“We shall see,” she said and winked. That wink was the strangest part of the whole charade, and almost convinced Mirnían that he was dreaming everything.
As soon as he entered the steam room, he wanted to jump out. His sores screamed with the heat.
And she wants me to thrash myself with oak? She’s crazy.
But he did it. He almost fainted from the pain. The poultice’s effect was immediate, however. It cooled his sores at a touch. He even laughed a little.
What other improbable feats could this new Lebía accomplish?
“Lebía,” he said, mocking. “You’ve grown so talented overnight. Are there perhaps some other talents you have found?”
No answer.
“I need a new shirt, Lebía. This one is seeped with disease and sweat. I noticed you put some fresh rushes on the floor. Can you sew me a new shirt from them before I finish here, so I can put on fresh garments, woven by your love?”
The door to the steam room opened, and a scrap of old wood dropped to the floor. A whittling knife followed it.
“What is this?” he asked.
“I will sew you an entire set of new clothes out of the rushes,” she said from outside the door, “but only after you carve me a spinning wheel from this scrap of wood.”
Mirnían laughed.
He sat in the steam, melting into nothingness, for as long as he could bear it. Then he ran outside, completely naked, and fell into the nearest snowdrift. After his mind reminded him to breathe, he got up and ran back into the house. A linen shirt lay there. As he put it on, he thought he smelled lavender.
Lebía waited for him by the window, absently humming and twirling the end of her braid on her finger. As he came in, she turned and gasped.
“Look,” she said, pointing at his arms.
His sores had healed completely. He felt stronger than he had in months.
“Thank you, my love,” he said.
Her face blanched at his words. His heart dropped in his chest. What did I just say?
He took her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace.
Lebía did not push back.
“I love you too, Mirnían.”
She was crying. Mirnían stroked her hair and put his chin on her head, enfolding her completely in himself.
“I feel so safe,” she whispered in between the sobs.
“I hope you always will, my love,” he said. “So. When shall we marry?”
Beware the man who thinks himself righteous, for he is a liar or a madman.
Seek out the man who knows himself sinful, for in him the light resides.
From “The Wisdom of Lassar the Blessed”
(The Sayings, Book I, 4:20-21)
Chapter 15
The Conspiracy
Vasyllia had been shrouded in fog for weeks. It almost seemed alive, a kind of enormous grey snake squeezing the city in its coils until even the air felt unbreathable. Though the air of the Temple was not as restricted, in Otar Kalún’s mind it was forever defiled by the violence done to the Pilgrim. Even now, as he tried to bring his unruly heart back to its usual, pleasant, barely noticeable beat, he could not stop the images of blood and mayhem from huddling in on his enforced silence. For the hundredth time this day, he tensed his bone-thin body and breathed out slowly, willing himself into submission to the purity of thought that he had nurtured in himself for many years. Only then did he allow his thoughts to proceed unchecked.
“How could we have allowed this to happen?”
He often spoke aloud in the Temple, though he had never heard an answer. He continued to hope. Surely the day would come that Adonais himself would speak to him?
“Adonais, your house has never been so polluted. How am I to put this to rights? What must I do to make it fitting for your presence again? It is no wonder that we are hemmed in from all sides by the dirty refugees, by disease, by rumors of war. There must be purification. Even if it be by fire.”
The words consoled him. How fitting if he, the chief priest of the great, awe-inspiring Adonais, would be the one to purge the filth that had come over his beloved Vasyllia! Who better, after all? He had dedicated his life to the discipline of the purity of the flesh. He had never taken a wife, though the desires for a woman and a family of his own ran hot in him from his youth. It had taken many years of physical effort, even pain, to extirpate those desires. He had even learned to abstain from excessive food and drink.
Nothing could compare with the inner freedom that was the reward of such willful abstinence. Nothing could replace that lightness, that joy he sometimes felt when he realized the dizzying spiritual heights he had scaled. And yet how far he still had to climb.
A muffled roar intruded on the stillness of his heart. It jarred him. Of course. The execution.
“What a disgusting display the Dar has prepared,” he said aloud. “And he expects me to attend. No, I will not befoul the person of your holy one, Adonais. Better for me to be here, to contemplate the Heights of Aer and the depths of human depravity.”
Better to prepare for the purification.
