I smiled. Not always did the Dzin sessions go so well, but I was pleased, though I took care to remind myself that all too much of what I imparted I had gained from others. Still, most of them seemed to understand, and some, like Wryan, had a feel for Dzin.
3
Truth is not somewhere else.
In the shadow of the cataclypt of Dyanar, two children kissed, and I let them, although in my new and deep aquacyan gown, I should have stepped forward, frowned, let the silence of my disapproval separate them, for such familiarity so young leads to the arrogance of unbridled knowledge.
Rather than act, I studied the carvings on the cataclypt, the images of the winged figures who represented the ancients and the tailed figures in the background, the representation of the demons who had been created by the technology of those ancient angels. Dzin had saved us, those of Dorcha, from degenerating into the soullessness of the north, just as, I supposed, Toze had saved those of West Amnord.
From the carvings, my eyes went back to the two children, kissing. That was the beginning, though I did not see it. Instead, I forbore intervening and smiled, for I well remembered a day years before when I had kissed Esolde behind the grape trellis in her parents' garden.
On this later day of my posting, in my aquacyan gown, with the slow swirl of the river below and the dampness of the morning mist in my nostrils, I let the two kiss unmolested and turned to walk along the foot-polished stones of the River Walk, the sun not quite warm on my right cheek as it struggled over the eastern hills and through the late-morning mist of spring.
Henvor is an old city, its origins on the banks of the Greening River lost in myths of time before the Great Hunger and Devastation. The weather-auspexes claim that it was colder then, much colder, but now the winter rains were soft, and the morning mists and clouds of summer kept the sun's heat from drying the marshes that bordered the watercourse south of Henvor, the marshes and their grasses that purified the waters once again before they flowed between the Whitened Hills, winding ponderously toward the merchant cities on the Summer Sea, past Leboath and Wyns, and eventually to Mettersfel, where the sunships brought in the ocean nodules and carried the wines and cheeses of Dorcha eastward, eastward across the Rehavic Ocean south of the Pillars of Fire and around the Barren Isles to Thule ... and occasionally to Dhura.
I hurried north toward the Hall, repressing a head shake. First my mother, then my father, then Umbard and finally Manwarr had cautioned me against the insidious and evil habit of open disapproval, even open disapproval of self, but still I had to fight that urge, calling on the precepts of Dzin, so much that I wondered what ancestor had gene-coded the trait.
Across the river was the equally old city of Teford, though it is closer to a large town than a city proper. There are the stone carvers, more properly called lithoidolators in their love of their craft, for it has been stone and Dzin that have held back the demons of the north.
The two river cities are the crown jewels of Dorcha, small but precious - unlike Halz and Mettersfel, which are large and filled with credits of all origins and denominations. Teford and Henvor are also far enough from the Sea of Summer to be comfortable, even if the merchants of Mettersfel call them provincial. Yet, how can a city such as Henvor, blessed with the hagiaphants of Dzin, ever be provincial, even to the merchant city-state of Mettersfel?
Behind me, there was the slap of softboots, and the children vanished into the Street of Iconraisers. I did frown at that. The iconraisers were tolerated throughout Dorcha, and indeed all of Amnord, but even I had to agree with Manwarr's view of them: 'The universe we see is unreal; how then would one describe an image of unreality displayed upon a bed of light?'
The Street of Iconraisers contrasted thin and mean dwellings, scarcely more than caserns, with the gold and viridium shimmering pillars of wealth. How else could it be, when the electric current to power an iconscreen was dearer than pure bloodessence itself? Some claimed that the iconraisers were little more than coprophrologers who enslaved and transferred the souls of children to power their lightbed screens, but always are there superstitions among the less enlightened, even within Henvor. There are even those -Dzinarchists - who see Dzin not as a way but as a goal.
As the softboot steps died in sound and memory, I looked northward, toward the unseen granite ramparts that marked the south border of demon-ruled Rykasha, land of mystery and darkness, before hastening my steps toward the Hall of Unremitting Alertness.
At the old river gate to the city, now well within Henvor itself, I stepped through the narrow way of the Demons' Passage. After a decade under the hagiaphants, I no longer looked up at the twenty-meter-high-glass smooth walls, nor at the blocking stones designed to glide inexorably into place should a demon need to be destroyed.
At the yearly ceremony of the old equinox, at each of the ancient gates, the blocks were tested. The first time, I remember, I stood behind Umbard, my head barely to his chest, my mouth open, as the niellen stones slid silently shut, creating a stone chamber that not even the strongest demon could escape. Then, my heart pounding, I had followed Umbard, as each new student had followed his or her first proctor, standing briefly alone in the square of judgment before being motioned to pass.
For all that two centuries had passed since the last demon had been caught and imprisoned in Henvor, my heart still beat a little faster each year, at least until the yin in the silver passlet on my wrist was renewed.
On the old city side of the demon gate, a constable in the dun red of the Shraddans smiled. 'Happy awakening to you, candidate scholar.'
'May the mists always be soft at dawn.'
She nodded, and I passed, and before long, with the other twenty senior candidate scholars, I stood in the Hall of Unremitting Alertness.
Nearly so old as Henvor itself, the stone arches that bore the ancient oak cross beams and the niellen darkslates soared into the dimness nearly thirty meters overhead, their size diminished only by their height. Aquacyan softboots remained motionless on the green ceramic floor tiles that showed no wear after nearly a millennium - yet another relic of the Days of Wonder and the time of demons.
Along the eastern wall stood the eight Masters of Dzin. Manwarr stood third from the left. Idly, I supposed that, had I been born in Klama, I might have been instructed by a Master of Toze. But speculating on the face I might have had if my parents had possessed others was futile ... and meaningless.
'There is no ceremony to wisdom, and wisdom requires none,' said Abbo Sanhedran. 'The individual reveres wisdom because it increases self; the merchant because it increases coins; and the scholar because wisdom is the first step to ignorance. May the wisdom you possess truly be but a first step on that journey.'
The words flowed over and around me, perhaps because I had heard them so many times before, just as the younger candidate scholars standing in the back of the Hall were hearing them.
I looked at the cream-colored sash worn by the Abbo, but once a year, wondering if someday I also might wear the cream.
After the ceremony, I walked to Manwarr's hypostyle, wanting to scurry, but, no longer a scholar candidate but a junior master of Dzin, I forced deliberation, even slowing to savor the delicate perfume of the golden springpoppies in the garden without.
As I entered through the plain stone columns and bowed, Manwarr returned the gesture, his faded blue gown sweeping the polished stones of the columned west meditation room, the one where he taught those of us who had been senior scholar candidates. 'You have been called.'