007 - Life itself sang to me

I went back into training after the three full-mourning days were over. Esora-e and Urakaila, one of the other teachers, sword-sparred to inspire us as they often did. That had always made me feel unmixed joy before; now I found myself thinking, ‘What are they doing?’ Then when it came time to wrestle, it was, ‘What am I doing?’ I was with Mana first, and he kept beating me, miming breaking my neck or crushing my throat with the usual glee, but each time I got him into a position where he was at my mercy, he would somehow squirm loose, my hands losing their strength when it came time to finish him. Against everyone else, it was exactly the same. I felt Esora-e’s eyes on me.

This had to be solved, I saw, and only I could solve it. What worried me most was that I was, at heart, a coward, and my father’s death had brought it out. Simple solution: I would climb Haranin to the edge of the highest cliff I knew the way to, look into my own heart, and, if I was a coward, throw myself off. Yeola-e would not need me.

But before I could slip away, Esora-e stopped me at the gate of the School of the Sword, and led me into the antechamber where the Sword of Saint Mother, the one Yeola gave to the first Yeolis from her own hand—hangs. He sat us down before it.

I’d lifted it—I remembered the sound of the chains from which it hung, like a brook’s trickling, when I’d done it—and that had apparently been a great thing, but now somehow it seemed bitter and darkened. This sacred thing had a stain on it now; how could that be? I realized: what I was learning to do in this place was what had been done to my father.

I thought of my own bright promise, the polished wristlets I would get on my graduation, the triumphal parades I would lead through the town as I had seen my father do, the flowers and streams of wine raining on me, and Chirel, forged in the perfect curve which, extended, would form the circle of rya-kya, nothing/everything—all these things I’d looked forward to making my life about. They all came crashing down. All lies, these beauties—all masks worn by death.

My body was suddenly going hot and cold by turns, and didn’t seem my own. What was I doing? Letting it, and my soul, be shaped into those of a killer. The joy of training turned rotten and evil in my mind, a betrayal of my own heart. Even my name was a thing of war, given to me purposely for that and meaning what it meant. But it was my only name. I wanted to scream for mama, or flee into some dark warm cave where no one would ever see me again, like the one I’d crept out of not so long ago. Or leap off the cliff.

Esora-e took my shoulders in his hands. “Chevenga, tell me what’s in your heart.”

“I never want to be a warrior.” I buried my face in my hands.

I could not see his expression, but I heard a long deep breath, a readying one like before a fight. “Well… it took courage even to say that,” he said. He’d been worried about the same thing, that I was in truth a coward. “Look at me, my child, and tell me why.”

I looked at him. “I never want to kill anyone.”

His moustache twitched. I thought of how he liked to show off his scars, and recount what happened to those who’d given them to him; how he talked of “full-splitting the child-rapers” and seeing their blood fountain, laughing, while my mothers both pursed their lips. I thought of my blood-father; I’d picked a flower on the mountain, and he’d said, “You’ve killed it. Up here where summer is so short and so it takes so long for them to grow back… well, there are many more. But never forget what you are doing. That’s the hardest thing, in war: never forgetting what you are doing.” He understands best, I thought, as always. Understood; he’s been picked.

“Anyone?” said my shadow-father. “Even if he is trying to kill you? Think of—” he spoke the name of my father’s assassin. “What he did was twice wrong: first, murder, and second, for mindless hate. We kill for the same reason Saint Mother gave us the Sword: life, and only in fair fights within our borders. Play that out in your mind, lad, as you have before.”

I did as he asked, imagining the enemy as a monster, as usual. I parried the blows in my mind as always, but when the time came to strike him dead, my hand in my imagination went weak as it had in real life in the class. “I couldn’t win,” I said. “So I should not be there.”

“Play it properly. He’ll kill you, if you don’t kill him. You know that.”

Playing it that way awoke my own fear, and it went as it always had before; any sympathy for him was gone from my heart. But afterwards as he lay dead, he turned from a monster back into a man, and I saw him on a pyre like my father’s, heard his wife and his small children weeping, and felt remorse to my bones. But the next enemy was coming, and the next… I would never tire, for that would be choosing death, but keep going, kill, regret, kill, regret, all my life. With any luck I’d die before it drove me mad.

