128 - Fear

Skorsas ran to my elbow like a hound. “He’s running very scared,” he said. “I’ve never heard of him going to all that trouble. He’s paid you the greatest compliment, in truth.” I didn’t know whether this was true, though; for all I knew, Riji had sparred every hard opponent he’d had the day before. Skorsas had reason for falsehood.

Men crowded around me like rats. Their Arkan smell, from eating too much beef, seemed pungent as dung, much more than usual for some reason; I wanted to cut a path through them with Chirel. “So, he got you! Do you think he will tomorrow?” –“ Raikas, how does this change things?” –“Raikas, might this be your last chance to speak to the people of Arko, what do you wish to say?” The standard odds had been even money; now I was hearing five-to-four, even four-to-three, for him.

I settled for shouldering a path through them, with not a word, as I usually did. Riji was happy to speak to an adoring circle of them in his usual grand way. He was still reading my mind. “I know what he is thinking,” I overheard him telling them. “ ‘Tomorrow will be different.’ But it will be just the same, of course.”

In the shower, and for the rest of the day, I thought a thousand things. I couldn’t meet Mana in the woods; Iska let me know it was the Director’s order that I was not to go out, since I was particularly valuable alive right now. The streets would be a gauntlet I didn’t care to run anyway, since the fans would assume that anyone about my height who left the Mezem in a hood would be either me or Riji.

Mana came into my room anyway, and we threw ourselves into a hug as always. (I was much less starved for touch these days; could he tell?) “Surely you aren’t going to let that child-raper throw you? Think of what Azaila would say: he has a bad spirit, and that will weaken him.”

“It didn’t seem to weaken him sparring.”

“Cheng, he’s a showman. That was a show. He’s never seen real battle; it’s about nothing but blood and corpses to him. He’s fake through and through.”

He was real enough to those he made into corpses, I thought, but didn’t say; I didn’t want to dishearten him. I went on instead about how Riji withholding that skill from the service of a nation was like treason, and so forth. “I wonder if the idea that Tor Ench would be worse off if I, a friend of Kranaj’s, were dead and Yeola-e conquered even enters his head?” Mana doubted it. I was pacing; on retrospect, he must have seen I was tense by how I moved.

He watched me for a time, thinking. “Chevenga,” he finally said.

“What?” I’d almost snapped at him; I reproached myself inside.

“I know what’s throwing you. It’s the contradiction. How can he be so good and so bad at the same time?”

I froze where I was pacing, seeing the sane and mad faces that were the quillons of Riji’s sword again. “Kyash. You’re right. But none of that should concern me when I’m in the Ring. Maybe I’ll kill him, even if they show the white; that would be just, wouldn’t it?”

“You can’t save him for the good of the world. Somewhere you want to; I know you.” He did, so well. I threw that out of my mind with a fast out-breath, too. “You need to kill the evil.”

“He has a wife and two children in Arko… they might even watch.”

“He won’t quit. Beat him, and he’ll come after you again. He’s mad, Cheng.”

He was right; of course he was. Look what Riji had already done for pride. “So I’ll kyashin hamstring him.”

Mana held his line, that death was best for Riji himself, like mercy to a mad dog, and everyone around him. I didn’t argue with much spirit; it might come down to the crowd anyway, or even the fight itself; the only opening I found might be for a killing-blow. I told Mana not to worry, as he left.

Niku sneaked in through my window later, and we made love, lightly enough not to leave me too spent. “He is a fahkad shkavi,” she said, meaning one who mates with sharks. “Kill him, omores.” Two red kerchiefs, I thought. It made me feel strong, to assure her with an unforced smile that I would win. She didn’t linger that night, knowing Skorsas would likely check on me.

Past the time I should fall asleep, I could not.

Fear is a squid, with a thousand tentacles. In Yeola-e, the time of two or three beads past midnight we call the death-hour, because the old and the weak often die then. Even the trees are silent, the moon seems colder, strength and faith are at their lowest ebb, and the tendrils of fear easily find us.

I lay measuring, weighing signs, telling myself I was truly better than he, he’d just been ready when I was not; then I’d feel the last stroke again, putting the lie to it all. I’d tell myself that hardly put the lie to it all, when tomorrow was another fight; then I’d see I was afraid, and the fear of fear would come up, I can’t sleep, he has me; by morning I’ll be exhausted and not my best and I must be my best, or better, to beat him...

Fear is a sparring-partner of thought, that knows every opening and changes it into a black dance. Fear is fire, licking at the pillars of the soul; fear is shadow, crouching behind every unevenness. Stamped out in one place, it flares up in other; driven out of one corner by light, it creeps around to gather behind, as often as not in disguise. As caution, as reason, as courage, as fear reflected in courage, as courage reflected in fear, it masks itself, and so on forever to impossibility, like the Legion Mirrors.

Why, I thought, didn’t I call him back to spar again, make it best two out of three? He’s left me with just that one memory, his sword in my throat. I felt it again, on my skin and with weapon-sense, again and again, and knew he had intended this and I was following his intent. I caught myself fingering the scab, whipped my hand away.

Two out of three, perhaps I would have beaten him, given myself a better memory. Yet perhaps not… perhaps he’d have got me twice, making it twice as certain. No, that’s fear talking; I’d have got him, I know it. But how can I know? That’s fear, too; no, it’s sense; no, it’s fear disguised as sense, no…

Fear is a dead end at every path, a dam clogging and choking the flow of good thought, twisting it against itself. I’m not stopping the bad thoughts, I thought, the replayings of the sparring-match that will etch that result into my mind and my muscles, making me follow it tomorrow as sure as if I were planning it myself. No one kills us, but ourselves; so I had always been taught. I tried meditating, but couldn’t well, so it only brought half-calm, not enough for sleep. And afterwards the snake-thoughts came slithering back.

