Treason Read online

  "Nonsense," I said. "I couldn't have been under there for more than fifteen minutes."

  They looked at me with respect and awe (and not a little fear) and the pregnant woman held out an armful of clothing. I walked out of the water, and they stared at me, as if they expected something unusual. I almost laughed to remember the way the sailors on the Singer ship had reacted to the way I looked before the Schwartzes cured me. If they could see me now-- in full possession of the sort of power the sailors had only imagined me to have before. Yet the way these people looked at me reminded me of my shyness about nudity when I was young and in Mueller. I dressed quickly, not waiting for my skin and hair to dry.

  "Thank you," I said when I was dressed.

  "We are honored," said a man who seemed to be in charge-- an old wan. I realized that there were no men of arms-bearing age.

  "Your sons are all off to war?"

  "There is no war anymore," the headman said.

  The pregnant woman agreed, soberly. "For Sill, there is no war."

  "There is no Sill," said the headman. "We're Nkumai now."

  I looked at them, all nodding in agreement. "Is that so? Then what enemy do you want me to kill?"

  They were silent. Until one old woman cried out bitterly, with tears in her eyes. "Nkumai! Kill the Nkumai! For God's sake, if you have any power at all--"

  Others took up the cry. "Kill the Nkumai! For our sons, for our homes, for our land, kill the devils!"

  I could hear the song of hate and death in their hearts, and I nodded softly and walked on.

  "What's your name!" the pregnant woman shouted after me.

  I turned and called out, "Lanik Mueller."

  To my surprise, the crying and shouting died quickly. Some looked terror-stricken. Some wrinkled up their faces in distaste, as if I had made some obscene joke. Other faces simply froze, expressionless. Then they all silently left me and went back to their homes. Only the old woman addressed any kind of message to me. She spat in the dirt.

  It could only have been my name that turned them from friendship and hope to hatred and fear. But what could my name mean in a place like this? In Mueller my name had been well enough known, being the heir apparent, but why should my name be familiar in Sill? I'd been gone for a year, throughout the whole war. I pondered the question as I headed north again, bearing a little west, on my way to Mueller-on-the-River. Could Dinte have hated me so much he spread stories about me as a traitor? Or blamed some atrocity on me? Impossible to believe that Father would let him do such a thing. Had I been gone so long that Father was no longer the Mueller? I could make no sense of it.

  There were patches here and there that the Nkumai had missed, places where the green was deep and the harvest would be good enough; the people would not starve. As I ran, however, I saw no one. Had the word spread ahead of me? Were people avoiding the journey of the Naked Man? Or was it the name of Lanik Mueller they shied from? Neither seemed impossible. Fast as I was traveling, rumors could pass me; how else could the survivors of Sill have heard tales of the Naked Man, when I had traveled all day and most of the night? The stories of Rumor as an evil bird that flies faster than sound must be true.

  It was a good thing I didn't get hungry. As I passed wheatfields and vegetable gardens my mouth remembered the taste and I wished for the food, but I had no need for it and didn't stop. Besides, if I had been hungry, no one was there to share food with me, and I was not yet ready to be a thief in a land where there would be little enough to eat this year.

  The River Sill was two days behind me when I finally saw another person. Or persons. I felt the pounding of hooves before I saw them. They were coming from the north, from Mueller. And when they came into sight, I recognized the banner of the Army of the East. The commander would be Mancik, my godfather.

  But Mancik wasn't with them, though the commander's banner was there; thus I knew that he had died. If I'd had a knife, I would have given him grief, but I had no weapon, and after a few moments I had other things on my mind.

  I didn't know the commander, nor did I know the soldiers who leapt from their horses and bound me. I consented to the binding partly because I was confused and partly because I was outnumbered. There's a limit to how many body parts even a reformed radical regenerative can renew. And they looked willing to take me apart.

  "I'm told to bring you to the capital alive," said the commander.

