Kherishdars exception, p.44
Kherishdar's Exception, page 44
part #1 of The Books of Kherishdar Series
“Mmm.” Satisfied sound, that. I liked how it made his chest vibrate under me. “It’s normal for it to be tender for a week or so.” He twisted until he could reach our discarded clothes, and after a moment came up with a small tin. As I watched, bemused, he unscrewed the lid and touched the salve in it to my mouth. It tingled on my skin, cool like water in a winter fountain. “Oh,” I murmured, and sighed, smiling. “Thank you. Should I ask why you know there’s balm for merethek ink burns?”
“In this case…” He put it on the night-table and sank back into bed. “For very prosaic reasons.”
“Oh?”
He smiled, whimsically. “My eyelids weren’t always white either.”
I paused… shuddered. “That must have been…” I couldn’t find a word. Glorious. Excruciating. My breath caught in my throat, and I yearned, and he knew it—I saw it reflected in his eyes, because he felt it too. His smile was lopsided as he set his fingertips on my chin.
“It was.” Just that. What else did he have to say? I sighed and let the moment pass, and smiled. He did too, gently, and reached past my shoulder to run his fingers down Aishal’s arm. “Shall we get up?”
I grinned. One didn’t have to be Shame to know some things. He didn’t want to, and really, who would? “No.”
He chuckled and we curled back up together, surrounded in family.
I thought it could be no more perfect, but it was Farren, showing up at the door, who completed everything. He was already dressed, of course; he would have been up with the sun to work. Surveying us, he shook his head and laughed. “Well and again, Haraa. Now you are truly home.”
And hearing it, surrounded by my loved ones and the man I would one day succeed as head of family… I felt it in my heart. The journey I had begun in my ill-fitting boots had brought me through the years and seasons and trials and choices, to the end of my paisathi… here. “Yes,” I said to Farren. “Yes, I am.”
The weeks stole past. The stone was removed from the end of the house and repairs commenced. The processions for the dead no longer wound through the city daily, or weekly; the festivals for the reunited lasted a little while longer, and were gone without any evidence of Shan’s family. By then, he and Farren had become inseparable, and we requested and were granted formal custody of him as one of the many orphans of the disaster. All across the capital such changes were being made. But we rebuilt, and with the burgeoning of spring, we knew that all calamities had their endings. I prepared my materials so I could resume my work across the Gate… and then I made my temporary farewells to my family, and rode up the Ashumel to begin, anew, my efforts. Ruben was glad to see me; Laurence, dismissive. Emma was angry with me. That particularly made my week there awkward. I judged it would be some time before she forgave me, but also knew that she would. I did not understand you, but I could still predict you, sometimes.
I could also sometimes predict Kherishdar’s Shame, which is why I wasn’t surprised to walk through the Gate and find him waiting to escort me home, sitting astride a beast with another roped to its saddle. He looked right there, with the Gate-wind pulling his dark hair over his shoulder and fanning his robe against the side of the mount. The new construction rose around him like the scene of a resurrection, and with him at its vanguard it was as if everything unnecessary had been culled so that the new could grow in its place.
There were so many plants in pots awaiting placement, aunera. The perfume of them filled my nose.
I stopped at the head of his jevi and rested a hand on its reins, looking up at him. I wasn’t done yet with how close I’d come to losing this life, and something of that relief, that wonder, was in my eyes. He understood my mood; it was one of the comforts of being with him. That he was nearly always right.
How good it was, that he was sometimes wrong.
As I pulled myself up into the saddle of the spare beast, he said, “Come. There’s something you should see.”
Without comment, I followed.
He led me into the hills newly formed by the accident. They’d been barren when I’d first returned through the Gate to prevent you from helping us… now they were felted with bright grass and flowers, lilac and white and creamy yellow. The latter were sovereigns—do you remember those, aunera? We use them for the Maiden’s rites, to celebrate youth and newness. I felt the gladness of them then, growing wild.
