The power of ahimsa is not just the readiness to die, he thought. It is the willingness to live. To live utterly without fear – this is a fearsome thing.
'Yes,' Danlo said again, 'I am ready ... to hear your poem,' he took a step toward the warrior-poet, and then another. The warrior-poet's knife shifted slightly, and Danlo saw streaks of blue-black light, the fearsome reflection of his own face. The warrior-poet moved the knife slowly away from Hanuman's eye. He looked at Danlo. He smiled, slowly, knowingly. Danlo took another step forward, and his foot seemed to hang in the air forever. Now the smell of kana oil was overpowering. It brought to him the memory of his passage into manhood when he had lain beneath the stars and learned to go beyond pain and death. It brought to him, too, an awareness of the warrior-poet's childhood. He could see this timeless time as streaks of violet lighting up the warrior-poet's eyes. In the golden glow of the warrior-poet's face, he could see the little child who sensed the terribly unconscious closeness of death. It was the whole of the warrior-poet's art to bring this deep knowledge into full consciousness. The warrior-poet smiled at Danlo, and he touched his lips to his violet ring, and as he accomplished these movements against the heavy pull of space and time, he sent waves of air molecules flowing out into the corridor. Danlo's nostrils were open to this air, open to the smell of kana oil that pierced his nerves and stabbed into his brain. He stepped closer to the warrior-poet, and he could not take his eyes off the warrior-poet's knife. Soon, perhaps, if he failed to complete the poem, the knife would stab through his eye into his brain. In a blindingly quick moment of time, his life would be done. Done, yes, but not destroyed. He could never cast his life away in the sense of wasting it, for life could never be unmade or destroyed. When the sharp, cold knife broke through the bone at the back of his eye, his blood would flow out of him like a river. It would spray over the wall stones and the steps and the iron railing; it would redden the warrior-poet's black hair and touch his beautiful eyes with the sting of iron and salt; it would fall over Hanuman's face like drops of morning light, and when Hanuman opened his mouth to scream his final 'no!' it would touch Hanuman's tongue and flow down his throat, into his belly, into the onstreaming life and tissues of his body. His blood would flow as endless and deep as an ocean, touching everything, nourishing everything, making everything more alive. He would live in everything, forever, just as the wild smell of kana oil and the marvellous colours of the warrior-poet's robe and Hanuman's beautiful, broken soul lived now and forever in him.
'Come here!' the warrior-poet said to Danlo. He was smiling at him, looking at him in gladness as if he had found a younger brother who has been lost. 'It is enough – you are ready to hear the poem, I think.'
With ten quick steps, Danlo rushed into the stairwell. He came over and stood next to Hanuman. He touched Hanuman's bloody hand and his glistening forehead. He touched the cool strands of acid wire encircling him. He looked at the warrior-poet, who was standing so close that he could have touched him, too. 'Please cut him free,' Danlo said. 'You have agreed to ask me the poem – so please free him.'
The warrior-poet stepped so close to Danlo that it seemed he was drowning in the smell of kana oil. The warrior-poet lightly ran the tip of his knife down the cocoon of acid wire over Hanuman's chest; this made a metallic, zippering sound, but the acid wire remained whole and unmarked. The kasja fibres are hard to cut,' the warrior-poet said. 'And even if I could cut him loose, I would not. If I did, he would try to kill me. Or kill himself.'
Hanuman was shaking, now, his whole body shivering with rage and pain. His pale eyes were locked open, and they fixed on Danlo. It was hard for Danlo to tell if Hanuman could understand what was being said.
'But if I ... fail to answer the poem,' Danlo said, 'then you will free him, yes?'
'In a way,' the warrior-poet said. 'I have a drug that will make him sleep – he'll wake up in three days, and he'll remain alive, if he wants to.'
'Then give him this drug.'
'Not yet. He must be awake to witness the moment of the one who takes his place.'
'But– '
'If you answer the poem, you may give him this drug. There is the purple needle-dart that you dropped in the corridor, do you remember?'
'I remember,' Danlo said. Then he nodded to the warrior, and told him, 'Please ask me the poem now.'
