#9 - I Cannot Heal

And now I am back to silence.  The guards are not happy with me and have shortened my day, I think.  It brings me back to the horror of when the old monster broke any hope of us being a family.

He hauled us boys down to the dungeons and locked us in.  Then he brought the girls.  And mother. She had just had another miscarriage and was not well.  She’d born us, all seven of us, and had four lost children.

I can’t remember that. I won’t remember that madness. It was madness and horror and every one of us broke that night, howling for our mother though we all knew. Every one of us cried and screamed and he left us there.  Fail him and he’d kill us. Until he brought mother back and made her release us.  She felt different. Wrong.  She was never the same, after, cold as ice.

The court was told that we were ill and in seclusion.  True enough. And he didn’t leave us a light. That was when Arnziel started drinking.  Ahrimiar began buying slave girls. Ahriminash became a fanatic at fighting.  I started hunting, killing things.  But I could ride outside and there was my valley.  The only place I would never kill anything.  I don’t know why, to this day, why I wouldn’t.  Outside where there were no walls, no bars, no blood on the floor, no shit or piss or semen.  There were flies but not masses of them covering… no.  Only the occasional flying bug, outside.

There was a peace that I could get by letting father see me torment some animal.  It was better than have him make me torture people.

The valley was the one place I could find some kind of sanity… it must be here in this world.  I hold that close to my withered and rotten heart.

My hunting party knew what I required and would go racketing around the hunting preserves all around.  They… covered for me, bringing back meat for the court’s table while I would sit at the waterfall.

The waterfall and the tree.  Though this tree was on the royal preserve somehow people would manage to sneak in and there would be ribbons tied onto the branches, cages with open doors though I used to laugh at the song birds sitting inside still.  I would take those home and give them to my sisters and little
 

Allama would actually train them to be free.

I’d be waiting at the tree at the end of the day, step out of its cool shade and meet my ‘hunting party’, get blood all over me and ride my lathered horse home.  Oh, not all the time.  Once or twice I would run from the racket of slaughter but most of the time I was in it up to my elbows.  Wild boar were the best.  They’d be the most likely to kill you and I admit I almost longed for it at the time.  I could see I was lost and would become the beast, the ravening monster.  I was so like the doomed boar.  Destined to either kill everyone around him or bleed his life onto the ground.  I could see it and couldn’t stop it, couldn’t turn aside any more than the pig could, helpless in the face of horror.

How long will the Imaryan make me wait? An orderly in a House of Violently Deranged.  Well.  You can certainly say I am that.

I have no appetite.  The food on the plate looks and smells disgusting.  I drink the malak because I think I would faint from lack of energy if I didn’t.  I put the lid back on the tray and shove it out the slot.

The valley. The waterfall.  The tree.  I have not allowed myself to miss them.  As an adult I put aside childish fancies, like naiads in the water and sylphs in the tree.  I stopped going out there.  But I did not forbid my children to go.  My young Ahrimiar.  He looks nothing like the hardened old bastards the Kenaçyen line are.  His smile is still sweet.

The silence.  I blink. There is nothing in the hallway. I stare at the candle light and try to imagine the night sky. I want out so badly I can taste it.

**

Days of silence.  I managed to eat this morning.  A handful of berries. A piece of toast. I am burning off any fat I might have built up not being able to exercise more than I have been.  Limyé is so conscientious that he even shaved me after he knocked me out.  After I tried to kill him, force them to let me out.

Between my beard growth and them clocking my days and nights by lighting and dousing the lamp, I guess that I have been punished with silence for approximately two weeks.

Then when he comes back he doesn’t speak to me but sets a box down, ties his trailing sleeves back at the small of his back, girds up his robe exposing skinny black legs and bare feet and begins painting on the wall.  “Limyé… Sir. Sir Ianmen?” He doesn’t answer me at first.  I sit down at the bars, out of reach.  “I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology,” he says, carefully tracing a line onto the rough whitewashed stone.  “You have no more chances.  Should you attack me again I will not come back.”

