Earthborn (Homecoming) (36 page)

The comparison of Motiak to Nuak was unbearable. “Get out,” said Motiak.

Aronha rose to his feet. “I see that this kingdom has changed since I was young. Now I am expelled from the king’s presence for showing him exactly what he is about to do.”

Motiak stared straight forward as Aronha left the room. Then he sighed and buried his face in his hands. “This is very messy, Akmaro,” he said.

“It can’t be helped,” said Akmaro. “I warned you from the start that it would be very hard to take this people from a place where diggers were hated and enslaved, where women were kept silent in public life, and where the poor had no rights against the rich, to a place where all were equal in the eyes of the Keeper and the law. The surprise is that it took them this long to bring their opposition out into the open.”

“And it wouldn’t have happened now, either,” said Motiak, “if my sons and yours hadn’t let it be known that as soon as I’m dead, all these innovations would be swept away.”

“They haven’t said anything publicly,” said Akmaro.

“Ilihi brought me word from a man who is at the heart of this; they would never have taken action like this if they hadn’t had assurances that all my likely heirs were opposed to you, Akmaro. All of them. The
only surprise is that they didn’t send an assassin to kill me.”

“And make a martyr of you?” said Akmaro. “No, they love you—that’s why it took them so long. They know that you are the reason Darakemba is at peace, the reason the Elemaki don’t dare to attack except those annoying raids on the border. They’re trying to destroy
me
without harming you.”

“Well, it’s not working,” said Motiak. “They
can’t
destroy you without harming me, because I know that what you teach is true. I know that it’s
right.
And I’m not going to back down.”

Didul raised one hand a little from the table. The others deferred to him. “I know that I’m only a priest from one of the provinces. . . .”

“Skip the formalities, Didul, and get to the point,” said Motiak impatiently. “We know who you are.”

“You are king, sir,” said Didul. “You must decide in such a way that your power to govern, to keep the peace, is not damaged.”

“I hope that you aren’t just pointing out the obvious,” said Motiak. “I hope that you have a specific plan in mind.”

“I do, sir. I have also read the book of Oykib, and the two later cases that were tried under the Sherem law. And both times the king turned the case over to the high priest to be tried. I think it was that very precedent that Nuab used in consulting with his priests during the trial of Binaro.”

Akmaro stiffened. “You can’t be suggesting that I should sit in judgment on these men and pronounce a sentence of death on them!”

Chebeya chuckled grimly. “Didul begged you not to make him come with you, Akmaro, but you insisted that you had dreamed of him sitting with you in council with the king and made him come along.”

“There was a true dream involved with this?” asked Motiak.

“There was a dream!” said Akmaro. “You can’t do this to me!”

“It’s an offense against the religious authority,” said Motiak. “Let it be tried by the religious authority.”

“This solves nothing!” cried Akmaro. “The case is still a miserable knot!”

“But as Didul pointed out,” said Motiak, “it removes it from a place where it can damage the authority of the king and the peace of the kingdom. I’ll have my decision written up on a bark immediately, Akmaro. The case can only be tried by the high priest, and you have full powers of disposition.”

“I won’t put them to death,” said Akmaro. “I won’t do it.”

“I think you had better think about the law before you make rash decisions,” said Motiak. “Think about the consequences of your decision.”

“No one can be one of the Kept if he follows the Keeper out of fear of execution!” cried Akmaro.

“It will ail be in your hands,” said Motiak. “Akmaro, forgive me, but whatever happens, the consequences will be less terrible for your having made the decision and not me.” Motiak arose and left the room.

In the ensuing silence, Akmaro’s voice came out as a rasping whisper. “Didul, don’t ask me to forgive you for turning this on me.”

Didul blanched. “I didn’t ask your forgiveness,” he said, “because I was not wrong. I agree with you completely. No one should die for speaking against the doctrine you teach.”

“So in your infinite wisdom, Didul, do you have any suggestions for what I
should
do?”

“I don’t know what you
should
do,” said Didul. “But I think I know what you
will
do.”

“And what is that?”

