Page 12 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

“How are those not the same?” I asked, quite genuinely.

“One is conscious. The other is not.” She knit her fingers together, settling in to a teacher’s posture. “Some choose to envision it like a dialogue between themselves and their pain. Become acquainted. Don’t try to evade it. Don’t try to think past it. Don’t imagine not feeling it now or in the future. Don’t wish for it to stop.”

To my confused expression she gave a lop-sided grin.

But I was trying to understand. “The anatomy schools in Estem Salo taught me that pain is an autonomic response. Meant to drive self-preservation. Our reflexive reactions are right ... aren’t they?”

“Instinct, you mean. Yes, usually it’s fine to give it its head. Let it run.” She held a finger against her temple. “But Talenfoier is mastery over instinct.” Seelia stopped, correcting herself. “It’s allowing the proper instincts to dictate action and behavior.”

“So, how—”

“Start with your senses,” she said. “If you must, work through them methodically, one by one. Catalog the sensation of your pain with each faculty: sight, sound, smell, taste, and so on.”

“It’s a diversion,” I concluded. “You’re abstracting the pain by analyzing it—”

“No,” she said sharply. “Quite the opposite. You can’t know a thing without understanding its full shape, in all its particulars. The senses are remedial, I’ll grant you. But they’re easy for you to understand. They help you give the pain definition, intimate acquaintance.”

“And once I’ve cataloged it through all my senses?”

She gave me an appraising look. “Let’s not walk before we can crawl, shall we?” she said, showing me another patient smile.

* * *

The technique worked well enough that Seelia and I continued our evening strolls through the rest of my second cruciation. She seemed pleased, and I was pleased that she seemed pleased. But I kept that sentiment off my face. She’d have noticed and called me arrogant again.

I looked forward to our walks together, but worked hard to not let them become a way to think past the pain. That would have been an evasion of Talenfoier. I can’t say I was always successful. But I suppose being aware of that risk at all meant I was on the right path.

By the time I reached the end of my second cruciation, a beautiful pattern graced the skin of my torso and sides. In its fullness, I could appreciate the art of it. I suspected there were meanings in the shapes, too. But if so, they were impenetrable to me.

I sat in my garden, waiting for Seelia. I had so many questions that night. Questions about the column of cruciation brands that would run up my chest and neck and cheek, if I survived that long. Questions about the other forms of cruciation. Questions ... about Seelia, that I felt maybe I’d earned the right to ask.

But she never showed. Even arriving a few minutes late would have been uncharacteristic of her. After waiting an hour, I knew something was wrong. I got moving, taking familiar routes to try and find her.

I stood out in Darles Hem like a broadleaf tree set among a stand of evergreens. For the most part, though, the Mal still took no note of me. I’d learned that their avoidance wasn’t disdain, really, just another side of their practical nature: Why take any interest in a Sheason undergoing Talenfoier? He’d be dead soon.

There were some exceptions to Mal indifference toward me. Not many, but some. They came once or twice an evening now. Usually from those I’d helped in some small way—treating an injury, or perhaps the injury of a friend or child. This acknowledgement came with a meeting of the eyes. No smile. No nod. And not ever a handshake or word of greeting. Just a shared look, without contempt or dismissiveness.

So on my more urgent walk that evening, I would likely never have found Seelia, had it not been for a subtle look from an elderly woman whose husband I’d cared for in his last hours. In the deep end of the Convalescent Quarter, with the sweet tang of molasses-covered apples and stewed peaches in the air, the old woman caught my eye. Twice, her gaze shifted from me to a set of doors set back from the road by a broad stone step.

I moved quickly to the doors, each of which bore an engraving I couldn’t decipher. But the wide front of this building, the broad step, the dual doors ... it was a ceremonial place. I’d call it a temple, if the Mal held any reverence for the abandoning gods.

Knocking would be pointless. Without Seelia’s company, no one would admit me. So I quietly admitted myself. Soft candlelight illuminated dark interior hallways. And there was a silence within. Not an absence of sound. But an observed silence. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. It had a feeling to it. A feeling I’d become more than familiar with: the held-breath expectation of some infliction.

Dread knotted deep in my gut, because I knew Seelia was here.

I rose onto the balls of my feet and moved through the dim corridors as quickly and quietly as I could. I slipped past paintings depicting unspeakable acts, but depicting them with such care and solemnity that they seemed less atrocious by half.

I soon realized the front of this particular building was deceptive. Its interior was deep, and stairwells led up and down at regular intervals along the hallways. Inset shelving beside each door housed books and the occasional bust. I got the impression that the volumes and sculptures were somehow related to the discussions that took place behind those doors. Soon enough, it became clear this was a place of learning. But not arithmetic or letters or anatomy. My bet was that this was cruciation learning, Talenfoier training—as near a religion as the Mal had.

Winding deeper inside, I heard murmuring on the air, soft voices. I slowed, moving more cautiously, and followed the sound. Weaving my way forward, I discovered an interior atrium. Hanging oil lamps and stands bearing candles with multiple wicks brightly lit the small courtyard. Some of the candles stood beneath broad, shallow bowls. The smoke that rose from these bowls smelled of pine pitch. And around the inner sanctum stood a dozen figures, men and women, old and young. They wore the expressions of judges.

At the center knelt Seelia, not in an attitude of appeal, but submission.

“… because you’ve shared with the Sheason the First Modes of Valutara. Otherwise he would be dead. And his claim to the old steel would be done.”

The woman speaking was in her middle years. And her words came with little inflection. Brands in her skin reached up her neck to the base of her jaw.

Tell them, Seelia. Tell them you did it in exchange for my help with the helpless.