199 - How to defend yourself the asa kraiya way

One time I did speak with Surya, I told him, “I really don’t know who in the Garden Orbicular I am.”

“You don’t need to know who you are,” he said. “You need to choose who you are.”

As always, you choose. Of course. May I be forgiven the weakness, right now, of being annoyed by that?

“We do it every moment; with every action and every word, we make ourselves,” he said. “Who is Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, or Chan Virani-e Shae-Arano-e, in the past, but what he has done? Who is he in the present and the future, other than what he is doing and will do—which, of course, is totally his choice? We make ourselves in the eyes of others, and from how they reflect that back to us, we are made in our own eyes. The only difference with you now is that you’ll be aware that you’re doing it.”

I had to roll that around in my mind for three days or so, to really see it. I’d led the liberation of Yeola-e and allowed the sack of Arko; these events and my name would be conjoined so long as they and it were remembered, both by me and everyone else. Thus I was the liberation of Yeola-e and the sack of Arko.

But what would I be from now on?

Two-thirds or so into the moon, the question started to look less like a black abyss, and more like an opening vista of possibilities.

There was a lot of nausea. I had forgotten that. I can’t say how many times I puked remembering something I’d done. But it eased. The fire of horror and remorse didn’t cease—Iyinisa told me it might never, entirely—but it became more distant.

There is an exercise ground on the ila asa kraiya, and though I had no idea what they actually did there, I stayed away at first. I’d go to flab if I did this all month, I knew—whatever my heart felt, my muscles were aching from idleness the third day—but I couldn’t imagine a training ground that wouldn’t remind me of war. If I did push-ups, what was it for, but strengthening my arms to wield weapons? If I practiced forms, what was it for, but to polish my fighting skill?

Everyone had told me to do as I was inclined, to stay in bed if I really wanted to, and not worry about my fitness; I’d be able to get it back later, same as if I were wounded, which I had plenty of experience in, except this time there would be no wound dragging on me. During the time I was wondering why I walked except to strengthen my legs for fighting, I did stay in bed; as the white heat of emotion faded to a duller red-orange, boredom drove me out, and I explored the island, sometimes with Iyinisa or another asakraiyaseye showing me, sometimes by myself, reminding myself that legs could be for other things, such as conveying the eyes and head to places they’d never seen or known.

When I finally did go to the exercise-ground, on the thirteenth day or so, I left in an instant; what call asakraiyaseyel had to practice with true steel I wasn’t sure, but some of them were doing it. Warriors weren’t allowed here, but swords were? When I asked Iyinisa, she just said, “A sword in the hand of an asakraiyaseye is a different thing.” Maybe I’m just too simple-minded for this, I thought.

Foolish though it will seem, some childish part of me had thought that the ceremony would somehow magically make me understand how to defend myself in the asa kraiya way. Alas, it hadn’t. When I imagined it, I had no idea. It would be the usual feeling-impossible-at-every-step grind that is war-training during its worst days, I suspected.

Just as I was thinking I was perhaps almost ready to consider undertaking it, maybe, Azaila came to my room, and said, “It’s time for you to learn this.”

He had me meditate with him first, to calm the emotion. Then he asked me, “What exactly stopped you from hitting Younger Riji?”

I had not thought back to that since I’d been on the island. Now I remembered how my arm had seemed to stop itself. And then my fatal solicitousness for the kid’s life had been rendered moot in one perfect heart-stroke by Kyirya. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Try harder. What was in the feeling?” They all conspire with each other, I thought, my healers, my teachers.

I tried harder. When I did, it came together, that night, and what I felt now. “It was too horrific for me to do,” I said. “Azaila… the thoughts I am thinking now…” More of my lake of tears came. I knew he wanted to hear those thoughts. “Why… why do we even make these instruments of steel, and sharpen them to the point where they can sever a falling hair without slowing down its fall, with the intent of turning them against other people… using them to destroy the internal workings of the human body so that they cease working… Azaila, All-Spirit help me, I am so asa kraiya that it makes me sick to remember any of it, or imagine anyone else doing it, or to think that I even held such a thing… incredible, isn’t it?”

