Daygo's Fury (29 page)

“You collapsed,” said Uksit above him. Niisa turned his eyes and saw the face looking down upon him. He watched him silently. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and touched the man’s ankle. Slowly, he passed his fingers around it until he held it softly, encased, solid within his fist.

Uksit looked down at his hand curiously. “Are you well?” he asked.

Niisa passed his gaze from the man’s leg back up to his face. His eyes were lost in the shadow of the evening. “I am well,” he said softly, releasing the man’s ankle.

Uksit gave a small nod. “You must be careful,” he said. “What you did was dangerous.”

Niisa smiled. “Thank you,” he whispered, but he did not move. After a moment, Uksit nodded and walked away.

Did he feel me invade his soul?

******

Over the following months, Uksit showed no sign that he was conscious of Niisa’s presence within him. During his time outside the commune, Niisa considered what he had been taught by Raba, what had been learned by his seven predecessors in the Walolang de Kgotia who had achieved the third stage before him. He tried to match this to what he sensed, and to discern from the mass of information the collaborating evidence, to make sense of his expanded consciousness.

It seemed an impossible task, were it not for that vague familiarity that persisted; for there was no sense he knew to use, no sight or touch or smell or taste that could decipher what was a separate plane of existence newly opened to him. A higher plane that he had only before touched on in communion with the air in their small cave.

The
life
that was all around him, the
life
that was in the world.

Months passed, and then a year, then two. He questioned Raba and the others constantly, trying to glean some further insight, some further knowledge from them, but they were ignorant, with no personal experience to speak of; all they could achieve was to recycle words once spoken to them.

But he did progress. After a time, he seemed to develop a sense to his expanded consciousness, a sense to Uksit’s aura. As though somehow, subconsciously, his mind recognised the pulsing flow within Uksit, perhaps interpreting it through the knowledge of the internal flow within his own body. Perhaps the familiarity stemmed from there.

He started to associate colours and heat and emotion to the flow of Daygo within Uksit. He visualised faint areas of shifting colour. He felt heat, cold or hot. He sensed emotion. He first knew that this held meaning when Uksit withdrew from their morning practice, citing an injury to his foot, several days after Niisa had felt a corresponding heat signature emanating from that area.

As time passed, he was slowly able to match what he sensed to what he had been taught by Raba.

Where the air was a mesh, the body was thick with energy in every pore. There were thousands of energy channels that ran through the body, interweaving, separating and intertwining through areas of convergence where they were funnelled through what he had been taught were locks within the body. These locks regulated and shaped the flow of Daygo, like a thousand, thousand knots tied in string until the resulting shape formed a body, a being that was Uksit. He could identify the seven main wheels of energy within the body, formed by hundreds, thousands of channels and locks, but the display was so complex and furious that Niisa often became lost within it.

He learned to appreciate fully the complexity of the flow that was needed to form a full being of a human’s size and intelligence. Through his study there always seemed more what ifs, more hope for learning.

Niisa began to recognise shifts within these wheels of energy. He saw it change with every inhalation and exhalation of breath, every shift of the body, every twitch of an eyelid. It took some time before he realised that many of these changes preceded the breath or the movement. It was unfathomably complex, constantly shifting and changing. Most times it was impossible to decipher which shift came first, which caused the reactions and which were reactions of others. He realised that what he watched was the never-stopping flow of Daygo, within what consisted a singular life. All Daygo was moving since the dawn of existence and had been moving since without one small filament of it ever ceasing to move. Movement was life. Every small shift of energy, every small change in the flow of Daygo, in the pace of its movement, was caused by a preceding shift. Each one led to another in a process that had never stopped since the dawn of time, of life, to the end of it; since that first movement, that first action, that set the universe underway.

What started it? Could there be a start? How could movement originate from anything other than movement? But movement could still end, it could stop, the end of time, the end of existence.

Was every single signature, every single action predestined since that first one? Each leading to the next, in never-ending time, to a final point? Was there an overarching intelligence? Or was it simply motion set loose that could not stop? That only reacted as it would always react, again and again and again, changing, shifting, until its end? Was everything Niisa chose to do now inevitable? Whether he continued with his plan or not? Was he changing the future, or was he just of it? He smiled inwardly at the thought, he saw no difference.

Where might the study of aura end? If he could sense weakness in their body, could he not too sense it in their mind? In their emotions? As he grew to know their bodies intimately, might he learn their thoughts? Was anything restricted? As Daygo’s chosen child, would all fall within reach of his touch?

Each day he watched his fellow priests closely, using all his five senses to analyse everything about them. He watched their behaviour, their interactions, the barest of their movements, the way they walked and ate and drank. He matched all they did with the auras that he studied in the cave each evening. And slowly, it started to knit together; slowly, every faint flicker of expression or reaction during the day started to correspond to some change in the flow of their auras that evening.

He called to Daygo, and it spoke back to him. He learned that the flow of Daygo slowed as the priests aged, that this in turn weakened the locks through which the channels passed through. He believed that this would eventually reach a final point where the flow slowed so much that the locks unravelled, relinquishing the current form within which Daygo flowed, into the thousands that followed.

Through the commune, the priests were more open even than the air surrounding them. The air retained its structure, retained its independence, but through the priests’ practice they had cultivated an opening up, a surrendering of their independence. This left them exposed, open to an almost unnatural vulnerability. He felt as though he might reach out and alter them through some transcendent body that existed within the connective tissue of Daygo. Could he impose his will in some way, to enact change on another as they did unconsciously with their own bodies? Was there a fourth stage to the commune, one of manipulation?

