Chapter 5

"Si'Wren," said old Ibi, "you have worked hard and diligently. I look forward with great pleasure to declaring you before all to be fully studied and prepared for your royal station, as formally commissioned by his Majesty the Emperor. When he hears of this, I have no doubt that you will be so appointed and given all due honors and tributes pertaining to the Order of Scribe."

Si'Wren stood before Ibi with the flush of joy and accomplishment on her face.

After her momentous court debut four years ago as the stubborn young girl-slave whose lips Borla's own sword could not open, she had been escorted to what was to become her very own personal, private quarters in the same wing of the palace as the other royal officials. Since then, as an underling to virtually everyone but the slaves themselves, she had been introduced to general grooming and appearance standards acceptable to palace etiquette, and ways of acting and behaving that conformed suitably to court protocol, and had begun her long and arduous internship as an understudy of the great and illustrious Ibi himself.

During these four years, she had managed to develop a somewhat foggy understanding of 'delicate subjects' having to do with politically potent and sensitive issues which one must always try to heed in order to properly show 'manners'. In view of how little she knew, it appeared that she did not merely have her marks to learn, she also had to pick up on the royal ropes. Many doors, some good, some evil, would henceforth stand open to her, but she must choose which.

Seemingly from her first month at the palace, Si'Wren had begun to assume the mantle of womanhood. Now, at sixteen, she was beginning to take on some of the physical characteristics of an adult, although in stature she still appeared to be somewhat small compared to others born of the same year. She was developing a trim, athletic figure as a result of avoiding the many fattening and corrupting foods free for the taking as a palace resident, and was becoming more womanly of form now with each passing year.

She who had once bathed in the stream, now dipped herself in the magnificent public baths of the palace dignitaries. Indeed, her privileges were such that she could have indulged in many spoiling luxuries, although -except for a simple desire for natural purity and cleanliness- by and large she tended to shun the physically and morally polluting diversions.

Her early years living on the plain fare of the slaves, together with her experiences in the spice tent, had engendered in her a natural awareness of how the vices of the rich could lead directly to one's personal destruction. Having preferred from earliest memory not to adopt the superior airs and affectations of Sorpiala and her clique, who haughtily deemed themselves to be above their fellow beings, Si'Wren did not see fit to change her humble and unassuming ways as a Royal Officer of the Court.

In his endless daily instructional sessions with her, Ibi had developed a fierce vicarious pride in the proper and dutiful studies of Si'Wren, and developed a habit of grilling her relentlessly, so that the poor girl spent her days perpetually neigh unto exhaustion from unrelenting fatigue.

In view of these and other considerations, and especially for moral reasons, Si'Wren deliberately avoided the many royal orgies of banqueting, and worse, open to her, choosing instead to spend much time cloistered alone in her personal chambers, there to catch up on her work assignments and neglected slumbers unmolested. She still slept on a mat of rushes, by choice, whereas the others in the palace all preferred more luxurious accommodations such as straw or down mattresses. Si'Wren seemed to sleep so much the better that way, and yet, in spite of her efforts at getting sufficient physical rest, ever did she labor with the circles of learning under her eyes. Truly, much study was a weariness to the flesh. But she always worked hard at it, and she was a fast learner.

She always wondered what had happened to Habrunt, but in addition to her vow never to speak, she could not so much as write his name at first. No person ever volunteered any information about him to her. And why should anyone care, seeing they knew neither her nor this curious unknown stranger called Habrunt? In fact, she had not overheard even the most incidental of news about him, and grew especially wistful whenever she chanced to think on Habrunt, and prayed for his well-being every day.

As for false religion, Si'Wren was not formally required to attend the worship ceremonies for any of the temple gods, nor did she ever once volunteer to go. For, marvelously, the Emperor had exercised his absolute power over his domain by indulging himself in the most peculiar manner, by openly declaring that one called Si'Wren was free to worship her forbidden Invisible God if she so chose. This unheard-of privilege especially rankled certain others of the court, and was to them a particularly vile concern, although they dared not so much as hint at their displeasure to Si'Wren's face. For equally obvious was the inescapable fact that Si'Wren had found much favor in the eyes of Emperor Euphrates, and because of this Si'Wren's neglect of the temple idols must be overlooked.

And that was that.

Whether this was because Emperor Euphrates was so far removed from the desperation of life that he had no proper appreciation for the resultant undermining of the idol-maker's profit motive by such an endorsement, was hard to tell. Perhaps instead, Emperor Euphrates actually found something to marvel in, at the very idea of a speechless young woman silently worshiping an Invisible God.