“What does it matter, if you destroy the internal workings of the human body? Especially that of another who wants to do the same to you?”

I was shaking and wanting to throw up, now. Why do I have to explain? You must understand this! Why do you make me say it? I don’t even know how to word it! All I could come out with, in the end, was, “He’s a human being! He’s a human being, same as me!” It didn’t begin to explain, and sounded intolerably lame to my own ears..

“Good,” he said. “Here what you need to understand.” They were definitely conspiring. “Not only why you won’t any more, but why you did. Everything went as it should, Chevenga. It was all necessary. What you feel now, you see the beginnings of it in your past, don’t you, if you look back? Close your eyes.”

In the Mezem—I had begun to go asa kraiya even before the Arkans had invaded—no, further. In the Lakan war… no. I had begun to go asa kraiya as a child. I remembered the conversation on the mountainside with Esora-e. The one that has always come and gone in my memory, that is. It had stayed in my memory, I realized, ever since Esora-e had given his blessing to my going asa kraiya.

“I am sure Iyinisa has told you this, or you’ve read it, or both, but it bears repeating. The big secret of asa kraiya is this… we give it the special name, and we sequester ourselves, and we have our ways and our histories and our fellowship as if it’s some esoteric thing, some exalted state. But the fact is, as every asakraiyaseye knows, asa kraiya is the true natural state of humanity. War-training takes us away from that, makes us inhuman, so naturally we fight it, which is in part why war-training is so hard. Gentle and sensitive spirit that you are, Chevenga, you fought it harder than most, and sought a greater punishment than most for acceding to it.”

“Azaila… I am so far away from anything that can be called gentle and sensitive…!”

“Hasn’t Surya said anything about how accurate your impression of yourself is?”

You think a thousand things about yourself that are wrong. He’d underestimated, really. “Point well-taken,” I conceded. “He keeps trying to convince me I’m a healer, though, which is madness, as I see clearly every time I’m in the presence of Kaninjer.”

I hadn’t known, incidentally, how much I would miss my Haian’s checking me morning and night, the feel of his warm fingers on my wrist as he felt my pulses, his bustling solicitousness, the way he could be utterly immovable in that quiet, gentle voice. The routine had become part of how I defined my day, how I measured time; I felt oddly naked without. But one must have wielded the sword to be beyond it, so Haians are not allowed on the island except for emergencies, and he’d pronounced me well enough to do without him for a month so long as I did not ignore any symptoms that came up, which he made me swear to.

He knew also that there is a Yeoli healer in the maesa asa kraiya, who trained for several years on Haiu Menshir after he hung up his sword. Tyaicha Shae-Krisa (yes, he is a distant relative of Inatalla) examined me once at the start and a few times more, that was all. I had a strong constitution and was quite healthy for someone who’d been so hacked up, he told me—no news there—and I was now going through the usual sword-pulled-out-of-me crap, which he’d seen a thousand times before, and was just a matter of endurance until it eased. “You’ll probably be laid up some of the time you’re here, while your life-force finds it bearings again,” he said. “But that’s all right. That’s what the maesa asa kraiya is for.”

Now Azaila said, “Surya is right,” a truism if I ever heard one. “A person can be as good a healer as he was a warrior.”

“Oh right—where’s your full-to-bursting practice, then?”

He just laughed. “There are different ways to be a healer.” I thought of him grinding my face in the dirt during the invasion of Arko, and saw his point. “Your way is very clear to me, even if it isn’t to you. That’ll change, as you give yourself permission to see it yourself. Just to irritate you, Chevenga, I’ll give you a hint: you were a warrior on a scale that touched the whole world.” I wanted to chase him out of my room flinging things at him. At least he’d admitted he was irritating me.

