The Tale of Oriel (5 page)

There was danger. Not immediate danger, but mounting danger. Nikol went up to whisper in the Damall's ear and after a few words the Damall brushed him away. The Damall didn't eat that day's soup, and neither did Nikol.

He thought he could see the shape of the danger, forming out of darkness.

By the second morning, all the boys felt well again, and hungry. The Damall had also recovered. The Damall sat beside the fire, the whipping box on the floor before him, a thin smile playing across his lips. The whip rested in his hands. “Nikol,” the Damall called.

Nikol approached, waited before the Damall's chair.

He looked at the two faces, and recognized his own fear. He did not yet know what he had to fear, but he would find it out. He didn't doubt that.

He also didn't doubt the courage of his heart to respond to the danger, whatever it was. He wouldn't let himself doubt his courage. He didn't dare to let himself doubt his courage.

“Nikol accuses Griff,” the Damall announced. “Griff. Step forward.”

Griff went forward.

“Face them,” the Damall said.

Griff turned around and faced the seated boys. Griff's hands clasped and unclasped together. Griff's tongue wet his lips, and wet his lips again.

He looked at Griff's familiar face. He didn't know what the Damall, and Nikol, were playing at. Nikol looked right at him then, and smiled.

He didn't like Nikol's smile.

The Damall also looked at him. The Damall didn't smile. “Come forward,” the Damall said.

He stood up. He moved forward, over the limbs of seated boys. There were three boys then, standing before the Damall in his highbacked chair. He faced the Damall, and Nikol, and Griff. Griff held his hands clasped together, and his jaw clamped tight, to keep himself quiet. Griff must think that if he were still and quiet, the danger would flow over him, like water. He wondered if Griff hoped to ride out the danger, as seaweed rides out the tide, by standing still, floating silent. He wondered how he, himself, rode out danger—and knew the answer before he had finished asking the question, when he felt his spirit spread out its wings, to rise up and away over, to look down on and see clearly, to soar free. Griff's way was not his way.

Griff's way would not deflect this danger. He knew that. How he knew, he couldn't have said, but the knowledge set his heart beating fast.

The Damall raised a hand and pointed a finger at him. “You be judge.”

He didn't question the choice. The Damall must not see any doubt or weakness.

Nikol accused Griff. “He put something in the soup to make us sick.”

“I didn't!” Griff cried.

“You did!” Nikol cried.

“Why would I?”

“To make us sick,” Nikol said. “Like you did that other time. You hate me, and you hate the Damall, and you want us to die.”

Griff hesitated against this charge. “But I was sick, too, it wasn't just everybody else, it was me, too. If I'd done it, would I have eaten any soup?”

“How do I know you were sick?” Nikol asked. He pushed his face towards Griff, jabbing his chin and nose upwards because Griff was the taller. “Anyone can pretend his stomach hurts. Anyone can pretend he's been outside with the shits, or the vomits. Who made the soup?”

“I did,” Griff said, “but—”

“Who knows what the naked ladies look like?”

“I do. But that's because after the time before I found all the places where they grow. Because I didn't want that kind of mistake ever to get made again,” Griff explained to the Damall. “I found the spring leaves and the fall flowers. I found the corms. I know what they look like.”

“See?” Nikol cried out, triumphant.

“But only so I wouldn't make that mistake ever again,” Griff cried out.

“That other time, we were sick the same way,” Nikol said.

“If somebody did it on purpose, it wasn't me,” Griff said.

Nikol spoke slowly then, his voice hissing. “Are you saying it was me?”

Griff's eyes were wide, like the eyes of a rabbit in a snare. “No,” he denied. “I don't accuse anyone. I don't know anything. Except I didn't. I wouldn't do that. I made the soup, it would be stupid for me to do that because I'm the first person anyone would accuse. . . .” Griff's voice trailed off and his shoulders slumped.

He thought what Griff said was true: It wouldn't be the cook who poisoned the soup. He thought that Griff wouldn't want to make
him
ill. He believed Griff was guiltless.

“Here's the whip.”

The Damall passed him the whip.