Never imagine children cannot get clear glimpses into the future.

But in this tangle, I felt, there had to be a thread of pure rightness somewhere. Every problem, I’d always heard, has a solution. I thought furiously, my hands curled into fists, until I found it, shining with truth’s magnificence. “There shouldn’t be any wars!”

I thought his face would light up with inspiration, as my heart had. Instead he laughed bitterly, and pulled a lock of my hair. “No truer words were ever spoken! Yet those pesky foreigners keep attacking us. You’d think they’d never heard the wisdom of the great sage Chevenga.”

Even if it wasn’t brilliant, I was sure it wasn’t deserving of mockery. Anger made me stubborn, as always. “When I’m semanakraseye, I’ll end it,” I said. “There won’t be any more wars. That’s what Saint Mother really wanted.”

“You will?” he said, his dark brows going up under his fore-curls, which had no grey in them then, but a smile playing on his lips. “By not being a warrior? You’ll go visit King Astyardk in Laka and charm him into stopping his thugs from raiding our farmfasts? When King Enjaliansi of Tor Ench lays claim to our port towns because they were inside the old empire a thousand years ago, you’ll say, ‘You can’t have them, but I don’t like killing people, so let’s not have a war, all right?’ You’ll sweet-talk the herd-raiders: ‘I’m not a warrior, so will you dear fellows kindly stop absconding with our sheep’?”

He was still making fun of me. “I’ll make them listen,” I said, stabbing three fingers of my sword-hand into the stone floor as I’d seen Servants do on their desks when making a point strongly. “Like when two of us quarrel and Mama makes us do chiravesa, I’ll say ‘You be me and I’ll be you.’”

“So that you will gain understanding of why they abscond with our sheep, and they, why we’d like to keep them?” He laughed out loud. “Fourth Chevenga, don’t look at me like that. It’s not really you I’m making fun of… it’s your age. You’ve spoken well, for seven. I’ve listened. Now it’s my turn to speak. You listen.” He took my face between his weapon-callused hands, his eyes turning the grey of storms.

“You think there is always a parent standing over people who are arguing. But when you grow up, there is none. Between you and some greedy tyrant, there is no such safety. This is foreigners we speak of, heartless barbarians, ‘those who will not listen to your words of justice and sense.’ Saint Mother was right; they came. And they still come.

“While you were showing off your naivete you were also insulting your ancestors. You really think you were the first ever to think of making peace? What you don’t see is that it cannot be done without a sheathed sword on your hip, to make good and clear to the foreigner he’s best off being reasonable. Otherwise what he will demand, ultimately, is all our land and all of us as slaves. You know your history, at least that much… you didn’t say none of us should kill, you just said you don’t want to kill. You’d rather leave it to others.

“Well, all right, no one has to do everything they don’t choose. But, we serve each other best by giving each other our greatest gifts. True?” I signed chalk. “Good. And what are you are showing better promise for, than fighting?”

He was right. I was good at my book studies, but not among the best. I was competent enough at playing the harp and flute and making things with my hands, but not out of the ordinary. I had no other uncommon gifts. Then something came to me: “Making friends.” I had succeeded in befriending anyone I’d wanted to, as long as I could remember.

He waved it off. “It’s foreigners, Chevenga! You can’t make friends with them! Oh, they might fake it; then when you are fooled, thinking what great friends they are, they’ll stab you, and Yeola-e, in the back. Of the other skills, from which come callings, you are best at fighting—deny it?”

I signed charcoal but said, “I have a calling. I’m going to be semanakraseye.”

“Well,” he said, “I was coming to that. Are you going to send out others to do what you yourself will not? Are you not still just as responsible for those deaths?” It fell to us to command. My blood-father’s words. I felt weak and sick.

Plenty of semanakraseyel, in fact, have not been warriors, including my aunt Tyeraha. For a century after the War of the Travesty, it was actually illegal for a semanakraseye to fight, and even now, a kraiya-semanakraseye, warrior-demarch, is seen as something of a relic of a time long-gone. It was compulsory only by old-fashioned rules of honour, really, and likely never will be again. But my grandmother and blood-father had both done it, and my shadow-father had followed my blood-father.

