Chapter 10 - Part VI

"Welcome to my world little Nü.  How are you enjoying your time in the City of the Crags?  Pho-Boteth has many people from all over the world, but not so many Nü, or Ela or Juttes or any others from your lovely little islands."  Cedric's voice seemed ill suited for the words coming out of his mouth.  Though he rambled on as the words were reaching his mind, he recited them rather than communicated them.

"My pets tell me you are unique, and maybe that is all they meant by that, and maybe in that case, they were right.  Dear pets though they are they are apt to get a little over excited at the smallest little thing.  Are you important?  Who knows, who knows but I tell you I don't think so, I am unimpressed.  But my queen, my queen she wants you known to us so I will do as is required.  For science of course.  We will see, we will see.

"So how about it then?  Are you ready to begin your training?"

"My training?" Vren asked.

"Why yes, of course.  If you fail of course you will die, or maybe you will become one of my pets.  No we can't let any disgruntled students walk around freely. No that wouldn't do at all."

But she might be a good pet if bei Anita was right, so that is very possible that could work.  Don't tell her that Cedric.  Not now. 

"What would you have me do that is worth my life to me?  I don't think anything you could offer me would be worthy of the risk.  I don't want to be your pet, whatever that means, and I don't want to die for this country." Onion asserted.


"Oh feisty little one that is sweet of you to say but you don't have much choice in the matter.  You know of us, you already know my pets, the bei, and my star students, the bei'thal.  You have but to choose your sentence.  The Empress is interested in using your talents for something worthwhile though and gives you the option to prove yourself.  And so I offer you the option to train to become bei'thal.  Or I offer you to become bei.  Or I offer you to die.  It is your choice but that is what you are limited to.  It would be a shame to have to choose death, but that is an adventure all its own and I am sure Cedric would be honored to see you on your way."  The Silent Scholar held back a smile as Cedric stuttered on his words.  He did not relish bringing up the topic of assassination to a woman he once tried to kill.

"That is all I have too choose from?  You offer me probably death, worse than death, and definitely death, is this how you inspire loyalty?  You cannot believe this is motivational."

Bah.  Anita told me this girl was beaten to the ground.  They really get too emotional and sentimental, it is true, those passionate bei.  They overestimate.  Give me bad information.  Ask for stupid things.  How they ask to return to their burned out villages when they have nothing for them there, oh tisk tisk, I must put more of that energy into good use.  How they cannot stop talking about one little victim here or one aboriginal girl there.  Oh they are such needy children.

Cedric's head started throbbing as the Silent Scholar started along one of its capricious lines of thought, dragging Cedric through its jumble of feelings without thought to the poor man.  The pnum'bei'thal skipped freely between the here and now to disgruntled complaints long past.  Cedric thought it queer too, to call a bei, emotional.

Cedric, use your own words.  I'd rather she take on the training.  Gives me time to think.  How to use a tool to the best advantage, that is important.  Even if she fails, we can see what she can do, yes, that is what I want.  Convince her then.  One chance.  You get one chance.  If you fail, take her to the lab.  I'll have Vren and Anita working side by side yet.  That would be amusing, and maybe useful too!

Not wanting to clue Onion into their conversation, Cedric responded mentally, What would you have me say?  She doesn't seem like bei'thal material.  She's not a leader.  Gregor told me she was a follower in her mercenary band, and now?  She seems little more than a lost sheep, except angry at everything.

Oh absurdity.  It doesn't matter if she'd be good at it.  That is the point of science!  Observation!  As if you don't know how to sweet talk a woman to get what you want.  Use that.  Whatever that is.  That CHARM thing.  

"Vren," Cedric turned back to Onion, "Life of a bei'thal is hard, but it is worth it." he put both his hands on the table, an ingrained gesture showing he was unarmed and demonstrating good will.  "We are sent to the ends of the Empire and beyond.  Maybe you will meet other Nü in your travels.  I know you enjoy the thrill of battle, you'd not have lasted with your brothers if you did not.  To be a bei'thal one must have the heart of a warrior and the mind of a strategist.  I know, as only one on the other side of a fight can know, you have both those things."

"Why did you become bei'thal Cedric?" she replied.

"Well," he chuckled, "I was fairly young, well into my studies here, and a good friend of mine had signed up.  He got me interested.  Gregor got me interested.  I can't say I regret it.  It has been fun."

