#87 - Peace Is No Longer An Assault

Ahrimaz gazed around the bedroom, his bedroom and realized he hadn’t been outside the building in several days.  They were finally leaving him alone with his thoughts more and more, since Limyé had noted his forearm scars were finally healed up enough to be heavy callus rather than weeping sores with bite-mark edges.  Every bath now they where easing, flaking off, being rubbed away with soap and hot water and a scrubbing cloth. 

He was no longer attacking himself, at least physically, and so the watch on him was less.  The weather was full-on spring and he found he could bear all this verdancy.  In fact he quite liked it.  He needed to go out, to where he’d found some kind of solace from the old monster, even if it was supposed to be hunting ground.  The old man had wanted blood spilled in the Vale, to ‘keep the witches out’, had torn down the ribbons that kept appearing on the massive old tree at the entrance.

The Emperor had, a generation ago, cut that apple tree down.  An oak on the other side of the path, he’d left and it had grown huge.  And the apple had come back from the roots, as if it were recovering from a natural disaster instead of from deliberate attack.

In this world an ice storm had shattered the tree and it had also come back, nearly identical to the one in his own world.

His hand hovered over the priest’s robe for a moment, then he grabbed the plain cotton training clothes, soft from all the washing.  Barefoot, he walked out past the massive building project at the front, rebuilding the polity’s hall.  It would look even more like the entrance to the House of Gold in his world when it was finished, but he said nothing about it.

The other enormous building project they were taking on was installing the first massive sheets of float-glass windows, both in the entrance and all along the Elephant Ambassadors hall, showing the lush and luxuriant garden within, and letting in much more light to the great good benefit of both the plants and the ambassadors.

Jagunjagun was paying for these extravagant windows travelling all around central Inné doing song instructions describing his home.  He had found himself uncomfortable doing this at first, but Didara only did the ones in Innéthel itself, as her pregnancy progressed, and her exercise became a series of specific walk arounds to not overtax herself.  Ahrimaz had insisted and Jagunjagun had supported him, much to her disgruntlement.

The glue and the stench of metal-work stung his nose, the thock of mallets on wood, and the harsher ring of hammer on metal and anvil tumbled through his ears but somehow didn’t manage to exacerbate the howling under his skin.  People’s shouting direction to one another had nothing to do with him, nothing he was responsible for, however much he’d given them ideas dragged out of another world.  It was similar enough an existence that any other Innéan could have thought the same things.

The yellow brick was warm under his feet and he felt curiously isolated, safely insulated somehow, from the business all around him.  The family were all busy, every one, and he could finally draw breath without someone else standing close enough to inhale what he exhaled.

He turned away from the plaza and went up the hill, the wide brick path shrinking as he distanced himself from the noise and mess of other people’s lives, realizing that he carried the noise and mess of his own life contained in himself.  The roaring in his head, the shrieking in his veins, the readiness to fight or flee or endure all ticking and pulsing and quivering just under his skin.

It was surprising how much he’d controlled it, really.  It was still consuming him but not as much as it used to.  Limyé had pointed out how much the Empire constrained him in the shape he’d been hammered into.  Another reason he hurt.  It was like unclenching a tight-held fist.

The trees at the entrance to the Vale were in full leaf and the apple was in full flower, the lower branches festooned with ribbons drifting in the wind and empty wicker cages, the birds released to Her glory cheeping and singing and screeching and chattering all the way to the waterfalls.

Ahrimaz nodded at the priest scattering cracked corn for the ground feeders and to the priestess raking the path.  A young acolyte, high in the tree, tiny to not disturb the fragile old branches, removed the oldest cages so they not foul the trees growth.  They all smiled at him and he found his own mouth stretching in that strangest of grimaces, an open smile at another person.

He didn’t have to fear them. He didn’t have to make them obey him.  He didn’t have to hurt them.

He found that his father had taught him to try and force people to fill the aching void in his chest. It was possible to fill himself up with passion, and pain, but simple connection was somehow far more satisfying.  Where before he’d thought it insipid, too weak, too superficial, it now felt far deeper than any connection he’d ever had before.

He was mourning the loss of pain, he knew; mourning the loss of all the strong and violent emotions in his life, he’d been taught were the only constant companions.  Limyé and he had talked about it, for far longer than he wished to remember, thinking that the time was being wasted.  That pain and violence and anger and fear were all like separate relationships and he would have to let all of them go.  

“Break up with them, as it were,” Limyé had said.  “Not necessarily a widower to them because they are not dead to you.  If you need them, as a warrior, they will always be there.  But you will need to conscript them.”

“For a pacifist you talk quite a bit about war.”

“I’ve studied the trauma of warriors all my career as a healer.  Why do you think I was Ahrimaz’s personal physician?”

“I see.”

Didara sounded a lot like Limyé and Ahrimaz had no wish to inflict and project his healing flames to her new baby, so rather than sit in her armpit and talk, he came up here more.

The platform near the highest Veil waterfall was empty, the pool below a froth of white and green.  He settled to his knees and lost himself in the roar of the water, the touch of the wind, the occasional spray upon his face, even the odd green or fishy smell kicked up by the falling water.  When he’d first sat here the peace had both reminded him of when he was a child, hiding from hell, and later like an assault on his bulwark of horror.

Now it just was. And he was able to be in it, without quivering or running or shouting at it.  People moved along the paths and drifted in and out of his perception as he knelt.

Then, sharp as knife in the guts, came a silent wail of despair that Ahrimaz knew all too well, for having lived it this past year.  He shot to his feet, the sharp whistle of alarm bursting past his fingers that would call the healers and other priestesses and priests. His hand rose to join the other and Ahrimaz, the Emperor, dove into the foam of the Veil, hands sweeping for the body he knew had to be there.

The attempted sacred suicides had dropped off once the weather had changed but people still despaired of their lives.

The water smashed Ahrimaz down to the bottom and there, clinging to the smooth stones, was the one trying to inhale the Goddess’s essence and drown.  His fingers clenched in hair and clothing, he planted his feet on the stones, shoving them both to the surface, away from the hammer of falling water.

Ahrimaz looked down into the clenched shut eyes of the young woman he’d hauled out, weeping invisible in the water pouring off her face, hair tangled across, clenched in his fist as he kept her in the air.  He shook her slightly. “Breathe, woman.  You are still needed in this life, in this place.  The Goddess Liryen says so.” He knew it, in his bones.  There was no uncertainty in him.  This young woman's time to die was not now. 

And then the others were there, splashing out to take this troublesome, hurting child out of his hands.  He wasn’t sure what he would be able to do if someone didn’t come and take them away.  He wasn’t a healer.

He sloshed over to boulders at the edge and sat down to catch his own breath.  A towel appeared for him… a dry robe.  He managed at nod at the priest who brought them silently.  It was understood that if you hauled someone away from death you would be the first to speak afterwards.

It was a slightly muddy scramble back up to the platform, since the stone steps were wet and his feet were still covered in algae and muck.  He pulled off his wet clothing and began rubbing his hair dry, sitting naked in the sun.   

The High priestess Mara nodded at him, from her own mediation spot and he began laughing as he took up the priest’s robe.  “Even if I don’t start by wearing this, You’ll have me in them by the end of the day, somehow, hmmm, Liryen?”