“I understand.”

The painting takes slow shape under his brushes and his fingers.  He sometimes plunges his hands into the paint and draws with great sweeping smudges of his hands, wrists, even the edges of fingers that resolve, in the flickering light, into leaves, twigs, flowers.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I wish to,” he says.

I nod.  Bullshit. He is still trying to get me to become his patient. “Limyé, you do realize that I can never become your patient?”

“Why is that?” He isn’t even looking at me.

“Because I wish to live.”

“Oh? It doesn’t seem like it if you are not eating.”

“That will pass.  My appetite will come back or I will force it.  To put it bluntly, I wish to live and if I become your patient I will grow a conscience.”

“And this will kill you, how?”

“If I grow a conscience… or let it out of its cage… I will be forced to recognize the evil man I’ve been and realize what horrors I have inflicted on the innocent and have to kill myself.”

He’s silent a long time standing, looking at his work, one paint covered finger leaving a green splotch on his lip. “It seems to me that you already know how evil you are. Anything else frightens you and you just cannot bear the idea of being healed.”

Tweeks to the site

I have been reminded that a 'donate' button should be here... and voilà! C'est ici!

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I have been asked to be a guest at Eeriecon at the end of September so I'm going to be printing up all the covers of the books about to go into print, if I don't manage to get things printed and shipped before then.

#8 - Attempting a Breakout

The healer stopped, just inside the first door.  Emperor in exile Ahrimaz lay on the cold stone floor in the middle of his cell, wearing only his trousers, shirtless, flesh pressed against the rock.

He turned to wave at the guard, young Oriké, who came in and startled, grabbed for his keys.  The Imaryan put a staying hand on his, mimed with a hand over his nose and mouth.    The guard nodded and fetched Pleta who was also on duty.

They locked the outer door, then the two of them waited while Pleta, with rope and kerchief, carefully went in to check.  He went to one knee, pressed fingers to Ahrimaz’s neck, looked up at the Imaryan and nodded.  The instant he took his attention away from the body on the floor he exploded up, snatched Pleta’s wrists and with a single move had him immobilized, arms straining, nearly pulled out of their sockets, armour creaking under the stain.  Ahrimaz stared out at them over Pleta’s body, leaning to press the boy’s head forward against his own gorget.  His breathing began to rasp.  “Let me go, or I’ll kill him.” As the other guard moved, Ahrimaz twitched.  “Show me the damned knock-out cloth!” – “Slowly.”  Limyé’s fingers moved and Oriké, moving carefully, used two gauntleted fingers to pull the cloth free.

“Wait,” the healer said, as the cloth came free.  He reached out, pushed the barred door open and walked into the cell.  Calmly he stopped in front of Ahrimaz and said.  “Let him go.  It’s me you want to kill.”

Ahrimaz shoved the choking guard away from himself, lunging toward the Imaryan healer, whose only move was to bring up the stole around his neck and as Ahrimaz’s hands closed on his throat, pressed it to his attacker’s face.

**

How many times in this world am I suddenly weakened, wrapped in blackness?  My hands fall away from the damned Imaryan’s neck, leaving only the barest red imprints of my fingers.  I was startled by him just walking into my reach like that. He’s got more guts than any Imaryan I ever saw. It didn’t work.  I should have stuck to the plan to get me out of here, rather than being side tracked by a deliciously offered bit of side murder.

The guard I would have been less likely to kill.  He’s a soldier and even if he’s not mine, and deaf and mute to boot, I cherish soldiers.  Damn you, Imaryan, for distracting me.  Damn you.

**

Ahrimaz’s eyes blinked open and a thunderous headache crashed around in his head. He was in the cell. Lying on the bed.  Damn you it is NOT my bed.  The bed.  He closed his eyes as he heard the rustle of cloth from outside.

“The soporifé will give you a headache, I’m sorry to say.  Water with a bit of juice in it will help.” Limyé said, from his place safely outside the bars.

