Tokus Numas (14 page)

A fool gives his heart away freely, with no expectation, no appreciation, and only his own self-recognition of his feat. He sees this as something grand and worthy of reward; yet his reward comes in the end, when he’s dead and gone, and never to be seen again.

—From
Book of Fools
, by Foolish Thinkers of Spearca

T
he journey was a little rough, but it could have been worse. They had the same meal every day on the train, except for the last day. So it had been a whole day since they’d eaten or drunk anything, and they were looking forward to being fed.

They disembarked the train, and Vetus Sepher met them outside on the platform.

“Come on, we’ve still got a ways to go,” Vetus Sepher said and handed Petro a bag. It was heavy.

“What’s this?” Petro said.

“There’re winter clothes. You’ll need them. There are some thick jackets inside and some pants and wool shirts. Hurry up and get changed.”

Petro looked around, but there was nowhere to change. He handed out the clothes, and they slipped the pants on and tucked in the tunics and then donned the wool shirts and heavy jackets. There were even socks and boots. They put those on and caught up with Vetus Sepher, who had left to fetch the wagon.

“Get on. We’ve got to get moving,” Vetus Sepher said.

The road was long through the High Mountains; the air was much colder up here than down in the valley and thinner from the altitude, and it caused Petro’s breathing to be shortened. Sha was in the back, quiet as usual. Adar was laid out fast asleep. Petro swore that guy could sleep anywhere. The Numas on horse flanked both sides of the wagon. It gave Petro an uneasy feeling about their journey and how they were watched closely and surrounded by them. Did the Numas expect someone to attack them way out here?

Light snow fell from the sky. Petro caught it in the palms of his hands. The snow melted and trickled down into a pool in the center. He brought his hands up to his mouth and licked the moisture off. It didn’t help much, but it was something to wet his tongue. They’d stopped a few times to water the horses, but no water was offered to anyone else. He never once complained about not getting anything to drink—he’d already noticed none of the other Numas had drunk any water, so asking would be fruitless.

“When will we get to Tokus Numas?” Petro licked his dry lips.

Vetus Sepher pointed, and Petro gazed upon the mountains. The mountains sloped high on all sides except for the road they were on. There were several short brown buildings clustered together with lookout towers around the perimeter. In the center was a tall, cylindrical building pointed toward the sky like an arrow. The grounds were brown, not green like he was used to seeing. Men walked about freely, for there were no walls around Tokus Numas; and he wondered why they left themselves so open. An enemy could attack at any moment, and the Numas would have no way to defend themselves. Petro had learned that a high wall was a means for self-defense and could even be the reason for winning a war. This was odd indeed.

His eyes wandered, looking at some of the men walking about. They were dressed in brown robes, and their heads were shaved. Others were in gray robes with hair that appeared longer. Some were in brown robes, and their hair was down past the midpoint of their backs. A few had shaved their heads except for one spot where the hair was braided, which hung down close to the back of the knee. This place and these men seemed strange to him, and as he looked on, none were armed with anything more than a sword and pistol.

Maybe what the Numas had to offer was not the art of war, defenses, or tactics as he had learned from his masters, but something else. That one thought led to another, but the pains in his stomach took him to a different place—right now he was hungry, in need of a bath, thirsty, and tired.

The wagon drew up to a building where a line of young men had formed. Vetus Sepher pulled the wagon to a halt and pointed to the line; Petro and Adar filed out and joined the line. Sha went to the front of the line and cut in. Behind them the Honor Guard trotted along down the center road, headed toward the back of the village. The road went past a center steeple, a place of worship, and disappeared on the other end of the square. They must keep the horses in the rear, Petro surmised.

He looked back to the line, and it had not moved. Petro rocked back and forth; feeling the urge to pee, he searched for a toilet. All the buildings looked identical. They were made of the same wood and stone with nothing to indicate what was what. He tapped Adar on the shoulder. “So, you think this is the toilet we’re standing in line for?”

Adar gave him a noncommittal shoulder shrug. “If it is, it’s going to be a while. Just go around the corner.”

“Why do you think we are standing here?” Petro asked.

“Not sure,” Adar said and looked forward.

Petro stepped out of the line for a few moments and took a look around. He walked over to the next building, but before he could pee, two Numas walked up to him. They were older. “Oh, hi. I was looking for the toilet. You have one around here?” The two Numas nodded to him to go back over to the line he had come from. Petro turned his head about. “Oh, yeah, the line. Got it,” he said and plodded back over. There he was standing again, twiddling his thumbs now, but growing frustrated.

Adar spoke over his shoulder. “Did you go?”

“No, they don’t seem to have one, unless we are standing in the line for the toilet,” he said.

“I can’t pee. I haven’t had anything to drink for…” Adar thought about it. “I think nearly thirty-six hours. It’s a test—it’s mentioned in the tablet that things will be different, done differently, and so to prepare your mind.”

“Sounds sort of vague,” Petro said under his breath. He waited a few minutes and then stepped away from the line again, and went to a different building back down the road where he had come from. He had made it a few steps before Vetus Sepher came out of nowhere.

“You leaving so soon?” Vetus Sepher said.

Petro cleared his throat as he attempted to lubricate his dried vocal cords. “No, I was looking around.” There was no going back, Petro thought. He needed to be here.

“There’s nothing to look at. You should be in line like the others,” Vetus Sepher said.

Petro looked back over his shoulder, saw the line, and then looked back to Vetus Sepher. “It’s not going anywhere.”

Vetus Sepher smiled. “You don’t want to lose your place,” he said.

Petro glanced back at “his end of the line, nodded, and said. “So, what’s the line for?” Vetus Sepher didn’t even flinch at his question; he wasn’t going to give away anything, and Petro knew.

