‘Those waves down there. Do you see them?’
A cough to clear his throat. ‘I am not blind yet.’
‘Sometimes, when I hear of such thing as this, I am reminded of how those waves are very much like ourselves, only that they live much shorter lives. I watch them come rushing for the shore and see how they tumble in equal creation and destruction, so captivating to my eyes. And I see how it is the force of the wind riding through them that keeps them alive. It borrows the water of those waves so it may pass its force through them. How many laqs, I wonder? How far have they travelled from the distant storm to reach here?’
Ash was listening with his full attention, his hangover momentarily forgotten. The dull sea made the monk’s eyes a dark green. They turned to regard him now.
‘You wish to hear this? I’m not boring you?’
A shake of his head.
Meer looked back out at the sea.
‘You see, I watch as they crash against the shore and fizzle out to nothing. The end of their journey; the end of their existence. And it becomes clear to me, in those moments, how their end is what makes them complete. It’s what gives them meaning, what gives their life form. What would that be, if they simply surged around the oceans of the world without ever ceasing? What is creation without destruction? Something bland and uniform and unchanging. Something truly dead.’
Meer leaned back and breathed deeply, as though returning to himself. He looked once more at Ash with his vibrant eyes, surveyed his expression to see how much Ash comprehended.
He seemed to decide that it was not enough.
‘I will tell you something,’ Meer said. ‘In the end, death is a gift of life. I know: it’s a hard thing to appreciate when you lose those you love so fiercely. But without death we would not be living. Those you have lost would not have lived at all.’
Ash moved to squat in front of the fire, his back to the monk now. They were fine sentiments, these words of Meer. Yet they were still only that: words and ideas. They did not dispel his suffering.
‘I will tell you this also. Call it an advance for all the stories you will tell me of Honshu.
‘When I visited the Isles of Sky, I saw how the people lived. They are almost immortal there, did you know that? They have ways of sustaining life, even of cheating death itself. But I thought, ultimately, their longevity brought them much harm. They seemed inhuman to me. Even with all their miracles and wonders, they lived in great boredom and listlessness. Worse, much worse – they could no longer see the poetry in the world around them, so buried in themselves had they become.’
Ash turned around slowly, a single eyebrow raised in disbelief. ‘The Isles of Sky?’
‘It’s true.’
‘I thought only the longtraders of Zanzahar knew the way.’
Meer shrugged. ‘Maybe when you tell me of Honshu, I will tell you more of my own tales. How does that sound?’
Ash opened his mouth, closed it again with a snap of teeth.
Meer was wrong about sharing his burdens. He felt even worse now than he had only a few moments before. He groaned as he staggered to his feet and threw the longcoat over his shoulders.
‘Thank you, again,’ Ash said, and left for the comfort of his room and a long hot soak in a tub.
The regulars were talking of the war the next afternoon when Ash finally rose from his bed, and stuffed some of the leaves into his mouth, and went downstairs to find himself a drink.
Against the bar he sat on a stool with a half-finished bottle of Cheem Fire, and played a game of ylang with Samanda, the dark Alhazii woman he had seen on his first night here, and who turned out to be the proprietor’s wife. Lars, the proprietor, seemed much infatuated with his young wife. He rarely complained at the fact that she refused to do any form of work about the inn.
‘I sleep with you, that is work enough,’ she replied the one time he bordered on criticism, and he lowered his eyes, and skulked away, muttering.
Ash scratched the bites from the bedbugs and listened to the gossip of the men around the room. They were talking of the latest rumours, of how the Matriarch had died from the wounds she had gained in the battle of Chey-Wes.
Ash longed for it to be true. He barely listened as they went on to describe how the imperial invaders were fighting now amongst themselves; how the defence of the Shield was going badly, how Kharnost’s Wall was about to fall.
Ash lost the game of ylang, his mind no longer on it. Drunk and in need of a walk, he excused himself and took his bottle with him and went outside. Dead leaves covered the pathways, piled in drifts against buildings, making for treacherous walking. The wind was jagged with cold today. It felt as though winter was arriving early.
Near the edge of the Shoals, close to the waves, he spotted Meer the monk sitting beneath a raised lean-to close to the sea, with a group of children gathered around him. Ash stopped, and lowered his bottle of Cheem Fire to watch.
The monk was holding up a slate and a stick of chalk. He was teaching the children how to read, and they were laughing, making a game of it.
Ash felt a semblance of peace as he gazed at the scene. He walked a few steps further onto the rocks and hunkered down with his bottle, still within earshot of the group, just out of reach of the hissing spray of the waves.
A fishing boat was out there in the heavy swell, struggling towards the harbour, its sails flapping in tatters and its crew straining with oars against the current. A hard business, thought Ash.
He settled into himself. Thoughts fluttered like falling leaves, glimpsed then gone.
A flake of snow ensnared itself in his eyelashes. He blinked it away and looked up at the clouds. More snow began to tumble down.
‘Look, children, snow!’ he heard the monk exclaim from behind.
The children instantly forgot their lessons and chased him over the rocks, overjoyed at the flakes of ice floating from the sky.
The wind felt cold on Ash’s teeth as he smiled.
The monk approached him as dusk was falling, a long fishing pole in his hand.
‘You look hungry, my sad friend.’
Ash’s stomach made an audible noise in reply.
‘Follow me. We’ll catch some fish and enjoy a supper together.’
He agreed, and together they found a flat spot next to the lapping water as the stars emerged, slowly populating the night sky with their shingle of light. Meer cast his line as far out as he could, then hummed a tune as they waited.
‘I thought the monks of Khos did not eat the flesh of fish,’ Ash said after a while, drawing his gaze from the eastern sky, where constellations were rising.
Meer drew in the line slowly, then tossed the hook, weight and float back out into the water. He sat down again.
A minute passed before he spoke. ‘I have a confession to make. I’m not really a monk.’
Ash saw that he was serious.
‘You’ve heard of fake monks before?’
‘Of course. Since the war only monks may beg for coin.’
The monk who was not a monk exhaled loudly. ‘I find it a useful way to live, whenever I’m here. It suits me best.’
‘So why tell me this?’
‘Because it’s no secret. If anyone asks me directly I tell them. And most people here don’t care what you are. I’ve helped them when I could, unlike a great many of the monks you’ll find on this island, locked away in their high sanctuaries. I must tell you. Even in my few months at the monastery, I thought most of them were more concerned with dogma and politics than in the Way.’
Meer glanced at Ash then, sideways, as though trying to read his reaction. ‘Besides, as soon as spring arrives, I’ll be leaving again to travel abroad.’