“Imagine, the Enchians invade, and you send out an army to die on Yeoli furrows while you sit safe in Assembly Palace. The numbers are even, but we lose and ten thousand die. Those who are left bind up their wounds and wonder what went wrong, how it could have been different. ‘I know one thing,’ one says. ‘Fourth Chevenga would have been a great warrior had he not quit his training because he didn’t want to kill anyone. With another First General First as good as Tennunga, think how the battle would have gone.’ Another says, ‘My father got killed by an Enchian too, and I didn’t quit my training.’ Another says, ‘How could he? How could Chevenga betray us like this?’ All down the line they curse you, and why not? You’ve denied your people your greatest gift.

I threw my hand up between his to grab my forelock, tears burning in my eyes and sickness in my guts.

“Think of those who rightfully envy you!” he said. “‘The strength and quickness and brilliance he was born with, why don’t I have that, when I’m willing, and he’s not? How is that fair? I’m going to die, and Yeola-e lose, because I don’t, and because we don’t get the next best thing--Chevenga being here himself. And he’s the semanakraseye…! If he doesn’t give his all and best, why should anyone else bother?’”

I couldn’t speak, only pull my forelock so hard it hurt, tears running down my cheeks. I hated myself.

“You were bred to be a warrior, Chevenga… you don’t know that, because he was too gentle, and she still is, to tell you that.” I realized he meant my blood-parents. “He and his mother before him and their ancestors all the way back married warriors, the best warriors, so their children would have the talent in their blood. That’s why the Shae-Arano-el do the stream-test the old hard way, too? You will stand out on the field and gain the promotions and be loved by all who fight with and under you, not by chance. All their choices led up to you. And you would throw it away…! Chevenga, what do you think your blood-father would think if he knew?”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking only of the cliff, and how free I would feel with the wind rushing through my hair, faster and faster, knowing the answer to all dilemmas and all blame was an instant away.

“We are all bound to our duty,” he said. “You’re not cowardly about pain or death. But if you shrink from your duty, you’ll be proven a coward anyway, since a coward is one ruled by fear, of whatever kind. I don’t think you really are, my son, and Tennunga’s. I just think your head’s deranged with grief, as can happen to anyone, for a while after a death. But in the end, it lies with you to prove it. It’s as I’ve always taught you. Whatever hinders you, you’ll have to conquer. Or fail entirely.” He let go of my face, got up and strode out of the room, leaving me alone with the Sword.

I lay flat on my face under it, two hands fists in my hair. I didn’t feel I had the strength to move. But I didn’t want to be here; I wanted to be on Haranin, where there was the clarity of the cliff. His words echoed as I ran up, but the ones my blood-father had said, unwaveringly, were clearer. “As always, you choose.”

The wind sang through the crags, growing cool as I passed the tall pines and then the stunted ones higher up. Clouds covered the sun and the many-hued striations in the rock turned dull. On the edge of the cliff I sat, dangling my legs, tiny treetops blue in the haze between my toes.

I took stock of myself. My legs and arms, so strong when I wrestled, my hands that were faster than anyone else’s, whether it was hot-hands or sword-practice, my mind that so easily perceived and understood and acquired the moves, so that there always seemed to be a special harmony between my war-teacher and me that the other kids couldn’t share. Tightening my arms, I took my weight onto them, while a hawk soaring far above the forest below hung tiny as a dust-speck between my feet. I was going to be semanakraseye so these things of mine had never been really mine; Esora-e was right, in that way, just agreeing with what I’d already learned. But my blood-father was right too. Even in the time of our greatest helplessness, our path always has a fork.

As always, I would choose; go on with my training, or leap. For me, life was bound to the semanakraseyesin and the semanakraseyesin to the sword. But I was not bound to life, if I didn’t want to be. I was less bound to life, in fact, than most, knowing I’d only have a short time in it.

I shifted forward a little, so my hips were just on the edge, to better consider. Had a gust of wind come from behind me right then, my story would have been this short. None did, but I leaned, and just for an instant, I thought I was gone.

