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The Heart’s Desire

  A Short Story by Carolyn Kephart

  A government scryer’s life is a prison until she discovers the ultimate secret language.

  Copyright 2011, Carolyn Kephart

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  The Heart’s Desire

  The gavel struck once, then twice, sharply quelling the crowd. The third blow echoed in total silence.

  “Let the Scryer be summoned.”

  Her entrance was all but noiseless, save for the faint clinking of her bodyguards’ weaponry. It was always a ritual, a procession of ominous state with fully-geared special forces providing escort as she glided deliberately down the aisle in her trailing gray robe, her lowered head entirely cowled by its overhanging hood. All around her she heard the surge of many people rising to their feet, and furtive murmurs that were sternly hammered down again as everyone re-seated themselves. In the now complete silence the Scryer halted at the bench to incline her head to the judge, and then moved to face the accused, her gloved hands clasped and hidden by her sleeves, her guards at ready on either side. During her silent progress the judge and spectators had donned the same kind of close-fitting reflective glasses her guards wore, and when she turned about she met only blank bug-like stares.

  It was almost amusingly eerie, but no one smiled as the cameras recorded everything for the benefit of posterity—and a very sizeable video audience worldwide. Prior to the Scryer’s appearance, that audience had been treated to a full and unsparingly graphic recounting of the accused’s atrocities, but the robed figure’s complete ignorance of all details regarding the case was both expected and enforced. She had been summoned as the last arbiter of guilt and innocence, the simple, absolute truth. The accused had waived his right to a jury trial as a desperate means of evading a guaranteed death sentence, putting his fate entirely in the Scryer’s hands. The judge was little more than a referee.

  Reaching the isolated dais where the accused sat, the Scryer pushed back the hood of her robe, revealing the black mask like a fencer's that hid and protected her face. She alone stood between the defendant and his doom, and she felt all the weight of that burden. Her body was sticky and cold beneath the cumbersome sexless robes, that swathed her like the pleurant of a medieval mourner.

  “The accused will face the Scryer.”

  The accused, the only one in the room with naked eyes, a young man with tight Aryan features, appeared to suddenly realize the seriousness of his decision and made things difficult for his guards, who after some struggling bound his hands, gagged his screams and fitted his eyelids with retractors. When the audience at last silenced, the Scryer began. Clicking the button on her mask that unveiled her naked eyes, she meshed her stare with that of the accused. The spectators fixed their attention on their video monitors, eagerly tracking the images of the accused’s brain scan, the flares and throbbings of ever-intensifying color that meshed with his choked keenings.

  The Scryer felt her entire body growing cold, sweat trickling at her nape as she stared into the accused’s wan blue wide-stretched eyes with their now almost invisible pupils. Every time she thought there could be nothing worse to see, that she had finally come to the end of everything rotten and twisted and senseless, creatures like this hell-wrought youth proved her wrong. For fifteen seconds' worth of lifetime she plunged into the unspeakable sewer that was his essence before closing her eyes, forcing her heart and guts to calm; but she felt faint and staggered slightly, causing a murmur among the spectators that the judge sternly banged into silence.

  “Scryer, your decision?”

  The judge’s question, one she had heard so often in the last five years, reminded the Scryer of her power, and it gave her a surge of intense, terrible joy. Her mask contained a device that would distort her normal voice beyond detection, and her words would emerge in a flat, sexless staccato. Always her statements were given tersely, whether advising incarceration or execution; but this time she said nothing.

  Her eyes again locked on the accused’s. Reaching out, she put her hands on either side of his head, and even though her touch was gentle, the accused screamed behind his gag.

  She mirrored him. All that he had inflicted, he now felt.

  He twitched and thrashed, and his muffled shrieks never stopped. The Scryer wrinkled her nose as he lost control of his bodily functions, but her stare never wavered; and finally his body relaxed as his head went limp in her hands, lolling backward as she let go. In the total silence, the slight thud of his head striking the chair’s back seemed to echo as his brain’s desperate, throbbing, brilliant colors faded to flat pale gray.

  Amid the collective gasp of the spectators, many of whom applauded and cheered, some of the accused’s supporters hurdled the barrier to exact vengeance. The guards rushed in to earn their pay, and at the same time the Scryer felt a steel-strong pair of arms grabbing her about the body, lifting her up and carrying her to the safety of the judge’s chambers.

  The heavy door slammed and locked. Her rescuer looked her up and down through the impenetrable sunglasses that for the Scryer had become part of his face. “You okay, ma’am?”

  She pushed at the spring that detached the mask, her fingers cold and frantic in their gloves. “I’m freezing. And I’m going to be sick.”

  Her savior caught the mask with one hand as it dropped, setting it aside as with his other hand he reached into a pocket and took out a slim silver vial, lifting its cap with an expert flick of his thumb, extracting one of its contents. The Scryer at once held out her hand to receive what looked like a pretty piece of hard candy, and popped it into her mouth. In seconds, sweet expected calm ensued in her stomach, a tranquil warmth that soon ebbed out to her body, working its blessed way upward to quiet first her battering heart, then her jangled mind. “Thanks, Dave.”

  He nodded slightly, then pushed back the Scryer’s hood and carefully removed the helmet. “What happened to that guy?”

  She knew what Dave really wanted to ask, but there was always someone else listening. “It was a heart attack, or a stroke. The autopsy will prove that.”

  Dave only nodded again. After he packed the robe and mask into its case, he led the Scryer to the private exit that led to the secluded garage, and helped her into the car. Its back windows were coated with an opaque film, making it impossible for the Scryer to see anything outside, but that didn’t matter. Past the barrier that divided her from Dave, she could feel him compelling the expensive machine with smooth stops and precise gradual turns. It always calmed her, his driving.

  His voice understood. “Feeling any better, ma’am?”

  “Yes.” But she only meant her husk. Inside, the emanations of the accused still poisoned her.

  He knew. His voice became level and detached, in a way she had learned to take very seriously. “What happened today won’t ever happen again. Sec, making a call.”

  He got on his phone and began speaking in Soldier, a language of acronyms and expletives. The Scryer took out her music player, donned her headphones, and escaped into her needful paradise of fugues and arpeggios and adagios.