#72 - I Suppose He's Feeling Better

Pelahir settled on the cleaned bench at the turn-off to the hay barn.  In this village it belonged to the Elector, who was mostly off in Innéthel, to be in her seat when the Hand called for discussion.  As such it was called ‘Elector’s Lane’ and touched the White Road just outside the village.  It was the furthest out the gas lamps came, the last one along the road and two just outside the barn doors.

The road lay, still half plowed and Teel sat on the bench already, his notebook open, breath steaming as he sat, warming his pen inside his mittened hand so that the ink not freeze and crack the reservoir.

Just visible down the hill was the local Goddess grove, neatly laid out stones all shoveled clear, ringed by gas lamps at all the cardinal points.  Invisible, behind the central stone, Teel had seen Ahrimaz sit with the young priestess.

“We’re just going to let a dangerous maniac sit alone with one of our holy people?” Teel asked Pel as he sat down.

“She’s holy enough to defend herself, if she needs to, and he’s broken enough to not attack other people at this point, Limyé says.” Pel folded himself into his furs, beat the snow off his fur boots and tucked them up, cross-legged, under his gakti, the Cylak name for their heavy fur coat.  “She’s trying to point out to him that him killing himself pays for nothing.  Especially not in this world where he hasn’t sinned.”

“The priestess’s name is Mara?  Named for her grandmother, the old priestess I understand?” Teel licked the point of his pen.

“Yes.  Mara the Elder is apparently a priestess at the Veil now.”

“Hmmm.  I should get one of my colleagues to go talk to the lot of them at the Veil.”

“You should.  According to Mara –“ Pel shrugged when Teel looked at him.  “I talked to her last night to tell her our shaman wouldn’t be able to make it from Riga… something otherworldly going on.” The clouds were finally beginning to break up and the snow kicked up by the light breeze began to glitter all around as the sun came out.  “According to Mara, there’s a lot fewer people trying to end their lives at the Veil and at other Goddess shrines all over the country.”

“Really?”

“Finding out that there is another world seems to have jolted a lot of people out of their death spirals,” Pel said.  “Buron, my shaman, sent a letter along and he mentioned that the spirit world is much troubled of late and there is upheaval everywhere.  There’s been a Fire Tiger seen and more people brought from that other world, apparently by the will of Aeono.”

“I… see…” Teel’s pen scribbled across the page.  “I’m going to have to hire people all over the world to keep up with these stories!”

“But more people are buying your broadsheet because you’re the ones telling everyone what’s really going on, instead of making up fantasy stories.”

“Hmm.” He made another three or four notes.  “These other people?  --“

“Two men,” Pel interrupted him.  “Couriers, I believe, from that other world, but that’s all I know.  Outside of Riga States… in the middle of our herd-track.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Teel said.  He looked up and around.  “Where did the Ambassadors go?  I saw them leave just a while ago.”

“Didara is fascinated by the inkworks here.  And the paperworks.  She’s still being mobbed by children wherever she goes so that has to be settled first and then she’s going to look at what she can see of the factories.”

“And Jagunjagun?  I hope he’s still being careful, with his rec—“

Pel interrupted him with an upraised hand.  Teel could see his grin even through his scarf.  There was a rumble, a thunder building. He turned to look down the road to see an enormous bow-wave of snow curling up and billowing off to either side of the road.  “What?”

“He was thinking about the snow-plows we use and saying that oxen are terribly slow,” Pel said and started chuckling.  “Ologbon modified a plow and…”

Teel and Pel both ducked, Teel tucking his book fast under his coat as the vertical wall of fluffy snow billowed over both of them, curling up and away from the road and from the trotting elephant.  Ologbon, heavily covered in snow spray, sat on the elephant’s neck chanting to him as he pushed the modified snowplow along the smooth military road.  The little man waved merrily as they roared by, Jagunjagun’s bright red earmuffs flapping, his tail sticking straight up out of his coat.

The rumble of their passage had faded by the time the snow wave settle enough for Teel to dig himself out of the wall of snow. Shovel crews recruited from the Horse Guard came rattling behind and began digging openings in the laneways.

“Heya, Staglord!”

“Holya, Albin!”

The shovellers quickly had the bench dug out and left half a dozen people to dig out Elector’s lane.

Teel stood on the newly plowed road, marveling it had happened so quickly.  “I suppose that Ambassador Jagunjagun is feeling much better.”

“I think that too.  I would not want to be the person trying to stop him in what he wishes to do.”  Pel was still grinning and beating snow out of his furs.