I leaned back, hearing a rushing like wind in my ears. The ground was suddenly tenuous under me, as if the nothingness beyond its edge somehow made all solids near it dubious, and I felt unmoored from it. The wind filled with song—the notes of the harmonic singer, one the dark and steady tone like a stone flute’s, the other soaring high and bitter and wild like the wind itself. Bound to one core like those of a jewel, facets of my life flashed in my mind: my turquoise, blue and purple marya, the height of the mountain racing all through my legs after a fast climb, the oyster of the chicken in honey sauce, Assembly Hall with its oak-paneled solemnity, the wildness of grown-ups dancing at the love-feast, the rock and incense smell of Sukala’s cave and her cracked laughter, the pride as I found I could do a move I had not been able to do before.

It all called to me, “No! Come back!” Not only things of the past, but of the future, as if from the land further away, blued by distance, hailing me from ahead, “Don’t give up on what you will do!” The voice was the breath of All-Spirit, I knew; the vastness in it had a collective name: Yeola-e. The song of the triumph, that I’d first heard during my father’s parade, ran through my head.

Do we defend it grimly, like a miser his gold?
No, stiffness is the way of death.
We choose, we choose, always, we choose.

Do we subsist and grasp, clawing the earth?
No, we move free as the wind and so prevail.
We choose, we choose, always, we choose.

Do we endure and wear our pain with pride?
No, we rejoice at life, and live in rejoicing.
That we choose, we choose, always we choose.

Life itself sang to me, reminding me that it was something too precious to give up. My tears of anger and shame turned to those we weep from hearing music too beautiful to bear.

The wind’s voice faded to a whisper, and I lay flat on the rock and wept. For my father, the first tears I shed that were for his loss, not my own. For myself, who would leave this too soon. For all the people, in their terrible number, more huge than any currently-living crowd could be, doing and using things that were incomprehensible to us now, a thousand races who had died as one with their devices and arts and knowledge beyond imagining in the Fire, never properly mourned because not enough were left to mourn them. I wept for the cow slaughtered for the pot, the starflower picked, the leaf fallen from the tree, the dead fly on the window-sill, the mouse in the cat’s mouth, my little brother who’d been killed by the stream, Sukala when she would go. I wept for all that would die: all that lived.

I could not leave it. Nor did it matter that I would leave it too soon; only one thing mattered. In the story of the Fire as my grandmother had told it to me, power had been in the hands of kings so that people could do little, but everyone had known it was coming. I asked her, “What did they do?”

“Some erased any thought of it from their heads and lived as if there were no threat. Some lived like warriors, fast and reckless and with no thought for tomorrow, since there’d be no tomorrow. Some went insane, turning frozen or berserk; some withered inwardly and died in spirit, then in body. Some prepared for it, building strongholds deep in the land. Some protested and debated bravely in the attempt to stop it. Some prayed, some resigned themselves and some just hoped.”

“But they all died,” I said. “So, in the end, what they did didn’t matter.”

“No,” she said. “But while they lived, it did.” Same for me. It would not matter how briefly I lived, if I lived well enough.

I made the first of my personal laws then. I had, I guessed, about half the time I might have otherwise expected, so I took my crystal in two hands and said, “All-Spirit be witness: I will do two times as many things as everyone else and love people two times as hard all my life, second Fire come if I am forsworn.” I think of it in the childish wording to this day.

Back down in the School, the Sword hung black between walls of plain white, unadorned, ungraven. It is not the Yeoli style to surround our sigil of war with scenes of glorious battles or splendid victories, of the nobility of war nor even the drama. It just hangs plain, neither dark nor light, pain or joy, loss or win, but bearing the potential of both.

My father had never said “Do it,” like Esora-e, or “Don’t do it,” like a Haian—just, “Never forget what you are doing.” I had not known the dark half; then when I’d learned it, I had forgotten the light. Now I saw both.

‘Esora-e wants me to fight because it’s what he wants,’ I thought, ‘not because he sees this. He doesn’t. Well, I see it, so I’ll fight because of it and nothing else, and if he doesn’t like it, too bad, but I bet he won’t notice.’I took the grip again, and the Sword rose in my hand, a little bit more easily.