ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I'm glad you enjoyed it. See I did get around the comments. I'll post soon and see you soon.
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The book of the battles
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
HALE
“Let me help you with that.”
Hilary, skinning the onion, looked up from over the pot.
“Lord Cynric, weren’t you out hunting with the others?”
“How many hunters do we need?” Cynric shrugged and sat on the stoop beside Hilary, picking up a potato and a small knife.
“How many patrol men do we need? And there is no need for calling me Lord Cynric.”
“But you are a lord, and cousin to the Queen.”
“I suppose,” Cynric said.
While Hilary sliced onions into the pot, she said, “This is the farthest north I have been. Or rather, when we passed Highpoint, it was the furthest north I had ever been.”
“And how did you find it?” he grinned at her and then winced as he narrowly missed cutting himself with the potato knife.
“It was… cold,” she said, and Cynric laughed. “They tell strange stories about the North and the Far North.”
“It is a strange place.”
“You’ve been?”
Cynric only shook his head.
“I have been only a little north to Highpoint, not even to Ossariand. I have met the people of the north, the Satzumi and the Ekebush. The only thing I know of them is they resemble in many ways the Tribes down in the south, and the Utes and the native people of Zahem, though those are darker in complexion. It is said they are also related to the Inui and the Skraelings who live to the north of Dayne. Their gods are in fact the gods the Daumans worship and many of the Dayne worship the same. It is said, but then everything has to be said for few of us in Hale know, that to the west, they have a bay which, in a way, collects heat so that it is lusher up there than down here and in some places winter never sets. It is almost a whole other world.”
“As a girl,” Hilary said as she began to stir the pot, “I heard that there were other peoples up there, not completely human, or not human at all.”
“The world is large,” Cynric said as he picked up another potato, “and it is old, and there were many before us and there are many beside us. I have heard that such ancient folk walk about openly in that land, shapeshifters, creatures half beast, giants, all manner of folk.”
“And you believe it?”
“I have no reason not to. Besides, I have seen the dwarrow, the Small Folk, now and again, though they keep to themselves, and it is said the Royan have the blood of an ancient folk as well. No,” Cynric shook his head, “the world is filled with many peoples. And here we humans cannot seem to get on, even with each other.”
Suddenly Cynric turned his blue eyed gaze on her. He sang:
“Af Ymer's kød
Jorden blev lavet,
Og af hans svede havene;
Hans knogler,
Træer i hans hår,
Og himlen af hans kranium.”
He turned away from her, adding another potato to the pot while he sang:
“Men af hans øjenbryn
Den blithe beføjelser
Made Midgard for Menneskesønnen.
Af hans hjerner
Alt det melankoli
Skyer blev lavet.”
It was when he had turned away from her that she realized how handsome he was. Hilary told herself that was a lie, for she had always been touched by how handsome he was, and how, she looked for the word, husbandly, he seemed. Yes. He was a married man and a father, the things that actually made him attractive, who doted on his little girl, a humble thatch haired man with always two days growth of amber beard on his gentle face. It was best to stop thinking about all that.
“What were you singing?”
“One of the old songs. About the creation. You’re from Inglad. I always forget that. An Ayl girl.”
Hilary shook her head, “I never think of myself that way. I’m just Hilary from a farm south of Ambridge.”
“But you are still Ayl.”
“Aye,” she said, “I suppose. I guess that means a lot to Hales, though Wolf was raised in the South too.”
Cynric gave her a half smile and a shrug. “It’s not that it means anything. It just means you don’t know those old stories. You’re Communion bred.”
Hilary laughed here and Cynric looked surprised.
“What?”
“Communion bred? Because…. At service that’s what you get at the altar. Bread. Communion bread. So I was just…” she shrugged, “never mind. I see what you mean, but the truth is I’m not anything bred. My family was never much for a minster or a monastery, and I thought the old gods were long gone till you showed up talking about them. Talk about them again.”
“No,” Cynric said. “I do not wish to. There are better things for a man and a woman to discuss than their religion.”
“Fair enough,” Hilary allowed. “Then…. Could you sing again?”
“My wife hates me singing.”
“I don’t believe that,” Hilary said. “And besides, Signy isn’t here. So. Will you sing?”
Cynric looked away, smiling, pleased.
“I will,” he said, lifting a finger and grinning at Hilary. “But just for a bit.”
THE ROOTLESS ISLE
“So you are going to do it,” Austin said, “become a Red Priest?”
“Yes,” Pol said. Then, “Do you mind?”
“No,” Austin said. “I am going to go through it as well. I assumed the ritual would be…”
“Sex,” Pol said, simply.”
“Yes,” Austin said. “Only I assumed it might be with each other.”
Pol had not assumed that. In fact, he had known better. That would not have been an initiation. Pol had actually taken it for granted that it would be Jasper or some other mage, a long made Red Priest, that somehow the sex which was good to him, but also not uncommon, would be made transformative by some Red Priest who would somehow show him things he had never known.
He did not say this to Pol, though. He thought, to fill the space, that he might bring up Anson and the woman on the island but this was no one’s business, and discussing Anson for the sake of mere conversation was immediately unappealing.
“I wonder what else will happen,” Pol said. “I really do wonder what sort of… training is involved.”
“Whatever it is,” Austin realized, “will we still be here when Anson and Ohean leave?”
“Where are they going? When? I heard nothing about it.”
“I heard nothing about it, either, but we’ve been here for some time. You can’t expect them to remain forever.”
For the last few days since Jasper had begun speaking to Pol and Austin, but never both together, he made sure they slept apart and often, when Pol awoke, he was surprised that Austin was not there, surprised by the flood of desire that filled him in the night. When he felt someone shaking his shoulder, he croaked, “Austin,” but was surprised to blink, squint his eyes and realize Jasper.
“It is time for your initiation,” the handsome dark haired man said.
Though it was in the middle of the night, and Pol’s cock was stiff as a board, he did not think of lust when Jasper told him, but was possessed of some holy fear. This was initiation, after all, and the only one he’d ever been through because it was the only one he believed in. Vague but huge hopes rested on it as he followed Jasper out of the room and down the hall of the house, out into the cool night. The sky was black and the moon half gone in the month, now seen only through trees, now clear again while Jasper led Pol, trembling into the new house. They entered a room where there was a dim lamp. Sitting up in bed, Pol saw someone who looked like one of the Tribes folk. Handsome, almond eyed, black haired, broad shouldered.
“Jon,” Jasper introduced him.
“Jon Dell,” the young man elaborated. He rose from the bed, strongly made, but still a boy. Pol saw his penis was hard and upturned though his face was solemn. It was only now that Pol realized he had been awakened naked, and was standing before Jon just as erect.
“Go to him,” Jasper surprised Pol. “Your initiation.”
So saying, Jasper kissed Pol on the cheek and left, shutting the door behind Jon and behind him.
They lay side by side, chests heaving, bodies slick, and Jon grinned and looked up at Pol in friendship. The two of them laughed, and suddenly Jon lay on his side and pressed his mouth to Pol’s.
“Do you think we can do this again?” he asked.
“We can do this whenever you want,” Pol told him.
“You have cigarettes,” Pol noted.
“Would you like one?”
“Yes.”
Pol climbed out of the bed to light his cigarette on the little lamp
“You are so young,” Pol said.
“Twenty one,” said Jon, moving past him while Pol heard him open the refrigerator door, and the boy came back in with a juice container that had been emptied a week earlier and filled with chilled water.
“That shade needs to be drawn down further,” Jon said.
Pol watched the naked boy squat on his hams and examine the windows. That was the best part of what came after sex, the lack of self consciousness or shame. Jon was tall and broad backed, strong thighed with shoulder length, but thick black hair.
“You are not of the Tribes,” Pol said. “And not from the Far North.”
“I am from Ossariand,” Jon said, “Half Royan, half Itzumi.”
“Ah, there it is!”
Pol sank into bed while the young man looked over him.
“I like looking at you,” Jon said, earnestly.
“I like looking at you too.”
Pol rolled over and reached for an ashtray.
“Well, now that’s true,” Jon said earnestly.
“I am here because my family discovered the Gift in me. I will be a mage.”
“Then…. Not a Red Priest?”
“That too,” Jon said.
“And that is why you are here.”
“You are here,” Jon said. “because I asked Jasper about you and he sent you.”
Pol blinked.
“You looked confident, and I wanted to be with a man, and he said you were from Kingsboro, and studying to be a Red and… You’ve probably been with many men. No, that’s a poor way to put it. I just meant you have experience.”
“You were right both times.”
“I was with girls for the most part before you,” Jon continued. Then he said, “Can I have a puff of that?”
“Go right on ahead.”
“And then more of what we did before?”
“Oh,” Pol grinned at him as he handed over the cigarette, “there can always be more of what we did before.”
MORE ON MONDAY. ON SUNDAY WE WILL HAVE SOMETHING ELSE
“Let me help you with that.”
Hilary, skinning the onion, looked up from over the pot.
“Lord Cynric, weren’t you out hunting with the others?”
“How many hunters do we need?” Cynric shrugged and sat on the stoop beside Hilary, picking up a potato and a small knife.
“How many patrol men do we need? And there is no need for calling me Lord Cynric.”
“But you are a lord, and cousin to the Queen.”
“I suppose,” Cynric said.
While Hilary sliced onions into the pot, she said, “This is the farthest north I have been. Or rather, when we passed Highpoint, it was the furthest north I had ever been.”
“And how did you find it?” he grinned at her and then winced as he narrowly missed cutting himself with the potato knife.
“It was… cold,” she said, and Cynric laughed. “They tell strange stories about the North and the Far North.”
“It is a strange place.”
“You’ve been?”
Cynric only shook his head.
“I have been only a little north to Highpoint, not even to Ossariand. I have met the people of the north, the Satzumi and the Ekebush. The only thing I know of them is they resemble in many ways the Tribes down in the south, and the Utes and the native people of Zahem, though those are darker in complexion. It is said they are also related to the Inui and the Skraelings who live to the north of Dayne. Their gods are in fact the gods the Daumans worship and many of the Dayne worship the same. It is said, but then everything has to be said for few of us in Hale know, that to the west, they have a bay which, in a way, collects heat so that it is lusher up there than down here and in some places winter never sets. It is almost a whole other world.”
“As a girl,” Hilary said as she began to stir the pot, “I heard that there were other peoples up there, not completely human, or not human at all.”
“The world is large,” Cynric said as he picked up another potato, “and it is old, and there were many before us and there are many beside us. I have heard that such ancient folk walk about openly in that land, shapeshifters, creatures half beast, giants, all manner of folk.”
“And you believe it?”
“I have no reason not to. Besides, I have seen the dwarrow, the Small Folk, now and again, though they keep to themselves, and it is said the Royan have the blood of an ancient folk as well. No,” Cynric shook his head, “the world is filled with many peoples. And here we humans cannot seem to get on, even with each other.”
Suddenly Cynric turned his blue eyed gaze on her. He sang:
“Af Ymer's kød
Jorden blev lavet,
Og af hans svede havene;
Hans knogler,
Træer i hans hår,
Og himlen af hans kranium.”
He turned away from her, adding another potato to the pot while he sang:
“Men af hans øjenbryn
Den blithe beføjelser
Made Midgard for Menneskesønnen.
Af hans hjerner
Alt det melankoli
Skyer blev lavet.”
It was when he had turned away from her that she realized how handsome he was. Hilary told herself that was a lie, for she had always been touched by how handsome he was, and how, she looked for the word, husbandly, he seemed. Yes. He was a married man and a father, the things that actually made him attractive, who doted on his little girl, a humble thatch haired man with always two days growth of amber beard on his gentle face. It was best to stop thinking about all that.
“What were you singing?”
“One of the old songs. About the creation. You’re from Inglad. I always forget that. An Ayl girl.”
Hilary shook her head, “I never think of myself that way. I’m just Hilary from a farm south of Ambridge.”
“But you are still Ayl.”
“Aye,” she said, “I suppose. I guess that means a lot to Hales, though Wolf was raised in the South too.”
Cynric gave her a half smile and a shrug. “It’s not that it means anything. It just means you don’t know those old stories. You’re Communion bred.”
Hilary laughed here and Cynric looked surprised.
“What?”
“Communion bred? Because…. At service that’s what you get at the altar. Bread. Communion bread. So I was just…” she shrugged, “never mind. I see what you mean, but the truth is I’m not anything bred. My family was never much for a minster or a monastery, and I thought the old gods were long gone till you showed up talking about them. Talk about them again.”
“No,” Cynric said. “I do not wish to. There are better things for a man and a woman to discuss than their religion.”
“Fair enough,” Hilary allowed. “Then…. Could you sing again?”
“My wife hates me singing.”
“I don’t believe that,” Hilary said. “And besides, Signy isn’t here. So. Will you sing?”
Cynric looked away, smiling, pleased.
“I will,” he said, lifting a finger and grinning at Hilary. “But just for a bit.”
THE ROOTLESS ISLE
“So you are going to do it,” Austin said, “become a Red Priest?”
“Yes,” Pol said. Then, “Do you mind?”
