Game Theory 1.36 - 1.37

Printer-friendly version
Synopsis:

Hate

Story:

***

“Why do I have to be awake?” I ask. I can just tell this is going to really hurt.

“You must be awake to reject the charms from your body,” the healer says. He is a male Neri shaman, distinguished primarily to my eyes by his simple white robe. Such garb looks almost as out of place here as it would back home. His age is impossible to guess at. He has that look about him shared by Fareis of enormous age, but he has the face of a beautiful young man. “You will have chosen them and bonded with them out of love for the Goddess. You must be awake to renounce them.” He looks at me sympathetically. “You must hate them.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” I say lightly.

He and Fareis stare at me as if I’d just said something bizarre.

“They are bound to your flesh with your love for the Goddess,” Fareis reminds me. “It will be difficult to do this without hate for the Goddess.”

“You may become apostate,” the shaman adds.

How do I say to them that a fortnight ago the Goddess was, to me, a fictional abstract; some minor detail in my character’s backstory to allow her access to a list of cleric spells up to a certain level? How do I explain to them that I come from a culture where belief in a single, omnipotent God is the norm, even though I don’t share that belief? The pantheon of limited beings of this culture are, I understand, literally real; but while that makes them powerful beings to respect or fear, questions of faith and love just don’t arise. How can I tell them what I think of a Goddess who answers offerings and prayers made by blunderingly, faithlessly, following the motions?

I say nothing.

“Charm magic is often favoured by the young,” the shaman says. “It is faster, more accessible, but it can be dangerous, as you’ve seen.”

“Like the dark side,” I say.

“Dark side?” He looks at me puzzled. Immediately I know I said something nonsensical. Of course it would not be possible to work magic that would be contrary to the will of the Goddess, and she is considered generally benign.

“Nothing. Never mind,” I say. “I think we can safely say I’ve grown out of charm magic.” In fact, I’m thinking, if I don’t have to cast another spell ever, it’ll be too soon. It all seems so mechanical in the game. You can role-play around that to spice it up in a session, but ultimately it’s machinistic and useful.

I look at my hands, with the mess of charms embedded and growing agonizingly into my swollen palms and fingers. This is just weird shit. Even the luck spell that seemed to work; it was just too weird. The luck that followed needed to have been set up months, even years in the past. I suddenly think; it could just as easily have put Jalese in that slaver ship hold for us to find, so she could take me right back to the inn where she once worked, where Taniel’s old box-harp was resting behind the bar, where the innkeeper just happened to have a vacancy for Market because someone who normally worked there just happened to have just given birth…

My luck was paid for with Jalese’s life.

I am never doing magic again.

“Shall we get on with it then?” I ask.

***

“Shitty death that HURTS!” I can hear myself screaming in English. Then the sounds I’m making don’t belong to any language; I’m just screaming and crying at once. It hurts so much I don’t notice for several seconds that the shaman has stopped twisting six inch spikes into my right hand. That’s what it felt like anyway, or what I imagine it would feel like. My whole arm is wrenched by spasms.

I’m reclining in a low chair in what looks like a treatment room. Already the long white tunic that’s all I’m wearing is soaking with sweat and he’s barely started.

“Teya, you must help,” Fareis reminds me, again. She’s sitting so that my head rests in her lap. I can feel my hair wet with sweat probably staining her tunic.

“’Fraid I’m prob’ly scaring off customers,” I say, breathlessly.

“I don’t understand, love. What did you say?”

I realise I was still speaking English. “I’m sorry. I said I must be scaring away people who want to buy things.” My voice shakes.

“It’s no matter. Now, you must remember to concentrate on rejecting the charm as the shaman works.”

“I was! I was trying to but it hurts so much!” Everything disappears but the pain.

“I know.”

I take some deep breaths. “You did this once.”

“A very long time ago.” She shows me her young-looking, unblemished hand. “The flesh regenerates, but you’ll remember the pain for a very long time.”

