“Yeah.” Jade lay a furry hand on Sun’s shoulder. She tried to remember the sympathy she had felt earlier.
“The Reading of the Hopes. It is … when we hope for the future. To throw in Mortur’s symbol is … an insult. If it is an accident, it is … a terrible sign. Horrible. We are not just artists, we are insight-creators, and even diviners …”
Sun was shaking. Jade felt like she was very much in the dark on the League traditions.
“Sabotage …” HuanJen began.
“Who cares.” Sun spat. “Our last performance! Our last time! Gone, spoiled, ruined, humiliated! A terrible, awful portent, mystic! I … we need to talk. Moon, I, the Council. We need to talk. The old-time members, the members who have been in this all their lives will be so upset …”
“What can I …” HuanJen began.
“What can you do. Well, let’s see. Did you …”
“I saw them. Fear.” HuanJen interrupted. “There were some spiritual airs about the performance. I am not surprised that there were unfortunate syncronicities. This could be a manifestation of the fear …”
“Some people think someone did this deliberately, or that it’s a warning that someone wishes the league ill. Already.” Sun stated.
“I am not surprised.”
“I want to see you soon. When I make arrangements. And we must talk. About damage control. And no … I don’t know what kind of damage we have. Yet.”
“I see.” HuanJen fixed his gaze on Father Sun. “I want you to know Jade and I only wanted and still want what satisfies you all.”
“I …” Sun looked into the Magician-Priest’s midnight gaze. “Yes. A shame I don’t know how many others are sure you or the Guild feel that way.”
Sun let the storage room. He was still shaking.
“OK, what the fuck just happened?” Jade asked as politely as she could. It wasn’t a very polite manner, but it was as polite as she could get and still swear.
“I am at a lost.” HuanJen stated thoughtfully. “I get the impression they do not know.”
“Yeah. Gods … we felt something was going to go wrong.” Jade closed her eyes.
“Yes.” HuanJen sounded thoughtful. “And sadly, I imagine so did they …”
REALIZATIONS
Jade Shalesdaughter was finding out what she could cope with.
Awhile ago she’d asked to be tested, to have HuanJen or some Guild Esoteric member find out if she could handle the path she had chosen. Over a year ago she’d jumped into the life of an apprentice mystic, following HuanJen in his career as a Taoist Magician-Priest. Then she’d jumped into his arms and later into his bed.
So much had changed. Some of her wondered just how much of her had changed and how well she was suited for the job.
So, she’d asked to find out where she was going. Most of those involved almost seemed amused at the question. So, M, the representative of Guild Esoteric to the Great Guild Council, asked her a question.
He asked her to find out what he was. This was unexpected as your average mystic usually tried to get you to find out who you were.
It was the kind of strange thing the Esotericists loved pulling on people. That was actually part of the whole Holy Person job - half being helpful, half playing mind games until people figured stuff out themselves. Jade knew that much.
Once she’d started studying M, things had happened. Strange things. Usually such things happened around HuanJen, but as her quest to understand M continued, things were happening to her.
The universe had a way of looking back at you when you looked at it, and for a long time she’d been looking at M.
Then she’d been looking at the universe.
And now it was staring back. When it stared back you had coincidences, and strange dreams, and fragments of something larger cutting you with sharp edges …
“You are going to have to talk to him.”
Jade focused. She was staring out the study window. The smell of old books and odd chemicals was all about. HuanJen was behind her, just out of sight, which seemed oddly appropriate. He was always there even when he wasn’t.
“I know.” Jade shook her head. “Do you know how much weird shit has happened, I mean …”
“That which you hide from comes for you, Jade. You’ve had the answer for some time.”
“You sure you don’t …” Jade began.
“No. This is between you and M. And yourself.” HuanJen answered pleasantly, if somberly. “If I intervene, then it invalidates what you wanted. Besides, I trust you.”
“You know, sometimes I wish you’d just not trust me.” Jade turned to face her lover-mentor. When she saw his midnight eyes, what little anger she had mustered melted.
