by Emanuel, Ako
Her nose went numb and the sneeze went away for good. She suppressed an urge to sigh, and continued her descrying of the meeting, not worrying yet about the information she had missed in her battle with the sneeze.
I’ll find a way to glean that information later, she thought decisively. Right now, it was important not to miss anything else. She focused.
As soon as she had become fully engrossed in the Six again, something bit her in the exact center of her back. Silonyi stiffened, clenching her jaw.
How are these afflictions getting through my enn hadura focus? she wondered angrily. How had the sneeze? Neither of these things should have affected her, neither should have broken her concentration in the least way. She should have been able to sit through the entire meeting undisturbed by physical discomforts real or imagined. Silonyi thought back to the exact moment when the sneeze had begun to bother her. And she realized that it had come gradually, insidiously, calmly overriding her enn hadura so that she did not notice until afterward, until the desire to sneeze. And now this, an irritating nip in the middle of her back, at just the right spot so that she would not be able to reach it without some exquisite twisting.
Why hasn’t my enn hadura shielded me from these things? Silonyi frowned. Enn hadura was the special art of spying, and she excelled at it. Was her focus being weakened somehow, by something she had done? The sharp nip came again, and over and again came the sense of dread. What if other aspects of her instruction in the art of spying had been corrupted? What if I am no longer able to move as silently as I need to, or sit as still as I have been taught to do, or record words and images as accurately as before? What if I’m on the verge of being detected?
That thought made her stiffen with fear. Silonyi listened for a moment. She had missed huge chunks of conversation, and was now hopelessly lost in what they were saying. She could try to piece together what was significant about what was being said, but without the information that had come before the overall understanding was lost.
Nip. She squirmed and quickly contemplated her options now over the suddenly loud beating of her heart.
The best thing would be to stay, but if there is something wrong with me, then perhaps I had better leave and try to explain later once the ol’bey woman has had a chance to look me over and my enn hadura teacher has had a chance to retest me and help me readjust for my growth. For she was just exiting adolescence, and her enn hadura teacher had had to work extra hard to train the awkwardness out of her stretching limbs.
She listened to what one of those in the lorn stated, and the last thing she heard was something about rescinding the challenge and meditating upon some matter. Then they all sat perfectly still and did not move or speak.
Silonyi shuddered with dread and indecision. Now, more than ever, she feared detection. If her enn hadura teachings were failing her, they would certainly become aware of her presence in this lull of silence. No, she could not stay. But she could not leave until there was something to cover the traces of her departure.
Then, like a Goddess-send, one of the figures moved, reaching for one of the pitchers on the low table. As that last of the cowled figures drank of the sem’sa in the pitcher of the jadine handle, Silonyi took the opportunity to escape. She would find out how they decided to rescind the challenge later. She turned quietly, slowly in the narrow space, moving with extreme care, holding her guinne and short pec’ta close to her so that they did not betray any sound of her passing.
This particular billa’ja’way was becoming more and more difficult to navigate as she got older and bigger. The old part of the palace was positively riddled and rife with these narrow crawl spaces that allowed one to spy on many of the secret lorn lains. Most had been forgotten from generation to generation until she had rediscovered them. Perhaps I will be able to find another billa’ja’way that comes to this lain, one that is more accommodating to my growing. Perhaps that slight feeling of awkwardness was part of what had broken through her enn hadura, even though it should not have made a difference.
If there were another such passage, though, she did not remember it. She had discovered the billa’ja’way system quite by accident. While playing many cycles before when she was younger, she chanced to hit a secret lever in one of the lower study lains, a lever that activated an ancient rite. The rite opened a sliding panel in the one wall without books. As soon as her mother had heard of the discovery, she set Silonyi to explore as many of the passage-ways as possible, making charts of where they terminated and which rooms and corridors they corresponded to in the old palace, T’chi’la. Some of these ways were blocked off once found, filled in, and otherwise destroyed. But there were still many points of entry, and as many points of defense and escape; chutes, trap-doors, hidden cubicles, all could be found in quantities along the billa’ja’ways. And Silonyi was sure that she knew them all. But her memory told her that this was the only access way to that particular lain. Her mother would not be pleased at all by this eve’s outcome of her quiet observation.
