Call of the Colossus: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles Book 2) (2 page)

The enforcers escorted her through the high-ceilinged corridors, their steps echoing on the polished wood floor. Ahead, justice officials in colorful robes filed into a courtroom, each one casting a wary glance in her direction as they entered. Some of them she recognized. Some looked familiar, but their names didn’t immediately come to her. Still others were strangers. The enforcers took her inside.

The room was filled to capacity, the seats in the gallery taken by disciples in blue robes, adepts in green, and elders in yellow. Jora hoped to see at least one violet robe worn by Adriel, perhaps her only remaining friend within the Order, but no novices were present. The onlookers sat quietly but for the rustle of nervous fidgeting as she walked past.

A trio of elders, Elder Gastone and two whose names she didn’t know, seated themselves at the judge’s bench. From their position atop an elevated platform in the front of the room, they could look down upon the accused and the adepts judging her. One elder had white eyebrows and a spotted head. The other was a woman who looked much younger, perhaps newly promoted. She had blue eyes, thin red eyebrows, and a freckled face. A disciple and three adepts huddled around the prosecutor’s table. Across the room, a single chair sat empty, facing them all. The accused’s chair.

The enforcers all but dragged her to it and sat her down. Two stood guard behind her, and Justice Captain Milad poised beside the prosecutor’s table, his crossbow cocked. One of the enforcers untied the gag and pulled it out of her mouth. It felt good to be free of it. She licked and stretched her lips and opened and closed her jaw to work out the stiffness. Justice Captain Milad flexed his hands on the crossbow.

“I am Elder Tornal,” said the white-browed elder in the center. “To my right is Elder Gastone, and to my left Elder Devarla. We will serve as Sentencing Judges for this proceeding. Let the record reflect that Disciple Jeneve is serving as Primary Witness, and Adepts Fer, Uster, and Gerios are serving as Primary Judges. Unless there are any objections, let us begin.”

He waited a moment for objections, but the room was silent.

“Will the accused please state her name for the court,” Elder Tornal said.

“Jora Lanseri.”

“Jora Lanseri,” Elder Tornal said, “you are here to face justice for the murders of five Legion soldiers, four enforcers, March Commander Turounce, and Elder Sonnis. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” she said.

“On what basis do you make this claim?”

Though the courtroom was quiet, a hush seemed to settle over it. No rustle of cloth, no clearing of throats. All eyes were on Jora.

She looked around the courtroom at all the faces staring at her, judging her. She was undoubtedly the first justice official ever to have been accused of murdering another, but then, they probably didn’t know that Elder Sonnis had murdered Elder Kassyl. Even if they did, it was too late anyway. “On the basis that I was acting in the capacity of a member of this order, meting out justice as my duty required.”

Gasps rippled across the room. People turned to their neighbor and whispered.

“Quiet!” Elder Tornal demanded. He banged a gavel on the bench. “Quiet.” He glared at the audience until they settled back down. “I’ll clear this room if you can’t maintain your composure in the manner befitting justice officials.”

The elders, adepts, and disciples, duly chastened, answered with silence.

Tornal lowered his gaze to the papers before him and began to read aloud. “Disciple Jeneve will Witness the events beginning on Veneris Day, the 8th day of Septebar, the day the accused renounced the Justice Bureau, and the four days that followed.”

“If I may address the court,” Jora said.

Milad flexed his finger on the crossbow trigger. If he squeezed it, even accidentally, Jora would be dead. Even without the kendern on her head, she couldn’t possibly have summoned an ally to protect her in the time it would take the bolt to travel across the room.

A bead of sweat dribbled down her sides. She swallowed and waited for Tornal to nod, then cleared her throat before continuing. “The events that led up to my decision to leave began with the death of Elder Kassyl.”

“I don’t see how Elder Kassyl’s passing is relevant to your departure,” Elder Gastone said.

“I’ll show you,” Jora said. “Permit me to give you a tour of my timeline and the things I learned. You’ll understand better why I did what I did.”

The three sentencing elders whispered amongst themselves for a moment, too quietly for Jora to hear. The three judging adepts took the time to discuss the matter as well. “We shall leave it to the discretion of the adepts sitting in judgment,” Tornal said.

Jora glanced at Adept Fer who had once been well-disposed toward her. Did he just wink? Did she still have a champion within the Justice Bureau?

