The Poppy War полностью

Rin was unconvinced. “But surely some teachings could be spread.”

“You overestimate the Empire. Think of martial arts. Why were you able to defeat your classmates in the trial? Because they learned a version that is watered down, distilled and packaged for convenience. The same is true of their religion.”

“But they can’t have forgotten completely,” Rin said. “This class still exists.”

“This class is a joke,” said Jiang.

“I don’t think it’s a joke.”

“You, and no one else,” said Jiang. “Even Jima doubts the value of this course, but she can’t bring herself to abolish it. On some level, Nikara has never given up hope that it can find its shamans again.”

“But it has them,” she said. “I’ll bring shamanism back to this world.”

She glanced hopefully toward him, but Jiang sat frozen, staring over the edge of the cliff as if his mind were somewhere far away. He looked very sad then.

“The age of the gods is over,” he said finally. “The Nikara may speak of shamans in their legends, but they cannot abide the prospect of the supernatural. To them, we are madmen.” He swallowed. “We are not madmen. But how can we convince anyone of this, when the rest of the world believes it so? Once an empire has become convinced of its worldview, anything that evidences the contrary must be erased. The Hinterlanders were banished to the north, cursed and suspected of witchcraft. The Speerlies were marginalized, enslaved, thrown into battle like wild dogs, and ultimately sacrificed.”

“Then we’ll teach them,” she said. “We’ll make them remember.”

“No one else would have the patience to learn what I have taught you. It’s merely our job to remember. I have searched for years for an apprentice, and only you have ever understood the truth of the world.”

Rin felt a pang of disappointment at those words; not for herself but for the Empire. It was difficult to know that she lived in a world where humans had once freely spoken to the gods but no longer did.

How could an entire nation simply forget about gods that might grant unimaginable power?

Easily, that’s how.

The world was simpler when all that existed was what you could perceive in front of you. Easier to forget the underlying forces that constructed the dream. Easier to believe that reality existed only on one plane. Rin had believed that up until this very moment, and her mind still struggled to readjust.

But she knew the truth now, and that gave her power.

Rin stared silently out over the valley below, still grappling to absorb the magnitude of what she had just learned. Meanwhile Jiang packed the powders into a pipe, lit it up, and took a long, deep draught.

His eyes fluttered closed. A serene smile spread over his face.

“Up we go,” he said.

The thing about watching someone get high was that if you weren’t getting high yourself, things got very boring very soon. Rin prodded Jiang after a few minutes, and when he didn’t stir, she went back down the mountain by herself.

If Rin had thought Jiang might let her start using hallucinogens to meditate, she was wrong. He made her help out in the garden, had her watering the cacti and cultivating the mushrooms, but forbade her to try any plants until he gave her permission.

“Without the right mental preparation, psychedelics won’t do anything for you,” he said. “You’ll just become terribly annoying for a while.”

Rin had accepted this initially, but it had now been weeks. “When am I going to be mentally prepared, then?”

“When you can sit still for five minutes without opening your eyes,” he said.

“I can sit still! I’ve been sitting still for nearly a year! That’s all I’ve been doing!”

Jiang brandished his garden shears at her. “Don’t take that tone with me.”

She slammed her tray of cacti clippings on the shelf. “I know there are things you’re not teaching me. I know you’re keeping me behind on purpose. I just don’t understand why.”

“Because you worry me,” said Jiang said. “You have an aptitude for Lore like no one I’ve ever met, not even Altan. But you’re impatient. You’re careless. And you skimp on meditating.”

She had been skimping on meditating. She was supposed to keep a meditation log, to document each time she made it to the end of an hour successfully. But as coursework from her other classes piled up, Rin had neglected her daily requisite period of doing nothing.

“I don’t see the point,” she said. “If it’s focus that you want, I can give you focus. I can concentrate on anything. But to empty my mind? To be devoid of all thought? All sense of self? What good does that serve?”