“No. Considering the weight of that plough he was pushing, and the weight of the snow… at speed.”

“It is impressive.”

“Indeed.  I wouldn’t want to go to war with their country, ever.”

#71 - The Imaryans Never Learned to Hate

I am soaked with blood.  I can smell it and taste it in the rancid air of their burning city. Shit too. Even the ones so scared they shit themselves before they died, did that.  Even them. I HATE THEM. All the buildings around me are burning. My soldiers are hurling bodies into the flames not taking any care to see if they’re already dead.  I have a babe, or rather half a babe in one hand and the Flamen in the other.  The sword is blazing, dripping red as the core of me.  I am on fire, screaming as I hurl the dead child into the kneeling mother’s face.

She catches the body and crouches lower, her hand raises in that strange ‘patting motion’ Imaryans use as a blessing and I swing the sword roaring in fear and rage. I hate them. I fear them. I HATE THEM. They must die. I’m screaming inside.  Every death I feel like the whip on my skin.  How dare they not fear me? How dare they bless me?

I woke up screaming again. My feather bag is soaked with sweat and Didara and Jagunjagun are both shaking me. “Sorry,” I husk and roll over, out of the bag, stagger to the human sized door, rip it open to let the snow billow in and stagger out far enough to close it behind me before I vomit blood into the snow.

“I want to die. I killed them and tortured them and mocked them, trying to get them to hate and fear me and all they did was bless me and die!  I’m never going to be able to pay for this!”  I thrust my face into the clean snow. It’s falling heavily enough that the scarlet splash of my spew is already dulled and disappearing in the gas lamp by the barn.  No fire in the barn, but light outside, safely behind glass.

I don’t feel the cold as I kneel here.  It’s nice.  It’s calm and quiet.  “I’m a monster.  Can I just fall asleep out here and remove me from this?  And you needn’t tell me that I’m not a monster in this world.  In this world the city of Imaru is not burned, the people are not all slaughtered.  I destroyed Yhom as well.  I decimated the Cylak herds to break them and make them bow to the Empire.”

“I certainly will not tell you that you are not a monster,” Limyé says as he wraps a horse blanket over my snowy self, urges me to my feet and back into the barn, into the tiny leather and hay smelling equipment and tack room.  He pushes me down to sit on the hay before settling across from me.  “You horribly slaughtered thousands of people.  If you succeed in killing yourself you can really only atone for one life.  You want to atone for what you did?  Stay alive and work for the great good of humanity.”

I stare at him, my mouth full of the taste of blood and bile, the snow now melted and I’m sodden and shaking so hard I can hardly  hold the blanket around me.  Then I start laughing.  It is a screaming kind of laugh.  It is instead of screaming I understand and he lets me go on until I cannot draw breath any more.  Then he shakes me silent and holds a cup to my lips.  “It is just water,” he says.  “Let me dry you off.”

The water on my face is snow I tell myself.  And it is, mostly.  He rubs my head dry with a towel that looks like it came out of one of the Horse Guard’s saddlebags, or barracks, harsh and rough and efficient.  The roughness helps, even though his touch is too gentle.  The water has the weird metallic taste that it always has when one has vomited.

He hands me a shirt and a pair of breeches and I realize with a start that I was naked, had run out naked into the snow. I pull on the warm clothing and as I yank the shirt over my head I close my eyes and see flames again but I recognize them as funeral pyre flames, not the random burning of cities.  I feel grief and rage that is not mine but is perfectly mine.  I sit, stunned.  I stare past Limyé, as though I've taken a sword through the guts.

“The other Ahrimaz… he’s killed the mother in that world.  Rutaçyen forced to pretend to be her twin.  He’s killed her.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel it. I just saw her funeral pyre.”  I shake my head and finish the water, holding it out to him.  “He’s becoming more like me,” I said.  “He’s killed her for betraying him, I imagine.”  I am glad that neither my hand nor my voice shake.

Limyé takes the cup and sets it down, looking away.  Then he holds out his arms to invite an embrace.  I shake my head.  “No, Limyé, no.  The demoness applies the whip and hook to the soul of those deserving.”  I shake my head again.  “That was something you Imaryans just couldn’t seem to learn.  I deserve every pain, until I atone for theirs.”

“One man cannot atone for the agony of thousands.  We will talk about that more, later.  Right now, as far as you know, you can only grieve that in your world both women who were your mother are dead.”

He is too gentle to the pieces of me, all of me, the shattered bits of mirror that are being shuffled back together again, for some reason, by some Being or Beings… or just by the madness of Imaryu that thinks all humans can be healed.