Adept Fer nodded and then whispered something to the disciple sitting beside him. “We have no objections,” he lisped with his baritone voice.

“Very well,” Elder Tornal said. “Jora, if you agree to take no aggressive action against any member of this tribunal, members of the audience, or the enforcers who brought you, we will remove the kendern device.”

“You have my word.”

“Justice officer,” Adept Fer said, “kindly remove the kendern from Novice Jora’s head.”

The corners of Elder Tornal’s mouth twitched. “Refer to her as simply Jora or Jora Lanseri, if you please. She has been expelled from the Order.”

Expelled. Jora cast her gaze downward. She didn’t know why that saddened her, but it did, perhaps because the Order was the closest thing she had to family, despite the fact that they were unfairly judging her for heinous crimes.

“Yes, Elder,” Adept Fer said.

The enforcer on Jora’s right fussed with the tightening screws on the device. Faint squeaks accompanied a gradual loosening of the band around her head, and then he pulled it free.

The sensation was like removing a murderous hand gripping her throat. Tears of relief and gratitude spilled down her face. She would guess that none of the elders had tried the thing on themselves to experience the oppressive silence. They couldn’t know how terrible it was.

For a moment, everyone fell quiet as if waiting to see whether Jora would keep her word.

Elder Tornal cleared his throat. “Jora, kindly lower the barring hood so that Disciple Jeneve can proceed.”

The barring hood was typically awarded to justice officials upon their promotion to the rank of disciple, but Elder Kassyl himself had taught it to her the day before he was murdered. “I must open the Mindstream to lower it,” she said. “I don’t know any other way.”

A few people in the audience chuckled. Even Tornal and Gastone smiled at her comment. “Yes, of course,” Tornal said. “That is the only way to remove it. You may guide Disciple Jeneve by Mindstreaming, as you call it, to the earliest relevant event. She will then share her Observation with the adepts, my fellow sentencing elders, and me. Proceed when ready, Jora.”

There were events over the previous two weeks that she desperately wanted them to see, but there were also events she wanted to hide. Her notes and Elder Kassyl’s books—the keys to summoning the allies—she kept hidden where only she could reach them. The incidents leading to Boden’s arrest were also relevant, but that knowledge had gotten Boden killed. It had gotten everyone in Kaild killed. Until she knew whose secret it was, she needed to guard it as if it were her own, if only to protect the innocent.

“I might need to show you something that is highly secret,” she said. “The reason two-thousand people of Kaild were slain. I respectfully request that only the seven of you participate in riding my ’stream. The more people who know, the more people I put in danger.”

“In danger from whom?” Tornal asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “The Legion, certainly, but someone in the Legion is giving orders to protect this knowledge, and I don’t know how far up the command chain it goes.”

Gastone wrinkled his brow and leaned close to Tornal to whisper something.

“Very well,” Tornal said. “I’ll ask that the audience refrain from participating or viewing the Mindstream.”

The room filled with disgruntled murmurs.

“Quiet,” Tornal said. “That’s the way it has to be.” He scowled at them for a moment, shaming them into silence, before turning his gaze back to Jora. “Proceed.”

Jora opened the Mindstream and pushed past those dark, whispering shadows that had frightened her as a child—the figures she now knew were allies yet to be commanded.

“What was that?” Jeneve asked in a quiet voice.

The adepts beside her expressed confusion about her question, but Jora knew she’d seen the allies. If others with the ability to Mindstream didn’t see them except when riding Jora’s ’stream, did that mean they couldn’t become Gatekeeper? She wondered if she’d been wasting her time and energy protecting her books if the knowledge within them wouldn’t do anyone any good. Well, there was no use taking any chances with them.

“All right,” she said. She kept her eyes closed to avoid confusing the images. “First, I’d like to show you Novice Gilon’s murder.”

“We already know Gafna is responsible,” Fer said.

“But Elder Sonnis–”

“We’re not here to judge your victims. Limit your tour to the relevant events, please.”

Fine. She advanced the stream to the moment when she read Boden’s journal entry in which he’d written to her, pleading with her to find out what she could about the smuggling. “This journal entry was the reason for his arrest. They intended to court-martial him for trying to find out who was–” Jora remembered the elders, adepts, and disciples listening in the audience. She couldn’t say anything about godfruit smuggling out loud. “—responsible for that.”