How long we rode… I don’t know. Some hours, maybe. Heading up was novel, for there had been no elevations to navigate prior to the accident; I enjoyed the exercise, and the peaceful silence that yoked us. When at last Shame brought his beast to a halt I was almost disappointed… until I drew up alongside and was confronted with the view. The Ashumel gleamed before us like a silver river, and at its end the capital rose in magnificent splendor. The spires of its temples and belltowers and palaces spiraled outward in gracefully descending arcs, out toward the walls, and even from this distance I could see the filigree brilliance of the calligraphy shimmering, gold and cream and white. The construction that interrupted that perfect curve was revelatory, exposing the layers as if they’d been peeled away for my edification. Broken rubble, then courses of ashlar, then a sheath of plaster, ready for paint.
And then it struck me why he’d brought me here, with all the force of a fall. Is Kherishdar unchanging, I’d asked. And here before me was a living symbol, an answer made manifest, like something out of a parable: a broken pot of a city, healing itself, as our society had been healed, over and over, by a god whose changes were so gradual it was not for us to notice them… save occasionally, and by accident, when we learned too much. I trembled, overwhelmed by… so much. Awe. Grief. A terrifying tenderness.
“You see,” he said, quiet.
“Oh, Shame,” I said. “Kor. Thank you.”
For a long time we remained in that silence, while I struggled, and then I just… stopped resisting and let it spill over me like a too full cup.
I hadn’t planned to say anything, but it came out. Slowly. “I had questions. I still have them.” A smile, though I felt as fragile as glass. “I thought it made me… other.”
“It is a mistake to believe that no one questions.”
“And yet…” I made myself glance at him. “A questioning spirit.”
He was staring at the vista, and a profile that would have normally seemed austere was gentled by the sunlight. “Only one necessary part of the role. It was never all of it. Or we would be a nation of Exceptions.”
“Like the aunera.” I flicked my ears back. “That was the other reason I was so sure.” I remembered the former Exception’s accusations, flung with such bitter accuracy. “That to be comfortable at all with the aunera, to understand them even a little… that it meant…” I could say it. “That it meant I was tainted. That the maien of Qenain had irrevocably twisted me. I thought if Thirukedi had placed me among them, it was because one day I would have to be….”
“Cut away,” he said.
“By you.”
“No.” He sighed. “No, that would have been Thirukedi’s task. I could not have done it.” A heartbeat, in which the words existed and were gone and broke the shell of my spirit, as effortlessly as Aishal had done with her first smile. “But contact alone with aunera is not dangerous. All their diseased ideas… we have had them already.”
“Or worse,” I murmured with a shiver.
“Yes. You know.” He twitched his head. “No, your time among the aunera only made you more Ai-Naidari, Haraa, not less. Thirukedi and I both watched it happen.” He smiled a little. “You could have wanted to be like them. You could have seen their virtues more than their flaws. But it didn’t work that way, did it.”
“No,” I admitted.
“Knowing them, you did not fall in love with them, as the lord of Qenain did.”
“No,” I said, quietly. “I fell in love, instead, with my master.” Unbidden, I saw His eyes, like the ones on the First Servant’s bedroom wall. Ancient and eternal and more real than dreams. I inhaled carefully to compose myself. “The two of you spoke of me.”
“What to say,” he murmured, smiling faintly. “No, and preserve my aura of omniscience… or yes, and tell the truth?”
“I think I can handle this one,” I said, smiling too. “I’m glad. That the two of you were watching over me.”
His voice grew quiet. “Even if it had meant that we would have excised you had it become necessary?”
The real question he was asking was hiding beneath the surface, as it had been in the First Servant’s bedroom, when he’d spoken of the scars. This time I realized it and was able to honor it, and respond… with silence. Maybe someone else would have found that unnerving. But Kor waited, patient with his own uncertainty, and that was why I did it. So that he could savor that vulnerable feeling, of not knowing everything, of not being able to predict everything. How badly he needed it. To be the man, as well as the mantle. To be answered as both.
