Chapter 18
It wasn’t possible to argue or fight back, not with the fiery ropes that several Scarlets flung around my neck. Denson treated me with mocking looks that promised he would make life hell for me. Jorland held back with several other boys and girls and looked on. As far as I could see, all trace of his injury was gone, and he looked fine. So much for gratitude. The Scarlets led me into the house and across the wreckage of their living room where the injured were being treated by members of my guild. I wanted badly to sing for them and make them feel better, but I was pretty certain that I’d get my throat cut if I tried it. One of the Gifted Healers looked up at me and scowled.
“I should have known how devastatingly dangerous your singing was!” Master Lesentrange yelled as I passed by him.
I looked into his face for any sign of the cantankerous, but good choirmaster I thought I knew. His face was so twisted in hate that there was nothing else there. Again, I didn’t see the sense in trying to say anything.
There was no question that my singing had wrecked an awfully beautiful house. A glass chandelier that had fallen and broken into thousands of pieces must have been stunning before I broke it. The chairs and couches and love seats, upholstered in different shades of red designs, had been tossed in all directions. A piece of sculpture was smashed to smithereens.
I got pushed and prodded up a spiral staircase to a second floor, and then pushed and prodded further up a narrower stairway to a third floor. There, I was thrown into a small room at the end of the hall. One of the young men crafted a pair of fiery and stinging handcuffs and then the ropes were lifted off me. The whole group cast a series of spells that caused something like a lit-up spider web to spread out all around me. These threads stuck to my arms and hair and legs and irritated my skin, even through my clothes.
“If you value your life, your sanity, and freedom from extraordinarily excruciating pain,” said one of the young men, “you will not even think of trying to escape from this room. Furthermore, you will not even think of singing as much as one note. If you do, this web will choke you, and you will never be able to sing again. No torture, however, will deprive you of your entitled appearance before the Tribunal of Gifted Judges.”
“Now are you proud of your singing?” Denson taunted me. I looked away from him. His smirk was more than I could bear. “Thought so,” Denson added.
“We’ll bring you down as soon as the Gifted Judges arrive,” said one of the young men.
Then, with a slam of the door, I was left alone. For what it was worth, this was a much nicer room than the cell I had at the Academy for Gifted Healers. It was furnished with a soft-looking bed and there was a maroon-upholstered chair in the corner. Best of all, this room had a window. The web gave me just enough freedom of movement to get as far as the window. and look down on many gardens filled with blooming flowers that snaked through the back lawn. There was a beautiful fountain with a statue in the middle of it of a man aiming thunderbolts at some enemy. At the edge of the lawn was a woods that faded into a mist. Unlike the other etheric landscapes I’d seen in the Gifted World, the sun was shining in full force.
The back yard was already full of people and more people were materializing all the time. The injured were laid out on stretchers and Gifted Healers circulated among them, doing what they could to heal their wounds. Then I noticed that a few patients were laid out separately, and a shimmering shield surrounded them. I hoped they hadn’t been pestilenced, but it looked like they were having trouble breathing. I didn’t need to have more pestilenced victims to be blamed for on top of everything else, but it looked like that’s what I had. At first, it was mainly red-caped people that I saw, but after a while, capes of all other colors appeared: lots of oranges; no surprise there, a few blues and then quite a few Ambers. Somehow, I didn’t get the feeling that the Ambers were coming to defend me, especially not when I recognized Mirry’s mother. She was yelling so loudly at the top of her lungs that I could hear some of it through the glass in my window. She wasn’t exactly praising me to the skies. I saw a man, a woman and a girl strolling around in brown capes. I’d never seen them before and I had no idea why they’d come. Would they take my part because I was from their clan, or would they denounce me because I’d joined a clan-transcendent guild? Some grays and quite a few greens also filtered in, Master Fintchel and Master Partridge among them. Most of the people from the Guild of Gifted Musicians went around playing harps, flutes and drums, which helped make it all look like a garden party rather than a trial designed to destroy my life. I looked in vain for Master Terman, Masteress Belinda, or Rosalind. Apparently any musicians coming to testify at my trial were going to condemn me.
