FAN FIC

Announcing the first ever Fan written piece of fiction for Eclipse Court!  Enjoy!

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A Jiaklem Adventure
by Dave Kirby

The words were important; he knew they were. Words he could understand, and he knew the funny marks on the paper were words, somehow. The marks meant words, in the silent language, and they were IMPORTANT! His people should see these Important Word Marks; they would know what to do. Especially the smart one, his friend’s podmate. Or maybe the quick, bouncy one. That one had an Important Place. Yes, the Important Word Marks should go in the Important Place.

Decision made, Jia started forward, than stopped. He would have to be careful; the others would try to stop him. If they saw him, they would trap him, capture him, hold him, TANK HIM! Jia quivered in place, torn between fear and loyalty, DUTY, to his friends. They should know about the Important Word Marks. He would be careful, and not get caught, and take the Important Word Marks to his friends. Maybe he would get shrimp! He liked shrimp.

He made himself look like the wall, the part over in the corner, by the tapestry, and carefully inched his way up. He stopped where the tapestry ended and carefully looked for movement. He couldn't see much, but more importantly it was quiet. He eased up the rest of the wall to the ceiling, and recoloured to match.

One of the Others came into the room, clattering and banging, moving things about. Jiaklem, master of disguise, stayed still in his shadowed corner of the ceiling, and wasn't seen. Eventually the noise and movement stopped, and Jia felt safe enough to continue on his vital mission. His luck held, and he swarmed down the wall as fast as he could, dropping the last little bit directly onto his prey. Holding the Important Word Marks carefully in one tentacle, he fairly leapt back up the wall, and squeezed into a grating disguised behind a decorative carving. The Important Word Marks gave him a bit of trouble, until he figured out how to trick them into fitting through the grate. The passage behind the grate might have been made just for him – it was just the right size for him to really move, his tentacles on all the surfaces, and he could go anywhere! This time he was going straight to his friends, though, so he could put the Important Word Marks in the Important Place. There was no time to lose!

There might be shrimp!

–

“Gan?!”

“Yes, love?”

“What the Hayel is Antras's shopping list doing in my jewellery case?”

“Dunno.  He was stomping around looking for it all morning...” 

________________

By Dave Kirby

I'm tempted to call it 'There Might Be Shrimp" but that would give so much away.

570 - I Can't Sleep

I couldn’t sleep and snuck into Minis’s room but there was Gan and Farasha sleeping and Minis wasn’t there, so I was really quiet and sat out in the front sitting room with Jia and Altras and Bella all of us in a pile on the big chaise.  Antras came in and asked me if I wanted Kaita or anything else and I asked him if he could get me a big glass of goat milk, since I found out I liked it better than cow milk.

I was starting to get sleepy when Bella’s head came up and she trotted out of the room, squeezing her big fat butt through the tiny cat-door. I heard the guard down the hallway say good evening to Minis.  That must be what Bella heard; my brother coming in.  I sat up straight and Altras complained and moaned and Jia cheeped.

“Ilesias Aan, what are you doing up so late and in my rooms?”  He looked… funny sort of.  Like he got smoothed out somehow.

“Waiting for you.  Couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh, Ili, don’t you feel all right? I can call for Akminchaer.”

“I feel fine, you don't need to call him.”  He sat down and we all kind of crawled into his lap and he laughed and wrapped his arms around us as best he could.  “I just wanted to talk to you.  You’re so busy and I’m so busy now we don’t have time to talk anymore.”

His arms tightened around me and I buried my face in his stomach, even though I was too big for that.  “I’m sorry about that, little brother.”

“I know we both have a lot to do, because you were elected and saved us from getting killed.  And because Arko wants you for the Crystal Throne.”  I knew it, but I didn’t have to like it, even if I was mostly comfortable being in the Marble Palace now.  I wasn’t having a lot of nightmares any longer but sometimes I’d be somewhere and start shaking and sweating and getting scared even if I couldn’t remember why.  Akminchaer and Kaita and Tanifas told me that it was probably memories that only my body held onto and that made sense to me.

“You know I still love you, little brother, even if we can’t be together so much?”

“I know that!  You’re silly if you think I don’t know that.  I’m smarter than you think.”

“I’m sorry, Ili, I didn’t mean to imply that you were less than intelligent.”

