“Forgive me, my Lord Captain Commander,” Trom said with a slight bow, “but since you are a participant in the Trial, you cannot be Arbiter.
Aside from the High Inquisitor, who by law may not take part, I hold the highest rank here after you, so with your permission…?” Valda glared at him, then stalked over to stand beside Kashgar, arms folded across his chest. Ostentatiously he tapped his foot, impatient for matters to proceed.
Galad sighed. If the day went against him, as seemed all but certain, his friend would have the most powerful man in the Children as his enemy. Likely Trom would have had in any event, but more so now. “Keep an eye on them,” he told Bornhald, nodding toward the Questioners clustered on their horses near the gate. Asunawa’s underlings still ringed him like bodyguards, every man with a hand on his sword hilt.
“Why? Even Asunawa can’t interfere now. That would be against the law.”
It was very hard not to sigh again. Young Dain had been a Child far longer than he, and his father had served his entire life, but the man seemed to know less of the Children than he himself had learned. To Questioners, the law was what they said it was. “Just watch them.”
Trom stood in the center of the courtyard with his bared sword raised overhead, blade parallel to the ground, and unlike Valda, he spoke the words exactly as they were written. “Under the Light, we are gathered to witness Trial Beneath the Light, a sacred right of any Child of the Light. The Light shines on truth, and here the Light shall illuminate justice. Let no man speak save he who has legal right, and let any who seek to intervene be cut down summarily. Here, justice will be found under the Light by a man who pledges his life beneath the Light, by the force of his arm and the will of the Light. The combatants will meet unarmed where I now stand,” he continued, lowering the sword to his side, “and speak privately, for their own ears alone.