170 - Many awakenings

Integrity. The Haian word, I am told, carries less of the ethical meaning of the Enchian or even the Yeoli, and more of the more ancient meaning: ‘wholeness.’ Wholeness, as is needed by those torn asunder. Hence, House of Integrity, the place where Haians take in the worst of the mad. So easily the signs, both in his words and in what I felt myself, had slipped through my mind, like oil through grasping fingers.

I’d long trained in the art of mastering fear. I took the first long breath, willed my mind to still, told myself, I am a warrior, and felt how out-of-training I was this way too. The thoughts, barely identifiable, that brought on terror kept poking their black paws through the bars I had raised; somehow I couldn’t put them aside, as I had always been able to before. My mind was clear of the grium; but something else was there. Suddenly nothing in it felt as it should.

But that’s just it. That’s the idea. The words were laughing and smug, and did not belong to me, though they were in me. From then on, one wrong thought after another came, like sparks, each setting off a fire in my mind as across a tinder-dry city. I could do nothing to stop them; whatever self-mastery I had ever learned was ashes. So the agony they brought, I was defenseless against, helpless as a slave in chains, being dragged towards a pit I knew would destroy me.

The worst of it was that it all felt familiar. I had fallen this way a thousand times before.

All-Spirit help me… the voice was Kurkas’s. I succeeded, Shefen-kas. Don’t fool yourself. You thought I would never break you, but I did. I heard his laughter echoing, as if from high above me, mixed with the screams I screamed silently in flames, licking me all around with searing truth, drawing me to the pit’s brink.

“Chivinga.” Hands gripped mine hard enough to hurt, just a little: earthly pain, something to hold to. Alchaen was nose-to-nose with me, his eyes fixed on mine, entirely calm. “Chivinga, look at me. You are on Haiu Menshir.” The white beach, the sea, the sky, the sun’s heat, it was still all around me, and yet was not; I had forgotten it. I would swear I smelled smoke. Now I understood the line in the play, ‘My mind is in darkness.’ “Take strength from my hands,” he said. He had a steadiness about him, like a sage, knowing how to be one’s rock in the storm. “Can you hear me?” he said.

Yes. The word formed in my mind, as ever—it was the truth and all my intent was to say it—but somehow my tongue was cut off from my will, as with truth-drug, but opposite, now refusing to speak instead of speaking of itself. My throat was closed as a gate; my lungs were stone, like a wall. What I had in the Mezem was child’s play, I thought. This is madness.

He seemed to see the yes in my eyes. “You fear for your sanity for good reason,” he said, firmly, but without urgency. “But you are thinking of it as permanent, as people do, and it is not. In time you will be as you were before. You are a very strong person, and you’ve already come far, faster than I thought you would, in truth. This is the first day, for instance, I have ever seen you as you were described to me: fast-moving, brave, quick-tongued… stubborn… This is the first day you have been sane enough to fear for your sanity.”

Alchaen… I had never said his name aloud, that I could remember, but crying it desperately in my mind was also unthinkably familiar. Alchaen… “It’s all right,” he said, as if he could hear. “I will tell you everything; but you should be at least sitting down.” I obeyed. I had to fight the flaming maelstrom in my mind to tell my limbs what to do. The softness and warmth of the sand was a faint comfort, but still a comfort.

“First of all: you needn’t worry about letting Denaina know; she does. The people of the shipfast who brought you in knew who you were, and so informed her. Here… lie back.” I obeyed again. I hoped he wouldn’t tell me to close my eyes; if I did, I’d have nothing but what was inside my skull to see. He took my head between his hands, one under the back of it, one on my forehead. That in and of itself was calming. “Deep breaths,” he said. The horrors faded, slightly.

“They kept you in the Mahid section of the Marble Palace for a month,” he said, both gently, and distinctly, as if I were a touch slow. “You were tortured, many different ways, until you appeared to Kurkas to be broken; but you were not. In negotiating for your ransom, the Yeolis required that they see you before they made full payment. So Kurkas ordered you taken to Yeola-e.

“They took you in a carriage, that was very well-guarded, but you still managed to escape, the first reason I say you were not broken. You couldn’t have done that, if you were. They must have chased you, but you somehow eluded that too; I suspect it was by running the opposite way they expected you to, to Tenaspur rather than Fispur. Don’t worry for a moment that you’ve lost your deviousness, Chivinga.

“You gained passage on a Yeoli ship, and they brought you here, though a little circuitously; that chest-wound, you got in a fight on an island.

“You cannot know, because you have forgotten, but you have improved greatly since you arrived here. I mentioned the surgery; once you were sufficiently healed from that, you were transferred to the House of Integrity, and I became your psyche-healer. Here’s what you need to understand: you are vastly better than you were.”

Alchaen shifted his hands on me, as if to remind me they were there, and make me feel their tenderness again. “When you first came to me, you could not speak, nor truly move of your own will, except, from what I understand, when your life was threatened. You would not eat or drink enough, unless we urged you, and you never truly slept, for nightmares. That was three months ago.

“You have had many awakenings, in that time. This is but the latest; but I think, just from my experience—I’ve healed many people who were tortured before, as it is my interest—this one will stick. You are afraid you can’t speak; not to worry, you can; we’ll try, in a bit. You have a way to go before you are able to command an army. But it will come.

“As I mentioned, Denaina learned you were here the day you arrived, and sent a pigeon to your sister right away. We also wrote to your family after we had fully examined you, recommending that some of them who were closest to you come to be with you. They came as soon as they could, your mother and your shadow-father, along with a troop of guards…”

They’re here? They’re here… they’re here… I felt my mouth working, but no words came out. No matter. Which way, Alchaen? I rolled out of his grip and leapt up. Never mind, no matter. My body knew it knew the way.

Inland from the beach the trees thickened and there were bushes also, none of a kind I’d ever seen, all with strange big polished leaves, and some with huge orange or pink flowers. I ran along a path of the same white sand, my feet seeming barely to touch it, my mind in a dream. Alchaen chased me, but I soon lost him.

Ahead I felt weapons—short blades, carried as if hidden—but no fear with them, only a sense of protection. The guards. Four of them were stationed around one place; it came into sight, a small house whose walls were made, as far as I could tell, of the reed-like leaves of these trees woven together, the roof thatched out of the same. The guards were light-armoured and helmetted, with shortswords under their kilts. The one at the door of the place was—Krero.

He looked at me as if he hadn’t seen me for a tenth-bead, rather than two years, and as if something about me was concerning him. Krero my heart’s brother! I got out “Krer—!”, my voice breaking high. I flung myself into his arms.

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