The Rest of the Story: The whole of
Fire can be found on my
Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on
this page.
Here it is, the next chapter of
Fire. Here I finally return to Victor's point of view. Remember him? He's my main character. Originally, this, or something like it, was going to be my second chapter (or maybe my third). Of course, this was before I knew all the details about the conflicts among the Domini, or started a war between the Novari and the Orcs, or discovered that Lucia was developing her abilities early. So I got a little sidetracked along the way!
Chapter 15
Trials
Victor followed the Dominus. He did not ask where they were going, since an Initiate did not question a Dominus, but such prohibitions did not prevent him from wondering at the morning’s events. The Dominus had woken him up only a few minutes ago, well before his normal rising time, and simply gestured that he should follow. They traveled down a long hallway of gray marble walls and tiled floor, flanked by plain wooden doors on one side and tall, narrow windows of glass on the other. Though the sun had not yet risen, the sky had grown gray and Victor could see without the aid of the small globe of light which hovered near the Dominus’s head. The Initiate could have summoned a similar globe himself, but he could only practice magic with a Dominus’s permission, and his escort still had not said a single word this morning.
The black-robed figure that towered over him would have been imposing except for the ungainliness which the robes failed to hide. The hunched shoulders and plodding step did much to detract from the awe that Domini usually inspired. Most people would not have noticed, but Initiates spent considerable time with the Domini. Victor thought he recognized him as one of his instructors, but without ever seeing his face nor even hearing his voice yet today, he could not be certain. Any number of Domini could be tall and gangly.
The sun finally emerged, casting long shafts of light through the windows and causing Victor to blink in the illumination. A few figures began to appear in the hall, all students in robes of white, yellow, or blue, each color representing a different year. Victor had had lessons with all of them. At first his lessons had contained only white-robed students, then yellow began to predominate. Recently, as many of his classmates wore blue as yellow. He thought he knew the meaning behind this development. Having traversed the length of the hallway containing the sleeping cells, they left behind the sunlight and entered a maze of corridors which Victor had never explored before. He wondered briefly at his lack of curiosity, which he had never lacked for before coming here. Soon the only illumination came from the Dominus’s shining globe. They came to a stop before a door as plain as any of the others stretching down the corridor in either direction. The Dominus opened the door with magic, startling Victor, since he hadn’t realized that magic had sealed the door shut. He hadn’t seen it used for that before. With a gesture, the black-robed man indicated that Victor should enter. He did so with some trepidation at whatever secret required magic to guard it.
The room was even smaller than Victor’s sleeping cell, and completely void of any opening save the door by which they entered. Only the Dominus’s steadily glowing ball provided any light, a long streak from the door to the wall opposite. That door-shaped beam illuminated the only furniture, two plain wooden chairs facing each other across a plain wooden table. On the small, low-lying table stood a silver cup.
“Sit,” the Dominus said. Victor jumped on hearing the Dominus speak for the first time today. The Initiate did not hesitate to take a chair, and his guide sat down across from him, the glowing sphere taking up station above the table, where it brightened to provide as much light as a lamp tree.
“Drink,” the Dominus said.
Victor picked up the goblet before disobedience to the Dominus even occurred to him. In fact, from the time the Domini had brought him here, obedience to them had come so naturally that he had never questioned it. Now he hesitated. What did the cup hold? He stared at the clear liquid, then looked at the Dominus, who did not say anything but leaned forward in his seat, ready. For what?
Drink, came the urgent command. Though Victor didn’t know where it came from, it contained such force that he found himself tilting his head back to drain the cup before he could think about it anymore. The contents were tasteless and lukewarm.
Just water, Victor thought, until the bitter aftertaste filled his mouth. Poison?
He waited almost patiently for some effect. The Dominus waited too, watching him without saying anything. After a few minutes, Victor began to think that it had not been poison after all.
“What did you give me?” he asked at last.
“Something to counteract the drug you’ve been ingesting for the past year, up until three days ago. It’s begun to clear your body, but this should wake you up now, ” the Dominus replied.
“Drug? What drug?”
“It’s called Redleaf. The Sovereign City of Maro makes a fortune harvesting it, unaware that we’re their largest customer.”
