I was in the bedroom of Sesako’s tower — maybe our tower.
Kisiko stood over me, pressing a hand to my bare chest that glowed bright as a blue sun.
Ouch.
Headache.
I flinched away from the light and shoved his hand away. I clapped my other hand over my eyes.
The bright blue light seeped through my fingers.
Kisiko stepped back and stroked his long beard. “Well — Hmmmm. Hmmmm.”
Hinete stood behind him, worriedly wringing her hands. She now jumped forward at seeing that I was awake, and she threw herself onto the bed to hug me. “Sesako! Gakonga died, and then you wouldn’t wake up and —”
I groaned and looked at her.
Damn, fucking headache. Fuck it. My head hurt worse than it ever had before, and my eyes did not focus quite right at first.
Fortunately, the pain started to recede quickly.
“They told me all about what happened. That you used the celestial power, and how…” Hinete slowly trailed off. “How Gakonga saved your life, and you killed a profound soul. And everything.”
I felt wrung out, like I had been run over by a steamroller, caught a bad case of the flu, and a baseball bat to the chest all at the same time.
Nausea, shakiness, aches everywhere, veins and nerves all taut. Tired. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
But…
The crimson power seeping into this body was changing it already.
Something flickered in Hinete’s eyes when she stepped away from me and looked at me again. Then she self-consciously backed away from the hug, and she sat primly on the edge of the bed.
She pressed her hand against her mouth, and her eyes looked like she’d been crying. I wondered what she could be feeling right now. I recalled that the man who'd saved my and Sesako’s life had been her favorite uncle.
And she’d been looking for some sort of comfort or care from Sesako, desperately waiting for him to wake up, and now she now recognized that I was not currently Sesako.
What was the etiquette in situations where two people shared a body, but only one of them was close to a particular person?
Kisiko kept tugging on his long white beard. At least he’d stopped using his hand to try winning a brightest light source competition.
I knew from Sesako’s memories that during the long centuries Kisiko had spent in the court of the emperor he’d deeply studied functions of the dantians — the celestial emperor had never ceased to study himself, and how he might strengthen his own massive power.
“I’d not expected thee to awake so easily. Not yet — the sleep had too much depth to its appearance.”
“You’d have woken a blind dead dog with that much light.”
“Do you have a headache?” Kimiko now scratched at the chin, instead of continuing to tug his beard. “How interesting.”
“It’s improving.”
“I am only surprised that it was present at all — I beg thy permission, that I might look more closely at your head — the fourth dantian. Your experiments bore success.” Beard tug. “Each of us in his court always whispered, one to another, wondering if the emperor was truly so special.”
“No man is so special as to be worth more than all others.”
A half-barked laugh. “Not even thee? It had been my anticipation that far more arrogance ought to be anticipated from thee.”
Then without a further request for permission he pressed his hands against my temples, saying as he did so, “If thy own power is not sufficing to quiet thy headache perhaps I might —”
His eyes widened.
I felt that probing of his magic towards my magic. And then he stood back, stepping several feet back.
Sucked in breath. He looked like he’d just had salt substituted for the sugar he’d dipped a strawberry in.
I had a sense that this situation might suddenly become dangerous.
I sat up higher, hands and held my hands up, though I had no idea what I’d do with them.
Funnily enough, the headache was completely clear.
Kisiko carefully studied Hinete, who was rapidly looking between us.
The old man shrugged. “Thou art that other fellow who'd shown up with Sesako’s ritual? Is my stab true?”
I’d spent enough time in this world that my self-confidence and self-esteem had returned. I also was not surprised that Kisiko had figured out that Sesako’s serious case of split personality disorder was acting up again. Clever old fellow.
He looked like Gandalf from the movies.
Be bold! Always be bold. That was what I told myself. Also, if you never fail you aren’t trying things that are difficult enough. Besides, dissembling was never a good look. “I’m the guy in here who you haven’t yet met.”