“Regenerates. Of course it does.” I should have figured that out.

“And I had only coupled one charm,” Fareis continues. “I know of no-one who has ever done what you have done.”

“No one else was ever this stupid. Wouldn’t it be easier to just chop my hands off?” I ask, feeling shivery and mad. Anything would be better than what I’d just been through. “They’ll grow back, right?”

“Yes, eventually. And there is a lot of pain along that way as well.” She sounds like she’s speaking from experience; but then she always does. “Would you be an invalid so long, given the choice?”

It says something for the pain that it’s actually tempting.

“This way is the quickest to a full recovery,” the shaman says. “We may yet have to amputate if you can’t reject them.”

“All right. I’ll try again.”

“Your pain comes from your attachment to these charms,” the shaman says. “You must reject them utterly. It will be less painful.”

“I am!”

“Shh, teya” Fareis says, stroking the sweat-stained hair back from my brow. “I know this will be difficult, but you must recall a time when someone treated you cruelly.”

I can’t think of anything. I suppose I haven’t had that bad a life, when I hear about the sort of things that happen to other people.

“What about the slavers?” Fareis asks. “When you think about what they did to you, what do you feel? What do you want to do to them?”

I feel nothing about that. “I… I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything about that.”

“Nothing? For twenty two years you remember nothing?”

I look up at her inverted face, her wondering eyes. “No, Satthei. Nothing,” I say, breathless with pain, still. “I remember as far back as being on the boat with my friends. We escaped from them together. I don’t remember anything before that. Just a few memories from when I was a child.”

She looks up, over me, and I follow where she looks, to see her exchanging a glance with the shaman.

“I have seen this sometimes,” the shaman says to her. “I have seen this in humans, when they have been seriously mishandled. Many children that were recovered from the Reki had no memory of their treatment. The Reki that were questioned swore to their deaths they had not used spells of forgetting. I believe it. It would have been counter to the aims of their project.”

“You were there?”

“I was a novice, apprenticed on a rescue ship. We did what we could. Some of them never regained their memories or their former selves. Those that did persuaded me that forgetting may have been a mercy.”

Fareis sighs. “They can’t be thinking they can start that again here.”

“A research outpost?” the shaman speculates. “It’s possible the slavers weren’t even aware.”

“But if they’re taking Neri children now?” Fareis is talking quietly, but she is angry. “There isn’t a mark on her,” Fareis insists, as if I’m not even present. I suppose she had every opportunity to check while I was unconscious.

“Except she’s been induced,” the shaman points out.

Fareis nods sadly. “We can slow her down, almost stop her as long as she stays with us, but–”

“Induced?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’m panicking. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“Shh, teya. Don’t worry about that now. We will talk about these things another day,” she says, taking both myself and the shaman in with a look “Tani, dear, you must–”

“What do you mean induced?” I demand again, trying to sit up. Fareis gives up and helps me to sit upright.

“How can she not know?” the shaman asks me.

“She said she’s forgotten much,” Fareis tells him.

“Even how her body–?”

“Hello!” I call. “She’s right here!”

Fareis looks like she’s thinking. She comes to a decision and moves around to my side. “Tani, child; your body is maturing too early. You should not have had your puberty induced at so young an age.” I stare at her eyes, hardly comprehending what she’s saying. “I cannot believe your Satthei would have done this. But the Reki–”

“I’m a child?” I ask. It comes out as a whisper. She’s been calling me that all along. I thought it was just a figure of speech. “You’re saying I’m a child?”

“Oh my dear, yes of course you are.” She strokes my hair gently, and I let her. It’s so hard not to; she’s so beautiful and gentle and kind. I inhale as her wrist comes close to my nose. She smells of home. “Of course you are. I’m so sorry. What that Reki did is… unpardonable,” she says.