  "Then I won't hinder you," I answered. "That's where I was going."

  This apparently made them angry. Two soldiers struck me at once, and I was dazed for a moment. "I'm Lanik Mueller," I said, spitting put the words, "and I won't be treated like this!"

  The commander looked at me coldly. "We know who you are, and after the way you've treated this land, any way we treated you would be far kinder than you deserve." He looked for a moment, grimly, across the wasted fields. "Of all the traitors who have ever lived, Lanik Mueller, there must be a special place in hell reserved for you."

  "I've been to hell," I said. "It's a better place than this."

  "What if you burn like you burnt these fields?" called a soldier. There was a murmur of bitter assent.

  "I didn't do this," I said, perplexed that they could think I did.

  "Didn't do it!" shouted a man. "I saw you dangling a torch yourself, ahead of all your inker troops!"

  How could I even protest against a charge so absurd?

  "Enough talking," said the commander. "He's going to claim he was insane or some such nonsense. No one will believe him, he'll get the death that such a man deserves, but there'll be no glory in it for us, having found him. The damage is already done beyond repair, and killing him won't undo any part of it."

  It was a strange thing for any commander to say, and yet it had a strange calming effect on the men. They had none of the hearty lust for battle that I had seen in the army all my life. But the commander's words had stirred in them some silent, desperate courage. All did their work quickly, wordlessly. They threw me over a saddle, strapped my legs to the stirrups, and left me to find my balance as best I could with bound arms on a galloping horse. They rode madly across the fields, as if they hoped (and I'm sure they did) that my horse would fall, would shatter me, would crush me into the ashes that had once been grain. Or perhaps they thought of me no more, and merely rode, machines of flesh astride these heaving horses, empty of thought, empty of anything but the knowledge of desolation.

  As I rode, what else had I to do but think? Somehow I was blamed for all this devastation, and not just by strangers, but by the men of Mueller-- the ones who once had loved me, if not for myself, then as my father's son. This was not something Dinte's lies could accomplish, nor could Ruva have persuaded anyone to think of me that way, nor any other jealous enemy. The man said he had seen me. Seen me, and though I know it was impossible, I could not doubt his honesty. It wasn't just my name that was hated here, it was my face.

  Thinking of hatred, thinking of my own face, I saw an image of myself before my eyes, and it was not a memory of my face as I saw it in mirrors. Then I knew the answer, knew why it was that every accusation they made against me could be true and not-true all at once. I also knew that no matter how convincingly I told my tale, they would never believe me,

  The slap of hard leather boots rang out in the stone halls of my father's palace. I was dragged in brutally and thrown down on the floor. I had seen the scene before, but from the other point of view, as men accused of treason were prepared for trial. The trial was a mere formality. The charge was so serious it was never brought unless guilt was certain.

  Yet my thoughts kept wandering. As they marched me through the corridors, held me in the small cell while the court assembled, I kept looking at the dead stone of the walls, realizing how much death this place had cost the earth. If I said as much to anyone, it would be taken as madness. Living stone? But I spoke in my mind and sang the song of the rock, and felt the resonation. Far under the castle, the stones were listening. They would hear, t
he living stones would know, if my blood were shed.

  The punishment for treason is drawing and quartering the living man. Women are decapitated first. It's grisly, but I had always thought of it as a fine deterrent.

  I arose from the floor and stood.

  "Kneel!" shouted Harkint, the Captain of the Guard (he used to race me on horseback through the streets of the city). I turned to him and spoke coldly, dramatically, because trials, like most of royal life, are theatrics, and I couldn't help but play my part. "I am royalty, Harkint, and I stand before the throne."

  This quieted him, and now the court settled into the steady business of hate and fear.

  My father looked old. It was for his sake I had returned at all. Now he looked weary and sick at heart. "Lanik Mueller, there's little point in a trial," he said. "You know and we know why you're here. You're guilty, so let's end this shabby business."