“No,” Austin said. “I am going to go through it as well. I assumed the ritual would be…”
“Sex,” Pol said, simply.”
“Yes,” Austin said. “Only I assumed it might be with each other.”
Pol had not assumed that. In fact, he had known better. That would not have been an initiation. Pol had actually taken it for granted that it would be Jasper or some other mage, a long made Red Priest, that somehow the sex which was good to him, but also not uncommon, would be made transformative by some Red Priest who would somehow show him things he had never known.
He did not say this to Pol, though. He thought, to fill the space, that he might bring up Anson and the woman on the island but this was no one’s business, and discussing Anson for the sake of mere conversation was immediately unappealing.
“I wonder what else will happen,” Pol said. “I really do wonder what sort of… training is involved.”
“Whatever it is,” Austin realized, “will we still be here when Anson and Ohean leave?”
“Where are they going? When? I heard nothing about it.”
“I heard nothing about it, either, but we’ve been here for some time. You can’t expect them to remain forever.”
For the last few days since Jasper had begun speaking to Pol and Austin, but never both together, he made sure they slept apart and often, when Pol awoke, he was surprised that Austin was not there, surprised by the flood of desire that filled him in the night. When he felt someone shaking his shoulder, he croaked, “Austin,” but was surprised to blink, squint his eyes and realize Jasper.
“It is time for your initiation,” the handsome dark haired man said.
Though it was in the middle of the night, and Pol’s cock was stiff as a board, he did not think of lust when Jasper told him, but was possessed of some holy fear. This was initiation, after all, and the only one he’d ever been through because it was the only one he believed in. Vague but huge hopes rested on it as he followed Jasper out of the room and down the hall of the house, out into the cool night. The sky was black and the moon half gone in the month, now seen only through trees, now clear again while Jasper led Pol, trembling into the new house. They entered a room where there was a dim lamp. Sitting up in bed, Pol saw someone who looked like one of the Tribes folk. Handsome, almond eyed, black haired, broad shouldered.
“Jon,” Jasper introduced him.
“Jon Dell,” the young man elaborated. He rose from the bed, strongly made, but still a boy. Pol saw his penis was hard and upturned though his face was solemn. It was only now that Pol realized he had been awakened naked, and was standing before Jon just as erect.
“Go to him,” Jasper surprised Pol. “Your initiation.”
So saying, Jasper kissed Pol on the cheek and left, shutting the door behind Jon and behind him.
They lay side by side, chests heaving, bodies slick, and Jon grinned and looked up at Pol in friendship. The two of them laughed, and suddenly Jon lay on his side and pressed his mouth to Pol’s.
“Do you think we can do this again?” he asked.
“We can do this whenever you want,” Pol told him.
“You have cigarettes,” Pol noted.
“Would you like one?”
“Yes.”
Pol climbed out of the bed to light his cigarette on the little lamp
“You are so young,” Pol said.
“Twenty one,” said Jon, moving past him while Pol heard him open the refrigerator door, and the boy came back in with a juice container that had been emptied a week earlier and filled with chilled water.
“That shade needs to be drawn down further,” Jon said.
Pol watched the naked boy squat on his hams and examine the windows. That was the best part of what came after sex, the lack of self consciousness or shame. Jon was tall and broad backed, strong thighed with shoulder length, but thick black hair.
“You are not of the Tribes,” Pol said. “And not from the Far North.”
“I am from Ossariand,” Jon said, “Half Royan, half Itzumi.”
“Ah, there it is!”
Pol sank into bed while the young man looked over him.
“I like looking at you,” Jon said, earnestly.
“I like looking at you too.”
Pol rolled over and reached for an ashtray.
“Well, now that’s true,” Jon said earnestly.
“I am here because my family discovered the Gift in me. I will be a mage.”
“Then…. Not a Red Priest?”
“That too,” Jon said.
“And that is why you are here.”
“You are here,” Jon said. “because I asked Jasper about you and he sent you.”
Pol blinked.
“You looked confident, and I wanted to be with a man, and he said you were from Kingsboro, and studying to be a Red and… You’ve probably been with many men. No, that’s a poor way to put it. I just meant you have experience.”
“You were right both times.”
“I was with girls for the most part before you,” Jon continued. Then he said, “Can I have a puff of that?”
“Go right on ahead.”
“And then more of what we did before?”
“Oh,” Pol grinned at him as he handed over the cigarette, “there can always be more of what we did before.”
MORE ON MONDAY. ON SUNDAY WE WILL HAVE SOMETHING ELSE
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! It was nice to hear from Hilary again and to see some of Pol’s initiation into Red Priesthood. Excellent writing and I look forward to whatever you post tomorrow! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I hope you and your family are having a good Father's Day. I'm glad you enjoyed this, though i'm getting some ideas on how it will change in the future. Well, talk to you soon.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT, AS OHEAN AND ANSON APPROACH A PLACE WHERE PARRALEL WORLDS JOIN, THINGS GET PSYCHEDELIC, AND IN HALE, QUEEN MYRNE GOES INTO LABOR.
HALE
“We will be back in Herreboro by the end of the week,” Eryk announced. “Well, not necessarily the end of the week, but maybe the beginning of the next. I imagine we might have to travel a little slower, for Myrne’s sake, not that Myrne is slow, but you know, she is carrying and…”
“Eryk Waverly stopped talking and looked down at the Dwarf who was scowling at him from the pony he rode.
“You talk a lot Rabbit-Face,” he said.
Eryk was about to respond to this, but he noticed no one else was speaking and turned around.
Beside Myrne, her servant Laia was white faced, and Myrne’s face was green and grim as she held her belly.
“Cousin! Are you well?”
“Come,” Laia said, sliding from her horse and trying to help Myrne off of hers.
Eryk did as well and he murmured, “My God, your dress!”
“I’ll never wear this again,” Myrne said, shakily, for wet spots shone through the blue gown. “And it would be soaked all the way through if not for the riding trews.”
“Lord Eryk, put her in the wagon,” Laia said, sensibly. “We’re either going back to the Dwarves or finding the closest town. The Queen is in labor.”
THE ROOTLESS ISLE
Early in the morning, Anson arrived a the offshoot of the great house where Pol stayed Austin. It was warm in these houses and rooms had woven reed walls and curtains for doors. Anson came to push the curtain open fully, for it was already half open, and in the early morning light saw red candles burning feebly all about the room as if someone had forgot to put them out the night before. The residue of myrhh and frankincense filled the chambers, mixing with fresh air from the open windows, and on the rumbled bed, naked, and satisfied, lay Austin, face down, arms splayed, but Anson, who was not surprised by this was surprised to see that the man asleep beside him, on his side, was Ohean’s father, Jasper.
I do not understand this Isle, Anson decided. Everybody is fucking everybody.
But even as the older man—and who could say how old Jasper was—stirred and grunted, Anson moved away, letting the curtain flap shut, understanding it was his own prejudice welling up. For, in his life, how many nights had he spent sneaking to brothels, fooling around in alleys and in dark corners? Clearly this must have been Austin’s initiation as a Red, for there were the Red candles, but still Anson was wrankled by the figure who had come to him in the dark, by how, sensing him to more deprived of human touch that ever, she had come to him. Had that been a mercy? What had it been? Was there some act of whoredom behind everything that took place here?
He heard them waking, and turned to leave. He was well on his way back to the house when he saw Pol and thought of asking where he had been. He did not, though. Instead he said, “It is time for us to be moving on.”
“Time and past it,” Pol said. “Where are you off to?”
“To join Ohean in Nimerly’s chambers.”the name of ohean’s grandfather
He had gotten used to Nimerly’s room of state. It was humble in comparison to anything in Kingsboro, but held a reverence in its bareness and in the walls with their ancient frescoes. When he came, though, Ohean was always present.
“Pol,” Ohean greeted him, “Jasper has informed me you will remain here and be schooled in the Red Art.”
“It seems so,” Pol said, putting a brave face on things.
“We will miss you,” Ohean said, frankly. “But our journey south will, I think, not be an evening stroll.”
“I did not think it would be.”
“Still,” said Ohean. “I wish you could follow.”
“Ohean,” Nimerly said, “before you go, I cannot make you, but I would ask you to take the Ethame.”
Ohean’s eyebrows drew together in a frown.
“I agree,” Anson said. ANSON QUOTES THE POEM
“Then so do I,” Ohean answered, though he did not look pleased.
As Ohean left with Anson on one side of him and Pol and Nimerly walking behind him, Anson whispered, “What is the ethy…”
“Ethame,” Ohean supplied.
“It means The Memory.”
OHEAN
“Can I hold you while we sleep?”
“You are a very peculiar boy.”
“Sir, what did you say?”
Ohean shook his head as they continued to walk through the trees.
“He is hearing the voices of his other lives,” Nimerly said as they stepped through the trees.
“Should we even be here?” Pol wondered.
“Yes,” Ohean and Nimerly said at the same time, though Anson did not speak.
“You should be here,” The Crystal Lady said, “though you should not touch the tree.”
They were just beginning to see it, impossibly wide, wide as many men and bent and gnarled its branches knotting through other branches, its limps wide as some trees, higher up, Anson noted, wide as roads, and it only went higher and higher. He craned his neck.
“You are wondering,” Nimerly said, “why you could not see a tree of such a height from a distance.”
Before Anson could say anything, Ohean said, “It’s height reaches out of this world as does it depths.”
“As does it sides,” Meredith murmured.
“Yes,” Ohean said. “As does its sides, its branches. This is the world tree.”
“Yggdrasil,” Anson said.
“Yes,” Nimerly said. “The Northerners call it that. It is also known as the omphalos, the navel of the world.”
But they were there were the leaves were fallen and always falling and as Anson looked on them he thought they were gold. It was as if had just rained or, now that he thought, as if someone had painted a portrait of it just raining and in the bowls of the tree roots were pools of water and Ohean, now in his white gown, mantle left back in the House said, “And so I drank.”
“You drank once.”
“As a boy, when I was not supposed to. And learned more than I planned.”
“Cousin, now you must drink and learn all.”
“In the stories,” Anson continued, “there were three sisters, the fates of the future, the past and present who guarded the sacred well that Vadan the God of Magic and Knowledge came to.”
“Well then know that I am all three of those sisters right now,” the auburn haired Nimerly said, dipping her pewter cup into the clear water in the bowl of the tree. And at this moment, Ohean is Vadan. Drink,” she passed the dripping cup to her cousin.
Ohean did not hesitate. He drank. He drank quickly, surprised by his thirst.
Anson remembered how Father Vadan hung himself on the tree to gain knowledge for the whole world. Ohean stretched himself out to encompass the tree, to place the side of his head against it.
“Mother,” he murmured. “Be a door for me.”
It was so silent. Anson actually heard a leaf come, twirling slowly to the ground.
“Mother,” Ohean said again. “Be a door.
“Motheerrrr—”
Ohean’s voice was caught in a shriek and a shout, but all this was lost in a ripping, a darkness, a rumble of the earth and a lightning shaft through the sky.
It was gone quickly and then Meredith gasped and Anson ran to Ohean, unconscious on the ground.
“He did not hurt himself,” Nimerly said, her hands moving about his head.
“We cannot wake him. Only make him comfortable. His journey has begun.”
HALE
As the night drew and the fire crackled, Cynric sang:
“Við hleifi mik sældu
né við hornigi
nýsta ek niðr
nam ek upp rúnar
œpandi nam
fell ek aptr þaðan!”
“I will never understand that,” Hillary said.
“Sure you will,” said Cynric.
When Ralph raised an eyebrow and Wolf turned his head and smiled, the bard shrugged and said, “Well, maybe you won’t.”
“But we love it when you sing,” Hilary said.
“That’s the truth,” Wolf said.
“Even I have been charmed by your barbarian music.”
Cynric chuckled and three a rind of bread at Ralph.
“Fuck you, Royan!”
“I’ll tell you what?” Ralph said, catching the rind in mid toss, “I’m a sorry singer, but a good storyteller, and if you finish up your song, then I’ll tell you one of our tales.”
“Which?” Wolf said.
“I don’t know, but Ohean taught them all to me.”
“Now Master… Ohean I guess I should call him now, he is a bard you would love to meet,” Wolf told Cynric. “But then I think he would love to meet you. Hear your songs.”
“We all love your songs,” Hilary said, and when Ralph eyed her she colored, saying, “Stop that.”
If Cynric noticed anything, he pretended not to, but lifting his harp, sang:
“Fimbulljóð níu
nam ek af inum frægja syni
Bölþórs Bestlu föður
ok ek drykk of gat
ins dýra mjaðar
ausinn Óðreri.
“Rúnar munt þú finna
ok ráðna stafi
mjök stóra stafi
mjök stinna stafi
er fáði fimbulþulr
ok gørðu ginnregin
ok reist Hroptr rögna!”
“Your voice is pure music,” the handsome Ralph said, “but I need to know the story now.”
“I know some of it,” Wolf said, “for my mother taught me the ancient language, and so did Ohean. I know is about Father Vadan, and how he became ruler of the gods and lord of wisdom.”
“Aye, cousin,” Cynric said, his fingers unconsciously strumming the harp.