“And confirm all your worst fears?” That hardly sounds like me.” HuanJen tried not to smile, and succeeded partially.
Jade stuck out her tongue for a moment of pure visceral disrespect. “Let me guess, this is all going to come down to some great issue about how my worst fears are really of myself and that I need to be as opposed to be something and my self only complicates issues.”
HuanJen blinked.
“It was wasn’t it?” Jade queried.
“What do you think?”
“I know you. I know the words. It’s the feelings I gotta sort out. I’m ready.”
HuanJen kissed his lover on the cheek gently. “I know you are. Go, go it’s needed. It’s been a time coming … and you’re probably tired of strangeness following you around.”
“Yeah, usually the strangest thing to follow me is you.”
“What can I say? I like the view …”
Jade stood before the Guildhall of Guild Esoteric.
In her more poetic moments, she thought of it as a summary of the religions of Xai in steel and concrete and class - symbols and designs and such that should have been in disharmony, but somehow weren’t. The hall was a tapestry of the beliefs of the world.
Though in her less poetic moments it was a big, hulking, and someone menacing building. The place was huge and filled with strange books, stranger artifacts, and the strangest people. It pulled at Metris, like a ball resting on a rubber sheet.
And she, in theory, was part of it.
And that is why she wanted to be tested.
Identity. Everything seemed to be about identity lately - her identity, the Panoramic League, the names of the Portals. She was beginning to understand just why HuanJen had once remarked people’s worst problems involved identity - they insisted on being something instead of being themselves.
No matter how pretentious he could sound, he ended up being right all too often. She was glad that, if he had a male ego, it was atrophied enough to be inactive. Otherwise HuanJen would be completely insufferable instead of only occasionally annoying.
She was distracting herself from what she needed - had - to do.
With a head-shake at her own stupidity, Jade strode into the Guildhall. She couldn’t avoid this.
… months hunting down who M was. Weeks since she thought she’d found the answer - and didn’t know what to say. There was the answer and what surrounded the answer - which was its own kind of answer. A huge line of thought stretching back …
Jade shook her head. A few passers-by in the hall walked around her. Esotericists - clerics, holy men, diviners. Some probably could feel what was going on in her head. It was one of the more common types of what Esotericists called Virtues, Gifts, or Talents - sensing the state of the minds of others.
After a few minutes walking and navigating, she found her way to the offices of the Councilmembers of Guild Esoteric. She’d known it from the many times Cardinal Byrd had gotten involved with HuanJen and his merry band of mystics and miracle workers. It was an out-of-the way place high up in the Guild building, and never where you’d expect it.
Cardinal Byrd. Crone Harkness, the others. And M.
M the mysterious. M the cloaked. M who represented Guild Esoteric to the great Guild Council, the governing bod
y of Xai where all the Guilds came together. M, who’s name was in records centuries back into time.
M, whom she’d been tasked to find the nature of, because she’d wanted to prove to herself she was up for the job of cleric, ready to learn. Appropriate to work alongside HuanJen, in her mind at least. To her it mattered.
“Come in,” said a dry voice from behind an old, dark-wood door. The door bore a simple nameplate: “M.”
Jade hated when the supernatural snuck up behind her and said “boo.” Usually she got used to storming into the supernatural’s house and making herself at home.
The door to M’s office swung open easily. Jade walked into the plain, undecorated room, and closed the door carefully. M, shrouded entirely in black robes, looked up at her from a worn desk. He gave the oddest impression of not owning anything. There were just things around him that he happened to use.
“And what am I?” M asked.
“No introduction?” Jade answered with sarcasm as she shut the door.
The dark figure stood up silently. “I do know why you are here. I know subtlety is not your style, so …”
“Yeah.” Jade crossed her arms.
“And what am I?” M asked.
Jade looked down at the desk. A few items, pencils and papers, no more than necessary. She took a deep breath.
