178 - Everything is going as it should

atakina 66 1556

Dear Chevenga:

I don’t understand why you keep running to suicide, which you’ve done now twice that I know of. It just makes no sense. It seems that when things don’t go the way you want, you figure you have to do yourself in, as though that’s going to undo what happened and make the world a better place. You’re sworn to obey the people and serve, aren’t you? Did we ask you to off yourself with each mistake? Well, I sure as shit didn’t. You’ve done so much for us already and could do so much more if you live, which you say you want to in spite of that death-in-you thing. So how do you come to death as a way of atoning for a screw-up? It won’t change history, it sure won’t do none of us good.

I figure all of us have made mistakes and some of us bigger mistakes than others, and I guess folks with big responsibility have a chance of making bigger mistakes than folks with little, but it’s not like you’re the only one who ever made a mistake. And isn’t just because of you that others have screwed up—most of us do that fine all by ourselves. And some folks are just mean and miserable and just waiting for mom or dad or their commander to look away for a moment so they can be as cruel and selfish as they want. It’s not like even you can control every one of them all the time or even a good chunk of it.

Anyway, we’re in this together. So unless you think all of us in Yeola-e should throw ourselves over the cliff each time we have a big screw-up, like a flock of sheep following the bellwether off of one, you need to quit doing that yourself or you’re going to have a pretty empty country.

So there. I don’t know whether I’ve expressed myself well; I’m just an ordinary fellow. But I say you need to get over thinking this you-got-to-kill-yourself thing and start remembering all the good you’ve done and would like to do yet. We could sure use you alive.

Melisaro Ora

Selina, Threshing Moon 1556

†

The way things had turned out, we’d do the asa kraiya ceremony just three days after the Committee released its findings. Not the timing I would have chosen, had I the choice. But I am just the aura-seer. The life of Chevenga runs, more even than I knew when we started, on a schedule willed by the people.

The last thing he needed was to be nervous about the Committee’s findings at the same time. My feeling, which I told him often, was that they’d write the truth: there had only ever really been one thing amiss with him, we were working hard on solving it, and there was every reason to be confident we would. But he could not know for sure, of course, until he saw it in ink. And I could hardly go to the Chevengani Mental State Assessment Committee and say, “Please ask for another extension, because Chevenga’s mental state is too delicate.” They’d present their report to Assembly on atakina 68 and the ceremony would be on 71.

I write an account, which no one will ever see, because what happened the night of atakina 64, 1556, will not be in his, which everyone will.

The last and strongest attempt of the death-in-him was upon him. I had seen the first slight waves of it rising three or four days before. The rage he’d felt on my telling him he need not go asa kraiya to live long, on 63, had soon passed, as he saw the sense of it. I told him on the morning of 64 that we would take a break today, which he seemed to take as a relief. I did not learn until later that, when he went down to Assembly Palace, it was to declare to Linasika Aramichiya that he intended to resign.

Within ten days of his asa kraiya ceremony, I had predicted in my own mind; it was seven.

“Step-dad!” Marel called me, from the door to our chambers, that evening. “The semanakraseye wants to speak to you.” Once I was in the corridor, Skorsas, who’d come here to accompany him, left us, almost scurrying.

I felt as if a hand were crushing my windpipe, and ice spreading all over my skin. The death-in-him filled his aura, smoky black and purple-grey and curling over and around him like the wings of an Arkan demon. It pervaded every vortex and energy-line, disordering and discolouring them all. The sword in him was so bright it burned my eyes, like the sun.

His physical face was impassive. “Surya, come with me,” he said, turned away and strode off down the corridor. I had never been afraid of what was in him before; I slowed my breathing and started an inward chant.

“Virani-e…” I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I cancel the relinquishment and claim back my will,” he said, without even a glance. I knew he’d do that, I reminded myself. This was a necessary part of his path, and it always involves the patient claiming independence from the healer. Like adulthood, the first stirrings come in rebelliousness. That didn’t stop terror from shooting through me. What was worst was how calmly he said it, and how precisely controlled and yet free every movement was, when I could see with my own eyes the life in him thrashing and screaming in the claws of the death. I followed him to the training-room, where he now kept Chirel. He lifted it off its rack, slung it on his shoulder, and turned to face me.