“Do you know,” he said, “you and Myrne are southerners, really. You both know the Royan ways, which are even older than ours, and you are allied with the monasteries, with that Lady Hilda. I have been all about returning to the Old Ways of the Hale, the ways we had across the sea.”
“And we must not lose them,” Wolf said earnestly, “or the Old Gods.”
“No,” Cynric said, “but we must no pretend we are nothing more. Centuries ago we passed freely back and forth between Dayne. The Ayl were different. They left Dayne long ago and made a pilgrimage through continent and into the south and, at last came to Westrial and the Southern Kingdoms. They became something else. We never did. Now, I see it is time we did. Now, I see that we already are. We are becoming something new in this land.”
The sound of a horn came low in the night. Cynric’s eyes were on Hilary. She did not look away.
He spoke no more, but sang, and as Hilary watched him by the light of the fire she wanted to touch his face.
I know that I hung
upon a windy tree
for nine whole nights,
wounded with a spear
and given to Othinn,
myself to myself for me;
on that tree
I knew nothing
of what kind of roots it came from.
I took nine mighty spells
from the famous son
of Bolthorr, the father of Bestla,
and I got a drink
of the precious mead,
poured from Othrerir.
Then I began to be
fruitful and wise,
to grow and to flourish;
speech fetched my speech for speech,
action fetched my action for action.
Again, the low sound of the horn.
“I thought I heard that the first time,” Wolf stood up, cupping his ear as he followed he sound to east.
“War horns?” Ralph wondered.
But now Cynric’s face frowned and Hilary said, “I’ve heard that pattern in the south, once, but not on a horn. On minster bells.”
Wolf turned to Cynric who had stopped frowning and was not smiling.
“What, man!”
“Oh, brother we have to teach you your horn patterns. That’s all we use up north.”
He clasped Wolf’s shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Tonight we celebrate!” Cynric declared. “King Osric is a father. Queen Myrne has just given birth to a son!”
OHEAN
“Can I hold you while we sleep?”
“You are a very peculiar boy.”
“I’m not! Lots of boys did it in Arvon. Some boys took each other for lovers.”
“I am not your lover.”
“You’re more my lover than you are my brother.”
“What do you know about lovers?”
“As much as you. You think you’re so much older. You’re only a few years older. What’s more, you know about magic and healing and card reading, Gods and history. And that’s all very nice. Really it is. But you do not know about loving.”
Harlan said nothing, and then Rhyan spoke again.
“Are you offended?”
“It takes more than that to offend me.”
“Then may I hold you?”
“Very well,” Harlan said, gruffly…
Leaves and patterns of leaves.
What is this? Where is this? But it is me. It was me. I knew completely who I was. This is my home. This is…. Like something on the edge of sleep. Like a dream half remembered…
Like a puppy, the boy Rhyan snuggled up to Harlan and wrapped his arms about him. Harlan’s hands covered Rhyan’s and Rhyan’s penis rose up in contentment. It throbbed gently with the closeness of the other young man’s body, and Harlan made no note of it.
Rhyan was content.
He was lighthearted and joyous like this when they went to High Service in the Great Minster, and because he was filled with such happiness, floating on a cloud, the next day when he was going to the Tournament with Kay and Kay was prepared to joust within an hour, he was paying no attention at all. He had been most scatter brained in dressing Kay Maracandas and now, when Kay said, “Sword! Sword, Rhys! Rhys, where’s my sword?” the young man’s eyes bulged.
“You imp!” Kay said with the first signs of genuine rage Rhyan had ever seen in his fosterbrother. “Where is it?”
“It must be… at the House.”
Kay looked like a vein was about to burst in his head and so Hace grabbed his friend’s wrist and said, “We’ll get you a new one. C’mon, Rhys.”
Rhyan nodded. Hace had already procured a cycler, and he set Rhyan on its handlebars. Dangerously, the boys careened through the muddy roads of the Tournament and into the city, hot for the sword before Kay missed his chance to prove himself as a knight before the peers of the realm.
“If he doesn’t get to beat another young knight across the head before the day is over, he’ll beat my head in for the rest of the year!” Rhyan declared.
They were racing through the city when Rhyan cried out, “Stop! Wait!”
“There’s no time—” Hace began, but Rhyan insisted, “Stop!”
Where are we?” Hace said.
“We’re in front of Clearstone,” Rhyan said, pushing himself from the handlebars.
“Well, I know that,” Hace murmured. “But why?”
The opened gate of the low bailey was near four stories high, though it was to the lowest part of the castle, and high above them. Far off, rose Gariavan, the Crystal Hold, and then beyond that the Mountain. But they entered through the main gate and Hace whispered, “There’s no time.”
The low bailey was so empty. A rare snow dusted the weed choked yard and hollow eyed, black windows stared out at them from the walls. Beyond was an old stair case, dingy from years of spring and summer rain and autumn leaves, cracked by the snow. But where Rhyan went was the chapel.
“Kay needs us to get the—”
“Kay can go hang,” Rhyan murmured as he went up the steps. He entered into the temple, and his eyes went to the altar.
“Well, look at that!”
Rhyan raced across the empty chapel, his boots making a hollow sound through the abandoned place.
“How did you know?” Hace demanded.
Rhyan did not bother with saying he didn’t know. He crossed the floor, made the sign of honor, and climbed up the steps to the altar. With the ringing sound of a blade pulled from its sheath, Rhyan brought out the blade.
Hace said, “It could be sacred. It could be there for a reason.”
“The Gods won’t mind,” Rhyan said. “We’ll bring it right back to them. Only… be careful on the way back. There’s no scabbard for this thing.”
“What is happening to him?” Anson whispers. “Is he only dreaming?”
“He is living in his other lives,” Nimerly says, “and for now he gets there by dreaming.”
“Can I go to him?”
“Presumably,” Nimerly said, “We are already there. In another form. In another way.”
“He has been asleep for some time.”
“I am going to him,” Anson decides.
“You cannot,” the voice of Nimerly speaks. “Ohean is a mighty sorcerer and it is his right to drink from the water and touch the Tree. If you do this you will die.”
“But is there the chance,” Anson asks, “that he himself will die.”
Nimerly does not answer.
The last true memory is of running to the cycler. After that the rest is legend, told over and over again. How they arrived on the field just in time and Kay took the sword, swinging it over Rhyan’s head, shouting: “I ought to knock your block off right now.”
But there was no time, for it was his turn to joust, and he was just going to do it when Jon Lackland rode up to him.
“What is that?”
“It is a sword.”
“It is not a sword,” Jon said, his fingers twitching, but not daring to touch it. “It is the sword.”
Jon called Ilyn Maracandas over and said, “Look at your son’s sword!”
And then he was calling others over.
“It is Dragon’s Tooth! That is Dragon’s Tooth! It is the Sword of Kings. Dragon’s Tooth.”
“Did you take this sword up yourself?” Jon demanded.
Kay looked back at Rhyan, who was looking at him, from the midst of the crowd.
“I did,” he said.
But then he looked at Harlan. Harlan’s dark eyes looked at him almost impassively, like the eyes of a crow, and now Kay said. “No. It was not I.”
Kay hadn’t been in the chapel to see it, so he said, with a question in his voice, “It was Rhyan?”
The eyes of the kings and lords, about thirty, turned to the large boy, and Harlan came through them all, touching Rhyan on the shoulder, “Tell them the truth. Never fear. It is only the truth.”
And so Rhyan did, and he was at the head of a large crowd of folks, forgetting the tournament, entering the city, winding their way to Clearstone. As the news of what had happened went through the Citadel, women joined the men. The Queen and her children were entering the Chapel, and there was the scorched altar, but no sword. The sword was in Rhyan’s hand.
“Place that sword back,” Harlan commanded, and when Rhyan obeyed he leapted back in surprise as the flames erupted from the sword and Jon Lackland nodded his head.
“And now pick it up again.
Rhyan blinked at Harlan, but Harlan said, “It will not harm you. Trust me.”
Rhyan did, and so he went to touch the sword, and the fire died. He lifted up the long sword with the dragons twisting about the hilt.
“Long live the King!” Jon Lackland cried, and he kissed the boy’s hand. He turned about and shouted, “God save the King!”
He cried it out five times until others, at first half heartedly, began to cry it out. Jon fell to his knees.
Blinking in amazement, the boy beside Harlan watched as the chapel, filled with kings and princes, dukes and lords and now ladies, cried out, “Long live the King. God save the King!”
And their voices rang through the walls of the old temple, stinging Rhyan’s ears.
This is familiar. Anson is here… but unfamiliar. Rhodry too. But… no, I know them both. I am… I AM Harlan. Both of these stories…. Both of these worlds are mine.
Anson sleeping in the forest in Rheged where the fairy women had come to him. Branches poking him from the mists, and brushed his face, but tt was not painful. The branches gave way, They were tender, they curled around him only to uncurl, brushed him lightly, wrapped around his ankles in a way that terrified him, and then at last seemed affectionate, and as he rested his back into them, he felt their roots. For a brief time Pol lay beside him. Austin smiled at him, and caught his hand, and then, on the wind, he flew away, a multi colored bird.
Anson blinked in the mist. All around him he felt a writhing, a moving. The mist was like smoke and Anson was still sure he was dreaming until Ohean said, “Between waking and sleeping comes truth.”
Anson looked around. It was warm and dark and the white mist crawled over Pol and Ralph, and the sleeping form of Ralph.
“In our waking we hold the worlds apart, but in sleeping the walls between them, the walls between what we see and what we believe fall. Stay in this time with me a little longer.”
Ohean was quiet and peaceful. Anson closed his eyes and shivered a little.
“What am I feeling?”
“Does it feel like something slithering above and around you?”
Anson thought and then said, “Yes. It does.”
“Then that is Kurukan, the Great Serpent.”
Anson looked at Ohean.
“All the stone serpents you saw, on the temples, on the banisters, in the palaces, their eyes fierce, feathery blooms up and down their backs, manes of bright feathers, they are all the children of Kurakin, and they are all his face. Many names they have, Queztalon, Mazaron…. In the language of the Northmen they are called Vurms, Worms, firedrakes.”
“As in the tales,” Anson breathed. “As in the tale when Sevard slew the dragon with his sword… my sword.”
“There are many dragons. They very ancient live in the mountains, the spines of hills, the lines of power in the earth, for dragons rarely die, but transform. Kurukan fell to the earth and became the great Land Serpent, the Power in this land. The Serpent is this mist twining about you. That Serpent flows through the trees and the strength of your arms.”
“In your magic?”
“And in your magic too, for you have your own sort. And it is in the tingling of your toes during lovemaking.”
When Ohean said that, Anson knew that he was naked, and he looked down to see the serpents, once tattooed to his flesh, mow moving up and down it, writhing over his biceps, his chest, down to his thighs and up again, eyes flashing.
Anson stood there in wonder, feeling the hum of the Kurukan through his body. There was thunder and then a flash, and he thought he saw eyes. Was the wind his roar, the flapping branches of trees those plumed feathers.
“Stop,” Ohean said, simply. “It wants to enter you.”
“There are many dragons, most old and retired to the mountains or under the sea. The very oldest are now mountains, the spines of hills, the lines of power in the earth, the charges of lightning in the air. Dragons rarely die, but transform. Pen Pryd fell to the earth and became the great Land Dragon, encompassing his bride. He is the Power in this land. The Dragon is this mist twining about you. That Serpent flows through the trees and the strength of your arms.”
“And In your magic?”
“And in your magic too. For you have your own sort. And in the tingling of your toes.”
Rory sat there, feeling the hum of the Dragon Father through his body, feeling his coiling lengths tangle through the wood, over roots and over branches. There was a thunder and then a flash, and he thought he saw eyes.
“Stop,” Harlan said, simply. “It wants to enter you.”
Ah, and here it merges… here both realities become one…
“Enter—”
“Enter you,” Harlan said.
“The Dragon is all around us night and day and how many sense it? Few. It is the inheritance of the people of the Land, yet how many people inherit it? Few. But you have.”
“Do it. Simply lie back down and breathe.”
He sat up suddenly surprised by the daylight. Sitting placid beside him, now in the same blue cloak as in the dream, was Harlan.
“Come with me,” Harlan whispered.
Rory got up without saying anything. He took Harlan’s hand. It had been so long since Harlan had touched his hand. He longed for it, longed to be guarded by the mage. He was such a beautiful man, but he had been closed like a flower. Now he was open. Harlan said, “There it is.”
With the thoughtlessness of a dream, Rory knew it was there even though he did not know what there was. They bowed down together before a deep pool. The moonlight was shining on it.
Rising up from the water was came first an orb like a shining apple, a knob. Now the knob was at the end of a long leather stick. While Rory tried to comprehend it, in the distance, or out of the earth he heard singing.
Every tree, every flower,
the mountains rising from
the earth and earth
coming up from waters,
all the world was made
by love and desire…
Rory blinked understanding that this was what he had not expected. It was, scabbarded, a sword. The sword rose up, the point of the scabbard, poised on the water.
“Yes,” Harlan murmured. “Take it.”
