"We do not know yet who stole the Matrix."
"Orim was attacked by a Mercadian and your guard commander."
"So she says," interrupted the vizier.
Sisay nodded. "Yes, but assume for a moment her story is true. If that's the case, your enemies have our ship and your Matrix. If they can acquire the Bones of Ramos too, we'll all be doomed."
The vizier shook her head skeptically. "And if you had the Matrix and could join it with your ship and the Bones of Ramos, what is to say you would use your ship to help us? We Saprazzans might be doomed anyway."
"No," Sisay said, clear eyed. "I give you my word. If Ramos rises, his children-Cho-Arrim, Rishadan, and Saprazzan- will rise too."
Even after two weeks, Orim found sleeping difficult in Saprazzo. The soft, diffuse light that came through her underwater window made her feel sleepy and sluggish, and the perpetual damp gave her the feeling she risked molding. Her bedclothes felt damp as well, and she often shivered beneath them half the night, or avoided them altogether, rising to pace back and forth across the room, waiting impatiently for morning.
Even the coming of day brought no change in her restlessness. The Saprazzans were continuing their investigation of the theft and murder, but at a leisurely pace, characteristic of everything that happened in the city. Orim was permitted to leave her quarters and move freely about Saprazzo, but she was invariably accompanied by a guard, who never left her side. She could talk to whomever she pleased, and though she spent time with Hanna and Sisay, she found she had little to say to them. Most days she spent meditating in her cell or sitting on the seawall and staring at the everchanging water.
This morning, in what had become a disturbingly familiar routine, she rose, dressed, and rang the bell that signaled she was ready for breakfast. Having completed the meal, she opened the door and, the guard at her side, walked up into the city.
Unlike Dominarian merfolk, Saprazzans were excessively friendly, even with a prisoner. Orim had several times been invited to dine with the vizier, who questioned her extensively about Dominaria and the journeys of Weatherlight. Orim answered the questions as best she could, trying to avoid explaining too much about the Legacy or Gerrard. The vizier never seemed to take offense when her questions were turned aside. Instead, she moved politely on to some less sensitive topic.
Orim's daily meditation in the little courtyard had reduced the pain of Cho-Manno's death to a dull heartache. It no longer overwhelmed her, as it had in the first weeks since it occurred, but it was always with her, always a sadness that rose up behind every thought and action.
Now, as she sat in the courtyard, the sun slowly rose over the city. Orim emptied her mind as the Cho-Arrim had taught her. She let her senses flow out around her, embracing her surroundings. The voice of Cho-Manno returned to her.
To live is to grow. We live only because we are growing. Even death is a kind of growth. Growth is more than mere change. To grow is to become one with those things around you. All existence-the sky, the earth, the water-strives to become one. All things yearn to be united to one another. Thus to grow is to progress toward a state of oneness, of unity.
Intellectually it had been easier for Orim to grasp this idea than to understand all its spiritual implications. The desire for unity was common to many religious systems. She had encountered such beliefs many years before at the Argivian University. What she found more difficult was the Cho-Arrim conviction that to actually attain unity with one's surroundings meant rejecting the logical connections formed by the conscious mind and surrendering to those elements she had always rejected as irrational and ineffable. Nonetheless, each time she practiced the meditation Cho-Manno taught, she felt closer to a moment of revelation, a flash of insight in which all creation would suddenly come into focus and, for the first time, she would become complete. This feeling was still a dim anticipation, but she now found meditation a delicious rest rather than a vain striving against some distant, unattainable goal.
She felt, rather than heard, a step behind her on the stones of the courtyard. Her concentration broke, and she rose, a reproof on her lips.
Silence enveloped her. The world rushed away, and all she knew was concentrated in the face before her.
Cho-Manno.
He stood exactly as she remembered him, one eyebrow slightly raised, his mouth drooping half-humorously. He was clad as he had been that day of the raid-in a short skirt, his chest bare, and coins flashing in the braids of his hair. She could see the fine beads of sweat on his breast, the gentle rhythm of his breathing as he looked silently at her. She gave a wordless cry and held up a hand, blocking him from her sight. Then, cautiously, she lowered her hand and saw that he was still there, still gazing at her. His soft brown eyes reflected all the world in their deep pools.
Without another sound, she ran to him and was gathered into the warmth of his embrace. She heard his voice, just as she'd remembered it so many times. "Orim. Chavala."
She pressed into his chest until she could hear his heart beating. His hands caressed her hair. He knelt, pulling her down with him, and covered her mouth with his lips in a kiss that lasted forever.
The healer pushed away from him, suddenly, thrusting herself back with rigid arms. "No! No! You're not here! You're dead! You died in the Mercadian raid!" She bent almost double, weeping. All the pain of that tragedy returned, as fresh as it had been a month ago.
Cho-Manno reached out for her, and again she backed away. "Orim," he said, his voice calm and reasonable. "I am not dead. How could I be, when you see me here, when you touch me? I am not dead, chavala. It is you who have been dead and are now alive."
Still crying, the healer shook her head. "You can't be alive. Everyone saw you die."
"They saw what they thought they saw. I was not dead, and here I am to prove it to you." He drew Orim to him, and this time she did not resist. Their kisses were gentler this time, less urgent.
At last Orim withdrew. "What happened?"
The Cho-Arrim leader shrugged. "I was badly hurt, but not, as they thought, killed. It is more difficult for my people to die than you suppose, Orim. We have such a strong life-urge within us. Yet we can be killed, and many were that day."
"Is-Shada?"
"Yes, she and others. We fled across the lagoon to the Navel of the World and from there into the Inner Waters. It is a dangerous place, and we do not like to go there, but I knew that once there none would find us." Cho-Manno chuckled grimly. "If the Inner Waters frighten a Cho-Arrim, how much more will it frighten a Mercadian?"
"What is it?"
"It is a bad place, Orim." For the first time, Cho-Manno looked troubled. "Do not ask me about it. It is a place of decay and rot. Others died there. There, we lost Ta-Karnst."
"Ta-Karnst." Orim closed her eyes, remembering the ChoArrim healer.
Cho-Manno nodded. "His soul is with the river now." He rose and stretched, one hand absently stroking Orim's hair as she gazed up at him. "At last we fled that place. We could not return to the village. The Mercadians had destroyed it and placed guards about the site, and 1 knew that if any of us appeared, they would never rest until they brought us down. We traveled south for many days until we came to where the Rushwood ends and the Endless Water begins."
Orim nodded. "The Outer Sea."
Cho-Manno repeated the words to himself, and Orim was reminded of his habit of learning new words and phrases, almost as a compulsion.