8 - Surya's story

“I am from Kabiri, a village near Tinga-e. When I was a child, I could see auras a little, and I knew something of what they meant. But people thought I was imagining them, would say ‘Oh yes, those certainly are nice colours around so-and-so, what an imagination you have.’ It got fainter and fainter, and stopped altogether when I started my war-training.

“We were very much a warrior family, my shadow-father a war-teacher by trade. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life as I was growing up; I didn’t like war-craft enough to follow him, and though I helped in my parents’ shop, I couldn’t see myself doing carpentry all my life either. I fought against the Lakans for three years, then married. My husband and shadow-wife did cabinetry, my wife did running for the Workfast Proclamatory, and we had children; I dedicated myself to them, and to the garden and the herd, because I still was not certain what else I wanted to do.

“We were all four warriors, so that when the Arkans invaded, we were devastated; you know how it was with warrior families. My shadow-father, my mother, both of my wives and a good half my in-laws all got killed within three moons. Anchera and I had the children cared for and wet-nursed by someone up in the mountains who wasn’t even family, so we could fight.

“When it turned around and we started winning, all was well for a while, but then I started getting sick. It was just aches and pains and nausea at first, but it worsened as we fought through Yeola-e and then into Arko. I started feeling tired all the time, depressed, I’d get fits of panic, nightmares, and catch every little thing that was going around. We thought it was grief from bereavement—but releasing my grief, crying out my heart many times, did not touch it. I went to one army healer after another, Haians, Yeolis, even an Enchian, and none of them could do anything. The Haian remedies would work for a short time, then I’d be back to where I had been before. The Haians told me it was because I was a warrior and I should quit—but you know Haians, they always say that. After everything, I was hardly not going to see it through to the end.

“The only person who really helped was a Yeoli war-master. He told me that I shouldn’t worry, that the reason for it all would come clear... that I didn’t have, and this is exactly how he put it, a case of sickness, but a case of change. What that meant, I hadn’t a clue, and I guess he didn’t explain because at that time I could not possibly have understood. But he said that I shouldn’t worry with such conviction and firmness that I believed him, and that helped.

“At Porfirias I had to drag myself onto the field. They were nothing but old men and boys and cripples, all that Arko had left. They’d stopped fighting, we were just slaughtering them as they ran, when I came to a point where something in me would not be denied. I couldn’t do this for a moment longer. I said so to Anchera, and threw down my sword. And then...”

Surya paused, gazing off over my shoulder, his face full of the memory, which seemed both wondrous and horrific. “My gift came up, full-blown.”

“Full-blown?” I asked him. “You mean—all of a sudden you were seeing everyone’s auras?” He signed chalk. “Sakra Mahaiyana... the wounded, the dying...? That must have been... I can’t imagine.”

“It was as if the land was burning, a sheet of flame of agony and anguish and rage... I fell to the ground and curled up into a ball. Anchera thought I’d taken an arrow. He and someone else carried me to the infirmary. The Haians figured it out fairly quickly, when I started telling them about things that had happened to them as children. There was a man across from me who was refusing painkiller, though he was in agony. I kept wanting to scream, ‘Force it down his throat!’ So, they knew what it was, but not what to do. I felt the only person who’d have a clue was that war-master. Anchera, bless his soul, went out and found him. Azaila—that was his name—”

“Azaila! Azaila Shae-Chila, of the School of the Sword in Vae Arahi?”

“Yes... well, I guess you would know him.”

“He was my war-teacher.”

Surya laughed, and said, “Ah, I should have known it.” His eyes took on the aura-seeing gaze.

“Oh yes, there he is! I see the spirit of his teaching in you.”

“What does his aura look like?”

“Oh, it is very beautiful, very strong, the colours all like jewels, everything integrated and well-formed, nothing out of harmony. It is a wonder to see.”

“Not like mine.”

Surya smiled. “Give yourself as many years as he has had, to learn and grow.”

