Karen Wehrstein - Chevenga 01 - Lion's Heart.pdf - Karen Wehrstein - margozap

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Lion's Heart by Karen

Wehrstein

Book I

PROLOGUE

The story with which every Yeoli's story begins:

Once upon a time in the great Empire of Iyesi, there was a sect called

the Athyel, who believed in no god but the God-In-Ourselves, and that

humanity by nature is free. When the King 14th Jopal had risen to power,

he sent his warriors to kill all who would not abandon their creed and

pledge themselves to his. The Athyel refused. Nine days the streets ran

with blood and the sky shone with flame, and all who were not killed fled

into exile or into hiding.

Now it happened that a teacher in an Athyi school gathered together

her students and fled away with them into the mountains. Although they

soon were tired and hungry, and some of the children were lost or eaten by

wild beasts, she barely let them rest as much as they needed, and at each

choice of ways chose one without pausing, though she didn't know which

way to go.

One day, near the end of their strength, they came to a deep wide

valley. On the shore of a lake they found a woman fishing. The teacher fell

on her knees and begged her aid.

"Many years ago," the woman said, embracing the teacher, "the

knowledge came to me that Athyel children would flee to this place, driven

from Iyesi. So I prepared for you as best I could: the house is large, you

see, the garden wide and the goats many. My name is Yeola. Come in! All

this is yours."

So they went in and ate from the great pot of stew which hung waiting,

then lay down upon the many mats and blankets, while she tended their

hurts with medicines she had in plenty.

"Yeola, our benefactress," the teacher said, "we could never thank you

enough. But every time our way forked, I chose without pausing, so it is

entirely by chance we came here. How could you have known many years

ago that we would?"

"Foreknowledge works outside of time," Yeola answered. "Had chance

taken you to the next valley instead, I would have known to wait there.

That is hard to understand, I know, for those who don't have a touch of it

themselves; perhaps the best explanation is to say that the God-In-Me told

me."

The teacher was overjoyed. "You are one of us!"

"No," said Yeola. "But I can speak the language of your thought. I

believe in none of the gods as their priests would have me do, and believe

in all of them as they are: the spirit of life as people feel it. I serve no god,

for none has spoken and asked it of me; I serve all, because their presence

asks, in all the wonders of life. I proselytize for no god, since each is part of

the truth as nations are part of the world; but I speak the language of

each, so that I may understand all people. To Enchians I would have said

my prescience came from First Curlion, to nature-cultists, from the

Hermaphrodite, to animists, from the mountain-sprites, to Fire-cultists,

from the Twin Hawks. But you happen to be Athyel, so I said it came from

the God-In-Myself."

"Well… I thank you for being so considerate as to speak in the language

of our thought," the teacher said finally. "But I am curious to know where

you believe it came from."

"I believe—I firmly believe—it came from all of them. Or none. Or me.

Or out of the sky. I firmly believe I do not know. Also that I do not care. It

came from the world of the unknown, which is wondrous because it is

unknown. All the gods' names are names for it. Once given, such a name

becomes Truth, the name of the Truth a people feel from the unknown.

Yours is the God-In-Ourselves. So I used it, to give you from the unknown

your Truth of where my prescience came from.

"Not that it matters a whit anyway. I hope this never ends up in some

chronicle. You're here, there's food and bed, and you are invited to stay as

long as you like."

So it was, they stayed. When they were strong enough they began the

work of life, on the land, and continued their education from the many

ancient books that Yeola had. Seek wisdom, she taught them, find the

God-In-Yourselves: live by the ultimate law that is hardest to live by: that

there is no ultimate law. For meanings their native tongue had none for,

they invented new words; for settling their disputes and making their

common choices they created new customs.

Years passed, and the children grew, built houses and had children of

their own. Yeola grew old. In their thirtieth year in the valley, as their

children were just beginning to have children, Yeola took ill, and it

became clear she would soon die.

Around her bed the people gathered. "My children," she said, "you

think I have shared everything I have with you, but in all honesty I have

not. I see I must now.

"I could never choose your ways any more than I could think your

thoughts. You will choose whether to stay in this valley or go somewhere

else, to remain Athyel or take up some church, to retain your customs of

being the other and of voting or return to your previous ways. Yet there is

one choice I did dearly wish to deny you forever, pretending to myself in

my foolishness that this peaceful garden in which we live was the whole

world. There was one thing I hid from you. You must choose what has

always been the hardest choice. It's in the chest where I keep my things, at

the very bottom."

