R. Bakker - The Judging eye

It is enough that I obey…

"The slave who brought you here," the Prince-Imperial continued in a by-the-way tone, "is named Porsparian. He's from Shigek, an ancient land to the south of-"

"I know where it is."

Had it come to this? Had it come to the point where interrupting his oppressors could count as vengeance?

"Of course you do," Kayыtas replied with a partially suppressed grin. "Porsparian has a facility with tongues. Until I find you an instructor, you will practise your Sheyic with him…" Trailing, the man leaned across the table to lift a sheaf of papyrus between his fore and index fingers.

He held it our to Sorweel, saying, "Here."

"What is it?"

"A writ of bondage. Porsparian is now yours."

The young King blinked. He had stared at the slave's back so long he could scarcely remember what he looked like. He took the sheet in his hands, stared at the incomprehensible characters.

"I know," Kayыtas continued, "that you will treat him well."

At that, the Prince-Imperial returned to his reading, acting for all the world as if their conversation had never happened. Numb save where the sheet burned his fingertips, Sorweel retreated. Just as he turned to cross the threshold, Kayыtas's voice brought him up short.

"Oh, yes, and one final thing," he said to the papyrus. "My elder brother, Moлnghus… Beware him."

The young King tried to reply but came to a stammering halt. He grimaced, breathed past the hammering of his heart, then tried again. "Wh-why is that?"

"Because," Kayыtas said, his eyes still ranging the inked characters, "he's quite mad."

Stepping from the Prince-Imperial's pavilion, Sorweel told himself he blinked for the sharpness of the sun. But his burning cheeks and aching throat knew better, as did his sparrow-light hands.

What am I to do?

The shouts of the cavalrymen carried on the wind, followed by a caw-cawing of a horn, high and shrill above the bone-deep din that was the Great Ordeal. The sound seemed to cut, to peel, expose him past the skin.

How many kings? How many grim-souled men?

What was Sakarpus compared to any nation of the Three Seas, let alone the might and majesty that was the New Empire? A god for an emperor. The sons of a god for generals. An entire world for a bastion. Sorweel had heard the reports of his father's spies in the weeks preceding the Ordeal's assault on the city. Shit-herders. This was what the Men of the Three Seas called him and his kinsmen…

Shit-herders.

A blank feeling reached through him, like forgetting to breathe, only more profound. What would his father say, seeing him unmanned time and again, not because of the wiles or the ruthlessness of their enemy, but because of… because of…

Loneliness?

The slave, Porsparian, watched him from the shadow of their horses. Not knowing what to do, Sorweel simply walked up and passed the writ of bondage to him.

"I…" he started, only to gag on welling tears. "I–I…"

The old man gawked in voiceless alarm. He grasped Sorweel's forearms and gently pressed the writ against the padded fabric of his parm tunic. And Sorweel could only think, Wool, here stands the King dressed in woollen rags.

"I failed him!" he sobbed to the uncomprehending slave. "Don't you see? I failed!"

The old Shigeki gripped him by the shoulders, stared long and hard into his anguished eyes. The man's face, it seemed, was not so different from the writ Sorweel held against his breast: smooth save where scored with lines of unknown script, across the forehead, about the eyes and snout, as dark as any ink, as if the god who had carved him had struck too deep with the knife.

"What do I do?" Sorweel murmured and gasped. "What do I do now?"

The man seemed to nod, though the yellow eyes remained fixed, immobile. Gradually, for reasons Sorweel could not fathom, his breathing slowed and the roaring in his ears fell away.

Porsparian led him to his quarters, taking too many turns for Sorweel to ever hope to remember. The tent was large enough for him to stand in, and furnished with nothing more than a cot for himself and a mat for his slave. For most of the afternoon, he laid in a bleary reverie, staring at the white fabric, watching it rise and fall like the shirt of a slumbering little brother. He paid no attention to the porters when they arrived with his meagre collection of things. He held his father's torc for a time, an age-old relic of the Varalt Dynasty, stamped with the seal of his family: the tower and two-headed wolf. He pulled it to his breast, clutched it so tight he was sure the sapphires had cut him. But when he looked there was no blood, only a quick-fading impression.

King Proyas arrived as the tent panels became waxen in the failing light. He said a few jocular words in Sheyic, perhaps hoping to hearten with his tone. When Sorweel failed to respond, the Exalt-General stared at the young King with a kind of magisterial remorse, as though seeing in him some image from his own not-so-kindly past.

Porsparian knelt with his forehead to the ground for the entirety of visit.

After Proyas left, the two sat in utter silence, king and slave, pondering the way the rising dark made everything transparent to the encampment's evening chorus. Singing warriors. Churlish horses. Then, when the darkness was almost complete, they heard someone, a Kidruhil trooper, relieving himself behind the tent's far corner. Sorweel found himself smiling at the old Shigeki, who was little more than a silhouette sitting on the ground a length away. When the trooper farted, Porsparian abruptly cackled, rocked to and fro with his spindly legs caught in his arms. He laughed the way a child might, gurgling against the back of his throat. The effect was so absurd that Sorweel found himself howling with the mad old man.

Afterwards, Sorweel sat on the end of his cot while Porsparian busied himself lighting a lantern. Everything seemed bare in the light, exposed. Without explanation, the old Shigeki disappeared through the flap, into the dread world that murmured and rumbled beyond the greased canvas. Sorweel stared at the lantern, which was little more than a wick in a bronze bowl, until it seemed his sight must be marred forever. The point of light seemed so clear, so whispering pure, that he could almost convince himself that burning was the most blissful of death of all.

He looked away only when Porsparian returned bearing unleavened bread and a steaming bowl-some kind of stew. The scent of pepper and other exotic spices bloomed through the tent, but Sorweel, as gaunt as he was, had no appetite. After some urging, he finally convinced the slave to eat the entire meal instead of, as Sorweel surmised, waiting on whatever scraps he might leave.

He thought it strange the way Men did not need to share a language to speak about food.

He sat on the end of his cot as before, watching the diminutive Shigeki. Without a whisper of self-consciousness, the man pulled aside one of the rough-woven reed mats, revealing a patch of bruised turf. He parted the grasses, cooing in a strange voice as he combed his fingers through them, then he began praying over the line of bare earth he had uncovered. In a moment of almost embarrassing intensity, Porsparian pressed his cheek against the ground, hard, the way an adolescent might grind against a willing lover. He muttered something-a prayer, Sorweel supposed-in a language far more guttural than Sheyic. Holding his hand like a spatula, he pressed a slot into the black soil-a ritual mouth, Sorweel realized moments afterwards, when Porsparian placed a small portion of bread into it.

By some trick of the light, it actually seemed as if the earthen mouth closed.

Smacking his lips with satisfaction, the cryptic little man rolled onto his rump and began fingering the food into his own grey-and-yellow-toothed mouth.