"Very well, I will undertake the training." Onion agreed.

That was easy.  Too easy. Cedric thought to himself, forgetting for a moment that the Silent Scholar was there and listening.

Maybe you don't have a chance with that girl, Cedric.  So sad for you!

Yeah, maybe that's it. Cedric agreed.


Then let's go.  Roh'ath is waiting for us.  I'm glad I can bring him some good news.

"Vren, it will be worth it.  Now, we need to get you to the Palace.  The Empress's son wishes to meet you."

Chapter 10 - Part V

He offered his hand but Onion rejected it, using her own power to rise.  The two descended down the half-circle of stairs.  While Cedric clacked with each step, Onion was silent in her movements.

"Why did you call me here?" she asked, impatient for some answers.

"I didn't.  My master did.  You will be meeting my master soon.  No more questions until we get to the conference room."

He pulled open the thick metal door and Onion found herself in a hallway of 5 mahogany doors spaced widely.  He led her to the second, on the right and held it open for her.  A small round table made of several cross sections of mountain oak, a skinnier, more twisted version of its coastal cousin.  Five chairs, also made of mountain oak, lay waiting for occupants.  On the walls of the small room were shelves of uncountable books and ledgers. 

"Go on, take a seat.  He is with the Empress at the moment, and she will hold him as long as it is her pleasure." he explained.  Before sitting down himself he offered, "You might recall me, but my memories of you are few and fleeting, so let's do this again.  I am Cedric Lumet..."

Vren didn't give him a chance to continue before she lunged to him and punched him in the gut.  Cedric wheezed, trying to catch his breath, but failing for several moments.  "Why did you attack me?  Who are you?  Is this part of some Archne plan?  You didn't get enough killing my brothers, you had to go some round about way of finishing the job?"

"Archne?" he wheezed, "No, no.  I am a servant of the Empress, council to her wisdom and the University on High."

"That makes no sense.  If you are not on the side of my enemy, then why try to kill me?" she shoved him to the wall.


"Sorry.  I didn't know who you were.  The Cedric you first met wasn't me.  Well, he was, but only a part of me, a twisted form of my personality.  I was jolted back too quickly, I was very confused.  Please stop hitting me." he coughed and straightened himself out.

Onion relented and eased herself into an open seat.  "Another personality? How is that possible?  Why?"

"You were a mercenary.  What would have happened if while planning strategy, you somehow ended up in the hands of the enemy?  What do you think could happen to that knowledge?"

"I would end my life.  We all understood that possibility, and my life was never worth all the lives of my brothers."

"Well yes, there is that option, but that's not very useful for an infiltrator."

"A what?" asked Onion, still not familiar some of the more complex vocabulary of the Yibouhese language"

"A spy.  For a spy, the whole point is to come back with information, right?"

"I understand."

"What if there were a way to find out the secret plans of others, without exposing your own people to the risk of being found out?  What if any secrets that person had could be locked away safely?

"That is what we did here." continued Cedric, "We had a man on the inside who could make observations, even when he didn't realize he was, while I was kept safe.  Even if somehow they did suspect Cedric of Archne was not who he said he was, he'd never be able to give them the information they were looking for.  And Cedric of Archne could be the best actor because he truly believed he was who he said he was."

"How does this happen?  Are you warped?  Are you bei?  Are you like that soulless woodswalker?"

"No.  Well, yes, sort of.," he looked troubled.  "Me, the man you see before you, I am actually bei'thal.  You've met Gregor, so I'm told.  He and I have serve the same mission.  I've been through the training, I've brought bei out to complete missions.

"But I have been compromised too.  Or at least Cedric of Archne has.  The other part of me, perhaps he is bei?  I don't really know.  I am the first to try this, and the experiment continues.  I may very well be the last."

The two stopped their conversation and Cedric dipped his head in reverence as the mahogany
opened.  The Silent Scholar, wearing its noisy ket clacked into the room.  It appraised its pupil and his find and smiled in its eerie way as it sat across from Onion.

Cedric, I see you've met my new present.  Be my voice for dear Vren, and translate directly.  It commanded. 

