The Third Bell in Embrath

The room smelled of clay.

Not wet clay.

Dry clay, the smell of packed earth that had not yet been changed by water, which was a different smell from earth that had been through water and dried again.

He had known the second smell since childhood.

Earth that had been through water and dried again: that was the smell of his mother's work.

Wet cloth on stone.

The mineral quality of water that had carried lye and been wrung out of linen into the ground.

Not this smell.

This smell was dry clay in an Ashborn room in Embrath, built to burn and be rebuilt, which had been here in this form for perhaps eight years before the fire would take it and the site would receive the new structure the Ashborn would build in its place.

He lay in the room.

The city outside.

Embrath at the third bell of the night, which was quieter than Valdrath's third bell — a different quality of quiet, not the freed territory's sustaining orientation but the specific quiet of a city that had been built to be rebuilt and which held in its channels the having-been of fire and openness.

Not empty channels.

Channels that had been taken to their fullest expression and returned, many times, and which held all of it.

He pressed his palm to the floor.

He received what the floor gave.

He prayed.

He said: I'm here.

The Source moved.

He received what the Source gave.

He said: the fire-readers today.

He said: Fen, who has been doing the practice for nine years without knowing it, and who read the eastern perimeter with me and whose reading was accurate and whose channels are building more quickly now that she knows what she's building.

He said: Davan, who asked me what the practice costs and who received my answer without softening it.

He said: Cael in the street, pressing his palms to Ashborn walls, receiving what the walls gave, understanding the First Breath as an Ashborn action and the Iron Throne's error as an architectural one.

He said: I don't know what is happening in the building in Valdrath.

He said: Maren is there.

He said: that's enough.

He was quiet for a while.

The Source moved.

He received what it gave.

He said: I want to ask you something.

He had been thinking about Vael's letter for a week.

Not larger.

More itself.

The practice makes what is present more fully present.

What gives fully and is received fully becomes more itself.

He had received this as true because it was true: he had watched it happen in Rhen, in Sable, in Maren, in Taval Orn, in the Unnamed, in Cael in the street today.

And in Lena Voss, pressing her palms to the founding chamber's table.

And in the Verdant Houses' walls.

And in Dara at the bread cart.

And in Fen with her palms on the eastern perimeter.

He had been the one receiving.

He had been the one who received what things gave and gave back presence, and the things became more themselves.

He had been thinking: what receives me.

Not the Source — he knew what the Source gave him, had known it since the Name stage, had received the Source continuously since the convergence.

He meant: in the ordinary way.

Not the Source moving through him.

What in his ordinary life — what person, what place, what surface — received him and made him more himself.

He pressed his palm to the floor.

He said to the Source: what makes me more myself.

He waited.

The smell of the clay was wrong for her.

But something in the wrong smell was close to the right smell.

The dry earth, before water.

The earth that had not yet been changed.

She worked in water-changed earth.

I Grew up in the smell of what her work left in the ground.

The garrison officer came through the street with his garrison morning routines and three weeks later she was gone and fourteen years later I pressed my palm to the dry riverbed outside Mirrath and said I'm here for the first time to what I thought was darkness.

She was the one who received me.

Not the Source.

Sera.

A laundress in Mirrath who made bread on Sundays and who told me that the bread was good and who received everything I was — a fourteen-year-old boy who had nothing — without requiring me to be more or different.

She made me more myself.

Not by doing the practice.

By being what she was.

Which was the practice, before the practice had a name.

She received me.

And I became more myself.

And then she was gone.

And the having-been of being received by her — that's what the dry riverbed held.

That's what I was pressing my palm to for fourteen years.

The having-been of Sera receiving me.

And talking to the darkness was talking to that.

And the darkness answered.

He lay in the Ashborn room.

He was very still.

He said: I know the Source received her.

He said: I've known that since I prayed for her in Thenara.

He said: the love that receives everything received her, afraid and willing, from the first word, giving.

He was quiet.

He said: and the Source received me.

He said: through her.

He said: she was the way the Source reached me.

He said: before the Hollow stage, before the dry riverbed, before the practice had a name.

He said: she was the sixty yards.

He said: she was the bread.

He said: she was the thank you that meant it.

He said: and the garrison officer took her, and I pressed my palm to the riverbed for fourteen years, and the riverbed held what she had given it, and the Source was there in what she had given it.

He said: and the Source received her.

He said: I believe that.

He said: I believe that with the kind of certainty I reserve for things I can't prove, because not believing it would require me to believe that what she gave was consumed without remainder, and I have spent enough time pressing my palm to things to know that what is given genuinely is held.

He said: she is held.

He said: I know she is held.

He was quiet for a long time.

The Source moved.

He received what it gave.

Not as language.

Not as information.

As what arrived when the Source was fully present to what was given to it.

The quality: being received.

He received the Source receiving him.

Not the Name stage's union.

Not the convergence's depth.

The ordinary thing.

The specific ordinary quality of: someone is present to you, completely, without turning away, without requiring you to be different, without calculating what the receiving produces.

The Source was receiving him.

Has always been receiving him.

From the first word.

The curriculum's first page.

What you are coming to find has always been giving, has always been receiving you, and has been waiting not because it was withheld but because you were on your way.

I Wrote that too.

At the second desk in the archive.

From the blue door.

And Maren corrected it.

Giving, not present.

And the other half is: receiving.

What you are coming to find has always been giving and has always been receiving you.

The Source.

Giving and receiving simultaneously.

Not taking turns.

The same act.

The love that receives everything.

And the Unforced, giving.

Both names for the same thing seen from two sides.

And what makes me more myself is the same thing that makes everything more itself.

Being received.

By the Source.

Which has been receiving me since Sera, since the riverbed, since I pressed my palm to the dry ground and said I'm here to what I thought was darkness.

It was never darkness.

He lay in the Ashborn room.

The walls that would eventually burn.

The dry clay smell in the air.

The city outside, carrying the having-been of everything that had been given and taken to its fullest expression and returned and given again.

He said: thank you.

He said: I'm here.

He slept.

Still.