

  The horror of it descended on Kett, suffocating him, seizing him with panic.

  “That, Kett Valan, will be the suffering of the Inveterae shelah,” Stulten continued. “I will keep you alive a very long time to wonder if the reunion you believe awaits you beyond death is real, or if you brought the premature end to the lives of an entire race … beginning with your own family.”

  Kett’s mind raced as he struggled to find words that might change the Jinaal’s course, some point of leverage or promise he might make. There was nothing. He’d already proposed everything there was to offer Stulten to stay his hand against his little ones. And he was of no use in his own defense or the defense of his children. He had to act while the Jinaal was close.

  He buried his one good hand in Stulten’s ceremonial robes and pulled him down to the ground, where he sank his teeth into his cheek. He ripped free a huge chunk of flesh. The Jinaal howled and kicked. One boot struck Kett’s left knee, sending a new wave of pain through his body. But he fought through it, trying with his useless hand to knock free Stulten’s knife. If he could just get it out and close enough to grab.

  But before he could do much more, Stulten pulled away, ripping his garments from Kett’s fingers. The Jinaal’s cheek bled freely, showing a glint of reddened bone where the flesh was gone. The wound oozed more when Stulten smiled.

  “This is what I expected, Kett Valan. Not the supplicant you’ve shown yourself. You knew what would happen when you crawled back to Kael Ronoch. You knew we would bring your small ones. Would they not have been a better sacrifice with you still on the high roads trying to stir your kind into its separatist dream? You have cheapened their lives … and deaths. That, too, you will live with for a very long time.”

  Kett watched as Stulten nodded to Praefect Lliothan.

  “Please,” Kett pleaded. There was nothing else left for him to do but beg. And while he didn’t expect any pity, he was helpless not to try.

  But Stulten didn’t even acknowledge him, stepping back to give Kett an unobstructed view and the praefect plenty of room.

  “Father,” each of his children whimpered, seeking help from the only source they could.

  Their appeal brought new anguish and determination to Kett’s heart. Against the excruciating pain, Kett forced himself to stand. He caught the praefect’s uncaring gaze, and with all the conviction he could muster, spoke a request.

  “Don’t do this, Lliothan. There’s another way.” He had only the old desire left. It might sound weak to them, but it was all he could think to say. He softened his voice a shade. “What if there were no Veil? Could there not be just … life, day after day, in a place that knows death only after a lifetime of peaceful skies?”

  The praefect didn’t reply.

  “Is there truly malice in you, Lliothan?” Kett continued. “Or could you have been told lies to stir your hatred against an enemy you’ve never even seen?”

  The wind up from the chasm swirled around them with its awful smell and black dust. The praefect’s countenance didn’t change, and he regarded Kett with icy indifference.

  “Kett Valan,” Lliothan finally said, “you’ve been found guilty of betraying your covenant. The Jinaal have spoken your punishment.”

  As the praefect began pulling Kett’s son in by his tether, the boy looked in pleading desperation at him. “Father,” he cried.

  Kett tried to get to his son, but after a single step his legs simply gave out, his knees unable to support the weight of his body. As Lliothan reeled Marckol closer, Kett pulled himself over the stony courtyard as fast as he could, trying to reach them. It took him only a few moments to realize he would never make it in time.

  As he dragged himself forward, he looked into his son’s eyes. “I love you, Marckol,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be together soon.”

  “Father!” his son screamed as the praefect put one mighty hand around the boy’s chest.

  Lliothan let go Neliera’s tether, and brought his other hand up around Marckol’s neck.

  “He’s a boy, Lliothan. Only eight seasons.” Kett then saw an awful glint in the praefect’s eyes. “Remember your oath to me, Lliothan.” Be swift!

  And in that moment, Kett knew the p
raefect’s treachery knew no bounds. He began to squeeze his son’s throat, cutting off his cries. Kett could only watch as his son struggled helplessly until a muted snap came from beneath the hand clenching his son’s throat. Then Lliothan dropped Marckol, who fell to the hard stones like a doll, not yet dead, convulsing, his throat broken, useless. His boy fought to breathe, his eyes wide, looking plaintively at Kett.

  And even as his son fought for his life’s breath, Kett screamed, “Run, Neliera!” His daughter did not. She stood frozen in fear, crying. And where could she have run? But he yelled it again, bringing only louder sobs of helplessness from her.

  Lliothan took two long steps, grabbed her up, and turned toward Kett again to be sure he witnessed this moment clearly. Neliera didn’t struggle, her fear so complete that she could only hope for some rescue. Through her sobs she called to Kett meekly, as if a softer entreaty might earn her his aid. The sound of it seared Kett’s soul.

  “Lliothan, for the child’s sake, swiftly, please,” Kett pleaded.

  While looking at him, the praefect performed the same horrific act, crushing his little one’s throat just enough that she would gasp and bleed inside, her gullet swelling, her breath slowing.…

  Lliothan dropped her beside her brother, where the two lay broken, drawing weak, strangled breaths, their faces pale and frightened. Kett pulled himself toward them, his ruined knees smacking stone edges that he no longer really felt. He reached his children in time to stroke their faces and see the questioning looks.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “You go soon to see your mother. Won’t that be a fine thing?”

  He no longer knew if he believed his own words, but he spoke them again and again until Marckol and Neliera ceased to breathe, their young, innocent faces motionless, their eyes glazed. He heard only the shrill whistle of the wind coming up over the lip of the chasm. “Receive them, Saleema,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I failed them.”

  He grieved, holding them tight in his arms, feeling an emptiness inside deeper than anything he’d ever known. Then he realized his punishment had just begun. Balroath meant for him to live a long life with the memory of what had just happened. A life that would likewise see the annihilation of his kind.