At last, I said, “Do you know, it was a comfort to me? There were days… more than one… where I knew that if I became an agent of sickness, that if I needed to be removed… the two of you would take care of it.”
I wasn’t looking at him, but I didn’t have to be to sense his shudder. Living with Shame, aunera, makes you sensitive to such things.
“I trusted you,” I said, and saying it felt it as truth. “I trusted you both. In the end, that’s what brought me home.” I faltered. “But oh… Kor… I wanted… I wanted to be what He needed.”
“And He told you that you already are.”
I laughed. “Yes. I would ask you how you guessed, but… I already know, don’t I.”
He flashed me a smile that would have melted a much harder person’s heart. Mine had softened long ago, while I had been busy doing other things.
“I would have done it,” I said, quiet, when the moment passed.
“I know. And you would have been free. Ultimately free.”
“Kherishdar’s Exception,” I murmured, trying to feel what it would have been like. Who I would have become.
“All Kherishdar would have honored your sacrifice.”
I eyed him, skeptical, amused. “Really, Kor? All Kherishdar would have reviled and hated and feared me.”
He chuckled. “All right. True.” Softer. “I would have honored you.”
“And would you have missed me?” I asked, just as quietly.
He met my eyes, and I saw the answer there. He spoke, anyway. “Yes.”
That last final shift in a person’s heart, aunera. Who can name it? It’s so small, to be so complete, and so incomplete, and so profound, and so perfect. My shoulders eased completely, for the first time in my life. “What now?” I said.
“Now,” Kor said, “I seek another. She’s there somewhere. It’s only a matter of finding her.”
“There’s always one,” I murmured.
“Will you be kinder to this one?” he asked, and now I heard the mischief that had been too long lacking in his voice.
“If I slap this one, it will only be because she’s half my age and in need of discipline,” I replied, attempting to be prim and spoiling it by laughing. With a sigh, I finished, “I hope He isn’t waiting long.”
“He still has us,” Kor said. “Until then.”
“Yes.”
We looked for a long while then at the distant city. “We change,” I murmured, looking at the capital and seeing instead the shape of my soul.
“Yes. In our own time… but yes.”
“For good and for ill,” I murmured.
“Yes. But everything worthy of saving, we save. And everyone.”
Because one man had decided we were worth preserving. And because one man had saved me, and given me back to my life.
The joy that flooded my heart then was calm and endless, and in my laugh. “Oh, Kor.”
“Yes.” When he looked at me, he wore a matching smile. And again, “I’m glad you’re staying.”
“So I am,” I said, and turned the beast to head back down the trail.
Here we are, aunera; now you have heard the story in full, the one that Emma insists is mine. But it isn’t, really. Do you see it? It’s Thirukedi’s, and Kherishdar’s, and the Exception’s. It belongs to that very first Measure who dared to agree that she wasn’t doing enough for the empire, who broke from the comforts of civilization to serve it forever. It is Ereseya’s story, and Shame’s, and yes… as the latest link in a long chain… it is mine. How I flew, and almost fell, and how Civilization caught me in His arms before I could shatter beyond repair.
How many had He saved this way since she slipped through His fingers? I was not the first and would not be the last, but I contributed, with my beating heart, to the rewriting of that ending in a story that never ends. Because, as you know, stories are imperfect because they are never finished, but are renewed with every person who shares them, and every person who is changed by them. How lucky we are, aunera, that it is so.
You will wonder, I suppose, how we went on. Whether I married (no), or Kor did (no). Whether Qevellen prospered (yes), and if Farren painted the capital’s new walls (to his everlasting glory). You’ll wonder about whether Shan ever spoke, and whether he became dear friends with Aishal and Kefthen, and if we were happy, and I know you have been told by other Ai-Naidar that happiness is a moment, and it is. But I will be rebellious and say that we were, we were happy. We were also sad, and exalted, and exhausted, troubled by life’s tribulations and irritated with its vicissitudes. We did the work which suited us—and we grew, each of us, in the place where we’d been set, where we belonged.
