371 - The white fire of the sun

When I’d lain there long enough that I did feel empty of shame, I went to my tent to do paperwork and be with Niku and Vriah. Kaninjer was not there—with a wound that was not life-threatening and already partly healed, I was very low on his list—but I still had the hot bath, and my squires did their best at massaging me. I went to bed early; Niku, always more of a night-owl than me, went out with Vriah.

When one thing passes, another impinges. The shame had eased, but I kept seeing the crash of glass on Saeririas’s arm, and his face corrupted into fungus from the mouth and eyes outward, falling in on itself, over and over and over. I couldn’t make it stop.

Because I wanted to capture him? Because he was young? Because that was only a fingerwidth from happening to me? I couldn’t see the reason clear. It was the instant destruction of his young face, one moment keen eyes, Aitzas-long nose, handsome cheekbones, all graven with his intelligence and personality, the next moment a rotting blob of sickly green, that I couldn’t make myself not see. I tried to fake the long breaths of sleep, but Ilachesa, watching over me, saw through it and didn’t start the sand-timer.

It was just a matter of time before he went to find Kaninjer to mix up the juice. In one of the infirmaries doing frantic surgery on someone who’d been waiting far too long already, spots of fungus growing on his face and in a line along the beach, clearly related to a portion of the Statute Assembly so therefore Miniren is going to make a point of order and Anae is walking towards me, divinely obsequious, while somewhere in the blue-lit cellar there is a smell like the lion-trench and the dripping of blood.

I am walking on a gray, cold plain, a bereft battlefield where the Arkan corpses are not lying down as they should. They slog aimlessly through muck up to their ankles, naked, faceless and earless; when I look closer I see they do have eyes and ears and mouths, but sealed under skin, so they cannot hear, or see, or speak, or breath. When they open their mouths the cavity is visible, dark through the skin.

Saeririas stands among them, wearing his cloak and armour but not the eagle-helmet, so his bright blond hair hangs free and shines in the sun; he has fungal growths all over, but is keeping his shape and beating them off, so they powder down on to the grey mud, green and blue and orange and yellow. He shakes his fist at the sky and yells upwards, “I shouldn’t be here! Forzak it, Father Muunas, all Gods, this is wrong! None of these solas should be here! This stuff, is this what I am now?”

I don’t know what to say to him, about whether anyone should be here; I don’t know where we are. I almost feel it would be impolite to ask; in my heart I actually don’t even want him to see me. The men all vanish, but him, and he sees me. “Fourth Shefen-kas Sharanoias! Why are you here?”

I have a sudden fear my own mouth is imprisoned in skin, and consider drawing my dagger to cut through it if it is—I’ll use my teeth to keep it from cutting too deep—but I remind myself I can see and hear, and things feel as they should. “I have no idea,” I say “I don’t know where this is, for one thing.” Perhaps he will take the hint and tell me.

“This is disgusting! Muunas would never allow such a thing! I don’t believe in Hayel!” Odd; I thought they all did.

“Neither do I... is that what you think this is?” Smothering, I remember. They could not breathe. I remember what Triadas said. “You have already seen Hayel. Hayel is created in men’s nightmares; Selestialis in Gods’ dreams. Thus it is the harder to keep alive.” That is why Saeririas is upset; he knows this, and felt that not believing in Hayel would keep him safe from it. But I put him through Hayel, and perhaps woke up a fear. The Lakans say that when the soul leaves the body, it can look back and see it.

“It’s a child’s fears is what it is! The Holy Book perverted—I had it read to me like everyone else. Good shot, by the way... I had no idea that fending that thing off would kill me.” He is not angry at me? The fungus is fading; he is staying a man, his fine-featured face staying a face. The sky seems brighter. Where, though it seems we are not moving, are we going?

“You credit the wrong person for the aiming,” I say, and tell him who. “I just watched.”

“My commendation to the fingers of the hand, too. I’m praising the mind!” Grey above is turning blue; grey gripping our feet is turning green and sunlit.

“Ehhh.... thank you,” I say.

“I nearly had you, didn’t I?” Where we are going seems familiar, in a way that brings a fiery lightness to my heart, like inspiration. “Not that I forgive you, yet. The Gods have yet to convince me that my death was necessary.”

