Keeping the Fire: Innocence

Don't know what this is? Check out the Pages section to the right to learn more about the Keeping the Fire project. 

╩      57      ╩

Were it not for water they would have died, but the roots granted them water. Both Polena and Mehethe could fast, she through practice and he through training. But their methods differed. Her way was always to be meditative, to be present in all things. Right now, she was so aware that she felt the darkness on her the same way one might feel the sunlight. Mehethe’s way was to shut down, to deny the hunger. He simply pretended there was no hunger, no pain, no darkness. Polena mused they had been down here almost three weeks. He was breaking first. She knew it. She also knew that there was someone crouching, waiting in the darkness. She had survived and recovered by force of Will, her own or that of the People. She had exhausted Hewava, or whatever spell or wickedness had lingered here but if that power had the strength to come again it would be through Mehethe. Polena knew all of this, but she dared not tell it. It would do no good. Instead she tried to keep him present, keep the Djaught from slipping away.

She did this first by common speech. She found out he had two wives, two sons and a several daughters, though he seemed to know them only distantly, as one would a cousin distantly. He had been a soldier all of his life as had his father and his grandfather before him. HE had seen many battles but no wars. Of Polena, he inquired nothing. She wondered if he did not care, or if the asking took too much energy. When they did not speak, they dug, but it felt slower and slower every day. Some time, maybe a day or two after she had first found him digging, he grew fevered and she feared that death or something worse was upon him. She could get nothing with common speech, nothing with courtly discourse. She would have to speak to a soldier as a soldier.

“ Djaught, who do you serve?” She asked, adopting the brisk tone Djaughts always used in poems and stories. Mehethe’s response was just as fitting.

“I am in service to the Vakhe of Concordance, Master over Thunder Falls, Shodje Shevake.

“How many men do you take in his service?”

“Thirty Hava in my duty.”

“How do they serve?”

“The Djahava Rhemu serves with distinction and is eager to advance our aim, the Djahava Medju is adequate but shows sign of bitterness at following coarser duties…” he went on this way, speaking of each and every soldier in his command, including those presumed dead at the Barrow. Polena let him speak, but as he did the thought came to her that he would answer any question she asked.

“Djaught Mehethe,” she said, trying to hide the hesitation in her voice, “what is Fiedjan’s purpose in this valley?”

“To gain the favor of the Fortress and take back the south from the murderous tribes that call themselves the downtrodden and ceaselessly raid the north.” The common line, she knew it, but even though she was trying to help him Polena did not want to lose a chance at the truth.

“Your Vakhe commands you Djaught, what is your true purpose here.” Mehethe was hesitant.

“I must not say.” He sounded pained, as if tired and drugged.

“Your Vakhe commands and I speak in his name. Tell your men their purpose Djaught.”

Mehethe’s breathing became taught and sudden. Polena reached to Mehethe and found his rod where it was tucked into his belt. She took it up and placed the metal of it on his shoulder, proving it’s authority.

“It is commanded!” she said.

“To strength the Priestess’ Peiyadja’s claim for the throne, to deter the Flinish attempts to take the Council from us. To make ready the way for the Vakhe’s army.” There was fear in his voice, the first fear she had ever heard in him. It stunned her, it seemed so foreign a sound, as if he used a voice that he had not spoken with since he was a small child.

“Why do you fear me knowing that?” Polena asked.

“Because I have failed. The fault is mine lord, I do you dishonor. I pursue the poet for more than the advantage her grave would bring us. I pursue her for myself.”

“Why?” Polena asked, her voice at once her own.

“Do not make me say it, please. Please.” He was broken. Polena felt a deep hollowness in herself. She saw an advantage and leapt at it. But in so doing she had found out the truth to this man Mehethe, one he buried so deeply that it was hidden even from him. He did not fear reprisal, he did not failure. He feared the showing of fear. He feared joy, tenderness, weakness. He could not show these things, for they filled him with anger or shame that she could not fathom. It was his hand that wrote those poems to her in his first letters. When he showed anger at court it was not because she had opposed Fiedjan or opposed him, but because she had insulted the poet. He had taken risks, had disobeyed his orders to pursue the poet and now his was afraid not because he would be punished, not because he had was almost certain to die entrapped in the darkness, but because someone might guess that he loved her, that he loved the poems. She could not harm him further.

“Djaught, I call you to rest you have done well,” then, thinking quickly she added, “as the First Poet says, “silence enfolds us,” rest, recover your strength, and take up duty honorably in the morning.”

The sigh she heard told her all she needed to know. Soon he was resting again, and within a time she felt his fever falling. She could not rest. They had been tricked here, both of them by people he sought power over fidelity. But she felt, as he slept, the full weight of her words and deeds since coming to the Fortress. It made her question if the only innocent one here was the child’s voice she had heard shiver forth from Mehethe’s mouth. The roots offered no reply but the distant drip of water.

╩      ╩