142 - My lifelong question was answered

To the Workfast Literary, Vae Arahi

Aras 1, 49^th-to-Last Year of the Present Age

It is our understanding that you are collecting writings of this nature. Brother Kadalas left the order some years ago, his spiritual journey leading him to the Enlightened Followers, and he said his papers were ours to do with what we felt fitting.

Wishing His mighty blessings upon you, I am

Father Otzapis Sendam solas,

Of the Amaestine Order of the Bright Greaves of Finpollendias,

Arko.

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I feel the urge to write how this came about and I have paper and ink, and permission.

We all start out base fools, I suppose, but I was a baser fool than most. Always there seemed something I yearned for but could not have. Why? I had everything. The mansion to grow up in, the silk and gold and rubies, the finest education, the best delicacies on my plate, the most beautiful slave-boys for my taking. What else was there to hunger for? How could a hunger be real that I could not myself understand?

So I grew up, and I married, and I had children, and when my father died I took over the estates. And I soothed myself with nakiti and Saekrberk, smooth-legged youths and the thrill of wagering on a Mezem fight or a horse-race. What I hungered for must be to win; what else could it be?

You know how it is… ‘I lost, yes, but I can make it up on my winnings next time. I lost again, so I have more to make up, but of course I can, since my Great God will favour me; as He is the God of Aitzas, He would never let me fail in life, right?’

You love them, you hate them. Svetkabras was reliable, built me back up after losses many times. Suryar Yademkin, same, until his shennen fiftieth threw me back a long way. Iliakaj, curse his Immortal guts, helped me deplete my wealth three fikken times—how did the Gods let him keep living? Karas Raikas was dearest to me, for getting me four for three coming back against Riji Kli-fas, may Celestialis lift him.

Ahh, it’s an old story. We’ve all heard it over and over, enough to be bored and enough to laugh at the fool who blunders down that path with his eyes wide open, but never enough to know when the fool is us. I don’t want to bore you with how I ended up lying on my back in the dark on the grass-faib field.

Well, this much, I should tell. The banker came to the door with a gang of okas heavers and two Sereniteers. “This lowly one is very sorry, ser, but… your illustrious self has been foreclosed for three months now. There’s no longer any alternative to vacating.”

I pointed a finger at him and said “It will tell its superiors, I need but two more days!” Fight day was in two days, and there were long odds on Borshal the Horned against Mannas the Wolf, so if I put together my last gold links with what I could get for pawning my Last Decade of the Previous Age cloisonné vase, the pay-off would be enough to catch my mortgage up to… two months ago. But the banker just held out to me the paper that made it legal, and the heavers marched right in past me and started hauling my furniture out onto the street.

“Kadalas!” Saria cried. “Vandals! Thieves! Send for the Sereniteers, this one begs help!” What man ever shares his finances with his wife? I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, when the banker told her, and I couldn’t deny it.

Her brother took us in. No longer was the barely concealed sneer of contempt he’d always had for me barely concealed, or even concealed at all. She and Mitrea, our one unmarried daughter, were welcome. I could sleep in the gazebo if I liked. I went to a tavern.

I thought I had friends. But it was all, “Stay here as my guest, after what you said, two years ago?” “After what you did, back in ’62?” What did I say or do? How had I offended them? I thought I just hadn’t called on them in a while.

Mannas beat Borshal, and there went the last of my gold links. And the truth fell on me, like a black shroud. Somehow I was unworthy. My Great Noble God was not going to save me.

How hard the old hunger came over me, as I lay, bitterly sober and naked to the world, for all I wore fine brocade, on those hard paving stones. I thought, in all those years, I had made myself forget it. For what? What do I want? But the shroud of truth made me understand what I must do.

Saria would be best off as a widow, and that would be best for Mitrea’s fortunes too. The house was gone—if only I had done this sooner!—but the rest of our things that I had not pawned remained, as did our lands in Maraboia. She’d be humbled, and Mitrea’s dowry much less than it should be, but they would not be on the street, or dependent on a cold-hearted relative. And my other children need not be burdened, or stained, with me.

