by R. T. Donlon
But Kyrah needed no more assurance that danger lurked in the Mountains. She held a raised open palm to signify she had heard enough. Latvala scoffed, this time nearly erupting with anger.
“How dare y—” he began to roar, but Kyrah kept still and collected in traji.
“I do not mean to offend. You are kind for making me aware, but there is a reason the Elite has sent me here. You have said so yourself. There is good reason why I have been granted permission to seek taerji. No one will stand in my way.”
It was in the girl’s last statement that Latvala sensed her true conviction. He reclined back against a fallen log, scratching at the daylong stubble that had grown quietly across his face.
“You see, Fenir?” Latvala turned, speaking to his apprentice. “This is true purpose. A Warrior must know what he wants. You could learn something from her.”
The boy squirmed against the mild insult of his Teacher, running his hands anxiously down the meat of his bow. He never raised his eyes, never tried to interject.
“I stand true in my resolve,” Kyrah confirmed. “I cannot return empty handed.”
Latvala bowed into marjhi—a sign that he accepted whatever Kyrah’s fate would be.
“Few people have returned from the caves of the Lost Warriors…and the ones that have never returned the same. They are savage people in the basest of ways,” Latvala continued. “They have lost themselves in taerji, so much so that nothing matters but staying in it.”
“If I could just sneak into the cave and grab a piece of—”
“Rose Petals,” Latvala interrupted. “You want the Rose Petals.”
“Just as proof. Proof that I was here,” Kyrah continued.
“I have deep respect for Velc Tahjir,” Latvala continued, “but if that is what you seek, then you are missing the point. Your Teacher has not taught you as well as you think he has.”
Embarrassment led to a bit of frustration.
“I know what I must do,” Kyrah called, “and I will do it.”
Latvala only nodded, keeping the rest of his thoughts hidden away in the depths of his own mind.
“Fenir, it is time to go. The girl has made her decision. Take your bow. Say goodbye. Farewell, apprentice. May your fortune hold true in your journeys.”
Fenir quietly rose from his seated traji position and bowed into marjhi. The shimmer had returned.
What did it mean? she thought, but Fenir and Latvala had already turned, vanishing behind the rocky escarpment like ghosts disappearing into night.
The heat of the fire cooled quicker than Kyrah had wished, leaving her awake and cold for most of the early morning hours, but as the sun crept to the ridge of the mountains, the thought of inactivity was no longer appealing to her, so she rose from her traji state and immediately felt the weight of stillness litter her joints. She had never grown accustomed to waiting, sitting still for long hours at a time. She had never really been one for sleep anyway.
The sun danced along the horizon, pulled by the invisible weight of the world across its axis. Kyrah could feel the initial breaks of morning heat crack through the fissures of night, but it still was not enough to dissolve the fatigue in her muscles. She knew it would only disappear if she moved through the pain as she ran, but the mountainous incline had other plans. She ached the entire way to the peaks, but managed to sprint to a flat inlay of land, spread out into odd angles of lush, dry patches of sawgrass.
It was here that she first saw the caves.
Five of them burrowed deep into the mountainside. Only the most jagged of peaks rose in points overhead now. The wind whispered as it passed and the air had thinned to the point of wheezed breathing. No insects buzzed here at this altitude. No sounds echoed beyond the black rim of the cavernous openings. Everything about this place seemed eerily close to death, too close to infinite danger.
She closed her eyes and planted her feet firmly against the flat lip of land on which she stood. The beginnings of taerji had already begun rooting themselves in her brain. Her heartbeat slowed. Her vision cleared. There was nothing stopping her now.
You are ready, she thought. This is your time.
And she thought this to be wholeheartedly true.
Two steps, then four, then six she took until she reached the hollow of the blackened cave and stopped to listen. Still, she heard nothing beyond the steep tunnel of rock. A matrix gray-black cloud formed above the mountain, close to the peak only a few hundred feet upward. A splattering of raindrops splashed to the ground, increasing in intensity into a shower, then a full-blown storm. For a moment, she stood motionless against it, feeling the beads of rain wet her hair and fall in streams down her face. The cool of it relaxed her enough to drop her shoulders and reflect.
