The Totem-Maker (part thirty-three)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Four

To Be and to Choose

(part thirty-three)

The woman stood. Her face was scarred; her arms bore the grooves of knife wounds, accenting sinew and muscle.

“I am called Pyrandtha. I am a Knight of Caeluvm, a Challenger. I fight no longer, but I serve, for we pledge our lives to the virtue of honor. I have been named by the Emperor Minister of Causes to the city of Monsecchers. I am asked by Lady Nyma to state for the court those rules apt to the Petitioner’s cause, for many of you are strangers, and many have never challenged.”

My eye she sought, at this pause. Whenever a person of importance exercised dignities of office, rituals I had never believed touched me, I felt a thrill. Of a glamour, touching me also. I wanted my turn on stage; I wanted my audience to want it. Some clever answer, and mysterious…

Yes, it flitted through my mind, in a hushed voice, loud enough for the Prince, for Lady Nyma, but not for the gallery, left to whisper and gossip…

But the Minister of Causes asked no question.

“The challenge must fall into one of three classes: Sauta Umos, insult to the person; Sauta Maitos, insult to the house; and Sauta Faibe, insult to the weak. The law holds that a person of lower lineage or place cannot commit Sautos against a person of higher; that a person without citizenship cannot insult the family or reputation of an Elector, but—this, to the law of challenge, is the foundation—any person may issue challenge against another, on the charge of preying on one weaker.

“The Order of the Knights of Caeluvm exists for this purpose, that many of the rightly aggrieved are not able to meet an opponent in combat. We are a charitable order. We swear a vow of Service above Self, even unto death, if the gods so will.”

She stopped again, not to offer her order’s charity to me, but because the Prince was playing at something. I saw him shift in his seat, with his knee nudge his bodyguard’s. Lusting to see a woman fight, as women did not in the Prince’s land?

And he would not fight himself, he would order one of his knights—

Whom Pyrandtha would destroy. I felt such scorn, I mouthed the word coward.

“The form of challenge, which by the account even of Mumas Martas, has been done correctly, is this: The Sautos must be stated, its being and its reason, the hand be placed on the belly, the seat of trust. As we do when on pilgrimage to the shrines, where the stonecrafters who lived among the gods carved their images by arts lost to us, and the priests fasted, and the earth burned day and night, and the blood of the impious ran as a river in the streets, to consecrate and make holy the living rock. When we pass in procession, and when we say our prayers, we place our hands on the belly of the god, but our eyes we cast down.”

Her words were for the Prince. Our midwinter time of pilgrimage was soon; many hearts would pray, many more of us walk the procession than before the Prince’s day. We would pray the Emperor be toppled from his throne, that his paid vassal be exposed to our mercy. And that, if it pleased the gods, the Prince would never leave this land.

35

To Be and to Choose

The Totem-Maker (part thirty-four)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)