My last silver links bought a flask of Kiaji’s and a vial of Eternal Surcease.

Night fell. I walked. I drank. I walked. I drank. I must get drunk enough that the fear went too far away to feel, drunk enough that it didn’t matter to me that I would fall through the Gates into Hayel. With the vial in my pocket, I staggered through the streets of the city, out past the fessas quarter and the marsh, out into the trees.

What was I doing here? I’d never been here in my life. I drank, and stumbled into the dark of the woods, that smelled of earth and wetness deeper than my mother’s garden, like I’d never smelled before. Liking the darkness, I snuffed my lamp and then left it—what use would I have of it again?—becoming a darkling myself. I drank, and tottered to the edge of a clear space, flat grass, a grass-faib field used by the lesser classes.

A good place to do what you want no one to see. I decided I would die looking up into the stars, to which we will someday return, even my descendants. I walked out until the sky was wide enough, and lay down on my back, the neck of the flask in one hand, the uncorked vial in the other.

With no moon there, they were a million blinding points of white against black as deep as a priestess-whore’s secrets, an infinity of diamond shards scattered against black as pure as the velvet lining of an Imperatrix’s blessing-box, with the milky path of Celestialis’ dust wending through them. It took my breath away. Though I had been a man and an Aitzas, I wept. Why is it only with impending death that these things are so vivid?

And it was then, Brothers, that the vision came.

It began with a sound of perfect, ultimate ecstasy, a cry so wild with freedom that one cannot even imagine it, except in the primeval parts of ourselves that remember earliest childhood. I froze, and listened. It went on, a man’s voice, breaking high as if he were a child again, in joy so huge it can barely believe itself, yelling in some flowing, arcane language so that my sensitized mind heard just the sounds, sibilant and watery. That was the first clue: an ecstasy so pure and free of shame that it can have nothing bodily or earthly in it, no pleasures of the loathsome flesh, only perfect and free spirit.

The voice approached far too fast to be natural. A shape blacker than night came rushing towards and above me. A great flying creature, like a massive bat, but with wings that stayed stiff rather than flapping, and were as straight-lined as if the Gods had cut them on Their own tailor’s tables—and clasped lightly in the joined-together rods it had for legs, his own hands clasping them, as he howled out his euphoria, was—Karas Raikas.

On the brink of death and under the influence of Kiaji’s only, can certain truths be teased out by the mind from the chaff of cluttered sight, and become sharp-edged as a sword with clarity. I saw the ridges of muscle on the arms of the Living Greatest, like those of a statue I have seen a thousand times, but in fact had never seen, until now. I saw his sharp Yeoli face, and then the letters of his name formed in my inward eyes, but with the ones my soul should read in gold. k ARAS RA ik AS. His name has the Name I must adhere to in it twice, once as anagram, once in order. Like a flash from the Holiest Blade came understanding, of what I had always hungered for.

It’s a bitter thing, to be born under the wrong God. It’s a bitter thing to be forbidden the divine affinity that is true to your soul, because to worship Him is déclassé. It’s a bitter thing to be told you are above Him whom you love.

But my lifelong question was answered, and the entire course of my years became understandable. The Gods speak to us in cryptic, even bizarre ways, and yet we retain enough divine nature to understand. I poured the vial out on the grass, and walked back into the city, in my own ecstasy, that of resolution.

It was an easy matter to arrange. De-elevating myself ensured that I could easily be deemed an unfit husband, giving Saria an Aitza’s widow’s standing over my lands and other chattel. I poured out the last of my links, coppers only, on her brother’s table. I even left every silken garment, except my underwear.

And I came out of the city, and to here, to wear the robes of devotion, my life dedicated to my Steel-Armed One, and now know nothing but bliss. This cloister is much better shelter than any manse; this pen scratching on paper, as Father has encouraged me to lay out my heart, is much finer than caressing the silken skin of any boy’s inner thigh; the plain water from our spring is far sweeter than the most priceless liquor. I have sworn off all these things. I live in Aras now, and only Aras. My life is perfect.

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