Roger Taylor: Caddoran

‘Well, you do now.’

The young man met his gaze awkwardly. Hyrald looked at him intently, then at the bodies of the two other men lying nearby. It was not difficult to see what had happened once the Death Cry had been proclaimed. ‘Barrack room talk, eh? Told you it would be easy money, did they? Or put you in well with Vashnar?’ There was no reply. ‘Well, you’re a lifetime wiser than you were a few minutes ago. As are your friends. Ask more questions in future.’ He glanced at his companions. ‘We’ll give you a couple of days’ food and water – that’s the best we can do. Head back the way you came – you won’t enjoy it but you should make it. And anyone you meet on the way, tell them what I’ve said. The more people who’ve heard about it, the safer you’ll be when you get back to Arvenshelm – whatever’s going on there.’ An unexpected thought came to him. ‘And tell them too, that as things are, we’ve no choice but to treat anyone who tries to stop us as mortal enemies, but one day, somehow, we’ll be back for a Hearing – for justice. Do you understand?’

A soft cry from Thyrn and a gasp from Rhavvan made the Warden start before he could reply. Rhavvan stepped forward, his staff poised defensively as a strange swaying shape emerged uneasily from the mist.

Krim glowered bleary-eyed at the grimy window through which the spring sunlight was filtering into the murky hall. His hand clutched fitfully at a shabby remnant of what had once been an ornately embroidered curtain but withdrew at the first hint of a snowfall of ancient dust. The curtain, swaying up to the gloomy ceiling, was attached to a mechanism that had ceased to function shortly after Krim had arrived to take up his late father’s duties many years ago. It was one of several things that had been a constant source of strain between Krim and Ector – the Moot Palace’s Most Noble Artisan – a man of similar vintage and disposition whose charge it was to maintain the fabric of the rambling cluster of buildings that constituted the Moot Palace.

Krim curled his lip and turned away from the window to look to the protection of his own charges from the blanching touch of the sun. Tall, thin, and alarmingly straight, he moved like a large and very stiff insect. So much so that even those who knew him, caught unawares, would tend to flinch in anticipation of the creaking of joints that might reasonably be expected from such a gait. But Krim moved silently. Indeed, but for the occasional hacking cough – not dissimilar to that of a gagging dog, though explosively short and very loud – everything about Krim was silent. It was a necessary part of his office.

For Krim was the Venerable and Honoured Cushion Bearer to the Striker of the Moot, the oldest and most dignified of the clutch of ancient offices that served the will and the needs of Arvenstaat’s Great Moot and which, tradition had it, were essential to its continuance. His formal title was actually Venerable and Honoured Cushion Bearer and Assassin to the Striker of the Moot, though the word Assassin, being a reminder of the distant bloody origins of the Moot, had long since been dropped from routine usage. Indeed, in this more enlightened age, moves were afoot to have all reference to it removed even from the written records of the Moot.

Krim’s attitude to such proposals, however softly worded, could best be described as venomous. The Moot was tradition. That was the very foundation of his life and work, as it had been for his father before him and his father, and all his forebears back through many generations. Change was anathema. To change was to destroy. The Moot was the pulsing heart of Arvenstaat and to deviate from its ancient ways was thus to threaten the stability of the entire state and all its peoples. Indeed, such troubles as Arvenstaat now suffered from, and, insofar as he understood any of them, could all, in Krim’s estimation, be directly attributed to the embracing of needless change. With dark silence, Krim quietly smothered all fledgling hints of ingenuity and originality whenever he could. His very presence at the councils of the Moot Officers dulled the bright eye and crushed the eager green shoot.

But while such matters underscored his life, it was a more pressing call that now occupied him. Moving only his head, he scanned the objects of his responsibility, seeking out those that were being touched by, or in the probable path of, the intrusive sunlight. Not that, to an outside observer, a great deal of sunlight survived passage through the fly-blown window. What might have been direct and brilliant outside was diffuse and hesitant inside. But to Krim’s eyes – eyes that rarely ventured beyond the Moot Palace, and had not been outside its gloomy courtyards in decades – the light glared and, in glaring, menaced his domain: the Striker’s cushions. The Moot’s cushions. His cushions. Cushions designed for and used by all the Strikers that had ever been, each housed in its individual alcove in shelves which towered in serried ranks around the circular tiered floor and rose up the curved and irregularly recessed walls from floor to ceiling. Access to these upper shelves was gained from balconies which, in their turn, were linked by an intricate arrangement of ramping walkways and stairways – straight stairways, spiralled stairways and strangely dog-legged stairways, all with uneven steps twisted by age and use and neglect. The whole formed a rambling vertical and horizontal maze. The parts swayed unsteadily when trodden upon and often creaked for no apparent reason.

The cushions were laid out meticulously in accordance with the dictates of Akharim the Great – the first Cushion Bearer and Founding Striker. The original Assassin, it was he who had dispatched the last Dictator, Koron Marab, and he whom Krim had been discreetly named after, in an uncharacteristic spasm of boldness by his father. However, as Krim had foreseen many years before, this Session of the Moot was proving particularly trying, for the strict ordering of the cushions brought those that were now in current use directly into the path of light from the offending window. It left him with a profound dilemma. The cushions belonged where they belonged, as decreed by Akharim. They could not, for example, arbitrarily be moved to those empty and more shaded alcoves intended for the cushions of Strikers yet to come. Even to think of such a thing disturbed Krim deeply. It was not for Moot Officers – or anyone – to question Akharim’s wisdom. Yet to leave the cushions where they were was to see their ornate and colourful embroidery washed and drained by the sunlight with all that that meant to the tenor of the conduct of the Moot’s debates.

Krim, however, knew the history of his office and that it had been peopled from time to time by men of resolution and determination in the face of such difficulties. Secretly, he fancied himself one such and, donning this heroic garb, he had finally acted – an almost unheard-of occurrence in a Moot Officer. With great trepidation and in great secrecy, he had acquired materials and after edging and embroidering them – with an undeniable skill – he had carefully draped them over the assaulted cushions. But the daring had taken its toll and left him ever nervous of discovery – constantly alert to the sound of approaching feet. His spindly frame shuddered throughout its entire length at the thought of some wretched Moot Page barging in on him inopportunely, seeing his subterfuge and recklessly proclaiming it through the corridors of the Palace.

With this in mind he had prepared a written report to the Striker and the Under Striker, expressing his deep regrets at what he had been obliged to do, and pleading the desperate exigencies of the time and the continued negligence of the Palace’s Most Noble Artisan who ‘has been told repeatedly, both verbally and in writing, of the nature and urgency of the problem, and who has consistently declined to effect the necessary repairs’. Accompanying this immaculately written report was a carefully annotated and cross-referenced list of all his pleas to Ector. When not actually tending to his charges, Krim spent much of his time weighing this report and making subtle changes here and there, to ensure that all the nuances of his distress and justification would be properly appreciated.