Having shut me up thoroughly, he went on. “Azaila and Anchera took me out into a forest near there, far away from the camp or the killing-field or any other people. There, he ran me through the asa kraiya ceremony.”

“Azaila does that?”

“Of course—he’s a war-teacher.” He shook his head, and a smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “You kraiyaseyel don’t know anything.”

“You know, Surya Chaelaecha,” I said, “I’ve never had anyone make me feel as much of an ignoramus as you since I came of age.”

“You’re welcome. It’s a healer’s calling to serve. Azaila, your war-teacher...” I’d already learned to fear Surya’s scheming look. “Did he give you your wristlets?” I signed chalk. “So you must be quite worried what he will think of you going asa kraiya. I have your next order. Do you know if he is in Arko, still, or back at the School?”

“Back at the School. I wish he were here.”

“You can’t speak to him, then—so: you will write him. Ask him his opinion of your doing this.”

I took a deep breath and said, “A-e, kras’.”

“No later than tomorrow.”

“I hear and obey.”

“Good. So anyway, he took me through the ceremony. Not that it was my true moment of laying down the sword; that had been when I had thrown it down, literally. But the ceremony formalizes it. And celebrates it. And then he suggested that I go to Haiu Menshir to be trained in how to use my gift. We had to smuggle ourselves onto the island because it was occupied by Arko then, but we managed; I got help from the semanakraseye, a letter for our privateers.”

It almost slipped by; I had to let it echo again through my ears. I got help from the semanakraseye, a letter for our privateers. I froze, shivers spreading outward from my heart, sending prickles flowering all down my arms and legs.

All through, Surya had never addressed me by name or by title, except kraiyaseye. I had thought it was to show me that my position was not important. Now I saw—it was that he didn’t know who I was. No—he knew better than anyone who I was. He did not know my name.

“The semanakraseye,” I said wonderingly.

“Yes—Chevenga himself,” he said, with a slight but unmistakable pleasure in dropping my name. “I guess it had to go that high, it was going to be tricky.”

When I thought back, I could vaguely remember it coming across my desk, after Porfirias, vaguely recall scribing and signing a note to my privateers, to get a warrior secret passage to Haiu Menshir to train a gift that had incapacitated him.

I played it out in my mind. The first session, he’d started saying things that shocked me so fast I’d forgotten to introduce myself. When he never asked, I had come to assume he knew by my face or the seals or the signet or the brand-marks, or Megidan telling him, which I knew now she hadn’t. But then how had he missed the clues all over me? They are surface things, I thought. He doesn’t look at the surface, at what I make myself appear to be; he looks at the centre, the truth, at what I really am.

Surya looked at me puzzled; of course whatever I felt showed plain as light to his eyes. I opened my mouth to tell him the truth and apologize for not doing so earlier, and felt my tongue lock. Something in me did not want to; asking myself, I saw right away what. Not knowing my name, he knew me, not it and everything associated with it in his mind, whatever that was. To him, I was just myself, not Fourth Chevenga, conqueror of Arko, Invincible, Beloved, Imperator, Son of the Sun, and so on. I wanted to stay that way to him so badly it almost hurt.

So I shrugged, and said, “Just a thought—one that’s best to tell you later, I think.” As if he’s going to let that go, I thought lamely. To my amazement, he did, and went on with his story. I felt like the child who walks onto the wrestling ground against the giant, and pulls off a victory.

“Anchera saw me settled on Haiu Menshir, and then went back home to reclaim the kids, since the war was over. I studied there for two years, then went back home, and I have been practicing ever since. My Haian master gave me the name ‘Kinamun,’ which means ‘certainty.’ I’ve just translated it to Yeoli.”

I could see why he’d been given that name.

“Now I understood, I had not known what I wanted to do with my life because my best talent had been hidden from me. I was practicing in Tinga-e until about a month ago, when All-Spirit told me that I should come here, for some reason. Anchera and Janinara-e—my new shadow-wife—and the children were not pleased; but I had to come.”

