Your father gaped, incredulous. "You…talked?"
"I asked him what she'd done wrong." You hovered in the doorway, ready to sprint away. "He thanked me. Said I'd inspired his sermon."
To your surprise, instead of chasing you down for a thrashing, your father leaned unsteadily against a wall. "Oh, son. She's killed you. That damned Ecclesiast, and your mother…"
"Mother's nothing to do with it," you protested, feeling tears burn behind your eyes.
"Who else gave you the idea that you could question a priest?" He lurched to his feet again, his face now savage. "Damn it, child…between them, they've ruined you, ruined our House…." Before he could reach you, you fled.
On Helsday, every soul in Rim Square was crammed into the Naos. Ecclesiast Olynna had survived her brutal beating, but half the town had seen the Alastors drag her onto a cart and set off for Shayard City, where she would face the Archimandrite's tribunal. Everyone knew that Ecclesiast Zebed had already found one young noblewoman guilty of sharing in Olynna's heresy, and had her summarily killed by the Alastors. So the first hymn was sung with unusual enthusiasm, and ended in abrupt and utter silence. Not even a breath was audible in the hall as the new priest took his gilded niche.
"What is compassion?" Zebed inquired. His voice rolled out across the temple, rich and resonant despite his clipped Reach accent. "The Codex tells us most clearly: the Blessed Angels will judge us by our compassion. But the text of Kapirus, which we read this morning, warns us equally clearly against false compassion, the softness which tempts us away from the Order of Xthonos, setting us on the easy, gentle path that leads to Xaos. We misunderstand this matter at peril of our souls."
He looked down grimly to the helotry in their crowded gallery. "The bounds of Order are neither easy nor gentle. The weak or corrupt always seek to escape Its strictures, to imagine a world other than the one we are given. But our world is a battlefield, and each one of us a soldier either for Xthonos or Xaos. Is it compassion to teach a soldier to weep, when they must be steadfast? Is it compassion to sap their strength and blur their vision, when the road to Elysia is both narrow and steep?
"No, my children. The true course of compassion is simple." Turning his face to the balcony, Zebed found your eyes and smiled benevolently. "To obey, and to teach others to obey. Compassion is obedience. That is all."
One day, the legend of your rebellion against the all-powerful Thaumatarch of the Karagond Hegemony will be retold in countless versions. Some poets will paint you as a ruthless bandit, others as a righteous idealist. Some will call you the scourge of the aristocracy; others will accuse you of conspiring with the nobility to keep the drudges and helots under control. But the poets will surely all agree on one thing: the dramatic moment in Rim Square when the uprising began.
They'll be wrong. Your rebellion began much earlier, on a day you and your father never spoke of again.
Like everyone else in the Shayard Rim, from childhood your daily life had been shaped by rules that went unspoken and unquestioned. No one ever challenged the Ecclesiasts' interpretation of the sacred will of Almighty Xthonos and Its Angels. No one stood up to the bullying Alastor law enforcers, who kept the helots in line and imposed the Karagond Canon across the Hegemony.
And no one spoke at all when the Theurges descended on the town for a Harrowing. No one questioned how they chose their helot victims, or why such a terrifying quantity of blood was required to keep up the Xaos-Wards.
The day you first asked yourself, Does it really have to be this way?—that, in truth, was where your rebellion against the Thaumatarch started.
But the legends of your revolt will inevitably begin eight years later, on the day you confronted the Theurge Chirex at the Harrowing.
Chapter One: The Fourth Harrowing
It is a cool, cloudy afternoon, but the hundreds of people in the town square are sweating as if it were the height of summer. Two dozen club-wielding Alastors have gathered the helots from the fields, disregarding the needs of the barley harvest. The yeomanry, tradesfolk, and lesser gentry are under no compulsion to attend the Harrowing, but a few of them are present regardless, shifting nervously at the edge of the crowd.
The two Theurges stand in the middle of the agora, dressed in their customary long black coats and iron diadems. Under their coats, bandoliers with dozens of crimson phials are barely visible. Rim Square is too small a town to need a permanent Harrower, so the magi have brought their own: an eight-wheeled platform bearing a polished monstrosity of gears, hooks, blades, pipes, and urns. The machine's oily, coppery smell faintly pervades the square.
The news of the Harrowing reached you an hour ago, at your house. One of your aristarch cousins from House Keriatou mentioned it as an irritating disruption to the afternoon's hunt; there would be no helot beaters to scare the game out of the brush and into bow range. You waited impatiently for her to take her leave, then informed your father that you were going down to the square. Now he and you stand in the middle of the crowd, waiting for the rite to begin.
"Why exactly were you in such a hurry to come down here?" Your father's voice is on edge; he's plainly uncomfortable with your choice to stand among the helots. "You'd think you'd never seen a Harrowing before."
"They don't usually have four in a single year, do they?" you counter, scouring the crowd with your eyes. "Why do you suppose they're so bloodthirsty this season? Perhaps they're stocking up for a new campaign to push the border out into the Xaos-lands."
Your father's lips tighten. "That's no business of ours—unless and until Archon Leilatou requires our aid. And you should watch your language, boy." His stare grows sharp as he regards you. "Which helot exactly are you searching for?"
You try not to look startled, but the accusatory note in his voice has taken you by surprise. You say:
1) "Joana, naturally." The aging helot who maintains my family's groves is very dear to me, if not to my father.
2) "Why on earth would I be looking for a helot?"
3) "I'm not looking for anyone."
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Topic: Let's Choose in Choice of Rebels: Uprising (Read 12320 times)