How did I move to be enfolded in his arms?  Where did the blasted cat come from?  I know that I must have moved because he will only offer, I am required to take responsibility.  He will not force comfort on me.  I must take it up myself.

Heylia doesn’t care for such niceties of consent for healing and has plastered herself along my back.  This place. This place. This world. Mother is dead. Mama was dead years ago. But… Mother is dead.  I cannot let myself weep, but neither can I pull myself from the comforting embrace of a blasted, scorching, be-damned Imaryan healer.  Damn his eyes.  Damn him.  Scorch him. I am weeping.  Silently. Mother is dead and burned.  I am truly orphaned three times over.  Mother is dead.

#70 - Like a Man On Fire, Chivvied Into the Water

"He won’t go into the barracks and lie down in a bed, will he?” Pelahir asked Limyé quietly.  The two men stood looking over the dimness that was the hay barn, barely large enough for the two elephants.

“No.  I am amazed that he made himself step out of the cell, the stage of healing he was at,” Limyé said. Pelahir’s smile flickered across his face and then fell away.  The elephants were dozing, with Jagunjagun lying down and Didara sleeping standing.  Ahrimaz lay coiled in his feather bag tucked next to Jagunjagun and Ologbon.  Sure and Teh and Heylia lay snuggled around the two men and even the mare  stood with her ears pinned back flat, head down just inside the door, as close as she could get without getting too close to the grey, snoring mountains that upset her.

“I don’t understand about the animals,” Pel said.  “They adored our Ahrimaz but this man has not loved animals, but rather tortured them.”

“Been forced to torture them.” Pelahir nodded acknowledgement of the Imaryan’s point.  “The moment he was out of that world, that whole world, he began changing.”

“To fit this one?”

“Possibly.  I don’t have enough information to do more than guess.”  Limyé shrugged.  “He’s becoming more and more like our Ahrimaz every day.  I am assuming our Ahrimaz is being similarly driven in the world of the Empire.”

“He’d hate it.  It would drive him crazy to…” Pel stopped. “Ah.  So… perhaps… can our world heal their Ahrimaz and can our Ahrimaz heal that world before both men go completely berserk?”

Limyé made another note in his book.  “It is entirely possible.  I am starting to wonder if I should be consulting more closely with the Priestesses about this.”

“There’s a Shaman who has settled here.  She works well with the young priestess in this village.”

“I shall have time to consult, I believe,” Limyé said, making another notation in his book.  “I heard the plowmen talking to you when they came in.”

“It is snowing again and the plows are behind. We’ll be here for most of a week, it looks like.” Pelahir shrugged again.  “So once you’ve spent some more time with our broken Ahrimaz, come join Teel and I at the barracks.  We have a very nice tea for you.”

“I shall bring along a small bottle of medicinal brandy that I have in my possession.”

“Excellent!”

**

I write from hell, albeit a hell that I now realize I have some control of, a hell that was forced onto and into my young mind and body by the monster.  The Scorching Demon herself.  In my father’s mind.  He took his own hell and poured it down my throat.

I… may be able to one day look at my actions without wanting to howl, to scream, to gnaw on my own limbs.  The scars on my forearms are both raw and I haven’t had an orgasm in days.  I’m not sleeping well, though my dreams – when I do not have foaming nightmares – are gentle.  Limyé gives me remedies that edge the whole world in gold or pink and blunt all the edges of my agony so that I have a chance of sleeping peacefully.

I imagine their Ahrimaz in my world.  Soft, emotional, decent, horrified by ruthless dispatch, disgusted by the violence expected of him… If Mother and Uncle and perhaps Arnziel… no, he’s too much a fool, they’d never talk to him if they discovered something so profoundly and potentially coercive.--  They would gleefully wring that Ahrimaz out and use him up to put themselves in power.  Uncle’s cadre are all military and when I was there, I would send them all out away from me in the hopes they’d get themselves killed.  He’d never managed that so he’s as dangerous as my brothers.  He wants to be Emperor, I know.  I wonder how this-Ahrimaz is handling that-Inné?

Did they find him out?  Did they expose him and let the nobles kill him and begin trying to put their own on the throne?  I don’t feel he’s dead.  And these people who say that he’s such a gentle person also say that they could see his violence and craziness merely exaggerated in me.  Does this mean I have the same capacity to love as he does?