Rory looked to Harlan, and then Harlan nodded. He grasped the sword and felt the energy of it being upheld by the water. Almost as soon as he touched it, he felt the water tension give way, and he snatched it to himself.
“What is it?”
“It is your father’s sword,” Harlan said, his voice light. “The last I saw it was in Astolat Wood when he tossed it into the water—” Harlan stopped himself.
“It is nearly day,” he said, standing up and wrapping his cloak about himself.
“We must go.”
“I would not have thrown you away, Harlan!” Rory said, suddenly. “Not like Rhyan. He was a fool. For a few times you loved me. You could have had me.”
Harlan said, “You were young.”
“Is that your way of saying I was foolish?”
“No,” Harlan murmured, “You hold your father’s sword in your hand, lost these thirty and more years. It is my way of saying you think so much of what is past, but you have no idea how much there is to come. Rhodry, Let us go.”
Rory followed, quietly. Harlan was thankful that the younger man left him to his thoughts. He had not said all he meant. He had stopped himself. He had thought of Rory many times. There were times when he was sure Rhyan was the wrong king, not the one promised, and that it ought to have passed to the second son. Now, tall and wolfish, Rory loped behind him, and Harlan cautioned, “Do not say too much about that sword now. And do not say anything about it when we return to Clearstone.”
“Why?”
“Do not,” Harlan said simply. Sometimes it was his to command.
“Fine,” Rory said. “Harlan—”
“Yes, my love.”
Rory’s mouth was half open with the question. The tall man cleared his throat and rubbed his unshaven throat.
“You called me your love.”
“I am not so old or so senile I need you to remind me of what I say. But what were you going to say?”
“You seemed to open to me. A moment ago. And now…”
“And now?”
Harlan looked as if at least ten years had fallen from him, and his face was light and mocking. Rory shook his head.
“Never mind.”
The mage waited, and then he said, “I will not. There are things on my mind. Doubtless there are things on yours as well.”
Harlan turned around and walked through the crunching leaves back to Astolat. Before the water, which they now left, he had stopped himself from saying to Rory:
“It is your father’s sword. The last I saw it was in Astolat Wood when he tossed it into the water and bellowed that the one who drew it would be the true king of Failmark.”
HALE
Ayla stormed into the noisy tavern followed by Breek, the rooty tendrils of his hair shouting up like the branches of a tree.
Ayla removed her hood and approached the woman she presumed to be the innkeeper.
“Mistress, I am looking for the Lord Waverly.”
The stout woman with the auburn bun was lighting lamps along the wall, and with her lighting stick she pointed up the stairs.
“Follow the sounds of shouting whores,” she said.
Ayla took a deep breath, and followed by Breek, did so.
Following the innkeeper’s simple directions, she flung open the door to see Eryk Waverly, his cloak on the bed, his trews down, lustily fucking a whore on the table. He stopped in midthrust looking dismayed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ayla demanded.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eryk roared.
“The Queen has just born a son!”
“And I am celebrating.”
The poor whore, legs open, Eryk between them asked, “Should I leave?”
“I’m not finished with you, my honey,” Eryk said and then turned to Ayla, “And I’m not finished with you, servant girl.”
“Your cousin’s wondering where you are and needs you to write a letter and send it by falcon to King Osric, so be quick about it. We’ll be in the common room, waiting. Don’t keep us waiting. Come, Breek!”
The Dwarf, without sparing Eryk Waverly a glance followed Ayla out of the room, but just as Eryk, unplussed, was setting back to fucking the whore, Ayla thrust her head back and shouted:
“And I’m no servant girl of yours, no matter how high up you think you are, my Lprd Waverly, you rabbit faced bastard!”
And so she slammed the door.
“Ten fingers…. Ten toes,” Myrne said, “hair coal black, lips blood red like a child from a fairy tale.”
“Perfect, your Highness,” the Mistress Willen, who had opened her house to the pregnant Queen said.
“Well,” Myrne said, “a little ugly to tell the truth. I had no idea. I really,” she yawned, “had no idea about anything. I didn’t know something could hurt like that. I always assumed…. Now I know why my mother only did it once.”
“My Lady,” Mistress Willen laughed, “you will have several children!”
“That,” the weary Myrne, damp hair in her face said, “I cannot imagine.”
The baby cried a little, and then was quiet. Its eyes rolled around behind its almost transparent lids, and the mistress of the house said, “I will put it in the cradle so you can both rest.”
Myrne turned a little so the older woman could take her son, and then she said, “But I have to stay up until my cousin arrives. His questfalcon is the only one I know that can find my husband wherever the King may be.”
“That may be him now,” Mistress Willen said as she heard a noise from the front of the house, and placed the sleeping baby in the cradle.
“He did not take to the breast,” Myrne noted.
“He will,” Mistress Willen said. “It is not as natural as some pretend.”
“I don’t think its natural at all,” Myrne declared as Eryk entered followed by Ayla.
“Cousin!”
“Ass!” Myrne put as much strength in her voice as she could, “I feel like something rolled over a part of my body I will not discuss with a man, and all I need you to do is have pen and paper and compose a letter for me to send to Osric. Where were you?”
Before Eryk could answer, Myrne said, “But I know where you were. The only question is why weren’t you here?”
“I’m sorry, Myrne,” Eryk said, sounding to Ayla, who had just entered with Breek, actually sorry for the first time that night. “I’m here now. Let me get my things so I can sit down and write.”
A few moments later, out of his good clothes and in a serviceable tunic, Eryk sat down and Myrne roused herself from sleep to compose. The good paper was to one side, and scrap on which he would compose the note was before him.
“Dear Husband, I have borne you… no… us… a son. He is black of hair, red of lip, white like the snow and shall be, in time, King of the Three Kingdoms. What shall we name him…. No. Scratch that out, His name is Blake.”
Eryk looked to his cousin.
“As his father is the Red Wolf, so his son will be the Black Fox. Blake.” Myrne concluded. “All my love, your wife and your Queen, Myrne Ceoldane. Lady of Herreboro and Queen of the Three Realms.”
So saying, the exhausted girl sank into bed, murmuring, “Eryk…. After you have sent this to Wolf, who may already now, for the horns have been blowing across the land, wait three hours to send a form of that letter to my mother and father and lastly… send one to Ambridge to let them know a dynasty has begun.”
“Really?”
“Now leave me,” Myrne said, “I am exhausted.”
As Eryk rose to leave, Myrne said, “And do not screw this up.”
“My dear,” Eryk said to Ayla as she came out of the room with the bloody cloths and a bucket of water, “may I have a word with you.”
Ayla held out the bucked and said, “You can help me carry this crap out is what you can do.”
Eryk wrinkled his brow and Ayla commented, “Men come into this world, splitting our snatches open, causing all manner of gore and water and shit. And all you do is cause gore and piss and shit and leave it for us, and then when we say, well put down that sword and pick this slopbucket up, you wrinkle your noses like the daintiest ladies and say, ‘Oh, but that’s women’s work.’ Well, if you want to have any word with me, you’ll be taking this bucket down.”
And so Eryk, unwillingly, did so.
“Now, Ayla,” he said, reasonably, “I understand that many women, when they have a fondness for a man, display by… being fractious.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said, coming to the bottom of the stairs a few paces before him.
“Spirited. Overly spirited perhaps. Spicy.”
“You’re calling me bitchy,” she looked at him levelly.
“I did not say it quite like that,” Eryk tried to put a laugh in his voice as he smiled.
“But you meant it.”
“I meant that when women often act that way around a man it is to convey feelings of… affection… that they might have difficulty explaining.”
She smiled at him from the side of her mouth, and the more Ayla looked at him, the more Eryk was unnerved and the more aware he was that he was carrying a bucket of shit and water.
“Uh… “ he began.
Eryk had always viewed Ayla’s rages as those of a servant like the sweet, fussy, but largely ignorant old women who had kept him at Waverly. Suddenly he was reminded that he had lived a more or less southern life, that class distinctions were considerable flattened in Herreboro where Myrne and Ayla had grown up and that now, a woman, every bit at intelligent and entitled as himself was looking at him with the utmost disdain.
“Eryk Waverly,” Ayla said, “I do not treat you as if you were an ass because I secretly love you. This is not one of your southern comedies where shrewish woman and sarcastic man bite each others backs and insult each other to prove their passion. I have felt passion. This is no passion. I treat you like an ass because that is what you are. Now please be a good ass and take that slop bucket down the hall while I take these sheets to laundry. My thanks.”
Ayla nodded curtly, and she was gone.
MORE FRIDAY
HALE
“We will be back in Herreboro by the end of the week,” Eryk announced. “Well, not necessarily the end of the week, but maybe the beginning of the next. I imagine we might have to travel a little slower, for Myrne’s sake, not that Myrne is slow, but you know, she is carrying and…”
“Eryk Waverly stopped talking and looked down at the Dwarf who was scowling at him from the pony he rode.
“You talk a lot Rabbit-Face,” he said.
Eryk was about to respond to this, but he noticed no one else was speaking and turned around.
Beside Myrne, her servant Laia was white faced, and Myrne’s face was green and grim as she held her belly.
“Cousin! Are you well?”
“Come,” Laia said, sliding from her horse and trying to help Myrne off of hers.
Eryk did as well and he murmured, “My God, your dress!”
“I’ll never wear this again,” Myrne said, shakily, for wet spots shone through the blue gown. “And it would be soaked all the way through if not for the riding trews.”
“Lord Eryk, put her in the wagon,” Laia said, sensibly. “We’re either going back to the Dwarves or finding the closest town. The Queen is in labor.”
THE ROOTLESS ISLE
Early in the morning, Anson arrived a the offshoot of the great house where Pol stayed Austin. It was warm in these houses and rooms had woven reed walls and curtains for doors. Anson came to push the curtain open fully, for it was already half open, and in the early morning light saw red candles burning feebly all about the room as if someone had forgot to put them out the night before. The residue of myrhh and frankincense filled the chambers, mixing with fresh air from the open windows, and on the rumbled bed, naked, and satisfied, lay Austin, face down, arms splayed, but Anson, who was not surprised by this was surprised to see that the man asleep beside him, on his side, was Ohean’s father, Jasper.
I do not understand this Isle, Anson decided. Everybody is fucking everybody.
But even as the older man—and who could say how old Jasper was—stirred and grunted, Anson moved away, letting the curtain flap shut, understanding it was his own prejudice welling up. For, in his life, how many nights had he spent sneaking to brothels, fooling around in alleys and in dark corners? Clearly this must have been Austin’s initiation as a Red, for there were the Red candles, but still Anson was wrankled by the figure who had come to him in the dark, by how, sensing him to more deprived of human touch that ever, she had come to him. Had that been a mercy? What had it been? Was there some act of whoredom behind everything that took place here?
He heard them waking, and turned to leave. He was well on his way back to the house when he saw Pol and thought of asking where he had been. He did not, though. Instead he said, “It is time for us to be moving on.”
“Time and past it,” Pol said. “Where are you off to?”
“To join Ohean in Nimerly’s chambers.”the name of ohean’s grandfather
He had gotten used to Nimerly’s room of state. It was humble in comparison to anything in Kingsboro, but held a reverence in its bareness and in the walls with their ancient frescoes. When he came, though, Ohean was always present.
“Pol,” Ohean greeted him, “Jasper has informed me you will remain here and be schooled in the Red Art.”
“It seems so,” Pol said, putting a brave face on things.
“We will miss you,” Ohean said, frankly. “But our journey south will, I think, not be an evening stroll.”
“I did not think it would be.”
“Still,” said Ohean. “I wish you could follow.”
“Ohean,” Nimerly said, “before you go, I cannot make you, but I would ask you to take the Ethame.”
Ohean’s eyebrows drew together in a frown.
“I agree,” Anson said. ANSON QUOTES THE POEM
“Then so do I,” Ohean answered, though he did not look pleased.
As Ohean left with Anson on one side of him and Pol and Nimerly walking behind him, Anson whispered, “What is the ethy…”
“Ethame,” Ohean supplied.
“It means The Memory.”
OHEAN
“Can I hold you while we sleep?”
“You are a very peculiar boy.”
“Sir, what did you say?”
Ohean shook his head as they continued to walk through the trees.
“He is hearing the voices of his other lives,” Nimerly said as they stepped through the trees.
“Should we even be here?” Pol wondered.
“Yes,” Ohean and Nimerly said at the same time, though Anson did not speak.
“You should be here,” The Crystal Lady said, “though you should not touch the tree.”
They were just beginning to see it, impossibly wide, wide as many men and bent and gnarled its branches knotting through other branches, its limps wide as some trees, higher up, Anson noted, wide as roads, and it only went higher and higher. He craned his neck.
“You are wondering,” Nimerly said, “why you could not see a tree of such a height from a distance.”
Before Anson could say anything, Ohean said, “It’s height reaches out of this world as does it depths.”
“As does it sides,” Meredith murmured.
“Yes,” Ohean said. “As does its sides, its branches. This is the world tree.”
“Yggdrasil,” Anson said.
“Yes,” Nimerly said. “The Northerners call it that. It is also known as the omphalos, the navel of the world.”
