Jessum

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Jessum

.At the King’s dismissal, Jessum bounded for the kitchen and, under the eye of a sputtering second cook, snatched a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese and a jug of cider. Once they were secured, he made off to the acolyte’s garret, a long room in the west wing. There, he spraddled on the sill of an open window, munching a fine brie with the crusty loaf. The cider was chilled and the meal delicious. By the time he was finished, Jessum had decided to leave.

He’d go home because there was no reason to stay. He’d return to his village of Larnes and find Euli, the blind seer dedicated to the old god, Jah, and declare that he’d been wrongfully chosen. There was no lock to which he was the key, no puzzle to which he was the final piece, no challenge put before him that he wouldn’t fail. And if Euli still insisted that he was the one and his destiny would soon be revealed, he’d lead the Seer to the nearest dung pile and say, Breathe deeply, this is the worth of your words.

He wanted nothing more to do with Jah, or his carping prophet. He and his family were of common stock and worshipped the humble household god, Drask. They’d been fools to believe in more.

Drask. Now there was a god he could believe in. A god of the belly, a god who listened to simple, everyday worries and cares. Bothered with a toothache? Leave enough honey on the altar and all would be well. Problems in the marriage bed? Two silvers and they’d disappear. Yes, he’d seen a mouse drag off a honeycomb, but it hadn’t affected his belief. The gods took many guises.

Jessum drained the jug and leaned out the window. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but he knew rain was coming. He’d had the ability to read weather since childhood, though he didn’t know why. He could breathe in chill, feel wetness on his skin and thereby gauge the severity of the storm. This one was going to be catastrophic. Some merciless force lay behind it, bringing danger. The sky would be black and wild with lightening, the roads flooded. There would be many deaths, mostly in the Bottom, where the Nawabs lived.

Jessum knew that, if he was going to leave, he should do it now, while the roads were still clear.

He leaned further out the window, grabbing the sill with his hand. Was that the Queen running to the stable with her skirts hiked up to her knees? Impossible! Queens don’t run or enter smelly barns, and they certainly don’t expose their legs. It must be someone who looked like Queen Laveth. Odd that he hadn’t noticed such a double before; he who watched everything at court. He waited for her exit, but when that didn’t come, he sniffed the air, instead.

Maybe he should leave within the hour.

Or should he? There was still work for him to do in the stables, and he was curious about the Queen, or, more probably, her double.

Still the mucking to do. Even during Open Court, Elymas hadn’t lessened his chores as he had the others. It was a duty, and even if he didn’t like Elymas, he cared about such things.

He surveyed the long room, the sloping ceiling and the twelve narrow cots beneath. Acolytes from diver’s regions sprawled nightly in these beds, but there wasn’t one among them he counted as a friend. They’d shunned him without exception. The Earth Skyll’s doing. For some reason, Elymas had hated him on sight. Jessum leaned out the window and spat.

He thought of Elymas humiliating the man named Milo. It was torture to watch, even though Jessum, too, had once humiliated a “Wabber”. He hadn’t been long in the city before he’d recognized the prejudice toward Nawabs, who were olive-skinned and short compared to the Casorians, who were tall and fair. Some even declared the Nawabs stank, though he’d never noticed it. Along Market Way, they moved to the sides. In crowds, Nawabs stood on the edges.

King Ranald had brought them to help rebuild the walls of the city, but he’d fallen ill, and until he got better, they’d wandered the city, finally settling in a part of the town called “The Bottom.” Except for an abandoned granary where plague victims had gone to die, the Bottom was mostly shanties.

Jessum spat again. It didn’t help. The bad taste was a part of him.

He’d come to the city expecting to make friends. No matter how they’d been chosen whether by seers like old Euli or by tests, the acolytes all carried the same hopes and fears. As they stood outside the Great Throne Room waiting to be presented to the legendary Earth Skyll, Jessum had seen himself reflected repeatedly. Same green colored tunic and wool leggings, same bowl haircut, same expression of fear. The fattest of the lot, a boy named Emil, was sweating profusely, dark stains under the arms of his tunic, while another publicly relieved himself of a private itch.

The doors had opened, and their desperate kinship had come to an end. The Throne Room before them was dim, a startling contrast with the sunny, autumn day outside, and the air was chilled like a cellar. Sunlight, he learned later, was unbearable to the ailing King, and Elymas hadn’t bothered to roll up the tapestries to relieve the gloom. Fat tallow candles flickered along the walls, their flames a sickly yellow. A Red Robe, the one they would come to know as Strout, prodded them forward, and they stumbled into the hall like children hurried in from the cold. The doors shut with a thud behind them, then the sound of a bar falling into its holder outside

Elymas stood in the center of the dais, clad in a magnificent crimson robe, the silk rippling about him even as he stood still. A flat gold medallion hung from a finely worked gold chain about his neck.

Jessum had heard of the medallion from Sartone, who, as a lad, had been chosen by Euli to try his hand in kingly service. Sartone had failed to make the cut, but what made him different from the others who had failed was this: he’d returned home. Most, having left home, were afflicted with wanderlust. Back in Larnes, Sartone eked out a living on his father’s farm and once a month, while in his cups, would hold forth on the dangers of city life.