Of course, her mother knew she was spying on this meeting - it was, in fact, part of her education as Heir. Physical spying of the secret lorns was impossible because the Palace was impregnable and one within would not dare to spy - unless one had permission, and one was included in the protections to ward off such things. And, of course, one had to know the arts of enn hadura, the ability to observe, undetected, among the powerful and alert and paranoid. Her mother expected her to spy as a learning experience, and also as a form of insurance. Because, for all their pretense at anonymity, Silonyi, too, knew their names and faces. It showed her mother’s trust in her, but it was also hard, bitter lesson - trust not even those whom one calls allies.
This was also a test of her aptness at stealth, a test of the enn hadura, and woe unto Silonyi if she were ever caught. If she were caught, she would be punished as if she were not authorized to be there, and she would be dealt with as a spy, avoiding permanent damage and death only because she was a Tribal Heir. But she and her mother and the Tribe would pay heavily, though secretly, for her misstep.
But I’ve never been caught, nor even come close before now. It was second nature to her to pass unnoticed through the billa’ja’ways by now - except for her growing. Because of her rapid growth she had begun to resort to tiny feats of chi’rita to get her in and out of this passage until she went through full readjustment training - and she had had to learn to make the rites themselves undetectable too, from all but her mother.
Perhaps that’s why the enn hadura has failed me, she thought suddenly. The enn hadura was supposed to be purely a physical art, without the use of ‘rita at all. I thought I was improving upon it with my tiny feats of ‘rita, but perhaps I was undoing it instead.
Perhaps. But when the edge of her pec’ta brushed the wall and a stray guinne scraped along the low climbing ceiling within her first five retreating steps, she had no choice but to grab at the sounds with her chi’rita, stopping the vibrations of air before they could transmit through the wall. No, she would not get out of here without her chi’rita. Sound beyond the wall had stopped again. There was no more cover. It was leave now or be detected for certain. She was dreadfully certain, at that point.
So she drew a deep breath, filling her lungs, held it and stilled all the air in the passage. She pulled all the energy out of the very particles, so that it did not even stir at her passing, a gaseous solid. A cold, gaseous solid. She moved through the stuff as quickly as she dared, parting it with her chi’rita like multiple draperies. Time and the immobilized air seemed to press in on her, a gentle liquid pressure squeezing her body, making it scream for a new breath. She marshaled herself as best she could, though, for the main passage was not so very far away, and she had come this way countless times before. But something felt different this time as the enn hadura completely deserted her. Something was wrong. In the absence of the security of the enn hadura the dread and the wrongness gripped her with hard, slimy-frigid fingers. The drea
d crystallized into panic, an unreasonable panic of wrongness that was so strong she nearly froze in her tracks as it reared up and wrapped itself around her throat. She stopped and quaked and tried to calm herself, tried to call forth her most effective schoolings in discipline.
There is nothing wrong here, she told herself sternly. There was no cause for alarm. She did this all the time. There was no reason to panic.
Her pulse slowed and her non-breathing calmed, for an instant.
And then the panic jumped on her like a ravenous joumbi and spurred her heels to flight. It whipped her to a gallop, rode her like an eve-mare. The dark passage seemed to stretch out infinitely before her as she loped, the soft-soled sandals she wore slapping noiselessly against the chilled soles of her feet. This was dangerous, not only because she was running and holding her breath, but because the chill itself might be detectable to those beyond in the secret room; not to mention the fact that the chill would invite illness if she stayed in it too long.
The dark passage way seemed to twist and turn before her (even though she knew it to be straight as an arrow’s path) and her held breath rampaged within her, clawing to get out of her lungs with needle-sharp talons. But she dared not let it out. It might act as a catalyst to the stilled air, might start it moving again unchecked, with a very audible whoosh. Her vision grew gray and red around the edges, and her head began to feel light. And a way of fifty paces became an eve-mare of eternity.
