The Scar (50 page)

*   *   *

The evening before the trial, the first spectators appeared in front of the courthouse. At dawn the square was so congested with people that the guards had to set their whips in motion to clear a path to the building. People gave way without the benefit of whips, groaning and pressing against one another, before a procession of the acolytes of Lash that made its way to the court. The university gaped with broken windows, but a crowd of students, forcing a path through the shouts and insults, also came. Four sturdy guards with pikes held across their bodies conducted one of them into the courthouse: a tall fair-haired man with a scar on his cheek. A rumor that he was the chief witness went the rounds.

There was far from enough room in the court to let everyone in, but bearing in mind the importance of the trial, the magistrate graciously allowed the townspeople to occupy the space between the doors, as well as the corridor leading outside and the steps of the building, and in the end the spacious courtroom was connected to the square by a wide ribbon of humanity. People reported what they heard from ear to ear like water is delivered from hand to hand during a fire, and everything that was said in the court became the talk of the square within a matter of minutes. The beginning of the hearing kept being delayed; sitting on a long, rickety bench, Egert watched impassively as the acolytes of Lash talked behind the empty judgment seat, as a clerk sharpened his quills, as the bench opposite him was slowly filled with frightened shopkeepers: they were also witness, witnesses of the Plague. Everything must go according to the rules. What a pity that it was impossible to summon to court those unfortunates whose bodies reposed under the hill; what a pity that it was impossible to summon Dean Luayan. He could not rise to his feet from under the earth, not even to help his beloved daughter.

Turning his head toward the hall, Egert saw the fringed caps of the students and instantly averted his eyes.

Two scribes were fidgeting behind a long table. Egert overheard one of them ask the other in a low voice, “Do you have a nail file? My nail broke, damn it!”

The crowd fidgeted, jostled one another, whispered to one another, and examined with equal curiosity the somber decorations of the hall, the scribes, Egert, the guards, the judgment seat, and the toylike gibbet on the table in front of it. It was an exact copy of the one that overlooked the entrance. The prisoner’s dock was empty, but right next to it, perched on a stool, was the short man of unprepossessing appearance dressed in a shapeless smock. A canvas bag rested on his knees, and by its contours Egert’s eyes effortlessly divined the nature of the object concealed inside.

The long-handled pliers.

Ten minutes passed, then another ten. The spectators finally began to look around excitedly, and Egert saw the magistrate striding toward the dais. A man in a hood accompanied him; Egert knew who he was. Treading with difficulty, the magistrate climbed the velvet-pleated steps and sat down heavily in the judgment seat. Fagirra stood next to him without raising his hood, but Egert still felt his observant gaze rest on him. The magistrate sighed something in a strained voice, and the clerk took up his words like a resonant echo.

“Bring in the accused!”

Egert mired his head deep into his shoulders, riveting his eyes to the gray fissures in the stone floor. The noise in the hall dimmed, steel clanged, and then Egert’s ability to feel others’ suffering returned to him.

His head still lowered, Egert’s skin sensed Toria entering the court. She was a solid lump of pain and fear, constricted by her obstinate will. He felt how with her very first glance, covetous, full of hope, she searched the hall for him and how that glance warmed as it settled on him. He realized that she already knew everything. She knew about the role that had been prepared for Egert, but all the same she rejoiced at the opportunity of seeing him; all the same she hoped as devoutly as a child. She placed her hope in this man, most precious to her.

Then he raised his head.

The days of interrogation had not been kind to her. Meeting Egert’s eyes, she tried to smile: almost guiltily because her bitten lips had no desire to obey her. Her black hair was pulled back with unusual precision; it was smoother than usual. Her bloodshot eyes were dry. The guard sat Toria down in the prisoner’s dock. With an obvious display of disgust, she moved away from the touch of his hand and once again looked at Egert. He tried to answer her look with a small smile of his own, but he could not bear it and turned his eyes away, right into the gaze of Fagirra.

The executioner sighed loudly, and his sigh echoed over the entire hall because just at that moment a breathless hush had settled over the crowd. The prosecutor stood up and flung off his hood with an abrupt movement.

