107 - All the universe is arms around you

etesora 54, 1556

Dear Chevenga:

I’m writing as a citizen of Yeola-e in answer to those military officers who have called you a traitor for going asa kraiya, and are going around the country whipping up fear of invaders so as to press you to reconsider.

Aside from thinking they’re a flock of cowards themselves, to be so riven by fear as to do this, I want to tell you that I am whole-heartedly behind you in this and I am certain I speak for many more. I am asa kraiya myself—after the Arkan war and the Sack—so some might say I am biased; but I was not born asa kraiya, and no one is. I came to is as you are coming to it and all people do, by seeing what they have seen.

Don’t listen, my semanakraseye. These idiots speak as if you have but one gift to give to the people of Yeola-e, but one ability, as if you, or indeed anyone, could be so limited. And as if so much more than warriorhood is not required of a semanakraseye, anyway, and you haven’t done just as well at that. Yes, you are a warrior and a general beyond compare; but you are so much more.

I will tell you something: I got a nasty wound at Eseral. I am one of the spectacularly few, the Yeoli cavalier, and my horse tripped on a dung-stick, sending me flying to land on, you guessed it, another dung-stick. Right through my arm and a little way, not too far, the die of Chance be thanked, into my chest. It eventually went clean and properly healed, and I wasn’t left crippled, even; but the Haians had their work cut out for them and I was out until winter, and for a while neither I nor anyone was sure I’d live.

Well, it was after a battle, I can’t remember which since I wasn’t much myself, and I was full of despair, thinking, here I am lying on my back while my siblings are all out fighting the Arkans, much use I am to anyone, I never will be, I might as well be dead so what’s it matter, that sort of thing, when I woke up from a kind of a doze in the afternoon, and saw – you. Feeling like a turd from the first horse after the entire cavalry has run over it, and, crap of all craps, there is my semanakraseye and chakrachaseye looking right at me with my uncombed, overlong hair and my muscles gone to flab and the smell of the festering and my miserable long face.

I’m sure you don’t remember, because you saw a thousand wounded warriors in the infirmaries, but you said, “You didn’t get it just today, did you?” and I told you it was Eseral, and a dung-stick. And you put your hand on my forehead, and said, “Mikra”—what did you do, peek at the Haian’s notes?—“in thinking you have nothing left to give, you’re forgetting that we need you. You are thinking you have no strength, but you do; it takes strength to live, and you are alive.” Then you poked me in the side and said, “Last we checked,” so I had to laugh.

It was exactly what I needed to hear. It was like a huge burden was lifted off me. After you went to the next person over, I kept feeling your hand on my forehead as if it was still there until I slept that night, and now and then I’d feel it again afterwards. It was as if the same thing that you’d said was coming through your hand, somehow, meaning the same, that I still had strength.

That was the turning point. I started to truly improve from that night.

Afterwards I was thinking about it, and I thought—and I hope you’ll forgive me for this, for the craziness of it, because who in the Garden Orbicular would think of this when you are who you are—“that man may be the greatest warrior since the wielder of the Fire, but – he’s a healer. I don’t know how it can be, but he is.”

I remember saying to the Haians, “Thank the die of Chance he was born in Yeola-e, not Haiu Menshir, because we need him—but he could have been one of you.” And they said yes, they always liked it when you came around to the infirmaries, because I was not the only one they’d seen this happen with.

I understood it better after I went asa kraiya, and what that makes me know is that, if you did not have the responsibility and name that you have, you’d have gone asa kraiya earlier. You’ve only held off this long for the same reason these sniveling idiots are calling you a traitor, because you are so important and you worry that it will weaken Yeola-e too much.

Well, to put it delicately, don’t kyashin worry. They, like me back then, forget what strength is. You will be no weaker a semanakraseye for being asa kraiya, and Yeola-e no weaker as a nation. You will just take strength a different way. Because you haven’t quite gone and done it yet, you don’t quite know what that means, but trust me, it will become very, very clear to you.

The other letter enclosed in this one, I would like you not to read until you are asa kraiya, because it is from one asakraiyaseye to another.