In view of recent developments, no ranking official would have dared to compel an alleged idol-breaker, and a known favorite of the Emperor himself, to attend upon the ceremonies of the gods. Unknown to Si'Wren, the very subject was what those-in-the-know at the palace considered 'an especially delicate matter'. For to lead her into some deathly blunder of etiquette, and inadvertently besmirch her newfound dignity, to which were attributed not her own, but the highest of royal graces clearly imbued by Imperial decree, was virtually to besmirch the character of Emperor Euphrates himself, and who would be so stupid as to dare risk such an awful eventuality as that?

Si'Wren daily prostrated herself on a rush mat in her private quarters and gave thanks to the Invisible God in wordless praise of both him and his perpetual blessings. For she did feel blessed, richly blessed, to know the one true God in such an evil world of scowling idols.

Si'Wren's awareness was constantly filled with the wonders of the palace, beyond the impregnable walls and outer battlements of which, stretching far and wide, existed a savage land of perpetual misery. She had grown much in wisdom, and in native understanding of the frightfully wicked ways of the world, and found nothing but evil in a society to whom such idols were a perpetual source of deliberate and intentional foolishness.

But in seeking real spiritual truth, Si'Wren could only confess to herself in private that she still knew next to nothing of the Invisible God. Free to believe in the Invisible God, she had launched herself on an inner voyage of discovery through vast uncharted realms of the spiritual unknown. It was a deep and ongoing struggle to overcome unrelenting feelings that she was as lost as ever, with only her untutored conscience as her guide.

She could only try not to mimic the false worship she had been formerly taught for idols, trusting blindly that Holy God would not find some reason to be offended at her clumsy attempts to give obeisance to Him. She sought in her heart how best to worship, but at first could only bow low upon the woven rug in her private chamber, prostrating herself humbly before an imaginary, holy countenance which she believed to be all-seeing, and speak in her heart as if to an imaginary personality that surely must be all-hearing, but she could only wonder what he truly wanted.

Silently, Si'Wren humbly petitioned this invisible, nameless God that he might accept her uninstructed worship of him. She prayed that he would never forsake her. Sworn never to actually speak, she prayed to him in silence. Unable to actually see him, she often closed her eyes. Unable to imitate him, knowingly appease him, or observe anything he might desire, she begged him to pity her and merely accept the fact that she worshiped him, the Invisible One, the only true and living God.

One thing she felt sure of. The worship of idols was an act of false, direst evil. Surely, without a doubt, the Invisible God desired true worship from her, and not evil idolatry. Si'Wren felt instinctively that in this must be found true virtue, and thought that she already had some misty idea of the proper difference between good and evil, but prayed for perpetual enlightenment in this.

That day, finished with her prayers, Si'Wren turned to an intricately woven basket on a carved wooden stand laden with ripe fruit, and began to consume some of it. Preoccupied, she absent-mindedly tilted her head this way and that as she ate thoughtfully. When she had finished eating, she sucked the pulp off her fingers, and set the beautiful basket back on it's stand. Having nothing else to do for the moment, she looked around her quarters, inspecting everything anew, for she could not help but marvel all over again every time she reentered her own private domain at all the fine things which were for her personal use, and to be considered her permanent possessions.

Imagine, Si'Wren thought to herself, having one's very own private bed chamber. It was located in the administrative section, the part of the Imperial palace reserved for the living quarters of the numerous palace civil servants, and occupied one entire wing of the imposing, rough-hewn stone fortress which contained many similar fine rooms as this, each one more glorious than the next.

All around her, in the palace, and in her own private room, were countless royal delights. The stone walls were paneled in planks of rough hewn wood, and hung with crude but richly woven tapestries and curtains.

The floors were of flat stone slabs, not perfectly flat but naturally smooth and hence very slightly uneven, being arranged so as to make a level surface, and frequently covered by rugs. Such was the slab floor in her very own personal room.

She turned to a little round side table and paused to examine anew, a polished wooden carving of an ox, dark, smooth and gleaming. The beautifully carved ox was short-legged and stout, with stubby horns, the whole artistic style being deliberately simplistic, having a tendency to look like a series of arcs fitly joined together; the horns and front legs both being arcs that went from side to side, the arcs of the hind legs, belly, backbone, tail, and head being arcs from front to back. All arcs.