“Declare them guilty, but change the penalty.”

“To what?” demanded Akmaro. “Dismemberment? Removal of the tongue? Public flogging? Forfeiture of property? Oh, I know—they have to live for a year in a tunnel with the diggers they despise so much!”

“With all your authority from the Keeper,” said Didul, “you can’t give someone back a missing hand or tongue, you can’t heal the wounds from lashes on their back, you can’t make new land or property. All you have the power to give them is by way of teaching them how the Keeper wants all his children to live, and then bringing them through the water to make them new men and women, brothers and sisters in the Keeper’s House. Since that’s all you can give them, then when they refuse those teachings isn’t that all you can rightly take away?”

Akmaro looked at Didul with a steady gaze. “You thought this out before, didn’t you? This was already in your mind before you came here.”

“Yes,” said Didul. “I thought that was how things would work out.”

“But you didn’t bother to say any of it to me until you talked the king into dumping the whole thing into my lap.”

“Until the king gave the case to you for trial, sir, I had no reason to make any suggestions to you about its disposition.”

“I have brought a snake into my house,” said Akmaro.

Didul flinched at the words.

“Oh, don’t take offense, Didul. Snakes are wise. They also shed their skins and become new men from time to time. Something that I’m apparently overdue for. So I make a declaration that the only penalty for preaching against the high priest is that you are turned out of the House of the Keeper. What then, Didul? Do you realize what will happen?”

“Only the believers will remain.”

“You underestimate the cruelty of men and women, Didul. Without the threat of criminal penalties, the worms will come out from under their rocks. The bullies. The tormentors.”

“I know the type,” said Didul softly.

“I urge you to leave for home at once,” said Akmaro. “When this decree is made tomorrow, you’ll
want to be in Bodika to help the Kept there deal with what will surely come.”

“You speak as if this were my fault, sir,” said Didul stiffly. “Before I go, I have a right to hear you admit to my face that I have done nothing more than tell you what you would inevitably have decided yourself.”

“Yes!” said Akmaro. “And I’m not angry at you anyway. Yes I would have made exactly this decision because it’s right. But what will happen to the Kept, to the House of the Keeper, I don’t know. I fear it, Didul. That’s why I’m angry.”

“It’s the Keeper’s House,” said Didul. “Not ours. The Keeper will show us a way out of this.”

“Unless the Keeper is testing Darakemba to see if we’re worthy,” said Akmaro. “Remember that the Keeper can also decide to reject us. The way he rejected the Rasulum, when evil triumphed among them. Their bones cover the desert sand for miles.”

“I’ll keep that cheerful thought in mind all the way home,” said Didul.

They arose from the table. Akmaro and Chebeya hurried out; Edhadeya stopped Didul at the door. “Did you decide anything about Luet?” she asked.

It seemed to take Didul a moment to realize what she was talking about. “Oh. Yes. I decided last night that I’d speak to her today. Only . . . only now I have work to do. It’s not a good time for love or marriage, Edhadeya. I have higher responsibilities than that.”

“Higher?” she asked nastily. “Higher than love?”

“If you didn’t think that service to the Keeper is the higher responsibility,” said Didul, “you would long since have joined with Akma out of love for him. But you haven’t. Because you know that love must sometimes take a second place.” He left.

Edhadeya leaned against the doorpost for a long time, thinking about what he had said. I love Akma, and yet it has never once occurred to me to join with him in rejecting the Keeper. But that isn’t because I
love the Keeper more, the way Didul does. It’s because I know what I know, and to be with Akma I would have to lie. I won’t give up my honesty for any man. Nothing as noble in that as Didul’s sacrifice. Unless perhaps my honor is also a way to serve the Keeper.

At first Didul thought that their fears might have been exaggerated. There was no falling off of attendance at the House of the Keeper in Bodika. In fact, the way the story first circulated through the province was rather favorable. Shedemei had been tried for teaching the siblinghood of all people in the eyes of the Keeper, and especially for allowing the children of the poor, the daughters of former slaves, to attend school, to eat, to work alongside the daughters of humans and angels. Therefore when the charges were dismissed against her and even worse charges were brought against her accusers, it was encouraging, wasn’t it?