Then finally she was out. She stumbled into the main billa’ja’way and released the pent-up energy and her breath at the same time, dropping and panting in the dust. With the promise of freedom, rational thought returned, the wrongness, and the dread vanishing like the fog of eve before the blinking eye. And she cursed at her stupidity, wanting to weep with frustration. There was no reason for her to have panicked, nor should she have given in to that panic - such childish behavior could, would, get her caught.
Why, why now, why here of all places?! Why this time, when such critical information is being given?! What is this inexplicable sense of wrongness and dread that I am beginning to feel in everything I do and witness?! she raged, wracking her brain. It was not the darkness - darkness had long been her friend and playmate. It was not the silence - though long her enemy, as long as darkness had been her friend, she had bested silence, learned to make its ways her own. So what had frightened her so?
She stood and dusted herself off. Nothing. Nothing frightened me, nothing at all. What was there to be frightened of? She had been a fool, and her mother would surely punish her. The fright had been unreasonable, irrational. The dread was unpredictable, and came when it would, not just in the billa’ja’ways. The wrongness was everywhere, rearing its ugly head at any opportunity, perhaps related to but not necessarily coupled with the dread. It had nothing to do with breaks in her enn hadura training. The dread had made her doubt her training, perhaps, and doubt was the surest way of losing the enn hadura’s benefit. She felt confident of herself now, felt as if she could sit through a hundred such lorns in succession and not even twitch from a stab in the back. That is, she felt sure until she looked back to the way leading to the secret lain and contemplated returning to her former position. Then the dread...
Silonyi leaned against the wall and thought hard. Could it be something in me, some internal fear I have yet to conquer? It seemed impossible - she had already conquered all the fears that her mother had wished her to overcome. No, these maleficent feelings had to have come from some external source, since they had not always been a part of her. She thought back, concentrating, tracing back to when it had started. When had the change come, where had the strangeness all begun? And then she nearly jumped in surprise.
It had all started the turn that I was caught in that new rite. The turn that I went to the dungeons. It had to be the fault of the strange rite she had been exposed to, performed by a prisoner in the dungeons below. Unlike the familiar chi’rita that she knew, this rite that she realized must be the cause of all her recent troubles used av’rita, the favored mode of rita of the Aba’jae, the impostors, the pretenders to the High Throne, and to be honest, most of the Realm. It has to be that rite, that strange Rite of Solu, and none other, that is causing me to react to imagined dangers and act as if I am some undisciplined whelp, and not an Heir of seventeen cycles. Before the strange rite she had used chi’rita to access and egress the billa’ja’ways dozens of times since the onset of puberty and awkwardness. Before the rite she had never once doubted her enn hadura. Before the rite she had never been distracted by inconsequentials. Before the rite she had never felt that unabiding sense of wrongness.
But after... After, things had been different. After, there had been a change effected in her. She probed the memory, tasting it as if it had happened just the turn before. She remembered...
...he lay huddled in on himself, shivering on the straw-covered floor, moaning, oblivious to all else in his cell of nearly total darkness. The feeble sound was almost a call, almost like words long moaned and now lacking meaning, just a refrain.
Silonyi gazed curiously at him, the first of her mother’s prisoners that she had ever seen - for most did not remain long enough for Silonyi to view, if they came to the den’lains at all. Some never made it this far.
“What is he saying?” she asked one the two warru put to guard him. “What is it he calls for?”
“Highness, he calls for the light of Av,” the taller one answered tonelessly.
“And what would he do if he were given the light of Av?” she asked, glancing at the row of iron levers set in the wall. These levers controlled the opaque panes over the windows of the cells. The one inverted lever was obviously the one that had shut the panes to the lone prisoner’s cell, depriving him of the very light for which he called.
“Highness, he would do what we all do with the light of Av.” Was there just a bit of venom in the monotone voice? Did this warru judge and disapprove of what was taking place? Did he presume that she knew and that she mocked the prisoner’s suffering? Silonyi thought on this as she looked at the quivering man. There was no discernible mark of abuse on him, no tang of ill health or unsanitary conditions. He looked well fed and watered, well kept. Yet quite apparently he was in torment, bereft of something vital. And the guard’s oblique answer gave no clue to what it might be.