She looked around, her eyes roaming the room, and admired a decorative, single-handled water vase that was flat, wide, and round at the base and gracefully slender for the upper two-thirds. Propped on a small round table, the tall vase was artfully and tastefully colored in earthtone shadings of tans and browns. Beside it was a fired clay wash basin. On the basin were to be seen engraved pictographs of the sowers, reapers and gatherers of grains. It wasn't so much a collection of idols, as a picture-script, a visual record of the entire harvesting process, above which was depicted a simple circle with lines pointing from it, indicating the rays of the sun as a source of light, and not as a false idol god.

There was, she perceived, a deep, real difference between the symbolic meaning and morally acceptable symbolism presented in such hieroglyphs, or picture-carvings, as opposed to the rank evil of outright, false idolatry. The symbolic images of honest work seemed most right, proper, and inspiring, and not at all like the false worship of mere graven things as false gods.

Hence, she perceived that the pictograph of the harvest inscribed in the sides of the water basin bore less of the idolatrous, and more of the earmarks of honest record keeping and written language, which itself comprised her new profession, rather than of the evil mysticism of idols, depending, of course, on how one looked at it. Anything could be made to be idolatrous, but some things, like these pictographs, could be viewed as mere pictures, and as just another form of written communication. Dimly, Si'Wren sensed that she was onto something new and vastly different from anything she had ever conceived of in her mind before. A whole new way of looking at things, far beyond what the idol-makers of the House of Rababull had been engaged in doing. It was good to understand this, and she wondered greatly at the clever artist who had so faithfully decorated the water basin.

Turning to reach past the polished dark wooden ox, Si'Wren retrieved the vase. In a perfectly expressionless and somber mien, she poured water into the shallow basin, filling it almost to the rim, and paused to consider it's reflection, seen by the light of a tall, narrow, decoratively barred siege window. One could easily understand that although water might reflect all things, the water was itself 'invisible' to the extent that one might see through it. Further, the water itself had no particular shape.

So might the Invisible God, she thought to herself, be seen in all things, and yet not be seen, even as one looked into the reflection of the water basin and by this marvelous result behold all mere physical things of the world. Yet one could no more touch the Invisible God than one could reach into the reflections in the water and touch them either. In spite of this, she could easily perceive what was real, and what was illusion. What great spiritual riches she had found in a bowl of water.

How could anyone possibly make an idol of the Invisible God? Why, one might as well try to make an idol of the wind itself, and did not God so breathe the very wind of life into the first man, the Patriarch Adam himself?

Adam and Eve had seen God, and talked with Him, when He came walking in the Garden of Eden, before they were cast out. Was not man said to be made in God's image, according to the ancient but discredited folklore and children's fables about Adam and Eve? Hence, the form of man must resemble the form of God, although man was but man, meaning mankind, which included womankind, and God was God. Nelatha had once said that if one went to Paradise, one would see God and live, a God Who walked, and talked, and could be seen, and Who was yet spirit.

Si'Wren was perplexed, and her thoughts ran to confusion. It was then that the very real wisdom of Nelatha, which had come from L'acoci, now betrayed its deeper truths, for Si'Wren remembered at the last that it was sufficient in Nelatha's understanding as a lowly ignorant slave girl, like Si'Wren herself, to compare the Invisible God to water, which one could see, and yet remained invisible. For could not one hold pure water in one's hand, and both see the water, and yet at one and the same time, see right through it? And water, she remembered, reflected all things faithfully. Thus might a righteous and holy God reflect all men's souls to them in the hereafter, rewarding the good with more good unto life, and the evil with more of their own evil unto eternal wailing and damnation.

Thoughtfully, she turned to the window, the frame of which was overgrown by clinging vines which stretched forth their profusion of white-streaked, green ivy leaves in every direction. Looking out, she saw a collection of dirty beggars sitting by the wayside in the street. They were the maimed, the blind, the diseased, always to be found among the countless throngs of city-goers and inhabitants.

She turned from the decoratively barred window and went back to the table, where she stood gazing down at the finely carved wooden ox. To the poor beggars, it would represent a fortune in coppers. She picked up the carved wooden ox, so dark, so smooth and lifelike, and returned to the ornate window. There, she paused for a long time, looking out on the beggars.

She already thought of the Invisible God as all-powerful by his very nature. But somehow she could not help imagining that surely he must desire at least a little agreement, some form of willful participation on her part, to better the lot of her fellow creatures.

Let the beggars sell the wooden ox, for money to buy food.

