50 - The click of the door of fate closing

Excerpt from the Pages of Arko, Imbas 32, 51^st to last Year of the Present Age –

During the announcement of Minis Aan’s candidacy and Chevenga’s recommendation of him, Minis was asked by a Yeoli scribe why his political philosophy seems so Yeoli, and was that due to Chevenga’s influence. In his answer, Minis said yes, in part, but also made extensive reference to ancient Arkan traditions which held the Imperator accountable to the citizenry. When he was finished answering, Chevenga interceded to add his own answer.

We quote it in full.

“I know the question wasn't addressed to me but I'd very much like to speak to this. The political traditions of Yeola-e are intended to embody and further an adherence to certain key principles: truth, choice, the fact that responsibility and power are one and the same, love, and harmony, by which I mean, the fact that people can accomplish much more working in concert with than against each other. With every refinement we make to our laws, we always have one or more of these principles in mind.

“But these things aren't Yeoli things—we are hardly the only people who love, who are honest, who would like to choose for ourselves, who can act together. They are what we all are, at our best. Different nations have had different degrees of success sustaining them in the running of their affairs; it depends on how much they've allowed their laws to be corrupted by fear, anger, greed, self-aggrandizement and so forth. Yeola-e was lucky; we started out with the guidance of a very wise person, who set us on a good course. Arko, less so, for what reason I don't know enough Arkan history to understand.

“So it might seem that voting, for instance, is politics in the Yeoli style. But it isn't. Any nation can change its laws to enable all its citizens to vote, tomorrow, if it wants to. It might take getting used to, as it has here in Arko, but in time everyone does, because we all know at heart how to do it. It’s as I’ve always said, anyone who has an opinion can vote, and everyone has an opinion.

“But to explain that even more exactly, the vote is nothing more than the exercise of a principle inherent in human nature. If you watch any group of people who are and few enough to speak together, and all free, they always want to make a decision the same way: by consensus. They’ll all talk, trying to come to a choice with which all agree, and they’ll yield and compromise on their own positions out of respect for each other’s.

“The vote is but an extension of that. It is a mode of choosing to which all agree out of respect for each other’s choice.

“If you doubt it’s more natural than any other form of governance, you need only look at the difference in security needed for Assembly Palace in Yeola-e and the palace of any king. Haians, philosophers and builders alike know, anything that goes against that which is natural poses more difficulty: to use the most common analogy, it’s natural for a rock to roll down a mountain, and therefore much easier to get one down the mountain than up.

“The difficulty and worry and expense a despot must endure to stay in power is great because he is not there by the consent of his people, and it’s natural for them to want him there by their consent. But Assembly Palace is there by the consent of the people of Yeola-e, and so—people who aren’t Yeoli often find this hard to believe, so I’ll swear to it, second Fire come—anyone can come in and watch Assembly do its work, whenever it’s seated, and say anything, so long as they don’t disrupt. The chamber in which Assembly sits doesn’t have a lock on the door; there is nothing to steal there that every Yeoli doesn’t already own. A semanakraseye can walk alone anywhere in Yeola-e without fear of assassination, unless by a foreigner; if Yeolis want to get rid of a bad one, there’s a method, with which Arkans are already familiar, of doing it peacefully, so no one need to resort to assassination, and no one does.

“It could be this way in any nation. I emphasize this point very strongly, because I am a Yeoli and so what I say could so easily could be taken as self-serving. We Yeolis aren’t any more peaceful or just or gentle or wise or self-mastered than any other people. We have what we have because the way we have chosen to rule ourselves is more closely aligned with what is natural to all people.

“I say it again: it can be this way with any nation on the Earthsphere.”

†

I never know I am dreaming when I dream. It is always as if every event in a dream is real.

I dreamed I had done the Kiss of the Lake, and climbed up out of the crowd—more people had come for this one than my grandmother had ever seen—to the meditation place on the mountain.

I sat, and was just beginning to bring on the stillness within when four people turned off the path from Chegra to Vae Arahi and walked toward me. That threw me out of it, even though I guessed they were taking a short-cut hunting, nothing out of the ordinary; they were one woman and three youths, and the youths all had hunting-bows.

Did they not know what day this was, that this place was mine alone for now? That couldn’t be, I saw, when they climbed close enough and I knew the woman: Sharaina Anina, once Servant for Aratai. I had not seen her for years, since her constituents had voted her out, and I had heard little of her other than that she had been expelled even from the Children of Yeola, the most nationalistic group I know of, for being, of all things, too extreme. I guessed she had gone mad, and looked for it now in her face, which had certainly aged. She was impassive. Her three friends all looked nervous. None looked at me, as if I were not there.

When they were fifteen paces or so off, the young friends all nocked arrows at once as if they’d been commanded, and one of them went as white in the face as bleached bone.