“What does it do?” Victor asked, his throat parched and his hands damp. An effect of the antidote?
“Redleaf has the powerful effect of making people more pliable. It doesn’t make them obedient, exactly, but it can make them... open to suggestion. When they are told something often enough they begin to believe it to be absolute truth. This is mostly true in general, but this particular drug enhances the effect. It also has the interesting effect of suppressing normal emotional responses. Or you could view this as an aspect of its primary effect: making someone susceptible to an outside influence requires muting his natural inclinations.” The Dominus paused, and his next words lacked the lecturing tone of a moment ago. “Do you understand what this means?”
“It means,” Victor said, “that you brought me here against my will and drugged me to keep me under control.” Anger had replaced fear, neither of which he had felt in the last year. They came like wind driving through fog, stronger for having been absent so long. Although he remembered the previous year, it felt like a dream, parts of it exaggerated while others had blurred. He could not recall the basics of his daily life, what he had eaten, where he had slept, who he had been. Bits and pieces came to mind, but no consistent whole. He could recall his lessons in uncanny detail, every word he had heard, every bit of magic he had imitated. It was as if he had gone to sleep the night of his coming of age and awoken here, this knowledge in his head and a year--
was it a year?--gone from his life. The Order had taken him, filled his mind with this knowledge for their purposes without a care for what he or anyone else wanted. His family must think him lost, never to return. Could he return? A Circuit came to mind, a flow of magic which could burst the door apart. Another, which could kill, followed, a necessary condition for the first.
“Do you know why you are here, Victor?” the Dominus asked.
Victor paused, thoughts of returning home held in abeyance. He had to think before committing some insane act. Like murder. Trying to recall what the Dominus had asked, Victor answered, “I’m being trained.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know for sure. You’ve instructed me in magic. I’ve also learned about culture and history, the parts which only the Order knows. And I remember that you taught a class about dangerous creatures, ‘threats to humanity,’ you called them.”
“So I’ll ask you again: what are you being trained for?”
Victor knew the answer. He had already begun to suspect it, though he still hesitated to voice it. “You want me to... join the Order, to become a Dominus.”
“Exactly, Victor. You have the rare ability needed to become one of us. That is why we brought you here and trained you. It’s why we want you to remain.”
“You ‘want’ me to remain? Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice. Sometimes it’s not the choice you expect or particularly want, however.”
“What is my choice now?”
“You can decide to stay, to complete your training and become a Dominus. Or you can decide not to.”
Victor did not think he would be allowed to leave, whatever he chose. Most likely they would kill him if he refused to stay. He could try to escape, but what chance did he have? Even if he could get past this Dominus, more lived on the island. And “island” summed up everything he knew about where he was. He had no idea how to get off of it, or even which direction to go if he did. “Why should I stay?” he asked, thinking hard.
“Some stay out of duty. The Domini protect humanity from threats most people cannot even imagine. Some want knowledge. We know more about this world’s history and nature than anyone else, even the Philosophers. Others hunger for power. The Domini are feared and respected everywhere in the world. Most, however, become Domini for the magic. You have just begun to learn what you can do, just begun to see the world as only the magic can reveal it. Can you give that up now?”
He tried to imagine life without the magic and failed. Curiosity, ambition, and duty were all strong reasons, but they paled in comparison to the magic. Like a child learning to walk, the magic seemed strange and wonderful but natural and right as well. He could not go back to the mundane world where only his eyes saw and only his hands touched. “What price must I pay for the magic?” Victor asked, feeling his anger begin to drain. What price wouldn’t he pay for it?
Randall laughed, a chuckle that seemed more strained than cheery. “You’re bargaining like a Kairnin, Victor. Or a politician.” His mirth died out quickly. “A Dominus’s first loyalty is to the Order. We have the awesome responsibility to protect humanity from threats they do not even know exists. We cannot let other loyalties distract us from that responsibility. To become a Dominus you must give up all ties to your country and to your family.” The Dominus watched as Victor absorbed the severity of the price. “We likewise discourage friendships outside of the Order, and forbid Domini from marrying or fathering children, or even taking a lover. All these things divide loyalties and steal time. We are your only family and friends, now. If you decide to stay, that is.”