“Apology accepted.  Where were you so late?”

“I was talking to the Fenjitzas.” I sat up and raked my hair out of my face.  I’d taken my braid out and my hair was everywhere.  His eyes were full of lightness and happiness.  “He’s… a holy man.”  I felt like I should be quiet and listen, instead of talking so I pinched my lips shut.  “He... well, he makes me laugh.”

“The FENJITZAS?”

“Shhhh!  You’ll wake everyone up!”  Sometimes I wondered if Jia understood Arkan, because he grabbed me around the mouth with a couple of his tentacles.  But I wasn’t that loud and there was a snort and a snore from the bedroom.  And my brother didn’t look angry.  He smiled.  “I think I’m going to have a lot of fun talking about the Ten with him.”

“Hunh. Good.  Hey, Minis, my music master says I have a talent.”  I yawned and lay down again on his chest.

“I’m glad to hear that.  Why don’t I lie down with you and when you fall asleep, we can tuck you back into your own bed?”

“Yes, please.”  He shoved a space in the animals and they wiggled around so we could all lie down together and Minis was tireder… more tired than he was showing.  He held me in a way that was heavy like he’s falling asleep too.  I liked that and snuggled in.  “Night Minis.”

“G’night little brother.”

569 - But I'm Not!

The Fenjitzas, now that I had sat back and actually recovered my balance a bit, I would never have recognized.  I’d only seen him in his full priestly regalia that glittered enough to nearly blind someone if he were standing in the sun.

Here in the golden, late-night lighting of the Temple he had his hair tied up tight and wore nothing but kilt and gloves.  He was even barefoot.  I saw he had some scars.  Perhaps he fought as a field-priest of Aras when he was young?  The oddest scar I could see on him was a ring of proud flesh around one thigh, just above his knee, that looked as though one of Grandfather’s gigantic yellow-legged worms had wrapped around and dug into the skin.

“Radas…”  I just had to ask.  “I know about this humility before the Ten kind of thing… but why… scrubbing the floor on hands and knees?”  I wasn’t sure exactly what I was asking.

“You mean why am I doing this in the middle of the night instead of where others can see?  Why don’t we go back to somewhere a trifle more private and have a cup of chocolate?”  He got up and I picked up his bucket and waited for him to show me where to dump it.  “Over behind that carved screen.”  I carted the bucket over and dumped it into the floor drain.  “Just leave the bucket there, please.”

He showed me to a room off to one side of the main Temple Hall, the door and the handle hidden in the elaborate carvings.  The room itself was small and lined with honeywood.  There were a few plain red cotton cushions on the floor and a Presence light and that was all.  “To answer your question,” he said as he sat down, nodding at the seat opposite him.  “I… am more comfortable scrubbing floors at night.  It is my pride, you see.”

“Your pride?  How do you mean?  How is hiding your humility, pride?”

“Ha!  Well I am personally torn two ways.  First of all, if I did the humble work before a crowd of people it would almost be like standing up and bellowing ‘LOOK HOW HUMBLE I AM!”, which is anything but.  I had too many superiors who attempted to teach their congregations how to be humble by parading their arrogance in this reverse way.”  A soft knock at the door and a Temple novice entered at his word, set a tray down for us and bowed his… no… her way out.  The Fenjitzas wasn’t served exclusively by boys any longer?  He nodded at me to choose a cup and took up the other, sipping quietly, then smacking his lips with satisfaction.  “That’s not humility, that’s arrogance.  Of course there is the other reason, which IS my pride.  I feel shame sometimes doing menial work and that shame is a very old teaching for me.  What if anyone should actually see me doing THIS?”  His smile was still clear.

“But you’re the Fenjitzas… how can you still be struggling with things like that?”  I was almost affronted. Wasn’t he supposed to be the wise one?  Why tell me that?  I… deflated.  In the face of his smile my emotional reaction just splashed against it and sublimated into the silence.  Oh.  The room was silent.  It cut out all sound from outside, the choir, the Tempilion, the murmured occasional prayer or tear or laugh.  I hadn’t noticed before. 

“You struggle with it until you realize that the one you are struggling with, is yourself.  Yourself, younger mostly.  And when you realize that, you realize why Mikas laughs so much.”  Rather than try and say anything I took a sip of chocolate, smooth and rich and sweet on my tongue.  Perhaps it was the sweetness that unlocked it and I found another question sliding out before I could censor it.