So saying to herself, she looked carefully, and tossed the wooden ox out through the ornamental bars past the green ivy vines.

It turned over slowly in the air and landed unbroken in a pile of dirty straw beside a group of filthy, crippled street beggars.

As Si'Wren stepped back into the shadows of her window sill, an outcry arose below in the narrow street. The anxious voices of the beggars could be heard talking animatedly about this perceived 'miracle'.

When at last Si'Wren dared to lean once more into the deeply recessed window sill for a peek, for the stone of the fortress wall was exceeding thick, her delight was turned to dismay.

They were worshiping it.

There they all were, kneeling and bowing to the dumb wooden ox! They had it propped up on the ground in front of them, off to one side out of the way of the busy foot traffic.

Shocked, she looked down upon them and stamped her little foot in mute frustration. They were impossible!

She opened her mouth, fervently wishing to call out to them and let them know the terrible error of what they were doing.

I threw it! she longed to say. But she had to shut her mouth again, and could only watch unhappily, with useless, tightly pursed lips and flashing, angry eyes.

So this was what she was up against. Remorse filled her soul, until she felt rent in twain by her anguish.

Why God? Si'Wren implored him, dropping in despair to her knees on the carpet. Why must I thus remain silent in this evil world so full of the praise of idols? Why God? Why?

Her sorrow multiplied rapidly over what she had unwittingly done in the name of idolatry, until her eyes blurred over and the unhappy vision of the beggars happily bowing before their new ox-god became washed away in a sea of salt tears and she turned away from them in anguish.

Brokenly, she fell across her bed and sobbed herself to sleep.

* * *

The next day, Si'Wren was formally presented by Ibi to the court and officially assumed her new status as Court Scribe. Emperor Euphrates was exceeding pleased, which would have made her all the more so by turns, were it not for her so recent experience with the polished wooden ox just the day before.

After she bowed low before him, he beckoned to her to sit on his right hand, several places removed. There were other, more important dignitaries who with all their robes and finery, considerably outranked her and sat closer to the Emperor. In fact, immediately to her right stood a royal palace guard, a rough-looking fellow, with his motionless back to the stones of the wall and a fearsome-looking spear in his big hands.

Seeing that the others were seated, she sat down also, and turned to stare curiously up at the guard standing beside her, but that other worthy only blinked in irritation and refused to look back at her or so much as acknowledge her presence.

Si'Wren dropped her eyes from the guard's aloof, stoic countenance, unaware that already many in the court room were covertly watching the newly appointed Royal Scribe with shifty, appraising looks, secretly wondering if she could be induced to sell out to them and at what price, in rank opposition to her Emperor's open claim to all her loyalties.

In contrast to the others' extravagance and finery in choice of raiment, Si'Wren had wisely followed Ibi's sage advice and foregone such vain nonsense in favor of a simple outfit consisting of pantaloons, blouse, long cape, and removable head covering, all loose in the folds but tight at the cuffs and waist, and all in starkest black.

By contrast, there was easily enough jewelry on all other royal dignitaries present to assure their inevitable drowning should one of them happen to accidentally fall into the moat.

Her hair was still the same length as always, almost to the waist in back. Sometimes, she kept it in a single long braid fastened at the end with a tiny black ribbon.

She took with her everywhere now her kit, consisting of the various tools and artifacts of her trade.

This consisted of two little wooden marking sticks kept in a black leather pouch, and a small honing stick of rough-surfaced lava rock from the stone masons quarter, for resharpening the marking sticks when the moist clay softened and distorted their tips. Actually, one had to set aside the dampened one to dry and use a dry one, and when the dampened one was dry, then to sharpen. She blinked ruefully at the memory of the day she had unknowingly tried to sharpen a dampened stick, and shredded it instead, thereby incurring the wrath of Ibi. How far she had advanced since that fateful day.

Also, she carried in her writing kit three thin soft clay tablets for writing on, housed in flat split-bamboo frames fitted with more bamboo strips to make a back support and allow for greater thinness, and a small fired clay bottle of water to soften the clay with the judicious sprinkle of a few added drops as needed.

These articles might be supplied in any desired quantity by the Emperor's slaves. However, she had been rigorously instructed by Ibi in all aspects of locating and gathering her own materials in the marketplace or -escorted by a pair of palace guards- out in the wild, until Ibi was satisfied that she knew as much about her profession as those who made her supplies.