Kisiko tugged at his beard and nodded firmly. “Such I supposed.”
Hinete’s eyes bounced between us like she was watching an Olympic ping pong game. Her nerves were quite understandable: If the two of us seriously fought in a room with walls designed to resist powerful magical forces… the result would have been… explosive.
Not good for the skin of anyone in the proximity who had only developed her first dantian.
“Profound Kisiko, there is no danger here,” Hinete’s voice cracked for the first words, but then it became as firm as it had been when she barked to me during the siege the command of which stone to bounce in which direction, “Sesako has already spoken to me about this other, and how they have formed an agreement. He was tied to Sesako’s soul by the Great One when Sesako’s ritual to open his fourth dantian, failed and —”
“Not a failure, I think. Rather a success whose price was rather different than young Sesako anticipated.” Kisiko combed his fingers through the beard. “So, so. Sesako is often the one who controls the body? — Of course, he is. No one but that young fool could have been the man in the conference before his mad raid.”
Hinete added, “I learned the day before yesterday that there were now two —”
“Before yesterday,” I exclaimed. “How long was I… was this body asleep?”
“It is just morning,” Hinete said. “I thought you ought to be allowed to sleep after the first examination of the healers.”
“But why — oh yes, you guys do not do full bombardments at night because it is too hard to adjust the aim.”
“And thou, possessing spirit, could keep your stone throws on target during the night, in whatever realm you have been called forth from?”
“Uh… I think so? It depends, but I think so.”
“How strange.”
There was a delighted look on Kisiko’s face, and his huge bushy Gandalf beard curled up emotively. Sesako didn’t like him, since Kisiko had no interest in dying for the dragon. That was not my business. I thought he was quite sensible to only be willing to fight while the endeavor wasn’t doomed to end in defeated death.
“A brace in a single — to wonder whether you are a wight, or a spirit of evil is unnecessary. The handiwork of the Great One, nay, I ought to say her talon work, is clear in that glimpse of an instant I gained into the braided workings of your mind.”
“Maybe she made a mistake,” I replied, “How do you know simply from that, that I am not evil?”
He laughed.
A very emotive big beard.
“You have only arrived recently — you have less knowledge and trust in the Great One than I. I assure you, if you were one who could fool her, in my own simplicity I shall have no hope of success in discovering the fraud.”
“Sesako’s devotion to her seems excessive.”
Another laugh. Kisiko grinned widely, white teeth showing. Cultivators don’t need dentists. “The young tend to excess, and Sesako tends more to excess than most young men I have made the acquaintance of in my long life.”
“I’ll hear neither of you insult Sesako — not though you both are far above me in ranking.” Hinete said. “He —”
She pressed her lips together, and she was trying to force herself to keep from crying.
“Young child, you need not remain in the room — I can assure you that Sesako and this other — what is your name? Are safe from any harm from me.”
Hinete shook her head stiffly. “Why would I leave?”
“I was called Isaac, but I sort of like being ‘the other.’ That’s what Sesako calls me in his mind,” I replied. “It’s kind of like a title. Cool in that way.”
“Regarding Sesako,” Kisiko replied, “I’d freely heap the highest praises upon Sesako. But he is fervent beyond any bounds. Yet you — Hmmmm. Possessing spirit, how similar are you to Sesako?”
“The Other! I want to be ‘the Other,’ not ‘Possessing Spirit’.”
Kisiko laughed, but then both of us noticed Hinete’s grim expression.
She must still be deep in the midst of her grief for her uncle. I could say all the cliches about war being hell, terrible, awful, and a bad thing.
They were all true.
I replied calmly to Kisiko, “I believe that we are somehow the same essential soul but born in different worlds. Our bodies were precisely the same, except for the presence of his magic.”
“My supposition once more. One can begin to guess at the likely patterns of such things after so many years, even if they have never studied the particular matter — what then, young man, are you passionate to an excess about.”
