One way to find out.
Scorio stepped into the white light, and became himself, or entered into another self, a Scorio who stood fierce and burning with hatred and frustration amidst a deep crowd that encircled gallows erected in the center of a city square.
He inhaled raggedly, the shock of the emotions washing over him, a contextual state of being that he couldn’t grasp. Why was he furious? Outraged? The great gallows, surely, where soldiers in officious garb formed a protective ring about the proceedings, their tower shields, and pikes arranged in tight formation as if in anticipation of the crowd’s attack.
A man was being led up the steps to the gallows platform, hands bound behind his back, clothing soiled and torn. His face—a jolt caused Scorio’s very soul to spasm in recognition, a face he’d never seen before this moment, but which somehow seemed familiar, an older version of his own, different, familial—his brother.
I have a brother, he thought, stunned, then the outrage surged to the fore of his being once more. And he is to be hanged?
An older brother, to be sure, but it was a visage touched by determination and stubborn hatred. He’d been poorly treated, his eye swollen shut, blood dried across his split lip, but he stood tall and proud as the guards led him to the noose.
To the side of the gallows stood a monstrous knight, a behemoth clad in such thickly armored plate that it was a wonder the wooden platform could support him. Some seven feet tall, he appeared an impregnable fortress, the iron of his armor nearly an inch thick and enameled in black and crimson. His helm was cast into a demonic visage, and twin horns swept up to meet at a small sphere above his head. He stood with his gauntleted hand upon the head of a massive ax, the blade looking to have been hewed from an obsidian boulder, its edge jagged but wickedly sharp.
“Stay your hand,” a man whispered at his side, voice earnest, desperate. “This farce must take place, tragic as it is. Do not act hastily, Scorio!”
The man was in his forties, face carved with lines of care, shoulders stooped, but in his eyes, a fierce light shone.
“That’s my brother,” Scorio heard himself say. “You’re saying I should sacrifice him upon the altar of the empire out of—what? A sense of decorum?”
“Eberro played a strong hand and failed,” said the man hurriedly. “But you stand to inherit the fruits of his labor. He would not want all his work to go for naught. If you can find the strength to resist temptation, you can step into his place. Rouse the provinces, foment a true rebellion. You will be followed. But squander your strength here, and the king shall turn his baleful stare full upon us. We’ll be crushed by his legions before you can do more than cry foul.”
Scorio grimaced and turned back to the platform. Eberro had been set beneath the noose, which was being placed about his neck.
The huge and perilous knight spoke, and such was the boom of his voice that it quelled the angry murmurs of the crowd.
“In the name of the king, sovereign light of these lands, lord of the beasts that crawl and birds that fly, I do hereby pronounce sentence upon Eberro of Spurn Harbor, who is found guilty of treason. He has fomented rebellion by seeking to pass spurious laws and undermining the authority of the king. For these trespasses, he is to die by hanging by the neck, as is befitting for all common criminals.”
The murmur rose into outcries of anger, and the crowd surged forward, causing the ring of soldiers to lower their long spears so that their phalanx bristled.
The huge knight appeared unperturbed.
“As the king’s appointed Warmonger in this province, I, Sir Kuragin, do affix my seal to this verdict and find the sentencing just. May this execution serve as a warning to all who desire to challenge the king’s unassailable authority, and think twice over future acts of heresy.”
Kuragin.
The name caused Scorio’s entire body to seize up. For a moment he had been so embodied in the moment, so caught up in the horror and rage of the moment, that he’d forgotten himself, his true self, the Great Soul who underwent a trial.
This isn’t me, or if it is, it’s a me that was. A past life? My first?
But Kuragin. One of the Great Souls from back—home? Was the Academy home? Was this? Wherever this was—Sprung Harbor?
“Scorio,” said the man by his side. “Exert yourself! Control the crowd. Draw back. Eberro must be sacrificed for the greater cause. His martyrdom will fan the flames of revolution!”
The man had him by the sleeve. He was tugging insistently, but beyond him, Scorio could feel the crowd as if it were connected to him, an extension of him. Waiting for his signal, to surge forward, or to retreat.
Eberro, his brother, gazed out over the crowd and finally found him. Their eyes met. Scorio felt a jolt of physical pain flash through his body, a profound sense of love, yearning, and horror.
In his brother’s eyes, he saw loss and resignation. He saw his death coming, an ignominious dance at the end of the rope, seconds from now. But the resignation was a form of peace. Scorio couldn’t put it into words, couldn’t vocalize how he knew, but he saw in the depths of his brother’s eyes a form of anticipation.
From here the flames will spread, he thought he heard. From here the revolution will grow. My life was an attempt to play the game by their rules, to earn votes and pass laws in local councils. My death will show the world the sham that this public forum truly is. My death will turn me into a martyr, turn the indifferent into fanatics, and you shall lead them, little brother. Now lower your eyes. Don’t watch me dance. Pray for me, and then avenge me. Let my end be your beginning.
Scorio’s tears brimmed and ran down his cheeks. Kuragin was saying something, his words booming out over the crowd. Several hundred individuals, all of them partisans, ready to fight, to kill, to shed their blood to protect Eberro. All of them looking to him, the youngest, for a sign, that this was the right time, the moment to birth their cause.
“Don’t do it,” said the man by his side. “Be dispassionate. Use your mind, Scorio! Now is not the time. We’ll be crushed. Instead of a martyr, he’ll be cast as a common criminal. Don’t throw it all away!”
Scorio felt carved from stone, unfeeling, no—numb, riven to the ground by a huge spike of horror and disgust.
His brother watched him yet. Eberro, his elder, who’d sheltered him under his raised protective arm, who’d taught him honesty, righteousness, fairness, and a deep and unforgiving intolerance of tyranny.
I go now. Could he truly hear his brother’s words? Or was he imagining them, creating the words based on what he knew his brother must be thinking?
No matter.
I go now, he heard his brother’s voice say. Avenge me, little brother. Raise our banner high and cast down the cruel.
Scorio took a deep breath. His brother had made his peace. The land was a tinderbox awaiting this very spark.
All Scorio had to do was stand back, arms crossed, and let the king murder his brother.
“No,” he whispered and felt his heart crack asunder, the numbness falling away before a deluge of white-hot rage. “I can’t allow this to happen.”
“We are not ready,” cried the man by his side, voice scandalized. “We are not ready, you waste his life, you kill us all—”
“Then so be it,” said Scorio, his fury endlessly unfurling within his breast like a banner with no end. “I will pay that price, but I can’t—no, I won’t—stand here and watch him die.”