Wild Magic

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Faharmoy heard the door click shut, then bent over the sill, fighting the sobs that tore through him He was weak! Worse than a woman! Crying. Nayo. Nayo. Nayo. Chumavayal, nayo! He gasped and shuddered as he struggled to expel this weakness from himself. Control. That was the thing. It was loss of control that he raged against. It was loss of control that was the thing. Not the soft weakness he… felt… for that… that creature. Nayo, it was the loss of control. Control. He’d burned it into his bones the past nine years… or so he’d thought. There wasn’t a man his age among the Cheoshim who could outfight him or outthink him on the battlefield. On this other field he was… mired… lost…

The shuddering and the tearing of the sobs he would not let escape him finally stopped, leaving him exhausted. He fell into the chair where he’d been sitting before, stretched out in it with his feet up and his eyes closed.

Gradually he pulled himself back from the situation, viewed it as a disembodied intelligence with no emotions to confuse his logic.

He was not at fault.

What he had felt was natural and good-or would have been if he had not been fooled and betrayed.

The traitor was not that creature. He… she… diyo, she was the tool of Abeyhamal who was always the enemy of Chumavayal, the bitter, bitter enemy, softness against strength, rottenness against purity.

Abeyhamal. Diyo. She and her accursed followers brought the drought on the Land by their sins and their rebellion against Truth.

Abeyhamal set the shape of woman on men and by doing so, betrayed all men. Mocked all that belonged to man.

When the sun pressed over the horizon and its red light streamed into the window along with the growing noise of the city coming awake, he went downstairs and out the back door, ignoring the female slaves scrubbing the stairs and chattering in corners whenever they got out of the overseer’s gaze, slaves who went silent and stared at him until he was past, whose whispers followed him out of the house.

When he stepped frOm the walkway between the Houses, boy shills for the chairmen swirled around him, not touching him but giving him no peace as they shouted out the fees and excellences of their chairs. Irritated, tired, impatient, he strode through them; he wanted to kick them away from him, slap them into silence. To do what he wanted would show weakness, loss of control, so he ignored them. And sighed with relief as he plunged into the Sok and left them behind.

The sun wasn’t fully up yet and there were very few buyers in the Sok. Many of the merchants were still sweeping off their plots and hadn’t yet set out their goods; those with shops were taking down their shutters and replacing their displays. A few of them stopped to stare at him. A walking Mal was a rare sight.

He found the kariam he wanted, moved briskly through the lingering coolness of the morning shadows, enjoying the play of his muscles as he walked, the perfume from the hidden flowers, the sweet seductive whisper of the unseen fountains; the Biasharim could still afford to be lavish with water from the aqueducts.

He crossed the Inner Ring Road and heard instead of water falling, the pounding feet of cadres of young Cheoshim as they marched and jumped to the shouted calls of their Drillmasters. He smiled, his soul expanding with the familiarity of those sounds.

He reached the Outer Ring Road feeling a growing harmony between himself and the world, but he needed more than harmony, he needed to understand the reasons for all this. He hurried along the Ring Road to the Jiko Sagrado where he joined the early trickle of worshipers and suppliants heading for the Camuctarr.