The warrior-poet examined the tone of Hanuman's eyes, and he said, 'It is too bad. Your friend has passed his moment. Now we shall never know what might have been possible – for him.'
'Ask me the poem – before it is too late.'
The warrior-poet nodded his head and reached into the side pocket of his kamelaika. He removed a needle tipped in pink. 'Please stand with your back to the railing, next to your friend.'
Danlo moved over next to Hanuman so that they stood side by side. He felt the hardness of the iron railing press against his spine. Behind him, below him, the stairs dis-
appeared into the lower levels of the library. In the depths of the stairwell, he heard the dark, underground sounds of hissing steam and water gurgling through unseen pipes. 'You will not bind me with ... the acid wire?'
'No,' the warrior-poet said. He stood in front of Danlo, eye to eye. Danlo felt the warrior-poet's breath fall over his face; it smelled sweet, like oranges and honey. 'I've no more wire.'
'Then why not let me stand free, without drugs?'
In his left hand, the warrior-poet held his paralytic needle near the side of Danlo's neck; in his right hand, he gripped the killing knife. 'If I recite the poem and you fail to complete it, you might wish to run away.'
'I will not ... run away.'
'You might wish to struggle, to avoid the ekkana drug.' The warrior-poet looked at Hanuman and bowed his head. 'You've seen how the ekkana licks the soul with tongues of fire.'
'Truly, I have seen this,' Danlo said. 'But is it not possible ... for one to reach the moment of the possible without the ekkana?'
The warrior-poet turned to study Danlo's face for a long time, and then he smiled. 'Perhaps it is possible,' he said. 'We shall see.'
Danlo felt Hanuman's shoulder pressing against him. He reached down by his side where he found Hanuman's hand all hot and slippery with blood. He held Hanuman's hand tightly, and he said, 'Tell me your poem, then.'
Now the warrior-poet moved in close to Danlo so that their chests almost touched; he pressed the needle against Danlo's throat and held the killing knife above Danlo's eye. 'Do you like poetry, Young Danlo? Do you know many poems?'
At this question, Hanuman came to life. He screamed and then laughed hideously; his hand squeezed Danlo's twice in secret code as if to remind him of all the nights that Danlo had spent memorizing Pedar's ancient poetry.
'I know ... some poems,' Danlo said. He neglected to mention that during the last half year, he had memorized some twelve thousand poems.
'Few people care about poetry any more,' the warrior-poet said. 'But once a time, poetry was the soul of civilization.'
'My ... father liked poetry,' Danlo told him, not knowing what to say.
'This is known. The Ringess once said that poems are the dreams of the universe crystallized in words.'
'And the poets ... are the part of the universe that dreams?'
'True,' the warrior-poet said. 'Though sadly, the dreams often destroy the dreamer. The price of perfect words paid with broken lives.'
Despite the extreme peril of his situation, Danlo smiled. He thought that the greatest paradox of the warrior-poets was that they used poems as well as knives in trying to reach the moment of the possible.
'I shall now recite the first four lines of a poem,' the warrior-poet said. 'An old, old poem – are you ready to hear this poem, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?'
Danlo felt Hanuman's fingers suddenly clasp his hand as if he were struggling to hold onto a rock on the face of a cliff. 'Yes,' Danlo said. 'Say your poem, then.'
The warrior-poet nodded again. His lips were only inches from Danlo's face, and in a clear, strong voice he said:
'Sweet infancy!
O heavenly fire! O sacred light!
How fair and bright!
How great am I...'
Danlo, upon hearing these sixteen perfect words, looked off into the flame globes that filled the stairwell with such a beautiful light. This dazzling light fell over the warrior-poet's face and touched every stone and streak of mortar with colours of cobalt, lavender, and rose. Because everything he could see was so beautiful and perfect with light, he touched eyes with the warrior-poet and began to smile, 'bid you hear me, Young Danlo? I shall say the poem again – listen to the words:
'Sweet infancy!
O heavenly fire! O sacred light!
How fair and bright!
How great am I...'
The words that the warrior-poet spoke were like a lovely, golden music in Danlo's ear. He did not need to listen to these words a second time. His memory of the poems he had learned by heart was complete. He had known instantly, upon the first line of the warrior-poet's first recitation, that the poem was unknown to him.