Weeks upon weeks of research …
Weeks upon weeks of confrontation …
“I’d say you’re one of the gods of Xai.”
Jade’s words drifted around the room like smoke. M didn’t move. “Continue?”
Jade blinked. “Yeah? What?”
“You are not finished. I can tell. Go on, Jade.”
Jade nodded. She thought for a moment, then sat down in one of the spare chairs. The wood it was made from was lacquered to the point of making it like metal.
“I … began looking. Began investigating. You’ve been here for at least a hundred and fifty years, and my guess is for a lot longer. Maybe the name changed, because there’s someone like you back even further. Always M.”
The dark-robed councilmember said nothing. His blackness seemed to adsorb all sound, all sound except Jade’s voice. The world bent around him.
“But nothing said what you are.” Jade felt the words erupting from her. It was oddly comforting. “But you know what I noticed? About all the other Guilds? They have their god or gods, or patron saints, or whatever, depending on who you ask and what religion they are. Not Guild Esoteric. Not even Legante or Trivanta. No god of clerics. Certainly no patron saints.”
“But … I am here.” M’s voice was without emotion, but there was a negative echo of something like humor.
“Yeah, but that’s it.” Jade stood. “See, if there’s a god of Clerics no one recognizes, then why should he be among the gods, in the Divine City or the Otherworld or whatever? A nameless god of a Guild of god-followers, an unrecognized deity, he’d have to be different as well. You’re the god of clerics, the god no one worships, and if clerics reach to the god-realm, you’re the god that is already here …”
M nodded, black hood bobbing. “Yes.”
“So … well.” Jade steepled her hands. “Um, now what?”
“You continue.”
The Vulpine cocked her head. “What?”
“Go on. There’s more. You said you would say I was a god of Xai. But that’s not all, is it?”
” . . yeah.”
Jade felt herself falling. She began to pace, to keep herself centered, or maybe to cling to an edge that she was afraid to use.
“Well, I figured this out a few weeks ago. I mean, OK, it’s a classic Holy Man wiseass maneuver, going back to go forward, but … damn. See, but not everyone takes the gods of Xai the same way. Different religions, different approaches. But they all let you represent us. So you’re sort of viewed as different things. So I just called you a god, but hell, can anything be defined by one word?
“Found more than you wanted?” M’s question seemed terribly relevant.
“Not quite.” The apprentice mystic gave a morose grin. “You ever met Rake … oh screw it, of course you have. Always wondered how he and HuanJen got along, I mean Huan doesn’t buy the Big Daddy God theory. But Rake … he told me that definitions of things were words, so though he and HuanJen disagreed on the words, it was where words came from they agreed on. People can agree where there aren’t words, we just start arguing when we look at words and not where they came from.
Jade kept pacing. Now it didn’t feel like a distraction. She felt a peculiar energy she had to walk off.
“Everyone sees you differently. See, after figuring out the god thing, I looked father. The Xaian Catholic Church recognizes someone called The Dark Saint. Lots of the other religions will think of you as a god or spirit. I found a reference to you with some unpronounceable Latin name referring to an angel. But you … are. They call you different names, but you just are.”
“And you?” M asked, “What are you?”
Jade nodded. “I … am. Just am. Like you, like the rain. I happen. I can’t pin you down, but no one can pin me down. I come from beyond-words. I am. Huan would call me a product of the Mysterious Pass, the wordless all-come-from. We just are.”
“How do you feel?” M asked quickly, as if snatching something from the air.
“Centered … without a center I can put my finger on. You are, I am. We all are. I keep rolling it around in my head. We are. No more. A thousand names and the named still is.”
M let out a chuckle, one of the most emotional signs Jade had ever seen from the strange being. “Good.”
“I got weird coincidences, weird things jumping into my life, into my head. It was all because I knew this, and I wasn’t able to say it. I’m used to feeling I’m separate from things, or running from them. But I am. Just am. Hmmmm.”
“Yes?” M asked.
