“Well I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“You can confide in us. We won’t tell anyone. No need to be shy about it.”
“But—”
A trumpet blew, followed by a hundred more. Drums thundered. Cymbals clanged. The mumbling roar of the crowd was stilled.
The Guardian entered the room, held aloft on a throne set on a platform on the shoulders of eight bearers, as he had the last time Ginna had seen him in this room.
The crowd divided like water before the prow of a boat, and The Guardian passed through. Ginna caught a glimpse of him between the shoulder of Kardios and the nose of the wiry man. Kaemen was paler, more pasty-faced than before, and growing fat His almost white hair stuck to his sweaty forehead beneath the black and white peaked cap he wore. He held the golden staff of office in his right hand, as he apparently did on all public occasions.
Ritual greetings were given. The Guardian pointed his staff at the crowd and moved it from left to right in a slow arch. All present raised a hand to acknowledge the received blessing. Ginna hid behind the bulk of the general, hoping to be as inconspicuous as possible. He was sure somehow that those pale eyes were searching for him.
For more than an hour after this, Kaemen sat atop a dais above the heads of the multitude, surveying the room, apparently deep in thought, waiting for a certain moment, or so it seemed to Ginna.
“He must be about to announce something,” said one of the ladies. It was obvious to everyone that they had been summoned for some purpose. People talked in hushed tones, every other glance directed at the seated Guardian. Ginna took some comfort in the way Kardios stood there, drink in hand, as ill at ease as he himself felt.
As last The Guardian rose, thumped his staff for quiet, and every face was toward him.
“Let the woman Saemil come forward,” he called out.
The silence broke into whispers of “Who?” and starched clothing rustled as people milled about and stood on tiptoes, trying to see what was happening. Ginna noticed movement nearby, heads turning to his left then following something. Bodies stepped back, pressing upon one another like a rippling wave. Someone stepped on his foot and he squirmed free. Now he was in front of the massive general, behind three short ladies in feather-covered gowns, and he could see clearly.
An elderly woman stood before the throne. She looked familiar. When she turned slightly, in a kind of twitch, he recognized her. He had known so few people in life that he never forgot a face. She was one of the nurses who had overseen his earliest years. He remembered how she approached him fearfully at first, but after a while developed a completely uncaring attitude, as if he were not more animate than a lump of dough in the hands of a cook. She was also one of the ones who had constantly dashed about, wringing her hands in worry, trying to please the infant who had grown into the boy now gazing down on her from the seat above.
She raised her hand and made the sign of blessing received, first and fourth fingers upraised, the others held under the thumb, the hand moved in a little square.
“A blessing indeed,” said The Guardian. “Woman, you have lived for the last three years because I forgot about you, but just this morning I remembered. I hope you will accept my apologies for the delay.”
The Guardian made a sign none of his office had ever made in public before, that of forgiveness humbly begged, and he smiled viciously as he did.
“Your Holy Majesty is... of course... joking... Oh, what a splendid joke!”
She forced a weak laugh.
“No!” He stood up and out of his seat, something else no Guardian ever did. “My Holy Majesty is not joking. I am in complete earnest, and I declare you to be a traitor, a bearer of ill will against me. There are many here who hate me, and your death shall be an example to them. By my command, you shall not leave this room until you are dead.”
“What do you mean? No, you can’t...”
Two soldiers pushed their way through the crowd. They wore no finery at all, but were dressed in simple leather tunics. Long, many-thonged whips hung coiled from their belts. They seized the helpless nurse and ripped her clothing off, until she huddled naked before the court, whimpering.
“I can’t believe this is happening? What is happening?” said one of the women standing in front of Ginna.
“We must all be drunk and dreaming,’ said the hooked-nosed man. “No son of Tharanodeth would ever do such a thing.”
“He has gone mad,” said Kardios. “The dark side of The Goddess is in him.”
With a loud snap a whip struck the old nurse’s bony back, leaving bloody stripes when it was drawn away. This made the whole experience real, more vivid than any bad dream. Another whip, in the hand of the other soldier, descended. She grunted, then screamed, and began to crawl across the floor on all fours. She rose to a sitting position, and one of them lashed her across the face. She screamed again, feeling her eyes, then groped about, obviously blind.
Her screams were not the only ones. The women in the crowd screamed at the sight. Some fainted. Men looked away. Others gazed at the terrible sight, the faces stoic marble masks. These, Ginna knew, would survive the longest in the days to come.
He desperately wanted to be elsewhere. He wanted to look away, but dared not
Behind him, someone was vomiting.
He looked to one door, then another. All exits were guarded by soldiers whose pikes were not ceremonial or made of glass. He had to escape, but could not There was nowhere to go. He edged backwards until he pressed against the refreshment table. Almost without knowing it, he took a glass of punch and gulped it down, then another, and another. He had only brief glimpses of the dying woman now. Most of the people in front of him were taller, but when a lady in a plumed headdress shrieked, covered her face, and began to push to one side, this created an opening, and he was afforded a full view of the huddled, naked form and the bloody smears on the tiled floor all around it. The whips rose and fell with mechanical precision.
He couldn’t taste the punch as he drank it. Only unconsciously did he know what he was doing. This was the only way out He usually avoided such excess, but now the alcohol was making itself felt the room reeled around him. He was very warm. The people around him seemed to have become a mass of sweating, milling, frightened animals.
He found himself studying Kaemen intensely. The Guardian leaned forward in his chair, surveying the scene with rapt fascination. What was happening to his face? Ginna wondered why no one else seemed to see it. The pale blue eyes were gone, replaced by black pits which spread slowly across the cheeks, eating away the flesh. Eventually there was only an oval darkness where the face had been. Then there was another face, outlined in a fiery red in that darkness, a hideous old woman who, or so it seemed to his dizzy imagining, was somehow nourished by the pain and fear, drinking it all in.
Even that face grew soft like melting wax and disappeared. The blackness extended outward grotesquely, until it was nothing human at all. It was the head of a wolf, no, a bottomless abyss, a rip in the fabric of the world in the shape of a wolf, growing out of the front of The Guardian’s head.
All other eyes were on the two floggers and their victim, who now lay still.
Didn’t anyone else see?