“That is a lot to give up,” Victor replied.
“Usually, Victor, an Initiate such as yourself would complete three years of training before this moment came. By that time, you’d have known for a year why we trained you. You’d have grown so used to the idea of becoming a Dominus that, even without the Redleaf, you would be eager to continue. You’ve lived here for less than a year, and you’ve had to figure out for yourself why we brought you here. I cannot expect you to make this decision easily, but you must make it now.”
Victor did not decide out of duty, or a hunger for knowledge, or a desire for power. Not even the pull of the magic decided him. He decided what he did because he knew that, whatever the Dominus might say, he had no choice. Those whom the Domini took never returned, so whatever alternative the Dominus seemed to be offering, it was not freedom. Victor wondered how many of the other students had stayed for the same reason; they could not have missed the obvious threat. “I’ll stay,” he said.
“Welcome, Acolyte Principius,” the Dominus said. He tossed his hood back, and for only the second time in his life, Victor saw what a Dominus looked like. It seemed impossible that the hood could have hidden such bright red hair. While long and somber, the man’s face wore a small, uncertain smile, which broadened when he reached out his hand and, after a moment of confusion, Victor took it. “My name is Randall,” the Dominus said.
Victor tried to grasp the significance of this Dominus dropping the mystery with which they usually shrouded themselves, giving his name and shaking hands as if with an equal. Victor’s own status had drastically changed, it seemed. “I’m an Acolyte? What is that?” he asked.
“Acolyte is the next stage in your training. You’ve committed to the Order now, so you will be trained in a different manner. You should learn much more rapidly from here on. Then again, you’ve learned very rapidly already, so maybe not.”
“You said that most Initiates have three years of training, while I’ve received only one. Why the difference?”
“As I said, you’ve learned very quickly. Your Philosopher tutor taught you many of the things in which we would have instructed you. Such an education leaves particular gaps, but we’ve filled most of them since you came. You’ve also learned magic more rapidly than any of our other pupils. To you, it seems to come... naturally.” The Dominus’s smile flickered and vanished. Victor tensed, realizing that something unusual was happening. Randall lowered his voice to continue, “Or as if you’ve been trained before.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Aulus tells me that he has not taught you, and I believe him. He’s not the only one who could train you, though.”
“Train me in what? What does Aulus have to do with this? Does he know something about the Domini?”
Randall shook his head. “No, not your brother. Your uncle. He’s a Dominus.”
Victor nodded. Of course. The uncle of whom he had often heard, whom the Domini had taken, would have ended up one of them.
“That’s beside the point. What I want to know is what you knew of the magic before you came here. Did anyone instruct you in it?”
“No. How could they? I thought only the Domini knew anything about magic.”
“That’s mostly true.” Randall frowned at him, but when Victor didn’t say anything else, he said, “All right, I believe you’re telling the truth. You’re standing on dangerous ground, however. This should explain it better.”
Randall reached into a hidden pocket and drew out a glass globe, which he handed to Victor. The flawless sphere just filled the palm of his hand. Its light-bending shape distorted everything seen through it, twisting them all around a central point.
“Do you know what that is, Victor?”
“It’s a piece of glass,” he replied. Although there was nothing extraordinary about the shape or material, someone had bound a Circuit to it. It’s complexity overshadowed any Circuit with which Victor had dealt thus far, but he suspected that the Domini used far more complex Circuits on a daily basis.
“It’s more than that. Can you activate the Circuit inside?”
Victor could see the gap in the Circuit and make out the required Component with ease. A simple bit of magic completed it, causing Essence to flow through the orb. It began to flicker with red, green, and blue light, beams of which shot out and coalesced into an image above the orb, the head and shoulders of a man on a level with Victor’s own head.
The man looked straight through him. He looked much like Victor’s father, sharing the same bold nose and dark eyes that marked the Principii. When he spoke, the voice sounded similar, though hoarse and too loud.
“Victor, do you know who I am?”
