110 - Being so used to ruling things

When I thought they might be out of earshot—I couldn’t know—I gave up control of my breathing, and let my chest heave in fear, hearing terrified scraps of my voice thunder through my head as they do when the ears are plugged. What I was thinking was that I had come through Terera undisguised, unconcealed; anyone could have seen me, and followed us here.

Some Arkan, some Lakan, someone else whose father or other relative I’d killed, some leftover Mahid who’d fallen through the cracks somehow; it seemed any moment I’d feel the plugs pulled from my ears, hear a triumphant laugh, and feel a cold blade-tip lift my penis—my first knowledge of the blade—then hear a long speech on what I was about to suffer, and die a wretched death.

This panic lasted a while, then eased; lecturing myself helped, especially when I forgot worrying about whether anyone could hear and did it aloud. “They know who I am, that they have to be mindful of my safety,” I told myself, the authority of my own voice, much louder to my own ears for them being stopped, a comfort. “They must have made sure we were not followed. Or else they informed the darya semanakraseyeni—that would be the correct course, which if they didn’t take they could land in hot water for—and this clearing is ringed with elite, and flyers circling above. How would I know?”

As the panic faded, my main oppression became a host of little things: itches I could not scratch, a blade of grass tickling my skin that I could not shift away from, insects crawling onto places where one doesn’t want to think of insects crawling. I was at the complete mercy of the mosquitoes. I worried that my family might be worried about me, until I reminded myself that the senaheral would let them know. I tested my bonds, lightly at first, then as hard as I could without pulling muscles, letting out war-yells as I did, mostly for something to do to keep my mind off the tiny torments. Of course, after I gave up and fell still, they came back worse, grass and leaves and dirt now sticking to my skin, sweat-drops crawling along my scalp, evening wind catching the sweat on me and bringing a touch of chill. I would have to drive away chill by sheer will, I saw, having no covering at all. I wondered how long they would leave me here.

When it is finished. When what was finished? Was it something that had started yet, or was I waiting for it to start? I tried to predict, couldn’t imagine. Some sort of spiritual experience I was supposed to have, since it was the senaheral; but aside from calling in the singing wind, I didn’t know what spiritual experience was possible without Surya here. (For a time I yearned so hard for him I could taste it, like an infant yearning for his mother’s milk; I wanted to scream his name aloud, but didn’t, for knowing the bitterness of his not coming would be worse for my having voiced my need.)

I tried to call in the singing wind, but the esegradaiseye’s words burned across my mind like a splash of burning oil across naked skin. All-Spirit became but another member of your command council. It hurt because it was true; in my general’s training, seeking the flash of the path unconceived, I had begun summoning the singing wind, snapping my fingers for it like an advisor. Yet if that was wrong, I wondered, why did it keep coming? To see All-Spirit that way, I saw now, was to deny its greater existence; it was like being at least partially atheist, like Kurkas.

With that thought came gladness, that I was staked out and suffering the aches and the chill and mosquitoes sucking blood from my foreskin; I wished more pain still, if it cured me of such narrowness, if it showed me something more. So what is All-Spirit, I asked myself, beyond another member of my command council? The answer that came to mind sickened me: I didn’t know. For a time I lost myself in shame and wished I were dead, and settled for relishing my suffering, and despising myself for how I must look to contemptuous eyes, splayed out like this. When the satisfaction of that ran out, I remembered what the esegradaiseye had said: to do what must be done. So perhaps at least the beginning of the cure was here.

I knew when dark was falling by an increase in the mosquitoes, and when it had fallen completely by a decrease; as well the cold grew sharper, and it was a greater act of will to drive it out of my skin. I began flexing against my bonds every now and then to warm myself with exertion; the wrist and ankle pain was worth it. Are they going to leave me here all night?

As my time in the dark stretched, and fatigue awoke the blacker aspect of my imagination, fear came up again. Not of human dangers this time, but the more primitive things that lie coiled in the backs of our minds, waiting for when we are tired. Does anyone really know all that is in a forest at night?

Perhaps I was guarded, but it didn’t seem I was; even without weapon-sense, it felt as if there were no one near. I could hear nothing, see nothing, not know what came close to me until it touched me. I would strain to hear, think I’d caught something faintly through the ear-plugs, or else that I could feel movement through the ground or the air, then tell myself firmly I was imagining it.

