“Afsan, I give you one last chance,” said Yenalb. “Release the poison within you. Recant!”
Afsan turned his head toward the sky. “The sun is out. You can see my sincerity. But even if it were darkest night, I would not take back what I’ve said. The world is doomed—”
Yenalb’s hand slapped across Afsan’s face, and, tied up as he was, he wasn’t able to roll with the impact. He tasted blood in his mouth, his serrated teeth having smashed into the inside of his muzzle. “Silence!”
Afsan swallowed, looked away. And yet, in that instant, he realized just how controlled Yenalb’s anger was, how orchestrated the performance. A backhanded slap? From a carnivore? Yenalb was deliberately avoiding using claws or teeth, pointedly refraining from drawing visible blood. He played the crowd the way Dybo would a musical instrument.
Yenalb turned to the audience. “The dat-kar-mas!” he shouted. Again the assembled group parted as a second priest, a female, came through, carrying a small jeweled box in both hands. She proffered the box to Yenalb. He opened it, the lacquered lid tilting back on tiny hinges. Inside was an obsidian dagger, lying on fine black silk. It glinted with lavender highlights in the sunlight. He reached in to pick it up and Afsan noticed Yenalb’s claws extending as he touched it.
The priest held it over his head and turned it so the crowd could see. Gasps and hisses filled the air. Yenalb would not attack Afsan with his bare hands, for such a spectacle might indeed incite the crowd to instinctive violence. No, already the sight of a weapon—distasteful, cowardly, a tool of the weak—had quelled the crowd. And yet, Afsan knew that Yenalb could bring them to near-boil again with a few words or an appropriate gesture. The priest turned toward him. “What you say, demon, is a lie. Since you continue to claim to see things that are blasphemous, you give us no choice.” He nodded at the guards.
One of them grabbed Afsan by the throat, claws sharp against his skin, his dewlap bunched painfully against his neck. Afsan tried to bite the guard, but another moved in, crushing Afsan’s muzzle shut in the crook of her massive arm. His head was twisted sideways, and Afsan closed his eyes. He felt the planks beneath him wobble as Yenalb moved closer.
Suddenly, roughly, his right eyelid was forced open by strong fingers. Diffuse light came at him through his nictitating membrane, and then a shadow fell across him. Afsan opened the membrane to see more clearly. Coming at him, cold and sharp, was the black obsidian knife.
The dagger was filling his field of view, and he realized at last that he was not to die here, although perhaps that would have been better.
The pain as the mineral point lanced into his eye was incredible, stronger and sharper than any agony Afsan had known before. He frantically tried to escape, to free himself, but the guards were much stronger than he. His left eyelid was forced open, too. He quickly rolled that eye, trying to move the pupil as far up into his skull as possible. The last thing he saw was one of the moons, a pale and dim crescent in the afternoon sun.
Then a second stab, a second agony on top of the first.
And blackness.
Through the pain, Afsan felt something like jelly on his muzzle.
His head pounded. His heart raced. He felt nauseous.
Yenalb’s voice rose above the sound that Afsan suddenly realized was his own screaming. “The demon can never again claim to see something that blasphemes our God!”
The crowd cheered. The strong hand at Afsan’s throat pulled away. Pain throbbed through him. He tried to blink, but his eyelids had trouble sliding over his rent orbs. His body racked.
And at last, mercifully, he fell unconscious, sagging against the wooden post.
*34*
Dybo apparently thought that what he’d allowed to be done to Afsan was a kindness, a gentler fate than having him executed. Indeed, the Emperor, in a gesture of his infinite mercy, let Afsan go, free to wander the Capital. Stripped of his rank, stripped of his home, stripped of his sight.
But free.
His eyes would never grow back. Bone and flesh, those could regenerate, but the eyes, the organs—damage to them was permanent, irreversible.
Afsan was determined not to dwell on his loss, and not to be a burden on those few who were willing to help him. He was learning to identify the sounds of the city: the clicking of toeclaws on stone paving; the thundering footfalls of domesticated hornfaces making their way down the streets; the chatter of voices, some near and distinct, some distant and muffled; the calls of traders trying to interest those wandering by in the trinkets and tools brought from other Packs; the tourists responding with interest, the locals hissing them down; the entreaties of tattooless beggars; the drums from the place of worship, sounded at the beginning of each daytenth; the identifying calls of ships down in the harbor. And behind it all the background noises, the things he had ignored most of his life: the whistle of the wind, the rustling of leaves, the pipping calls of wingfingers gliding overhead, the chirpings of insects.
And there were smells to help guide him, too: pheromones from other Quintaglios, the reek of oil from lamps, the delicious aroma of freshly killed meat as carts rattled by carrying it from the central butchery to dining halls around the city, the acrid smell from metalworking shops, pollens in the air, perfume of flowers, ozone before a storm.
He found he could even tell when the sun was out and when it was hidden behind a cloud, his skin reacting to the change in heat.
Pal-Cadool and Jal-Tetex became his constant companions. One of them was almost always with him. Afsan didn’t understand why they gave so much time to looking after him, but he was grateful. Cadool had carved a stick for Afsan from a telaja branch. Afsan carried it in his left hand, feeling the ground in front of him. He learned to judge what each little bump meant about the path ahead, with Cadool or Tetex providing a running commentary: “There’s a curb here; that’s just a loose stone; watch out—hornface dung!”
Cadool and Tetex were practically the only ones willing to speak to him. Afsan had not been tattooed with a shunning symbol—his crime was heinous, indeed, but he had not been moved to mate with a rutting animal nor had he hunted without eating what he had killed. But, then again, there were only a couple of other blind Quintaglios in Capital City, and both of them were very old. Everyone could recognize Afsan immediately, the scrawny young adult feeling his way along with a stick. And, after what had happened to Afsan, it was little wonder that no one risked talking to him.
Afsan was no longer a prisoner, but nor was he an astrologer. A priest from Det-Yenalb’s staff had taken Saleed’s place, and no apprentice was needed, apparently. Cadool had made space for Afsan in his own small apartment, two rooms on the far side of Capital City.
Today, the twenty-first day since he had been blinded, Afsan detected a difference in Cadool as the butcher walked beside him. His voice was charged, and there was excitement in his pheromones.
“What’s with you?” Afsan asked at last.
Cadool’s long stride faltered a bit; Afsan could hear the change in the way his friend’s claws ticked against the stones. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, good Cadool, that you’re all worked up about something. What is it?”
“It’s nothing, really.” Without being able to see the muzzle of the person speaking, Afsan couldn’t tell if he was being told the truth. Still, since lying was futile in most circumstances, it tended not to occur to Quintaglios to try. Nonetheless, Cadool’s words seemed insincere.
“Come on, it must be something. You’re more stimulated than someone about to go on a hunt.”