Surya lifted his teacup for a sip, and said, “Now it looks to me like the reason was to save your life.”

“Surya, you are extraordinary,” I said, “and all who come to you are blessed, that in the way of All-Spirit you were given such a gift. I should not waste it.”

He shook his head. “That’s it—enough rest, nose to the grindstone again. Do you hear what you are saying? You should not waste my gift, as if that is the crucial consideration in whether you live or die. Before it was Yeola-e would lose you as a warrior, as if you losing you was of no consequence at all. I do have my work cut out for me, don’t I, having to convince you your life is worth anything, for its own sake?”

I couldn’t speak. I had said those words, there was no taking them back, no pretending that meaning was not in them.

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7 - There is steel in you

“Have you talked to anyone else about it? Family, friends?”

“No one. I couldn’t bring myself.”

“You need others as well as me. Your family, your spouses, your friends, do they know about your foreknowledge?”

“My mother, my wife and one of my lovers do.”

“What would they feel and think, if they knew what you now do, about it?”

Death-obligation. Lay down the sword. I tried to imagine Niku hearing these things, then Kallijas, and I was in a worse maelstrom than before. “Take a deep breath and let me rephrase that,” Surya said. “How would they feel if they knew that there was a way for you to survive?”

“They’d... well, they’d be ecstatic.”

“So tell them. I can see something of them in your aura, they are all very brave and strong people—have to be, to be with you, eh?—and they’d close ranks hard with you if they knew. They are warriors, yes?”

“My mother’s asa kraiya, but she cut her hair and took up the sword again against Arko when she found out what they did to me.”

“Would you trust them with your life, on the field?” I signed chalk. “Then why not with this? The sooner you tell them, the sooner they can start helping you. Eventually they’re going to demand to know what’s going on anyway.” That was true enough. “You’ve relinquished your will to me, and I am going to give you orders today. This is one of them—tell your wife and the one lover who knows. Tonight. And your mother, she’s in Yeola-e?” I signed chalk, noticing I was doing it firmly like a good soldier to his commanding officer. “Write her. Tonight.”

“A-e kras.” Like many a warrior given an assignment, I didn’t know how I would do it.

“So,” he said. “Are you convinced of the truth in what I said last time?”

“I... well, I know I dare not argue with you on it.”

“That’s a start. Are you convinced you must go asa kraiya?”

Asa kraiya: beyond the sword. Lay it down, give up warriorhood. Asakraiyaseyel are fairly secretive about it; my mother had never told me what it was like, and nor had I asked. My letter to her started to write itself.

“Well, if it’s that or die, yes. Yeola-e will lose me as a warrior either way. Given the choice, I imagine they would take the way that left me alive.”

“Of course they would. But this isn’t for them, it is for you. Can you see yourself doing it?”

“No. I can barely believe I’m even saying these words to you.”

“You are very, very tightly tied to the steel in you,” he said. “You think of that idea, the steel in you, as a metaphorical construct. And it is true, there is no material steel inside your body. But there is steel in you, the sword in you—an energy-form, a thing made of the same stuff that makes up your aura—”

“So you can see it?”

“Plain and clear.”

“Really? Where is it in me, exactly?”

“I could make you feel it, except that you’re not ready for that.”

“How do you know I’m not? Why don’t you give it a try?”

He smiled, and just when I thought he might commend me for my courage, said, “You are thinking, ‘How scary could that be?’ It isn’t courage prompting you this time, kraiyaseye—it’s denial. You tell me, how scary can it be to lie on a healer’s table?”

I sipped my tea, and signed chalk without a word.

“Don’t worry, you’ll feel it soon enough. You are very much a person of touch, who perceives reality through his bodily sensations, and I will speak to you that way, all through.”

There, to me, is the mark of a great healer. Alchaen did it all the time too. He will tell you something hugely significant about yourself which you have never thought of, and no one else has ever told you, but which you immediately recognize as such obvious truth you are astonished you did not know it. Of course I am a person of touch, who perceives reality through my bodily sensations; I have been all my life, with everything from the butterfly-kisses of lovers’ eye-lashes on my cheek to steel rammed through my body.