“So… which was it tonight?”

“Oh, neither,” he said and laughed very much like Sukala, but in deep men’s tones.  “You see, I’ve been doing it long enough that it no longer matters which emotion comes up, though they both do... they no longer matter.  I scrub when I feel the need and forget what other people think.” He chuckled again.  “I’ve not yet felt the need to scour the floor in the middle of any of the rites. So far my fellow priests have been spared the sight of me cleaning, in the God’s Presentation robes and mirrors.  I think the two lowest Gods and Mikas would all think it was perfectly hysterical if I did.”

“And Aras and Muunas?”

“Aras would probably be concerned about my discipline, which would make Mikas laugh harder… and the High God… He would know why I did it.”

“Um… and approve?”

“Who am I to beg approval of a God?  He will approve of me, or not, and I would prefer to be the kind of child of the Divine who doesn’t keep whining into his Parents’ ears.  Not that I always succeed, and often I must run to the Ten bearing the prayers of the congregation and the Empire.  In that sense I am Arko’s divine donkey.”

I nearly snorted chocolate through my nose.  “What?  You bear the people’s spiritual burdens to the Gods as if they were barrels of cooking fuel?”

“Exactly.  And sometimes they are as volatile and as inflammable as cooking fuel.  So tell me your experience of the Ten.”

This time I did choke on the liquid.  Did he plan that?  “Err… I really don’t remember much of what happened in the Imperial Chapel… I felt…”  I almost wanted to wave my hands in a frustrated, Yeoli way and twitched enough to almost slosh out of my cup.  I set it down.  “It is too big to describe in words… unless they are poetry and I am no poet…” He didn’t say anything but was leaving space for me to go on.  I’d hoped he would fill the silence with something, free me of the need to try and explain the unexplainable but he just sat and watched me.

I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes.  There was that space in my chest, that light feeling, perhaps…  I opened my mouth and what came out surprised me.  It was a single note… long drawn out and rising.  It ran around the inside of my head and was followed by a harmonic note.  Three or four more tones and then…

Words that flew like sparks and free dancing flames unfettered to the burning coal below poured out of my mouth.

 “All the words, all heard and sung and read…

Or tasted, drunk or smelled…

Sung to the living and the dead…

All things that flow from hands ungloved and gloved

From human hearts both innocent and wounded, scarred,

Are new conceptions: greatly loved.

And gifts:  glorious faint notes, shining flung

To singers oh so far away

That they can only hear the faintest thread of sound

Creation’s flames and in ceaseless dark abound

Eternal course of Selestial drink,
Pouring through us from God’s cup brink."

My eyes flew open and my hands up to my mouth as if to control them, to hide those odd words. Or perhaps catch them before they fled away into the air and were gone, like sparks going out once separated from the main fire. His eyes shone.  “Thank you for being the allusion of the Gods’ voice,” he said.

I panted as if I had just run a long race.  “But I’m not a poet!”  I wailed as if I was young as Ili.

He just nodded.  “That’s all right.  The Gods are.”

568 - My Heart was Riven

“Just Radas, please, Spark,” he said, settling down cross-legged on the tiles with me, completely heedless of the fact that we were sitting in the middle of the Temple floor, in the middle of the night, under the high God’s eye.

“If that’s the case then just Minis, for me,” I said to him and managed to wipe my face with the sodden handkerchief I had clutched in one fist and thrust it into one of my sleeve pockets.  The servants would probably hate me later.  “I’ve… had my father’s dekinas who was the single most boring individual alive, then I had 2^nd Amitzas Mahid and the priest-trained Mahid – er, some encouragement from the Yeoli Imperator.  And I’ve met an odd old Yeoli woman sage on a mountain.”

“That sounds like you’ve gotten mostly pedantry and sophistry.”

I blinked at him, not sure what to say.  “I read a lot.”

He smiled at me.  He had a sweet smile.  “So I understand.  So, what do you feel, of the Ten?”

But… what?  What?  Um… well… but… “Errrr… well… um…”

He shook his head at me.  “I am too blunt.  My apologies, Minis.”

