2. Fundamentación Teórica
2.4. Origen del Olimpismo en España: Constitución del Comité Olímpico
S
ahja meditated. The path to Nirvana is a full void, an infinite that stretched across a single point of the mind. To properly pursue the path, one seeks enlightenment by searching the things that one already knows. It is impossible to truly find enlightenment outside of oneself. A person will find many clues leading to it in the outside world, but ultimately it is found within.Her journey to Nirvana had started at a Baladata or, “girl’s school,” in Vudra. It had taken her all over the Inner Sea as a sailor. Now she sat in the small shrine to Irori in Almas, the capital of Andoran. The path would most likely lead her much further, but for now, in the peaceful contentment of her soul, she felt she was where she should be.
“Mistress Sahja.” The sweet-sounding soprano of her acolyte’s voice broke through the barrier of Sahja’s mind. There was a hint of apology, possibly fear, in the voice. So the young cleric did remember she wasn’t to disturb her mistress during meditation, but felt that there was some urgency that precluded her previous instructions. More likely, since fear was involved, someone else felt their urgency overrode the acolyte’s instructions.
Sahja listened intently, but did not open her eyes. Yes, there were two people standing behind her. She could hear the breathing now that she was less self-absorbed.
It was not another of the shrine. The rasp of the breathing was too desperate to belong to a cleric of Irori. He? Yes, her guest was most likely male and had run a ways to get here.
“Tell our guest to remain here; I’ll speak to him momentarily. You may return to what you’re doing.” Sahja slowly allowed her mind to return to focus in the real world. She rose, keeping her upper body rigid, swinging her bare feet fluidly under
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her and standing. She wore slightly faded orange silk tightly wrapped around her upper body and yellow silks hanging from her belt and wrapped loosely to form leg coverings that didn’t hinder her movement. Her skin, like most Vudrani, was well tanned—not too light or too dark. Unlike most of her countrymen, her eyes shone a brilliant green, accented with a touch of barely seen eye shadow. That and the red dot on her forehead, set above and between her eyebrows, was the only make-up she allowed herself to wear. Her black hair was worn long, clasped with a golden ring behind her neck.
She turned to face her guest. He was a youngster, no more than twelve, with rusty blonde hair and brown eyes. Like many his age, he was wearing the leather apron of an apprentice. It was surprisingly clean, especially considering he worked in a job that required ink. There was ink stained blue on the knuckles of his hands. Because of this, he could not be a scribe. A scribe would not have ink on his knuckles. Sahja let out a light-hearted laugh as she realized what the young man did for a living.
“There’s a devil in my shrine,” she said happily, “a printer’s devil. What brings you here today, young devil?”
The young man tried to laugh nervously. “’ave we met, miss? I don’t recall us meetin’ afore…”
Sahja placed a hand lightly on his shoulder, trying to calm him—it had the opposite effect. She kept forgetting that Andorens had different notions of personal space than Vudrani. “No worries,” she said, trying to hide her accent as best she could. They were about the same height. She lifted his hand in hers and ran a finger over his knuckles. “Scribes don’t get ink on their knuckles as a rule,” she said.
“Now that’s a flood,” he responded. “Ya ’ave the eyes of a falcon, miss. I’m a devil right ’nough.”
Sahja made a motion like she was scribbling on some imaginary paper. “Or write enough.” She smiled slyly at him. The devil just looked blankly at her, missing the joke. She continued quickly, “What brings you to the shrine of Irori today, Master…?”
The apprentice looked down at his hands trying to make the nervous gesture look like an attempt to rub the ink off his knuckles. “I’m Dore ’allanson. It’s my master, Ben Forlin, miss. ’e needs your ’elp. ’e sent me to see if ya would ’elp him find our stolen type.”
The cleric wondered if the “h” was one of the letters that was missing. “Sounds like you need the watch, not someone like me.” Sahja said slowly. She had said that line many times before and it hardly ever made a difference.
“That’s what I toll ’im, miss. I did. And ’e did call the watch, sure ’e did. But
’e was figurin’ that seein’ ’ows ya ’elped out old Zimmer last fall, findin’ ’is stolen necklace from the temple…”
“Yes, the stolen stole. I doubt I’ll ever live it down.” She lightly rubbed her palm against her eye and forehead, but her humor was lost on the devil. Sahja supposed that he spent so much time working with words that he had little thought for playing with them. She quoted from the Azvadeva Pujila, “‘Enlightenment cannot be found without service to others.’ Don’t worry, Dore. I’m a pushover for word devils.”
The watch had already arrived at Ben’s shop when the two arrived. Sergeant Mlunsa, a former tribesman of the Mwangi Expanse and Sahja’s main connection inside the watch, was taking notes as she and Dore entered. “Dah!” he exclaimed.