He couldn't say—as the Damall wanted to hear him say—“But I haven't judged.” If he said that, the Damall would pass the whip to Nikol.

He couldn't say—as the Damall hoped he would—that he believed Griff. If he said that, he would lose his place as heir. He knew that as surely as he knew—whatever Nikol might have actually been promised or maybe just lied about—that
he
was the rightful choice for seventh Damall. Not Nikol.

He took the whip into his hands and folded its tails back along the length of the handle, being careful not to cut his hands on the stone chips. “For the guilty party, how many?” he asked the Damall.

“Twenty,” the Damall said. “No, twenty-five.”

The boys murmured, pleased. Griff seemed to shrink into himself.

He kept his face a stone mask.

“After which,” the Damall said, “he goes to market. Directly to market. It'll be spring, when the soldiers come shopping, and the mines need to replace their winter dead.”

He nodded his stone head and did not let his eyes turn their emotionless glance from the Damall's face. He could see Nikol, out of the corner of his eye, smiling. He saw Griff's body quivering, as if with chills.

“For the guilty party,” the Damall said, and showed his teeth.

He understood: This was a test, or a contest.

“I am to judge?” he asked. “As you said,” he reminded the Damall.

“So I did.” The Damall seemed pleased.

He didn't know how to judge, but he knew what his failure to judge would lead to. So he began to make his careful way into the trap. “What Nikol says is true,” he said. “It is Griff who prepared the soup, and who knows about the naked ladies. It is Griff who always prepares our food, so it is Griff who could most easily add the sickmakers,” he said. “Nikol is correct also when he says that the guilty person could pretend to be ill. But,” he asked, “how are we to know which one of us it is who was pretending? Nikol might accuse anyone,” he said. “He might accuse me.”

“I didn't accuse,” Nikol sputtered, “I just told the truth. Are you telling the Damall that I'm lying?”

“How could I know if you're lying?” he asked, and felt his own cleverness. He had asked a question no one could answer. He knew, now, how to win the test, and hold his inheritance. “How can any of us know, without proof?”

Nikol pulled at his lower lip and looked at the Damall. At last he answered. “Raul saw. Raul saw and he told me. Stand up, Raul. Stand up and tell them what you told me. How you saw Griff cutting up little white-brown things. How he'd gotten them from under his bed, in a bag. How you looked under his mattress and found them there. How he didn't see you because he thought he was alone, and you were in the shadow by the cupboard beside the fireplace, and his back was to you, and he chopped them up small, with the biggest knife, and dropped them into the soup, handfuls of them. You saw him. You saw it all. Tell what you saw. Tell what you told me last night, when everyone else slept.”

Raul stood up. “That's right,” he said, and his voice squeaked.

“No, you tell,” Nikol said.

“What Nikol said. That's what I said. It's true. I promise,” he cried, his voice rising as Nikol reached a hand out for him.

The Damall interrupted. “Twenty-five strokes, judge.”

He didn't like his choices. Each choice must be paid for in coin he didn't have to spare. If he denied his own belief in Griff, then he would have purchased his right to rule the island by the betrayal of the one person in the world he trusted. If he acted as he believed, then he would lose his inheritance. His heart sank like stone.

Griff, pale, and sad, was lifting his shirt over his head. Griff looked right at him to say, “I'm sorry.”

He knew what Griff meant to say. Griff understood the choicelessness and was sorry to make things harder for him.

“You hear? Did you all hear? Griff admits it,” Nikol said. “But he's just saying it now so he'll get fewer strokes. Are you going to let Griff get away with that?” Nikol asked the Damall.

He felt anger raise his heart, until it seemed that he was soaring on wings of anger above the hall. From up there, he could see the Damall's purposes, and see Nikol's purposes, and see a way to save himself.

He handed the whip back to the Damall, who held it out to Nikol.

He made his accusation. “Griff isn't the one who should be whipped. I accuse Nikol.”

Nikol's eyes narrowed, briefly. The whip was between them, ready. “You, I'll whip you first, until you beg me—”

“You'll whip no one.” The Damall had risen in his chair. “Not until I tell you. Besides, he accuses you. Have you no answer to make to the accusation?”

