#84 - Sacred Suicide

Ahrimaz pulled himself out of the mud next to one of the Veil platforms, where he’d actually fallen, face first.  Rutaçyen sat, cross-legged, next to the High Priestess.  They looked almost like bookends, though Rutçyen had the Kenaçyen blond hair, cut short and sharp now, and High Priestess Mara had long dark brown hair that coiled all around her as she sat.

“Go get cleaned up, Ahrimaz,” Rutaçyen said.  “The water is warm enough now.”

“Maybe to an ice-tits like you.”

“Give me fifty push ups,” she said without heat.  “Then go get clean.  I have clean clothes for you when you have the mud off.”

Ahrimaz glared at her, hands convulsively opening and closing.  The weather had finally shifted and the snow had melted in the warm rain that came day after day.  Today the sun was making a rare appearance and the water surging around his ankles was actually swimmable.  He was aware of Pelahir meditating on another platform down the Veil, far enough that the rushing sound of the water would give everyone privacy.

Yolend sat with him and the child… now running like a mad thing… made a beeline right to him. “…shups?” he inquired in his piping voice.  He insisted on trying to do what Ahrimaz was doing, especially if it was training of any kind and would cry if Ahrimaz tried to tell him he wasn’t ‘daddy’ but ‘uncle’.   

“Daaaaah?  …shups?”

“Yes, pushups,” Ahrimaz snarled, splashed down and began.  The baby did too, his bum in the air as he wobbled through four press-ups before sitting down and beginning to throw mud as Ahrimaz finished his fast fifty.  “You stay with the war master while I swim!” Ahrimaz snapped, scooped him up and dumped the messy toddler on Rutaçyen’s lap, mud and all, with an evil grin.

She grinned back and encircled the toddler, heedless of the dirt and the water.  “If you have trouble getting into the water I’ll call Didara.”  The elephant had found the Veil waterfall or waterfalls… the whole amazing length of them, to be her favourite place outside and was currently upvale standing under one of the more energetic showers.

“No,” Ahrimaz snapped, and yanked his shirt up over his head, flinging it into the dirt, with his trousers, turned and walked into the nearest pool.

Rutaçyen handed the toddler to an acolyte who carted the child back to Yolend who took him and offered him her breast.  He began nursing and was asleep in moments, arms and legs relaxing over his mother’s knee.

“So you think he’s ready for this?”  Rutaçyen asked quietly and the High Priestess shrugged.

“Soon if not now…”  There was an unaccustomed shout from higher up the valley.  “See?  Even if he doesn’t realize it, he’s ready to do the work.”  The shout was from one of the priestesses who came running down the hill, leaving her basket behind her, spilling early bulbs all down the hill.  She was chanting something under her breath as she plunged into the water near the main waterfall, the Goddess’s Hair.   

Ahrimaz had stood up from where he’d been scrubbing mud and sweat out of his hair, before the woman had called, his head turning toward the falls.  “He knows, even if he doesn’t yet understand.”

The priestess dove under the thundering waterfall and a moment later came up with a young man, hauling him out by the hair.  They couldn’t hear what was being said but she shifted her grip the moment his face broke into air and he tried to fight her, to drive himself under again.  “They feel so much pain,” the High Priestess said.  “This year it’s worse than it has been in the past ten years.”

“Is it in part the knowledge that there are other worlds?”  Rutaçyen folded her hands and looked over at Ahrimaz, watching another priest wade over to the would-be suicide, one of the youngsters pelting up the path to fetch Limyé or another Imaryan healer from Innéthel.

“I think so.  Some people just give up and think “in another world I didn’t do this.  Let that ‘me’ go on.  This life hurts too much.”

 Mara nodded.  “But She lets us know if it is not their time.  Some years She allows the self murder and calls home but we know, then.”

“And Ahrimaz, our stranger, can tell.”

“He’s already a priest.  He already knows.  He’s just fighting it because it seems too good to be true for him.  He still thinks it necessary to be in pain, to pay for the evil he did in that other world.”

 “I see.” Rutaçyen smiled brightly as Ahrimaz sloshed out of the water, clean. His face was troubled.

“That boy…” he said.  “How did I know it wasn’t his time?  How did I hear him howling about how he had to die?”

The High Priestess handed him a clean robe and a towel.  “Probably because you have had the same urge.  It will make you sensitive to it.”

“Oh.” He dropped the robe over his head, then looked up in shock.  “This is a priest’s robe, not trousers!”

“Yes.  That’s all the investiture you’re getting,” the High Priestess said.  “You are now welcome onto the private meditation platforms.  Please don’t set them on fire if you get upset.”  She smiled at him and nodded to Rutaçyen.  “I’ll be over with Yo and Pel.  Limyé will, no doubt, report to me once he’s calmed that young man down.”

“Ahrimaz, you need to rest.  You pushed yourself to half-crazy today and are still shaking with fatigue.”  He was watching the boy being led out of the water, escorted by the two priests and the healer who had just arrived, running.

“Hmmm?” He took a deep breath, sank down to the platform.  “Yes, teacher.”