I stand silent, considering how to answer him. Some say there is no “nearly” in war, or even in life; what happened happened and that is all that counts. “Nearly enough,” I say finally, “that even with bringing out the wings, I could win only a costly victory. Your thousands who went took thousands of mine with them.” Distantly across the grassy plain, I hear the sound of men training. We are on the Fields of Honour. “Without the wings... you might well have had me. I commend you. We are where you should be, Saeririas. When is death necessary?”

I expect him to hesitate, but he answers without pause, “When those who don’t hear or see or speak truth live. If they are blind, deaf and dumb enough, it takes war to correct it… the Gods allow us, as that is Their nature, as they allow us to die pointlessly of disease. Blots on the world remove themselves… but it’s up to you to take the Crystal Throne, hmm?”

I don’t entirely follow the last part, my mind seized with those who were here a moment ago, blinded, deafened and rendered dumb by their own skin. Those who don’t hear or see or speak truth… “Those,” I say, “who were just here?” And yet, his eyes and ears and mouth are free and open. Did he throw that off on death, the fungus eating away the skin that had formed in his life?

He sits; I sit beside him. I am having the conversation I dreamed of having with him, though we aren’t talking about what I thought we would. I thought it would be all strategy and tactics. “I had a priest who explained to me once that Hayel is being cut off from truth... or the Gods, if you must give names to the aspects of truth,” he says. “He always said that we create our own Selestialis or Hayel, and Hayel is being isolate from other people, spirit, everything.”

“Symbolized by being isolate from air… it makes sense,” I say. “There is a very old story about everyone having arms that won’t bend at the elbow after death... do you know that one? Hayel and Selestialis are simply the same banquet hall, but two different hosts of guests. In Hayel they struggle and fight to get food to their mouths, futilely, and so are eternally starving; in Selestialis they feed each other.”

He laughs. “No, I had never heard that, but it is beautiful.” Perhaps it’s a Yeoli tale, making fun of Arkans. “I wanted to see my wife again. My next child will be born soon...”

My tongue trips over itself. “For that,” I say when I can, “I am truly sorry. Given the choice, I’d have captured you. There was no way to manage it.”

“I know. I can’t think of a way I would have captured me if I were you, either.” That boyish phrasing reminds me of his age, which I ask: twenty-five, only a little older than me. “If you had, I should have to be ashamed… oh, that’s interesting. I’m done with shame. Shame is an emotion of the living. Anger is easier to grip but...”

“If shame is an emotion of the living, I am not dead,” I say. I am thinking of his wife, and the child who will hear much about him and never see him.

“No, Shefenkas, you are true-dreaming. As a Son of the Sun does. We’ll speak again, but you should wake up soon.”

I don’t want to. Ashamed though I feel, and helpless before his anger, I like his company. There is a warmth and charm about him. “Before I do... what did you mean, it’s up to me to take the Crystal Throne? Some would say that’s up to the Gods.”

Again he does not hesitate. Has death brought him this wisdom, or did he have it when he was alive? “Talk to your priest. Their realm is outside and through; only men may act. If They touched the world of matter, it would instantly cease to exist. It is our power and Their weakness. They stir not so much as a leaf but court us through the heart.”

This rings so true my bones thrum to it, like a bell when another bell of the same pitch is struck. He can’t have learned this from the dekinas. His face changes, into Kallijas’s. “He learns these things as he utters them.”

“Steel-Armed One,” I say. He may be speaking to me equal-to-equal, but I should at least respect Him by the title. “I... as athye, I guess I already knew what he told me. Our saying is, ‘As well to expect a voice from the sky.’ But the heart... I understand.”

The God smiles. It goes like a bolt of lightning through me. “Saeririas wishes to speak to you for the same reasons as you do him: the ways in which you and he are alike make you both rare. It will be.” I do not ask when. He is a God. He stands, towering over me, and I follow. He reaches out His hand to me, and says “Come.”

We are in a classic Arkan training-ground. The sand is perfectly white and smooth on my feet; along one side is a wall of perfect mirrors taller than His head, with a drinking-fountain like a waterfall from the sky. The weapons one may select are unlimited; I see Chirel, and sling it on when he tells me to arm myself. He takes the sword I know as Kall’s. He and I are both naked—it is the ultimate clean blade—and suddenly he is no taller than Kall, though the shrinking in no way diminishes him.

We draw, and bow our heads to each other Arkan-style, and begin. It is not sparring; where we are, neither of us need pull a blow. It is like fighting Kall again, but without the one darkness there was, thinking we’d never be able to speak, or love. I am flying on the wings of ecstasy again.