A finger of night wind crossed my chest or moved my forelock, and I had to tell myself there was not a ghost standing over me, whose icy fingers would go on next to my open privates, that there were no angry spirits of the woods gathering against me for all the wrongs I had done in my life. I would think I’d heard a rustling and crashing in the trees, and have to tell myself that the Creature of the Mountains would not come to crush my head beneath his great foot and eat the rest of me, that likely there were no bears or pumas or lions or wolves about, and if there were, they would avoid my human scent. I smelled the deep musty smell of forest, and told myself that no skeletal dead trees would come alive and strangle away my life with twisted roots like gnarled fingers. An insect would bite my back, and I would have to tell myself it was not a poisonous spider and I would not puff up, turn blue and die in agony before the monks came back. Or else I would hear and sense more nothing, and have to tell myself there were no unnamed and indescribable monsters of the type a child imagines, that there was nothing namelessly poisonous in the air, that the woods were not out to get me.

I fought off fear with my voice; I sang, I told jokes, I recounted my victories in egomaniac detail, I threatened the shadows and the monsters with death if they tried anything. If anyone was near, let them be entertained. But that could only last for so long; exhaustion made me lapse into longer and longer silences. At least the things I saw, which were beginning to be many, I knew for certain I was imagining. Or was I? Might I have gained some sort of sight to which a blindfold, and night’s darkness, didn’t matter?

The time crept by like the finger-width creeping of a glacier, and I settled into the task of enduring its slowness. When I began to realize that exhaustion might ease the fear too, I found myself able to relax a little. It certainly felt as if the monks meant to leave me overnight. Would I be able to sleep like this? Would I want to? Or would exhaustion take the choice out of my hands? Asleep or awake would hardly make a difference to my helplessness, I thought.

Helplessness. More intensely, I felt the immobility of my limbs, the vulnerability of my naked, spread-open body, unable to stop anyone or anything from doing what it would. The monk’s words came back to mind. I ran them through my inward ears again, easy to do with my outward ears stopped; maybe there was some clue in them.

When a person comes to the senaheral, a sacrifice is asked of him, that is the most difficult thing for him; he must enter that which is hardest for him, which is where his greatest learning lies. In your case, the esegradaiseye saw that the sacrifice must be power, that you must enter helplessness, for it is there that your greatest and richest mysteries wait.

Somehow the words were incomprehensible; it seemed I could hear only the sounds of consonants and vowels, the rhythm and the tone, not their meaning, like wordless music. I did it again. When a person comes to the senaheral, a sacrifice is asked of him, that is the most difficult thing for him; he must enter that which is hardest for him, which is where his greatest learning lies. In your case, the esegradaiseye saw that the sacrifice must be power, that you must enter helplessness, for it is there that your greatest and richest mysteries wait.

The beginning, When a person comes to the senaheral, came involuntarily the third time; and next thing I knew his words had set themselves repeating in my mind, like a chant; soon they were following a simple, sacred-sounding melody. Give yourself to this, a voice inside told me. Breathe; that was in Surya’s voice. Be still, stop fighting, stop resisting. I had entirely entered helplessness; I felt my bonds and my nakedness and my vulnerability in the midst of night and forest more intensely again. I could do nothing. What happened was absolutely out of my hands. The sooner I quit balking and simply accepted it, the wiser part of me knew, the better it would be. I balked for a long time yet anyway, being so used to ruling things. Eventually even that failed and faded away, and I lay silent and still at the brink, like a cliff, with the chant circling in my mind, knowing that when I leapt, the spiritual experience would begin, but still hesitating.

I am entirely open to all that is out there. So I am one with it. What happens is out of my hands entirely, and in those of... “but another member of your command council,” I heard the esegradaiseye say, as if she were beside me and my ears unplugged, and I wanted to laugh bitterly. All-Spirit.

Having come helplessly through fear, and pain, and self-contempt, and bitterness, and then fear again, having fought and been defeated by them all so that I knew they were all delusion, I was ready. A force inside like a tide rose from my heart to my head, my breathing evened entirely by itself, and with the chant dissolving into wordless song, I fell into the deeper state.

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