Sermon 5

The caravan had placed many days between it and Veloth anon Almalexia. Kundali knew only torment, twisting and turning in her tent, upon snake-skin pillows.

"Ah! I die!"

Ayem held her false-mother's soul. "You do not die; pain is the proof of life."

"Take this pain from me, I beg you."

"It shall lessen you; the temple of our body is mortared with suffering, marbled with sorrow."

"I care not! Take it from me."

And Ayem, who is the Mother of Mercy, swallowed her false-mother's pain, and she knew peace. But fear soon took her again.

"What if I give birth to you here, in the Forsaken Lands? I will lose grace in my beloved husband's eyes."

"I shall come when I am needed, not before or after."

But Ayem's words went unheeded, for Kundali was a creature of the now, snatching at sensation. She summoned the catamite, smiling his evil.

"How can I assist you Mistress?" he said.

And Kundali begged him to concoct his elixir, to prolong her pregnancy. The catamite bowed, awaiting this moment. He prepared a drink thick as familial water, and lowered a black bead into it. This was a poison, extracted from broken hearts. (The distillation of this poison is now forbidden.)

"Mistress, the elixir."

The catamite presented a jewelled cup, and Kundali took it, salivating.

Ayem said, "False-mother, do you not see the ill-intent hiding behind his eyes?"

But Kundali had already drunk. She should have choked on bitter ash, but Ayem transmuted the poison into the prelude of death, which is sleep.

The catamite, believing her extinguished, wrapped Kundali in thirteen vagrant-thin shawls and dragged her from the tent. He deposited her far from the caravan's light, in a ditch, an offering for passing nix hounds.

There was much wailing when Kundali was found missing. The catamite claimed she had fled, for she bore the child not of the king, but a cook. And this satisfied the weeping eunuchs, for it is easier to believe an interesting lie than a banal truth.

But Kundali slept, for three days, hidden from the world. And on the third day she awakened.

"Where am I?" she said.

"At the centre of everything," replied Ayem.

But Kundali paid no mind to this. She went in search of the caravan, and finding naught but spent fires and guar dung, she fell to her knees, lamenting.

"Alas, abandoned in the Forsaken Lands! None will find my bones but the nix hound! My child shall never know the splendour of blood-born privilege."

And Ayem said, "You have nothing to fear, I am here."

"I shall starve to death.

"No, you carry life everlasting; you shall never know hunger again."

"Who will mourn me?"

"I shall."

And Kundali laughed, for she was a foolish woman.

"What does this matter to me, unborn one?"

And Ayem said:

Follow not the sceptic,

On the way of subjectivity.

I am the insurer of cosmic value,

The justification of universal pain.

In me is found the promise,

Of love eternal.

These words struck Kundali dumb, for she had never faced truth before, in all its many-bladed terror.

"Come now false-mother, stand."

And Kundali obeyed.

"We walk. I have lessons to remember."

And Kundali walked.

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.