The Crucible of Logic

by Garret Stirland

part 1

Grandfather’s hair is a bleached white and, over the past few days, it’s been thinning. Carox notices the liver-spotted scalp hiding beneath. Something has come over Grandfather recently; life has drained from his cunning countenance. Normally those weathered shoulders are quick to dispute their age, full of swift mirth. But these last few days have brought on a torrent of erosion.

“Your father is still imprisoned in Ann Vossar,” Grandfather tells young Carox from across their dining table. “I received a letter stating that his sentence has been extended indefinitely.”

“They gave him a life sentence?” Carox had been hoping for good news. “All for a few words scribbled in ink?”

“Ah, but your father knew better,” Grandfather says, full of certain wisdom as he leans across the oak table. The windows are open, white curtains shift in the early sun. “The Domes cannot tolerate any other schools of thought. Not now, in this moment of governmental transition.”

Beyond the apartment window, Carox hears wooden wheels grind against cobblestones. A city churns around them, so unaware of this family’s strife. “But a lifetime of imprisonment?” He shook his head in amazement.

Carox was never close to his father, who was a Praetor of the Domes and an established lecturer. And yet, Carox was shocked when Vossari police, with wooden staves and wicker shields, pounded on their townhouse door to place his father under arrest. It had been the most disturbing night of Carox’s life. “All for a few written words.”

Throughout all of Carox’s youth, he was closest to his dear grandfather, a long-time widower and retired member of the Voluntary Martial Guild. Grandfather’s old sword is mounted on the wall of their den, dusty and dim, but still honed. “There are worse things than imprisonment,” Grandfather adds, but the hardness in his face is betrayed by his running his trembling fingers through his hair. Does he really believe what he’s saying?

“Kindle me dead,” Grandfather curses, peering at the hair that has come away in his fingers. “I’ll be bald in a week.”

“Will they execute him?” Carox asks softly.

The look in Grandfather’s eye is grave and strained and heavy, too wounded for a dinner-table conversation. “If they execute him, you must be thankful. Give thanks if that is all the Vossari choose to do with your father.”

“What else could they possibly do?” Carox urges his grandfather. “What else could they possibly do to him? Life in prison, then the headsmen? Are you suggesting they may torture him, too?”

“Heavens, no!” Grandfather nurtures respect for the Domes themselves, but hate for the politicians and praetors that comprise those Domes. An old, retired soldier, he claims these final years are for drinking and reading and looking over old maps from his campaigns in far foreign lands. But that claim is threatened now, ever since the police came pounding at their door.

“To put a man to death is a simple thing,” Grandfather explains, “and a mercy in the Grandest Scheme. Most who are executed become martyrs in time and, with so many eyes to watch their heads roll, the memory of their deaths lives on in a million different minds.” He lifts an aged finger at Carox. “How many theaters of the mind will your father play a role in? In the footsteps he takes to get to the headsman, in the dust that touched his shoes... His memory, his legacy, even if he is ignorant to it, lives on fully in time. The flap of moth wings in Udienon can ignite a hurricane in Glaciec.”

“You speak so flippantly about my father’s death. He’s your son, after all.”

Grandfather shrugs, his shoulders too tired to complete the gesture. “And I love him, almost as much as I love you, Carox. But I’ve loved many souls in this life.” His blue-gray eyes shine with tears, and Carox thinks for one fleeting moment that he’s finally going to see his grandfather cry. “But a hog must not weep when its sow is taken, when its piglets are dragged away screaming. For the hog exists completely at the pleasure of the rancher.”

Carox frowns. “We’re all pigs?”

“No, that is a much overused metaphor. Maybe it’s the wounds of the war that are coming back to me.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I feel like our conversation has taken a dark turn—”

“That’s okay,” Carox inserts. Sometimes Grandfather gets lost in conversations. “I don’t mind hearing hard things. Tell me, what is Father’s fate?” Carox is newly an adult, considered a viable citizen in Ann Vossar just last year.

Grandfather’s voice drops, his eyes grow big. “Be thankful they do not send your father to the Crucible.”

“Crucible?” Carox has never heard this word before. “What is that? Another terrible prison somewhere?” He’s heard of the Crater Prison in Amidir, the violent Mud Pits of Moor, but never this Crucible in Ann Vossar.

“If only it were a hole in the ground...” His grandfather utters, his gaze growing distant and fogged. “If only it were a pit, my boy.”

“It is for torture, then?” Carox puzzles, slightly perturbed. “You’re afraid they’ll torture Father before they take his head.”