“You’re--”
“My name is Aulus Principius. I’m your uncle.” Victor realized that the image could not hear or see him, so he kept his mouth shut. “It was I who brought you to the Order; you may have seen my face that night. You and your sister are causing no end of trouble for the Domini.” His sister? What had Lucia done? “Fortunately for you, the blame for that trouble will fall on me, but it’s already affecting you both. You were raised to Acolyte early because of it. I’m told that you are ready, but the Order has its own motivations for raising you this early. An Initiate has certain protections, whereas an Acolyte must accept many of the risks and responsibilities of a Dominus. The Senate will soon summon you to testify as to whether I taught you what you know of the magic. You must lie and tell them that I did teach you.”
“Lie?” Victor asked. He looked to Randall, who was also watching the image. The Dominus’s eyes had gone very wide, and he seemed to be whispering to himself. Victor only caught the word “crazy.”
The image continued, “I know that it is not in your nature to lie, especially in a legal proceeding, but you must. I’m not sure you understand what they suspect of you, although I’m sure Randall has told you the same thing as he’s told me, that you’re too good with the magic, too able. If they think that your talent comes from my teaching, they’ll blame me, but if it seems to come from some other source, they’ll go after you. The Order can be remarkably close-minded about such things. They’ll see the threat, not the good, that comes from your ability, and there will be an Inquisition which can only end in your death. If they believe I’m responsible, they’ll try to hurt me, but I’ll survive.” Aulus gave a brief smile. “Kulsin has been trying to get rid of me for years. If he can convince the Order that I taught you before you came here, they’ll probably force me out of the Senate with a severe reprimand. That’s as far as it’ll go. I have enough friends left that they’ll never get the votes to Expel me.
“The important thing to remember about the lie is to keep it simple. Say that for two years before we took you, I visited your home several times a month, but not on any regular days. I taught you the basics of the magic. If asked specifics, just mention the things you’ve learned here already. Seeing Essence, building Circuits, applying them to move objects and the like.
“Which leaves just one more thing. From now on, you have to learn slower. You can escape suspicions once, but you might not be so lucky a second time. If you just slow down from here on out, it’ll look like you’ve reached the end of your premature teaching and it should allay their fears. Good luck.”
The image fell silent, then vanished a moment later. Victor sat there with the globe in his hand, then said, “Did you know what it contained?”
“Not until now,” Randall replied. “I knew Aulus intended to do something to protect you, but not this.”
“He said he could survive this. Can he?”
“Teaching someone who is not an Initiate yet is a serious offense.” Randall licked his lips. “But if anyone can survive it, Aulus can. He’s been parrying Kulsin’s accusations since he was an Acolyte.”
Victor could tell that Randall didn’t lie well. “Who’s Kulsin?”
“Kulsin is a Dominus, a member of our Senate who is about a decade older than your Uncle. The two of them have very different ideas about what our Order is and what it should be. Aulus believes that we should do away with many of our ancient practices, while Kulsin believes it’s important to hold onto our traditions.”
“So they’re political opponents?”
“Yes, and more. There’s some very personal animosity between them as well.”
Victor had grown up hearing about the politics of Novaro, no matter how much his mother tried to shield him from it. His father had never tried very hard. Though he had heard stories of vicious struggles, even assassinations, he had never been a pawn in anyone’s fight before, nor had anyone ever asked Victor to betray him. The young Acolyte stifled a yawn, too tired to reason clearly. The mental and emotional strain must have worn him out.
The Dominus realized his plight. “The counteragent you’ve been given stimulates your mind briefly, but when it’s done it leaves you exhausted. Now is no time for you to deal with a moral dilemma. I should show you to your new quarters.”
“New quarters?” Victor asked.
“Yes. Now that you’re an Acolyte, your life will change significantly. The Acolytes live on the other side of the Outer City, in an area where you haven’t been allowed to enter before. I’ll show you where you’ll be living now.”
The Dominus did not give Victor a chance to go back to his old cell and get his meager belongings. Instead, he led Victor further down the hallway by which they had entered, the glowing ball of light still following, until they came to a wooden door at the end. Magic sealed this door as well. The Dominus unlocked it to reveal a room even smaller than the one they had just left, inhabited solely by a marble door frame in the center, two columns resting on a marble block and supporting a lintel. Sitting in the middle of the room, it should not have led anywhere but to the other side of the room. Instead, sunlight poured through the doorway, flowing from a brightly lit room Victor could see on the other side of it.