"Ah.  Vren.  This is the Silent Scholar, the first of the Order of Compromised of the Spirit.  I will be speaking for the pnum'bei'thal.  Take all my words as coming directly from my master.

Chapter 10 - Part IV

Like every other building within campus, the Fourth Hall was build entirely of white marble blocks and crushed limestone mortar.  Unlike the other buildings though, the Unseen, that is, the quiet and unassuming cleaning staff of the University on High, avoided the Fourth Hall in their duties and in some dark corners, greenish moss colonized the unassuming walls. 

Onion reached for the simple brass ring that hung listlessly upon the mahogany door and pulled it with a slight tug of her arm.  The door was well oiled and made not a sound as it closed behind her.  the room before her looked like nothing more than an amphitheater in reverse with stairs descending on all sides.  The ceiling was quite high and adorned with several windows allowing a flood of natural light to make its way to the floor. 

Onion stood on a smooth, half circle marble platform that was bare save for a couple of long desks and accompanying chairs, and several dormant torchlamps, undoubtedly reserved for use on overcast days and moonless nights.  A sole student sat at one of the desks with a small fort of books and scrolls guarding the secrets of whatever he was scribbling down furiously. 

"This is the Fourth Hall, correct?  I am looking for someone..." Onion felt her words stop in her throat at the student threw her a venomous glare and returned to his studies.  No sooner had she sat down at the second desk in defeat when she heard the a rumble as one of the thick metallic doors standing sentinel at the bottom of the stairs eased open.  A man in a purple cassock and a gold striped navy blue shoulder cape and hood emerged, his face shadowed by the billowy hood.  The single gold stripe ran from the tip of the hood to the back of the cape where it met the cassock.

Like most of the professors, high ranking instructors and Imperial Officials, the man wore curious shoes of silk and wood.  While the top part of the shoe was similar to the outer footwear of the Eirdren nobles, a soft and embroidered slipper of shiny silk, the sole was a black lacquered trapezoidal wood block covering only the forefoot of the slipper.  When worn correctly, a person's heal would never touch the ground, instead relying on the strength of form of the foot to keep it parallel to the ground.

Footwear was a much more important part of Yibouhese etiquette than that of the coast, as Vren had observed since her arrival, which made sense, given the coastal reluctance to wear shoes inside.  Yibouhese architecture favored sturdy flooring of stone rather than the extremely difficult to clean flax mats or easily marred wood floors of the inner sanctums of Eirdren buildings.  Footwear also helped to mark the person in those shoes.  Most students wore either flat slippers of silk and leather, or the shoes of their home countries.  For the instructor, it was a mark of dedication and elegance to opt for these reverse platform, or ket shoes.  The familiar clacking of the wood block brought talkative students before class to attention as quickly as swine to a dinner bell.

As the man clacked up the stairs, Onion too had a similar feeling of needing to be prepared, though she had only been attending classes for about a tide.  She straightened her back against her seat and put her hands on the desk in front of her.  He approached her and pulled back his hood with two pale but sinewy hands and liberated his long straight blonde hair from the vestment.

Onion seized up a little, eying the student lost in study, wondering if his presence was enough of a deterrent.  After all, the last time she saw the hooded man, he had tried to kill her.

"It has been awhile." Vren said stiffly.  After arriving at Eora Swou the following day, the bei, Anita had rushed him away on horseback.  So close to the border of the Yibouh province, perhaps they thought there was little danger in openly transporting him.  Or perhaps they had no choice.  He had not regained consciousness from the time he had been subdued until their departure.  Onion had thought that perhaps he had gone insane, and was a danger to himself and others.  Clearly, if he had, he got better.  The man before her now was calm, composed, and smiling at her.

"We haven't met properly, but this isn't the place for introductions," he eyed the student, "Come with me."

On Radio

I have a habit.  Usually, I listen to NPR.  In this rural area, it is hands down, the best choice for radio and it has a decent amount of transmitters so you can get it most anywhere.  However, the car I use has a bad radio, and when I have to go north to our main office, it ends up fuzzing up.  Additionally, sometimes I am not in the mood for music, but talk.

I willingly listen to some of the Christian talk radio.  Sometimes this is because I have pent up other anger and want something to yell at.  Sometimes, it is because I am trying to understand the thought processes of the people I live with.  Sometimes I can take the barrage of judgmental, group-think, as a point in cultural anthropology.  Sometimes I can only take so much before I slam that radio off in frustration.