Something, perhaps the guard’s blankly disapproving manner, or perhaps cold curiosity, a grim fascination with this immaculate torture, moved Silonyi to a decision.
“Throw the lever and give him what he wants,” she said, “but only for as long as I say. When I give word, put it back. I want to see what he does.”
The guard’s face did not twist in disgust, his features remaining still, absolutely expressionless, but his eyes filled with some deathly fire, some inarticulate rage at her request.
Silonyi ignored the guard’s judgment, though she was aware of it, for this wuman and his suffering were nothing to her; there was no mercy in her request, just perhaps an obscene enthrallment with this other’s plight. Her cruelty could almost have been of innocence, her callousness almost an act of ignorance - but for the excesses of the mother. What she had ordered had not been to alleviate the man’s anguish in any way, but to satisfy her curiosity - and it would likely as not heighten his anguish, for she had no intention of sparing the prisoner enough time to completely fill his need. It would probably take several turns of exposure to Av to assuage whatever his condition was, for he had been several turns without. This tiny sip of Av would not slake his need’s thirst.
The guard hesitated. But the warru was bound by honor, and many heavy rites of submission, to obey. Any resistance or disobedience on his or any other subject’s part, and the Queen would know immediately. And though perhaps he would spare the man the teasing sprinkle of Av which would only redouble his suffering when it was taken away again, he could no more disobey the Heir than the Queen.
So, perhaps wishing with all his being that he could have bee
n born to another Tribe, Silonyi thought with malicious glee, he tripped the lever, causing the polarizing panes to retract and the full, if late, glory of setting Av to pour upon the captive.
The crumpled man responded immediately, gathering the tatters of his strength into a rite as old as reflex, and as reflexive as breath, like breathing as vital, and vital for life. Silonyi watched with wide-eyed fascination even though the guards respectfully turned away. One warru still had his hand on the lever, awaiting her cruel word. She watched as the man in the den’lain uncoiled like a tight spring released, shouting words with his mind so that they almost seemed spoken, flinging his arms wide and the merest twitching of his fingers drumming out his pay’ta.
The Rite took shape and shot out like a firebird or an sparrowette of flame to strike at the great lavender face of Av floating low in a deep aqua sky. Struck, Av poured forth thick orange and gold radiance that surged into the cell, and into the prisoner...
And into Silonyi. And Silonyi, caught in the fringes of the Rite, was washed in the thickly raining splendor, was swept up into the core of the rite so that she forgot to give word to shutter the windows. Forgot everything, in fact, as the beauty of the light dazzled her, filled her to overflowing and then more. It sculpted all the life around her from itself, the world a shimmering color negative. Then the rite itself took hold of her, penetrating her stupor. It seemed to blow her apart, or blow something apart from her, so that she was boiling in liquid lumen, scalded and melted and reformed, lifted and stabbed to life and dropped. And something in her mind gave way with the sound of a great, grating CRACK, like the splintering of shrieking steel or the shattering of blinding faith, the sundering of some deep bond rooted in immemorial time. Some tinted veiling was ripped from her eyes. Some shedding dermis was peeled bodily from her. And thus excised of the still living skin of broken faith that bled the essence of some long-existing plan undone, the Rite let her go. She dropped heavily into herself, swaying as her reeling senses attempted to move in concert with her reeling body. She came back to herself clutching hard and clinging desperately to the arm of one of the warru. The other warru still held the lever and awaited her command. The man in the cell was asleep peacefully for the first time in many turns. But as she focused on the incarcerated man, something seemed wrong with the tableau, as if a film had been drawn over her old vision or else torn away too soon from vision newborn, warping what she saw or perhaps how she thought she saw it. She shook her head and looked about as if seeing everything for the first time, yet seeing it wrong, or seeing it was wrong. She glanced at the warrus’ faces, which were unreadable un-expressions, only then realizing that she still held the arm of one of them. She drew herself up and let go, haughtily gesturing at the other as she turned to leave.