Randall sealed the door behind them and then spoke, “Some Domini think this is showy, a needless waste of resources. Others consider this an important rite of passage. It’s called a Doorway. Go ahead and take a closer look, just don’t use any magic.”
All thought of his tiredness gone for the moment, Victor went closer to the Doorway and put his arm through it, which went in without any difficulty, no different than if he had put his arm through a normal doorway. He pulled his arm back out, still not noticing anything unusual. He circled around the Doorway to find blackness filling the frame on the other side. He reached out his hand to put it through the frame again, but it would not go. Victor did not feel anything when he touched the blackness, he simply could not push his hand any further. Thinking of this, he noticed that the pillars were cut in half so that they appeared flat from this side. The lintel and the marble base ended at the same plane. It did not seem as though the Doorway would be structurally stable without the other half. Puzzled, Victor circled around to the front side.
Randall smiled at him, clearly amused at his behavior. “We developed the ability to make Doorways over seven centuries ago. It was then and is still our greatest innovation, allowing us to consolidate our Order in one location and giving us instantaneous travel and communication to anywhere we can place a Doorway. Our income comes from letting our agents around the world use them to transport goods more quickly and reliably than other merchants can. Of course, if we’re not careful to avoid overdoing this, we might reveal our particular advantage.”
“How do they work?” Victor asked.
“The basic concept is simple. Build an ordinary door frame, then magically reinforce its nature as a doorway. That part requires a complex process that only a few Domini really understand, but if it’s done right, you can cut the frame in half and it remains a doorway. You can place the two halves on opposite ends of the world, and traveling between them would remain as simple as stepping through an ordinary door.”
“Are there a lot of them?”
“We have hundreds of Doorways. Each of those towers we build in every large city has one. Most of them terminate on this island, in a central location, so we can travel from city to city through a single hub.”
“So that’s what’s in those towers,” Victor said.
“They also have a few sleeping quarters and some supplies, but mainly they give us a place to put our Doorways.”
“Where does this one go?”
“Just to the other side of the island, to the Acolytes’ quarters. Go ahead and step through it. Don’t use any magic while you’re doing so, though. That can disrupt the Doorway and break the link.”
Victor hesitated, then squaring his shoulders, he closed his eyes and stepped through. He had to open his eyes to confirm he was on the other side. He had not felt anything. Randall followed him, and Victor noticed that the accompanying light had vanished. “This way,” he said.
They left the room with its tall windows and quickly found themselves once again in inhabited hallways. It’s tiled floors and marble walls looked no different from those in the Initiates’ area. The students wandering the halls here wore red and brown robes, but Victor found the noise stranger than the colors. While Initiates only spoke to one another when necessary, several of the groups of Acolytes whom he and his escort passed appeared to just be chatting. Unlike the Initiates, who would hurriedly avert their eyes upon spying a Dominus, these young men often gave Randall a friendly nod which he returned. None of them asked about the white-robed Victor, however. Apparently even Acolytes did not simply address a Dominus.
Randall led him to a wall with regularly spaced doors and windows, flanked by a colonnade which opened up onto a courtyard, where he introduced Victor to his new room. While not large, it seemed spacious compared to his former cell. It was even bigger than his room in Novaro. The low-lying, neatly made bed occupied one corner, a small writing table and its straight-back wooden chair beside it. A clay oil lamp stood atop the table, and shelves already holding several books were mounted on the wall above that. Lying against the opposite wall was a chest of some dark wood, sitting on bare tile rather than on the rug of Manuelite design in the center of the floor. Victor most welcomed the window facing towards the courtyard, since his previous room had had no opening except the door, which had opened onto a similarly windowless hallway.
“You’ll find red robes in the chest. Go ahead and put them on. You have the rest of the day off, but tomorrow morning you’ll be called to testify at your Uncle’s trial.” As if he had not just told Victor that he faced a life and death decision tomorrow, Randall left him alone. The new Acolyte did not immediately don his red robes. The grogginess has set in again, so he lay down on the bed to rest for a few moments, which was all the time needed for him to doze off.