“No, no… in fact you almost remind me of the Yeoli sage.  But she was blunt enough to bruise one’s forehead on… or to bruise one’s ego on, I suppose.  I liked her.”

“She sounds like she knows herself very well.”  How did he know?  Did all God touched have access to their own private connection?  Now that I was just looking at Radas, he looked God touched and I had the urge to unburden my heart.

“Fenjitzas… Radas… I don’t know how to talk to the Ten, I was taught so much fear… so much… I was convinced for the longest time that I was forzak no matter what I did… I grew to hate any teachings about the Gods and Goddesses…”  My voice trailed off in a disorganized mumble and I ended up looking at Muunas’s marble toe peeking out from under the flowing, open robe.

“Ah.  Are you upset with yourself because you are angry?  Many men in Arko are taught only fear and hate.  Of the Gods, of themselves.”

“The Regent and the Yeoli Imperator weren’t taught that fear of the Gods.  They were taught love of the Gods.”  I looked away from the statue at the scraping noise.

He’d pushed the bucket out of the way as he leaned forward to look into my eyes. I wasn’t sure what I saw in his eyes, so close.  They were almost dark blue with blue-white flecks in them.  We locked eyes and I wondered what he saw in mine.

He looked into my eyes  and I tried to keep my eyes open, for all that my heart shrank.  “I… Fen… Radas… the God… he told me… he said… I needed to be clear eye’d, to open my eyes to everything.”  I had to drop my gaze.  His was almost as bright as the God’s and my heart was riven. 

“You are sensitive to the Ten,” he said.  “I’m happy for you, and I’m sorry for you.”

My gaze snapped up from the fascinating tableau of my hands on the gold tile and his bare knees.  “You… um…thank you.”  He understands.  “Am I… are my dreams… real?”

“Of course they are real.”  He smiled.  “If you like, Minis, perhaps we can go through the Holy Book and talk about the Ten, just you and I?  Perhaps we can look at the crippled and hobbled versions of the Book you were taught and you might be interested in how I see the Gods, hmmm?”

“I… I…” I gulped.  “I’d like that.  Quite a lot.”

His hand came up to buffet me on the shoulder, rocking me where I knelt.  He had been solas.  Of course.  “Good lad.”

567 - My Childish Heart

I stood behind the Steel Gate and waited for my escort.  Since the kidnapping attempt and the slaughter of my guards, I wasn’t going to be able to just walk out into the city when I wanted to.  Idiesas was the head of Kallijas’s security and had taken over mine with Joras’s death.  I would never in a thousand thousand years hint at what I felt when two of the Muunas’s First Elite stood at my back instead of Mahid.  I shrugged mentally and set my feelings of walking out into the city naked aside. They would protect me.  That was their job.  But I still felt like my shadow had been cut off.

With my guard at my back, my heart and gut was in full roil.  It was the first time I’d been out of the Marble Palace since the attack.  The whole city felt unsafe to me, even if that wasn’t true.  I had to stop at the bottom of the steps and think about it before I stepped down onto the pavement of the square.

The trial of the surviving… I wouldn’t call him an assassin, since they were not trying to kill me… the murderer, nonetheless, would be later today and I would be there.  For a moment the carnage on the Lion’s Bridge was in my nose once more.  It wasn’t just the memory of blood, but bodies and feces and urine.  It wasn’t as if I was unfamiliar with that stench – not with prime seats at the Mezem, or with 2^nd Amitzas as a teacher – but I truly never wanted to smell that particular stench ever again.

I shook myself and walked out onto the bridge over the fountain.  I’d have to talk to Tanifas about it.  Or… perhaps this priest… whoever he was… would be able to give me some perspective.  It was arrogant of me, actually, to assume that any priest or dekinas available to give me spiritual guidance would be as boring and awful as Tobeas.  After all, I had quite liked Itasas the solas priest I’d heard at Ky’s.

And I had to admit I was more in awe of the Ten, instead of fearing them.  Since Chevenga had insisted that I lay myself in Muunas’s hand in the Imperial Chapel… I’d had this bright space under my breastbone, a feeling of lightness and brightness.  I would circle around that interval, that pause or space in me, testing it, poking at it as if it might twinge like a loose tooth. I suspected the odd dreams of being pelted by copies of the Holy Book and running with sacred animals rose out of that opening.