I thought of going to the window and calling on All-Spirit. “There is no voice from the sky,” my sense said, almost laughing bitterly. Yet if I believed there were, I thought, I’d be comforted; it’s fear stopping me again. But if I try I will fail, and feel like a fool. What am I afraid of? Shininao is my little brother, I like to say. A thousand times, I have accepted my death.

Fear is a disease, for as in a disease, the body rules the soul; one cannot keep the sickness, the trembling, the sweating, from poisoning the thoughts; one cannot forget one is feeling them, nor that they aren’t going away. I will fail, I will prove too weak, I will slip, I will have lost… some mistake in technique that my teachers taught me but I was too stupid to remember, and in an instant I will die.

How many others, I thought then, have lain awake in the claws of dread in this room? Is it the power of their ghosts I feel, resenting my life, my victories? The Mezem is the jaws of a monster big as the Earthsphere, eating all that comes into them, first with madness, then death.

Everyone knew the story of the fighter who was so afraid of his opponent he jumped into the lion-trench; but the subtler forms, the drink, the herb, the katzeriks, the superstitions, the fanatic religions full of illusions, the rape and murder, were all around.

We all knew the look of man whom the day-in day-out fear had finally broken. He went into the Ring looking for nothing but death, the life gone out of his eyes already; he didn’t really fight, but only made the motions, and got spat on by the crowd; soon he got cut down, putting an end to the pretense, his soul following his eyes. We all hoped to be matched against him.

Am I that now?, I wondered; no, but I will be by morning if I don’t sleep. I closed my eyes; but as good to try to force it as to catch the sea-tide in a net. It was far past the time of reason; every passing moment I lay awake was sapping my strength, killing me. Yet I could do nothing. Fear is a wall, at every side.

If I were home, I’d go to my mother. I wept for a bit, for missing her, and wondering how it was for her in the war; then, thinking it might bring calm, I imagined her arms around me. That made me weep, but also made me despise myself, imagining what Riji would think if he knew.

Finally, in frustration, in exhaustion, in horror, I wept in the darkness and tossed, my sheets thrown aside, like a child, even as I knew the motion itself would keep me awake. Fear destroys, I thought, one comes to a point where there is no turning back, and death is inevitable; I must be past it by now. No, All-spirit… the voice from within turned stronger. No. You are thinking wrongly. Calm—I need something, I thought. Anything. There must be some way. I have borne this alone so far, in pride, telling myself I was capable. Forget the pretense; I can’t afford it. Iska had told us all, one-on-one, “If you need anything the night before a fight, come to my desk.” I got up, put on a robe, and went there.

His eyebrows rose in surprise, when he saw me. “You can’t sleep,” he said.

“I can’t sleep.” My own voice sounded hollow to me.

“You’re scared shitless.”

“I’m scared shitless,” I said, feeling a smile tug my lips, in spite of everything.

“One thing you are blessed with that will always stand you in good stead,” he said. “You don’t deceive yourself.”

I waited for him to mix me the sleeping drink. A failure, to have to take it, and it does throw one off slightly; but better than no sleep. Instead, he said, “Raikas, listen, and do exactly what I say. You trust me, don’t you?”

Even as part of me thought no, my mouth answered, “Yes.”

“So you will do it.” His firmness was somehow welcome.

“I will do it.”

“Good. Go out into the Ring. Right now, into the Ring. Give voice and act to your fear. Don’t worry about waking anyone or anyone seeing you, but scream what you want to, whatever comes to you. Yell, ‘He’s going to get me! I’m lion-food! I’m going to lose! I’m doomed! I’m fikked’—whatever is there. Run around and throw yourself in the dirt and kick and scream and be totally undone until you can’t any more; until you’re completely spent. Then come back here.”

I stood staring at him, wondering whether he’d taken Riji’s side. “You said you’d do what I say,” he reminded me. “You said you trusted me.”

In the Ring, though the air was still warm, the sand had gone cool, under my bare feet. I stripped to free my limbs, and stood for a while naked, thinking, “What I am about to do is madness.” But once I’d begun, precisely what he’d prescribed down to the words, it followed naturally enough. I can’t remember all I yelled, switching from one language to another; a child throwing a tantrum with all his childish single-mindedness couldn’t have done better. I did it until I fell.

As I lay panting, having put on such a fine show for an audience of ghosts in the empty stands all around, I thought, this isn’t going to help one bit. I’m being a complete idiot. Maybe he’ll get me, maybe he won’t; I will do all I can do, my utmost, and if it isn’t enough, at least my people won’t have to pay the ransom.

Clarity came harder. I’ve been afraid not of death, I thought, but defeat! That’s pride, vanity, hubris; it is not semana kra; Saint Mother, who cares if he outdoes me or not, when my life hangs in the balance? That’s the only thing to fear, and I don’t hear Shininao’s wings anyway. Fear is an illusionist, masking one feeling with another.

I went back in to Iska. “Agh minigh, look at your face,” he said. “Are you that dirty all over under the robe? Well, you have time for a quick bath, while the drug’s taking effect.” He’d mixed it after all; I drank it down. “Now get to bed,” he ordered, when I was out of the bath. “Too bad if you don’t like my shortness. You understand why I don’t have so much sympathy for you as for most? For once in your life, you’ve had an inkling of how it would be to be matched against yourself.” I couldn’t help but laugh, and somehow all was well. “Now get.” I slept.

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