I flushed. “I suppose… I suppose I take philosophy, arguments about morality and ethics more seriously than others do — but everyone ought to treat them with some seriousness, even if I don’t expect anyone, even myself, to act in an inhumanly driven way, as though they were a utilitarian saint. I’m not a saint, I just try to take my ideas a bit seriously.”
“Different in that way from Sesako. He expects most of us to be saints — I too delight in argumentation and philosophy. Ah, I remember, the wife of my youth. In that she was like me. That she was the emperor’s own flesh, one of his many children is not a matter to sneer at her for. There are many amongst the great — and even amongst the lesser — on this island who can trace their ancestry back to a child of the emperor. He has ruled for a thousand years, and he has had nearly that number of offspring.”
“A surprisingly small number,” I offered.
Kisiko raised his thick bushy eyebrows. “A small number? I have had but five children of my own loins. Two dead from age, two living, and one dead in battle. I say that each took a great scope of time and effort to mold.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“I mean — what sort of a father is the emperor?”
“Ah.” Kisiko nodded. “A wise question. He is not… a good father. He lacks intimacy and warmth for his children, and his grandchildren. But he is always attentive to their wellbeing and their education. The emperor’s heart has been spread in many directions, and he has lost many children, many grandchildren, and even many of his grandchildren’s grandchildren to the illness that is old age. He sees the world differently — I believe that you shall come to see it in a like manner over the many centuries. You also have now broken from the patterns of time.”
“But he chooses to continue to have them? Despite that inevitability of loss?”
“And why not? A child, even though that child will one day die, is a beautiful thing. Besides, he is a man, and he is eternally in his youthful prime, and he finds women beautiful.”
“That is my point. I am surprised he does not spread his seed far wider. There was a great conqueror in the world I am from who had so many children that even though he died when he was only seventy years old, it is estimated that less than a thousand years later one man in every two hundred is descended from him.”
Kisiko stroked the beard. “An average of one child each year from the emperor’s many wives and concubines is no small number. Perhaps he a more ordinary man — a better one — than the people of this lovely, small island believe. In this land, the land of my birth, he has become known to be the most vicious villain. I know him. He is neither wanton, nor is he cruel, nor is he a demon from outside of all nightmares —”
Hinete had stiffened. She glared at the far more powerful cultivator, but she still had a sense that it was not her place to argue with one who had achieved a profound soul more than three hundred years before she was born. There was an edge of anger in her — like maybe she hadn’t really realized what fighting would mean until yesterday when her uncle returned as a dead body from the raid he’d happily and laughingly joined.
Kisiko glanced over at her and smiled, “My dear girl, thy parents, thy society, thy whole world has pressed into your young mind a specific, a particular mode of seeing. Should fate decree that you flourish and live for a long span of years, you will eventually come to understand that often that description of the world which lives in your mind does not correspond in every particular to the actual world that lives outside of it.”
I said, “The map is not the territory.”
“Aha!” Kisiko clapped his hands twice in delight. “A finer description of this point I have never heard — I shall steal it, if thou hast no objection.”
“It is a commonplace piece of wisdom in my world.”
“Such a clever place — thy people must be wiser by far than ours in that case.”
“That is not true.”
“And thee, stranger from another world who has become a part of one of the great lords of this one, you do not bristle to hear me describe the emperor as neither an evil man, nor an unreasoning one.”
“Few people are completely stupid, and even fewer are mad. Everyone likes to say that their enemies are both mad and stupid, usually without thinking about what their enemies actually say. I liked history — but what then is his reason to destroy the dragons.”
“I know not.” Kisiko shrugged.
“But it is an important question.” I pushed aside the sheets and sat up on the side of the bed. “Perhaps there is something we don’t know which means that it is important that the dragons die. The term we used was a ‘crucial consideration.’ It seems like protecting the independence of Yatamo, and the life of the dragons is a good thing to do. And obviously the direct effect is good — but perhaps there is something that I don’t know, but that if I learned, would convince me that it would be a good thing for the dragons to die.”
