Metal and Flesh (The Rohvim, Book 1)

19.4 Fly

   Aeden, Frederick, and Stuart traded turns digging a shallow hole in the ground with Gregory's spade. The mission urged them on, so they dug but two feet while the elder members gathered large stones to pile over the mounded earth. They had sat around their fallen comrade for close to an hour, either weeping or in shocked silence, before they managed to summon the heart to stand.

   Aeden rested while Frederick took a turn, and looked over at Betha and Darla. Betha was preparing Rupert's body for burial, cleaning off the blood, straightening his clothes, going through his personal belongs to leave appropriate items in the grave with him. Darla looked on, not quite knowing what to do. Eventually she just got up and started a fire for the night-they assumed the enemy knew where they were already.

   The grave prepared, the men slowly bore the small, unbelievable light body into the air, and laid it lovingly down in the hole. Betha knelt now beside him in the hole and attended to some final details. She laid his sword on his chest, pointing to his feet. She covered most of him with his blanket, leaving his peaceful white face exposed to the air. Finally she removed a necklace that Rupert always wore underneath his shirt. Aeden had not seen it before. Just a small, simple locket on a thin string. She put this in a pouch on her waist, and climbed out of the hole.

   They stood, silent, in a circle around the open grave. The grey evening descended upon them, and a cool mist blew from the ocean a hundred miles away. The master healer announced, "Let us proceed." And he along with the others bent down.

   Aeden looked on in confusion, and Betha noticing him said, "Aeden, you've never buried a person who knew their true nature, have you?" He shook his head. "Come down here. Put a hand on each of your neighbors' heads, and at the head of the circle the master healer will place both of his on Rupert's head. When the circle is complete, enter Rupert's head. It's hard to explain, but you will jump from mind to mind until you reach the master healer's mind and from there will find Rupert's."

   Aeden protested, "But he's dead. Can we enter his mind?"

   "His body is dead. His mind is ... mostly gone. There is still some small life in it, but it too will die within a few hours. While we still can, we have the tradition of gathering the dead's loved ones, and entering the mind one last time to say goodbye."

   "Is he still ... in ... there? I mean, will we see him?"

   Betha put out her hand to Aeden's head, "Come and see."

   Hesitating, Aeden placed his hands on Betha's and Stuart's heads. And then it struck him. The ritual he had performed all his life in ignorance now, finally, had context. He looked around at the others completing the same motion, and when the master healer, sitting on the edge of the hole, had placed his upon the pale boy's head, Aeden concentrated and tried to enter Rupert's mind. He rushed forward simultaneously entering Betha's and Stuart's minds, seeing and feeling them as he passed through before entering their neighbors', and so on, until he reached Rupert.

   He looked around. It was the same mountain that Betha prepared for them during his first rohva duel with Rupert. The stream splashed down the rocks from some unknown height above them, flowing past before making its way to an assortment of lakes below. Instead of the amphitheater, however, stood the healer's hall from Ramath, gleaming white in the brilliant sun. They climbed its steps and passed through the door, entering the arched hall. He opened his real eyes and simultaneously saw the circle he was a part of, a view that now stirred him as it never had before, a sight that that spoke sacred things to his soul. While once a mundane part of the communal service, the ritual now seemed ancient and sublime, and he felt intimately connected with his friends: they had become one in the sight of his Creator, as Priest Anthony had told him.

   He closed his eyes and focused on what lay before him. In the center of the hall, with shafts of sunlight beaming down upon it, a royal figure now lay upon a raised platform. Aeden looked closer, and saw Rupert's kingly face. Finery that would shame the royal robes of the king himself now clothed his body. No wounds were visible, his arm was intact, and he lay there, warm, pink, seemingly full of life, but asleep and unaware of his surroundings. They gathered around him.

   Aeden asked, Did he do all this? 

   Betha shook her head, No. When I prepared his body, I came and made the preparations here too. I thought he would like it here. He loved the society. It was his new family. Oh, I almost forgot ... She turned around and wrinkled her face in concentration.

   As they watched, the stream outside redirected itself and flowed down to the eastern side of the building, where it was let in by a new passage that opened from the outside directly into the council chambers, and from there into the white marble hall. Flowing in a raised granite stream-bed, it passed into the hall and split in two, wrapping around the raised platform where Rupert lay, and recombined before it flowed out the front door, down the steps, and then down to feed the lakes below.

   The master healer remarked, Simply beautiful, Betha. Well done. They gathered around the sleeping Rupert and looked down at him. He seemed bigger, more muscular, heavier, and happier than he seemed in real life.

   Aeden murmured, He was like a brother to me, and I only had him for a few months. Betha held up her hand, and a hawk calling above them entered the hall from one of the roof openings, alighting at the head of the raised platform.

   As he looked around at his companions, Aeden realized that he could feel them all. Not some memory of emotion as when he touched the screens in Rupert's mind, but real, live, raw emotion flowing from his friends. He felt peace. Love. Sadness. Loneliness. Regret. Joy. Bitterness. Anticipation. Hope. Somehow, passing though each of their minds to arrive at Rupert's, he could feel them all, and in that moment felt a connection to other humans, other rohvim, that he never had experienced before.

   He looked around at each of them, and felt their bad and their good. Their hope and their despair. Their hate and their charity. He felt all of them, each as a divided whole, each a disparate assortment of emotions and thoughts and plans and truths and lies and components all wrapped into a human-like rohva, or perhaps the other way. And beyond them, he felt something else, external to himself.

   As he pondered, Betha spoke again, Master Healer. Will you say the words?

   The old man slowly nodded, and spoke.

   To the end we've come, but not the end. The moments are gone, the eternal now is here. The arrow is flown and golden fields press on to our view. The fugitive moment is passed and the millennial year shall come at last. Of one mind and heart.

   The rest of them murmured, Of one mind and heart.

   May his spirit fly east, over wind and zouree, said Betha.

   Aeden touched Rupert's shoulder. I wish he could make that journey in body.

   Betha nodded. We will. And he will meet us when we come.