#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.