“Oh, be sure they’re torturing him right now. I don’t wish to frighten you, but you’re a man now, and you claim to be accepting of dark things. If you could hear your father’s anguish now, you would not be able to sleep tonight. But that is not the Crucible. If you pour me a glass of brandy, I will speak of it. But, son, you must drink it as well.”

“But strong drink clouds a growing mind,” Carox repeats from his lessons.

“Drink with this old man, or leave me and go to your studies. These things are unbearable.” There is a mist of sweat on his receding hairline. His skin has become pale and sallow. “Drink, Carox, or go.”

Of course Carox stays and pours his poor old grandfather a teacup of Dather’s amber brandy. Carox pours himself a little, too.

“More,” Grandfather demands, nodding to the cup.

Carox fills the little teacup right to the brim.

Grandfather throws it all back in one mighty gulp. “Drink.” He grimaces, holding out his teacup for more. Carox drinks his in one go, too, his throat on fire and face pinching in. Thankfully, Grandfather did not demand a second cup from Carox.

A sigh from the old man. One long, heavy, stinking sigh. Brandy soothes some jagged memory in his ancient brain. “Those men we met on the outskirts markets,” Grandfather says. “It was a week ago. Do you remember?”

“Of course, those Crissa folk who were selling silver charms.” Two foreigners they’d met at the markets last week. Strange people who had been hairless. Not just shaved, but truly hairless. A bizarre sight in the tumult of the marketplace.

“Those very ones.” Grandfather nods. “Far-westerners. We used to call them Nightmen, but that term is foul. They are Crissa. I spoke with them, after you went off with your grandmother to help her lift that basket. Do you remember helping your grandmother?”

“Grandmother...” Carox says, and the word feels distant on his lips. “Grandmother died when I was very young, too young to remember. What do you mean, ‘last week’?”

Grandfather takes another big drink of brandy, shaking his head. “Carox, that is simply not the truth. You must take another drink because your paradigm is at stake.”

Again he runs his fingers through his thin, white hair. “Your father would be better at speaking about this next thing. He’s better at philosophy, at the technology of the Domes that seems to me like magic. It’s a shame. Where did an idea like that come into your head? That your grandmother has been dead for so long?”

Carox searches his mind for the last memory of Grandmother. No, he cannot remember her at all. Not her face, not even her name. Only stories about her, but even those stories are shadows, less than impressions in fleeting memory. “I was too young when she passed.”

“Those Crissa folk” — Grandfather rubs his temple — “they said things to me that no other person, not even I, should know.” A conspiratorial edge cuts through the dining room, Grandfather’s blue eyes shimmer as he searches for Carox’s reaction. “Well?” He prods. “What do you have to say? Am I a foolish old man for listening to Crissa?”

“I’ve heard rumors that Nightmen — er, Crissa — can read minds.” Carox is breathless. He’s overheard much hearsay about Crissa his whole life, the timid ice dwellers from the far, far west.

“No.” Grandfather has regained his surety. “Don’t be daft, they were not reading my mind. Those Crissa folk...” He pauses. “The woman spoke to me about the tour my platoon did in the far west, out beneath the pink ibu forests beside the Night’s Curtains. They knew how Altor, my comrade, perished.”

“The soldier who was dragged beneath the freezing river?” Carox has heard the story many times.

Grandfather peers through memory. “I watched him slip under the grey water with my own eyes. But these Crissa, they gave me a message from Altor. They said he was speaking from beyond the veil. A message to give to his long-widowed wife. Words that brought tears to my eyes. When I delivered that message, Altor’s widow fell down at my feet and she wept. She’d been praying, you see, and that message was her answer. Carox, mark my words. Those Crissa knew Altor and knew him well.”

“What was the message?”

“For respect to the dead I will not speak about it here. But it was the perfect message to give his still-grieving widow.”

“Rest in peace.” Carox sips his teacup.

“Yes, may he rest in the Kindler’s ever-burning hearth. Hopefully your father will.”

“Why do you keep saying that? What mercy is it if father is executed? He is innocent!”

“You must listen closer, Carox. This Crissa, they gave me a message, and they gave me something more. I bought a box from them, a charm of sorts.”

“You bought charms? Grandfather...” It was an unreasonable thing to do. Not very logical. His father would be ashamed of such superstition.

“Quiet.” The old man stands and goes into the back room. He returns, holding a little wooden box with simple silver hinges and pink fibers that look almost red. Grandfather places the box on the table and slides it over to Carox. “Open.”

Proceed to part 2...