On retrospect, the sky, the stones, the ground beneath my knees and the air in my lungs, the meditative chant that had died in my mind, the blood in my very veins, all screamed warning. If they had been Arkan, or Lakan, or Enchian, I would have been gone in a lightning-flash without their seeing a trace of me. But they were my own people, so I turned the feeling out of my mind, as I never had before in my life, and never would again. I wondered vaguely if they were here because they feared for me being alone here, and took my own reassurance, as always, from sensing no weapons but theirs. The youths had skinning-knives too. They came within five paces, still with not a glance at me, and I was about to remind them I was here, and perhaps ask if I could help with whatever troubled them, when Sharaina said, “Now.”

I remember the one whose eyes I caught, as they aimed; he looked as terrified as if he were about to die. It all crashed together in my head, what perfect sense it made, how it fit with everything I had learned all my life, how this all had been set in stone from the moment I had been conceived. Semana kra. I had always lived by that. My people had ruled my life; who else would end it?

I did not move, though I could have, perhaps successfully; a great deal of time, as a warrior in motion measures it, passes between the moment someone decides or is commanded to act, and the moment he does, especially if the act is an enormous one. And even if these young men were war-trained, I knew from their expressions they’d never seen war, which would make that time longer. If I had flung myself to the side and leapt up and rushed their flank, dodging, and perhaps seized Sharaina, I might have saved myself.

Instead I stayed still. To watch, one would have thought it was in shock, in disbelief, but it was not. It was revelation, and astonishment in the face of a great truth until then hidden, and the click of the door of fate closing. Surya would say my own hand pushed it closed; one could argue this. At any rate, I heard it, as I saw the small triangle made by two aiming eyes and a steel arrow-head when it is aimed at your heart, three times over, framed in curly hair. One whispered “Kahara,” and another clenched his eyes shut, as they loosed.

I knew as soon as I took the arrows, as I was falling back from my knees from the force of them, that together they were mortal, that I would never rise by my own strength again. There was no pain yet, and I didn’t know exactly where I’d been hit; I felt it in my soul, that I had begun dying, that my soul was taking leave. I also knew, before the back of my head hit the ground, that I could not have been hit in the heart, for I had some time, the rest of the day, perhaps, if I clung to life with all my strength.

Sharaina had let out a yell of triumph, throwing her arms skyward, and a long shattering laugh; she came close, leaned over me, and now let me see the madness that was the light behind her grin, like a candle in a skull. “He can’t fight you now,” she said, and as I saw the brilliant sky between her ringlets, I realized she was speaking to the three. “He’s dead in spirit, it just needs the finish, his throat cut.”

They hesitated, and I threw up one arm, and said with a scrap of voice, “No, please. It’s done, kerel, I’m dead, just let me say farewell to my family.” That froze them.

“He’s lying!” Sharaina screamed, “his healer will save him, remember we knew we had to watch for tricks, finish him, finish him!” But at least two of them were themselves finished, emotionally. They had looked away from their own intent beforehand; now with the results before them they could look away no longer. I took my crystal in my sword-hand and clasped my shield-hand over the semanakraseyeni signet, and said, “Second Fire come if I lie.”

“Give me a knife I’ll do it myself!” By weapon-sense I felt a sudden move, a stab, turned inwards; one of them was trying to kill himself, maybe succeeding. I tasted blood at the back of my throat, and wondered if it had come up from lung or stomach or both. Sharaina was back soon, the flattened skin around her pursed-in mouth yellow, the knuckles of her knife-hand white. To fight would cut off some of my time, but less than not to. I didn’t have the strength or the angle to palm-heel her, so I grabbed the fist holding the knife so she could neither strike nor drop it, and the other wrist, and just hung on, hoping she wouldn’t think to knee or lean on one of the arrow-shafts standing in me. As I had a daughter who was an empath—this was pure thought, no feeling at all, yet—help would come soon.

“Bartelao you childraper help me!” Two of them were down, now, and the third was shrieking, “We have to get away from here please Sharaina it’s done look at him we did it please let’s go!” as she and I wrestled, my own blood wet under my back, her rabid face two handspans from mine and her arms one moment trying to tear away, the next trying to overbear me, the half-action letting me prevail. Then the other screamed, “Sharaina they’re coming!” She saw, and when she tried wholly to tear away I let go and they dashed away.

Now I was alone. I let my head and my arms sink to the ground, tried as best I could to relax, and saw what lay ahead. My loves, my children, my friends, would have to watch me die. In both Hearthstones and in Terera right now, they’d be pinning up the black and white ribbons and banners, setting out the flowers, hauling up the wine-jugs, everyone grinning in happy expectation of a night of revelry. The first handful knew already, the first signs of something gone amiss would have been seen; soon the Hearthstone would have the full news, and then Vae Arahi, and Terera, and from there it would spread as fast as a yell through the crisp night, “Chevenga’s assassinated.” I knew how it would be, I could see their frozen hands, glazed eyes, bloodless cheeks; I knew it all from my father’s assassination. I heard my own moan of anguish, felt tears spring from my eyes, and when darkness came roaring up into my head I let it take me.