Eye of Darkness (Part Two)

Eye of Darkness (Part Two)

Lieutenant Thron sat squirming in the bare wooden chair the School had provided for the meeting. It had certainly not been designed for anyone wearing leather armor, and doubly not if they were carrying a short sword. The seat creaked and groaned like a ship in a storm every time he shifted his weight. The last thing he wanted was any further attention, so he was trying to be as still as he possibly could, which made the elderly piece of academic furniture more torturing by the minute.

He was sitting in the bottom of what might as well have been a pit, with tiers of seating for about thirty people rising claustrophobically above him. The door to the room was just to the right of Thron, so every time one of the quaint old Masters in their variously colored robes came in, the first thing their curious, probing eyes fell on was Thron. They filed up to their chosen seats above, and then the only thing they could do was look down on him and the dais.  

At first, he had nodded to them in acknowledgement as they entered. Now he just sat as quietly as he could, each involuntary movement he made cracking an echo off the back wall and drawing the attention of every scholarly gaze like a flock of barnyard turkeys, eager to be fed.

At least Thron shared some of that attention with the others on the stage. Even so, they were not as interesting as a high-ranking warrior from Morg City, with a forest-green cloak and his helmet on his knees. The Morg who sat in the middle was only Master Crett, familiar to the whole school in his old black tunic of Law, his white sash streaking down like a flash of lightning in the night. The third figure, on the side farthest from the door, sat huddled silently in dull, much-worn brown robes. A scrawny, elderly human, he held his hands folded together and watched the learned Morgs scuffle in and find their places. There was no expression on his face, but his eyes were bright and watchful. There seemed nothing unusual about him except his presence at this assembly.

Thron ground his teeth at the thought of that human and of his orders about him. Those orders came straight from the King himself, in the presence of the General. The fact that Thron had to dance attendance on this beggar, all the way to Tronduhon, to observe and report on the outcome, when there was trouble brewing in the Northwest Reaches that could require swift action by his company, made his stomach roil. Then he thought about his secret orders and his hand clenched the handle of his sword. He looked darkly toward the impassive, brown-cloaked figure.

As his eyes swept over, his gaze snagged on a Master sitting halfway up the filling tiers of seats. He was hard to miss, sitting ramrod straight and taller than most Morgs, dressed in a glowing old-gold robe cinched with red, and a flowing curly head of hair that mingled with his beard like a mountain ram’s. But what had caught Thron’s eye was the big Morg’s fixed attention on the old man on the dais below. As Thron watched him, the Master took out an eyepiece and screwed it into place, as if to get a better look. Although the seats were being taken quickly now, people seemed reluctant to sit within the haughty scholar’s zone.

As if he felt the lieutenant’s eyes on him, the Master turned and looked at Thron. The scholar nodded, as if acknowledging his notice, then went back to studying the old man. Thron’s face burned. He felt that he had been quickly summed up and found to be of inconsequential interest.

The last few Masters came hurrying in and found their seats. The very last was old Xelkin, in the grey of Medicine, struggling in on two canes. She was given a seat on the lowest tier, and the former occupant labored his way to the back corner, avoiding a couple of seats lower down that remained unoccupied around the tall burly Morg, who grinned sardonically at the action. The mid-morning bell rang, the door was slammed shut and barred, and Master Crett rose from his seat. Thron straightened himself to attention, his chair cracking loudly even through the murmurs of the curious gathering.

Notes

The illustrations I've been finding for these sections of story are not of course absolute representations of the actions and setting, but are chosen to give visual interest to the post and an approximate sense of the 'props' and settings of the scenes. 

I developed an entire color scheme for the different ranks of the Morgish army. These are:

General: Blue

Colonel: Gold

Captain: Dark Red

Lieutenant: Green

Sergeant: Bright Red

Private: Brown.

These all began with Roth wearing a red cloak (rather suggesting both a sanguine nature and a resemblance to a Roman legionnaire), and developed from there.

There is similar color-coding in the academic robes and sashes, which I will get into in the next session.