“As I was saying, you are very much tied to the sword in you, much more so than most. So going asa kraiya for you will require a lot of preparation.”

“Not more preparation than I have time for, with however much time you gave me last session, I hope?”

“I gave you nothing; you claimed that time. All I did was show you how. The thing is, you don’t need to actually do it, to perform the asa kraiya ceremony, to save yourself in effect—just to definitely decide, to form the intent solidly enough. Though don’t start thinking that just by deciding here” —he touched his temple— “that it’s done, that you can change it just like that. You have had experiences in the past, perhaps, where you decided something in your mind, but when it came time, things went exactly the opposite?”

I felt a little sick as I signed chalk, thinking of the sack of Arko.

“Don’t flog yourself,” he said, patting my shoulder. “The stroke of the past is in the past, it makes no difference now. However important it is that you do right, don’t hold yourself to too high a standard for a human being to attain.”

I took another deep breath. Alchaen had said that so many times.

“So. We will prepare you for asa kraiya, kraiyaseye.”

“You’ve done it before, for others?”

“No. Not for anyone else. Most people who go asa kraiya don’t need a healer. For one thing, they’re usually not on quite so tight a schedule. They can afford to wait ten years until they’re ready. You’re... unusual.”

No argument there. “Then how...” I wasn’t sure how to ask this, without risking offending him.

“How do I know how to do it? Go ahead, ask me such questions, they are fair. I did it for myself.”

“You are asa kraiya?” That explained his strong hands, his ease in lifting me, his short hair. It was hard to imagine Surya in armour, those magical fingers holding a sword or a spear.

“Yes. ’50 — the second-last battle against Arko, Porfirias.” It was even harder to imagine that he’d fought under my command.

He was being kind to the Arkans, calling it a battle. They’d been twenty thousand to my hundred thousand, put in our way just to slow us down, allowing more time for the final force to be gathered in Finpollendias, the plain just above the City, as its last defense. All twenty thousand must have known they were just the rocks placed in front of the carriage, their lives being thrown away.

“I’ll tell you the story,” said Surya. “Put your feet up, take a break.





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6 - Oh kyash, talk-healing

In the next two days, the bliss faded. Everything Surya had said, my mind recoiled from, in shock, in horror, and in other emotions I could not name. The second night I woke soaked with sweat.

They poked at the edges of my thinking, death-obligation, lay down the sword, I don’t deserve to live, and my mind shrank away from them like a caterpillar from a firebrand. Then when I least expected it, some part of my body would whisper, I want to live. It was the oddest thing, to be completely disoriented in perfectly familiar places, as if I had taken a head-blow without noticing it happening. My thoughts would be going along their everyday course, then everything would suddenly be spinning; else rising out of sleep, I would feel as if I’d been flung sideways, the room going end over end.

I was desperate; it was a problem I had to solve, but could not even begin to make sense of, as if I must win a battle but could not even count my army or see what equipment we had or name any officers, all these things slipping out of my mind even as I thought them, making it impossible to bring everything together, like in a bad dream. It was like the time on Haiu Menshir after Kurkas had tortured me to insanity, when I could not form up my thoughts; but this time it was not some external disturbance making it impossible, like a din forbidding speech, but the nature of the thoughts themselves, each seizing me too violently with shock to allow me to think of all of them at once, so that I could not consolidate them.

I told no one. I couldn’t bear to, didn’t know what to say; my mind shying away from it all would hardly allow my tongue to speak it, and let another hear it. “I can’t talk about it, please stop asking,” I begged Niku and Skorsas and Kallijas, which astonished them, being so unlike me.

I floated through my work, the gilded office, the meetings, the national calculations and considerations all seeming distant and strange. People noticed that I seemed as if I had partaken of the herb-pipe; those who did not fear me mentioned it. I know now they talked about it with each other.

