101 - A cliff to leap off

None of the four of us mentioned it, over eggs-and-gruel breakfast. I felt delicate in several ways, so no doubt everyone else did. She was in a hurry to get to her students; other than a curse on us for her headache, half-joking, she said little at all. Was she just keeping her lips tight, or had she forgotten that she’d told us at all? I might never know in my life.

When we went down to the training-yard with her, it was all cut and thrust, order and obey, as always. When she told them that the Rao Kyavinara whom they ought to remember was in truth Fourth Chevenga, I got the impression that a good half of them had already guessed.

They were most intrigued with Esora-e. A good many of them, it appeared, had not even known she had a son, and so never tied him and her together in their minds through the common surname. They kept smiling, and raising amazed brows, at how he reminded them of her, in looks, words, mannerisms and the smallest fighting-moves.

When it came time to spar, I wondered how he would do with her watching for the first time in thirty years. So often people who are in truth excellent will go fumble-tongued, and fumble-bodied, in front of one who judged them harshly as children.

Bless the God-in-Him, he was magnificent: light, loose, making it look effortless, showing every fighting virtue that Azaila had taught him, and besting everyone she had. We at the School of the Sword knew that fourteen years practice with his shield-hand had made him as good with it as he had been with his sword-hand before, but it was an inspiration to Krasila’s students, showing in true life the lesson that thumbing is not the end for a warrior of sufficient bravery and perseverance.

When it was my turn to go up against him, and he went to rack his true steel for wood, Krasila said, “No, lads—steel on wood. I want to show them something. Before you start—Esora-e, do an oblique down-stroke at his head. Full force. Chevenga, parry straight on, edge to edge, no deflection.”

We both stared at her. How to put this politely? “But he’ll cleave my head in half,” I said.

“I said parry straight on; I didn’t say you may not do anything else.”

Fair enough; I could do the parry while absenting myself from under it at the same time. We signed each other with a glance. With a ringing whack, he cleanly trimmed off three fifths of my wooden sword, which hit the earth with a gentle thump.

“Reason not to spar wood on steel?” she said to the students, as she sent one of the young ones to fetch me another wood. They all stood in transfixed silence, the youngest with naked awe on their faces. “No—only reason not to spar wood on steel unless you know how never to parry straight-on. My shadow-grandson will now demonstrate—watch.” And she called start.

I doubted Surya had meant this when he’d released me of the stricture on sparring, but I wasn’t about to ruin Krasila’s lesson for that. Call it a Judge’s Clemency of sparring; we gave them a show, they reveled in it, and I couldn’t deny afterwards that some of the Mezem that had seeped into me against my will while I’d been there, had come out. Asa kraiya seemed a thousand day’s journey away.

As the three of us were harnessing up, I realized why all had been so joyous. “It was her,” I said. “She’s feeling the freedom of revealing what she hid, and being given the compassion she always should have had for it, whether she remembers or not. There’s an emptiness in her she’s been carrying for fifty years, that she’s just begun to have filled.”

“Are you doing an apprenticeship with that aura-seer?” Tyirya said, as I hooked him onto his wing. “I noticed it last night, too, come to think of it; the way you handled her reminded me of more than one Haian I’ve seen. If you didn’t already have a calling, lad, I’d say you should be a healer.” I could not speak to answer, and then we were flying.

†

As Kamanera Shae-Simisa had promised, I’d received an official invitation to the cornerstone-laying of the new town hall of Shakora. I had answered that I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able, being at the behest of the Committee and so forth, but I would do whatever the Shakorans asked of me if I did. As my shadow-father and grandfather and I had left for Chavinel, it had been in the back of my mind that Shakora is more or less on the way, and the date would be during our return. So we went.

There was a town there, again, albeit with buildings that were less tall, for now. They had decided to leave one patch of the rubble of the old in what was now the town square, with a cenotaph, as a memorial. It was good to see people bustling in the street with no thoughts on their minds but whatever business they were about.

The seventy survivors of the razing passed the stone from hand to hand, older to younger, as they’d planned, with the youngest laying it.

All they asked of me was that I touch the stone once it was laid, and make a speech if I wished to. Being full of the feeling myself, I found it easy to speak of the necessity of rebuilding and renewing after loss, since if we are to live there is no other way, and how we must will ourselves to that action since it in itself will heal us.

Several of the seventy were in chairs, but I spotted Kamanera by his thumbless hands—the Arkans had done both—as he passed the stone, and so got to meet and embrace him and introduce him to Esora-e and Tyirya afterwards. He showed me how he used a pen now, gripping it in his first three fingers. “I take what you wrote to heart,” I said, “though I confess, I am not entirely there, yet.”

“Well, what’s keeping you?” he said. “You’re thinking it’s the rest of a mountain before you that you have to climb, the height set in your mind; it’s only fear that keeps you from seeing that it’s really a cliff to leap off, that you can any moment, and that’ll be it—done. Oh, and you have one of those wing things on your shoulders—you aren’t seeing that either.” He said this with the utter authority that only having lived what he spoke can bring, leaving me speechless. “Ah well.” I’d knelt beside his chair to be eye-to-eye; he slapped me on the back, his hand feeling like Esora-e’s. “You will. You aren’t going to leave before we celebrate tonight, are you?”

I’d been thinking of it, but now I said, “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Esora-e, Tyirya and I went easy on the wine though, and I noticed Kamanera kept strictly to tea. It was just as well to be mostly sober, when he drew me out of the crowd and up onto the dais of the square, and the new people of Shakora lit a first a twinkling cluster—that was the seventy—and then a flickering sea, of candles.

From them, it struck me much deeper than usual. If those who have suffered so much can wish so well for another... and yet, when I thought about it, I had often seen suffering cause people to wish ever more well for others. I cried almost as long and hard as I had in Arko, even to the point of light-headedness again.

That night, basking in bed at the inn, boneless, while the memory of the candle-flames cradled my heart, and the first nonsensical tendrils of sleep touched my thoughts, I heard words I knew came from within, but so clearly they seemed outside. “My life is about love.”

It jolted me fully awake. My life is about love? I thought. What sort of self-important tripe is that? But Surya’s words came back to me, about not always knowing why he was abjured, yet knowing he must trust it anyway. Nascent answers were also there, almost, in the candle-flames, in Kamanera’s words, in how Krasila had had me spar Esora-e, even, and in the night around me, that shimmered with sweetness. My life is about love. I need not understand it, I decided, only listen. Kamanera spoke true: I would leap off the cliff, and fly, when I was ready.

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