“Look, my teacher, the night I fought Younger Riji, I felt defenseless,” I said. “I now feel about a hundred times as defenseless as I did then. And it’s been a while since anyone tried to kill me; we’re about due. Will you please hurry up and make me into a wizard like yourself before the brown stains in my, and Krero’s, under-cloths become permanent?”

“Sure,” he said, laughing again. “Or at least you will make yourself one, the moment you get it. You’re a step ahead of most in understanding what victory is… at least I think you still are; define it for me.”

“Causing the enemy to lose the will or ability to fight me,” I said. “Either by incapacitating him physically, incapacitating him emotionally, or causing him to make a reasoned choice not to. Or”—I almost forgot—“arranging things so that he has either no will or no ability to fight me in the first place.” I felt about ten again.

“A good warrior and general’s definition,” he said. What other kind is there? “So the question of defending oneself asa kraiya is—what?”

“How to do that without causing harm… or without even threatening it, since you can’t cause it.”

“Ehh, you’re still thinking like a warrior, but you’re pointed in more or less the right direction,” he said cheerily. “Well, there you are. That’s all you need to figure out.”

“Thank you so much, revered master,” I said. “That clears it right up.”

He let out a cackling laugh. “Have I ever told you that teaching you is unending delight? You’re always so much fun. All right, go back a step and take them one by one, the ways of causing the other to lose his will or ability to fight you.”

“Incapacitating him physically is out the window.” He gave me his “you’re idiotically wrong” grin, and I remembered what Surya had done to me, the night I’d dreamed of fighting my Arkan escort in Roskat. I’d definitely been physically incapacitated, but not harmed. Or was it emotionally? That can take all the strength out of the body too, and I’d felt plenty afraid as I’d lain there unable even to get up on my elbows. “All right then—incapacitating him physically in any way I know how to do is out the window. Emotionally too, since it’s always with fear of same. I guess I’m going to have to convince them to make a reasoned choice every time… talk them out of it. Those who have no ears for my words of justice and sense, sure.”

“You feel frustrated for the usual reason,” he said. “Limiting yourself. To words… to convincing—”

“What else is there for me, now?”

“You’re sweating the technique too much, Chevenga. Think more of the result. What do you have to do?”

“Well you’re the one who asked me to take two steps back and look at the ways one by one!”

“Of course; that was to point out the futility of thinking of it that way.” May I be released from the inhibitions of asa kraiya long enough, I asked some mythical power that an athye may not ask, to strangle my war-master?

“Cause the enemy to lose the will or ability to fight me.” I swallowed the urge to add, “magically.”

“Right.” We stared at each other for a time; no words came to my mind but, How!? and he’d told me I was sweating the technique too much. “Fourth Chevenga Shae—Virani-e, I should say…! The answer is right in what we were talking about earlier. Why don’t you see it?”

For all I felt like utter crap, I got up and paced anyway, wanting to throw up. Legs can be for that too. Famed the world over for all I had done, vanquisher of Riji Kli-fas and Kallijas Itrean, conqueror of Arko, I now knew less than nothing. Make no mistake, going asa kraiya rips you back down right to the ground.

I ran back over our talk in my mind, straining to see clues. Why I could not hit Riji, him being human like me, me being gentle and sensitive (ha!), asa kraiya being the natural state… I saw about as much as a blind man in the deepest crack of a cave at midnight.

“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Riji was already victorious over you before you even closed, whether he, or you, knew it or not. True?”

“True.” Asa kraiya and vomiting-averse to it or not, I still felt the sting on my pride. “I had no will—or ability, for that matter, or so it felt—to—ohhhh, I get it! I have to make everyone who attacks me go asa kraiya, right then and there! Well, kyash, no problem!”

“Exactly,” he said, with his most satisfied grin, as if I hadn’t been being sarcastic in the slightest.

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