Then a flock of people in black capes appeared, looking like vultures perched on a limb. I was pretty sure that the people in black capes were from the Guild of Gifted Judges. Master Scarlet, Master Medwick, and a man from the Amber clan greeted them and they got going with a vigorous conversation that was probably about everything that was wrong with me. One man among them, a tall, thin man with a bird-beak-like nose took out a scroll and wrote furiously as the clan leaders spoke. Several other people also came along to put in their two or three cents worth. As this conversation was going on, a group of people in tan capes cast a spell that caused a structure looking like a giant pulpit to grow up out of the ground. This pulpit branched out, and finally took shape as a set of judges’ benches.
To top everything off, a sudden flurry of mud-brown capes brought on exclamations of delight. Picnic tables filled with pots and baskets of food mushroomed all over the lawn. I heard Masteress Carassima’s voice before I saw her. She was announcing the choice menus and beverages she’d brought, and when some of the children rushed the table, she told them off and made them approach in a more orderly way. Everybody down there seemed to be having a good time. Up in my room, I wasn’t having a good time at all, and I wasn’t getting anything to eat. I kept hoping I’d see Maranissa, but she didn’t seem to be there. I listened to Masteress Carassima for a while as she threw her voice all over the place, but all she talked about was how much she wanted everybody to have a great feast fit for the grand occasion. So much for my hopes that she might bawl them out for bringing the Tribunal of Gifted Judges against me.
Having seen enough, I plopped down on my bed. Almost immediately, I felt a weight on my lap and heard a low-pitched purring. I don’t know how it did it, but the tabby cat had managed to stay with me through everything. With more enemies than there were grains of sand on the seashore, it was nice to have at least one friend. The cat seemed grateful for the long strokes I gave it from one end of its belly to the other. By this time, there was no trace of its wound. I thought of the few friends I still had somewhere, or hoped I still had. So far, none of them had come to defend me. I could only desperately hope that they hadn’t had some terrible mishap, or gotten pestilenced themselves, or gotten convinced by everybody else that I was some awful criminal.
As I petted the cat, I tried to figure out what had happened to put me in this fix. I was singing in my cell at the Academy of Gifted Healers. Suddenly, the walls shook and crumbled, and then the front of somebody else’s house cracked and fell, wrecking about half of it. Since Denson had been pretty beastly, I suppose I could have been feeling a lot of anger at the Scarlets and that anger kind of took over and wrecked their house without my meaning to. In going over the events later with a few others, we came up with a likely reconstruction of what had happened. Howard, Charna, Parrison and Marilyn heard me singing in my cell and felt vibrations spreading through all the stones of the Academy. That gave them the bright idea of stealing the power of my singing and directing it at the Scarlets’ House. Of course, when the front of their house fell, there I was, all ready to take all the blame and pretty helpless to defend myself.
Suddenly the door of my room opened. A flagpole-thin man in a mid-brown cape stood in the doorway, holding a bowl of steaming food in his hands. Behind him stood three young Scarlets who were obviously poised to skewer me with their spells if I showed any sign of misbehaving.
“Are you Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown?” asked the man from the Guild of Gifted Culinary Artists.
“Yes.”
“This is for you.”
He handed the bowl to me and then stood in front of me, waiting for me to eat. That wasn’t very comfortable for me, but I suspected that’s what the guards ordered him to do. The mess of food didn’t look that appetizing, but it tasted like fresh mint on a spring afternoon. Even a few spoonfuls were enough to make me feel better than I thought I could under the circumstances. While I ate, the master from the Guild of Culinary Artists held out a tin cup for me, and let me take a drink anytime I needed it. Toward the end of the meal, one bite seemed a bit funny. I moved my tongue around and identified a bit of foreign matter. With the guards watching like hawks, I pushed the paper to the side of my mouth and finished the serving. I handed the bowl to the Gifted Culinary Artist. He bowed to me solemnly, and left the room. Then guards slammed the door shut, leaving me alone once again. Feeling a lot better after having finished the meal, I turned my back to the door and let the paper drop out of my mouth. I opened it up and read:
We are coming for you now.
Pollo & Mirry & Maranissa & Charles and many others besides
I crumpled up the message and stuffed it back inside my cape. That made me feel a lot better, but it didn’t keep me from worrying about what kind of life, if any, I would have by the end of the day. At least I knew my friends wanted to rescue me. What I didn’t know was whether or not they could rescue me.