I have deep respect for Velc Tahjir, but if that is what you seek, then you are missing the point. Your Teacher has not taught you as well as you think he has.
Latvala’s words had never left her mind. Something about the tone behind his words, the way he had said them, pestered her thoughts. Was she being too impatient? Should she have listened to Latvala? She shook free from her doubt and cleared her mind. She had already made her decision. She did not need the confirmation of strangers to justify her actions, so she entered the cave with her arms outstretched and knees bent, cautiously aware of the dangers that may lie within.
The cave smelled musty, almost sour, so much so that Kyrah felt the need to breathe through her mouth, taking choppy breaths to escape it. She crept forward and the smell worsened to the point where Kyrah’s entire being became it, engulfed in it. Her eyes adjusted slowly, but never enough to make out more than shapes and outlined figures. She crept onward, squinting at a faint glow of red at the far end of a passing tunnel.
“Rose Petals,” she whispered.
Four bodies stood from the base of the cavern and shifted layers of displaced dust previously settled across the floor. She could not decipher their shapes more than blackened movement, but as they approached, a looming sort of fear took hold of her.
“I mean you no harm,” she spoke. “I come for only one thing—one of those stones behind you.”
The blackened shapes continued to shuffle forward without reply. Kyrah took a small step backward in panicked retreat, allowing for her shoulder to make contact with the cavern wall at her back. She unsheathed the small dagger at her hip with her right hand and held it tightly between nervous fingers. The shapes wobbled in the dark, moving toward her even faster now. Kyrah stepped sideways to avoid them, but caught her heel on a loose rock. She fell to her back and grunted against the pain.
Stand up, she told herself. Harness your pain.
But these things were easier said than done. It had only taken a moment for her to attempt to stand, but the blackened, silhouetted shapes had already reached her, looming over her with empty, hollow faces.
“No one enters here,” the closest spoke, “unless they wish to die.”
Kyrah controlled her breathing, broke into traji to erase the panic in her eyes.
“I wish only to learn the ways of taerji. That is why I need the stone—”
“The stone has nothing to do with taerji. Many have come in search of the stones. Many have died never knowing the truth.”
The bodies leaned forward from the hips in an angled warouw pose, arms flexed at their sides, knees bent as if to attack. It was clear now, to Kyrah, that they had no intention of allowing her to live. She squeezed the worn hilt of her dagger with taut fingers behind her back.
“I will ask you one more time,” Kyrah reasoned. “Let me be on my way.”
The faces had come into distorted view now and, clearer than she could have ever wanted, she witnessed first-hand the Lost Warriors of the Mountains. It seemed the ink of the Warrior paint had seared into the orbs of their eyes, sinking into the hollow sockets from years of decomposing aged skin and inactivity. There was a graying color to their skin that resembled wrinkled clay. It sagged and drooped at odd places—neck, jo
ints, the lobes of the ears—and forced Kyrah to grimace, even as she held true to traji. The farthest jack-knifed a smile so wide that Kyrah thought him to be mad. Chipped, brown teeth circled swollen gums. It was enough to force a whimper from Kyrah’s mouth.
“If you enter,” said the closest voice, “you die.”
The whip of a calloused hand whistled and connected with Kyrah’s jaw, opening a cut the size of a fingernail across her lip. She swiped the dagger laterally into the air in front of her repeatedly, but the Warriors merely stretched backward in avoidance of it and smiled. Wild fists cracked hard against her ribs, the side of her skull, her abdomen.
Harness the pain, Kyrah. Use it to your advantage.
Her Teacher’s voice ran through her thoughts. It gave her hope until the taste of blood filled her mouth. A length of her head across the hairline had been cut open against sharp ends of cavernous rock jutting from the wall. She held the dagger tight against her, swinging it intermittently between blows of fists and feet, but the Warriors met no resistance from the girl. The subtle calm of traji had all but vanished from her psyche and, as she laid there in a bloody heap completely vulnerable, her heart beat savagely against the bones of her chest.
