and possessions, but twisted their spirits and scared them with fire.
As we drove our painted cart down muddy roads and through poor towns whose houses were built of dried mud and straw, we saw men and women wearing placards that proclaimed their errors. We learned to 'read' the various symbols branded into their cheeks or foreheads: a star usually signified minor defiance of some lord or master whereas an eye within a triangle told of the errant's hubris, in aspiring to a station for which he had no claim. Theft, of course, was usually punished by amputation, though minor pilferings or greed might call for nothing more than the searing of a grasping hand into one's flesh. And so with other symbols for other crimes.
I might have thought that the Haralanders would try to cover these mutilations in shame. But so disfigured were they in their souls that many bore their scars openly and even blatantly: in the village of Dakai, I saw a streetsweeper going about naked but for a loincloth, and proudly displaying a star, triangle, bell, hand, circle, butterfly and other signs branded all across his shiny brown torso, arms and legs. It was as if he used these scars to cry out to everyone: 'Do you see how much I've suffered to try to walk the Way of the Dragon? Do you see how much I've sacrificed in pain that others might learn from my errors?' It astonished me to learn that errants, when facing a branding, were expected to perform this atrocity upon themselves, and that many actually did. It seemed they were burning into their very nerve fibers the imperative that they existed only to execute the will of the Red Dragon.
We had tramped through the Haraland many days, however, before we came across the first crucifixion. In the town square of Yosun, a slender man had been put up on wood for all to see. I was driving the cart that day, and stopped it on hardpacked earth stained with blood. I climbed down and joined the crowd gathered around the cross. Four soldiers covered in iron scales and bearing spears would not let any of the townsfolk too near the crucified man. I saw that great iron spikes split his hands and feet, and his trembling legs seemed no longer able to push against the footpiece to which he was nailed. He gasped for breath. Two days in the hot Haraland sun had nearly blackened his naked body. His dark eyes stared out as at nothing, and I knew he was close to death.
Although it was hard to tell because desiccation and anguish had contorted his face, I thought he was of an age with me. To a woman standing near me, I asked, 'What was his error?'
'He killed his brother,' she told me.
'Killed his brother!' I cried out. I could think of few worse crimes.
But there was more to the story than that. From a wheelwright who had known the young man, whose name was Tristan, I learned that Tristan's brother, Alok, had flown into a rage and had struck the local Red Priest. It seemed that the priest, Ra Sadun, upon learning of the defiant ways of a third brother only six years old, had come to take the boy from Tristan's and Alok's house to be raised in the Kallimun school. As the Kallimun say, 'Give us the child, and we shall give you the man.'
But Alok had not wanted to give away his youngest brother. Perhaps he feared that the Red Priests would castrate him, as they often did with boys so that they might more beautifully sing the praises of Angra Mainyu and Morjin. Perhaps he dreaded even darker things. Clearly, though, he had not believed Ra Sadun's assertion that the abduction of his youngest brother was a mercy, the only way to save the boy. And so he had hammered his fist into Ra Sadun's nose, drawing blood. After Ra Sadun had gone away to summon the soldiers, jgristan took up a carving knife and killed Alok. The dishonor that Alok had brought upon their family, Tristan claimed, was too great for him to bear. Alok's blood, he told everyone, would wash it clean. But many of the townfolk of Yosun believed that Tristan had stabbed Alok to
'The Dragon is not to be cheated,' the wheelwright told me. He was an old whitebeard whose hands seemed as hard as the wooden spokes he worked. He waved one of them at Tristan, fastened to the cross above the square. 'If you ask me, though, Tristan
Slayings of honor, of course, had a long tradition in the Haraland. Nobles fought duels over real or imagined insults; men murdered the prurient for staring too boldly at their wives; brothers put to death their own sisters for adultery and other lasdviousness that mocked marriage and brought shame upon their families.
The wheelwright gazed up at the dying man with a whitish rheum rilling his eyes. He said to me, 'There was a time when the Red Priests would have praised Tristan for what he did. Now they put him on a cross.'
The whole spirit of the Way of the Dragon, as I understood it, was that people were supposed to divine Morjin's will, make it their own and carry it out in their hearts and deeds. But this will could prove difficult to perceive, for it always changed.
'I think it's Arch Uttam,' the wheelwright said to me. This was not the first time I had heard the name of Hesperu's High Priest. 'They say the Kallimun will no longer tolerate honor killings of any sort. All right, I say, all honor to Lord Morjin, and who is anyone to assert his own honor against what's best for the realm? But sometimes it's hard to
It astonished me that the wheelwright bore no mark of brandings anywhere that I could see, for it seemed that the looseness of his lips would long since have tripped him up into making an Error Major. I took advantage of his loquaciousness to ask if he had ever heard of a place called Jhamrul; he hadn't. When I brought up the matter of miraculous healings, as slyly as I could, he seemed to remember that he was talking to a strange player in a public square at a crucifixion, and not holding forth over a mug of beer in his home. And so he gave me a response that I had grown well-tired of: 'They say the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya. Of course, I don't know if even Lord Morjin could restore poor Tristan now.'
In truth, no one or nothing could, for Tristan's head suddenly dropped down upon his chest as his strength gave out and he died. I felt it, like a hole opening inside myself through which an icy black wind blew. A terrible thought came to me then: what if we had come here too late and Tristan had been the one whom we sought? But how could that be, I wondered? Tristan was a murderer of men, even as I was myself.
After that they cut down the body for burial, and we prepared to leave. But the wheelwright, who knew Tristan's mother, implored me to give a show so that we might cheer the poor woman. I did not think that anything in the world could help her just then, for she bent over weeping uncontrollably as she wrapped Tristan's body in a white linen. She reminded me of my own mother, not in appearance, for she was short and stout, but in the depth of love that poured out of her.
In the end, I agreed to the wheelwright's request, although I doubted if any of the townsfolk would want to see a show that day. But the people of Yosun surprised me. Later that afternoon, after the burial, my friends and I donned our costumes and set up in the town square. More people packed into it than had been present at the crucifixion. It was as if they desired any song, story or spectacle that might drive the sight of Tristan from their minds. Tristan's mother, whose name was Uja, stood closest to the circle that we had marked off with a painted rope. It seemed almost profane to perform on ground still stained with Tristan's blood.
But perform we did. Kane brought out his colored balls, and hurled them high into the air. When he had finished juggling, he took off his shirt and stood half naked before the crowd. So perfect was he in the proportions of his limbs and body that it wasn't readily obvious what a large man he really was. But now he displayed his great strength for all to behold. He brought out an iron chain, and invited the wheelwright and several other men from the audience to test it and wrap it around his mighty chest, locking it tightly. Then, with a huge and quick inbreath of air, his chest swelled out like a bellows, snapping the chain with a sharp crack of iron, to the delight of the crowd.
After that Maram came out and clowned around, pretending to try to break this selfsame chain with heavings of his belly. Failing this feat he gave up in order to ogle Yosun's most beautiful women. When Yosun's fathers and brothers grew uneasy with his attentions, Maram seemed to remember his restraint, and used the chain as A reminder, wrapping it around his loins. A moment later, however, he fell back into lust, and thrust out his hips toward the crowd as he stepped forward with a leer lighting up his face, only to be jerked up short by his pulling on the chain. I thought his' act too lewd for the severe Haralanders, and I feared that one of the men might draw a sword and decapitate him, or worse. But again the townsfolk surprised me. They laughed heartily at Maram's