But they were there were the leaves were fallen and always falling and as Anson looked on them he thought they were gold. It was as if had just rained or, now that he thought, as if someone had painted a portrait of it just raining and in the bowls of the tree roots were pools of water and Ohean, now in his white gown, mantle left back in the House said, “And so I drank.”
“You drank once.”
“As a boy, when I was not supposed to. And learned more than I planned.”
“Cousin, now you must drink and learn all.”
“In the stories,” Anson continued, “there were three sisters, the fates of the future, the past and present who guarded the sacred well that Vadan the God of Magic and Knowledge came to.”
“Well then know that I am all three of those sisters right now,” the auburn haired Nimerly said, dipping her pewter cup into the clear water in the bowl of the tree. And at this moment, Ohean is Vadan. Drink,” she passed the dripping cup to her cousin.
Ohean did not hesitate. He drank. He drank quickly, surprised by his thirst.
Anson remembered how Father Vadan hung himself on the tree to gain knowledge for the whole world. Ohean stretched himself out to encompass the tree, to place the side of his head against it.
“Mother,” he murmured. “Be a door for me.”
It was so silent. Anson actually heard a leaf come, twirling slowly to the ground.
“Mother,” Ohean said again. “Be a door.
“Motheerrrr—”
Ohean’s voice was caught in a shriek and a shout, but all this was lost in a ripping, a darkness, a rumble of the earth and a lightning shaft through the sky.
It was gone quickly and then Meredith gasped and Anson ran to Ohean, unconscious on the ground.
“He did not hurt himself,” Nimerly said, her hands moving about his head.
“We cannot wake him. Only make him comfortable. His journey has begun.”
HALE
As the night drew and the fire crackled, Cynric sang:
“Við hleifi mik sældu
né við hornigi
nýsta ek niðr
nam ek upp rúnar
œpandi nam
fell ek aptr þaðan!”
“I will never understand that,” Hillary said.
“Sure you will,” said Cynric.
When Ralph raised an eyebrow and Wolf turned his head and smiled, the bard shrugged and said, “Well, maybe you won’t.”
“But we love it when you sing,” Hilary said.
“That’s the truth,” Wolf said.
“Even I have been charmed by your barbarian music.”
Cynric chuckled and three a rind of bread at Ralph.
“Fuck you, Royan!”
“I’ll tell you what?” Ralph said, catching the rind in mid toss, “I’m a sorry singer, but a good storyteller, and if you finish up your song, then I’ll tell you one of our tales.”
“Which?” Wolf said.
“I don’t know, but Ohean taught them all to me.”
“Now Master… Ohean I guess I should call him now, he is a bard you would love to meet,” Wolf told Cynric. “But then I think he would love to meet you. Hear your songs.”
“We all love your songs,” Hilary said, and when Ralph eyed her she colored, saying, “Stop that.”
If Cynric noticed anything, he pretended not to, but lifting his harp, sang:
“Fimbulljóð níu
nam ek af inum frægja syni
Bölþórs Bestlu föður
ok ek drykk of gat
ins dýra mjaðar
ausinn Óðreri.
“Rúnar munt þú finna
ok ráðna stafi
mjök stóra stafi
mjök stinna stafi
er fáði fimbulþulr
ok gørðu ginnregin
ok reist Hroptr rögna!”
“Your voice is pure music,” the handsome Ralph said, “but I need to know the story now.”
“I know some of it,” Wolf said, “for my mother taught me the ancient language, and so did Ohean. I know is about Father Vadan, and how he became ruler of the gods and lord of wisdom.”
“Aye, cousin,” Cynric said, his fingers unconsciously strumming the harp.
“Do you know,” he said, “you and Myrne are southerners, really. You both know the Royan ways, which are even older than ours, and you are allied with the monasteries, with that Lady Hilda. I have been all about returning to the Old Ways of the Hale, the ways we had across the sea.”
“And we must not lose them,” Wolf said earnestly, “or the Old Gods.”
“No,” Cynric said, “but we must no pretend we are nothing more. Centuries ago we passed freely back and forth between Dayne. The Ayl were different. They left Dayne long ago and made a pilgrimage through continent and into the south and, at last came to Westrial and the Southern Kingdoms. They became something else. We never did. Now, I see it is time we did. Now, I see that we already are. We are becoming something new in this land.”
The sound of a horn came low in the night. Cynric’s eyes were on Hilary. She did not look away.
He spoke no more, but sang, and as Hilary watched him by the light of the fire she wanted to touch his face.
I know that I hung
upon a windy tree
for nine whole nights,
wounded with a spear
and given to Othinn,
myself to myself for me;
on that tree
I knew nothing
of what kind of roots it came from.
I took nine mighty spells
from the famous son
of Bolthorr, the father of Bestla,
and I got a drink
of the precious mead,
poured from Othrerir.
Then I began to be
fruitful and wise,
to grow and to flourish;
speech fetched my speech for speech,
action fetched my action for action.
Again, the low sound of the horn.
“I thought I heard that the first time,” Wolf stood up, cupping his ear as he followed he sound to east.
“War horns?” Ralph wondered.
But now Cynric’s face frowned and Hilary said, “I’ve heard that pattern in the south, once, but not on a horn. On minster bells.”
Wolf turned to Cynric who had stopped frowning and was not smiling.
“What, man!”
“Oh, brother we have to teach you your horn patterns. That’s all we use up north.”
He clasped Wolf’s shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Tonight we celebrate!” Cynric declared. “King Osric is a father. Queen Myrne has just given birth to a son!”
OHEAN
“Can I hold you while we sleep?”
“You are a very peculiar boy.”
“I’m not! Lots of boys did it in Arvon. Some boys took each other for lovers.”
“I am not your lover.”
“You’re more my lover than you are my brother.”
“What do you know about lovers?”
“As much as you. You think you’re so much older. You’re only a few years older. What’s more, you know about magic and healing and card reading, Gods and history. And that’s all very nice. Really it is. But you do not know about loving.”
Harlan said nothing, and then Rhyan spoke again.
“Are you offended?”
“It takes more than that to offend me.”
“Then may I hold you?”
“Very well,” Harlan said, gruffly…
Leaves and patterns of leaves.
What is this? Where is this? But it is me. It was me. I knew completely who I was. This is my home. This is…. Like something on the edge of sleep. Like a dream half remembered…
Like a puppy, the boy Rhyan snuggled up to Harlan and wrapped his arms about him. Harlan’s hands covered Rhyan’s and Rhyan’s penis rose up in contentment. It throbbed gently with the closeness of the other young man’s body, and Harlan made no note of it.
Rhyan was content.
He was lighthearted and joyous like this when they went to High Service in the Great Minster, and because he was filled with such happiness, floating on a cloud, the next day when he was going to the Tournament with Kay and Kay was prepared to joust within an hour, he was paying no attention at all. He had been most scatter brained in dressing Kay Maracandas and now, when Kay said, “Sword! Sword, Rhys! Rhys, where’s my sword?” the young man’s eyes bulged.
“You imp!” Kay said with the first signs of genuine rage Rhyan had ever seen in his fosterbrother. “Where is it?”
“It must be… at the House.”
Kay looked like a vein was about to burst in his head and so Hace grabbed his friend’s wrist and said, “We’ll get you a new one. C’mon, Rhys.”
Rhyan nodded. Hace had already procured a cycler, and he set Rhyan on its handlebars. Dangerously, the boys careened through the muddy roads of the Tournament and into the city, hot for the sword before Kay missed his chance to prove himself as a knight before the peers of the realm.
“If he doesn’t get to beat another young knight across the head before the day is over, he’ll beat my head in for the rest of the year!” Rhyan declared.
They were racing through the city when Rhyan cried out, “Stop! Wait!”
“There’s no time—” Hace began, but Rhyan insisted, “Stop!”
Where are we?” Hace said.
“We’re in front of Clearstone,” Rhyan said, pushing himself from the handlebars.
“Well, I know that,” Hace murmured. “But why?”
The opened gate of the low bailey was near four stories high, though it was to the lowest part of the castle, and high above them. Far off, rose Gariavan, the Crystal Hold, and then beyond that the Mountain. But they entered through the main gate and Hace whispered, “There’s no time.”
The low bailey was so empty. A rare snow dusted the weed choked yard and hollow eyed, black windows stared out at them from the walls. Beyond was an old stair case, dingy from years of spring and summer rain and autumn leaves, cracked by the snow. But where Rhyan went was the chapel.
“Kay needs us to get the—”
“Kay can go hang,” Rhyan murmured as he went up the steps. He entered into the temple, and his eyes went to the altar.
“Well, look at that!”
Rhyan raced across the empty chapel, his boots making a hollow sound through the abandoned place.
“How did you know?” Hace demanded.
Rhyan did not bother with saying he didn’t know. He crossed the floor, made the sign of honor, and climbed up the steps to the altar. With the ringing sound of a blade pulled from its sheath, Rhyan brought out the blade.
Hace said, “It could be sacred. It could be there for a reason.”
“The Gods won’t mind,” Rhyan said. “We’ll bring it right back to them. Only… be careful on the way back. There’s no scabbard for this thing.”
“What is happening to him?” Anson whispers. “Is he only dreaming?”
“He is living in his other lives,” Nimerly says, “and for now he gets there by dreaming.”
“Can I go to him?”
“Presumably,” Nimerly said, “We are already there. In another form. In another way.”
“He has been asleep for some time.”
“I am going to him,” Anson decides.
“You cannot,” the voice of Nimerly speaks. “Ohean is a mighty sorcerer and it is his right to drink from the water and touch the Tree. If you do this you will die.”
“But is there the chance,” Anson asks, “that he himself will die.”
Nimerly does not answer.
The last true memory is of running to the cycler. After that the rest is legend, told over and over again. How they arrived on the field just in time and Kay took the sword, swinging it over Rhyan’s head, shouting: “I ought to knock your block off right now.”
But there was no time, for it was his turn to joust, and he was just going to do it when Jon Lackland rode up to him.
“What is that?”
“It is a sword.”
“It is not a sword,” Jon said, his fingers twitching, but not daring to touch it. “It is the sword.”
Jon called Ilyn Maracandas over and said, “Look at your son’s sword!”
And then he was calling others over.
“It is Dragon’s Tooth! That is Dragon’s Tooth! It is the Sword of Kings. Dragon’s Tooth.”
“Did you take this sword up yourself?” Jon demanded.
Kay looked back at Rhyan, who was looking at him, from the midst of the crowd.
“I did,” he said.
But then he looked at Harlan. Harlan’s dark eyes looked at him almost impassively, like the eyes of a crow, and now Kay said. “No. It was not I.”
Kay hadn’t been in the chapel to see it, so he said, with a question in his voice, “It was Rhyan?”
The eyes of the kings and lords, about thirty, turned to the large boy, and Harlan came through them all, touching Rhyan on the shoulder, “Tell them the truth. Never fear. It is only the truth.”
And so Rhyan did, and he was at the head of a large crowd of folks, forgetting the tournament, entering the city, winding their way to Clearstone. As the news of what had happened went through the Citadel, women joined the men. The Queen and her children were entering the Chapel, and there was the scorched altar, but no sword. The sword was in Rhyan’s hand.
“Place that sword back,” Harlan commanded, and when Rhyan obeyed he leapted back in surprise as the flames erupted from the sword and Jon Lackland nodded his head.
“And now pick it up again.
Rhyan blinked at Harlan, but Harlan said, “It will not harm you. Trust me.”
Rhyan did, and so he went to touch the sword, and the fire died. He lifted up the long sword with the dragons twisting about the hilt.
“Long live the King!” Jon Lackland cried, and he kissed the boy’s hand. He turned about and shouted, “God save the King!”
He cried it out five times until others, at first half heartedly, began to cry it out. Jon fell to his knees.
Blinking in amazement, the boy beside Harlan watched as the chapel, filled with kings and princes, dukes and lords and now ladies, cried out, “Long live the King. God save the King!”
And their voices rang through the walls of the old temple, stinging Rhyan’s ears.
This is familiar. Anson is here… but unfamiliar. Rhodry too. But… no, I know them both. I am… I AM Harlan. Both of these stories…. Both of these worlds are mine.
Anson sleeping in the forest in Rheged where the fairy women had come to him. Branches poking him from the mists, and brushed his face, but tt was not painful. The branches gave way, They were tender, they curled around him only to uncurl, brushed him lightly, wrapped around his ankles in a way that terrified him, and then at last seemed affectionate, and as he rested his back into them, he felt their roots. For a brief time Pol lay beside him. Austin smiled at him, and caught his hand, and then, on the wind, he flew away, a multi colored bird.
Anson blinked in the mist. All around him he felt a writhing, a moving. The mist was like smoke and Anson was still sure he was dreaming until Ohean said, “Between waking and sleeping comes truth.”
Anson looked around. It was warm and dark and the white mist crawled over Pol and Ralph, and the sleeping form of Ralph.
“In our waking we hold the worlds apart, but in sleeping the walls between them, the walls between what we see and what we believe fall. Stay in this time with me a little longer.”