Egert felt Toria’s horror. She even flinched when Fagirra looked at her. At the thought that the man had tortured her with his own hand, Egert’s jaw clenched with the desire to kill him, but fear soon overrode that desire and returned everything in his soul to its accustomed place.

Fagirra began to recite the prosecution’s charges, and from the very first word Egert understood that it was hopeless, that Toria was doomed and that no mercy would be given.

Fagirra spoke simply and plainly. The people listened to him with bated breath, and only in the back rows was there any whispering: the words of the prosecutor were being transmitted along the chain to the square. From his words, as considered and precise as the work of a jeweler, it incontestably followed that the dean had long planned to blight the city and that his daughter, of course, helped him. Fagirra mentioned such details and produced such proofs that Egert’s heart began to ache: either a spy of the Order had been hidden in the university for a long time or Toria, under torture, had told Fagirra about the most private, most secret details of her father’s life. The crowd became indignant; Egert felt how their righteous anger spread along the chain beyond the walls of the court, how the human sea on the square was filled with wild rancor and the thirst for retribution.

Toria listened, cringing internally. Egert felt how she tried to gather together her scattered thoughts, how she flinched from the accusation as if from blows. Her hope, which had flared up at the sight of Egert, now gradually faded like a smoldering coal.

Glancing intently at Egert, Fagirra finished his speech, flipped his hood back over his head, and approached the judgment seat. One by one the witnesses were called to the stand at a sign from the magistrate.

The first, a fleshy merchant, had the most difficulty: he did not know what to say, and so he simply lamented his losses, somewhat inarticulately. He was listened to with sympathy, for every man in the crowd could say the exact same words in his place. Everyone who was called up to the witness stand after the merchant behaved similarly; the lamentations were repeated; women cried, enumerating their losses. The crowd hushed, borne away into grief.

Finally the flood of witnesses of the Plague dried up. Some lad from the crowd started yelling out his own experiences, but he was quickly admonished to keep quiet. As if it were a single entity, the gaze of the crowd, stern and sour, lunged at the accused. Egert felt a slap of hatred strike Toria. Groaning noiselessly, he jerked on his bench, wishing to shelter and defend her, but he remained seated while the magistrate coughed something and the clerk repeated that now the prosecutor would question the defendant.

Toria stood up, and that single movement cost her agonizing effort. Egert felt how every nerve, every sore muscle quaked. Taking the stand, she quickly glanced at Egert, who leaned forward, silently supporting, embracing, and reassuring her. Fagirra walked close to the stand. A convulsion passed over Toria’s entire body, as if the intimate presence of the robed man was unbearable to her.

“Is it true that Dean Luayan was your father?” Fagirra asked loudly.

Toria—Egert knew what effort it cost her—turned her head and looked him straight in the eye. “Dean Luayan is my father,” she replied brusquely, but loudly and steadily. “He is dead, but he still exists in the memory of the thousands who knew him.”

The hall, which had been silent, broke out into whispers.

Fagirra’s lips quivered slightly. It seemed to Egert that he was about to smile. “Well. Daughterly affections are commendable, but they do not justify the deaths of hundreds of people!”

Egert felt Toria flinch as she tried to overcome her pain and fear.

“Those people were killed by you. You hooded executioners! And now you weep over your victims?! On the night the Plague appeared”—Toria turned toward the hall—“on that very night—”

“Save your breath! Answer the questions without superfluous words,” Fagirra interrupted her. “On that very night, you and your father performed certain magics in his locked study. Yes or no?”

Egert realized how terrified she was. Fagirra stood next to her, piercing her bloodshot eyes with his gaze.

Toria staggered under his aggression. “Yes. But…”

With a sweeping, eloquent gesture, Fagirra turned to the magistrate, then to the hall. “Hundreds of candles burned all night in the dean’s study. Your loved ones were still alive. In the morning, dogs howled throughout the entire city, and your loved ones were still alive, but then the Plague descended, called forth by these conjurers.”

“A lie!” Toria wanted to shout, but her voice broke. She glanced at Egert, pleading for help, and he saw how her hope died.