“I see the real detective has arrived.” Each word was fully enunciated in a way that
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made every syllable clear. Sahja liked the sound of the sergeant’s voice.
He was dressed in the typical blue, white, and gold uniform of the Almas watch.
Next to him stood a short and stocky man in an apron covered with ink. He wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up and ink on the bottom of the arms. His hair, despite a relatively advanced age, completely covered his head with an uncombed shock of white. A little tinge of blue ink streaked just above his left ear. The printer looked hopefully at Sahja.
“Oh, thank you so much for coming Miss Sahja,” he said, almost pitifully. “I’ve heard so much about all the good you’ve done around here. I’m very confident you can help me out.”
Sahja smiled at the praise. “Coming from a left-handed printer, does that make it a left-handed complement?” she asked.
Ben laughed. “I do say it with all sincerity—wait a moment, how did you…?”
“There’s ink in your hair on the left side, but not the right” she answered lightly.
“How did people not notice such things?” she wondered.
Ben laughed again. “I’d heard that I’d need to watch what I say around you, but my, I need to watch how I look too?”
Sahja simply smiled and began a careful look around the shop. The press dominated the middle with a small forge on the port side, as if the shop had been a ship and the door the front. Tongs and a crucible sat on a shelf next to it along with a couple of black bars. Cubby holes all along the wall held the casts for the different letters.
The opposite, or starboard side, held a work bench with a few random ink stains on its surface. The wall above it was noticeably empty. Unlike other walls in the place, there weren’t samples of previous work or works in progress. It was just blank.
The back held a small desk that faced the door. Its surface was cluttered, so much so that it made Sahja cringe to view the disorderliness of it. Wherever nirvana existed in the universe, that desk was at an opposite point.
As Ben and the sergeant seemed busy talking, she took a moment to step outside the shop. Dore followed silently. He’d been quiet most of the walk over too. She appreciated how he allowed her to think, even if it was more out of nervousness than courtesy. The door had no knob, but had a simple latch and large padlock to secure it while the owner was away. The lock was lying on the ground. The side where the lock latched had been smashed smooth, but the keyhole looked untouched. She looked up and down the road. To the starboard side of the shop was a cooper and to the port, a blacksmith.
Sahja left the lock on the ground and poked her head into the shop. She got Sergeant Mlunsa’s attention and motioned towards the cooper’s shop. “I’m going to see if anyone next door heard the lock get broken off.”
“Dah!” the sergeant responded. “You go and do that, Miss Sahja. We be still trying to figure out how much Ben’s type was worth.” The two returned to their discussion.
“Ya think the cooper might ’ave taken the type, miss?” Dore asked as they turned to leave.
“No,” Sahja responded, “I just like the word ‘cooper.’ It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
Dore didn’t agree or disagree. “That’s good, miss. Both our neighbors are nice
’nough folk. I don’t think either would ’urt Ben.” He held open the door for Sahja and she entered the cooper’s shop. She decided not to comment on Dore holding the door.
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The cooper’s shop was an antithesis of the print shop. It was a little smaller, but the floor was not only well swept, it was waxed. Shelves on the back wall held supplies and some tools. A workbench, clear of tools or work at the moment, sat under the only window. The cooper himself, sporting a tradesmen’s apron, well combed honey-colored hair, and a large smile, sat on a stool in the center of the shop, carefully placing the slats for a large barrel with the help of a hide mallet.
“Dore,” he said congenially, not able to look up from his work at the moment,
“what brings you to my shop today? And who’s your guest?”
“’Aye, Adam,” Dore said. “This is Miss Sahja. She’s ’elping Ben find out ’oo stole our type this mornin’.”
Adam stopped mid-swing with his mallet and several slats fell to the floor. He might come to regret the time of careful work that was lost, but for the moment, his face showed a sympathetic concern. “Why would anyone steal type?”
“The metal…it’s expensive,” Dore said emphatically. “It’s made of lead, tin, and bit of some…secret metal. We’d be ’ard pressed to replace it all afore the rent comes due the morrow.” Sahja was about to comment on the printer’s devil being “hard pressed,” but Adam spoke up first.
He winked at Sahja as he said, “Secret metal?”
Dore sighed and shrugged, “Ah, Adam. Don’t be doin’ that again. I toll ya, I’m not allowed to tell no one about the secret metal.”
Apparently they’d had this conversation before. Adam’s smile broadened. “Is it gold? Afraid that if people knew that…. Hey, is that why your type was stolen?!”
“Nah, it’s not gold.”
“Then why’s it secret?”
Sahja watched the exchange with some interest. She knew what the third metal was, but guessed that Dore had a hard time saying antimony—a metal made by alchemists to help the type hold its shape better. Adam knew at least that it was something Dore couldn’t pronounce. It didn’t seem to matter if the cooper knew what the metal was as long as he could use it to cause a little friendly torment.