Ohean was quiet and peaceful. Anson closed his eyes and shivered a little.
“What am I feeling?”
“Does it feel like something slithering above and around you?”
Anson thought and then said, “Yes. It does.”
“Then that is Kurukan, the Great Serpent.”
Anson looked at Ohean.
“All the stone serpents you saw, on the temples, on the banisters, in the palaces, their eyes fierce, feathery blooms up and down their backs, manes of bright feathers, they are all the children of Kurakin, and they are all his face. Many names they have, Queztalon, Mazaron…. In the language of the Northmen they are called Vurms, Worms, firedrakes.”
“As in the tales,” Anson breathed. “As in the tale when Sevard slew the dragon with his sword… my sword.”
“There are many dragons. They very ancient live in the mountains, the spines of hills, the lines of power in the earth, for dragons rarely die, but transform. Kurukan fell to the earth and became the great Land Serpent, the Power in this land. The Serpent is this mist twining about you. That Serpent flows through the trees and the strength of your arms.”
“In your magic?”
“And in your magic too, for you have your own sort. And it is in the tingling of your toes during lovemaking.”
When Ohean said that, Anson knew that he was naked, and he looked down to see the serpents, once tattooed to his flesh, mow moving up and down it, writhing over his biceps, his chest, down to his thighs and up again, eyes flashing.
Anson stood there in wonder, feeling the hum of the Kurukan through his body. There was thunder and then a flash, and he thought he saw eyes. Was the wind his roar, the flapping branches of trees those plumed feathers.
“Stop,” Ohean said, simply. “It wants to enter you.”
“There are many dragons, most old and retired to the mountains or under the sea. The very oldest are now mountains, the spines of hills, the lines of power in the earth, the charges of lightning in the air. Dragons rarely die, but transform. Pen Pryd fell to the earth and became the great Land Dragon, encompassing his bride. He is the Power in this land. The Dragon is this mist twining about you. That Serpent flows through the trees and the strength of your arms.”
“And In your magic?”
“And in your magic too. For you have your own sort. And in the tingling of your toes.”
Rory sat there, feeling the hum of the Dragon Father through his body, feeling his coiling lengths tangle through the wood, over roots and over branches. There was a thunder and then a flash, and he thought he saw eyes.
“Stop,” Harlan said, simply. “It wants to enter you.”
Ah, and here it merges… here both realities become one…
“Enter—”
“Enter you,” Harlan said.
“The Dragon is all around us night and day and how many sense it? Few. It is the inheritance of the people of the Land, yet how many people inherit it? Few. But you have.”
“Do it. Simply lie back down and breathe.”
He sat up suddenly surprised by the daylight. Sitting placid beside him, now in the same blue cloak as in the dream, was Harlan.
“Come with me,” Harlan whispered.
Rory got up without saying anything. He took Harlan’s hand. It had been so long since Harlan had touched his hand. He longed for it, longed to be guarded by the mage. He was such a beautiful man, but he had been closed like a flower. Now he was open. Harlan said, “There it is.”
With the thoughtlessness of a dream, Rory knew it was there even though he did not know what there was. They bowed down together before a deep pool. The moonlight was shining on it.
Rising up from the water was came first an orb like a shining apple, a knob. Now the knob was at the end of a long leather stick. While Rory tried to comprehend it, in the distance, or out of the earth he heard singing.
Every tree, every flower,
the mountains rising from
the earth and earth
coming up from waters,
all the world was made
by love and desire…
Rory blinked understanding that this was what he had not expected. It was, scabbarded, a sword. The sword rose up, the point of the scabbard, poised on the water.
“Yes,” Harlan murmured. “Take it.”
Rory looked to Harlan, and then Harlan nodded. He grasped the sword and felt the energy of it being upheld by the water. Almost as soon as he touched it, he felt the water tension give way, and he snatched it to himself.
“What is it?”
“It is your father’s sword,” Harlan said, his voice light. “The last I saw it was in Astolat Wood when he tossed it into the water—” Harlan stopped himself.
“It is nearly day,” he said, standing up and wrapping his cloak about himself.
“We must go.”
“I would not have thrown you away, Harlan!” Rory said, suddenly. “Not like Rhyan. He was a fool. For a few times you loved me. You could have had me.”
Harlan said, “You were young.”
“Is that your way of saying I was foolish?”
“No,” Harlan murmured, “You hold your father’s sword in your hand, lost these thirty and more years. It is my way of saying you think so much of what is past, but you have no idea how much there is to come. Rhodry, Let us go.”
Rory followed, quietly. Harlan was thankful that the younger man left him to his thoughts. He had not said all he meant. He had stopped himself. He had thought of Rory many times. There were times when he was sure Rhyan was the wrong king, not the one promised, and that it ought to have passed to the second son. Now, tall and wolfish, Rory loped behind him, and Harlan cautioned, “Do not say too much about that sword now. And do not say anything about it when we return to Clearstone.”
“Why?”
“Do not,” Harlan said simply. Sometimes it was his to command.
“Fine,” Rory said. “Harlan—”
“Yes, my love.”
Rory’s mouth was half open with the question. The tall man cleared his throat and rubbed his unshaven throat.
“You called me your love.”
“I am not so old or so senile I need you to remind me of what I say. But what were you going to say?”
“You seemed to open to me. A moment ago. And now…”
“And now?”
Harlan looked as if at least ten years had fallen from him, and his face was light and mocking. Rory shook his head.
“Never mind.”
The mage waited, and then he said, “I will not. There are things on my mind. Doubtless there are things on yours as well.”
Harlan turned around and walked through the crunching leaves back to Astolat. Before the water, which they now left, he had stopped himself from saying to Rory:
“It is your father’s sword. The last I saw it was in Astolat Wood when he tossed it into the water and bellowed that the one who drew it would be the true king of Failmark.”
HALE
Ayla stormed into the noisy tavern followed by Breek, the rooty tendrils of his hair shouting up like the branches of a tree.
Ayla removed her hood and approached the woman she presumed to be the innkeeper.
“Mistress, I am looking for the Lord Waverly.”
The stout woman with the auburn bun was lighting lamps along the wall, and with her lighting stick she pointed up the stairs.
“Follow the sounds of shouting whores,” she said.
Ayla took a deep breath, and followed by Breek, did so.
Following the innkeeper’s simple directions, she flung open the door to see Eryk Waverly, his cloak on the bed, his trews down, lustily fucking a whore on the table. He stopped in midthrust looking dismayed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ayla demanded.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eryk roared.
“The Queen has just born a son!”
“And I am celebrating.”
The poor whore, legs open, Eryk between them asked, “Should I leave?”
“I’m not finished with you, my honey,” Eryk said and then turned to Ayla, “And I’m not finished with you, servant girl.”
“Your cousin’s wondering where you are and needs you to write a letter and send it by falcon to King Osric, so be quick about it. We’ll be in the common room, waiting. Don’t keep us waiting. Come, Breek!”
The Dwarf, without sparing Eryk Waverly a glance followed Ayla out of the room, but just as Eryk, unplussed, was setting back to fucking the whore, Ayla thrust her head back and shouted:
“And I’m no servant girl of yours, no matter how high up you think you are, my Lprd Waverly, you rabbit faced bastard!”
And so she slammed the door.
“Ten fingers…. Ten toes,” Myrne said, “hair coal black, lips blood red like a child from a fairy tale.”
“Perfect, your Highness,” the Mistress Willen, who had opened her house to the pregnant Queen said.
“Well,” Myrne said, “a little ugly to tell the truth. I had no idea. I really,” she yawned, “had no idea about anything. I didn’t know something could hurt like that. I always assumed…. Now I know why my mother only did it once.”
“My Lady,” Mistress Willen laughed, “you will have several children!”
“That,” the weary Myrne, damp hair in her face said, “I cannot imagine.”
The baby cried a little, and then was quiet. Its eyes rolled around behind its almost transparent lids, and the mistress of the house said, “I will put it in the cradle so you can both rest.”
Myrne turned a little so the older woman could take her son, and then she said, “But I have to stay up until my cousin arrives. His questfalcon is the only one I know that can find my husband wherever the King may be.”
“That may be him now,” Mistress Willen said as she heard a noise from the front of the house, and placed the sleeping baby in the cradle.
“He did not take to the breast,” Myrne noted.
“He will,” Mistress Willen said. “It is not as natural as some pretend.”
“I don’t think its natural at all,” Myrne declared as Eryk entered followed by Ayla.
“Cousin!”
“Ass!” Myrne put as much strength in her voice as she could, “I feel like something rolled over a part of my body I will not discuss with a man, and all I need you to do is have pen and paper and compose a letter for me to send to Osric. Where were you?”
Before Eryk could answer, Myrne said, “But I know where you were. The only question is why weren’t you here?”
“I’m sorry, Myrne,” Eryk said, sounding to Ayla, who had just entered with Breek, actually sorry for the first time that night. “I’m here now. Let me get my things so I can sit down and write.”
A few moments later, out of his good clothes and in a serviceable tunic, Eryk sat down and Myrne roused herself from sleep to compose. The good paper was to one side, and scrap on which he would compose the note was before him.
“Dear Husband, I have borne you… no… us… a son. He is black of hair, red of lip, white like the snow and shall be, in time, King of the Three Kingdoms. What shall we name him…. No. Scratch that out, His name is Blake.”
Eryk looked to his cousin.
“As his father is the Red Wolf, so his son will be the Black Fox. Blake.” Myrne concluded. “All my love, your wife and your Queen, Myrne Ceoldane. Lady of Herreboro and Queen of the Three Realms.”
So saying, the exhausted girl sank into bed, murmuring, “Eryk…. After you have sent this to Wolf, who may already now, for the horns have been blowing across the land, wait three hours to send a form of that letter to my mother and father and lastly… send one to Ambridge to let them know a dynasty has begun.”
“Really?”
“Now leave me,” Myrne said, “I am exhausted.”
As Eryk rose to leave, Myrne said, “And do not screw this up.”
“My dear,” Eryk said to Ayla as she came out of the room with the bloody cloths and a bucket of water, “may I have a word with you.”
Ayla held out the bucked and said, “You can help me carry this crap out is what you can do.”
Eryk wrinkled his brow and Ayla commented, “Men come into this world, splitting our snatches open, causing all manner of gore and water and shit. And all you do is cause gore and piss and shit and leave it for us, and then when we say, well put down that sword and pick this slopbucket up, you wrinkle your noses like the daintiest ladies and say, ‘Oh, but that’s women’s work.’ Well, if you want to have any word with me, you’ll be taking this bucket down.”
And so Eryk, unwillingly, did so.
“Now, Ayla,” he said, reasonably, “I understand that many women, when they have a fondness for a man, display by… being fractious.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said, coming to the bottom of the stairs a few paces before him.
“Spirited. Overly spirited perhaps. Spicy.”
“You’re calling me bitchy,” she looked at him levelly.
“I did not say it quite like that,” Eryk tried to put a laugh in his voice as he smiled.
“But you meant it.”
“I meant that when women often act that way around a man it is to convey feelings of… affection… that they might have difficulty explaining.”
She smiled at him from the side of her mouth, and the more Ayla looked at him, the more Eryk was unnerved and the more aware he was that he was carrying a bucket of shit and water.
“Uh… “ he began.
Eryk had always viewed Ayla’s rages as those of a servant like the sweet, fussy, but largely ignorant old women who had kept him at Waverly. Suddenly he was reminded that he had lived a more or less southern life, that class distinctions were considerable flattened in Herreboro where Myrne and Ayla had grown up and that now, a woman, every bit at intelligent and entitled as himself was looking at him with the utmost disdain.
“Eryk Waverly,” Ayla said, “I do not treat you as if you were an ass because I secretly love you. This is not one of your southern comedies where shrewish woman and sarcastic man bite each others backs and insult each other to prove their passion. I have felt passion. This is no passion. I treat you like an ass because that is what you are. Now please be a good ass and take that slop bucket down the hall while I take these sheets to laundry. My thanks.”
Ayla nodded curtly, and she was gone.
MORE FRIDAY
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great and lengthy portion! So much going on and I am enjoying this story a lot! I am glad Queen Myrne gave birth safely. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
OHEAN
Under him, eyes wide, Harlan pulled him deeper inside. He beheld Rhodry, neck arched, mouth parted, eyes wide and shining as they looked down on him with a demon light, and them back up to the ceiling. Rhodry stood on the edge of the bed, fucking him deeply, until, with a startled shout, eyes shut, dry mouth open, hands clenched into fist, they came so hard both all but passed out.
Sweat dripped down Rhodry’s body. It beaded on his brow, touched his eyelids and ran down his face, still stamped with a smile of ecstasy. Harlan urged him on with his cries, with hands that were soft and dry clutching to his arms, to his hands, holding the High King’s hips
“I’m—” Rhodry heard his voice rise, “Coming.”
“Come,” Harlan whispered.
Rhodry’s eyes rolled back in his head. He felt himself gasping. He felt like something was being pulled out of him. Sex was a miracle. That’s all it was. Why couldn’t people understand? His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed in silence. The orgasm shook him, taking strength out of Rhodry until, teetering, he lay across Harlan.