She was becoming progressively more skilled in working with these raw materials, having learned how to manufacture them at her own hand out of fresh supplies, a technique she had mastered long ago using the herbs in the spice tent, with dear Nelatha. Momentary recollection of happier times with Nelatha caused Si'Wren to suddenly realize how truly long it had been, since those long-ago days.

She took her kit daily with her to the court and carried it openly before all, as an outward sign of the integrity and mastery of her trade, justly proud of the way her knowledge of its use and upkeep demonstrated to everyone that she rightly deserved her appointment to her office as Royal Scribe. Few could boast half as much, and although she was not the type to do so anyways, she felt herself to be beyond all need of boasting.

Ibi did all of the regular and customary record-keeping. Or rather, one of his shaven-headed underlings sat behind him and did it for him.

Si'Wren was there more than for show, to perfect herself as a studious worker before her Emperor Euphrates. She was Ibi's most beautiful, and indeed his only, female Scribe. It was a memorable day spent in service to the Emperor, and Si'Wren adapted readily and willingly to the routine.

Afterward when court was recessed for the day, Si'Wren was called to a private consultation with Ibi, who examined her in great detail and gave her further instruction in all that he felt needful pertaining to what she had seen that day.

So was her Royal routine established.

* * *

"If you'll just stand before me, Si'Wren..." said Ibi one day, mysteriously but calmly enough.

Ever obedient, Si'Wren complied and waited to see what was up.

Ibi turned and waved an arm to signal someone unseen just beyond her range of vision in the next room, and an exceeding rough-looking character stepped in. The newcomer, with as many fighting scars on his skin as any other might have had tatoos, was dressed in a leather skirt supported by wide, criss-crossed leather straps across his hairy chest and over the tops of his bulging, heavily muscled shoulders.

He had a leather thong across his dark, thick, unkempt hair, and sandals fastened by calf-straps like a soldier or professional sojourner. He carried a sword in his right hand, and the presence of dirt and grime on him was self-evident by the smell.

The newcomer entered and greeted Ibi formally, and -at Ibi's bidding- turned and looked upon Si'Wren with bold, appraising eyes that were unusually bony across the brows, while his blunt, step-ladder nose looked as if it had been broken and rebroken many times, and his ears had been boxed so many times they scarce resembled ears anymore. The newcomer was clearly not a man to be fooled with.

He also stank like an animal. His odor filled the room, but she was used to being around animals from having spent her earliest years as a slave, so that she really didn't mind that nearly so much as she might have, had she been noble-born instead. It just made him that much more imposing and disquieting to be around.

His face was hard and unflinching, and his eyes were openly appraising of everything he saw as if he were already preparing for the battle. She felt his eyes on her, sizing her up. Not that there was all that much of her to be sized up, she being so small for her age.

"You want to give spurs to this chicken?" the newcomer ventured, with an skeptical look that Si'Wren found somehow insulting.

"Aye," Ibi sighed with a studious nod of his haggard, hoary old head and long, flowing white mane. "Do what you can, Mearch. It is our Emperor's desire that she should learn to do more with horses than to look at them. I'm getting too old to ride along with his Majesty on the odd excursion, so a competent replacement has been wanting for some time. I have any number of young male understudies, but his majesty has taken a fancy to the girl. Anyway, you're to set her up with her own mount, and see that she learns how to handle herself on four legs as well as two."

Si'Wren's eyebrows quickly raised in astonished hope, disbelief, and anticipation.

For her--a horse?

"She is also to be given ivory marking sticks," Ibi remarked significantly, "and knows how to make proper use of them, too. You're looking at a lady of station. We're having them carved now."

"It's your show," Mearch shrugged. "I can give her no ivory, but we can definitely take care of the horse. If that will be all--"

Ibi paused, looking up at Mearch with a serious expression.

"No, that will not be all. I've seen your negligent attitude toward outfitting junior officers of the court in the past, and it was entirely too careless for my liking."

Ibi rose up off his seat suddenly and leaned forward, propping both bony arms firmly and authoritatively on the workbench as he regarded the other intently eye to eye, with a look of menace.

"Mearch, listen well. I was given an ill-mannered, ill-treated ruffian-girl straight from the slave fields, when she came to me. She was as fresh as the clay on the banks, and it was my job to train her up in all ways needful until she was found fit to present in court as a royal officer. I worked hard on polishing her coarse ways, and she has repaid my efforts beyond all expectation, which pleases me greatly as I do not relish the prospect of being made a public spectacle by having fools for underlings.

