The Right Hand of God Read Online Free PDF Page A

urgent whisper. 'The Aslamen want to know why you spoke a name on the sacred island. They want to know why you stole someone's Name.'
    For a moment Leith was at a loss, and again he considered using the Arrow, or asking the magician to cast some spell that might save them. Then he remembered the moment Maendraga had spoken the name, remembered watching, remembered how it had affected him, remembered the Name being spoken aloud - and suddenly his transgression became clear. No use arguing it had been unintentional, done out of ignorance. He had spoken where it was sacrilege to speak. He nodded, summoned up enough saliva to enable him to speak, and waited until the knife eased away from his throat.
    'I was caught by the moment,' he said simply. 'I saw the girl receive her Name, and I spoke it aloud without realising.' He turned to face Maendraga. 'How can I be sorry for that? Should I apologise for being moved?' It was a reckless reply, he knew, but it brought a grunt of understanding from at least one of the men surrounding him.
    'You are First Man,' said the voice of the man holding the knife. 'You say you were first, but you were last. You came to our island and broke our rules. When we break your rules you kill us all. What should we do to you?'
    In that moment, as the Aslamen waited for his answer, Leith's mind turned over the puzzling thing the voice had said during the Burying ceremony. 'He called you Pei-ra. He said it was your secret Name. I saw your battle mounds in the hills of Astraea, and took sable armour for myself. I—'
    The Aslamen backed away from him, thrusting themselves towards the stern of the canoe and nearly swamping it, forgetting their seamanship in their haste. The eyes that stared at him in shock were rimmed with fear and loathing.
    'The burial mounds ... they remain?'
    The question was hesitant, and layered with a number of undercurrents. Anger that one of the despised First Men had something they wanted, fear of the answer he might give, shame at the reminder of their debased state and the loss of their homeland, all were mixed into the few words spoken.
    It did not seem possible that Leith might read such great significance into those words, but he did. He told himself it must be the Arrow, that possessing the Jugom Ark gave him magical insight into the words of others. After all, he reasoned, how else had he bested the King of Nemohaim but a few days earlier?
    'The Pei-ra lie untended and unregarded in the land of
    Astraea,' Leith said, almost dreamily. 'The land is uninhabited, while the Tabuli and the Nemohaimians go about their business elsewhere, having forgotten their quarrel with you.'
    And, hoping his insight ran true, he added: 'There will be no one to interfere when you return to bury the many, many Names in the great fires you will set there, and the Pei-ra will have their Name restored once more.'
    Is this your story? he hissed a thought, but there came no answer.
    Maendraga looked at the youth with something approaching awe. The Aslamen - the Pei-ra -
    began to mutter among themselves, and there was no more talk of what ought to be done with Leith.
    I'm still doing it, Leith realised. Still gathering. Someone from the Pei-ra would come to Instruere, to be part of the salvation of the First Men . . . He wasn't understanding fully, he did not have the whole picture; something greater, perhaps, than he yet. appreciated was still to unfold. Nevertheless, as he watched the men talking with each other, still reluctant to meet his eye, he was content.
    That night the Pei-ra held a meeting on the sacred island and, for the first time in a generation, voices were raised above a whisper in that place, and something other than Names were spoken. Leith, Maendraga and the two Nemohaimians were excluded, but needed no interpreter to tell them what topic dominated the energetic discussions they could see and hear from the other side of the lagoon. Children talked with the women and the men as the