I cancelled on someone, something I never do unless I’m deadly ill, to go to Surya the second time. Of course, according to him, I was.

I turned to walk up his flag-stoned path, and froze in fear. I could not move forward, as if I was standing against a wall.

I have sneaked alone into a war-camp to kill the most well-guarded person there, at the age of fifteen. I led more charges than I’ve kept count of, running or riding straight towards the naked blades of hundreds of enemies all ignoring everyone else to fight-stare me, wanting my blood most. I won fifty duels in the Mezem, and strode without hesitation to where I would duel Riji, and Kallijas Itrean, both at least my equals. My courage is the subject of songs, murals, statues. But now I couldn’t walk up to the door of a healer’s office. I stood like an idiot in an Arkan street, unable to make myself step forward, swearing I’d die before I stepped backward, thinking “I will do this if I have to stand here until the second Fire does come,” the only mercy that I was wearing a hooded cloak so that none of the glancing passersby could know it was me.

Then Surya opened his door, and said “Nye'yingi, come in,” and my body mindlessly obeyed as it would a war-commander.

“Kras’,” I said as I passed him. He smiled, and I braced myself for his order to strip and lie on the table, my mouth gone bone-dry and my legs jelly. Instead he took me into a parlor with two plush chairs, had me sit down and offered me ezethra, of all things, as if I were a visiting friend.

“No touch-healing today,” he said, reading my mind to answer my question. I thought my heart would fall out of my chest, with relief. “Just talk-healing today. Tell me: how do you feel?” Oh kyash, I thought: talk-healing.

“You can’t see it in my aura?” I asked him.

“I can; but I want to know how well you know your own feelings.”

And how honest I’ll be, I thought. “All right. Shocked to my bones. Very relieved not to be on your table. So scared I feel like shitting my kilt right here.”

“And one other.”

“One other?”

“Emotion. You feel another emotion. Tell me, because I need to know, are you hiding it just from me, or yourself as well? Be honest with me, it’s very important: do you know you feel another emotion and just don’t want to tell me, or do you not know you’re feeling it?”

I felt, and followed, the urge to breathe deeply, as I thought about how to answer this. “I must be hiding it from myself,” I said finally, “for I told you all the ones I could think of.”

“All right, good.” He did not say which of the two possibilities carried the better prognosis; I hoped the “good” meant it was the one I was taking. I wondered if he could tell if a person was lying from their aura. I certainly wasn’t going to try. “The other emotion you are feeling is shame, shame for your fear.”

Of course, I thought, smacking myself inwardly, remembering how glad I’d been of the hooded cloak on his walk. “Which you needn’t feel. With what you’re facing, courageous as you are, you’d be inhuman not to be afraid.”

“Ah.” I pursed my lips. “That’s so reassuring.”

He laughed again. It was good to see; he had a warm laugh, and it made him human. Face-to-face, I noticed other things about him I hadn’t before; he had green-grey eyes, his hair was short enough to be counted a warrior-cut, he had a mole over one eyebrow, he wore a plain white linen tunic and nothing on his feet. His hands I was almost afraid to look at, but of course I could not help it while he spoke. Their way of moving was gentle, like their touch, but they were muscular, making me wonder if he did hard massage as well. He was so plain outwardly, for what he carried within him, it was startling; those hands, that had done what they had done to me, looked like anyone’s.

“Well, we’ll return to shame. Have you thought about the last session?”

“As little as I could possibly manage.”

The laugh came with a snort, this time, catching him by surprise. “My clients should always be so truthful. Well... sooner or later you will have to start.”

“Seriously... I did think about it, I tried to, but I could get nowhere. It’s... it’s still entirely overwhelming, Surya.” I suddenly wanted to cleave to him, like a bit of rock in a heaving ocean. In all this, he was the only certainty.





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5 - I can't do that

“What!?” That wrenched me out of the place he had sent me like a splash of cold water. I noticed my hands had suddenly taken a death-grip on the edges of the table. “Lay down the sword? I can’t do that.”