“Can’t ’ave everyone knowin’ or they’d all be printers too.”
Sahja redirected them by saying, “Why do you need the type to pay rent if it’s due so soon?
Doesn’t Ben already have the money?”
Dore looked slightly indignant. “’Course Ben ’as the money. We can pay rent, but then we wouldn’t ’ave any type to keep on goin’.”
Adam took the hint and dropped off tormenting the devil. “Landlord isn’t going to be lenient this month either, with so many people wanting space here. Shop front in Almas is going for more than a copper or two these days. That explains Ben rushing to find you, Miss Sahja. I suppose I shouldn’t be wasting your time by playing games with the locals.” He held out his hand to her and she took it, blushing humbly as he bowed his forehead to it. When he straightened back up, he said slowly, “What can I do for you, my lady?”
“I won’t keep you from your work,” she said kindly, “I just have a small question.”
When Adam nodded once quickly to her, she continued. “The lock was broken from the door, not picked. Did you happen to hear anything this morning?”
Adam smiled. “Funny you should ask. There’s a blacksmith just two doors down.
I don’t think I’d notice an odd hammering here or there.” As if on cue, the sound of a hammer rang out a few times and then quieted again. They laughed.
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“I suppose not,” Sahja said, her voice cracking a little, as though there was a deeper joke to it all. She made the conventional departing comments and she and Dore exited the shop.
“That was it, miss?” Dore said skeptically. “You didn’t need to know any more from ’im?” He didn’t move away from the shop just yet.
“No, Dore, I didn’t.”
“Not if ’d ever left ’is shop or ’e’d seen anyone unusual or anything?”
“He wouldn’t have,” she answered with a ring of finality to her voice.
“Oh, so you mean like it was a professional job, miss. And they’d not ’ave let themselves be seen?”
Sahja paused for just a moment, trying to decide what she could safely tell Dore if he was to keep trailing her today. She was starting to see that he was a bit brighter than his method of speaking let on. “Yes, Dore,” she said carefully, “it was definitely done by a professional.”
The blacksmith’s shop was a crowded space with the forge set on the starboard wall. To the port side was a stack of black bars, slightly lighter in color on the top with the ones further down lightly specked with red. The smith, whose name was Hammil—or ’ammil, as Dore pronounced it—was busy working the bellows when they entered, so he didn’t hear them.
He was a large, heavily-muscled man who stood a good two feet taller than the priestess. Like a lot of people who spend most of their time around fire, very little exposed hair remained on him. The work of the forge was too hot to allow more than an apron, breeches, and boots for cover. Under a sweaty forehead sat a small set of blue eyes, looking like they were almost too close together to be on such a large man.
Inside the forge she could see the fire blazing, wood turned so bright a yellow it was almost white, sitting atop the coals. A pile of coal with a shovel nearly buried in it was next to the forge. Tongs, hammers, and other implements of the trade were set hodge-podge around the shop, apparently where their owner would need them for different jobs. To Sahja, it looked disorderly, but there was a system to it that she could appreciate, given the small, cramped space.
She had to push past the rain barrel that sat near the anvil to enter. It rolled lightly as she moved it, having recently been drained of its contents down the nearby drain in the floor. It wasn’t a high quality barrel, she considered. It was probably not the work of the fastidious Adam Cooper at any rate.
As Sahja slipped past the barrel into the main part of the shop, Hammil noticed her and Dore for the first time. “Dore,” Hammil said gruffly and loudly. He might have been slightly deaf; he had put long hours in a loud job which may have affected his hearing. “I can’t imagine you need more heat for the forge on your side. What’re you and a beautiful woman doing in my smithy?”
“This ’ere is Miss Sahja,” Dore began his introduction. “She ’as a question for ya about what ya might ’ave ’eard this mornin’.”
“Been working on a set of horse shoes for the Supreme Elect’s carriage horses all morning,” he answered. “Don’t know I’d have heard much.” He turned his attention to the cleric. “Priestess Sahja? Muddying your feet outside your shrine again, I’ll wager.” He smiled slightly as he said it.
She graciously returned his smile. “I’d rather they were muddy, or walking a ship’s deck, than growing weak sitting in the shrine all day.” The smith’s smile vanished when she continued, “I think the Supreme Elect might be a little more
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lenient on you if you just returned what you took from Ben’s shop this morning. It’d be the least you could do.”
Hammil looked confused but Sahja continued. “There’s no need to pretend. You used a hammer to open the lock this morning.” She nodded to the one in his hand.
“I’d guess that one would be about the right size for it and it’s not made of hide like
“I’d guess that one would be about the right size for it and it’s not made of hide like