“A lie…,” echoed from the corner where the students lurked. The crowd grumbled so loudly that the clerk banged on his table and the guards held up their pikes.

Encouraged by this unexpected support, Toria regained control of her temper. Egert felt how a desire broke through the black pall that shrouded her mind: a furious desire to resist, to denounce.

“It’s a lie that the Plague came through the will of my father. It was the Order of Lash that summoned death to us. They went to the hill where the victims of the plague were buried and dug it up! They let death go free!”

The crowd hummed loudly. Egert held his breath: he thought that the truth said loud enough was capable of changing the court’s direction.

“Did you see this yourself?” asked Fagirra.

“Yes!”

“But where?”

“In the enchanted—” Toria stopped and then ended the sentence in a hoarse voice. “—in the enchanted mirror … in the water…”

“In the water,” repeated Fagirra turning to the crowd, chuckling. “I’m sure that that’s not the only thing the mage can show ‘in the water.’”

There was an nervous laugh in the hall.

“Listen!” Toria gathered the last bits of her strength. “The Order of Lash is strong where everyone is afraid! Where people wait for the End of Time! The Order of Lash committed a crime to regain its former power! Has anyone ever seen the Lash facilitators bring people anything but fear? Who among you knows what the Order of Lash really is? Who among you knows what plans they nurture under their hoods? And who among you would not affirm that my father never brought evil to anyone in his whole life? Can even one of you ever recall him harming so much as a dog? With the help of magic or without it, he served at the university for decades. He worked for the good, and he is the one who saved all of you from the Plague. He sheltered us with his own body. He gave up his life, and now—”

Toria reeled from a sudden, resurgent pain; the tortures she had endured had left a multitude of agonizing marks on her body. Egert bit his hand, drawing blood. The crowd buzzed deafeningly. Astonished people repeated to each other the words of the accused, conveying them to the square, and it is possible that her words sowed doubt in some souls. The students stood strong, a fortress, a citadel of support for Toria. From the corner of his eye, Egert noticed the headmaster being buffeted toward the exit, holding on to his heart.

Fagirra was unfazed. With the corners of his pale mouth slightly raised, he uttered in a low voice, “You aggravate your guilt by slandering Lash.”

It was agonizingly hard for Toria to start speaking again. “You have not brought one piece of hard evidence of the guilt of my father. Everything you’ve said means nothing. You have neither evidence, nor … witnesses.”

She spoke ever softer and softer. Trying to make out her words, the crowd hushed, and only the scraping of soles along the floor and the breath of hundreds of people could be heard in the sultry air of the hall.

Fagirra smiled slightly. “There is a witness.”

Toria wanted to say something. She jerked her head up, ready to vent all her wrath and disdain on Fagirra, but then she stopped short and said nothing. Egert felt how all her strength and all her will dissolved, receding like water through open fingers. Hope, which had lingered on until this moment and which had helped her to struggle, shimmered one last time and then died. In the growing silence Toria turned her head and met Egert’s eyes.

He sat alone on an infinitely long bench, hunched over, doomed to betray. A wistful question stood in Toria’s eyes, but Egert could not answer it. They looked at each other for several seconds, and he felt how pity, despair, and contempt for his weakness struggled in her soul, but then these feeling gave way to a deathly exhaustion. Toria’s shoulders slowly slumped and, dragging her feet, she returned to the dock without a single word.

The silence in the hall lasted for a few more seconds; then a roaring quickly surged, flying up toward the ceiling. The clerk was about to pound on his table, but with a scarcely noticeable gesture Fagirra stopped him, and the hall, unrepressed, was free to express its astonishment, its indignation and its rage toward the sorceress who had capitulated in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Finally, Fagirra snapped his fingers, the clerk banged away at the tabletop, and the guards slammed the ends of their pikes on the floor. The crowd quieted, though not immediately. The magistrate said something Egert could not hear. The clerk loudly repeated his words, but these words did not reach Egert, who had settled into a dreary stupor, until a guard standing behind him firmly seized him by the elbow and lifted him up off the bench.