Victor awoke in the mid-morning, still feeling groggy from the drug. The sunlight seeping through the closed shutters had not awoken him, but the increasingly hot and stuffy air of the room had. Groaning, Victor rolled out of the bed and went to open the shutters. A cool breeze filled the room immediately, refreshing both the atmosphere and the occupant. Victor discarded any thought of going back to bed. His room, along with ten others just like it, sat on one side of a colonnaded courtyard which reminded Victor of the peristylium in his home in Novaro. Grass and a few trees filled the sunlit space. Students dressed in red and brown robes sprawled on the ground underneath, some reading while others apparently slept. An animated discussion had broken out among a group of three students, two in red and one in brown. Their voices carried to Victor, though he couldn’t follow their highly technical conversation.
Seeing their colored robes reminded Victor of his own white one. He headed over to the chest and opened it to find new boots, undergarments, several red robes, and a small wooden case. Victor put on the boots and one of the robes, unsurprised that everything fit perfectly. He opened the case next. Inside lay on odd quill pen and several sheets of parchment, but no ink jar. The lack puzzled him until he took a closer look at the pen, discovering that it held a complex Circuit which kept a small reserve of ink and dispensed it in a controlled manner. Even more interesting, the other end could be brushed against any parchment and absorb the ink upon it, replenishing the pen’s supply and erasing the writing on the parchment. Victor brought the pen and parchment to his desk where he experimented with it and watched the Circuit at work.
Once he had learned all that he could from the pen, he took down one of the books from above his desk and opened it. Complex diagrams illustrating advanced Circuits greeted him at once. Although he had seen bits of this notation before, he had never seen anything this involved. He spent some time trying to puzzle through one of the diagrams, sorting out what the different parts did. This proved time consuming, since whenever he came across a symbol he didn’t recognize, he had to rifle through the book’s pages until he found it. Then he’d spend long minutes deciphering how that Component worked, and even longer minutes figuring out how it fit into the Circuit. The whole thing began to give him a headache. If his uncle said he was so gifted, why was he having such a difficult time making sense of this?
Still hunched up over his desk, he didn’t notice at first when the bell began to ring. It took the sound of many people moving and the following silence to get his attention. He went to the window just in time to see the last red robe vanishing down a corridor. Victor vaguely recalled that a similar bell had rung to call the Initiates to lunch. His hazy memories of last year had nearly made him forget this highly practical bit of information. With a growling stomach reminding him that he had not eaten breakfast today, Victor hurried out the door and after the departing Acolytes.
He caught up with them and took a position several paces behind the last person in the informal procession, who turned to look at him then quickly looked away. Victor almost asked him what was going on, but he had become so accustomed to the silence of the Initiates that speaking now seemed awkward. The other Acolytes had no such difficulty, and they sounded boisterous to Victor’s ear. He had forgotten what casual human socialization felt like. It should not have surprised him to experience anxiety rather than eagerness at his return to it. He had never been comfortable around strangers, and after being an Initiate for a year, nothing seemed stranger than these unaccountably loud Acolytes.
The bell had been a call to lunch after all, and Victor filed into a large dining hall with the others. Like the Initiates, the Acolytes came from all over the world, from every province of the Novar Empire, from Kairn, from the Sovereign Cities, and, most often, from Manuel. Those in red and brown robes freely mingled. While their ages varied, most seemed older than him, if not by much. Over fifty students gathered together here, less than half the number of the Initiates, and they didn’t come close to filling the room. The vaulted ceilings and tiled floors, lit by windows high in the walls, gave the massive room an uninviting feel. Victor joined the line leading up to a window connected to the kitchen. A slave there handed him his lunch, a tray containing a bowl of soup, some cheese and fresh bread, and a cup of wine. Aside from the wine instead of water, he thought the meal resembled what the Initiates ate. It was plain fare compared to what he had eaten in Novaro, but better than what most of Novar Plebeians ate. Victor watched the other Acolytes take accustomed places at the long tables. He had no place here, so he took a position near the end of a table, several seats down from the nearest person. No one seemed eager to talk to him, and he could not work up the courage to approach any of them. It didn’t take long to realize that they had no qualms in talking about him. Of course they had noticed a newcomer to their ranks. Those just a few seats from him tried to be subtle, but he noticed the glances cast in his direction which quickly turned aside when they saw him looking back, and the voices which dropped as the topic of conversation shifted. Those further away did not hide their curiosity as well, looking and pointing and talking, sometimes whispering, sometimes not. He only caught bits, “white robes”...“less than a year”...“Principius’s nephew”...“testify at the trial”...