~She means Kerilas,~ I realise, and I understand what she’s accusing him of. The thought hits me in my stomach. I feel dizzy. “He didn’t do anything!” I protest. My voice sounds so far away I have to shout. “You’re lying! He didn’t do anything to me! He was a captive too!”

“Are you sure?” she asks me sorrowfully. I just glare back at her. I won’t believe it. “Now, turn what you’re feeling onto the charms. Quickly.”

She’s obviously misinterpreting my look. I stare at her, appalled. “You’re… You are lying! You’re just saying that because you want me to hate him! I won’t! I won’t!” My voice wavers.

“Satthei, stop” the shaman says. “The enchantment is too strong.”

“There’s no enchantment!” I yell at him, crying.

“Shh, Tani,” Fareis says, stroking my hair again. Her smell is so soothing. But her voice is sad. “All right. Lie down and rest, my dear.”

~I won that one,~ I think, lying back and feeling a little triumphant.

“We may have to amputate, then,” the shaman says to Fareis. “We can’t leave them in for the time it’ll take to dispel the enchantment.”

“It’s always horrible when I have to try awaken hate in someone so young,” Fareis answers him. “Perhaps it would be better. She has enough heart wounds to heal as it is.” She strokes my hair as she talks.

I feel bad now. They’re trying to help me, after all, and asking for nothing in return. And if they amputate I’ll be crippled for months… Maybe years, how long does a Neri hand take to grow back anyway? And there is something. Something that I’ve kept and not allowed myself to think about for a long time. I know I can hate. “Wait,” I say. “I’ll try one more time.”

“It’s all right, child. No more pain. Sleep now.” And I remember, she can put me to sleep with a gesture. “When you wake–”

“No!” I cry out. “I’ll try again. Wait!”

I turn my attention from the two of them and stare at one of the charms on my right hand; the shell that the shaman had been trying to remove earlier. It’s on the second joint of my index finger.

Tim Manor.

It wasn’t that he actually beat me up, that often. Although, thinking that, I flash to the time he shoved me up so hard against the wall of the school changing room that the back of my head smacked hard against the bricks. I remember they were painted yellow; it must have been a long time ago, because the paint was chipped and dull and the bricks looked like old teeth. He was so strong, it didn’t seem possible to resist him, but I tried, once. He had been needling me and needling me for about a week until finally I tried to hit him. I threw a punch at his head. He just grabbed the front of my shirt and held me at arm’s length while everyone in the class laughed. Then the teacher arrived, asked what happened, and I got sent to the headmaster’s office for starting a fight. Three day suspension.

He was smart like that. I wish I could say he was just a stupid jerk, but he wasn’t. He was intelligent, he knew how to manipulate people, and he wanted to hurt me, and he knew better than to trust only to physical assaults to do it. He just had to say things, the most ridiculous things, and everyone seemed to want to believe him. The whole school believed I was gay, because he said it. For a while I even pretended to have a girlfriend. People would ask me about her. I think they were testing me. I’d have to make up so much detail about her, but that was easy. I just had to make her the person I wanted to be. But now I think back I’m not so sure people were as fooled as I thought they were at the time.

Oh I’d forgotten this. I’d forgotten how he’d manipulated me and my best friend into fighting each other. How had it come to that? I still can’t remember what was said, what was done, to push me to the point of grabbing a metre long branch and trying to smash it into my best friend’s face.

And the fantasies I had. In my impotent rage I would daydream how I would destroy Tim Manor. Gifting myself powers in my imagination to flay the skin from his body with a glance. More prosaically, just imagining myself with a big stick, hitting him, and hitting him, and hitting him, until his head was a pulpy mass. I would picture it in exquisite detail.

I thought I’d left this behind; so much so I hadn’t even remembered it until now. I wanted to let it go. I wanted to forget it, to not let myself be driven by this. And I did it. I let it go, I thought. But it’s all welling back so strongly I’m crying the way I did then, when I knew no-one could see me.