But recently, something stood out to me as particularly deserving of exposing: the need for fundamentalists to engage in not only group-think, but retroactive justification of the bible, even when it directly contradicts what they say in other forums.

I am one of those rare atheists/agnostics who does not believe there should be a right to choose to end a person's life except in self-defense.  The term is pro-life, a though that term has so much baggage, I'm not sure it applies.  Logically speaking however, I've never really seen this as a religious issue though.  When we talk about individual rights and doing harm that exceeds the crime (if any even existed) as unjust. these concepts were born of an increasing tendency of secularization.  God of the OT has absolutely no problem with killing and maiming people just to make a point to other people.  God has no interest in the individual as a concept (he plays favorites, randomly loving some and not others, but not the general "individual"), and has had no trouble with killing kids just because they were taunting one of his bros.

And even if we choose to believe that God did have a personality change with the New Testament, killing really doesn't seem like that big a deal if that child will just be going straight to heaven, or for Buddhists or Hindus, that the child will be reborn at a later time.

So it has always been a strange thing to me that the most fundamental Christians are often the most fundamental pro-lifers.  It is not the believer, but the non-believer who sees this life as the only thing we have and will ever have, and thus this life as the most deserving of being protected and sustained.  So similarly it baffles me that more progressive, atheists are not pro-life.

Anyway, back to this radio, the christian pastor was talking about the second book of Samuel, 11:2-5 and 12: 13-19

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”  Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home.  The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”
....
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”
After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.
On the seventh day the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”
David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked.
“Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.”

I had just tuned in, so whatever lessons the pastor was attempting to communicate to his flock, I don't know, but at this point he tries to make the case that God was being kind and merciful to the child, which he killed to spite David (so much for individual rights and justice), using language that was eerily familiar to language used today by a certain group of people.  (This is paraphrased as closely as I can remember):

"God knew the child was unwanted."
"God knew the child would suffer hardship and he was saving the child from that."
"God knew the child would be taunted and tormented because he was born out of wedlock if he had survived, so this was better for him in the end."

Wow... that kinda sounds like the rationale for women to seek terminating their pregnancies, something touted by the pro-choice movement.  Let's just replace the term God with The mother:


"The mother knew the child was unwanted."
"The mother knew the child would suffer hardship and she was saving the child from that."
"The mother knew the child would be taunted and tormented because he was born out of wedlock if he had survived, so this was better for him in the end."

And the pastor included what I would see as rationale for why religious people should be more pro-choice:

"For the child, he just closed his eyes one night and woke up in heaven, so no real loss for him.  He just got a ticket to the ultimate happiness and paradise."


I don't really know what to make of this, except some frustrated christian perhaps responding to this by saying "you don't understand, killing children, the un-born, etc is ok, but only when GOD does it."  Well, I have a million problems with that sort of god, not to mention, well, how does anybody know when god wants it and when he doesn't.  That asshole never bothers to write or send an email.

It just amazes me, and hints to the idea that fundamentalist Christians are not completely unable to make and understand the rationale that pro-choice people have, but they choose not to apply that same logic when it comes to a woman making that decision for herself.  On the other hand, I do understand the arguments pro-choice people make, and in a nutshell, I don't think it is right for anyone to make a decision for me whether I should live or die based on what they project my future happinesses to be, and I don't think it is just for me to die when I haven't committed a serious/ lethal crime.  But that christian fundamentalists make both this statement, and the reverse, just depending on who is inflicting this death, is frankly, amazing.

Amazing.

Chapter 10 - Part III

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"You've made incredible progress, Vren.  A couple more tides and you'll be speaking the middle tongue fluently." 

"Te bhur."Onion replied, trying not to let the quick beam of pride impact her accent on one of the first words she learned upon entering the classroom, Thanks.  Yibouhese was anything but difficult to pronounce for her, but basking in a rare moment of self confidence in the language was the exact moment she seemed to always slip up.  "It is a little strange, but the middle tongue is not so different from my home language.  All the words are different, but the music of it feels the same."

"The music?  Perhaps you mean rhythm.  I don't know much Nüish," the slight teacher admitted, "but there is some debate that maybe long ago we gave you our language and you warped it to fit your needs."

