Saint Dane didn’t react. I couldn’t tell if he was happy they had mined so much extra glaze, or ticked that the Milago had met his unfair challenge. He swung his leg over and jumped down from his horse. He climbed up onto the platform and looked at the level scale with a slight smile. Suddenly the mood of the crowd grew tense again. What was Saint Dane doing? He looked to the heavyset man who was swaying on the end of the scale. The man looked down, afraid to make eye contact. Saint Dane then walked to the end of the scale where the glaze stones were piled into the basket.
“Well done, Rellin,” he said. “You have mined quite a large amount of-” He suddenly stopped talking, and leaned in closer to the basket of glaze stones. Throughout the crowd people started holding one another’s hands for strength.
Saint Dane gazed into the basket of stones and said, “Rellin! I am surprised at you. There is a stone in here that is not pure glaze!”
Uh-oh. Rellin made a move to run to the basket, but two of the knights held him back. Rellin yelled something at Saint Dane, but it didn’t matter what he said. Saint Dane reached into the basket, grabbed the largest glaze stone, and picked it up. Instantly, the scale tipped and the heavyset man slammed down onto the platform, hard. Saint Dane carried the stone over to Rellin and held it up to his face.
“You know that Kagan only accepts stones of pure glaze,” he said through smug, clenched teeth.
Not that I’m a geology expert or anything, but that stone looked just like every other stone in the batch. Saint Dane was changing the rules again.
“You know what must happen now,” he said with mock sadness.
Apparently the heavyset men knew it too. He scrambled to his feet and jumped down off the platform. He wanted out of there, fast. But the knights grabbed him and held him tight.
“What’s happening?” I asked Osa.
Osa didn’t answer. She kept staring at the scene with sad eyes. I figured I was going to find the answer soon anyway and turned back to watch the last act of this drama.
One of the other knights quickly grabbed a heavy chain that was attached to one end of the wooden platform. He pulled on it and half of the platform top lifted up like a trap-door. Underneath there looked like…nothing. The platform was built over a huge hole.
“It is the first mine shaft that was dug here in the Milago village,” Osa said without taking her sad eyes off the scene. “It is a pit that reaches down farther than the eye can see. I am afraid there are many lonely bones resting on the bottom.”
My mind was racing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. They were going to toss this guy down the mine shaft!
“Why don’t the Milago do something?” I said. “There are hundreds of them! Why don’t they stop it?”
The knights dragged the heavyset man closer to the open pit.
“Bagga! Bagga va por da pey!” he cried. It was horrible.
No one in the crowd moved. No one tried to help the poor guy. Even Rellin. It was like they knew it was futile. I noticed that next to me, Loor reached to her back and grabbed hold of her wooden weapon. But Osa put her hand over her daughter’s.
“You know it is not the time,” she said softly.
Loor didn’t release her weapon at first. I could feel her tension. One push, and she would be down there, swinging away. But today was not that day. She kept her eyes on the scene and released her grip on the weapon.
The knights dragged the screaming heavy man up to Saint Dane, who looked at the poor guy without a trace of sympathy and said, “If you weren’t such a glutton, you may have lived to see another day.” Saint Dane then nodded at the knights, and they dragged the poor, screaming man toward the open pit.
“Ca…ca!” he pleaded. “Maga con dada pey! Maga con dada! Moy fol wife, and two children! Please! I must take care of them! They will be alone!”
The scene was so horrifying that it wasn’t until later that it hit me…I could understand him. It sure sounded like English, but it didn’t make sense that he suddenly would have switched languages. Osa said that the Travelers had the ability to understand all languages, and since I was suddenly able to understand this man, maybe I was a Traveler after all.
But I didn’t think about that until later. Right now I was witnessing the most gut-wrenching moment I could imagine. The two knights dragged the heavy man closer to the open pit. Suddenly a woman jumped out of the crowd and tried to pull him away from his executioners. She was in tears and begging for mercy. She must have been the man’s wife, but her brave effort didn’t help. She was quickly grabbed by another knight and thrown to the ground. She lay there in the grass, sobbing.
The knights finally got the man to the edge of the pit and were about to push him in, when the man suddenly stopped wailing. Up until this point he had been crying and begging for his life. But now he stopped fighting and stood up straight. I swear, there was a look on his face that was almost calm. The knights didn’t know how to react. They weren’t used to someone being calm during the worst moment of their life.
The heavy man turned and faced Saint Dane, and in a distinct, strong voice he said, “My only regret is that I will not live long enough to see Kagan suffer the way we have all suffered.”
Saint Dane chuckled and said, “None of you will live that long, for that day will never come.” He then gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod and the two knights pushed the doomed man backward into the pit. His wife screamed, but the guy didn’t let out a sound. One second he was there, the next he was just…gone. Hopefully his death would be quick and he’d now be in a better place than this horrible village.
The knight holding the chain let it go and the wooden platform fell down with a boom. Saint Dane walked up to Rellin, who looked him right in the eye. Saint Dane then pointed to the man’s sobbing wife.
“We will use her for tomorrow’s Transfer,” he said with pleasure. “She seems quite light. It should make for an easy day. Please thank me for being so considerate.”
Rellin looked at Saint Dane and for a second I thought he was going to spit in his face. But he didn’t. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Saint Dane said with a smile. With that he strode to his horse, jumped into the saddle and was just about to ride off when he once again looked back toward us. Actually, it was more like he was looking right at me. I could feel it. He knew I was there. Was all of this a show for me? Saint Dane laughed, kicked his horse and rode off through the stunned crowd back toward the Bedoowan palace.
The knights pushed a few of the miners toward the basket of glaze with their spears. The valuable stones had to be delivered to Kagan and it was clear that they weren’t the ones who were going to carry them. That was a job for their slaves. The miners picked up the basket from the seesaw and started the long walk toward the palace. The rest of the villagers slowly started to disperse. Not a word was spoken. A few people went up to console the poor woman who had just lost her husband, but most simply headed back toward their homes. They had been through this horror before, and they probably would go through it again.
But I hadn’t. I was frantic. I had just witnessed a man murdered in cold blood. It was even more horrible than the poor homeless guy who Saint Dane hypnotized into running into the subway train back in New York. That was awful, but it didn’t seem real. This was very, very real and I didn’t understand it. My emotions were all over the place. And yes, I’m not ashamed to admit it, I was crying. They were tears of anger, and fear, and sadness for a man I didn’t even know. And for his family. I didn’t care that I was crying in front of Loor or anybody else. I was out of control.
“Why didn’t they do something?” I shouted at Osa. “They could have ganged up on the knights. They could have pulled the guy away. Why didn’t they stop it?”