"Furthermore," Ibi went on, "she is still of tender years, and has taken a vow of silence for life, and I will not stand for her being given the customary business-as-usual rough handling at the coarsened hands of your cocky young studs. If she cannot speak, she cannot protest, but it would be a fatal mistake to think she is as easily intimidated as all that. The Emperor himself failed to get a word out of her, in spite of Borla's ready sword held close under her pretty little nose. I saw it myself, and it was most impressive."

Whether it was Si'Wren's beauty or her fearlessness that he found so impressive, Ibi did not elaborate, although a fondly doting Mearch seemed to have his own ideas already.

"She has since found favor in his Majesty's eyes," Ibi went on dryly, with an acid look for Mearch's wayward eyes, "and gives better reports in fresh clay than others seem to manage out of so much bad breath! Am I getting through to you?"

Ibi held Mearch's eyes for a long, hard moment of utter silence, while Si'Wren stood self-consciously with eyes downcast, trying to appear as if the last thing on her mind was to get in anybody's way.

Mearch nodded with an off-handed ease of manner, avoiding Ibi's hard stare as he examined his dirty fingernails, which smelled as if they had horse hoof diggings under them, a distinct possibility.

"I will train her personally."

"Mearch--"

Mearch dug at his fingernails momentarily, persisting almost to the point of disrespect, and finally looked up, to fully meet Ibi's jaundiced eyes again.

"What?" said Mearch.

"I'll stand for no nonsense!" said Ibi, making the bench clatter as he pounded it once with a bony fist for emphasis. "She's no plaything. I expect regular reports on her progress, and her personal safety will be on your head."

"I hear and obey," said Mearch, somewhat sarcastically, bowing obsequiously with a formal fist clap to the chest as he turned away, to the end result that he bowed to the side wall instead of to Ibi, who sniffed loudly in open disdain of either acknowledging or censuring such mockery.

Mearch stepped in front of Si'Wren, his massive arms hanging straight down at his sides as he towered over her. He stood there and stared down at her expressionlessly for a moment.

Si'Wren merely stood her ground, respectfully avoiding his eyes like any proper woman, but neither did she try to shrink back from him.

"She is young," said Mearch, a remark which, in an age of penta-centurions, adult human beings of 200, 400, and even 700 or more years old, was no idle comment.

"She is that," Ibi mused, staring idly past Mearch at the crudely hewn stones of the far wall. "Well, Master Royal Armorer? Will you get on with it?"

Abruptly, Mearch turned to Ibi and hesitated significantly, before saying to the old Scribe, "How much?"

Ibi stared blankly back at him a moment, until enraged comprehension filled his features.

"Forget it, Mearch," Ibi rasped in a gravel voice fraught with caustic skepticism. "She's royal property, and if you so much as petition the Emperor for her hand, you'll find there are bureaucratic punishments against which you shall find no proper shield or defense. I have no intention of losing her services so soon after training her up. She is brilliant."

"But--" Mearch faltered. "She would become my most favored wife, and I have but six now!"

"What you ask is unthinkable! She is not for sale and you are not to molest or entreat her in any disrespectful manner, or you'll be hacking your way out of a dungeon cell with your fingernails, if they're not pulled out by the roots first. Is that clear?"

"Aye," said Mearch, looking back at Si'Wren with eyes which were curiously lacking in their customary boldness. "Such beauty." There was another long pause. Then he said, "Me, I know weapons, but this one has slain me already."

Nervously, Si'Wren avoided meeting his eyes. She was ready to listen and learn, but he was so fearsome to look upon that she found it difficult to face him. Besides, for a woman to meet a man's stare too openly was to appear wanton.

Yet, for some odd inexplicable reason, she somehow already felt agreeable to fierce Mearch's tutelage. He was fittingly warned by Ibi, and his treatment of her should not be too harsh. Although still very much unsure of him, Si'Wren fully expected him to behave himself, in view of Ibi's stern admonishments that she should remain safe from all harm or harassment in his care.

"Why has the Emperor not taken her for himself?" Mearch asked, in a disdainful and skeptical voice.

"His Majesty is fond of praise, whereas this one finds talk a bit too cheap for her liking, even to please an emperor. Anyway she has found special favor by virtue of her uncommon vow, and has shown iron resistance against breaking it in the face of honed steel. As Royal Scribe, she is sworn under oath to strictest secrecy and loyalty."

"She'll never talk, eh? And what better way to keep the king's secrets? A great pity. But, seeing she shall never speak again, how did she swear her oath of loyalty to his Majesty?" Mearch asked smugly.