In the box they found a sword.

The sight brought back a thousand things to those who had fled Iyesi:

the iron-armored warriors of Jopal, houses falling in flame, the cries of the

dying, the smell of smoke and blood.

"Never did I want you to bear killing tools," Yeola whispered, "and be so

tempted to kill. But someday someone may come wanting to kill you, who

has no ears for your words of justice or sense. Someday having it may save

your lives, which I cannot deny you. You must choose, whether to take it

up or not.

"I ask only this: see what I show you now." Opening the packet she

showed them, they found five books of an age beyond thinking. The pages

were darkened but the writing was visible, and made them start and

shiver in their hearts. A human hand is unsteady, and will err; this writing

was flawless, as could only have been done by the hand of a machine.

"I guessed Jopal would burn your libraries. So I took these, which the

first Athyel collected from the ruins. They knew people would start

doubting it was human-crafted fire that burned the world, for such power

is beyond imagining today; so the proof must be preserved. These were

written when such weapons existed, and speak of them.

"The knowledge to make them is lost—but only for now. Do you know

what the common weapon of war was, 500 years before the Fire?" She

cast her gaze to the sword.

"We won't have this thing!" one cried. "We'll throw it into the deepest

lake we can find I" But another clenched his fists and said, "Are you mad?

Someone will come, just as Yeola said, as Jopal did. If our parents had had

swords, all would have been different!" A quarrel ensued, each side

horrified at the other. "Yeola,' they said finally, "we see this thing's two

edges now, very well."

"You are forgetting something," she said. "This is not a good or evil

thing, for it does not live. It's only a piece of steel. Never can it kill, without

a living hand wielding it, and bare hands can kill without swords. What

brought the First Fire, and will bring the Second, is not weapons or

knowledge, but choices made in error. Remember that."

They swore they would, and Yeola died.

Once again they wept and clung together, and found strength; once

again they felt a sunset, and a dawn.

They buried her beside the lake, and then all bathed naked in the clear

water, to cleanse themselves. Later she became known as Saint, for having

been divine in her humanity, and Mother, for having been mother in spirit

to a people. Her sword, serving as a sign to all and belonging to no one,

now hangs in the School of the Sword. In her honor, the people named the

valley in which they lived Yeola-e.

Vae Arahi, Spring Y. 1554

Two days after I was born my parents carried me up Hetharin, with the

two monks of Senahera to bear witness.

It was a fell day like ones I remember: the land lies sweet as after the

act of love, the scent of ripened crops fills the mountain air, and in the sun

the lowland trees at the peak of their fall-turning seem on fire. Along the

path that follows the meltwater stream from Hetharin, they climbed with

me to the naked heights, to where the air carries so little life one must

breathe hard to draw it in, and nothing grows but lichen and flowers

smaller than one's fingernail. It seems a place little worth the climb, until

one turns around.

Assembly Palace lies small as a lidless jewel box, pale and shining in the

sun, far below one's feet. Vae Arahi is a handful of gravel strewn in a

circle, the School of the Sword a gold tinderbox across the way. Beyond

the lip of the valley mouth the lake shows plainly its reputed shape, that of

a wide scythe, with the city Terera piled about its tip. Only the mountain's

siblings remain large: Haranin at one's face, Saherahin at its shield-side,

Perin to one's own sword-side. Beyond them stand the white-helmeted

peaks no one sees who doesn't make this climb, the shoulders of the nearer

ones forest-green, the farther ones deep steel-blue, and so on, fading into

distance out of mind, till they drop from the rim of this facet of the

Earthsphere. Here one sees, clear as a stroke to the heart, the smallness of

oneself alone, and the greatness of all things as one.

There is no praying for us. We cannot receive comfort from a voice in

the sky. It was for my parents then as it would be for me six years later,

when I entered the School of the Sword to begin my war-training. Asked

did I will this, I signed chalk, yes; I could feel the ability I had been born

with, as people can, and was to my mind obliged to defend my people. I

put my hand on the sword of Saint Mother, as all the masters and novices

watched: the hilt, worn down to nothing by the touch of generations of

initiates and replaced uncounted times, the straight dark blade, never

used, the same she gave us. Hanging by chains, it stirred at my touch, and

Karen Wehrstein - Chevenga 01 - Lion's Heart.pdf

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