Victor hunched over his meal, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. He had never liked the public attention he had received as an Imperial prince, and this was even worse. He hurried through his meal and waited for his fellow students to lose interest so he could leave unnoticed. They never did, so after a while he simply stood up, letting the tray lie where it was, and left.
Back in his room, Victor shut the door and windows, preferring a stuffy room over curious stares. He opened the book he had been studying before, but found himself unable to concentrate on it. Standing, he began to pace back and forth, a mere four steps in either direction due to his limited floor space. He had always hated being the center of attention. No, that was not entirely true. Like anyone else, he had enjoyed praise, had even gotten annoyed when his accomplishments went unnoticed. On the other hand, he had liked to slip into the background whenever he had wanted, to only receive attention when he had allowed it. He had not felt this way during the last dreamy year, but with the Redleaf gone, he found he had not changed much. The sort of attention he now received, unsought, even undeserved, disturbed him as much as it ever had. The averted eyes and whispering behind his back would drive him as paranoid as Aulus. His brother, not his uncle. He did not know how paranoid his uncle was.
Which brought him back to the more important question. The elder Aulus had asked him to lie, to perjure himself in a trial so he could protect his own skin by condemning his uncle. Aulus Principius might want to make the noble sacrifice, but that didn’t make Victor’s part in it any less ignoble. Victor had never thought of himself as the virtuous hero, but he had always believed himself a decent person. Lying to protect himself while sacrificing his kin went beyond immoral. It sounded like the improbable plot of some tragic play, where the audience eagerly awaited the anti-hero’s painful demise at the end. How could his uncle have put him in this dilemma? Victor shook his head angrily. Why did Victor think he had to help his uncle, anyway? He had never even met the man, whom the Domini had separated from his family almost forty years ago. Yet his political fights had thrust his nephew into this uncomfortable position among the Acolytes. If Aulus Principius had told his nephew to lie, why should Victor feel obligated to find a better way? He certainly didn’t owe his uncle anything. Then again... how certain was he that his uncle did want him to lie? The young Acolyte only had the floating image and Randall’s word as evidence. What made him think that Randall really was Aulus Principius’s friend, rather than an enemy out to destroy him with his nephew’s testimony?
Victor was still pacing when the bell rang for supper. Though his stomach rumbled and his legs ached, neither persuaded him to go and face the Acolytes’ scrutiny again. Instead, he continued to pace across the same patch of floor even as the light leaking through the shutters began to fade. By then he did not need the light to know the number of steps between the walls.
Victor fought back a yawn as he entered the indoor amphitheater early the next morning. The Senate almost never called Acolytes to testify before them. They had not even permitted an Acolyte to enter the Inner City in over decade, and then they had executed him rather than allowing him to leave--hardly a reassuring thought. Victor hoped no one here wanted him dead, but he didn’t feel hopeful.
If my Uncle’s right, the only thing in my favor is that this Kulsin’s more interested in killing him than me, he thought grimly.