“Why did you come into my reach, Imaryan?  You were right.”

“It would distract you enough for me to apply my nostrum,” Limyé said quietly.

“How could you do that so calmly?  Imaryans don’t fight.”

“But we do defend ourselves from our patients. I was an orderly in the Hospital for the Violently Deranged before I became the Hand’s personal physician.”

“I’M NOT YOUR PATIENT!” Ahrimaz coughed, wheezing up onto his side.

“Indeed. And you have reminded me.” Limyé rose and brushed off his robe, turning to go.  “That’s three times.  The two I warned you of and a third attack on me.  Goodbye, Ahrimaz.  I will continue my research in a less dangerous place.”

You don’t have the guts to walk away from… wait. Wait!  “Wait!” He cried and the Imaryan turned back at the outside door but didn’t say anything.

“Would we be back in the conversation stage if I apologised?”  He coughed again.

Limyé stood still, looking at him for a long moment and the candle lamp flickered and hissed, just for an instant, flaring up.  Then he sighed.  “That would depend entirely on if you meant it or not.  Good day, Ahrimaz, I will think about hearing an apology from you for a short time.”

The guard opening the door was Pleta who glared at him before pointedly locking the door behind the Imaryan.

#7 - Clinging to Pain

“It is clear and cool though we haven’t yet had any frost.  We are hoping for more rain after the last harvest, and perhaps it will rain after the Goddess Night.” Of course. They have a Demon festival after last harvest.  I heard whispers that female witches soaked the ground with blood around that time, to spread disease and death to assist the winter in killing us off.

 

“Why do you care for rain then?”

“To fill the rivers and lakes before the deep cold comes.  You know very well that the water is necessary here at the navigation head.”  The Imaryan settled down on the chair, folding his hands open in his lap.  He’s right, the bastard.

I don’t understand him. He’s not afraid of me. He knows I’d kill him in a second. Torture him and kill him if I had time. But he’s completely calm and just… just there.  He is giving me his careful and specific attention despite my intention.

“How can you be like this?” Ahrimaz finally asked him, straight out.

“Like what?” Limyé raised an eyebrow.  In the light of one candle it was hard to see his expression; dark lips against milk-and-malak coloured skin, even the whites of his black eyes were ivory.  “We have an agreement.”

“And you believe me?”

“Yes.  Why should I not?”

Ahrimaz sank down to the chair he’d brought over to the bars.  “Why should you not?” He repeated the question incredulously.  “Imaryan, I’m a self-admitted monster who killed your entire race in my world.  I threatened your life the last time you were in here with me. You have absolutely no reason to trust me in the slightest.”

“I am not foolish, Ahrimaz.  You’ll note that I am staying carefully out of your reach.”

“As well you should.”

“Why do you hate Imaryans?” He asked.

“Well, they’re despicable,” Ahrimaz answered.  “No one alive can be that forgiving and that generous in spirit.  They’re hiding something. They’re hypocrites, I’m sure of it. They’re dangerous.”

“We are devoted to life and health.  This makes us dangerous?”  He made a note in his book.

“Yes. No one is that honest.  Everyone has evil in them.  My father taught me that.  Everyone.  Even those who say they love you. Perhaps most in those who profess to love you.”  Ahrimaz paused, looking at his hands clenched on the bars hard enough to make his knuckles white.  He was panting in terror.  Why did I say that?

“I’m glad you are safe from me, then,” Limyé said, gently.

“GODS SCORCH YOU!” Ahrimaz clung to the bars, pressing his forehead against them hard enough to pain him.

Limyé rose, bowed, the bastard… and said “That’s once.  Good evening, Ahrimaz.  I will come back tomorrow.”

“Come eat with me.” Why did I ask him?  I can’t command him. Help me God, I’m going mad.

“Perhaps later.  Sleep well.”

Dammit dammit dammit scorch it Tiger Master Lion Master Demon eat him he has the power over me.  Power to control my words.  I’ll not be his patient.  I won’t. I won’t. I don’t need healing. I’m already a good man.  I don’t need him to make me better.

