Margaret Weis - Dragon Wing

It was, he saw in horror, a bloated and decaying corpse. . . .

“Hey, wake up,” said the copper, poking Limbeck in the side. “Wombe’s the next stop.”

An ordinary felon on Drevlin would have been brought before his local Froman for judgment. Petty thefts, drunk—and-disorderlies, the odd brawl—these were considered to fall under the domain of the head of the defendant’s own scrift. A crime against the Kicksey-Winsey, however, was considered high treason and therefore the defendant was required to go before the High Froman. The High Froman was head of the most important scrift in Drevlin—at least that was how his clan viewed themselves and that was how other Gegs were expected to view them. It was their scrift which was in charge of the Palm—the hallowed altar where, once a month, the Welves descended from the heavens in their powerful winged dragon ships and accepted the homage of the Gegs, given in the form of holy water. In return, the Welves left behind “blessings” before they departed.

The capital city of Wombe was very modern, compared to other cities on Drevlin. Few of the original buildings constructed by the Mangers remained standing. The Kicksey-Winsey, needing to expand, had leveled and built over them, thus destroying much of the existing housing of the Gegs. Nothing daunted, the Gegs had simply moved into sections of the Kicksey-Winsey that the Kicksey-Winsey had abandoned. It was considered quite fashionable to live in the Kicksey-Winsey. The High Froman himself had a house in what had once been a holding tank.

The High Froman held court inside a building known as the Factree. A huge structure, one of the largest on Drevlin, the Factree was made of iron and corrugated steel and was, so legend had it, the birthplace of the Kicksey-Winsey. The Factree had long since been abandoned and partially demolished, the Kicksey-Winsey having fed parasitically off that which gave it birth. But here and there, standing silent and ghostly within the eerie light of the glimmerglamps, could be seen the skeleton of a clawlike arm. The Factree was a sacred and holy place to the Gegs. Not only was it the Kicksey-Winsey’s birthplace, but it was in the Factree that the Gegs’ most hallowed icon was located—the brass statue of a Manger. The statue, which was the figure of a robed and hooded man, was taller than the Gegs and considerably thinner. The face had been carved in such a way that it was shadowed by the hood. There was a suggestion of a nose, and the outlines of lips and prominent cheekbones and the rest blended into the metal. In one of its hands the Manger grasped a huge, staring eyeball. The other arm, held in a crooked position, was hinged at the elbow.

Standing on a raised dais next to the statue of the Manger was a tall overstuffed chair. It had obviously been constructed for those built along different dimensions than the Gegs, for its seat was some three Geg-feet off the floor, its back was nearly as tall as the Manger, and it was extremely narrow. This chair was the High Froman’s ceremonial sit-up-high, and he squeezed his large body into it on occasions of state. He overlapped the sides and his feet dangled well above the dais, but these minor detractions in no way reduced his dignity.

The Froman’s audience sat cross-legged on the concrete floor beneath the dais or perched on ancient limbs of the Kicksey-Winsey or stood around on the balconies overlooking the main floor. On this day, a considerable crowd had jammed into the Factree to witness the trial of the Geg who was a reputed troublemaker, the leader of an insurrectionist, rebellious group which had finally gone so far as to inflict injury on the Kicksey-Winsey. Most of the night scrifts for every sector were present, as were those Gegs over forty who were no longer working on the Kicksey-Winsey but were staying home raising young. The Factree was filled over and beyond capacity, and those who could not see or hear directly were kept informed of the proceedings by the squawky-talk—a sacred and mysterious means of communication developed by the Mangers.

A whistle-toot, blowing three times, called for relative silence. That is, the Gegs kept quiet, the Kicksey-Winsey didn’t.

The proceedings were interspersed with whoosh, thump, whang, zizzt, occasional sharp cracks of thunder, and howling gusts of wind from Outside. Being accustomed to these noises, the Gegs considered that quiet had descended and the ceremony of Justick could be commenced.

Two Gegs-one’s shaved face painted black, the other white-stepped out from behind the statue of the Manger, where they had been standing, waiting for the signal. In their hands they held between them a large metal sheet. Casting their stern gazes over the crowd to see that all was in order, the two Gegs began to vigorously shake the metal, creating the effect of thunder. Real thunder was not in the least impressive to the Gegs, who heard it every day of their lives. Artificial thunder, reverberating through the Factree over the squawky-talk, sounded eerie and wonderful and drew gasps of awe and murmurs of approval from the crowd. When the last vibrations of the quivering sheet had faded away, the High Froman made his appearance.

A Geg of some sixty turns, the High Froman was from the wealthiest, most powerful clan in Drevlin—the Longshoremans. His family had held the title of High Froman for several generations, despite attempts by the Dockworkers to wrest it from them. Darral Longshoreman had given his years of service to the Kicksey-Winsey before taking over the duties of his office upon his own father’s death. Darral was a shrewd Geg, nobody’s fool, and if he enriched his own clan at the expense of others in Drevlin, he was merely carrying on a time-honored tradition.

High Froman Darral was dressed in the ordinary working clothes of the Gegs-baggy trousers falling over thick, clumping boots, and a high-collared smock that fit rather tightly over his stout middle. This plain outfit was incongruously topped by a crown of cast iron—a gift from the Kicksey-Winsey—which was the High Froman’s pride (despite the fact that after about fifteen minutes it gave him a pounding headache). Around his shoulders he wore a cape made of large and ugly bird feathers—the feathers of the tier—(a gift from the Welves), which signified the Gegs’ symbolic desire to fly upward to heaven. In addition to the feathered cape, which appeared only at trials of Justick, the High Froman had painted his face gray, a symbolic blending of the black and white faces of the Geg warders now standing on either side of him and designed to prove to the Gegs that Darral—in all things—was neutral.

In his hand, the High Froman held a long stick from which dangled a long, pronged tail. At a signal from Darral, one of the warders took the end of this tail and inserted it reverently and with muttered words of prayer to the Manger into the base of the statue. A bulbous glass ball affixed on top of the stick hissed and sputtered alarmingly for an instant, then sullenly began to glow with a bluish-white light. The Gegs murmured appreciatively, many parents drawing the attention of children in the audience to similar glimmerglamps that hung upside-down like bats from the ceiling and lit the Gegs’ storm-ridden darkness.

After the murmurs again died down, there was a brief wait for a particularly violent whoosh-whang from the Kicksey-Winsey to subside; then the High Froman launched into his speech.

Facing the statue of the Manger, he raised his flashglamp. “I call upon the Mangers to descend from their lofty realm and guide us with their wisdom as we sit in judgment this day.”

Needless to say, the Mangers did not respond to the call of the High Froman. Not particularly surprised at the silence—the Gegs would have been tremendously astounded if anyone had answered—High Froman Darral Longshoreman determined that it was his duty by default to sit in judgment, and this he did, clambering up into the seat with the assistance of the two warders and a footstool.