“I deny it,” Nikol said. “He has no proof.”

He had proof ready, and as soon as he started telling it, the Damall's glittering eyes told him he had chosen well. “I think Griff saw you,” he said. “I think Griff had gone out to the privy and left the soup unguarded. I think you had the corms. I think Griff saw you dropping something into the soup and I think he asked you what you were doing and I think you told him he made a mistake, you weren't doing anything. I think Griff believed you. I think you are the boy who only pretended—”

By then, Nikol had hurled himself forward.

He was ready, feet apart, hands in fists. He felt nothing, when Nikol slammed into him, he felt no pain of fingers groping for his eyes and cheeks, there was no more than a temporary blackness in front of his eyes. He threw Nikol off, threw Nikol onto the ground, threw himself down on top of Nikol.

Hands grabbed him, to haul him up. Nikol scrambled to his feet.

“Let's do this properly,” the Damall said.

The Damall held him back by the arms, until he agreed. Then the Damall said, “Take the whipping box out of the way. These two will fight without interference, until . . . one of them begs for mercy. Yes. Then we can be sure who the guilty person is, and we will deal with him. Understood?”

The boys murmured agreement.

“No boy is to try to help in the fight. No one. If any boy does that, he'll be punished as many strokes as the guilty person. Is that understood?”

They understood. Four boys carried the whipping box out of the way. They made a circle around the space in front of the fireplace. The Damall sat in his chair. The main hall was dark behind the ring of boys, even though it was morning. Firelight played in the air and fell over the faces, as if it were evening, not morning.

He didn't think. He couldn't think. He held himself ready.

Nikol, too, across the empty space, awaited the Damall's word. The packed dirt floor made a kind of penned area, like a corral for animals or the slave market in Celindon. The fire burned behind its hearthstone. Nikol's eyes burned. He hadn't understood how much Nikol hated him.

He shifted, waiting. Firelight made shadows on Nikol's face.

At the word, they began.

This time they were cautious, with circlings and fingers clenched. There was a roaring in his ears, like fire. He could hear his heart beating, he could see Nikol's eyes and the red blood oozing down from Nikol's nose. His feet scuffed along the floor in their soft-soled boots as he circled, wary, ready.

Then there was a time of feinting and false starts. He jabbed a fist out, to draw Nikol's guard. Nikol rushed forward and he just stopped himself in time from ducking backwards, off balance. They feinted and drew back, circling. He began to sweat, salty sweat running into his mouth. He was aware only of Nikol's burning eyes and the dark moving shape beneath the eyes that was Nikol's body.

With a cry that was half a groan, Nikol broke the circle and threw himself fists first into the fight.

There was a confusion of blows and jabs and pains. He moved his hands and legs, moved back and forward, to protect himself against fists, and clawing fingers, teeth, and hands that pulled his hair back, against jabbing knees and kicking feet, and he had to maintain his balance. He was shoving and hitting, clawing, biting at Nikol's ear—it tasted vile—and biting at the hand that Nikol had over his face, with Nikol's fingers up his nose. He jabbed his knee at Nikol's parts. He shoved Nikol's chest with his shoulder and Nikol's face with his elbow and knuckles. Nikol's nose spurted blood, and he had Nikol's blood all over his face. Unless it was his own blood.

He wiped his eyes, because he couldn't see for the blood, and sweat. The sweat stung.

He jabbed backwards, because Nikol hung on his back.

Nikol fell off and he stumbled for sudden lightness.

There was a sound, the boys making some kind of noise. The sound had been going on for a while, he thought.

The Damall's eyes glittered. The Damall might have been about to smile.

He got up onto his feet, but his knees felt wrong, and he was struck from behind the legs and his knees buckled. He fell over backwards like a tree and heard his head strike on the hearthstone. Stunned for two blinks of his eyes, as he tried to clear his vision, two more blinks—he shook his head.

Nikol knelt on his chest, a knee in his neck, choking him. Nikol had a dagger. The dagger Nikol had was his, the one he had been given years earlier, the one that had disappeared. Did Nikol carry a dagger in his boot every day?