Randall conducted Victor to stand at the right of the raised podium which faced the Senate and its audience. A single Dominus, a gray-haired gentleman with a well-trimmed beard, sat in a chair on the dais behind the podium. About fifty men, whom Victor assumed to be Senators, sat in the four rows of curved stone benches arranged in a semicircle on the amphitheater floor. Randall took a seat on the front row near the center. Aulus Principius had a seat on the front left, between two Domini who must be his guards. On the front right sat an elderly, mostly bald Kairnin with bug-like eyes. Behind them sat the remaining Senators in uneven groupings of unknown political meaning, and behind them rose several tiers of seats, holding space for at least a thousand observers. Domini occupied every seat, their hoods tossed back so their diverse origins stood out. Sun-darkened Kairnins looked lighter next to the black skin of the Daurentian nomads from the Novar Empire’s northwest desert. The pale skin and fair hair of the grassland dwellers from the more eastern northern reaches of the Empire could not have looked more different. Victor wondered why people living in neighboring regions had such different looks. The southerners seemed roughly similar in comparison. Though the few who looked distinctly Novar had darker complexions, only a fellow Novar would have noticed them among the Manuelites or citizens of the Sovereign Cities. Despite the variety of faces, the black robes gave them a frightening uniformity of appearance. He could not help feeling self-conscious in his red robes, as obvious as a cardinal among crows.
A low murmur had moved through the spectators and the Senators themselves when he had entered, but the gray-haired Dominus on the dais brought silence simply by standing. “The Acolyte Victor Julius Principius has been called to testify by Dominus Kulsin of the Restal. Acolyte, you have been summoned to give your testimony before the Senate of the Domini. To speak falsehood here is to forfeit your life.”
Aulus didn’t tell me that, Victor thought. From what his uncle
had told him, telling the truth would kill him too. “Domine Kulsin, you may ask your questions.”
The presiding Dominus returned to his seat as the aging Kairnin Senator rose from his. He took several measured steps towards Victor, stopping only when he stood much too close, where he could look down on the Acolyte.
“Your name is Victor Principius?” he asked.
“Yes,” Victor answered, as clearly as the tightness in his throat allowed. The Dominus loomed over him at an angle that let him see the hairs in his nostrils. He turned his eyes towards the assembled audience, resisting the insane urge to giggle.
“You are the son of Marcus Julius Principius, the brother to the Novar Emperor an’ heir to the throne?”
“Yes,” Victor intoned, wondering whether the Emperor had really named his father as the official heir.
“Then the Dominus Aulus Julius Principius is your Uncle?”
“Yes,” Victor said. He recognized the repetitive questioning as a lulling tactic, and not an impressive one for such a supposedly deadly political opponent.
“Have you seen this Dominus before today?”
At least the questioning had turned serious. “Yes.”
Kulsin’s bulging eyes went very wide as they focused on Victor. “Tell us about the las’ time you saw him.”
“I saw him when I was... taken.” Victor had almost said “kidnapped.” “His obscuring illusion slipped and I saw his face.”
Kulsin grimaced, the unpleasant expression making his face even more gruesome. Victor knew better than to congratulate himself on his little dodge, which had done nothing to help matters. Kulsin leaned over him, so that his wide-open eyes came very close to Victor’s own eyes, which only force of will kept from blinking. “What about before then? Did you ever meet Aulus before that time?”
Lie.
“What did you say?”
“I said,” Kulsin replied, “did you ever meet Aulus before you were taken? Did he reveal himself to you? Tell you about the Domini or--” Kulsin pulled himself up short before he gave Victor’s testimony for him.
You must do what Aulus told you and lie!
“But who...?” Victor fell silent. Hearing voices had to be a bad sign.
“Aulus! We’re talkin’ about your uncle Aulus! Stop tryin’ to avoid the question!” Kulsin looked furious, his dark skin flushed and his bug eyes nearly falling out of their sockets. He did not raise his voice, though it became sharper. “Did you meet this Dominus before your comin’ of age?”
Victor no longer tried to meet Kulsin’s eyes, instead looking towards his uncle, who sat without moving except for what Victor thought was a slight nod.
Lie, lie, lie! came the emphatic command inside his head.
Looking down at Kulsin’s tightly woven sandals, Victor spoke his uncle’s death sentence, “Yes.”
This has been a 6,953 word chapter of a 90,110 word novel.
This is a low point for Victor. Okay, so he's only had two chapters, but still! The main reason I put him through this is I wanted to give him an early experience of shame and failure. This will haunt him. Nor do I think it will be the only such failure that will. The other reason for this is that I wanted him to finish up his training early, with a two year break between the end of
Fire and its sequel, rather than the four years it would normally take to finish Dominus training.