The two of them, shaken from the place they had been, lay trembling and wet until finally, mouth dry, Rhodry turned onto his back, drawing his knees up.
So often they had been parted. Now they were never to be parted again, and the large man laughed as he lay on his side with the magician, facing him, running his finger along his smooth chest.
“Thou art the High King,” Harlan murmured, “in every way.
Rhodry threw back his head and laughed.
“The journey to Carfayle was good, but I am glad we are taking Andry with us and heading back to Sayers.”
“What a strange place to bring up a baby,” Harlan said. “Right after love making.”
“Nay, the appropriate place,” Rhodry disagreed. “For in lovemaking was that baby made. Andry was made in bed by us, in our sweat and funk and desire.”
“I cannot wait until the day you repeat those words to him,” Harlan said, turning over and reaching for his cigarettes.
“I will,” Rhodry said. “You think I won’t, but I will.”
“No,” Harlan said, taking one out and handing it to the King while he took one for himself. “I know you only too well.”
Rhodry smacked him on the rump and smiled at the satisfying clap of Harlan’s ass.
“I bet you think I enjoyed that.”
“I know you did,” Rhodry put down the cigarette and mounted Harlan like a lion, his mouth on the enchanter’s neck.
“I cannot say no to you,” Harlan told him, putting his cigarette away, almost despairing, lying flat under Rhodry while the larger man trapped him in his thighs, kissed his body up and down. When they had made love a second time Harlan said, “You are the only king who ever defeated me.”
Exhausted, pungent, hair tousled, Rhodry rasped: “Then why are you the one who looks like the victor?”
“If he sleeps longer, I will drink the water and go into find him.”
“It does not work that way,” Nimerly’s voice.
“I want to be with him!”
“Anson, in that world you already are!”
“Annatar,” he said. “How come you to be here?”
“Are you mad?” Ohean said. “Or do you think I am?”
“Here I am,” Kror spread out his fair hands, “And here is my house at the end of the world. I only want peace, and now this tall one,” he gestured to Barad, “comes shouting at my door.”
“I will not humor you by giving you a list of things you have done, or even begin to enter into your games which are just as tiresome as they were the last time I pushed you out of this world.”
“Last time?” Kror’s great face was fair and pale like a young Aiulman. He raised a golden brow.
“Are you remembering things the way they did not happen? As I remember you had a great deal of help, Annatar. And see, I am here. And I have friends as well.”
“As do I.”
Kror looked down at his white hands and began brushing his immaculate fingernails against the cream fur of his robe.
“Then what shall we do?”
“I,” Ohean said, “shall tell you to leave. And you will obey.”
For the first time Kror’s blue eyes flashed with irritation. He hooked his hand in a claw and said, “Like this?”
But even as he was lifting it, suddenly an arrow pierced his wrist and Ohean turned around just for a moment to see Barad with his bow.
The blood went down Kror’s wrist deeply red, now over the cream fur of his robe. His face was going livid, his eyes reddening.
“Ohean Penannyn!” he swore, dispensing with the pretence of Annatar and still ceasing to acknowledge Barad.
The palace was suddenly a black factory of belching chimneys and turning wheels, and the open doors a gash of red light, Kror rose up several times his height, his face flowering as it blacked, and then was lost in a hood now gone dark. His voice changed, staticky like dragons as his hand stretched out.
“Rise!” he commanded. “Rise with me! Stop pretending to be a man.”
Out of his back, blotting out the sky, making a great wind that caused Jon and Barad to shield their eyes, came great black wings the size of trees expanding with the sound of trees being ripped from the earth.
“Ever were you obsessed with being human, and that will be you downfall.”
As Ohean looked calmly up at the growing monster, he said, “You were never content to be human, and that is yours.”
Kror’s response was a great roar of dragon fire, gouts of black and red from his unhuman mouth and Ohean danced out of this way, his cloak fanning behind him.
“Get back! Get back!” Ohean sang. “I must battle. You are in the way.”
The others obeyed. The space in the snow before Kror’s palace was red with firelight. The monstrous Kror circled about while Ohean danced beneath him, vaulting on Sherreth, the Pendick a glowing light at its end.
“Annatar of the Stars! Annatar Brat who took what was mine! Annatar content to watch the generations of men from afar. What you should have desired was control. I would have changed this world!” Kror declared, his new long tail coming down like a spiked club to strike the earth.
Ohean reached into the snow and threw up a handful of it.
“But what you shall do,” he commanded, “is leave his world!”
Even as he spoke, the snow did not fall. It hung about him, glittering, a dome of stars while he stood under Sherreth singing to himself.
“Fight with me!” Kror growled. “Fight with me, damn you, or I’ll fight with these. These little elves and these little men. I’ll kill them all!”
Ohean reached out his hand, and just like that, each of the glittering stars fell into his hand, a pile of lights. He stretched out the bright Sherreth and began slowly walking to Kror, an enormous monster with baleful eyes who stared down at him now, sinuous tale moving in the air.
Ohean traced a line in the snow, and it was glowing.
“This is for you,” he said quietly.
“What foolishness is this?” Kror rumbled.
Ohean moved away and cried, “For you!”
He cast the stars down, and they exploded in white. Kror screamed out, and suddenly a crack in the earth, no… in the world was opening.
While Kror screamed, the engine castle was falling, the camps were falling, all of it was falling and Kror was falling. Screams went up, and now, beyond the falling castle, Barad, Jon and Burt saw, for the first time, the Muspel, the Firefolk, part human, seeming part dragon, rearing up long enough to be sucked down, filling the suddenly black and red night with their screams. All of the fortress was being sucked in now the giant form of Kror was reaching out to Ohean.
“Ohean!” Barad shouted.
“Annatar!” Kror screamed.
Ohean stood on the lip of the chaos, not even turning around and Kror’s great arms went about him, pulling him into the departing blackness. As he disappeared, Ohean sang, “I’ll kill you there, so you won’t come back here!” As he went down hands uplifted in triumph, the sorcerer laughed and laughed, the echoing of his laughs and Kror’s screams coming together from the unimaginable blackness.
Jon and Ohean stood horrified, but Garavac and Rhyan turned to each other, nodding.
With a mighty dive, Garavac put his hands together, and the massive Vomer jumped into the darkness. Rhyan stood on the edge and said, “Don’t you two even think of it!”
And then he jumped into the darkness and just like that, it was all gone.
In the cold snow, under the black sky and the stars, Barad Uelengad and Jon Oscar Nighthawk stood together. The land was empty and the two of them looked at each other before stumbling around and finding a place to sit. It was as if none of it had happened. Garavac, Rhyan and Ohean were gone. The other Vomor were a day away. They were all alone.
“What do we do?” Jon wondered.
Turning a fatherly look to him, Barad said nothing, but he wrapped his arm about him.
Quietly the snow fell.
They were both desolate.
Slowly, Ohean opened his eyes. Anson was in a darkened room with him and when he turned his head a little, surprised by its heaviness. He stopped moving and closed his eyes, for their forms were not stable and on top of them were the forms of others.
“I have to get used to this,” Ohean said.
“How does your head feel?” Anson asked, when he saw Ohean touch his forehead.
“Like its going to melt. Like its going to fall off.”
Ohean turned his head to Jon and was sorry he did, for he felt like his face was sliding off. He said, “I suppose you were there too.”
Pol did not know what he was talking about, but from the look on the Prince of Ondres’s face, neither did Anson.
“I learned everything,” Ohean said. Then he said, “I need water.”
“You need to rest.”
“No, no,” Ohean said. “I have to tell you what I learned… what I am learning now. I must tell you everything.”
When Anson came back into the room, Ohean said, “But keep that light off. It’s all new, and I am not… settled yet.”
Anson brought him the cup of water. Ohean spoke.
“It is something we take on faither, the Royan at least, that we have lived many lives, though only a few of us are to be awakened to them. For most of us it is not harmful.”
“I have heard the Zahem believe the same thing,” Pol said, but Ohean only nodded, not knowing what else to say to this.
“It was said that I was the coming again of Annatar who was the coming again of Akkrabath and that Akkrabath was one of the many incarnations of Varayan.”
“That part,” Anson admitted, “I have never understood.”
“The Gods came into the world many times, to teach, to protect,” Ohean said. “Those incarnations have been called avatars.”
Anson nodded, “But each avatar was distinct on its own. So when Akkrebeth came he was distinctly Akkrebath, not simply the last incarnation reborn, like spokes on a wheel or like branches on a tree. But each of those branches had other lives and each of those lives were their own, distinct, not just the same soul coming back again and again.”
“Like…. A bread print making a new loaf?” Pol suggested. “Rather than simply the same bread being regurgitated?”
Anson looked at Pol with an unreadable expression, but Ohean said. “Yes. Much like it.”
“Have you collected all your lives?” Anson said, “all the lives of Akkrebeth.”
“Yes,” Ohean said. “But here is something else. Do you know why it is called the Rootless Isle, and yet the Tree in it center is said to go deep into the heart of the earth?”
“I did wonder that!” Anson said, “though I did not ask.”
“It is because,” Ohean told him, “it does not go into the heart of this earth.”
Anson frowned and said, “I don’t follow.”
“The Tree goes into the heart of existence.”
“Yggdrassil,” Anson said, “The world tree!”
“Yes, but it is really the universal Tree, or more than universal, for it goes through all worlds and all worlds spin about it.”
“The world of the Gods,” Anson said, “and the world of the devils. The world of…”
“No,” Ohean said, “all worlds.”
Before Anson could speak again, Ohean said, “There are many, many worlds. The Gods and even the High Folk inhabit them all, but not us. This why sometimes they greet us as if they knew us, as the Elves greeted you that night in Rheged. For there are other worlds, other Ossars, other Sussainies, other Remulan Empires.”
“Other us?” Pol said.
“Yes,” Ohean said. “Though it is not easy to see right away. In one world I am still Ohean, but much older. In another I am called Harlan. In that world the Royan are called the Fail, and they resisted the Empire when it came and so they made for themselves a strong Empire. In that world the Sendics live in only a fraction of it. There is a King. He is called Rhodry, he is mighty and the soul of the land. His brother was King before him, but did not rise to take up his duty. In this world, Anson, you are both. In another world you are Adam King of Locress. Locress is a whole land and I am your teacher. I fight a great demon and, I believe, may die. In one world there is no Rootless Isle. In another it is called Watergarden and still, in another, Avalon. Always there is a mighty sword, Excalibur, Dragon;s Tooth. The story changes, but is the same. I have lived many lives, and died many deaths and will not die. Always, you have been at my side.”
“Those worlds are here,” Anson said. “All around us.”
“Yes, living right now. I am passing through them even now.”
“If this is so, Ohean, then what comes next? Do we head up to the north to win glory?”
“No,” Ohean said. “We avoid that glory. There is another fight for us. We are going south.”
KINGSBORO
“In the north it seems,” Anthony Pembroke began, and when his brother, who looked like him only with dark haired raised an eyebrow, he restated, “no it is true it would be more appropriate to say, that Myrne Herreboro has born a son.”
“Anthony,” Queen Isobel asked from where she sat at the council table, “why do you act as if you were in Edmund’s court and not give the woman her true title. She is Queen Myrne and her son is the Prince.”
“If she and this Osric can hold their land,” Sir Anthony said.
“They hold two kingdoms,” Isobel said, “with the support not only of their own lords, but of Rheged, Elmet and Ossariand, and the two kingdoms they hold are two more than you do, so it is time to call them King Osric and Queen Myrne.”
“There was a time,” Anthony said to Cedd, “when a Queen did not sit in King’s Council.”
“There was a time when a lord knew his place,” Queen Isobel said. “In your life time you only knew Queen Tourmaline who died young and Queen Essily who did not even receive her title, so I cannot blame your tongue for not knowing when to keep still, but I am from Sussail where we know what a ruler is, so have a car, Anthony, before I show you.”
Here Cedd could not help but laugh into his beard until Isobel’s eyes flashed, and Cedd said, “Apologize to the Queen.”
“Forgive me, your Grace.”
Isobel nodded in curt acceptance.
“But,” Lord Francis said beside his brother, Anthony, “before we drifted from our original point of conversation we were speaking of the situation in the north and what it means for us.”
“What it means for us,” Lord Buwa of Southmountain said, “is we have not established our allegiances.”
When Isobel looked to him, Lord Buwa said, “Your majesty, we have an allegiance with Sussail, which we assume is allied to Daumany, but if Daumany should go to war with the north.—“”
“But it is already at war with the north,” Cedd said. “William eats at Ambrdige every night.”
“But does that mean we must eat at Ambridge every night?” Anthony said. “I have no love of Edmund, and Inglad is on our northern border. Surely he is waiting to hear something from us. Everyday we do nothing—”
“Idris has already done something,” Francis said, “and he is the King’s brother in law. Word is that Imogen will bear him a son soon. Morgellyn has declared for no one yet, but can she not declare for Edmund and Inglad.”
“We must wait, it seems,” Cedd said.
“But how long, your Grace?” Lord Buwa demanded.
