The Poisoned Ground Read online

blows to the arm and wrist. The spear rolled away harmlessly, its tip fading out.

  Anger flashed in Ronel’s eyes as he subdued the attacker, “Why! Why are you trying to kill us?”

  “Our jobs. She would close the mine. My wife, my children – without jobs from the mines, we will all starve to death! Please! My life is not important – but my babies scream with hunger!” wept the miner.

  “She built the healing center to help you – why do you not see it?” cried Ronel.

  “What good is a healer if you die of hunger? We do not need more healers. We need food. The food grown around here is no good no more. Is poison to my babies.”

  “He’s right,” answered Lady Healer Gwyneth, her tablet computer in hand along with a pouch containing the samples Cara collected the previous beinor. “The crude refining at the mine has released such toxic levels of argene into the air and soil that locally grown food is no longer safe to eat. Proper refining from a better and more expensive facility could do much – but not nearly as much as re-growing the forests themselves.

  “What ‘er ye sayin’?” asked the miner.

  “The strip mining is giving you work, yes, but the way house Ana conducts the mine is poisoning everything within a four hundred li 里 radius – including, I fear, coastal marine life.”

  “But we are more than three hundred li 里 from the ocean!” protested the miner.

  “Yes, yes we are. Yet food is brought in from the Amba Mederi Ocean. From the raks and fish served on the table to the sea vegetation that is normally so nourishing – nothing grown here is safe to eat,” explained Gwyneth. “We are all dying from argene radiation poisoning.”

  “Poison or not, food is food and we a’nt got none to ‘at.”

  “I fear that is on purpose, my lord.”

  “I ai’ no lord – just a bloke who canna bear the sounds of my children hungry.”

  Convinced her life was no longer in danger, Lady Abbess Cara rose, “There is more going on than just irresponsible mining practices. Come with us – bring your family – we will take you to the capital city in Dong-Bei where you can find work doing something safer than this and where your family will never go hungry again. I swear to it as abbess of Ten-Ar.”

 

  “His Majesty will see you now,” hovered JDP5, King Gareth’s personal droid.

  Dressed in her most formal Ten-Arian crimson gown, Lady Abbess Cara bowed her head respectfully towards the droid before entering the king’s private office. Inside, King Gareth fixed his grey eyes onto a series of reports flashing across his tablet computer. Cara bowed deeply to him, “Thank you for seeing me this beinor, Your Majesty!”

  Gareth’s eyes met her, catching his breath for a moment, “You are … most welcome. Excuse me, you are?”

  “Lady Abbess Cara of house Ten-Ar. We have not met, Your Majesty, unless perhaps you personally attend sessions of the Great Council. I have – created many enemies there.”

  “You are the Ten-Arian healer advocating for safer conditions for the poor and disadvantaged, are you not?”

  “Your Majesty, the health and well-being of all Beinarians is at risk. When I received reports on my desk beginning in BE 5493, I dedicated myself to better understanding and helping people sickened by the strip mine near Nan-li City. I petitioned for and you granted permission for houses Ten-Ar and Gurun to jointly build Nan-li Central Healing Center with its state-of-the-art research facilities and laboratories. Now, after many yen-ars of research and the hard work of healers across both our houses, the data is conclusive.”

  “Is this the data in front of me now showing a strong link between de-forestation and both atmospheric bilast and argene levels?” asked King Gareth.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I see here a recommendation for the re-planting of the Nara forests along with other complimentary species designed to reclaim soil displaced by mining operations, is that correct?”

  “My liege, if I may be so candid: it is my contention not only that the mines are creating this new, sight-taking disease called ‘brown-eye syndrome,’ but these irresponsible mining practices are behind much of the latent misery in the region, including widespread hunger.

  “If we simply switched these practices for slightly more expensive, but many times more ecologically responsible and efficient measures, we most likely will be

  able to not only stop brown-eye syndrome before it creates multi-generational mutations and damage to our helices, but reverse the obvious poisoning of the local population. I have, in fact, one with me whom I beg you to take into your personal service so that he and his family may leave Nan-li forever,” petitioned Cara.

  “This is the one who attacked you with a laser spear?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do not begrudge him?”