So, why did I find myself dragging my feet across the square as if I were a boy being called before his father’s desk for a lecture on his behavior?

Instead of one driving thing cracking the whip over my head, all these myriad things had sprung up.  But they all meant one thing… me growing up to be able… to be worthy to assume the Crystal Throne when the time came.  My steps slowed and I found myself looking at a small Banaksias drawn on the pavement in front of the lowest of the Temple steps.  It was the Ten… apparently having a dyer-style party. 

But that was the whole of being the Spark.  Realizing that all these things reflected one thing.  It was not anything to do with me, but with the Empire.  I was voted in and what I needed to be willing to do was give up control to the people guiding me. 

Over and over and over again.  It was illustrated in front of my eyes.  The Gods and Goddesses surrendering control to each other.  Surrender of control.  I stretched to step over the chalkwork.  It might be ephemeral but I didn’t want to be part of destroying it.

The incense and light enfolded me as it always did.  I could only see a dozen other people sitting in the pews or lying prostrate in the aisles, arms outstretched toward their God or Goddess.  It was full of the light and peace so rare in the world and people seeking comfort must have needed fairly desperately to be here so late. I walked up the golden centre tiles to the new circle in the exact centre.  It was a plain circle of silver set into the gold.  I stood there for a while, eyes closed, head bent, listening to the unearthly sound of the Tempilion.

Then I went up to lie before Muunas and Selinae, I wasn’t used to having the High God and Goddess given equal space.  Some part of me wished that Selinae were still off to one side, that I was still young enough to tuck myself between her feet in the bottom of her stone skirts.  But those were both children’s wishes.  I did let the tears flow… and scrubbed my face again and again with my gloves but I got pretty messy.

The tile under me was cool and I tried to open myself to the touch of the Gods but the incense wafted over me, empty of Their presence.  I breathed and tried to make myself more open but there was only the sound of the Tempilion and… scrubbing?

I opened my eyes, full of the pressure of bereft tears and saw an old man on his gloves and knees, wearing loincloth, his silver-gold hair clubbed up tight against the back of his neck.  He was heavily muscled, but his eyes were full of… some kind of light.  He had a heavy scrubbing brush in his hand and a bucket next to him.  I felt… I thought… did I know him?

His humming under his breath matched the rising and falling of the instrument, echoing in the late night Temple.  “Move over, just a bit, I’ll clean the tile you’ve been… breathing… on, then you can move back.”  Snotting on, is more like.

“Of course, Ser.”  I inched over but couldn’t take my eyes off him.  He spoke like a priest.  He spoke like a... solas?  I felt like I should know him but I had never met an okas priest before who spoke like he did.

“The tile will be damp for a bit, perhaps you should wait before you lie down there again.”

“Of… course.  Ser…” I was going to ask him if I knew him but what came out of my mouth instead was, “Why are you doing this?”

“Scrubbing?  It clears my head.”  He carefully pulled his cloth out to dry the area he’d just finished scouring, his hands on the tile as careful as if he wiped the face of a child, clearing tears.  “I didn’t have a place to throw my excess pride, you see, so I had to find a way to show my childish heart what was real.”

“You mean… the way some priests sweep… or rake paths?”  My mind went back to Sukala’s mountain cave.  “Or crochet odd pieces of clothing?”

He sat back on his heels and dusted his wet gloves together.  “You know, Spark,” he said.  “It seems to me, that you have been taught by a lot of theorists, rather than people truly inspired.”

“Fenjitzas.” I said, sitting up.

566 - They Hold No Business Hours

Kallijas and I were in the Verdant Imperial Garden room having a late evening talk.  It was nearly midnight, though Kallijas was so much happier early in the morning.  I was happier staying up late. He told me that might change as I got older, but for now he would have been able to tease me about it every morning when we trained.  Bella, who had decided that I needed a pack member present and that pack member was her, leaned against my knee and I scratched her neck while we talked.

“Ch’venga called it well,” I said, referring to the letter he’d sent me about the Mahid debate.  “But then he basically put the Assembly together in the first place.”  Kallijas was drinking some kind of Haian stuff instead of kaf or wine.

“Hmm. As usual he offers excellent advice, in spite of his own strong feelings,” he said quietly and set his empty cup down.

