Orson Card - Treason

The commander looked at me coldly. "We know who you are, and after the way you've treated this land, any way we treated you would be far kinder than you deserve." He looked for a moment, grimly, across the wasted fields. "Of all the traitors who have ever lived, Lanik Mueller, there must be a special place in hell reserved for you."

"I've been to hell," I said. "It's a better place than this."

"What if you burn like you burnt these fields?" called a soldier. There was a murmur of bitter assent.

"I didn't do this," I said, perplexed that they could think I did.

"Didn't do it!" shouted a man. "I saw you dangling a torch yourself, ahead of all your inker troops!"

How could I even protest against a charge so absurd?

"Enough talking," said the commander. "He's going to claim he was insane or some such nonsense. No one will believe him, he'll get the death that such a man deserves, but there'll be no glory in it for us, having found him. The damage is already done beyond repair, and killing him won't undo any part of it."

It was a strange thing for any commander to say, and yet it had a strange calming effect on the men. They had none of the hearty lust for battle that I had seen in the army all my life. But the commander's words had stirred in them some silent, desperate courage. All did their work quickly, wordlessly. They threw me over a saddle, strapped my legs to the stirrups, and left me to find my balance as best I could with bound arms on a galloping horse. They rode madly across the fields, as if they hoped (and I'm sure they did) that my horse would fall, would shatter me, would crush me into the ashes that had once been grain. Or perhaps they thought of me no more, and merely rode, machines of flesh astride these heaving horses, empty of thought, empty of anything but the knowledge of desolation.

As I rode, what else had I to do but think? Somehow I was blamed for all this devastation, and not just by strangers, but by the men of Mueller-- the ones who once had loved me, if not for myself, then as my father's son. This was not something Dinte's lies could accomplish, nor could Ruva have persuaded anyone to think of me that way, nor any other jealous enemy. The man said he had seen me. Seen me, and though I know it was impossible, I could not doubt his honesty. It wasn't just my name that was hated here, it was my face.

Thinking of hatred, thinking of my own face, I saw an image of myself before my eyes, and it was not a memory of my face as I saw it in mirrors. Then I knew the answer, knew why it was that every accusation they made against me could be true and not-true all at once. I also knew that no matter how convincingly I told my tale, they would never believe me,

The slap of hard leather boots rang out in the stone halls of my father's palace. I was dragged in brutally and thrown down on the floor. I had seen the scene before, but from the other point of view, as men accused of treason were prepared for trial. The trial was a mere formality. The charge was so serious it was never brought unless guilt was certain.

Yet my thoughts kept wandering. As they marched me through the corridors, held me in the small cell while the court assembled, I kept looking at the dead stone of the walls, realizing how much death this place had cost the earth. If I said as much to anyone, it would be taken as madness. Living stone? But I spoke in my mind and sang the song of the rock, and felt the resonation. Far under the castle, the stones were listening. They would hear, the living stones would know, if my blood were shed.

The punishment for treason is drawing and quartering the living man. Women are decapitated first. It's grisly, but I had always thought of it as a fine deterrent.

I arose from the floor and stood.

"Kneel!" shouted Harkint, the Captain of the Guard (he used to race me on horseback through the streets of the city). I turned to him and spoke coldly, dramatically, because trials, like most of royal life, are theatrics, and I couldn't help but play my part. "I am royalty, Harkint, and I stand before the throne."

This quieted him, and now the court settled into the steady business of hate and fear.

My father looked old. It was for his sake I had returned at all. Now he looked weary and sick at heart. "Lanik Mueller, there's little point in a trial," he said. "You know and we know why you're here. You're guilty, so let's end this shabby business."

Every delay is a promise of life; and even though I knew there was no chance that they'd believe me, still I had to have my say. Perhaps it would be many years before my innocence was proven, but there would be some then who would remember that I had told the truth this day. "It's my right to hear the charges against me."

"If we listed them all," said my father, "I couldn't stop the people here from killing you with their hands."

"Say them briefly then, but name my crimes, since I don't know what they are."

My father's face wrinkled in distaste at what he thought was a feeble lie. "You shame yourself," he said. But he looked at the herald, and old Swee called out in a ringing voice:

"The crimes of Lanik Mueller: Leading the Nkumai armies into battle against the armies of Mueller. Destroying fields and homes of citizens of Mueller and dependent Families. Betraying the secret of regeneration so that our enemies now hack the bodies of our soldiers to pieces on the field, so they die. Plotting to undo the succession and take the rightful heir from the throne." Swee looked bitter and the gathered court shouted in outrage as each charge was read.

"I didn't do any of this," I said, looking my father in the eye.

"You've been seen by a thousand witnesses," said my father.

A soldier stepped forward in rage-- a commoner, since he had lost his arms and neither had grown back. "I saw you myself," he cried, "when you cut off both my arms and made me come here to tell the Mueller that you planned to drink his blood!"

"I never did that, never said it."

Father answered contemptuously. "Tbere are others who knew you who saw you leading the Nkumai armies. We've heard enough now. You're guilty, and I sentence you to--"

"No!" I shouted. "I have a right to speak!"

"A traitor has no rights!" shouted a soldier.

"I'm innocent!"

"If you're innocent," cried my father, "every whore in Mueller is a virgin!"

"I have a right to be heard, and I will speak!"

They fell silent then, perhaps because my voice still had some power to command; or more likely because they drew some bleak satisfaction out of watching me struggle vainly for my life. Still, useless as the effort was, I tried to tell them the only explanation that would fit what they had seen, and what I knew I had and had not done. Half of what I said was speculation, but as far as I knew then, I was telling the truth.

I told them that I had gone to Nkumai, but my subterfuge had been discovered only moments after I found the secret of what they sold to get iron. I told them of my escape, my disembowelment, and of the echo of myself that had been regenerated from my own gut. I described my imprisonment on a Singer ship and how the Schwartzes had cured me (I said nothing of how, or what I had learned about the living rock of our world), and how I had come as quickly as I could to warn my father of the danger.

As to the person who claimed to be me and fooled others into thinking he was, I could only guess that he was my double; that he had not died, but had been found by the Nkumai. "I was careless. I should have destroyed the body. But I wasn't thinking clearly then, and most Muellers would have died from such wounds." They must have trained him, I speculated, and he would have had all my inborn abilities. No wonder people believed he was Lanik Mueller-- right down to the genes, he was.