#21 - Ahrimiar II, Wenhiffar and Rutaçyen

Ahrimaz could feel them looking at him, staring down at him, aware over every thumb length of his skin where he was.  There was a rustle and Ahrimaz couldn’t look, couldn’t force his eyes open.  The old monster is dead, he can’t hurt me any longer.  I heard his skull pop.  I saw the life go out of his eyes. I killed him.  I did. This isn’t him. This isn’t him. This isn’t him.

His body didn’t believe it and shook and sweated in terror.  “I understand that you are not my son, though you look like him.” His voice was the same, though there wasn’t the dangerous edge in it.  Different.  “I assure you that you need not bow to me, young man.  I have no will, nor inclination to hurt you.”

“Even having usurped your son’s rightful place?” He managed to squeeze the question out of  thickened and harsh vocal cords.

“You have not.  The people are currently debating who should lead Inné, since you are indisposed.”

“Who is in the running?” Ahrimaz managed to open his eyes but even as he eased back away from the man, he couldn’t raise them.  The man, Ahrimiar the Second, had knelt down before the stack of mats where Ahrimaz sat, the woman a vague blur in white and blue off to one side.  

“You are concerned?  This is not your world, so Pel and Limyé tell me.”

“Yes, I care.  It is still Inné even if it is not my beautiful Empire… my father’s beautiful Empire, and his before him.”

“I see.” He sat quite still.  “Your brother Ahriminash is most likely to take over, or Arlinaz.  Arnziel has recused himself as High Flame of Crowned Tiger.”

“Really?  Arnziel in this world found his vocation?”

“Oh, yes, he was nine when the God woke in him.”

“Nine.” Scorch and burn and scar me.  Father made me kill that in him then.  Not this man.  Father. 

“And he’s a warrior priest?”

“Just as Arlinaz is a healer priest of the Veil.”

A witch priest.  Like me. Every muscle in his back was cramping. “With your permission, Ser, I would like to rise.”

“Oh, yes, please do.  You don’t require my permission.  I repeat, I am not your father Emperor.”

Ahrimaz sat back further, raised his head, carefully, dared glance out of the corner of his eye.  This man looked like his father’s brother.  His face was as open as Pel’s, or Limyé’s and the bulk of his wrinkles were smile lines around his eyes.  His mouth lines all turned up.  Father’s face had been compressed and dark as if the scorching devils sat behind the centre and pulled it into a mask of rage and despite.  In fact the only time Ahrimaz had seen his father’s face at peace was a moment after he died as his soul drained out of the meat.

“Ser?”

“Yes, Ahrimaz?”

“Is it allowed to rage? Am I allowed to bellow ‘why him and not me?’  Is it possible for me to express how angry I am that he was born here and I was not?”

"Indeed.  The God in Flame is an excellent way to express rage, though not if it makes you ill."

The woman, who Ahrimaz had not been able to even look at, while focused on Light Ahrimaz’s father spoke up for the first time.  “Yes, Ahrimaz.  The Goddess allows all.  Scream your rage to Her.”

Ahrimaz sat, frozen once more, tongue locked in his jaw as if it would never move again.  He wrapped his arms around himself and managed to squeak out ‘Mama’? before things began to shatter in his mind.  The person who looked like an Apporheitos, who had spoken to Pel, stepped up next to his mother… Light Ahrimaz’s mother… and put their hand on her shoulder.  They had the same face.  Twins.  “But… but…”

A shattering memory. His mother, strangled before him by his father.  Her body lying on the dungeon floor for days until it no longer resembled anything human, a mass of fly maggots.  Another mother being brought in by his father, who looked identical to what had been Wenhiffar, a seethe of maggots, a squirm of maggots on the stone floor, was never the same as ‘Mama’.  Cold, calculating. Distant.  Safe. Maggots make a pattering noise on stone.

Ahrimaz fell over, his hands flung over his face, locked into rigor.  Distantly he could hear Limyé, feel their hands on his limbs.  He could not move. He could not speak.  He could not die. “Too much at once,” his pseudo father said.  “Let him alone for a while.  He needs to recover.”

“If he recovers,” Pelahir said.  “We have to make sure he’s all right if we have any hope of getting our own beloved back.”

“We might not.  This Ahrimaz might be all we ever have again.  We are dedicated to saving him, because he is our son,” Wenhiffar said.  “Rutaçyen… can you help him?” The other woman… her sister.  Her twin sister… Mama’s twin sister was close by. 

“I will try,” she said.  “But his pain might be too great. That dark old man obviously twisted him and he may not be able to grow straight again.”