OUTCASTE
Episode One of Spaceforce
by Penelope Irving
Copyright Penelope Irving 2012
Read more about the author and Spaceforce at www.penelopeirving.com
Cover design by www.MotherSpider.com
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Table of contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
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One
The boy kept his head bent down as he heard the footsteps, vellum on glass, soft as a whisper. The library was almost in darkness, and he had no idea whether there was anyone else in the temple. If they were not alone, he knew she would not stop.
A light bobbed at the edge of his field of vision, and her intense, spiced scent reached him. She smelled of a mixture of incense, musk flowers and something else he could not identify.
“Jhal. Still here? It’s very late, you know.”
He lifted his eyes. She was standing in a pool of light created by the votary candle she held, casting shadows under her face. “I know. But I want to finish this chapter.”
“Do you have to be in the forge tomorrow?”
“Yes. At dawn.”
“Then it is very late for you.”
“What other time do I have to study, Murai?”
The light, the smell, came closer. He stayed still, listening to his own heartbeat and feeling the heat of shame on his forehead. The proper attitude, he knew very well, was to feel pride in his apprenticeship, and peace in his calling to work metal in the forge to make swords, spears and other things for the town’s swordbearers. He should not feel dread in his soul to think that he would have to spend the whole of tomorrow’s daylight hours bent over an anvil under his father’s eye, his skin reddened in the heat of the fire and his hands growing calluses.
It might have been worse. His family could have been Earthturners, called to work in the fields, or Dustgatherers, who gathered refuse and swept the streets. But an understanding of the reality of what his life would be had come over him in the last three months since he had left school and started his apprenticeship; day after day, year after year, stretching ahead from sixteen to one hundred and seventy, entombed in a boiling forge from daybreak to dusk.
Fingertips brushed his jaw. They were alone.
“Close the book, Jay,” she said, in her soft authoritative murai’s voice. “You’ve done well for one night to get so far into such a difficult text.”
He shut the pages carefully, and looked directly into her face. He had determined to say this now, before he lost courage, and before he was too much in her power. “Murai Shiell - you know that I can do this, don’t you.”
“I know you can do lots of things, Jhal.”
“Studying the scriptures, commenting on them, making sense of philosophical writings. When I was sweeping the floors and you let me sit in on your classes, I could keep up with your students, and they were two or three years older than me and had been learning those things since they could talk.”
“Keep up with them? You were far ahead of my brightest students last year. That’s why I’ve encouraged you to come here and continue studying, even though you have to work during the day now.”
“But why? Why have you encouraged me, if I have to spend my life making swords and buckles? Is there no way I could become an acolyte? Is there any path I could take to become Priest Caste?”
She laid the candle on the table and kneeled by his chair. “Jhal. There is no path. You know that.”
“Lonn doesn’t say anywhere in his Word that we have to stay in the caste we were born into. Lonn says we should gaze into our inner flame and see the image of God.”
“Lonn, my little candleflame, says many things which we, mortal souls, can’t live up to in real life. On Anhual, of all places, we are as bound as the rock to the ground.”
“Why here, why Anhual?”
“Oh Jay, we are so far from anywhere, so far from the great worlds of the Empire, from Taysar, from the Court, from anyone who thinks, or lives, or does anything but just exist.”
“If you don’t like it here, why did you come?”
“I was sent by the temple elders. It wasn’t my choice. But there are some good things, even on Anhual.”
Darkness of disappointment and confusion clouded his mind, mingling in with the rush of excitement as her mouth covered his and her hands slid under his tunic against his burning skin. Of all the things that he shouldn’t do, this was so far beyond inappropriate that he had no fear any longer. Besides, she was Murai, and she had taught him what to do.
Two
He lay on the warm flagstones before the great fire, between the triangular shadows of the two triluminary statues. The only light came from the flames. Beyond the shadows, the boundaries of the hall disappeared into vast darkness.
Strange to think that in less than eight hours the hall would be filled with sunlight and the acolytes of the town, offering their morning devotions. Shiell would be leading the ceremony not far from where she lay now on her cloak, her skin glowing amber in the firelight.
He felt detached and curious about the contrast, now that the flame was doused. He was emptied, mind and body and emotion.
She opened her eyes and ran her gaze over him. "What a fine body you have, Jay, so young."
He looked at his hands. They had rough pads on each finger, and burn scars on the knuckles. So young, so soon. Four months ago he had been in a schoolroom.
Shiell saw, and laid her own fine, soft hands over his. "It isn't fair, Jay. But it's the way things are."
"Is this the way things are, Murai? Who else does this?"
"You question things a lot."
"How many other people live normal lives on the surface, but do this when the doors are closed?"
Her head lolled back, towards the fire. She was not Murai now. "Not many. It finds itself out, for most people. I'm - unusual."
"Why?"
She rolled round quickly and looked directly at him. "You know very little, Jay. What do you think usually happens when people are close, like this? Why do you think it's reserved for marriage, and all the ceremony that goes with that?"
"Tradition, I thought."
"Reproduction, you fool. Sex makes babies, didn't you know that?"
"Yes, but - not for you?"
"No. Not for me. When I was a little girl, I was ill, and I had to be treated with strong chemicals and rays, and the doctors told my parents that I would never be a mother. At that time I knew that I should become a celibate Murai, because I would never marry. But I get so lonely, Jay. Lonn may have been a great prophet, but he's a poor bedfellow. When I saw you - your eyes full of fire and hunger - " She reached out and traced her fingers on his cheek.
There was a noise, far back in the room.
Shiell snaked to her feet in a flash of movement, her face suddenly pale and tense with actual terror. She threw her cloak around her, and stood still until the silence grew again.
"There's nobody there," Jay said, but in a whisper. He did not move.
"Ssh!"
There was no further sound, no more movement. Eventually, Shiell relaxed and wrapped her cloak more firmly around her body. "You should go."
Accepting his dismissal, Jay climbed to his feet and pulled on his few discarded garments. The mystery, the distance, was crystallising around the Murai again as he glanced back at her.
"Jhal - I'm sorry there's nothing I can do for you."
He stopped at the door. "Why are you afraid?"
"Because - if
they caught me - it would be the end. I told you earlier that I didn't want to come here, to this God-forsaken world. I was exiled here, because they guessed my proclivities, and they thought I would keep out of trouble out here. I was given a second chance, but if they ever find me out for sure - "
She left the consequences unstated. He couldn't properly imagine them.
Her face softened, and she came forward with an outstretched hand. "There may be a way. I didn't want to say it, because it would mean sending you away."
He said nothing, not wanting to appear to encourage something that she clearly did not like.
"You've learned a lot in this last year, enough to pass as a religious acolyte. If you were to disappear from Anhual, and reappear somewhere far away – Taysar itself perhaps - no-one would know you, you might be taken in by one of the temples - you would have to change your name, and to live an untruth. Could you really do that, Jhal?"
Could he? He thought he was born without that essential moral element, the one that urged all men to speak the truth; and with the intellect to weave the elaborate dance that helped almost everyone to avoid it. He had never had any difficulty in telling outright lies, and he had, in early childhood, learned the power that gave him.
"Stay after class tomorrow night," she said. "We'll talk about it further then. I have some robes you could take, and a spare copy of the Writings of Lonn. If - you do this, it would be good to go soon - there will be so many pilgrims in the Capital on Taysar for the Festival of Stars, no-one would question you closely."
He tried to look solemn when he parted from her, but his heart was blazing with eagerness as he sneaked home