  Every delay is a promise of life; and even though I knew there was no chance that they'd believe me, still I had to have my say. Perhaps it would be many years before my innocence was proven, but there would be some then who would remember that I had told the truth this day. "It's my right to hear the charges against me."

  "If we listed them all," said my father, "I couldn't stop the people here from killing you with their hands."

  "Say them briefly then, but name my crimes, since I don't know what they are."

  My father's face wrinkled in distaste at what he thought was a feeble lie. "You shame yourself," he said. But he looked at the herald, and old Swee called out in a ringing voice:

  "The crimes of Lanik Mueller: Leading the Nkumai armies into battle against the armies of Mueller. Destroying fields and homes of citizens of Mueller and dependent Families. Betraying the secret of regeneration so that our enemies now hack the bodies of our soldiers to pieces on the field, so they die. Plotting to undo the succession and take the rightful heir from the throne." Swee looked bitter and the gathered court shouted in outrage as each charge was read.

  "I didn't do any of this," I said, looking my father in the eye.

  "You've been seen by a thousand witnesses," said my father.

  A soldier stepped forward in rage-- a commoner, since he had lost his arms and neither had grown back. "I saw you myself," he cried, "when you cut off both my arms and made me come here to tell the Mueller that you planned to drink his blood!"

  "I never did that, never said it."

  Father answered contemptuously. "Tbere are others who knew you who saw you leading the Nkumai armies. We've heard enough now. You're guilty, and I sentence you to--"

  "No!" I shouted. "I have a right to speak!"

  "A traitor has no rights!" shouted a soldier.

  "I'm innocent!"

  "If you're innocent," cried my father, "every whore in Mueller is a virgin!"

  "I have a right to be heard, and I will speak!"

  They fell silent then, perhaps because my voice still had some power to command; or more likely because they drew some bleak satisfaction out of watching me struggle vainly for my life. Still, useless as the effort was, I tried to tell them the only explanation that would fit what they had seen, and what I knew I had and had not done. Half of what I said was speculation, but as far as I knew then, I was telling the truth.

  I told them that I had gone to Nkumai, but my subterfuge had been discovered only moments after I found the secret of what they sold to get iron. I told them of my escape, my disembowelment, and of the echo of myself that had been regenerated from my own gut. I described my imprisonment on a Singer ship and how the Schwartzes had cured me (I said nothing of how, or what I had learned about the living rock of our world), and how I had come as quickly as I could to warn my father of the danger.

  As to the person who claimed to be me and fooled others into thinking he was, I could only guess that he was my double; that he had not died, but had been found by the Nkumai. "I was careless. I should have destroyed the body. But I wasn't thinking clearly then, and most Muellers would have died from such wounds." They must have trained him, I speculated, and he would have had all my inborn abilities. No wonder people believed he was Lanik Mueller-- right down to the genes, he was.

  I explained everything I could think to explain, and then I stopped talking.

  What effect had all my talking had? Little enough. Most of the people were still hostile, openly disbelieving, eager for my death. But here and there, especially among the older men, there was a face that looked thoughtful. And when I looked at my father, I knew (or did I only wish to know?) that he believed me.

  I was no fool. I realized that whether he believed me or not, he, had no power to save me. He couldn't have acquitted me-- not that day, not before that audience.

  I had hardly noticed Ruva and Dinte before, but now they both came up to confer with my father. It startled me to see them as allies-- hadn't Dinte hated her as much as I did? But allies they were, and of course they had noticed the change in Father's expression that had told me of his belief in my tale. Now they would try to undo any good my speech might have done for me. Ruva kept whispering to father, while Dinte stepped forward and spoke loudly, for all the court to hear.

  "Apparently you think we're fools, Lanik, he said. "Never in all the history of radical regeneration has anyone formed an entire duplicate of himself."

  "No rad has ever had his guts torn out and strewn across the countryside, either."

  "And then you say the Schwartzes cured you. Desert savages, and they can do what none of our geneticists can manage?"

