ometimes the drone faded to the edges of his awareness; sometimes it swallowed him whole, and he lost himself in the soft not-rhythm. He rested his head back, breathing deeply in and out. He felt the vibrations underneath his fingertips, through the damp, warm rock. Sometimes a melody would curl out through the rush of it, a tatter he could only just hold onto before it slipped between his fingers.
There was an intricate series of waterfalls at the back of dzechy’haf, feeding in thin streams to the smooth-carved baths. They trickled through holes and caught the rock so that the babbling was like the low ringing of a dozen bells. Sometimes an arata would move past them along the walkway, and the sound would shiver and warp; if you’d been in the room long enough, you could tell it was always shifting with the passage of water and bodies.
He thought he must’ve been there for hours.
It hadn’t been a long walk from Aratra to Ire’dzosat, though it’d been a strange one; he hadn’t been to Iz since the first time. He’d padded swiftly, quietly, through the first room, following the sound of hushed voices through the waterfall; he hadn’t looked at the stone benches.
It hadn’t been so hard, in the end. Owo’dziziq, sagely-solemn, had recommended it to him, watching him wince as he’d gotten up from a three-hour meeting on the two. It’d taken him a few days to grapple with the idea. There were public baths Uptown in Vienda; it was something gollies did, he knew, though he’d never done it himself, not in chilly Anaxas, and not – like this.
The corridors had gotten warmer and warmer as he’d gone; Owo’dziziq had explained to him that it was one of Ire’dzosat’s marvels, where Ifus and Iz conspired together. He’d padded down long walkways past stone steps leading down into deep, rectangular pools, where arati stewed and waded – dzechy’haf was past these, the smallest, hottest room, where the air was full of steam and the drone was the loudest.
The baths were separated, and the steam rooms too, though only by a partition; he could hear voices echoing through, women and men both laughing and stirring the water, all of it underneath the drone.
Maybe it was the pain that gave him courage; maybe he was just tired, damned tired. Maybe it was the sight of lads barely old enough for Vespe’s blessing melting alongside white-headed Thul’amat professors, and everyone in-between. There weren’t any other Anaxi there, but if the stares he’d expected were glances, and nothing more than the occasional encouraging – bemused, but encouraging – smile went his way.
He had sat on the edge of the water for a time, clothed and timid, soaking his feet. But the rest of him ached, too. There were iwogadiq haunting the walkways with baskets and crisp linens; he’d relinquished his clothes eventually and surrendered himself to the water, and he’d been too busy unraveling into the warmth to think of much else.
He was sitting now in the steamroom, wrapped from the waist down, half-asleep against the warm stone. Occasionally he felt the brush of a field at the edge of his, almost always belike.
He thought he drifted in and out. He thought once he felt a familiar weight settle in next to him on the right, no field but a brush of something else and a soft, thoughtful voice.
It was less a dream and more an impression; it dissipated in an instant, when he reached for a hand and found the warm stone instead. A perceptive field brushed by, followed by a physical ramscott and the sound of men laughing. It left him with a wistful ache. A few more days, he thought, his fingers curling around the edge of the bench.
He opened his eyes at a clairvoyant caprise, shifting to sit up more in his seat. There was a rasp of laughter not too far off; a few old men were sitting around a low stone table, slick with sweat and moving tiles around on an elaborate-carved board. He looked over, closer, to the man that had sat down near him.
“Good evening, ada’xa,” he said, smoothing the linen against his knees.