#57 - We Can Only Ask

Didara the Curious, is it you?  Is it just a phantom of my friend?  I don’t know I don’t know I can’t chance it, I HAVE to get us over to that ambush site in my world, on the edge of the Boundless Grimy Fen.

I can’t tell that young medic that in my world he’s my personal physician that I am poisoning, needing me to give him an antidote every morning so that he not die…

Limyé I need to keep talking to you.  I need to keep taking those remedies of yours... But right now, the thing I need most of all is to be moving or I will go foaming at the mouth mad.  Ahrimaz ground his teeth in rage, felt the priest sense it and try and ease a fraction of a finger-width further away, without making it obvious.  He thinks he’s being unobtrusive and is frightened of setting me off.

Liryen Mother of Tigers, Demon Witch Nurse, may I sacrifice my rage to You?  May I give it to You?  Or will that just… even as he thought this he could feel a wave of relaxation wash over him, his stomach unknot, his hammering heart cool.  The tight band around his forehead and the cables attaching his head to his neck suddenly clicked and loosened.  He could see or feel or somehow hear the fire in his blood pouring into his centre and there somehow be removed from the flow.  He removed his mittens and stuck them in his belt. Thank You.

“My Father, in the other world, spent years of his life trying to beat me open to take the God in,” he said conversationally, still looking up at the sky.  The priest realized he didn’t necessarily want a response and sat silent.  “It never worked.  Oh, I forced myself open and they made me drink the Fire Cup every year, as Hunter, as the Fiery Killer.”  He paused remembering the nauseating pain of it, like swallowing a live scorpion.  “What they’ve all forgotten in that world is that people cannot demand if they have no power.  It’s like a toddler having a nasty tantrum until the Divinity gives them what they're whining for with an exasperated ‘HERE!’”

The priest was startled into laughing.  “I’ve been doing a lot of learning, here,” Ahrimaz said, feeling the cold and the damp that had been plaguing him drift out of his mouth on the fog of his every breath.  “It seems to me that the way to actually address either Him, or Her, is to ask.  We cannot know why the Gods do as they do.  We cannot know how much our requests would interfere with our own or someone else’s free will.  But it is given to us to say ‘Would this help?’  or ‘May I do this?’  He coughed as he choked down tears suddenly threatening to burst out of his eyes and stop his throat.

I tried to force you to love me.  Yolend, Pel, the babies even.  And the only way I knew how to touch them was by controlling them, hurting them, terrorizing them.  The country.  My soldiers.  No wonder they love my fetch self.  He learned how to ask.  Ahrimaz cringed inside at what this priest or the watching raconteur or the healer must be thinking, and let the tears flow.  He couldn’t help remembering the horrific, satisfying smash of his fist into his Yolend’s face.  He could make her cry.  He could make her react to him.  And Pelahir… I could make him beg for me to hurt him.  The way Father hooked pain to sex with me.  I… don’t think I ever want to have sex with anyone ever again.

As he thought this he felt the Goddess withdraw from him, Her disapproval icy and suddenly he shivered again, the raw winter catching his skin and his throat. 

Liryen, I’ll try.  I’ll try.  Truly.  I mean… how?  And how may I ask you for help?  I don’t know.  I don’t know anything.  The deadly cold clutching his heart faded.

“Asking the Gods anything is like letting snowflakes land on your hands and not melt,” he said.  He could hear the priest take a breath as if he were about to ask a question.  “You have a lover, Charles? Yes, that was his name.  A Hunter’s Partner?”  The boy nodded.

“So think of your partner and making love to them,” Ahrimaz said.  “Think of the heat that rises between you.  Offer yourself to the God like that.  Only war cats can get away with shoving their faces in to demand caresses.”  Another chuckle from the boy and a catch in his breath.  “Think of how it feels to turn your cheek and anticipate being caught up by the God’s love. The moment when the Divine breath warms your face, the first touch of God.”

He could feel the young man’s opening, following his words.  He could feel the heat rising from his heartbeat and his blood and his sex.  His heartrate sped up and suddenly all around the barge the copper wire under his hands began to warm up, then glow.  One breath.  Two breaths.

He’s doing it.  He’s opening himself to the Fire of Heaven.  Aeono, thank you.  Liryen?  May I do this?  May I try to rescue my friends in this world?  Their Rummummalos names are…” and he dropped to the range of voice that so few people could hear.  The rumble spread out from him, to the riverbank and washed back to reverberate in the water.  The Horse Guard moved to be with their mounts as sailors shouted and the barge master went from indolent to active.  Whistles, shouts, stragglers scrambling up the gangway one last girl clinging to it even as it came up and inboard with a crack.

The Hunter priest’s altar showed a blazing fire now, though there was no fuel to burn, and the barge dropped a handspan as it melted free of the ice, that then broke into man-sized pieces.  Teel scribbled madly in his book, Limyé nodding and looking thoughtful.

The wave came from nowhere, and everywhere, somehow a wave rolled down the river and the new ice shattered and broke into chunks.

Ahrimaz made the Ambassador’s true names a prayer, his eyes closed, his hands loose, water pooling in his palms, pouring down his knees.  He was lost remembering how it felt to be loved without reservation.  Didara had shown him that.  Love, not sex.  Compassion.  A creature so enormous, so strong, so careful that she didn’t hurt him, even as she was dying and in fever and pain. 

He didn’t notice as the sailors sprang to untie them, and ride this miraculous wave downriver.