She focused inward, allowed her body’s pain to focalize, but it was already too late. She had allowed the beating to go too far. No amount of focus could bring the energy within her to a boil, even if she could concentrate long enough to get it there.
A thwap sound rattled the musty air. Something long and fast exploded the skull of one of the Warriors in front of her. A warm spray of blood splattered across Kyrah’s chest.
“The arrows!” another Warrior yelled. “The arrows!”
Another thwap rattled to a stop, but not until it hit the cavern wall and sparked only a few inches from Kyrah’s ear.
Another thwap, then another, until the cavern seemed to be raining arrows. One by one, the Warriors fell to the floor in heaps of dead flesh.
A single figure approached her from the cave opening. In his hand, the silhouette of a bow moved at its hip.
“No,” she mumbled. She could not tell if this new figure was friend or foe. “Please…”
But sprays of Warrior blood had clouded her vision. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall into the unconscious.
“We must hurry,” Latvala said. “She does not have much time.”
He bent at the knee, picked her up in his bulging arms, and carried her out into the Light.
The soft flicker of a crackling fire emanated from the corner of the room. Her lids were still heavy and swollen, but the warmth of the fire kept inviting her to open them, to bring her back to the conscious. Bandages swaddled the wounds across her arms and shoulders. The softened feathers of a pillow fluffed nicely behind her head. It all seemed so foreign to her now, so comfortable.
“Rest,” a familiar voice spoke. It came from across the bed. “You have done a very foolish thing, but you have survived.”
It was Latvala, the Mountain Teacher.
“Those…monsters,” Kyrah wheezed.
The fluid in her lungs had yet to drain.
“Yes,” he said. “We know a thing or two about our people—the people that surrendered to the taerji. We know how lost they truly are. You were lucky they only cracked a few of your ribs.”
Kyrah did not speak, only kept her swollen eyes locked to Latvala’s gentle, but stern expression. He allowed his fingers to meddle with the others across the parallel of his hands.
“I warned you, apprentice, but your stubbornness nearly killed you.”
Kyrah sat up slowly, grimacing against her wounds.
“You do not seem to understand,” she said, “I have no choice.”
“Your Teacher is a smart man. The stones were never your primary objective. Velc led you to me.”
Kyrah ran a hand down the side of her chest. She could feel the inflamed muscle wall just below her ribs and coughed violently against her own touch.
“It hurts,” she said.
“We have doctors here that have trained with ferrilas. They were Healers some time ago. They gave you the medicine you needed, but Kyrah,” Latvala continued, “you must give yourself time. Your bones are healed, but your spirit is broken. I can feel it.”
At this, Kyrah deflated back into the pillow.
“I know that you understand,” Latvala continued. “It is impossible to escape the caves of the Lost Warriors unless you are of taerji yourself. It is what makes the Mountains so great, so powerful. The Elite understood that you would stumble, that you would push past the limitations, but he also knew that I would be here watching you.”
“Teacher of the Mountains,” Kyrah whispered. “I am sorry.”
“Do you wish to learn the ways of taerji?” Latvala asked.
Kyrah nodded quietly.
“Then do not apologize. What you have done does not matter. What matters is only what you become. Now rest. When you wake, we have work to do.”
The bruises and slashes of Kyrah’s beating in the caves slowly faded into the swell of time and, as days passed and nights pushed onward, Kyrah became accustomed to Latvala’s stern, silent demeanor. Every morning, the Mountain Teacher awoke to his usual traji meditations, then as he broke the calm within himself, he brought himself into tansij to stir his heart just a bit, to awaken himself to the point of function.
Each morning Latvala spent hours in meditation without explanation.
“You,” he had said, pointing to Kyrah. “Do as I do.”
And Kyrah followed suit without question, for she understood that it was not her place to doubt the mind that had already been forged from nothing.