Hinete snapped at me. “The Great One gives us her blessing. You can’t —”
“What if one day the whole world will be eaten by her children? Wouldn’t it be worth it then to kill her to save everyone else?”
“She loves us, and her children likewise.”
I shrugged. “I do not know what consideration might point in a different direction. Perhaps the emperor has a prophecy which says, ‘should the dragons live, then the whole of the world shall one day be doomed’.”
The glare that Hinete leveled at me was a magnificent thing. I was fairly sure that she was reconsidering whatever positive thoughts she’d ever had about me.
Kisiko grabbed a fistful of his bristly white beard to tug this time. “Uncertain they are, prophecies. Uncertain things. Prone to misinterpretation and being fulfilled by the attempt to avoid it. Act from understanding. Else thy actions are likely to cause more harm than good.”
“Precisely,” I said. “In the world I came from, we wanted to make machines which could do anything a human being can, and more. But many people feared that a mistake in designing them could lead to the destruction of everything, since creatures that could do anything, a human can, even better than we can, might be able to defeat us all if it chooses to fight us. However, figuring out how to ensure such a creature always did what we wanted might prove to be extremely hard. But the people who were scared of this could not agree about what we could do to avoid the danger. Some of them wanted to frighten the public so that they would demand the government stop all of this sort of research, or provide oversight for it, while others thought this would cause more harm than good. In the end when I died, there had been little attempt to shape government policy, because they were locked in this analysis paralysis of worrying about secondary effects, the effects of secondary effects, and other crucial considerations.”
“How might the public control great cultivators engaged in deep research?” Kisiko said. “How can even the other great cultivators exert a controlling influence? Any cultivator will defend his right to engage in his own research without interference or observation, even when he does nothing that any other might find objectionable.”
“He claims,” Hinete pointed at me. “That there is no magic in the world he is from.”
“Ah.” Kisiko nodded. “I see. That might explain why thou seems to have a greater sophistication in philosophy than most in this world.”
I laughed. “If I replace great cultivators with great merchants, that is in essence the problem. The other fear is that if everyone who obeys laws and who can easily be controlled is stopped from doing such research, while that will slow the research, it also will mean that those who continue such research are likely to be criminals, enemy nations, and others who care even less about the safety of their inventions than the merchants.”
“Thy world permits merchants to develop such automatons? Insanity. A committee of thy great — for there must be nobles and great warriors even if no magic. The desire for power is more central to mankind than the ability to use magic. Those amongst you who are greatest must ban such merchants entirely from dangerous research, and only allow those who are committed by law, by tradition, and by personal interest to the public welfare to develop them.”
“Yes, but the merchants would object to that, and talk about how they provide many good things for everyone, and enough people would believe them that the government wouldn’t actually strip them of their right to do this research… at least it probably wouldn’t—” I shrugged. “In any case I can give no advice to my former world. I have died within it, and I do not believe that death can ever be undone.”
“It shall not be. Thou art tied to this place, to this body, to Sesako, and the Great Ones.”
“I dearly wish,” I said, “that I could know what drove the emperor. From what I see, other than eating a lot, the dragon actively makes this island a better place. Sesako at least believes there is more happiness and wellbeing in Yatamo than is usual in other lands, and —”
“If the word of one who has spent more than five hundred years in other lands, and not always in the guise of one with a profound soul, has any evidentiary force for thee, thou mayest feel assured that the life of the peasant, and the life of those with little wealth in the city are better by far in Yatamo than in other lands. There is no other land which better nurtures the spark in the young. Unlike Lady Hinete here, who is the cousin of the clan chief of the Turagoa, or the original possessor of that body you act through, whose mother was the granddaughter of one who had achieved a profound soul, I was born in a peasant family. Many centuries ago, the Great One told us, the inhabitants of Yatamo, to nurture all children born on the islands. Without that command I would have never become one of the great.”