“Oh? You just swore you’d do anything. Second Fire come.”

My thoughts chased themselves in circles. “Lay down the sword. Are you sure I have to? And why?”

“When you first understood what being a warrior meant, did you want to be one?”

I tend to forget intermittently, the memory burned away by the fire of all that has happened since. “No,” I whispered.

“Because of that, bearing it is killing you. It kills everyone, but some faster than others. I am as sure as I can see it in your aura, which is as clear to me as your face, or clearer. Breathe, kraiyaseye. Lay down the sword you never wanted to take up in the first place, or die, those are your choices, it’s simple as that. You think, you were taught, that your own inclination, your choice, was not important, could be overridden without cost. But it can’t; do you think that choice is sacred to all Yeolis except yourself? The cost is your life. How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“For someone whose death waits at thirty, twenty-eight is old age. There is another part of you that is just plain tired, that just wants to stop, and get away from all this shit, and death is the only honourable way. It’s all right, let the tears come, they are ones you can’t allow anywhere but here. Let them come.”

Though my body stayed lying down, my mind lost it then, and my tongue ran clean away. He did not answer any of what I said, just knelt with his hands lying gently on me while I cried and thrashed and railed at him that he was mad, that I wasn’t afraid of my death, never had been, and wouldn’t try to squirm out of it now like a coward; that it was too late to put down the cursed sword, I was a warrior to my bones whatever I had wanted as a child; that I was going to take all my blades and get out of here before he dragged me into his madness so he’d better stand aside, and so on. He let me go on; I think, on retrospect, he’d expected it. After a while he laid a finger on my lips and said, “Stop,” and I did.

“You say all this,” he said, “but it’s not what you want. Always it’s the mind that’s full of shit… your body and your spirit know the truth. Else you would throw me off, you would go. Instead you’re lying here still. Deny it?” I just let my tears run silent.

“I know,” he said. “It is very, very hard. I wouldn’t go so fast, if there were more time. You can bear it, even though it seems you can’t; you can.” He took hold of my manhood again, and the streak of feeling through me sent me down deeper. “Before you,” he said, “lies the possibility of a journey. If you take it, I will lead you; you will follow, or not, by choice. If you follow all the way, you will live. If you choose to follow, you have to relinquish your will, like a warrior to a commander. Will you do that?”

As I lifted my hand to take my crystal again, to swear the relinquishment, fear filled me; my tears and my sweat seemed to turn from hot to icy cold. I tried to master myself. His hands did not waver. Inside me was a silent shrieking, even as I felt the beginnings of ecstasy. “Feel the life in you,” he said. “More than anything, life wants to continue forever, so we feel it there most keenly, and so I am touching that part. Now follow the life in you, do what it wants.”

It took everything in me, to mouth the words. I relinquish my will to you, Surya Chaelaecha, in matters of my life and death. It felt like leaping off a cliff. Second Fire come if I am forsworn. “Good. It’s all right.” There was a sinking and a release all through me; I felt the table seem to press harder against my back and limbs, and realized my body was relaxing. My mind stilled, like falling into a trance, and from then on his every word or motion or idea seemed as great as the world, and touched me bone-deep, with a kind of joy in sensitivity so keen it was almost pain. I fell deeper, beyond words spoken or unspoken, beyond concepts; there was no reality for me but Surya, his hands, his voice, my own breaths in and out like life and death, dark and light, interchanging while my body danced, climbing, to his hand.

“Tell me,” he said. “What do you want?” I didn’t know. “Speak from everything you feel. What do you want, more than anything?”

“To… to live,” I whispered, though neither the voice nor the words seemed like mine.

“Say it declaratively,” he said. “And out loud. What do you want?”

“I want to live.” It was barely more than a whisper.

“Again,” he said. “Keep saying it. Draw the intent out of the pleasure. Feel the life in you, and express its will.”