“I noticed how he was instructing me… speaking for his people, not himself.  I mean, he is actually friends with some Mahid.”

“Yes, he’s speaking on behalf of his people and several other foreign nations as well,” Kallijas smiled.  “The great political dance that he’s so good at.”

“Well,” I found my tongue locking up a little, so looked down and poured a little more wine for myself.  Bella pointed her nose hopefully at the table of pastries and then sighed and laid down when we ignored her. When he and I finished the day like this… and I cherished every one we had time for… we served ourselves or each other, to be just the two of us, without the omnipresent servants. “I was thinking about that.  I mean, I’ve met Reknarja... and I like him. He might like to see the competitions my mother proposed.  I wonder if we opened up the selection of Mahid as something for the foreign dignitaries to witness... so they can see we aren’t setting up torturers and crazy Aitzas fighters?”

“That... that is another good idea to consider if we reach that.”  He smothered a yawn, tired, not bored of what we were talking about.

“I can see where foreigners would think restablishing the Mahid is a threat, Kall, but is it my bias, my acknowledging them as family in any way?  Or is it because I understand they were working under orders, doing their best to obey? Or do other Arkans see the Mahid as only the terror in the street?”

He paused as he thought it through in his careful way. “The terror in the street... yes.  You must remember Minis, that people saw only that face."

I nodded, slowly.  I had a much more intimate view of them than regular Arkans.  "I suppose you could attribute your hopes to familial bias," he went on.  "But I don’t think you're the only one who will see the benefits of reestablishing the kind of Mahid who can think as well as serve. Maybe it's best to acknowledge the bias and leave the outcome up to the Gods and Arko. We won’t know what they will conclude until we ‘get a feel for the war-horse we're riding’ -- as Sheng suggested, in fact.”

“I... I’ve been keeping my distance as much as I could.  My mother called me to consult on various things... but they voted amongst themselves, to pursue this.  I’m thinking that there is no way on the Eathsphere that people will believe I’m not behind this, until I let myself be truth-drugged over it.”

“Then you've already recognized what you must do. Be as neutral and unobtrusive as possible, but be honest with yourself about what that truth-drugging will bring out."

I had to sigh and actually got up to pace a little as if I could somehow flatten out my spikey thoughts by treading them down.  Bella didn’t follow me with anything but her nose and eyes.  “Intharas will have a field day, of course.  But that will be typical of things.”

“Maybe. But Minis, I, um, I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with caring about your family. You're doing everything properly, in spite of your strong feelings, even by asking these questions about your bias and and your impact on the process.”  He leaned on one hand, elbow propped on the armrest of his chair, watching me. 

“Oh good.  I’m feeling like I have been chasing my own tail about this... Tanifas says that people need me to be Aan, not Mahid, but I’m both.  I’m still nervous of my sire’s tendencies coming out in me, am I feeling too much?  Not enough?”  Oh Gods, I sound like a child!  I sound like a total second thresholder!

Kallijas looked uncomfortable as if his comfortable chair had sprouted an upholstery tack in a tender place. “I think Tanifas probably knows what he’s talking about. You are thinking things through. And I think after knowing Sheng, I can say that as long as you're still striving to think the right things, and you're uncomfortable of the right kinds of things..." he paused and I looked over at him.  "You talked with Surya and have your own healer as well,” he added. “A person can feel a lot and it can still be all right.’

I sat down again, relieved.  Bella pinned my foot with her muzzle as I did.  “It is what you do with the emotion, both Surya and Tanifas have said that... though Tanifas says that if I overthink things he’ll send me out to take the puppies for a swim to get my mind off the exercise wheel I’ve put it on.”  I had to grin at that.  The kennels had pools for conditioning the dogs and Tanifas did not swim, so sent me in.  It was amazingly calming to learn how to calm a panicking animal.

“Yes, I'd trust what healers say and how -- exactly -- they say it.” He smiled back at me.

“Ch’venga should be done his asa kraiya time just in time for this referendum they’re having again whether they want him as semanakraseye.  Do you think we can swing the time to be there for their count?  Or are there too many crises happening in Arko?”

I can see the flicker of longing cross his face.  He missed Ch’venga and the rest of the family desperately, but didn’t think he should indulge himself in that.  “Well... it is a very significant moment...”  Young Kallijas knocked at the door and peeked his head around the door before coming in.  As many times as he did this, he always had to check and see if he were interrupting anything.