**

 I’m standing in a clearing that has knee-high sear grass in it, surrounded by a sky high wall of rose brambles.  One side of this clearing has a swamp thick with sunflowers, blighted by the look of them.  No wonder since they are growing in an alcohol swamp that occasionally shoots a blast of blue-white flame up to incinerate another flower.

There is a thatched cottage in the middle of the clearing, though the roses are grown up over half of it.  A gigantic spider has woven a web over the door and a serpent that is green as grass and thick as my forearm lies upon the steps like an artificer’s toy though metres and metres of length, enough to swallow a man.

They are guards, I know, somehow, and in my dream a man comes staggering through the alcohol swamp, his hair singed and bright, his clothing slashed to ribbons by the leaves of the flowers, skin blistering from the thickets of nettles.  His ruined sleeves are up over his face and I startle when he lowers his arms, falling onto solid ground, almost at my feet.  Arnziel.  He doesn’t see me. I am a ghost to him.

He is weeping, shivering. “God, Oh Heavenly Master, help me!”

A voice answers “He cannot hear you.”

Arnziel wraps his arms around his torso and looks longingly at the swamp.  He even turns to cup a palm full of the alcohol up almost to his lips and freezes, until the liquid is slopped away because of his tremors. “I could stand a drink,” he says and laughs as though his throat is full of broken glass.  “But not today.” He scrubs his palm dry in the grass and gets up like a very old man.

“I need to go in,” he says to the snake.  It raises its head to stare at him and then hisses something.  The spider jerks side to side at the door, snapping its pincers.  “Please,” he says.  “He’s dying.”

Who is dying?  Surely no one in this Demon guarded hovel?  They cannot be someone we know.

The spider pulls its own web down and the snake slithers aside.  Arn climbs the steps as tired as if he carried the earth upon his back.  His scarred back.  The scars I put there.  Father was careful to use the wide whip on me, to not mark his heir.  He wasn’t so careful which whip he rammed into my hand, to use on the most useless of my brothers.

The door creaks open and inside, a squalid mess tumbles out. Incense burners with holes burnt through and broken Tiger Masks and charred sacred flames, a veritable mountain of rotting religious paraphernalia packs the hovel.  Deeper within, I can see a giant of a man.  A golden man, but with hair and beard that grows over him and the bed he lies upon, and out into the broken regalia of God.

I see Arnziel stoop and begin to clean away the mess with his own, bleeding, blistered hands. I throw my hands up over my eyes, somehow my chest is filled with pain and twisting, loneliness and despair.

I am weeping.  How dare I weep?  How could I weep for an old and dying man that I don’t know?  That my brother is caring for?  I must not weep. I clamp my breath tight and stop the tears by stopping my breath. 

A big pair of arms folds around me, drawing me gently in to a soft breast.  “It is all right.  You may weep now.  You are allowed.”

That undoes me and I bawl like a baby in a mother’s arms.  “No one heard me!” I scream like an infant. “I cried and screamed for help and there was no one to hear, no one to save me! No one heard me, even God was deaf.”

“I heard you.  It took some time for me to come, for me to save you.  The God was dying.  He will hear you again one day.  But until then, I hear you.”

**

I woke from that nightmare shaking, soaked with sweat, my face and hair and neck and even my shoulder soaked with tears.  I stagger over to the table and write down my dream.  It seems as though I should, but I don’t understand why.

I write it all down and then take my shirt off, kneel down on the stone floor and snap the cotton into a twisted strand that I can flog myself with.  I’m going soft.  I must punish myself for tears.  It is part of my training.  The shirt is nowhere nearly as effective as a flogger and I miss the one in my study at home.  My knees are already aching from cold and from the stone and I’ve only been here a short time.  Soft.

Like this world.  They’re going to break me. They are going to re-make me in the image of that Ahrimaz and I will cease to exist.  I strike harder, trying to raise a sting against my back, filled with horror.