Onion twisted her mouth at the reflexive derision the Yibouhese often bestowed on other tongues, but said nothing.  It was becoming far too commonplace for her to fret over much anymore. 

"Vocabularies," she continued, "are completely different, but both languages are monosyllabic, loose word order surrounding a general subject, verb, object rule and..."

Onion stared at the woman in her pale blue and lilac flower robe as she went on, completely ignorant to what her teacher was saying.

Shar-Wu caught herself eventually, realizing she was getting lost in terms the Nü girl likely didn't know in her native tongue, much less the words of Pho-Boteth.  She offered a nervous smile and fidgeted with her hair scarf as an offer of recompense.  "You know these things, by how quickly you've picked up the language.  Dagleth-dor, it has only been a tide and a half!  You understand this in your heart, just maybe not your mind."

"Perhaps.  Is this what you study at the University Shar-Rduap?" Onion asked.

"Foreign languages?  No.  Not technically.  The University on High prides itself on being a center of learning and openness, but we are the center of the world.  What use have we to learn the tongues of the outer provinces or our other neighbors?  When students come to Pho-Boteth, they learn Yibouhese.

"But," Shar-Wu smiled mischievously, "I think even the empire understands that we have to communicate with others from time to time.  That is why we do have the study of linguistics.  One of the Learned, Waar-Rduap, the Empress's top advisers, is the head of our wing.  I hear he is rarely called on for private meetings, but that is all gossip anyway."

Shar-Wu and Onion were probably about the same age, although she had been in university for the past 7 tides, and before that a well-to-do daughter of pottery artisans.  Though she was the teacher and Onion was the student in language and easily her senior in the ways of the university, she was still young and green to the world.  She spoke too much.  She knew she spoke too much.  But knowledge had yet to foment behavioral change and probably wouldn't until one day she spoke too much about the wrong person.

Her black, wavy hair was long, but kept tidy under a transparent purple scarf before dangling down her back.  She did not have the look of a teacher, but the university did not take it upon themselves to educate their newest students in the middle tongue - they were expected to come with a full knowledge of it, so she was the best hope for the job.  Her appointment to Vren had been by direct request by the head of linguistics.  Who requested her tutelage from Waar-Zhe was a mystery not soon to be solved.

Their one-on-one lessons consisted mostly of the middle tongue, but every Rel'ir, perhaps in symbolic deference to the Keeper of the Eirdren, Onion had asked to study the tongue of the Red.

"However good you may be getting at the middle tongue though, Vren, you need a lot more work on your Eirdren." she confided to her student.  "Your writing is passable, but your sentence structure is barely understandable.  Try a little harder."

"It is difficult when I never have the chance to practice.  I go to the dining halls, and I am asked if I want thuoz and fruat, not nohl and paek.  My peas and carrots are Yibouhese, not Eirdren."

"Do you still write to your friend?" Shar-Wu asked.

"He has not responded in some time.  I think he has forgotten me."

Vren had more anger than hurt in her golden eyes.  Shar-Wu couldn't blame her, this friend of Vren's, so she told her, had brought the girl to this world of the unfamiliar and just left her here.  Luckily the University on High was willing to accept this girl in cultural exchange, but it was cruel abandonment by that man nonetheless.

"Ah," exclaimed Onion when she looked up as the mechanical clock chimed to the tune of the half hour.  "I'm late.  I need to get to Fourth Hall."

"The Fourth Hall?  What classes do they have there?  I thought that was just a laboratory for the Alchemy and Chemistry Scholars."

"I don't think it is a class.  I don't know.  This was slipped under my cell door this morning." Onion passed a folded piece of manilla paper to her teacher and budding friend.  On it were scribbled only:

Fourth Hall

Noon and Half

Alone

But the seal was an official Message Relay mark.  It was one of the few characters she could read in Yibouhese.

"Strange." Shar-Wu commented.  "Perhaps a professor is interested in taking you on as an apprentice?  How have your alchemy studies gone?"

"Not well," Onion replied sheepishly. 

"Maybe better than you thought." Shar-Wu smiled.  "You better get going.  Chatting with me, while improving your fluency, is just going to make you more late!"

Onion returned the smile.  "Thanks Shar-Rduap.  I will see you tomorrow then."

"I look forward to it."