Days passed. Weeks. Months.
She continued every morning in the same meditative poses for hour upon hour, wondering if the torture of silence would ever cease, wondering if she would ever find the taerji state, then, as if he could part the clouds from the sun with a single sentence, Latvala finally spoke: “It is not the process that is important, but rather, it is the mind itself.”
The first words spoken by the Mountain Teacher came as nothing more than a mystery to Kyrah. It had been so long that she had nearly forgotten what Latvala’s voice had sounded like. Kyrah turned to Fenir, but no motion had disturbed the young warrior’s frame. Instead, his eyes only opened slightly to prove he was alert.
“Fenir has been with me long enough to understand this, but you,” the Mountain Teacher continued, “you have only just begun.”
How could she respond to this? With a sign of gratefulness? Dutiful thanksgiving? Or was this an insult disguised by subtlety? She kept silent simply because she knew not what to say.
“Fenir, enter deep traji,” Latvala continued.
As if gliding through air, the Teacher strode from where he had once stood to hinge at the hip just behind Fenir’s right shoulder. The cross-legged Fenir allowed his shoulders to fall into deep relaxation, his chin falling to chest.
“The mind is a slave to its body—trapped and contained by its mortal needs. Without the ways of mortality, the mind will not function as it must. Air to breathe, sustenance to eat, water to quench thirst—all of this is paramount to keeping the body—and mind—at peak physical function.”
Latvala’s thin, serpent-like fingers ran across the backside of Fenir’s ear, searching for the soft spot where skull met jaw.
“Taerji is the transcendence of physical limitations. It is the separation of mind from its host, and in turn, accepting that it, indeed, can be done. Do you accept what I have just spoken to you?”
There was hesitation in her expression.
“You see? There is doubt in how you respond. There can be none if you wish to proceed. Mind can separate from body. It must.”
Latvala found the spot behind Fenir’s ear and held the pads of two fingers in place, pulling back a strand of hair across the boy’s neck.
“Take your reaction to my sudden voice just a moment ago. I have not spoken in month
s! You should be deep enough into traji at this exact moment. You whipped yourself up, ready and alert. Fenir, however, could barely open his eyes. That is the true mastering of traji—deep within yourself without doubt.”
“But Teacher—” Kyrah began, but Latvala interjected forcefully to prove his point.
“There are levels to transcendence, girl. Fenir, like you, has nearly mastered the meditative poses. Traji erases the past. It erases the fear one has already known.” The Mountain Teacher stopped speaking for a moment, breathing heavily as if trapped in a smoky room. “But it cannot erase the physical. It cannot erase the present. That is why I can shake him from his trance.”
With the smallest amount of pressure against the softened corner behind his ear, Fenir jumped out of traji, swinging an arm in the direction of his Teacher. Latvala simply caught the arm at the wrist and slowly guided it to the boy’s side.
“One more time,” Latvala whispered to Fenir. “This time, tansij.”
Fenir rose to his feet, stiff against tense muscles. When his shoulders dropped and the lids of his eyes closed, Kyrah sensed a new sort of calm in him.
“Another mastery, you see,” Latvala spoke, directing his words to Kyrah. “He has accepted the call of his inward world—one only he knows.”
Kyrah thought inwardly, knowing only tiny pieces of the world inside of her head. It was dark, yet clear, windy, but calm.
“Ah!” continued the Mountain Teacher. “So you have seen your world. Good!”
“Not in its entirety,” she replied, “but yes, I have.”
“One does not need to see the entire image to know it in its whole form,” he replied. “In fact, one does not need to see it at all. You know of it. That is all that matters. This shows mastery.”
Kyrah sighed through frustration, too noticeably for her own polite stature.
“As traji erases the past—nullifies it—so tansij forgets the trajectory of the future. No longer is the mind bogged down by the pain one has experienced, it is no longer affected by the pain it will.”
Latvala found the soft spot behind Fenir’s ear once more, but hesitated in pushing into it.