I know, because I have known you, that it is so hard for you to find joy. I wish it for you anyway. I wish you completion however you may find it, and imperfection, and perfection. I wish you road beneath your boots while your journey lasts… and I wish you a home, and love, and a door to walk through to find it.
Until we meet again, aunera. May you find where you belong. And if you don’t… we’ll keep the lights on.
—Haraa laijzeni’Qevellen-osulkedi
you
You
You
...and me.
—Theme Poem #18: Danse ("Forever")
Ereseya, The Hagiography
There are no endings, only endless, heartbreaking, glorious beginnings. If we are incomplete, it is because we haven’t opened every door and passed through every gate. And no one is complete.
So walk on, walk on.
Keep walking.
—Ereseya, The Nine Spokes of the Wheel of Love
The Ai-Naidari lexicon contains over 1500 words, but these handful are repeated in the text, and are offered to ease confusion.
aunera - 1. a color-emerald green, very lush and deep, with a slight tint of blue. 2. anything or anyone alien, from people and worlds to emotions and thoughts (though more rarely used for the latter). Singular is aunerai.
dareleni - family time, an hour or so where people sit together and work, play a game, or do other activities together.
emethil - chain; biological concept, of self as part of a long, unbroken line of blood family, from ancestors to children. Has connotations of eternity and immortality, but without the strong sense of individual persistence.
ishan - appreciation of fullness of a thing's span, from its inception to its ending; implies that it is worthy at every moment of its existence, and acknowledges that it is different in the beginning from how it is at its peak and how it is at its end, and that this too is part of its worth.
ishanjzal – ‘perfect as it is’, with the understanding that what is, is incomplete and imperfect. Recognizes ishan in everything, and finds it beautiful.
ishas - spirit; very specifically, your ishas is what defines your caste and rank no matter what caste and rank you're born to. This is your social identity (which for the Ai-Naidar is inextricable from your personality and who you are). On a very real level, you simply are your ishas.
nafeth - to complete (a person, with other people). Can also be used as an adjective. The noun form, 'nafeth', is translated better as 'completeness' rather than 'completion'.
nesthae – exception; has unsavory connotations: ghost, demon, outside, unlike. Not quite alien, but contra-societal. When used as a proper name, refers to the Exception.
paisathi – a journey; when an inevitability comes into life, brought there by changes your spirit requires to grow, you embark on a paisathi.
shabati - podium, pedestal, narrow standing desk; a piece of personal furniture for writing
shavelani - a blossom that falls of its own accord. Also, a fortuitous thing.
Readers wishing to further explore the Ai-Naidari language will find more information on the author’s website at mcahogarth.org.
The author wishes to thank the Dreamwidth serial readers for their enthusiasm and typo corrections, as well as Luna and Kara for their further proofreading aid. Any errors remaining are entirely the author’s should be considered dashovit, flaws that prove the hand of the artist. To the Ai-Naidari Language Club, sovelil pinith—you have continually delighted. Thanks also to Daniel for providing the voice of Kherishdar over four books; Shame and Thirukedi particularly would not be the same without you.
Finally, to Kijzuni, to whom this book is materially dedicated. On sonevilan nininith tok ivalir the tok sedaludar, hharane. Verijz odil seid on ithavr. Anytime you want to return, they have a cloak waiting for you.
Daughter of two Cuban political exiles, M.C.A. Hogarth was born a foreigner in the American melting pot and has had a fascination for the gaps in cultures and the bridges that span them ever since. She has been many things—web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist—but is currently a full-time parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens, both human and otherwise. She is the author of over 40 titles in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, humor and romance.