“I want to live.” It was a struggle; I felt my eyes clench shut, my cheeks tense like rock. My core was on fire with ecstasy. “I want to live.”

“When you hit the peak,” he whispered, “make your cry those words. Say it with freedom, fly on the wings of it.”

I felt the beginnings of the long joy-scream within, unstoppable with any degree of will. “I... want... to... live. I want to live. I want to live. I want to live. I want to live I want to live I want to live I want to live I want to live I WANT TO LIVE I WANT TO LIVE I WANT TO LIVE I WANT TO LIVE...”

It went on; it would not stop; even when I was long past coming, convulsing, agony and ecstasy wracking me at once, I could not stop. I screamed it over and over like a child having a tantrum except there was as much joy in it as anger; I leapt off the table and was all over the room, dancing the desire and the pain of being denied it for all my life, which he told me I was feeling in full for the first time; there was the freedom, the wings as he had said, and I flew, I flew on it as he had commanded, flew and screamed and wanted and demanded, with tears raining, and his encouragements all the way, the life-wish that I had forbidden myself for twenty-one years, until I was empty of everything but a vast white bliss all through my insides, that I had never felt before.

†

Surya helped me wash and showed me to another room, with a couch. “Sleep,” he said. “No one else is here, you are safe, and I’ll get you back to where you should be when you should be, don’t worry.” I didn’t think I would, but I was gone the moment I closed my eyes.

I slept two beads solid. When I woke, he wouldn’t let me even attempt to walk, but hired a chair to carry me back to the Marble Palace, telling me to come back in two days. The bliss still filled me. I got a notion of swords near; my invisible back-up, seeing me in this state, had quickly decided to make themselves visible. When I got to the Palace, they put me straight into bed. For all I told Kaninjer I had not been drugged, he insisted on checking me from head to foot. I cancelled all my appointments for the evening, fell asleep again, woke just long enough to eat a little and reassure my loves that for all I might be flattened, I felt better than I could describe, then slept solid again, right until dawn.

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4 - Give yourself to life

Somehow, this made me want to breathe deep and hard. “The first thing to do—you are doing it already, good. Breathe. Keep it flowing, like water. When did you last drink?” He went away and came back with a large cup of water and made me drain it dry, though I had not thought I was thirsty. He touched the top of my head and the spot between my legs again. “See that river of light between my fingers. Feel it. As well you must open yourself.”

“More than I already have? You have my great secret, and how long have I been here—half a tenth?”

“It’s all right,” he said again, and with one hand took hold of my penis. It was impersonal—he was a healer—but his touch had power in its tenderness, as if to say to me, ‘I am here, and there is no turning away from that.’ I stared at him for a moment but he was not looking at my eyes, and his expression had not changed. Despite all my fear, my body granted him its trust. I fell into myself, my mind blanking but for the thought of the river of light.

“What I am doing is speaking with your body, because when it comes to life and death, your body is wiser than your mind. How many times have you tried to kill yourself, and your body refused?” He didn’t sound as if he didn’t know that it had been several. “So I am going to make your body tell your mind.”

I swore Second Fire come, I thought. What have I done? But I heard myself say, “I should trust you, you mean, as I’d trust a surgeon.”

“Yes, exactly. That is physically; this is emotionally and spiritually. You must give up your power of choice in matters of your life and death, because such decisions you aren’t competent to make. Your habit of thinking and choosing is going to kill you in two months. If you could change that by yourself, you would have already; you can’t, so you need to give it to someone who is competent, who knows, who understands and who isn’t afraid of you, and I think I am the only one.”

I just lay and breathed, trying to keep the room from spinning with the depth of my breaths; I could do nothing else.

“Keep the path of light strong in your inward eye, and keep breathing, else what I’m going to tell you will knock you unconscious, no joke. Tell the truth: you don’t much believe me, do you, that it is not foreknowledge, but a feeling that you don’t deserve to live?”

“I... well, I’ve thought it was foreknowledge for twenty-one years.”