“Is that why you chose to turn against the emperor?”
“That, and he never, though I begged him to, explained his reasons for wishing to destroy the Great Ones. I assumed from this that he had a reason which he knew would not speak persuasively to me. Else he would have spoken.”
“Or perhaps the knowledge contained in his reason is so dangerous that he would not risk telling anyone, even you.”
Kisiko shrugged.
“Do you have any notion of what the best thing might be we can do to aid the ordinary persons, the peasantry — without regard for who. Anyone, in any country?”
Kisiko blinked at that question. “Why do you ask?”
“I swore an oath many years ago that I would give ten percent of everything I earned to those less fortunate than myself, and a half of what I earned if I ever became wealthy. Sesako has agreed that if I help him defend the island to the best of my ability, that I’ll get half of his money pile to give away. But I have not yet determined what is the most effective way to give it away.”
“A noble oath.”
“It just — it gave me more purpose to life. It was a way for me to feel connected. I wasn’t trying to be noble, just to be a normal, decent person. The best estimates said that spending around four thousand pieces of the currency of my country to distribute bed nets that kept poor people in a poor country from getting bitten by mosquitoes that carried diseases would save a child’s life.”
“Wait, mosquitoes carried diseases in thy world?” Kisiko frowned. “It might make sense of certain mysteries if they do here.”
“We’ll look into that — if the germ theory of disease is true here, convincing people of it might do a bigger amount to help everyone than anything else I could do. See —many possibilities. It is easy to get lost in them.”
“Choose a direction, and start walking, while never forgetting that perhaps one day a different direction might appear to be better.”
“The thing is — the average worker in my country earned enough money to save the lives of at least ten children a year — now we aren’t saints. None of us. It just isn’t the way that human beings work, we can’t sacrifice all of our own goals, or turn ourselves into someone who simply exists to help other people, without any special concern for ourselves, or for those we love. But if someone looked at this chance of saving the life of one child a year for a fraction of their income, and then didn’t do anything, that there was something a bit wrong with them. I don’t want to be judgmental. It isn’t useful. Everyone is where they are personally in life, and only they know what it's like to be them. I was more fortunate than most of the people in my country, and so it was easier for me to say this. But — I mean isn't it cool that you can make a giant difference in the life of other people? With an amount of money that would be nice but not transformative if you kept it for yourself — I enjoyed helping in this way.”
“Most would not.”
“You are vastly richer than others around you. Like Sesako you have reached the highest level of development that a cultivator can expect to reach, and —”
He laughed. “Except thee and Sesako have surpassed that point. But I see your reasoning! I certainly could not expect the dragon to rescue my life from my own foolishness in the way She did for Sesako. She has considered Sesako a dear friend since his youth. But I understand thy question. Will I become a benefactor of the poor?”
“That speech you made to Sesako, about the beauty in life. The beauty that you see everywhere. Do we not create more beauty when we help another to be happy, to achieve their dearest hope? — I’m not saying you need to give ten percent of your wealth. One percent will make a difference. To someone. Just do something.
Kisiko smiled, a grandfatherly smile. He said, “Thou art a noble fellow — for all that thou art odd.”
“Whether you will dedicate a portion of your own income to such a cause, I know I can trust your word.”
A thin smile from the old cultivator. “Why sayest thou that, when thou knowest that I betrayed, in a manner of speaking the Great Ones and the land of my birth when the rebellion rose, and I did not join it for another thirty years. Also, when I did join this rebellion, I betrayed the emperor to whom I had sworn my allegiance and loyalty.”