It’s probably just as well that I didn’t know how serious the situation was at the time I got my note, or I might have lost hope altogether. They were in a double bind. As I already said, they had gotten the information they wanted for the spell to reassemble Masteress Oldham. That spell required the voice of a Gifted Singer, preferably the one whose song had created the fragments of our boat. That is to say: Me. Rosalind had joined my friends along with Ferndal and Master Terman and Masteress Belinda, but Rosalind didn’t have a Gift for doing any of the things I seemed able to do. With Rosalind’s help, my friends had also found formulas for spells that would help them find me and rescue me, even if they had to break through airtight barriers. These spells, also, would work best if they had me on hand to sing the spells. That is to say, they could most easily rescue me if they already had me to sing the spells to free me. Failing that, their best bet was to have Masteress Oldham back and functioning. She might have the strength and knowhow to break through the barriers and get me. But they couldn’t rescue Masteress Oldham if they didn’t have me with them to do it. So, Pollo and Mirry and Maranissa and Charles were talking in pretty glum circles while I was stewing in my room. Having gotten word of my upcoming trial, they were watching the preparations on a set of etheric images. That only added to their frustration. In turns, they spoke of the rescues of me and Masteress Oldham as if they were done deals, and then they talked about how impossible both missions were.
While I worried about getting skewered on some cosmic oak tree by a lightning bolt, the cat started to play with the web that secured me to the room.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” I said to the cat.
When the cat got a paw stuck in the web, I thought it was going to agree with me. But the cat kept on playing with the web to try and free itself. After some time, and through the exertion of much effort, it managed to snap off a thread of the web with its other paw. After that, it managed to loosen quite a lot of the web around me. The cat couldn’t free me, of course, and I don’t know how I could have taken advantage of it if it could, but I was a lot less uncomfortable during the rest of my time of waiting and fretting.
The time finally came when a gang of Scarlets, a gloating Denson among them, burst into my room, gathered me up in the web like in a net, and carted me down the stairs and out the back door with a lot of rough handling, punching, and pinching along the way. After getting carried past the flowerbeds in the back yard, I was jammed feet-first into an open box so hard that my knees ached throughout the trial that followed. The webbing was still draped around me, making me look ridiculous, which was probably the idea. The dark-stained front of the judges’ bench towered far above me so that I had to strain my neck to see the four black-robed Gifted Judges looking down on me. A thin man with jet-black hair sat in the middle. To my right, sat an elderly woman with fluffy white hair and a middle-aged man who wore a black patch over one eye. To my left was a blond girl who looked like she was about ten. Like the other three Gifted Judges, her eyes were as soft as granite. She didn’t look likely to let me off just because I was a kid. To the right of the judges’ benches, a fair-haired boy of the Guild of Gifted Mystics, who looked like he was close to my age, sat cross-legged on a cloud. There was a shimmering quality to his image and a faraway look in his eyes that made him looked like he was only half there. That made me afraid that the Guild of Gifted Mystics had turned against me like everybody else. People were buzzing over the harp, flute and drum music from all over the yard, and they yelled out cat-calls at me like “Why don’t you pestilence yourself?” and “There’s the boy whose voice shatters houses!” I didn’t want to look at anyone, and I didn’t. The judge in the middle — I found out later that he was called the Master Superior Judge — pounded his gavel.
“The Gifted Judgment of Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown will now begin,” the Master Superior Judge announced in a voice so deep and harsh that it sounded like an airplane engine. Several more catcalls rang out and the Master Superior Judge had to pound his gavel several times to get silence. “We are sorry to say that only the four of us whom you see before you are unpestilenced at the moment, and are thus free to preside over this most important judgment. The state of unhealth of the other members of the Guild of Gifted Judges has been entered into the list of charges against Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown. Only one member of the Guild of Gifted Mystics was sufficiently unpestilenced to come and assist us.
“The list of charges levied against Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown is as follows: Nathaniel Brown has pestilenced all of the boys of the Boys’ Choir of Gifted Singers. Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown has pestilenced fourteen members of the Guild of Gifted Archivists. Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown has pestilenced twelve members of the Guild of Gifted Musicians. Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown has pestilenced six members of the Guild of Gifted Judges. Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown has pestilenced one-hundred-and-forty-seven members of Gifted Clans. Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown has stolen six treatment areas of the Guild of Gifted Healers where pestilenced cared-fors were being treated, and all trace of these cared-fors is currently lost.”