******

He delved into Uksit’s aura. He brought his attention to the command centre of the body, the wheel of energy that circled on the crown of his head. Here he found what he had come to recognise as the subconscious mind, the command system that ran almost all of the body’s behaviours. He sensed the stillness of Uksit’s mind and waited until Samadhi started to slip. Once it had, he committed himself totally to Uksit, he became him. He draped his consciousness over Uksit’s until his body was his own, until Niisa was convinced and knew it to be absolutely true. Now, knowing his new body as he now did, after years of study, he instructed. He brought his mind to the one lock that he knew was there. He told it to close. He focused completely on its closure. A minute passed. Then a twitch. Niisa suddenly abandoned his convictions. He returned to the observer. He watched as Uksit’s aura sparked, as hundreds of reactions laced through his being. For a moment he thought his system would fall into flux, but slowly it righted itself once more and returned to its natural state.

Uksit said nothing the next day, but Niisa watched him closely, and he noticed an occasional frown creep across his face. It was enough to confirm that he had recognised some change within his body.

That evening, Niisa possessed Uksit once more. He brought his will to bear, focusing all his conscious effort on expanding that same lock. This time, as he felt the twitch, he held on, expanding with all his mind, all his energy, all his power. In possession of Uksit and lost within a singular focus, he could not bear witness to the results of his effort, but he felt a resistance growing against him. He knew it was Uksit’s subconscious resisting the intruder, trying to re-establish its natural stewardship of the flow.

He grew tired and his control became murky. He felt himself weaken. Then he slipped. His whole being jarred. He lost the commune. He opened his eyes, disorientated, not knowing where he was. His vision spun. He resisted the urge to puke, just. He breathed deeply for a while, his right hand on the stone beside him holding him up, before he realised where he was and remembered what he had done. His head throbbed, but he turned his eyes to Uksit.

The man was spasming furiously, but he seemed, somehow, to retain the commune. Had he noticed? Was he aware that Niisa had possessed his body? Niisa watched, fascinated even through his own pain. He wondered if the others were sensitive enough to have picked up on the disturbances in the air. As gently as he could, he returned to the correct posture and sat in silence to wait.

He watched Uksit indirectly as he broke. His head tilted slightly to the side as he opened his eyes, but he showed no other reaction as he waited for everyone to leave the cave before him.

Outside, Niisa turned to watch Uksit as he exited the cave. Uksit stopped immediately at the grassy hillside and raised a hand to his head. One of his eyes was bloodshot. He dropped to one knee as though he would retch.

“Uksit?” called Bosede in alarm as she saw him. “Are you well?” She strode towards him, followed quickly by Onyeka and Obasi, and placed a hand on his upraised arm.

He twitched at her touch and looked up at her in surprise. “What?”

“Are you well? Your eye …”

“I’m fine,” he said, his tone of voice normal, as though there were nothing unusual about his behaviour. He stood up. He looked quizzically at the two women and Obasi and walked away. They glanced at one another and then at Niisa. He shrugged and followed Uksit up the hill.

Niisa was still dizzy when they sat for commune the next day, but he managed to achieve Samadhi. He had planned to simply observe the changes in Uksit’s aura, since he had failed to bear witness to it the previous day.

But as he watched, wrapped in the self, it was not enough for him. He wanted to see larger changes. He needed more. His ambition was too great to be content with further crawling progress. He possessed Uksit, and once more he focused on expanding that same lock. But this time, knowing of the resistance he would face, he made war with that resistance. He bent his will against it.

Uksit screamed. Niisa collapsed, returning to himself as though fallen from a great distance. It jarred, his head spun, he threw up on the stone beside him. The ear-wrenching sound reverberated off the walls. All around him, his fellows broke from the commune. Uksit jumped to his feet. He screamed again, high octaves rocking off the walls. He turned and ran for the exit, stumbling over and trampling on Yejide. He pulled himself through the rocky tunnel, headless of the sharp edges, and disappeared from sight.

The priests looked at one another in sudden shock, dazed to be so suddenly jerked from their worship. A final roar from outside set them to motion. Quickly, they followed Uksit out the exit, Niisa at their heels having tried vainly to settle his stomach and his mind. He stumbled as he exited the tunnel.

They found him in the centre of the camp stabbing the sharpened stone of a knife deeply in and down just above his left hip bone. Niisa counted five stabs before his leg collapsed and he fell in something close to a fit on the ground. The priests swarmed around him, pinning him down and removing the knife from his hand.

After a short struggle, he lost consciousness, the ground around him soaking deeply red. A few moments later, he was dead.

The priests looked at one another wide-eyed, shocked still and silent. Niisa felt woozy on his feet. He dropped to the floor, sitting awkwardly, and managed to refrain from reaching a hand to his head. He felt white. Goosebumps crawled across his body. He stared at Uksit’s body, turning his sickness into a performance endearing towards his fellows.

Even as he wanted to retch, he felt a smile that he kept from his face. There was a fourth stage to the commune. It was manipulation.

He had surpassed all of his predecessors in knowledge. He was truly Daygo’s chosen child. Born to succeed in holy work. Designed to succeed. He glanced across at his fellow priests, suddenly feeling the act was beneath him. Why pander to lesser beings?

They stood, not knowing what to do, as blood that had pooled around Uksit’s thighs seeped into the ground. The knife lay discarded a few feet away, dirt stuck to the slick blood on the blade. Birds sang in the trees. Monkeys’ chatter could be heard in the distance. The evening sun bathed the scene in bright yellow light. Niisa looked at them one by one, wondering if their heartbeat was still slow from the commune, even after the excitement and shock of what had just happened. Was a strange peace still settled over them? Did it make them feel odd?