"She can give the nod, and that with a true heart, which is more than most so-called honest witnesses are called to testify with their lying lips. That will be all, then, I trust?"

"Aye," Mearch said. "I get the idea. Even so, from what you have said of her, I still say one could not give in equal trade one's best stallion for such a woman. But I have a stallion, my best, that she may have, for to ride upon. Send her down to me at the stables in a week. No, better make it two weeks. My men only just caught this one particular horse recently, and I still have to break him in, if I can."

"What are you saying? Do you mean, an unbroken, ungelded stallion?" Ibi asked in disbelief.

Mearch shrugged.

"He has already broken three of my best trainers' numbskull heads, but never -never!- have I seen such a fine creature," he barely glanced at Si'Wren, and added, "or woman. But I, Mearch, can break him to ride without ruining his spirit. It takes much strength, courage, wisdom of the heart, and patience, and one dares never use too heavy a hand in the matter. Yet it is possible, I think, but only by me. That girl and that horse; they are the same. I feel it. It will be right. You will see."

Mearch turned for the door.

"No harm will come to her," he called over his shoulder on the way out.

Ibi studied the surface of his desk until Mearch was safely gone.

Then he glowered down at his withered old hands, and said, as if speaking in Mearch's presence instead of Si'Wren's, "It had better not, Mearch."

* * *

Si'Wren sat at court every day, whether her Emperor appeared or no.

When Emperor Euphrates did not show, Borla usually heard the cases. Any problem which he did not feel himself adequately competent or suitably authorized to deal with, he literally bound the suspect over for Emperor Euphrates to dispose of later at his convenience.

Si'Wren learned the complex, elusive ebb and flow of court politics, the petty social concerns, the lawsuits, the drastic and petty religious differences, and a host of other lost causes.

For practice, she always had to record everything, even if one of Ibi's shaven-headed underlings was present making official copies. Si'Wren did not write it out word-for-word, which would clearly have been impossible, but only took down names, dates, and a few crucial details about any complaints or petitions.

Then, tiredly, she would retire to Ibi's quarter, and knock the clay filler from the frames, kneading the used clay with a little water until she had worked it soft and pliable again. Then she would prepare the boxes by refilling them and wiping their outside frames clean of dried-on clay dust and leaving them covered with moist cloth of flax weave. She would also set her dampened wooden marking sticks neatly laid out to one side to dry at day's end, and also saw to various other details of her daily chores. Finally, exhausted, she would retire and sleep soundly until the cock crew in the early predawn darkness to signal the start of a new day.

Upon arising and finishing with her toilet, she would take with her a set of dry sticks to sharpen with a small piece of honing stone, and lift the dampened linen from her restored clay tablets to find them looking fresh and soft with a dull smooth gleam when she took them up to bring along with her for the day.

Mearch appeared one time in Ibi's shop, equipped with a wooden staff. Advising her that he was still working on his assignment for her, the Master Armorer made crude knife marks on the rod with a stubby but wickedly sharp flaying knife as he measured her height, the length of her limbs, and some other proportions, accomplishing all with a swiftness and unconscious poise that betrayed long practice at this sort of thing.

"I shall go, and do, and then I will return, and then you will see," he finally said. Then his face briefly illuminated with a cheery smile.

Shyly, Si'Wren bowed, and smiled briefly in return. Although she had no desire to become his next wife, she found him to be well-mannered and likeable enough, in spite of his crudeness. "Do not fear," he said, all businesslike again. "When you come to the royal stables, I, even I, Mearch, Chief Armorer to the Emperor himself, will not suffer you to come to the slightest harm."

Si'Wren slowly bowed low to him again.

Mearch grinned, and turned to go back to the stables.

* * *

Si'Wren continued to increase in knowledge and wisdom as she observed her astute Emperor in court, learning intuitively from the inevitable daily exercise of her mental faculties how to sift truth from lies, and how various evils and perplexing situations were to be properly adjudicated.

There were several ways that crimes were judged. One was by the severity of the crime itself. Another way was to judge the criminal by his or her own attitude and intentions. Equally important were the question of whether the suspect was high born and wealthy, or low born and bondable, or a beggar, or--most unfortunate of all, a mere penniless slave.

To Si'Wren, they were all human beings first and foremost, but she was no judge and could not voice an opinion regardless. However, she was well aware of the fact that high station was no proof of good character. In fact, there was very little to call good in any of the people she saw. They all seemed intent upon doing evil to their neighbors, and were only sorry to be caught, not for doing wrong.