“I don’t have time or patience to write a note, so let this be it,” he said. “They’ll truth-drug you and you’ll repeat it back verbatim.

“I tried to save my own life, as anyone would, and in the process I destroyed it, and my good name. I would have died in happy ignorance with my honour and my dignity intact, and left a mark in history such that people in the future might have admired and emulated me. As it is, I’ve lost or am losing my friends, my family’s in chaos, I can’t spar, I can’t swim, I can’t fly, I can’t be alone, I can’t defend myself, I’m being hounded out of politics, I’m estranged from the military, the world thinks I’m a lunatic, and that’s how history will remember me. None of it can be undone… I can’t hide my foreknowledge again, I can’t undo the conviction, I can’t un-write whatever the Committee is going to present in three days, I can’t retroactively silence Linasika Aramichiya and erase everything he’s said that has rung true to my people.”

“Viran—”

“Chevenga,” he snapped, cutting me off. I’ll always be known as Chevenga. If I think I can change that name, I’m”—he spat out an acid laugh—“out of my mind! It’s carved into the stones, and it’s carved into the memories, and a thousand years from now I’ll be Chevenga no matter how much I want to be Virani-e. Chevenga the warrior; it’s madness to think I can go asa kraiya.”

A blurring flicker, and Chirel was in his hand, as if it had sprung out of the scabbard. He grabbed the hair that grew from above his brow and scythed it off short, then did the same with the sides and the back. The ancient blade cut through his black curls as if they were liquid. “I guess,” he said as he did it, “if everything is going as it should, what was meant to be, what was the way of All-Spirit, was that I should be destroyed… it’s for the best somehow… I can see that. I am too deadly, I am too powerful, there is too much darkness in me… I am insane, I can’t go on pretending I’m not… it was all for a reason, death is best for me, and best for the world. There… good enough… Skorsas will even it out when my body’s being prepared for the pyre.”

“You swore before a judge, Second Fire come, that you would never again attempt it,” I said, matching his unearthly calm as best I could. “You honoured that last time.”

He spat out another vitriolic laugh. “What are they going to do—arrest my corpse? Surya…” He took a deep breath, and his face softened. “I’m sorry. You’ve just tried to help, all you’ve done is healing work, and you’ve done it very well, as well or better than anyone else in the world could have done it. That it’s not enough is only because the patient is too far gone. It’s as you said in the first session; if it’s not enough, we will both know we did our best and I will go on to the next thing. It’s all my fault, Surya. Take that to heart, know that I know the fault is all mine and not yours at all.”

“Virani-e—Chevenga—nothing you are saying is true.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.

“Tell them this, Surya. My people, whom I love, the fault is all with me. I made a mistake, letting myself believe that it was death-obligation, not foreknowledge. I made a mistake going through this whole thing, and imposing the chaos and the madness that is in me on the world. I made a mistake not just accepting my fate with grace, but instead trying to do the impossible, fight my way out of it. I’m sorry for not staying with what I first planned, which would have been much more kind to everyone. I am sorry, I can’t say how sorry, for all the pain I have caused, to so many people, in all my life. I apologize in particular to those who have tried to help me, to those who somehow, for some reason, still love me, for trying where I could never have succeeded, so they suffer the pain of my failure. But understand, I count it as no one’s failure but my own. From the start, Surya, you’ve said it was all ultimately my choice; you didn’t lie there; I was taught that by my father also, ‘As always, you choose.’ I am sorry for the pain the choice I take now will cause, but I also know that it will save greater pain in the long run.

“I will not die in honour and loved as I would have; so people will suffer less for my loss than they did for my father’s, which is a blessing. All that’s left to me is to cut through this mess once and for all, so neither I nor anyone else will have to bear living with it any longer. I will go up onto the mountain and die as I am, as I was meant to be. If anyone tries to stop me I’ll kill them.”

He turned to go. I reached with my aura toward his to stop him, to weaken first the hand that held the sword, then the rest of his body. Something stopped me; it was as if my will and energy hit a wall. He strode to the great double-doors, saying over his shoulder, “Farewell, Surya. Thank you for everything. Go with All-Spirit. And don’t worry, since you have been right all along: everything is going as it should.” The doors closed behind him.

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