  “He is poor; he thought killing me was the only way to feed his children. Please, Sire, have mercy on him!”

  King Gareth rose, eying her, “I will on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “You join me for dinner.”

  “And after dinner?” suggested Cara shrewdly.

  “Go or stay as you prefer. I hope you will choose to stay tonight – or at least return that I may know you better,” suggested King Gareth, his mind already undressing the abbess.

  Lady Abbess Cara curtsied, “As you wish.”

 

 

  The Great Hall of the Assembly stood stately against the stormy sky. In the upper atmosphere, a massive hurricane more than ten thousand li 里 in diameter raged violently, filling the lower atmosphere with thunder, lightning, and hail that tumbled more than fell from tumultuous turbulence. It was as if the planet itself were at war with different parts of itself, broody and contentious.

  Dodging the irregular-sized hail stones, Lady Abbess Cara tried in vain to prevent her carefully braided black hair from falling out of its pins holding it into a matronly style. Her hair, like the storm, preferred chaos this morning.

  With an entourage of healers and all ten Masters of Ten-Ar at her side, equal delegates to the Great Council, the abbess felt confident her appearance before the Great Council would persuade her peers to choose wisely on behalf of the poor even as her mind drifted to the night before in the king’s bed, nine beinors after the king’s initial invitation. Was she wrong to allow King Gareth to seduce her? Fighting what she knew was the inevitable biological inclination to meditate on her first experience with man, she breathed deeply, hoping the night before would not show to others, but suspecting any royal appearance in council chambers might trigger an instinctive response.

  As two master knights opened the heavy wooden doors separating the offices beyond with the main council chamber, Lady Cara’s resolve and focus returned. Taking their customary places in the massive chamber, the abbess felt a certain pride as she crossed the granite floor mosaics telling the story of the Great Migration to Beinan before turning her attention to Honourable Lord Horatio of house Xing-li, the current chair to the Great Council, “Lords and Ladies of the Great Council, I declare this session convened.”

  Lady Abbess Cara stepped forward, her tablet computer ready, “Your Honour, may I address the Great Council?”

  Lord Horatio bowed respectfully, motioning to the abbess to the podium, “The chair recognizes the abbess of Ten-Ar.”

  Cara stepped forward to address the council from the podium, “Honourable Peers of Beinan I come to you as abbess of Ten-Ar and the duly elected healer in chief of the healers of Ten-Ar, long recognized as the most skilled of all Beinarian healers. A crisis lays before us, one of our own making. In Xi-Nan Fang, hunger ranges, the local food supplies poisoned needlessly. With the loss of great forests to strip mining operations and crude on-line refining, the land can no longer buffer against the radiation emitted by argene. Making this misery worse, the refining process releases the nerve toxin bilast and its nearly insidious isotope dilast, killing and maiming indiscrimi
nately.

  “But there is hope, my friends. Small adjustments in mining and refining operations paired with more ecologically responsible practices across Xi-Nan Fang can clean the air, the soil, the water. Simply planting more nara trees throughout each town and village can provide critically needed nirlar to the air, protection against argene and the argun ore from which it comes, and nara fruit harvestable by all who are hungry. Simple food forests and parks can change our planet in drama ways – if we have the courage to do what is right.”

  Lady Engineer Rachel of house Ana rose, clapping sarcastically, “Bold words, healer! But at what cost? Our jobs? Our wages? From the safety of the Ten-Arian monastery, these offered resolutions must sound like the perfect fix to what you see as a problem. I for one see the economic consequences of these proposals as far worse – coming from the king’s whore, no less!”

  Lady Cara felt trapped. Did the king seduce her just to undermine her position? Before she could answer, the Honourable Lord Horatio stepped forward, “I move we dismiss Her Excellency’s proposals as a Ten-Arian conspiracy to cripple our economy. What say you, shall we dismiss these charges against argene mining? House Ana?”

  “Yeah.”

  “House Cashmarie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “House Xing-li?”

  “Yeah.”

  “House Miyoo?”

  “Nay.”

  “House Gurun?”

  “Nay.”

  “House Slabi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “House Shem?”

  “Yeah.”

  “House