I look at this battered, water damaged, ink-spattered little volume of my introspections and wonder if Teel would be interested, since his ripping me open exposé has neither brought howling mobs to rip me limb from limb, nor secret cadres of would-be rulers wanting me to figurehead an Empire here.  It did not even damage me, much.

Such an Imaryan idea.  Living an open, whole hearted life?  The idea terrifies me, so of course I’m certain that is the way I shall be driven, like a man on fire, blind to his own salvation, being chivvied into the water.

And like such a victim I am fighting them blindly burning them as they struggle to fling blankets about my flaming soul. I wish I could see my direction so that I could fling myself into my own salvation, but until then my eyes are firmly clenched shut to save them from melting down my face.

I shall have to share this gruesome image with Limyé.  He will make copious notes in his book and hear it all calmly, as he does everything.

It would be nice to not be running around with my symbolic hair on fire though, however metaphoric.

 

#69 - They Keep Him From Killing Himself

The march back to White was much much slower than the breakneck pace they’d set out with, since they were moving at the recovering ambassador’s pace.

Teel’s wrists and arms and his legs and his back all hurt and he welcomed the switch from riding to walking, sliding down to lead his horse in place, rather than fighting the animal from its back.  None of the Innéan horses were used to the elephants yet and tended to start and then bolt at the slightest excuse.

Pelahir rode up beside him, between the elephants and the horses, slid down and walked beside Teel.  He didn’t need to lead his doe, who was indifferent to the ambassadors once introduced.  She followed along the cleared road at his shoulder and occasionally rubbed her eye shield against him, making him stagger.  He just chuckled and scratched underneath.

“How is your horse coming on then, M’sieu Raconteur?” His smile was obvious even behind his own goggles and the face mask drawn with wolverine fangs.

Teel pulled his own wool scarf down and rubbed a mittened hand over his dry lips, carefully.  “Well enough.  The whole lot of them seem like elephants make them crazy.”

“Indeed.”  Just behind them, and beyond Jagunjagun’s careful hobble so as not to overstretch the stitches on that side, they could hear Didara rumble singing in the white cold.  Up on the doe’s back Ologbon stirred where he’d been curled up against Pel’s back in one of the Cylak feather bags, modified so he could put his hands out if he chose.

“She sing him song theory of ‘Being Awake’,” he said.

“Still?” Teel said.  “Again?  Didn’t she sing him that yesterday?”

“Oh, no, that just beginning.  Theory that people are awake even when sleeping or hurt.  People BE.  Song-theory is five days long.”

“Five days,” Teel said faintly.  “So… Didara is equivalent to our scientists?”

“Yes/no, no/yes, maybe?”

Pel snorted laughter.  “That clears it right up!  From what Jagunjagun tells me it’s a bit like our shamans and your priests AND inventors.”

Jagunjagun, who listened, ear muffs flapping as he stepped gingerly on, in his fur mukluk boots and wool coat, nodded.  He was learning Innéan with astonishing speed. “Your Ahrimmmmmaz has a people’s ear,” he said.  “He can hear our language even below what our beloved iti-igi here can!”

“I refuse to be offended,” Ologbon said in the snottiest Innéan accent and that made both Pel and Teel wheeze with laughter, pressing face masks tight to keep from sucking in too cold air.

Ahrimaz lay on Didara’s back and neck and head, covered by another feather bag as she strode slowly before her brother, making sure the footing was good enough for him, though they had assured her that the Innéan high road was much much better than the muddy and fading little Rigan/Cylak track.

Pel nodded and pointed at Jagunjagun’s ears.  They had just swiveled forward in what clearly was shock.  “Ologbon what was just said?  Did you hear?”

“Um… your Ahrimaz just added two whole sound cycles to Didara’s theory.  She’s thinking about it.  He’s… odd, your Ahrimmmmmmaz.”

“He is that,” Pel said quietly.  The whistle came back down the line for everyone to mount up and they were within resting distance of the next village, La Jolie Cuervos.

The groans of complaint were pretty evenly distributed between mounts and men as they mounted once  more, but they knew that the military barracks at Cuervos would hold them all warm, even the ambassadors.  The Cylak had sent ahead with one of their messenger raptors and a hay barn had been hurriedly modified.

“Pelahir?”

“Yes, raconteur?” – “Teel, please.”  “Yes, Teel?”

“What does Limyé say about Ahrimaz and these… these elephants?”

“They are good for him.  They might keep him from killing himself.”

“Oh, that’s good then.” Ologbon sat up, looking between Pel and Teel, then rumbled something that had Jagunjagun flapping his ears and making the horses fidget.