“This is not Boden Sayeg’s trial, Jora,” Tornal said. “How is this relevant?”

“My seeing that journal entry created a problem for the Legion,” she said. “Captain Kyear had come at Elder Sonnis’s request to discuss…” She licked her lips. “…killing me. The Legion’s solution was to make sure I didn’t talk about what Boden had written about the… situation.”

The justices leaned forward as they listened, captivated.

“Elder Sonnis knew that my research on the tones and my ability to communicate with Sundancer—the dolphin—were unique and valuable to the Justice Bureau. He proposed another solution: killing all the people of Kaild.”

“That makes no sense,” Tornal said. “Why would he suggest such a thing?”

“If I had no one I trusted to talk to, that would have the same effect as killing me. He thought that by slaying my real family, I would turn to the Order—to him, as my elder—to confide my concerns.”

“That’s preposterous. How did you overhear this supposed conversation?”

“My friend, Novice Adriel, was meeting with Elder Gastone in his office next door. I Mindstreamed to her and then jumped to the Legion captain. Listen for yourself.” With the others riding her ’stream, they should have been able to overhear the conversation that Jora Witnessed.

“That was the day before Elder Kassyl’s death was discovered?” Gastone asked, his voice almost a whisper.

“Yes,” Jora said.

She led them through the rest of her timeline—Gilon Witnessing Elder Sonnis murdering Elder Kassyl and confronting Sonnis, Gilon being slain by Gafna at Sonnis’s behest, Jora taking her stolen books back from the dominee with the god Retar’s help, and fleeing. She showed them as much as she could about Boden’s attempt to flee to save the people of Kaild and his murder in the forest. Witnessing his death the second time was no easier for Jora, though knowing he was still her friend, her ally, was a comfort. It was true Jora had stolen a dinghy in an attempt to reach Kaild in time to warn everyone of the assassins Sonnis had sent, but without a horse, she’d had no chance to get there in time.

She condensed the timeline, showing them when Sundancer arrived to pull the boat through the water, arriving on the beach only to find the assassins relaxing in town after the slaughter of so many innocent lives, and her vengeance afterwards.

“And how did you learn to summon that creature?” Tornal asked.

“Sundancer taught me.”

“A dolphin taught you an ancient magic that has been lost for centuries?” asked a woman’s voice from her right, the one Tornal had called Elder Devarla, silent until then.

Jora nodded, opening her eyes and closing the Mindstream.

“How did this dolphin know it?”

“I think the dolphins are stewards of that magic. That’s why everyone is so enthralled with the tones of the Spirit Stones.”

Whispers broke out in the audience, but Tornal didn’t shush the onlookers, nor did he make good on his threat to send them from the room.

“Why did the dolphin choose you?”

In all honesty, Jora didn’t know. Perhaps to give her the tools to defend herself, but in doing so, Sundancer had conferred upon Jora the magic of the Gatekeeper—magic that hadn’t been used in some five hundred years. “I don’t know. I never asked her.”

“And so you used this ancient magic not to do good or aid others but to slay the men responsible for killing your friends and family,” Uster said. “That is called revenge, not justice.”

“No,” Jora said. “I knew these men would kill again, and so I slayed them to protect the citizens of Serocia.”

“They were Legion soldiers carrying out an order given to them by their leader, March Commander Turounce. Is that why you murdered him, too?”

Jora’s gut burned. She could understand why they saw it that way, but she honestly wasn’t thinking of herself when she killed him. “I killed him because he executed an order improperly. He received the so-called cull order from a justice official, not his commander. Captain Kyear was obviously against the slaughter of two thousand Serocian citizens to keep me from talking about the sm— the situation. He refused to issue that command, and yet Turounce accepted it from an improper source.”

“How was he to know?” Fer asked. “The order was written on the command board by his own adept.”

“Because killing Serocian women and children isn’t right,” Jora hollered. At the sight of their widened eyes, she lowered her voice to a calmer volume. “He should have questioned that order. A good leader would have at least verified it with his commanding officer. A good leader would have ensured that his adept had received it correctly. A good leader wouldn’t have taken his soldier’s life in anger.” Her hands shook with frustration, though when Justice Captain Milad leveled the crossbow at her, she made an effort to steady herself.