Jade smiled, then a gleam appeared in her eye, curiosity, sympathy, and something deep and wide. “Since I figured it out …”
“Yes?”
Jade tossed subtlety to the wind. “God, angel, whatever. I wanna see what’s under that cloak. And no, I’m not hitting on you. The only supernatural entity I hit on is my boyfriend.”
“Really?”
“Please.” Jade asked sincerely.
“Of course. With an invitation like that, how can I refuse …”
M stood, and lowered his hood, revealing his black-swathed face. Deliberately, he undid the strange wrapping around his head. When he was done …
… Jade admitted it wasn’t what she’d expected. She was surprised, but in a very calm way.
M appeared to be a man of perhaps forty, dark skinned with short, curly black hair. His eyes were brownish, holding a peculiar sheen. He didn’t look impressive, he didn’t look godlike - he did look like he needed a good cup of coffee.
“This body belonged to a member off Bengli’s congregation. He wanted to be a holy man, but he didn’t quite have the talent. He also had a very nasty onset of brain cancer. Travelflux, probably.”
“You’re riding him?” Jade asked. There was something to those eyes that felt wrong, made her feel a bit queasy. They were dead eyes that were more alive than she was.
“No, I have replaced him. I have had many bodies, and when those go to the Ossuary, those brave enough, those desperate, those dying, they volunteer to be my next body. I am Guild Esoteric given form and shape, embodied.”
Jade pointed at M with mock-accusation. “The Guild needs you. You are that which if we didn’t have, we’d have to invent. If not a god …”
“Then I am an avatar, a tulpa, an angel, what have you. Names for something that can’t truly be named, but must for reference. You figured it out.”
“Yeah.” Jade acknowledge. “I wanted to be tested. I did it.”
“And?”
“It sort of seemed easy. But … I got to it by going backwards. But I did it. You’re … a bit of me is part of you?”
“Yes.”
M began masking his face again. “You glow in me, a glint of green. HuanJen is a silver light. Byrd is a straight line of white. Dealer Zero is the glints on a dark agate. Brownmiller is an unpolished opal. I am the god of the Guild, I am its embodiment. I am what is and must be and will be no matter what you call it. Just like anyone, really.”
Jade nodded. “It’s kind of weird, coming full circle and sort of meeting myself - and, wait … the proper response is that we all come full circle, right? That’s your standard Zen Koan Mystical Confusion Official Response to stuff like this.”
“Yes.” M drew his hood over his borrowed head. “That is a classic. Though, things are classics for a reason, trust me.”
“Yeah.” Jade smiled. “I did it. I … well, as Huan would say, it is what I do. I sort of never realized what I can do. I found a god. I really wasn’t sure I was up to the job, sometimes. I just wanted to get away from all the limits of things, all the cages I made in my head.”
“I know. I could feel it when we talked. Every time.”
“No mind reading?” Jade asked, recalling some private thoughts and private moments with HuanJen that she didn’t want influencing any votes when the representatives of the Guilds met.
“No. I am the summary, not an external force.” M said simply. “I am. You are satisfied?”
“Yeah. Yeah!” Jade felt an enjoyable rush of energy. “I did it, M. I can handle this on my own. It’s … like waking up.”
“I rather imagine it is. And?”
“And … I don’t feel beneath HuanJen. I … did a lot. And others. Always less. But there’s no high or low really, just me. Just like you … ‘are’ so am I. I’ll be what I’ll be.”
M sat at his desk, seeming to shrink slightly. “Yes. And now …”
“You have work to do. I know how that goes.” Jade sighed. “And we have to return to dealing with the Panoramic League. Thanks.”
“You are welcome, Jade. So, now what?”
“Back to my life.”
Jade walked out of the office quietly, out of the Guildhall, and onto the sidewalk.
The entirety of Metris, as noisy as it was, seemed to rest on silence.
“How did it go, dear?” HuanJen asked as Jade entered their apartment. Jade started - he had just been there, practically in front of her. Part of her suspected he had been waiting nervously. He seemed calm, but …
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