As soon as Jessum had been chosen by Euli, Sartone had taken him aside to give him advice.

“Pack your coins between the soles of your shoes.”

Jessum stared at his bare feet.

“Sew a double lining in your pocket, then. Anything to protect yourself from the thieves. They’re thick as fleas along Market Way.”

Sartone had gone on to describe the city in ways that Jessum had probably heard before but only now seemed real. Ursaulis Castle, the stump of the Bone tree, the Warrior King and his scarecrow of a councilor Fulcruchen, the Market Way packed with every tribe in the land but overshadowing them all was the presence of the Earth Skyll.

Strange, but the more Sartone had talked about Elymas, the more Jessum’s mind fastened onto physical details: the color of his robe (in Sartone’s day, it had been green), the drag of his foot, his expressionless blue eyes, and, of course, the medallion. Sartone had been careful to impress him with that.

“Pure gold,” he said. “I could stare at the sun longer, I think.”

There were two stories surrounding the origins of the medallion, and Elymas had never bothered to confirm either. The first held that the medallion had been a gift from King Revel, who had been responsible for many of the additions to the castle. There had been a problem with one of the towers, no one remembered which one, and Elymas had solved it, though no one knew exactly how. In return, King Revel had ordered the finest goldsmith in the land to fashion a replica of the sun.

Not so, others argued, the medallion was all that had been left of Saar, the chain found twisted amongst his ashes at the base of the tree. The disc was old and powerful, and the light that glowed from it wasn’t from gold, but from the mastery of the wearer. No one had ever doubted Elymas was strong.

Bunched in the Great Throne Room with the rest, Jessum had given a furtive glance at the medallion before looking straight ahead.

“Each of you has been chosen,” Elymas began. Not a booming voice but clear. “But how? By whom?”

The bench vibrated beneath him; they were all shaking badly. He willed his limbs into rigidity, digging in his pocket for his rulla dice.

“Was your test against the wind? Was your judge the village shaman smeared with dung?” Elymas turned his head and coughed. The cough was contrived, of course. Every apprentice knew he’d turned his head because the odor of them, all bunched together, was appalling.

“Am I speaking to emptiness? Am I alone in this room?” he shouted and pointed to a boy in the front row. “You there! Answer me!”

“I am from the village of Irwallis,” the quavering voice began.

“I didn’t ask where you came from. I asked how you got here!”

A pause and then the shaking voice began again. “The rock, Sir, I found the painted rock in the forest.”

“Ha!” Elymas laughed and kept on laughing, short barks of contempt which might have gone on indefinitely except the unthinkable happened. An apprentice in the row behind Jessum began to laugh. Then the one in front of him. Then another and another until the room was filled with the laughter of young men.

Idiots, Jessum fumed, could they not see he was making fools of all of them? Suddenly, the pale blue eyes focused on him with an intensity that told Jessum he’d been the target all along.

“You at the end, speak!”

I am not a dog to command, Jessum thought. His voice was steady. “Euli, dedicated to the Silent God Who is Everywhere chose me. He is a blind seer, highly regarded for his wisdom and insight. Perhaps you know him?

“The God who is everywhere is called Jah. Learn his name if you wish to stay in Casoria.,” replied the Earth Skyll. As for your seer, no, I haven’t met Euli of Larnes.” Then he added snidely, “I await the pleasure.”

Laughter followed only now they were laughing at him. A few craned their necks to stare. Jessum, hunched over with embarrassment, listened with only half an ear as Elymas moved on to explain the different duties to which the apprentices would be assigned at the castle. Each would spend time in the kitchen, or as pages, butchers, gardeners and so forth, and if one showed exceptional promise, he’d be allowed to assist the Red Robes with the night watch. In Jessum’s mind, the phrase Euli of Larnesturned over repeatedly.

But Jessum hadn’t said Larnes, only Euli.

Elymas knew Euli but refused to admit it.

Why?

Over the next few weeks, Jessum had little time to ponder the question. The acolytes were kept busy learning the castle, learning protocol, adjusting to the personalities of those Red Robes assigned to them and doing chores.

Jessum had been assigned to the stables, where he cleaned stalls and shoveled muck without relief. The others rotated in their positions --- pages, boot polishers, kitchen boys--- but Jessum remained with Alban, the head groom. He noticed the slight but refused to complain; he liked being out of doors and away from castle intrigue.

And if the boys could be believed, intrigue was on every side. The King was dying. The Queen was mad. The Earth Skyll was going to make the tree bloom and surpass the Dark. On and on it went. Jessum buried his head in his pillow and thought of cleaning stalls.

The days flew by in a pattern of exhaustion and routine. The boys fell into bed each night bone weary, only to awakened at dawn. They ate their breakfast still shivering from the effects of a cold-water splash, then dispersed to their various jobs. The boys relaxed around him; some began teasing him about his red hair. Jessum began to believe he’d imagined the Earth Skyll’s dislike. Perhaps his tone had been presumptuous. Perhaps Elymas had not said Larnes.

Then came the incident with the rulla dice.