  "I know it's hard to believe--"

  "What's hard to believe is that you could tell us all this with a straight face, dear brother. No one has ever come out of the Schwartz Desert alive. No one has ever done any of these heroic deeds you claim to have done. What people have done is see you at the head of the enemy's army. I saw you myself, when I was commanding the Army of the South in Cramer, and you waved to me and shouted some obscenity. Don't pretend you don't remember."

  "I'd hardly be the first to shout an obscenity at you, Dinte," I said, and to my surprise there were a few chuckles in the court. Not enough to hint that I had any friends. But enough to prove that Dinte had some enemies.

  Now my fathq interrupted. "Dinte," he said, "you're being undignified." There was contempt in my father's voice. But there was some other emotion when he spoke to me:

  "Lanik Mueller, your defense is implausible and the testimony of a thousand men is unarguable. I sentence you to be drawn and quartered alive on the playing field, by the river tomorrow at noon and may your soul if you have one rot in hell."

  He got up to go. How much did I want to live? Enough to sacrifice all dignity and cry out after him, "Father! If all this were true, why in the name of God would I have given myself up to you?"

  He turned slowly and looked me in the eye, "Because even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help."

  He left the court. The soldiers took me then, and because I had been sentenced to die they spent the afternoon and evening torturing me. Since Muellers heal so quickly, we can bear exquisite injury and still not die. Of that night I'll say no more.

  Chapter 7 -- Ensel

  I wasn't bleeding anymore, but I was still in pain, and more painful was the memory of the hatred of the soldiers. I knew only a few of them, but those had always been kind to me, and some of them had been friends since I was a child. Now they delighted in my pain, wanted me to suffer, and still it was plain that to them, nothing I went through could equal the punishment I deserved. Their loathing stung, worse because I didn't deserve it and yet had no hope of proving my innocence.

  So I lay in darkness in the dead stone cell where they at last let me rest until my death the next day. My wounds were healing quickly enough, leaving me exhausted, but soon enough I would be whole. Father had given me a night and morning of life before I died. I determined to use the time, not preparing for death, but trying to think of a way to escape.


  I admit my thinking wasn't good. I had come too recently from Schwartz, and still found myself as maddeningly disdainful of normal concerns as they were. No one had fed me since I came to Mueller, but I wasn't hungry. No one had offered me water, but I felt no thirst. And since I could ignore pain as it subsided, what was there to remind me that I had to act quickly, act immediately if I was to save my own life?

  Save it for what?

  My purpose in Schwartz had been to come warn my Family. The warning was a little late, and no one wanted messages from me now anyway. Worse, they had locked me, in a prison of dead stone, so I couldn't even speak to the rock and sink into the soil and, escape.

  I could kill myself, of course, but my natural aversion to that was abetted by the fact that I could not bear to be guilty of adding that much pain to the earth. Rock bears enough murders without the scream of the self-murderer's death.

  There was a patter of light footsteps outside the door of my cell. The bar lifted, and the door, with difficulty, swung out.

  "Lanik," said a voice in the darkness. I knew the voice at once, could not believe that I was hearing it. And then. Saranna was holding me and weeping. "Lanik, they even put out your eyes."

  "They're growing back," I answered. "It's so good to be home."

  "Oh, Lanik, we've been so afraid for you!"

  She spoke to me as if I had never been away, as if nothing had changed. Her hands fit exactly on my back, in places where ancient habit said that hands that size belonged. She held me with a pressure that I had last felt yesterday (had last felt a year ago) and her breath, her skin as her cheek brushed mine, the scent of her, even the wild wisps of hair tickling my nose--

  I held tightly to her because for a moment she took away the nightmare of the last few days and months and years, and I was Ensel Mueller's son Lanik, heir to the throne and a happy young min. Damned happy. Damned.

  "Why did you come?" I asked.

  "You have friends, Lanik. Some of us believe you."