'What is the last line?' the warrior-poet asked. He pushed the point of his knife a half inch closer to Danlo's eye. 'Do you know the words?'
Danlo felt Hanuman's hard little hand trembling in his own, and he turned to look at him.
'Say it, Danlo,' Hanuman forced out. 'Say it now.'
Hanuman's face, too, he saw, was very beautiful, and it shone with all the colours of hope. Hanuman was sure he must know this poem. At that moment, Hanuman was sure that Danlo must have known every poem in the universe.
'Please say it!'
Danlo tightened his grip on Hanuman's hand and drew in a long, deep breath. And then he said:
'Sweet infancy!
O heavenly fire! O sacred light!
How fair and bright!
How great am I...'
With a shake of his head, Danlo's voice faded off to infinity. He had hoped that he was wrong, that somewhere in his memory, like a diamond hidden among mountains of lesser jewels, he might find this poem. He had hoped that one perfect word might lead to another, and thus in saying the poem's beginning he might remember the last line. But how could he remember what he had never known?
'I shall say the poem a third time,' the warrior-poet told him. The third recitation must be the last. If you can't complete the poem, you must prepare yourself for your moment.
'Sweet infancy!
O heavenly fire! O sacred light!
How fair and bright!
How great am I...'
'Well, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?'
Down by his side, Danlo felt Hanuman's long fingernails cutting into the palm of his hand. Little drops of blood ran from the gap between their hands, and it was impossible to tell whether this blood was Hanuman's or his own.
'Danlo, Danlo.'
He heard Hanuman whispering his name, and he saw that Hanuman's eyes were moist with the madness of pain.
'Please,' Hanuman whispered.
The warrior-poet was very close to Danlo; Danlo was very aware of the smell of kana oil and the warrior-poet's bittersweet breath. Danlo's whole world, at that moment, was composed of Hanuman's deep-throated moans, the sound of his own deep breathing, the silvery glint of needle and knife. His mind was empty of words, as empty as the blackness between the stars. There was nothing in his mind. And yet there was everything. There was light from the flame globes, brilliant streams of light reflected from polished basalt in lovely polarized waves. There was some-
thing wild and strange about light. It was as if the million million photons carried memories of distant stars and other times. He knew that somehow everything must be coded into light: hopes and words and the universe's deepest dreams. With this thought, the curtain of light falling over him (and over Hanuman and the warrior-poet, too) was torn away to reveal something impossible to look at, impossible to turn away from. There was a light beyond light, behind and beneath light. This extraordinary light was made of a thousand strange new colours almost impossible to behold. And in each colour there was a whole world of space and memory and time. A whole world. He sensed that just behind his eyes, spinning in the depths of his blood, there were worlds inside worlds. There was a deepness, a strangeness about himself that astonished him. There was something strange about his memory, as if there was more inside him than he had ever known. He should have remembered himself. There was something utterly crucial to his life (and perhaps to the lives of others) that he should have remembered. Now, and every moment of his life, like a child standing by the ocean's shore, he was always on the threshold of remembering, but always this great memory eluded him. He was haunted by a sense of missing time, a terrible suspicion that he had forgotten great segments of his life. And most terrible of all was the certainty that these memories lay just beneath the surface of his soul, waiting, onstreaming, like the shimmering ocean beneath a layer of ice and snow.
I have forgotten what I have forgotten.
In the strange light of the stairwell, the warrior-poet looked at him, and a terrible smile touched his lips. He touched the blade of his killing knife with his beautiful finger. And then suddenly, like an iceberg rising up out of a starlit sea, a word appeared in Danlo's mind. Almost instantly there were other words, six splendid, perfect words. The words were strange but somehow completely familiar to him, as if long ago he had composed them himself. Or rather, as if he were composing them now in completion of a poem, as if these six simple words were the only words that had ever been or could ever be.
Whom the whole world....
'Danlo wi Soli Ringess!' the warrior-poet whispered. 'Are you ready for your moment?'
Danlo inclined his head slightly, but before the warrior-poet could touch him with the knife, he fixed the poet's eyes and said:
'Sweet infancy!
O heavenly fire! O sacred light!
How fair and bright! How great am I,