8. The palace (III)

He awoke slowly from a dreamless sleep, disoriented by the darkness in the room and by the fact that he could not at first remember where he was or how he had come to be there. As his eyes made out, in the gray light seeping under the door, the contours of the room where he lay, his memory began to retrieve scattered fragments of the events of the day before, but for some time the pieces refused to gather themselves into anything resembling a coherent whole. For the time being, owing no doubt to his residual grogginess and exhaustion, this failure did not bother him much. He might well have drifted off again, had it not been for the discomfort of a severely parched throat and mouth, which at last drove him to sit up and locate the carafe. When he had drained the contents he rose, made his way to the water-closet, returned to the bed to lace on his shoes, and opened the door into the hall.

Though there were no windows in the vicinity of the room it was evident that it was day; from somewhere far off a muffled echo of sunlight was penetrating the gallery. The lanterns had all gone out, or been extinguished, while he slept. With no one in sight and no sound other than the dull reverberation of his footfalls, he began to walk, reversing the course he had taken the night before, undoing turns until he came to the long gallery on the building's perimeter. Here the full glare of the day shone upon him through the great arrays of windows. He looked out and saw that he was much higher up than he had imagined. Far below him, neat rows of trees paralleled the building in either direction; further out there was a narrow canal, another plantation of trees, and then green cropland, perfectly level and broken only by a rigorous geometry of irrigation trenches which receded from his eye to a vanishing point unseen. The distant mountains, now largely obscured by haze, loomed well beyond it all. From the angle of the sun he judged that it was already midday.

He walked along beneath the windows, passing one deserted branching gallery after another, until he heard sounds coming from somewhere ahead, something like furniture being scraped along a floor, and doors being opened and shut. He veered to the right, following the sound, then to the left, and soon found himself at the entrance to a large room, in which some thirty or so men and women were seated around a long table made of dark, highly polished wood, chatting amongst themselves and sharing a plain but abundant spread of bread, fowl, and greens, washed down with the contents of unmarked glass bottles of wine. To the right, on a raised platform, was a smaller dais, placed perpendicularly to the rest of the room. A lone figure, elderly but still to all appearances hale, was seated behind it, surveying the room in silence and picking halfheartedly at his plate. On a perch behind him, unteathered and alert, was a tiny, immaculate white owl no bigger than a man's hand.

He saw no sign of Mira, but at his approach one of the men broke off his conversation, rose, greeted Oren briefly, and ushered him to a seat. A plate and cutlery were in place in front of him; Oren poured himself a glass of wine, heaped his plate with a little of whatever was in reach, and began to eat without hurry, looking around the room at the company that surrounded him. Aside from an occasional nod or glance in his direction they continued as before and paid no particular heed to his presence. Much of their banter he could make no sense of — it seemed to be in a tongue he didn't speak — and what he could understand was evidently concerned with trivialities, or at any rate he could find no great consequence in the mingled threads of conversation that reached his ears. All present, including the older man whom he took for his host, were dressed in like fashion, in unadorned but well-made clothing similar in style to the simple frock that Mira had worn the night before.

When all the diners had finished eating, a crew of children — boys and girls, ten or twelve years in age — swept in and cleared the table, efficiently and in silence, leaving only the wine, then just as swiftly vanished from the room. The conversation dimmed at first to whispers, then to an expectant hush, as all eyes now turned towards the end of the room furthest from the dais, the presiding host, and the diminutive bird of prey. All at once, unheralded, two young men entered the room, strode abruptly to the dais, and came to a halt before the old man, who regarded them impassively. As soon as they had both snapped to attention a third figure appeared through the same doorway, carrying with both hands a long lance fashioned from gleaming and lethal steel. As he crossed through the room Oren saw that the head of the lance was covered in what appeared to be fresh blood, and in fact as the young man passed in front of Oren a single drop fell from it and burst upon the marble floor.

When he reached the dais the bearer of the lance took his place between his fellows, directly in front of the old man, and held the weapon out before him in the upturned palms of his hands. The old man stared at him intently but gave no command. When this standoff had lasted for a minute or more the young man suddenly stepped forward sharply, laid the lance on the white tablecloth of the dais, then stepped back. Immediately all three young men turned to one side and strode away, exiting where they had entered. No one except Oren watched them go.

The silent interval that followed must have lasted, by Oren's reckoning, a good ten minutes. Save for the owl, which shifted restlessly on its perch, blinking and swiveling its head to regard first one side of the room and then the other, no one moved, and all eyes remained on the dais and the bloody lance. He was getting a bit tired of this when at last the old man rose stiffly from his chair and raised his hands in a gesture that might have been one of resignation or dismissal. The company evidently took it for the latter, for at once they rose and departed, alone or in twos and threes, ignoring Oren as they left. The old man had stepped into the crowd and Oren did not see him go out.

He remained in his chair until he was alone; then he got up and made to leave, but at the last moment he changed his mind, turned, and approached the dais. He could see that the blood from the lance had seeped onto the tablecloth, staining it a violent red. The owl looked blankly at him as if awaiting an inquiry, but Oren said nothing.

June 12, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Chris Kearin. All rights reserved.