Only gradually did the realization seep through the community that in refusing to have the heretics who accused Shedemei put to death, Akmaro had changed the law. The only penalty for offense against the official state religion was now to be turned out of the House of the Keeper. But what kind of penalty was that, for those who didn’t believe anyway? Akmaro had been confirmed as the arbiter of doctrine for the
state religion; but the law was now protected by such a feeble penalty that it was hardly a crime to disbelieve.

What did that
mean
, actually? Most people had only known one kind of religion, consisting of the official rituals performed by the king’s priests in every city. Those priests had been put out of work thirteen years ago, and replaced by a ragtag group of priests and teachers who, instead of confining themselves to public rituals, insisted on collecting food to help the poor and teaching strange new doctrines about the equality of all people, which was obviously against nature. As most people were quick to say, it’s fine to free the captured digger slaves after they’ve served ten years, it’s fine to say that the children of slaves are born free, but everybody knows that diggers are loathsome and stupid and unfit for civilized company. Educating them for anything beyond menial labor is a waste of money. So the fact that the state religion now kept insisting on defiance of the way the world obviously worked was simply incomprehensible.

But no one
said
anything about it, except a few fanatic digger-haters, who spoke in secret. After all, the law was that you didn’t speak against the religion of the king’s priests, right?

Only now the only penalty that would come to you for speaking against these priests was to be turned out of the House of the Keeper. So that meant it was all right, didn’t it?

There might be hidden penalties, though. After all, for foreigners to become full citizens, they had to pass through the water, and who could do that besides priests? So did foreigners have to join the Kept, and then later leave? And what if the king only did business with tradesmen who attended the House of the Keeper or sent their children to school at one of the little Kept Houses scattered through the villages and administered by one or two teachers? No, there was no need to open your mouth and get turned out. See how the wind blows.

That was the majority. It was the fanatics that began to make life problematic for Didul and his priests. It wasn’t enough for them that now their meetings could be open. They had expected that thousands of people would leave the Kept and join them; instead, things were going on pretty much as before. That was intolerable. So they began to do things to help encourage the waverers that it was better for them to stop going to the priests of the Keeper.

At first it was the word “digger hole” written in excrement on the wall of the House of the Keeper in Bodika. The word was a scatalogical pun: The second word was the coarse term for the anus, while combined with
digger
it was an exceptionally offensive term for a tunnel in which a community of diggers dwelt. By calling the House of the Keeper by that name, the vandals couldn’t have been more explicit.

That had been easy enough to clean off. But that was only the beginning of the harassment. Groups of digger-haters—they preferred to call themselves the Unkept—would gather at outdoor rituals and chant obscenities to drown out the voice of the priest. When someone was being brought through the water, they threw dead animals or manure into the river, even though that was a crime. Someone broke into the House of the Keeper and broke everything that could be broken. A fire was started during an early morning gathering of priests; they put it out, but the intention was clear.

Attendance began to fall off. Several of the teachers in outlying communities got messages—butchered animals on the doorstep, a sack over the head and a beating—and resigned or requested assignment in the city, where there might be safety in numbers. Didul had no choice but to close many of the outlying schools. People began to walk to and from meetings and classes in groups.

Through it all, Didul went from town to town constantly, protesting to the local authorities. “What can I do?” the commander of the civil guard would say.
“The penalty for unbelief is in
your
hands. Find out who they are and turn them out. That’s the new law.”

“Beating a teacher isn’t unbelief,” Didul would say. “It’s assault.”

“But the teacher’s head was covered and she can’t identify who it was. Besides, it was never a good idea to have a woman doing the teaching. And diggers along with people?”

And Didul would realize that the commander of the civil guard was probably one of the fanatics who hated diggers worst. Most of them were retired soldiers. To them, diggers were all Elemaki—vicious fighters, night-time assassins. Slavery was all they deserved, and now that through some accident they were free, it was abominable to think of these former enemies now having the same rights as citizens.