“Dad, Spark -- um, I know, Minis -- sorry… I’m ready to go off to bed.  Good night.”  He gave the correct bow to both of us and then accepted a hug from his father – such an un-Arkan thing. 

“Good night my son.  Sleep well.  I’ll see you on the roof in the morning.”  The boy gave me a quick grin as he turned to leave.

“’Night, Young Kall,” I said as he slid a pat over Bella’s head and headed off.  Ili was long in bed.

After the door closed behind him I pushed my argument. “Both Laisa and Kyriala wish to come... and they can both relay.  You could show Laisa Yeola-e at the solstice...?  Give her fair warning if you ever decide to offer her the split ring?” Gods, he is easy to tease...

“Err, I appreciate the effort to think ahead, Minis, but I don’t think my personal concerns should be the deciding factor. We should make the decision based on what Arko wants.  And considering where we should best be, whatever outcome of the count.”  You want to be so proper.

“Foreign relations are significant and must be maintained, oh my Regent!  And other foreign emissaries will be there. Arko has a lot of fences to mend with the world and the best thing, in my opinion, is to participate in such significant and peaceful meetings.”  I sipped my wine to hide my smile.

“Yes, I agree, which is why we will not just go flying off to visit friends.”  The look he bent on me was stern.  But I knew he was being stern with himself as well as me.

I straightened in my chair and put an attentive look on my face.  “Yes, ser?”  I put my best ‘innocent under the sun’ expression on. “I think that an eight day away from the city itself would not be the end of the world, we could surprise him, and be supportive either way, and still be back in plenty of time for the next ceremonial we must do.”

Kallijas sighed. “All right Minis. We'll begin planning in case we are able to attend. If no emergencies arise and the government can spare us both, then we will go for the sake of peace and Arko.”

“Thank you, Kall.  Thank goodness for the moyawas.  We’d be almost a full moon or more on the road and we can now talk of making the trip in an eight day.”

“Thank the Gods,” Kall corrected me, gently. “So, Minis. If I may ask... well, how is your progress with following the Gods’ instructions to you?”

My teasing mood collapsed and I pulled my foot out from under Bella’s nose. “I... um... well.  Um... I’ve been very busy with trying to finish my doctorate... as unsuccessful as that was... and I... er... haven’t.” I could feel my shame burning on my face.

“There is nothing more important,” Kallijas said.  His face was solemn. “Or I wouldn't have asked something so intimate.”

“Um.  Yes, of course you wouldn’t pry, but you’re the Regent and my spiritual health is your concern.  I’m sorry to have dragged my feet.”

“True.”

I turned away from his look, still shamed. “I just don’t know... I’m thinking that if I just walk into the Temple I’ll get stuck with some dekinas like my old teachers who made me afraid of the Ten.”  I found myself  staring almost blindly across the room.  “I... they... I believed I was forzak for years, Kallijas.  I don’t know... truly how to approach the Gods at all.  I... Ch’venga put me in the Imperial Chapel the once... and I’ve prayed there a time or two since... but... you don’t overcome years of fear so easily... Can you?”

“I'm sorry that was your early experience of the Gods, Minis... You ask me... if I can overcome my fear of the Ten?”

“I was speaking in general... can one do so, so easily?”

“I'm in awe of the Ten. I believe I always will and should be.  But I know that my moments of fearing for my soul -- because of something I'd done... well, I always blamed myself in those situations, more than the Gods.  After all, who was I to presume to blame a God for anything?”

I nodded, finding myself examining a whorl of hair on the top of Bella’s head.  “I will go into the Temple to inquire...” Kall waited politely for me to finish, in a way insisting that I finish the thought.  “I may as well go now. It is not as if the Gods hold business hours.”

“And,” he added, as gently as he’d wished his son good night, “It is my sense that the Gods have great mercy for their children, especially when they are afraid and approaching humbly anyway.”  I could hear the approval in his voice though I couldn't look at him.

_______________

My thanks to GV for her assistance playing Kallijas.  Thanks!

The End of Extensive Re-Writes

I believe I have fixed the wobble in the book and have slotted all the re-writes into their respective spaces.

We go onward from here!

Thanks for looping back through time with me.