My jaw dropped a hundred feet. There was no way I could be responsible for that! That news pretty well drove me to despair, and it had a lot to do with my not even trying to defend myself, not that I had any opportunity to do that anyway. What good was my quest going to be if all of the pestilenced cared-fors had been kidnaped and I couldn’t help them anyway? What the Master Superior Judge had just said seemed to be news to a lot of people. Fathers and mothers and children all cried out in agony over their loved ones. The Master Superior Judge allowed people to yell and scream about the lost cared-fors for some time before pounding his gavel for silence.
“The final charge against Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown is that he has willfully and maliciously destroyed the Main House of the Scarlet Clan,” the Master Superior Judge concluded. “We will now listen to the testimonies.”
I simply cannot stand to write out the angry and long-winded accusations that were lodged against me. Master Lesentrange started off with the tirade of his that I’d heard before. Denson followed with his accusations, followed by Master Fintchel, and so on it went. Not only did Master Scarlet accuse me of pestilencing all stricken members of his family, but Master Amber did the same on behalf of his family. Mirry’s mother, of course, went on another rant about how I had kidnaped her son and Denny’s mother explained at great length how I had put her son into the hands of kidnapers. Far from having come to defend me, the man in the brown cape joined the others in blaming me for pestilencing almost everybody in the Brown clan, a sure sign that I had turned my back on them.
Then Jorland sat in the witness box, and the Master Superior Judge asked him to state his charges. I looked away, like I’d done with all the other witnesses.
“Nathaniel carried me away when I got hurt in a battle,” said Jorland, speaking very slowly, “and Nathaniel sang as he carried me and—Nathaniel—he—he cured me of awful jet flame burns.”
A loud murmuring greeted that testimony. I whipped my head over in Jorland’s direction. He hung his head as if he’d just been accused of a horrible crime. His father ran forward to stand before the Master Superior Judge.
“Your Gifted Honor,” said the man, “as you can see, my son has been deeply traumatized by the jet flame wound inflicted on him by Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown. Please enter that charge onto your list.”
“The charge is entered,” said the Master Superior Judge.
Then Jorland’s father yanked his son out of the witness box, punched him two or three times, and carried him away.
The last testimony was given jointly by Howard, Charna, Parrison and Marilyn. They told the Gifted Judges how I had denounced the Scarlets for what they had done to me, and then told the court how they had tried to restrain me from attacking the House of Scarlet, but were not able to stop me before the damage was done.
“Nathaniel Hawthorn Brown,” said the elderly woman on the judges’ bench. “Do you have any testimony to offer in support of these charges?”
“I—I was asked to go on a healing quest to learn a healing chant that would make the medicine all pestilenced people need to be cured of the pestilence and so I . . .”
The judge shut me up by pounding her gavel.
“Your testimony does not support the judgment against you,” she said to me.
“I declare judgment against Nathaniel Hawthorn Brown on all charges, provided all feuding clans agree to end their warfare, now that the cause of the strife has been disclosed,” said the little girl.
All three of the other judges repeated the statement. I looked to the sky for any sign that my friends were going to swoop down for me in a fiery chariot to deliver me, but I saw nothing.
“Is there anybody here who wishes to contest the judgment of the Gifted Judges?” asked the Master Superior Judge.
Silence. Nobody stuck up for me. After what had happened to Jorland, I couldn’t blame any supporters, if any, for keeping quiet. I looked again for rescuers, but saw nothing but hostile faces.
“Will the heads of the two previously feuding clans shake hands to ratify this judgment and its provision?” asked the Master Superior Judge.
Master Scarlet and a man from the Amber Clan stepped forward and solemnly shook hands in front of everybody. Then they bowed politely to each other and returned to their clans.
“How shall the judgment against Nathaniel Hawthorn Brown be enforced?” asked the Master Superior Judge.
“The voice of Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown shall be ripped out his deep personhood,” said the middle-aged Gifted Judge.
“Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown shall then be locked in the deepest dungeon and fed to the dragons, at a rate of fifty-six molecules per bite,” said the girl in a dead-pan voice.
“Does anybody contest this enforcement of the judgment against Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown?” asked the Master Superior Judge.
Silence. I was too far gone to even cry. I gave up all hope of a rescue.
“As the representative of the Guild of Gifted Mystics,” said the boy in the white robe, his voice floating like a butterfly, “I claim the privilege of personally enforcing the judgment against Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown. I propose to remove the voice that must be removed, and lead Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown into the etheric depths beyond the wood surrounding this house.”
“Modification accepted. The judgment of Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown is concluded!” the Master Superior Judge announced to a deafening cheer.