“If no one else lives through this war, you are planning to. Take — take now the half of the wealth in Sesako’s storehouses that he has promised to disperse amongst the poor. And once this war is over, if we should die, I shall trust you to be the one to find a way to aid others with it — if nothing else, you can simply find communities of those who are extremely poor and divide it up into small amounts of money and give it to them. That was something that we had learned in my world, that often the best way to aid others is to simply give them the power represented by a little bit of gold, and then let them figure out what to do with it for themselves.”
Hinete sneered at Kisiko. “You still mean to be a coward? Even though brave men have already died. You are planning to flee.”
Kisiko said softly. “Brave men often die. And sometimes they live. That is no reason for me to choose death, nor is it a reason for you to choose death.”
“It makes Gakonga’s sacrifice meaningless, if we just give up!”
“We shall not simply give up.” Kisiko sighed. “My poor girl. You are young — has anyone near and dear to you ever died before?”
Something on Hinete’s face told me that Kisiko’s supposition was correct. Even though she was thirty, nobody who she loved had ever died.
“Life is not so charmed for all,” Kisiko replied. “And you, The Other, any peasant would prefer a great amount of money to many other things I might give him that I would suppose he ought to desire more.”
“I always thought that it was a form of positioning myself as the superior, as the benefactor to assume I knew better.”
“And as a master of the profound soul, it would fall within the scope of my abilities to ensure that the local lords take none of what they receive in ‘tax’.” Kisiko’s voice was filled with a grim amusement. “You look surprised at that suggestion — but I assure you, in many cases such a lord would rather their peasants receive nothing than that they receive something which they cannot steal. I wish, however, for Sesako himself to give me this commission before I agree to undertake it. But if he does, I shall take it upon myself. I grew up a poor lad. I spent each summer knocking the olives from the trees along the coast and stomping them into oil in the vats. It shall be an interesting question to see if I can think of something which I or my parents would have preferred to a couple of silvers in the pocket — do you have any advice that was commonplace in your other world about how to determine what the most useful possible way to help someone is?”
“Uh, well there was the tractability, neglectedness, and importance framework.”
“Whether you can do anything, whether other people are already trying to do it, and whether there is any point in doing it in the first place?”
“Basically,” I nodded in agreement. “I feel like though there aren’t nearly as many people already trying to do things in this world than there were in mine.”
“No, no, no.” Kisiko shook his head slowly. “There are certainly sects who provide healing to peasants, or groups that attempt to ensure that the beggars have food or shelter. What is wholly different is that in your world people attempted to help those to whom they had no connection. I cannot think of any efforts which are not limited to one region, or one nation at the most, or alternatively some particular blood community, or a particular sect.”
“Well then. If I die…” I let out an uncomfortable breath. I really didn’t want to die again. “That is settled.”
Hinete glared at me. “You aren’t going to die. Sesako isn’t going to die. You’ve become a celestial, and we will win.”
Neither Kisiko nor I spoke.
“We. Will. Win.” Hinete’s voice rose an octave with each word. “Gakonga died so you wouldn’t die. And you owe him that. You are alive because he died. The best of us! He died for you. You can’t flee. You can’t give up. You have to do whatever it takes to win. For his sake!”
“I am not going anywhere,” I said softly. “I intend to fight.”
She clenched her fists, her jaw, and her whole body. “Sesako. It is Sesako and the Great One that I trust. Neither of you understand. We will win. I feel it in my heart. I feel it in my soul. We will win.”
“Thou hast placed much confidence in the one whom thou lovest.” Kisiko said softly, kindly.
Hinete flushed deep red. “I don’t —”
Silence after she cut herself off, and looked down, rather cutely pressing her thumbs together.
I decided I ought to speak to spare her from her embarrassment.
“We need to figure out a plan to stop the whole invasion. Either destroy the island or kill the emperor if we can find him.” I said. “But I’m pretty sure that even though Sesako and I have opened the fourth dantian, this will not be easy.”
“Wisdom from a young master?” Kisiko’s eyes crinkled, “In the difficulty of our task, we may repose complete confidence.”