The weight forced her back into the stone; before half the crowd had passed, she was finding it hard to breathe. When she tried to keep her chest expanded, they added links to the lower stone, forcing her to use chest wall as well for breath. Her sight dimmed; she let her eyes shut, concentrating on breath alone. She heard the priests’ voices, but could not follow their words. No more links dropped. She struggled, fighting for every breath. Air rasped in and out of her throat. Cold water drenched her face; she choked on it, tried to cough, and could not. Before she quite passed out, they took off a few links. Then they watched as she struggled with that weight. When that, too, exhausted her, they removed a few more links.
She longed for rest, for sleep, but could not sleep with that weight; whenever she dozed, she could not breathe. Again, she had no idea how long this lasted; each painful breath seemed to be an hour away from another. She could hear the voices, hear the clank of metal as they played with her, taking off a link or so, and dropping it back on. She felt other pains, as the priests and worshippers prodded her, spit on her, and tried to provoke some reaction, but all that really mattered was air: the struggle to suck it in, the weight that forced it back out too soon.
As the torment continued, a part of her mind was aware of the differences between this and the earlier captivities she’d endured. That night in the Duke’s cells, when she’d been so sunk in her own misery that she had not even imagined worse than Stammel’s anger. The pain had been real, the fear overwhelming . . . but as the pain and fear of a child stung by a wasp is real. Lost in the moment, the child cannot imagine that the pain will end, or that any pain could be worse. The adult knows better; she pitied the child she had been, so miserable in the dark, alone and afraid, convinced that her chance to be a hero was lost forever. And how Korryn’s punishment had shocked her with its cruelty! She had trembled for days at the thought that she might have been whipped and branded instead. Being stripped publicly had been bad enough.
And from that she had gone to a soldier’s endurance, learning to stave off pain and fear with anger and defiance, linking hope to vengeance. That righteous anger served well against Siniava, or seemed to, when she avenged her friends’ deaths. Yet in Kolobia, that same anger betrayed her to deep evil. She remembered too well that mood, black rage edged with madness, so much less innocent than the panic of the beaten recruit. Under it had been the same fears the child had, disguised but not controlled, a willingness to deal the pain she suffered.
Again, as so often before, her mind filled with the vision of her childhood dream, the bright figure in shining mail, mounted on a prancing horse and waving a sword. It flickered in and out of her sight, shifting in tides of pain and weakness, as it had flickered in her mind’s eye these several years. Now she could see its shadow, the dark nest of fears which had brought it to life. Helplessness, humiliation, pain, a lonely death, and nothing after—she had feared these, and made of that fear a dream of power, of freedom, of untouchable strength and courage. She would never suffer that, because she would be the hero, the one with the sword, the one who was above such suffering.
And here she was, bound helpless before enemies who enjoyed her pain, an example, as they said, of Liart’s power. An example to teach more fear, more hatred, proof that the dream of glory had been false: no power, no bright sword or prancing horse, no protection, even for herself.
But the image of her dream steadied, and did not fade. No one whole wanted to be hurt, wanted to be the victim of such cruelty as held her now. Her fears were as common as a taste for salt or honey, as healthy as the desire for comfort, for love. So much she had learned from the Kuakgan. Now, at last, she accepted her right to share those fears: she did not have to deny them, only master herself.
And this, she saw, her dream had done. She had built against that fear a vision of power not wholly selfish—power to protect not only herself, but others. And that vision—however partial it had been in those days—was worth following. For it led not away from the fear, as a dream of rule might do, but back into it. The pattern of her life—as she saw it then, clear and far away and painted in bright colors—the pattern of her life was like an intricate song, or the way the Kuakgan talked of the grove’s interlacing trees. There below were the dream’s roots, tangled in fear and despair, nourished in the death of friends, the bones of the strong, the blood of the living, and there high above were the dream’s images, bright in the sun like banners or the flowering trees of spring. And to be that banner, or that flowering branch, meant being nourished by the same fears: meant encompassing them, not rejecting them.
She did not know herself when these thoughts linked at last, forming the final pattern, bringing up into her mind the self she had become. It was then as if several selves were present, mysteriously separate and conjoined. Trapped inside her body was the same child she had been, feeling each new torment as a wave of intolerable pain, each ragged scream as a fresh humiliation. The seasoned soldier watched with pity as her body gave way to exhaustion and pain as any body would, feeling no shame at the sight or sound or smell of it, for this was something that could happen to anyone, and she had never inflicted it on others. And someone else, someone newer, refused the soldier’s tactics of defiance, anger, vengeance, and looked into her own fear to find the link to those around her, to find the way to reach those frightened tormentors, the ones not already lost to evil.
In the rare respites, when the priests stopped to harangue the crowd and revive her for more torture, she felt curiously untroubled. Not free of pain, nor free of fear, but free of the need to react to that fear in all the old ways. She had no anger left, no hatred, no desire for vengeance, nothing but pity for those who must find such vile amusements, who had no better hope, or no courage to withdraw. It would all happen to her—all the things she’d feared, every violation of body, everything she’d taken up the sword to prevent—and she consented. Not because it was right: it was never right. Not because she deserved it: no one deserved such violation. But because she could consent, being what she was, and by consenting destroy its power over her and others, proving in her own body that fear’s power came from fear, that greater power could from the same dark roots find another way to the light.
This quietness, this consent, formed a still pool in the center of that violent place. At first, only the priests noticed, and flung themselves into a frenzy of violence against it. But it was not brittle steel to break, or crystal to shatter, but a strength fluid and yet immovable, unmarred by the broken rhythm of her breath, or even by her screams. The quietness spread, from gray eyes that held no hatred for those who spat at her face or tasted her blood, from a voice that could scream in pain yet mouth no curses after, that spoke, between screams, in a steady confirmation of all good.
Those watching could not deny the wounds: they had seen them being dealt: they had helped deal them. They could not deny the sight of blood, the smell of it, the sticky feel of it, the salt taste on too many tongues. They could not deny the stink of burnt flesh, the sight of scabbed and crusted wounds, the dead servant girl, the boy’s back striped and bleeding. This was not the quietness of inviolable protection, for she suffered all that was done to her. They had seen a virgin raped, a soldier’s scars mocked and redrawn in fresh blood. They had heard a paladin scream, as the priests promised.