“You’ll find out what you need in time. Just stand in line and wait.”

Petro surveyed the line again; he took notice that the snowflakes had stopped falling. It made him wonder if there was a heavy snow coming after all, and were the Numas covering up something else. When he looked back to Vetus Sepher, he had walked away. “This is no way to go about having new recruits join and then to tell them to just stand in line,” he muttered. Petro got out of line and walked down the road until he was behind the structures where a small dirt road wound through. He heard a whistle blow, and he turned around to see if it was from behind; it was not. Then he turned around again to see if it was in front of him. The whistle kept blowing, on and off. He glanced up at one of the guard towers, and the whistle stopped. Petro turned about and headed back around to the front of the buildings. When he turned the corner, he heard a different whistle blow; a long, drawn out sound that came from a man who stood out in the center of the courtyard. He pointed in different directions, and the Numas, were moving about, aligning themselves into a formation around the steeple. The new recruits stayed in line, eyeing what was happening around them. Suddenly there was a chime of a bell, which came from the top of the building. The sound reverberated off the surrounding mountains and faded into the distance before the next chime. The Numas pulled their hoods up and bowed their heads and held their palms out, facing upward. All of them stood still, listening to the bell, which rang again and again, seven times in total. After the final chime, the Numas pulled their hoods down and went about their business.

Petro scratched his head, wondering what it was all about. When he turned around, there was a new batch of recruits who marched in from the west of the village, and crammed into the line behind Adar. Petro went back to the line and squeezed in behind him. Another new recruit caught Petro by his collar and yanked him out of line. “The back of the line is there,” he said and pointed. Petro looked him up and down. He was a large guy, taller than him, thicker, and he seemed like he meant business. Petro decided it wasn’t worth the scuffle and headed to the rear of the line.

“This is great,” he said to himself. “Just like that to happen to me. I turn my back, and everyone else shows up.” This time he wasn’t going to move from his spot. The clouds had cleared, and the sun now sat in the west, behind a mountain. No other recruits had arrived, and it didn’t seem the line had moved much since he’d been there.
They should have brought them something to drink and eat if they were going to make them stand like cattle this long,
he thought. There was a shuffling of feet, and the line moved a little, not forward but backward. He nearly stumbled over his own feet trying to back up quickly enough to keep from being trampled over.

Petro danced slightly in place, looking about to see if he might be able to quickly find a spot and relieve himself. He stepped away and hurriedly went around a small building where two large bushes were planted. He peered about to see if anyone was looking. No one was and the men in the tower couldn’t spot him here. He undid his pants and felt relief as he peed on the wall. It took a while to empty his bladder, but there was no rush. That line wasn’t going anywhere.

He returned to his spot, but the line was gone, and the door was shut. He grabbed a hold of the door handle and turned it. The door opened, and the hinges groaned. He let out a deep breath. Inside, he was surprised not to see anyone, and he wondered where they all went. He went down the dimly lit hall and came to several Numas dressed in white smocks. There were seven chairs; three had other recruits in them, and the floor was covered with bunches of cut hair. A Numa with wrinkled, manila-colored skin and gray hair motioned him to the chair. Petro sat facing a mirror. The Numa revealed a set of clippers and switched them on. The buzz filled the room, and Petro felt the vibration on his scalp when the clippers moved across his head. His locks fell to the floor, collecting there with the other piles of hair. He watched in the mirror, noticing that one side of his head was bald, and the other side was still his normal length. Petro thought he looked strange, and the guy he saw in the mirror just didn’t seem like the one who had come here. Things were different now for him in ways that didn’t make a lot of sense. It was a feeling of crossing over some barrier, a hidden line, and there was no way of going back, no way to return to how things use to be. The Numa finished taking the rest of his hair off. Even the old Petro in the mirror was gone as he reached up and ran his fingertips over the prickly stubs, thinking his head looked a little off, misshapen, more oval than round.

The other recruits were done as well and were moving out of the room, through a door, and into a hall.

Petro followed them. They came to a stairwell and went down; the air was cooler and moist. He took in a deep breath, taking the spiral all the way down to the base, where it opened up into a large hall, much larger than the building above.
Is this where they all went?
Several other recruits were standing at a double-door entryway, yet they still had all their hair. Petro wondered if that was a test, too. Maybe that was what everything here was about, a series of tests. He hated tests and preferred to eat, drink, and sleep. He grumbled internally over the idea that they had them standing outside nearly the entire day to get a haircut, at least some of them—and you’d think they could have made that more efficient.

On the far side of the room was a stage. A man stood in the center, talking. He wore a dark robe, and his hair was long and braided with the end brought back up and clipped to itself. His eyes were slanted some, and his skin had a yellowish tint. Petro figured he must come from the far east of Spearca, maybe one of the fishing villages or the woodlands where soft pines are grown, cut, and sent to all the kingdoms of Spearca for building. Petro cocked his head to one side to hear him better and counted at least fifty other recruits in the room.

“I am Vetus Mont, and I’ve seen many recruits come through Tokus Numas. You are not the first, as you know, and you will not be the last; but you are here now. I want you to think of this as a place to learn, a place to grow, and a place you can call home. You’ve departed from your prior life, and have stepped into your new life—this life is what you make of it. You can pout, whine, shout…or you can be excited, eager, and ready to make something of your time here at Tokus Numas. It’s up to you. Some of you are thinking, ‘This doesn’t apply to me. I’m going to do my time and leave.’ Some of you are thinking, ‘I want to be here’; but I challenge you to show it, not only think it. Some of you are probably too tired, too hungry, and too thirsty to even think at all.”

Laughter erupted and filled the air.

Vetus Mont held up his hands, and the room quieted.