* * *

One day, Si'Wren was finally given her new ivory marking sticks. They were beautiful, with different-shaped ends at the tips, for greater writing versatility, and she felt as if she had been given a gift from heaven.

Si'Wren was learning how to snatch up her marking sticks and write swiftly when called upon, mimicking her mentor Ibi and copying the flood of new words she heard by seeing what he wrote and duplicating it exactly in clay with the white ivory marking sticks. They were marvelous. The beautifully carved marking sticks did not grow soft from her almost ceaseless jabbing of the moist clay when at court, and never needed resharpening.

At the stables, where she went almost every day during her free time in the afternoons, she was learning to ride, but not on the horse Mearch had chosen for her. He refused even to tell her yet which one it was that he had chosen to be her personal mount. Mearch had chosen instead to pursue her training period on a gentle mare, to give her a chance to develop a proper background in horsemanship. Later, he began to put her on other horses, to give her a greater diversity of experience.

He had every horse in the stable to choose from, and only withheld the most unpredictable, hostile, or otherwise dangerous animals, which he would never change his mind about. He reserved those for his hardened men-at-arms, to be their battle mounts.

However, he did not fail to notice which one caught her eye most often. It was the one he had secretly chosen for her, a dark, lustrous, highly-spirited black stallion which the men were afraid to even think of riding. Mearch believed that the stallion, so wild and untamed, only needed to have it's trust and cooperation gained, and to be given a chance to develop a sense of mutual trust and respect for it's rider.

In her other rounds, although no man or woman in the palace went deliberately out of their way to show any special respect for her, Si'Wren was not actively persecuted. As Royal Scribe, her appearance anywhere in the palace might mean nothing but idle curiosity on her part as an inexperienced member of the palace staff, or it could be that she was acting in official capacity, and how were the others to know? To deliberately impede or interfere with her could mean death to an offender, if she were on official business. Thus none dared lay a hand upon her or bar her path for the slightest reason.

She got her share of incidental looks, though. Some accepted her, some despised her, some merely took a good look to see who she was and then left her alone.

Meanwhile, rumors flew like birds on the wing, telling of Kadrug and giants, Kadrug and Conabar, Kadrug and this, Kadrug and that, and so on and so forth.

Si'Wren watched Emperor Euphrates prostrate himself once in private prayer services to the sun god, beseeching deliverance from Kadrug and his giants. Emperor Euphrates seemed very worried, though she could not imagine why. His army certainly seemed large enough to handle any possible enemy, giants or no.

* * *

One day, Mearch marched into Ibi's private chambers, and returned Si'Wren's polite bow and Ibi's imperious look with equal aplomb as he delivered to them both a careless greeting with a wordless wave of the hand.

Si'Wren's eyes were riveted upon Mearch's other arm, in the crook of which was tucked an oiled chamois skin wrapping, which was carefully folded and tied around something rather bulky.

Mearch had only come calling, in Si'Wren's rather short-lived experience, with a direct regard to the pursuit of her education with horses, and as she looked on with no small degree of excitement and anticipation, she suspected that today was to be the day she had been awaiting anxiously for so long.

"Si'Wren," Mearch beckoned, his face impassive.

Si'Wren had long since discovered that Mearch had a deep and subtle sense of pride and good will, in spite of his frankly ugly features. She felt curiously safe with him, as she still could not with so many others who never smiled at her, and had come over time to count Mearch as an unspoken ally, until it seemed that the less either he or she acknowledged it, the more each became aware of this secret bond of trust between them. Today, with his flashing eyes, he regarded her with a look of satisfaction and unvoiced promise, for he was, she suspected, come to fulfill his duty to Ibi on her behalf, and it evidently gave him great pleasure, though he dared not show it lest Ibi misunderstand his motives and give him another chewing out.

"Today, little one, you shall ride the horse I have promised," said Mearch. "Behold."

With a flourish, he flicked his razor sharp stone knife through the binding of thongs and swept aside the chamois skin, and revealed a stunning black leather harness and saddle, intricately trimmed with ivory and silver.

Si'Wren looked on with astonishment, as he held it out to her.

This, she reflected, clutching the riding gear with both hands and smelling the fine black leather, was for a horse. A horse of her own! She held the saddle as she smiled at Mearch, and shut her eyes momentarily in thanks to the Invisible God.