Samarkar sat in the cold darkness, the chill creeping into her muscles, then her bones. She folded her legs one atop the other and brought her hands before her groin, where the center of creation had once lived and lived no longer. There was the essence of wizardry. It was an act of creation; it was a pure delight in defiance of hunger, and thirst, and sorrow, and the inevitability of death and devouring. As she had sacrificed the power of creation with her body, so she gained the power of creation with her mind.
So it would be.
She was resolved. This thing for herself, who had given so much for others.
She emptied herself, emptied her mind. The thoughts came nevertheless: I am cold. I am hungry. I am thirsty. I need to urinate.
See the thought. Allow it. And then allow it to pass. Let the space behind be empty.
* * *
I will do this thing.
No.
And no, too, was identity. She felt something flicker, briefly, gone like a fish in the cold savage water of the Tsarethi, but it was her that thought it. And that was enough to drive it away.
* * *
Drifting. Warmth within, as there was none without. Warmth filling a void, a void with no center.…
Some time passed.
Eyes opened. Or did they? All was darkness, darkness and the warmth of steaming skin. There was a space bounded by walls, and a space within the space, bounded by flesh. They were equivalent.
There was nothing.
More time, the space thought.
It considered the thought and let it pass.
* * *
Eyes open in darkness. What was warm grows cold; what was comfortable grows stiff and chill. Heart slows, breath rattles in time with plashing water.
Cooling like embers.
Eyes close in darkness.
* * *
And all is quiet and still.
* * *
One could be content.
Content with this.
Content to die in the cold?
* * *
Content in a life devoted to the pursuit of perfection and the compassionate understanding that it is unattainable.
She was what she was and what she would be. She was imperfect and full of striving. And that would be all right.
Whatever she was would be enough. Or it would not. She had what she had to use, and she would use it to her best ability, and she would allow the silence within her to persist and inform. She had that much and no more.
You cannot fool the magic into entering you. You have to release control. You must let the world choose.
You must let the world choose. All the while understanding that this is not helplessness. It is choice. Openness to the stream of what is possible.
Openness to all the possibilities of the world, in the understanding that some of those possibilities are terrible. Openness to grace.
What is, let be.
Thus do victims become heroes, Samarkar.
Heroes?
Now, Samarkar. Now it is time to open your eyes.…
* * *
… On a room bathed in light.
The floor around her was dry; the water dripping from overhead evaporated before it touched her shoulders, her hair, the dry silk of her breast-wrap. Farther away than the reach of her arms, the walls of the small chamber glistened with wet and hoar; water drizzled from above.
She lifted her hands from her lap. Fingers still interlinked. Each one limned with a glacial fire.
She put a finger in her mouth and licked it.
Fire, still, though the inside of her mouth felt chill.
* * *
Samarkar-la sat on the cold stone floor of a dungeon and began to laugh.
8
She came up out of the earth by the light of her own hands. She cast no shadow, but all shadows streamed away from her.
She found her coat and blouse and boots around the corner, where Tsering had left them. She clasped her collar around her throat. She saw by the lay of the light across her chest and shoulders how she shone through the translucent jade as if she were a sun and the collar were a window.
She had no concept of the hour of night or day. When she emerged, she half thought it would be midnight, and she would sulk back to her chamber and curl up in bed to sleep the sleep of the chilled and exhausted. But of course her people would not allow a ritual to pass without acknowledgment, and when she stepped blinking into the early morning light, a crowd waited in the courtyard at the top of the stairs to greet her.
Tsering was there, and Yongten-la, and every wizard who had passed initiation. They handed her from one to the next with hugs and cheers, a break in their formal reserve that left her blinking tears. A newish wizard with his long moustache draped over his ears to clear his mouth for drinking passed around cups of millet whiskey sweetened with mulberries. The raktsi tasted like fire going down, and her head spun and her ears rang and the world whirled about her until Yongten-la thrust a sweet red rice cake into her hands and said, “Eat. You need that more than whiskey.”
She broke off a piece and put it in her mouth, surprised by the sudden growl of an awakened appetite. She would have crammed the whole cake into her mouth if he hadn’t laid a finger on her wrist, beside the bone, and said, “Softly now. You need to start slowly.”