Peace to you, my semanakraseye,

Mikra Tolamisin

†

There is a kind of joy that is so deep, it seems to set everything right. Like a sated belly, but much deeper; like the bone-deep satisfaction after a good long day doing work that was truly needed, but even more central in oneself. In that state, all the world is a place of comfort; all the universe is arms around you; everyone is a friend, even if an unmet one, or one who thinks he is an enemy; every move is with ease and every thought with inspiration.

It’s hard to describe; perhaps this way: there is joy that you can feel while you remain who you have always been. You are, say, a warrior, and you have victory, so you are happy; the person you secretly love suddenly turns and says they love you, so you are filled with joy; you do a fine piece of work and so look on it with happy pride. These are joys, but none of them are so vast and profound that they alter who you are.

I speak of joy that changes you through and through, because you did not know it was possible until you felt it, you did not know life could be so good, and so the possibilities astonish you. I speak of joy that fills you with stunning confidence, even if you already thought of yourself as confident, and so now know that in truth you didn’t. I speak of joy that makes you realize that the hardness of life, the burden of obligation and expectation of hardship that you have always lived under, and so you’ve always felt as sharply on you as your limbs, or your skin, is not so, and is not truth, but only just another feeling, not the be-all and end-all, but one discrete thing, and not so huge a thing, so it need not rule you any more. I speak of joy that makes you realize this through and through, so that you are suddenly changed so much in how you think that it’s dizzying.

I had felt a touch of it as I had lain down to sleep in Surya’s house in Arko after the first visit; I felt it more now, as Komona and I lay basking in the warmth of the fading fire, and the warmth of ourselves, my cheek leaning on the silky-soft skin of her inner thigh. It was as I had said: my pleasure was not our end, but once the first ecstasy had kindled her confidence, she had wanted to try everything, to see if she could still do or bear it, including taking a man into her.

I hadn’t thought I would tell anyone at all, other than Surya, about my mother’s true name for me, but I told Komona. What secrets or silences could there be between us now?

“Virani-e.” Her lips and tongue caressed its syllables, like a hand stroking a curl. “Yes. She is right, Virani-e.”

“Aigh!” I threw one hand over my face. “As if—just as I said to Surya—as if I could escape Chevenga!”

“You can while you are with me.” I stared at her. “I look at your face, and I see: Virani-e. It’s plain to me. I will give you that, a bit of return for what you’ve done for me.”

“What I have done for you… if you were to thank me, and I were to say ‘My pleasure,’ it could never be so hugely true as in this case. I have given myself as much as I’ve given you, by doing this.”

“Be that as it may, Virani-e—”

“Aigh! Stop! I can’t take it!” I clenched my eyes shut and took a deep breath.

Before I could move further she whipped her other leg over to catch my head between them, the upper one low enough it didn’t cover my ear. “Virani-e, Virani-e, Virani-e,” she said. “I’m getting you used to it, Virani-e; listen!” I squirmed ineffectually, clasping her hips, and she tightened her legs, giggling deep in her throat. “Fourth Che… che… venga… who? Who is that? I have here Virani-e.”

Had we been war-students wrestling, I would have had to tap out. She didn’t know that custom. “Mercy, Komona,” I gasped. “Let go.”

She did loosen her legs, but only long enough to pull my head, which she’d taken a firm grip on by two fistfuls of my hair, in closer so my face was pressed into her womanhood, and then they clamped tightly again. “You have more arguments, Virani-e—you are still semanakraseye, so, First Virani-e, yes?—then make them; be articulate.”

“Kmmhnhhhh, Immm sthhhmmm Chhhhmmmmmmmph…” One of those long rippling laughs came out of her, hard, and she bent her legs, hooking them around my back, and twined the fingers of both hands in my hair again. “Virani-e, Virani-e, Virani-e!” She made a song of it. “Argue more eloquently, you who are Virani-e.”

“Mhhhh tnnnnnnng, kyhhhhmmmmt Immmm cnnnnnnt sphhhhhnnn…” Her laughter burst out like a trail of notes. “Virani-e! Virani-e! Who’s this Chevenga? I love you, Virani-e! Vira—oh! Oh, oh, oh, aahhhh, oh, All-Spirit, oh…” Best I use my tongue for what it was in position to best do.

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