“Fair enough.” He let go with the one hand to touch two points on my chest with his fingers. I felt another strangeness on top of everything else. “So tell me you do, then. Say, ‘I deserve to live.’”

I opened my mouth, and my tongue locked just as on Haiu Menshir the first time. “I... I...” I struggled for a time, and managed no better than wordless panting. “I... kyash, what’s wrong with me?”

“Breathe. Nothing. But I am touching your aura in such a way that you can say nothing but the truth of your belief. Question: what is the one thing that can counter foreknowledge?”

“Other foreknowledge.”

“Have you ever worked with an augur?”

“Yes... Jinai.”

“Jinai Oru! The greatest augur. You worked with him on decisions you had to make, for others. Have you ever asked him to look for your own death, so you could see how to prevent it?”

Like yesterday, I remembered Jinai saying, when I had asked him whether he ever looked for his own death: “No—I might see it.” I remembered how that had seemed to make us brothers. By not answering Surya, I answered him.

“Why not?”

“I... I always considered it inevitable.”

“Why? As you say, foreknowledge can be countered by foreknowledge, and that is something you know. What stopped you?”

I felt myself fall into myself again, trembling now. I could think of no explanation, except his.

He laid his hand on my brow. “I see... you as a child on the mountain, with... an older man. Shadow-father. I think you have forgotten this, we’ll have to come back to it. It was your duty to be a great warrior, you’d be a traitor if you weren’t, all these things he taught you and so you took the sword deep into yourself. You are such a warrior, and you did not want to be one at all—the core of you still does not. Because you did not want to give out death, you did not want to render other sons fatherless. Your shadow-father told you it was your duty, that you would be a traitor if you quit war-training. So you stayed, and took the sword very deeply into yourself, as you do all your obligations. But there had to be a price to pay. A great price, for something that was so against your conscience, and yet which you do so much and so well. You already had an idea what sort of price. As I said, your family stream-tests. All Yeola-e used to, and all Yeola-e carries the trauma, still, deep in our souls. We may not live if we are not strong... breathe.

“Your shadow-father... a hard relationship, with him. When your father was killed, he leaned more on you than he let you lean on him, though he was the adult and you were the child. And... he let you know you were not to outdo your father. At the same time you were supposed to be the greatest warrior, which was outdoing your father. You had to outdo him and not outdo him, both at once. You found a way, the path unconceived. ‘No one deserved more than he,’ did your shadow-father not say that? That gave you the clue: more life. You could be the greater warrior so long as you didn’t live longer than he. How old was he when he died?”

“Twenty-eight,” I whispered. The world spun end over end; the only steady things were the river of light, and his hands, touching me to depths deeper than I understood. Breathe. Keep the river of light steady.

“Your shadow-father feared you, too. Even when you were a child. Many people fear you still, they fear your capability and your power, regardless of your intent; they see it as inequality and we are a very egalitarian people. None more than you, so you would give your life to assuage their fear. And it is fair exchange, you feel, for what you have been given. The best die young, is that not the saying? Breathe... you see what I mean, you are near to passing out.”

When I could, I said, “I feel like I’m dying.” Each idea he spoke seemed to sink me deeper, as if towards some kind of complete collapse, or defeat, or surrender.

“That’s all right,” Surya said. “It will feel like dying, for all it’s denying death. You’ll get a lot of that, throughout. For you to live, something in you, something substantial, must die, and that death you will feel as the death it is. As I said, it will be difficult; I would not lie to you. There’s no way around it. But you have done very difficult things before, met great challenges, and on the other side lies rebirth. You deserve to live. To get old, to work for another twenty or thirty or forty years, to see your children grow and thrive and marry and have children of their own. You think a thousand things about yourself that are wrong; one of them is that you know how to give yourself to life, and to take it in, when in truth you don’t. I will teach you, I am teaching you.

“You have given yourself to death—give yourself to life. The sword is killing you. That is one thing you will have to do: lay it down, go asa kraiya.”

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