So let him be bound in a shell, in a pebble, in a piece of dried bladderwrack. Let him be bound in that tooth, in the tiny abstract-seeming carving made from driftwood, in that ivory seahorse– I scream as the shaman touches it, and I accidentally try to clench my other hand, but I focus, I push a piece of Tim Manor into the carving.

And it’s free. The shaman almost seems to slide it out of my flesh as if pulling a key from a lock. It doesn’t even hurt. Blood pushes out through the wound left behind. The shaman drops the ivory carving into a lead jar.

“Very good, Taniel! That’s so good!” Fareis exclaims.

“Quickly, another,” I pant, and focus on the driftwood. In my peripheral vision I see the shaman, sensing where my attention is. I think I can co-ordinate this, and I feel myself pushing another piece of Tim Manor into the wooden shape in time with when the shaman touches it. “Got you now, you fucking bastard,” I say in English. It comes out harder, soaked in my blood, splintering in my flesh, but it comes out. The blood from my hand is dripping onto my thigh. “Another. I don’t know how long I can do this!”

The shaman starts to reach his fingers for the bladderwrack.

“No! Shell!” I shout. That’s what I’m focusing on. I can feel its chambers intersecting my blood vessels. “This is really going to hurt,” I say through my clenched teeth. I’m feeling dizzy and sick.

“Yes,” the shaman agrees.

I remember how I wanted to make his head explode. I remember how I’d focus so hard on the back of his head I got a migraine. The shell. Let the shell be that worthless fucking scrote’s skull and I’ll make it explode now! “Oh fucking Christ Almighty!” I scream from the pain, but I keep glaring at it, as if forcing the scream into laser beams from my eyes. I’ll blow it into so many pieces they’ll be finding them in the woodwork for decades. But even now, even now in this place with all this magic, I can’t make so much as a tiny seashell explode with the power of my mind. But it does come free, hanging with blood and skin and strands of muscle. The pain is excruciating. The shaman has to use a tiny knife to cut a string of some body tissue. I want to pass out. It’s a vertiginous feeling. I don’t want to speculate but I think it was a tendon or a ligament from the finger joint. I can never remember the difference. I can’t believe how much blood there is from the wounds on my hand. Why aren’t they doing anything about them?

“You’re being so brave, Taniel,” Fareis’s voice says, from miles away.

“Fuck that, this is payback,” I mutter. I realise I said it in English, but I don’t care to translate. Breathlessly I call out, “Next!”

Notes:

Readers, Please Remember to Leave a Comment

Want to comment but don't want to open an account?
Anyone can log in as Guest Reader -- password topshelf to leave a comment.

up
27 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

Intense!

Just a little intense here wasn't we? This is some good stuff.
grover-

Hmm this has me thinking ...

Breanna Ramsey's picture

Just talking out loud here but maybe Fareis is on to something. Maybe Kerilas did have something to do with what the others went through. It could be he wasn't really a captive but one of the captors. I've had DM's cook up similar things with players, and at the time James did it, it was just a game. Now it's real, and could explain a lot.

Whatever the case, this is another great installment. We get a bit more backstory on Paul/Taniel and maybe the exercise here will help her remain anchored in some way. Somehow I think her promise to never do magic again is not going to be keepable.

Thanks Rachel!

Scott

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of--but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Lazarus Long
Robert A. Heinlein's 'Time Enoough for Love'

Bree

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy

http://genomorph.tglibrary.com/ (Currently broken)
http://bree-ramsey314.livejournal.com/
Twitter: @genomorph

Excellent Chapters

I love how you channeled feeling into this submission. I shared the hot emotion Taniel is feeling here. Exquisite; I was disappointed to see it end so quickly. Keep up the excellent work...this is my current "Hot Read" right now. I'm salivating in anticipation of the next installment.

Hey! I'm finally caught up!

I'm involved in this story now, I can't wait to see where you take it.

Mr. Ram