The Totem-Maker (part one hundred forty)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Thirteen

The Citadel

(part one hundred forty)

“But pomp,” Castor finished, “will acknowledge you soon enough, when the zhatabe send their escort.”

“Tell me what that means, zhatabe. Is the Citadel ruled by tribunal?”

“The Citadel is not ruled. Not precisely. The zhatabe are not a tribunal.”

Knowing him, I said: “They are not a council. They are not a married pair. They are not an assembly of elders. They are not…”

“Yes, yes, Tedium. They seek signs, the present zhatabe, among the generations of every twelfth year, and these children are sent to the Citadel—to be educated, to be followed by scribes, and their sayings recorded. None of these holy matters is the affair of a street gossip like myself, and so I cannot answer much, if you wish to know what manner of education, and what manner of sayings.”

I did, but I was not shy to ask this face-to-face of the zhatabe; one member of the group, or all collectively. The education must be a sort of priestly training, the children to become themselves zhatabe, and the sayings would be like my own…too much anticipated, too often repeated, too deeply studied.

Another stranger, a wizened person carried in a sling on the back of a son, approached me with downcast eyes, and a bouquet of four-petalled blooms, orange-red.

“How nice these are!” I said. I could catch a direct look from neither, yet they watched, and so I fixed the flowers, one and the next, in my hair among the plaits. The son said something marveling to the mother; the mother answered in a parched voice, and with a nod of certainty. The son bowed off, moving backwards, while the silent crowd made way.

“And you tell me,” I said, very low-voiced, “that you don’t know this language, and can’t translate…”

“Have I ever said so?”

“But the townspeople here do not speak as the traders do, or I could have made out the words myself.”

He gave a shrug, greatly acted. Yet I felt somewhat at fault; I had vowed to practice this, and had not found the unmanipulable question.

“Ahead you see the Arca,” Castor said.

“The stone circle that Diira and Ba’ahn told me is a crossroads…more than a crossroads, a map almost…pointing the way to many cities.”

“I know of four languages spoken in this town of Aran. I can distinguish the sound of each, and I know what lands the speakers hail from.”

“Can you name them for me?”

“The lands? What the natives call themselves? How they call their speech?” When I made to answer, he cut me short. “All those things, yes. Will you remember?”

“Castor, I wish only to know if I was kind as I might be, to the poor woman. While also, I hope she does not find me holy.”

144

The Citadel

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)