Sermon 12

To the jade-petaled palace the caravan travelled. Curious eyes watched its passing. And Ayem raised her hands high, singing:

I listen to the human noise we make,

But there is something sacred in silence.

So I stop my breathing, soundless for your sake.

A smile, a flicker, at my absence.

Pressing into you, I savour your scent.

For a brief moment, only we exist.

And no sage or saint could say what it meant,

If time would permit our love to persist.

And her words took wing, became birds and the images of birds. They soared, circled the sun 333 times. Then they evaporated into clouds of diamonds which sighed as they fell to earth.

There was a great clamouring then, thousands leapt at the gems. Even the rich, arrayed in the wealth of mines, struck children in the face, so desperate for shine.

Ayem shook her head, for people find beauty and pleasure in rocks and other senseless things. The Mother of Mercy let them keep the diamonds for three days, then, the stones recited a scripture of such aching splendour it is sacrilege to preserve it. Any who kept the diamonds after this was undoubtedly a paramour of the daedra.

The gates of the palace swung wide, admitting the caravan. Ayem was led to the Hall of Beauty, where the king waited to judge his brides. His concubines lined the walls, and many bore small smiles, for they still savoured the news of Kundali's demise. Jewelled eunuchs performed a serpentine dance. The plumed courtiers twittered, eager for pain to ease their ennui. Beside the king knelt his favourite catamite, who poisoned Kundali.

Ayem remembers them all.

The gold-mantled emissary came up beside Ayem.

"Your Perfection," he said. "I have here a woman of unsurpassed charms."

And the king rose from his throne, gaping.

"I know your eyes," he said.

And Ayem inclined her head. "I bear the face of your mother before you were born."

The Hall of Beauty gasped, for the king's mother was murdered by his father, and it was forbidden to speak of her.

"Who are you to say such?" said the king.

"I am love."

And the king laughed.

"Love is weak. I have turned cities into charnel houses, choked rivers with corpses. I have ordered the deaths of children and smirked at their screams. Love could not save them."

"Pain is fleeting, love is eternal."

The king stepped down from his dais. "What comfort is love to those who know only suffering?"

And Ayem leaned forward, kissed the king upon his lips.

He touched the place of their meeting, frowned. "Shall this prelude never end?"

And Ayem, Mother of Mercy, waved her hand, forming a mudra. "Be dust then."

And the king became mere breath.

Chaos seized the Hall. The courtiers scrambled for the exit, undone by this reminder of mortality. The concubines wept bitterly, for now they must live for themselves. Ululating, the eunuchs summoned chitin-clad guards. They saw Ayem standing beside the ashes of their king.

"Know death!" cried one of their number.

And Ayem looked to the trembling eunuchs, displayed her palms.

"Do not let others shape you," she said. "You lament your fate, 'I am just a rootless tree' you say. This is false. You shall bear my lineage, and found houses which shall outshine the sun."

And at these words, the eunuchs stiffened. They clashed with the guards, drove them back, for they knew the strength of self-acceptance. Some say this is greater than love, or perhaps it is a different kind.

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.