He solves me. He foot-sweeps me and I spin to land on my feet but land on my knees instead, with Him over me and my sword far off-angle to parry. He drives his down into me for the kill-stroke, not behind the collar-bone for the heart, but into the back of my neck and down my spine right to its base, the blade severing every vertebra. I cannot fall but all goes black.

When I come to myself, I am whole again, lying on the grass. I feel as if He whack-weeded me. “More?” He asks. I leap up, wanting to win.

He solves and kills me again. I leap up again when I wake up whole. I resolve never to give up. He kills me again, and again, and again. Sometimes in the heart or the neck-artery or the leg-artery and I am awash in my own spurting blood on the grass; sometimes in the windpipe and I die with my lungs screaming; sometimes on the head and it is no different than being struck unconscious except the black is a deeper black; sometimes He strikes off a limb and I keep fighting until I fall. In between, He carves along the lines of my scars, as if to make me relive all my fights. I wake whole and just as good at fighting as I was before, or better; He makes me rise above myself just as Kall did, and so love myself more. It is an ecstasy of fighting and blood and death and love, in which I cannot get in a scratch; in that way it is more like sparring Azaila.

The only thing that changes is that I grow tired. Each time He asks me, “More?” and I say “Yes,” until I say “Yes” in little more than a whisper and cannot raise my head out of the grass. It feels like when I collapsed at Chinisinal, the internal blackness and the grinding shame, shadowing my joy. It is not shame of being defeated—about that, I feel nothing but reverence for Him—but for being too weak to be worthy of defeat by Him again.

“No, bright soul,” He says to me. He grows to divine size again, and lifts me into His arms. I suddenly feel the eyes of the other Nine on me, watching silently. “Give up that shame to Me. I find your will and spirit honourable and worthy of praise. Rest.”

I close my eyes, as if I were a baby and He my mother. I lie still until I feel life spread like a fire up through the centre of me again. I want Him; I have all through, same as Kall—I may, if he accepts me. Clean service to the victor… I want to give Him that so badly I feel I’ll die of it if I can’t. I understand precisely how it was for Kall, why he was so fervent, and so passionate when I did let him. I look at His Kallijas-face, and know that He wants it of me too. But He will not ask; it is not clean, then; even a God will obey the tradition.

The words, I think. What are they… “I... offer myself... to you... freely... and without... let...” Something like that: I hope He understands.

He laughs, shaking me through and through. In the shaking, somehow, strength is poured back into me. He sets me on my feet and lets go of my shoulders, the movement having a feeling of formality in it, formality in allow me my free choice. I never knew an Arkan, even an Arkan God, could ever do something that feels so Yeoli. “I accept you.”

I fling myself to my knees before Him, throw my arms around his hips, seize Him in my mouth right down to my throat so He is pleasured His whole length. He smells and tastes like Kallijas, but also wildly, unearthly sweet, like the wideness of the sky beneath my wing, or the warmth of a meal shared around a fire with those you love most. He gasps and seizes my hair, holding my head in a steely grip, and thrusts, His manhood feeling like pure light. In His passion He is not gentle, but He need not be; I am giving myself entirely.

He throws back His head. His words come through His hands and His manhood as much as His voice. “I will bless you. I will give you of Myself.” When He comes it is like the white fire of the sun, purifying all it touches, burning painlessly down into me. I drink and drink of Him, tears raining, and feel searing light spreading all through me along the veins and nerves and life-force lines, just as Selinae spread Herself through me by Her hair the first time.

His manhood falls lax from my lips. He lifts me by my shoulders, and turns me away from him; gripping me by my chest on either side, He catches my nipples between His fingers. As victor, He is not required by custom to pleasure me; it is the vanquished who must give service and expect nothing. He is doing this for love. He lowers me onto His manhood, which is hardened again, and takes mine in His huge hand.

I open entirely. He fills me with light, from between my legs to my nipples to my mouth, which He kisses by turning and arching back my head. Without willing it, pinned with light in His five grips, I writhe, then thrash like the dying. When I come the colours blind me, then send me out of consciousness.

I woke in the Arko-hot darkness, sweated all over, and felt the liquid stickiness clinging to the sheet, and running down between and outside my thighs. Niku had come back and slid in while I slept. “Ama Kalandris,” she murmured. “A-gain?”