“As long as we can without going to war,” Cedd said. “I thought we were done with Daumans and done with wars. I don’t ever want to see young men heaped up as corpses, farms destroyed, women raped, children made orphans.”
Cedd shook his head.
“Not in my Westrial, not during my reign.”
Isobel had been standing at the window, looking over the Great Market. Late spring, and the sun shone on the city with all of its people far from battle and the troubles of war.
“Friends,” she said, “might I have a word with my Lord?”
They all looked at the Queen suspiciously, but Francis said, rising, “Of course, your Grace.”
“No,” Isobel said, “it is not right that you all should leave. We will go out in the hall. It is fair news, but the King must here if first.”
The Queen left the room, and Cedd followed her out into the hall.
“Isobel,” he began, but she placed a hand on her stomach.
“Isobel?”
“I have missed my courses for the third time. I wanted to make absolutely sure.”
Cedd help Isobel away from him, looking her up and down as a smile dawned on his face.
“He will be strong and healthy, and no son of either of your sisters. I am bearing you and Westrial a son.”
MORE BOOK OF BATTLES TOMORROW
Under him, eyes wide, Harlan pulled him deeper inside. He beheld Rhodry, neck arched, mouth parted, eyes wide and shining as they looked down on him with a demon light, and them back up to the ceiling. Rhodry stood on the edge of the bed, fucking him deeply, until, with a startled shout, eyes shut, dry mouth open, hands clenched into fist, they came so hard both all but passed out.
Sweat dripped down Rhodry’s body. It beaded on his brow, touched his eyelids and ran down his face, still stamped with a smile of ecstasy. Harlan urged him on with his cries, with hands that were soft and dry clutching to his arms, to his hands, holding the High King’s hips
“I’m—” Rhodry heard his voice rise, “Coming.”
“Come,” Harlan whispered.
Rhodry’s eyes rolled back in his head. He felt himself gasping. He felt like something was being pulled out of him. Sex was a miracle. That’s all it was. Why couldn’t people understand? His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed in silence. The orgasm shook him, taking strength out of Rhodry until, teetering, he lay across Harlan.
The two of them, shaken from the place they had been, lay trembling and wet until finally, mouth dry, Rhodry turned onto his back, drawing his knees up.
So often they had been parted. Now they were never to be parted again, and the large man laughed as he lay on his side with the magician, facing him, running his finger along his smooth chest.
“Thou art the High King,” Harlan murmured, “in every way.
Rhodry threw back his head and laughed.
“The journey to Carfayle was good, but I am glad we are taking Andry with us and heading back to Sayers.”
“What a strange place to bring up a baby,” Harlan said. “Right after love making.”
“Nay, the appropriate place,” Rhodry disagreed. “For in lovemaking was that baby made. Andry was made in bed by us, in our sweat and funk and desire.”
“I cannot wait until the day you repeat those words to him,” Harlan said, turning over and reaching for his cigarettes.
“I will,” Rhodry said. “You think I won’t, but I will.”
“No,” Harlan said, taking one out and handing it to the King while he took one for himself. “I know you only too well.”
Rhodry smacked him on the rump and smiled at the satisfying clap of Harlan’s ass.
“I bet you think I enjoyed that.”
“I know you did,” Rhodry put down the cigarette and mounted Harlan like a lion, his mouth on the enchanter’s neck.
“I cannot say no to you,” Harlan told him, putting his cigarette away, almost despairing, lying flat under Rhodry while the larger man trapped him in his thighs, kissed his body up and down. When they had made love a second time Harlan said, “You are the only king who ever defeated me.”
Exhausted, pungent, hair tousled, Rhodry rasped: “Then why are you the one who looks like the victor?”
“If he sleeps longer, I will drink the water and go into find him.”
“It does not work that way,” Nimerly’s voice.
“I want to be with him!”
“Anson, in that world you already are!”
“Annatar,” he said. “How come you to be here?”
“Are you mad?” Ohean said. “Or do you think I am?”
“Here I am,” Kror spread out his fair hands, “And here is my house at the end of the world. I only want peace, and now this tall one,” he gestured to Barad, “comes shouting at my door.”
“I will not humor you by giving you a list of things you have done, or even begin to enter into your games which are just as tiresome as they were the last time I pushed you out of this world.”
“Last time?” Kror’s great face was fair and pale like a young Aiulman. He raised a golden brow.
“Are you remembering things the way they did not happen? As I remember you had a great deal of help, Annatar. And see, I am here. And I have friends as well.”
“As do I.”
Kror looked down at his white hands and began brushing his immaculate fingernails against the cream fur of his robe.
“Then what shall we do?”
“I,” Ohean said, “shall tell you to leave. And you will obey.”
For the first time Kror’s blue eyes flashed with irritation. He hooked his hand in a claw and said, “Like this?”
But even as he was lifting it, suddenly an arrow pierced his wrist and Ohean turned around just for a moment to see Barad with his bow.
The blood went down Kror’s wrist deeply red, now over the cream fur of his robe. His face was going livid, his eyes reddening.
“Ohean Penannyn!” he swore, dispensing with the pretence of Annatar and still ceasing to acknowledge Barad.
The palace was suddenly a black factory of belching chimneys and turning wheels, and the open doors a gash of red light, Kror rose up several times his height, his face flowering as it blacked, and then was lost in a hood now gone dark. His voice changed, staticky like dragons as his hand stretched out.
“Rise!” he commanded. “Rise with me! Stop pretending to be a man.”
Out of his back, blotting out the sky, making a great wind that caused Jon and Barad to shield their eyes, came great black wings the size of trees expanding with the sound of trees being ripped from the earth.
“Ever were you obsessed with being human, and that will be you downfall.”
As Ohean looked calmly up at the growing monster, he said, “You were never content to be human, and that is yours.”
Kror’s response was a great roar of dragon fire, gouts of black and red from his unhuman mouth and Ohean danced out of this way, his cloak fanning behind him.
“Get back! Get back!” Ohean sang. “I must battle. You are in the way.”
The others obeyed. The space in the snow before Kror’s palace was red with firelight. The monstrous Kror circled about while Ohean danced beneath him, vaulting on Sherreth, the Pendick a glowing light at its end.
“Annatar of the Stars! Annatar Brat who took what was mine! Annatar content to watch the generations of men from afar. What you should have desired was control. I would have changed this world!” Kror declared, his new long tail coming down like a spiked club to strike the earth.
Ohean reached into the snow and threw up a handful of it.
“But what you shall do,” he commanded, “is leave his world!”
Even as he spoke, the snow did not fall. It hung about him, glittering, a dome of stars while he stood under Sherreth singing to himself.
“Fight with me!” Kror growled. “Fight with me, damn you, or I’ll fight with these. These little elves and these little men. I’ll kill them all!”
Ohean reached out his hand, and just like that, each of the glittering stars fell into his hand, a pile of lights. He stretched out the bright Sherreth and began slowly walking to Kror, an enormous monster with baleful eyes who stared down at him now, sinuous tale moving in the air.
Ohean traced a line in the snow, and it was glowing.
“This is for you,” he said quietly.
“What foolishness is this?” Kror rumbled.
Ohean moved away and cried, “For you!”
He cast the stars down, and they exploded in white. Kror screamed out, and suddenly a crack in the earth, no… in the world was opening.
While Kror screamed, the engine castle was falling, the camps were falling, all of it was falling and Kror was falling. Screams went up, and now, beyond the falling castle, Barad, Jon and Burt saw, for the first time, the Muspel, the Firefolk, part human, seeming part dragon, rearing up long enough to be sucked down, filling the suddenly black and red night with their screams. All of the fortress was being sucked in now the giant form of Kror was reaching out to Ohean.
“Ohean!” Barad shouted.
“Annatar!” Kror screamed.
Ohean stood on the lip of the chaos, not even turning around and Kror’s great arms went about him, pulling him into the departing blackness. As he disappeared, Ohean sang, “I’ll kill you there, so you won’t come back here!” As he went down hands uplifted in triumph, the sorcerer laughed and laughed, the echoing of his laughs and Kror’s screams coming together from the unimaginable blackness.
Jon and Ohean stood horrified, but Garavac and Rhyan turned to each other, nodding.
With a mighty dive, Garavac put his hands together, and the massive Vomer jumped into the darkness. Rhyan stood on the edge and said, “Don’t you two even think of it!”
And then he jumped into the darkness and just like that, it was all gone.
In the cold snow, under the black sky and the stars, Barad Uelengad and Jon Oscar Nighthawk stood together. The land was empty and the two of them looked at each other before stumbling around and finding a place to sit. It was as if none of it had happened. Garavac, Rhyan and Ohean were gone. The other Vomor were a day away. They were all alone.
“What do we do?” Jon wondered.
Turning a fatherly look to him, Barad said nothing, but he wrapped his arm about him.
Quietly the snow fell.
They were both desolate.
Slowly, Ohean opened his eyes. Anson was in a darkened room with him and when he turned his head a little, surprised by its heaviness. He stopped moving and closed his eyes, for their forms were not stable and on top of them were the forms of others.
“I have to get used to this,” Ohean said.
“How does your head feel?” Anson asked, when he saw Ohean touch his forehead.
“Like its going to melt. Like its going to fall off.”
Ohean turned his head to Jon and was sorry he did, for he felt like his face was sliding off. He said, “I suppose you were there too.”
Pol did not know what he was talking about, but from the look on the Prince of Ondres’s face, neither did Anson.
“I learned everything,” Ohean said. Then he said, “I need water.”
“You need to rest.”
“No, no,” Ohean said. “I have to tell you what I learned… what I am learning now. I must tell you everything.”
When Anson came back into the room, Ohean said, “But keep that light off. It’s all new, and I am not… settled yet.”
Anson brought him the cup of water. Ohean spoke.
“It is something we take on faither, the Royan at least, that we have lived many lives, though only a few of us are to be awakened to them. For most of us it is not harmful.”
“I have heard the Zahem believe the same thing,” Pol said, but Ohean only nodded, not knowing what else to say to this.
“It was said that I was the coming again of Annatar who was the coming again of Akkrabath and that Akkrabath was one of the many incarnations of Varayan.”
“That part,” Anson admitted, “I have never understood.”
“The Gods came into the world many times, to teach, to protect,” Ohean said. “Those incarnations have been called avatars.”
Anson nodded, “But each avatar was distinct on its own. So when Akkrebeth came he was distinctly Akkrebath, not simply the last incarnation reborn, like spokes on a wheel or like branches on a tree. But each of those branches had other lives and each of those lives were their own, distinct, not just the same soul coming back again and again.”
“Like…. A bread print making a new loaf?” Pol suggested. “Rather than simply the same bread being regurgitated?”
Anson looked at Pol with an unreadable expression, but Ohean said. “Yes. Much like it.”
“Have you collected all your lives?” Anson said, “all the lives of Akkrebeth.”
“Yes,” Ohean said. “But here is something else. Do you know why it is called the Rootless Isle, and yet the Tree in it center is said to go deep into the heart of the earth?”
“I did wonder that!” Anson said, “though I did not ask.”
“It is because,” Ohean told him, “it does not go into the heart of this earth.”
Anson frowned and said, “I don’t follow.”
“The Tree goes into the heart of existence.”
“Yggdrassil,” Anson said, “The world tree!”
“Yes, but it is really the universal Tree, or more than universal, for it goes through all worlds and all worlds spin about it.”
“The world of the Gods,” Anson said, “and the world of the devils. The world of…”
“No,” Ohean said, “all worlds.”
Before Anson could speak again, Ohean said, “There are many, many worlds. The Gods and even the High Folk inhabit them all, but not us. This why sometimes they greet us as if they knew us, as the Elves greeted you that night in Rheged. For there are other worlds, other Ossars, other Sussainies, other Remulan Empires.”
“Other us?” Pol said.
“Yes,” Ohean said. “Though it is not easy to see right away. In one world I am still Ohean, but much older. In another I am called Harlan. In that world the Royan are called the Fail, and they resisted the Empire when it came and so they made for themselves a strong Empire. In that world the Sendics live in only a fraction of it. There is a King. He is called Rhodry, he is mighty and the soul of the land. His brother was King before him, but did not rise to take up his duty. In this world, Anson, you are both. In another world you are Adam King of Locress. Locress is a whole land and I am your teacher. I fight a great demon and, I believe, may die. In one world there is no Rootless Isle. In another it is called Watergarden and still, in another, Avalon. Always there is a mighty sword, Excalibur, Dragon;s Tooth. The story changes, but is the same. I have lived many lives, and died many deaths and will not die. Always, you have been at my side.”
“Those worlds are here,” Anson said. “All around us.”
“Yes, living right now. I am passing through them even now.”
“If this is so, Ohean, then what comes next? Do we head up to the north to win glory?”
“No,” Ohean said. “We avoid that glory. There is another fight for us. We are going south.”
KINGSBORO
“In the north it seems,” Anthony Pembroke began, and when his brother, who looked like him only with dark haired raised an eyebrow, he restated, “no it is true it would be more appropriate to say, that Myrne Herreboro has born a son.”
“Anthony,” Queen Isobel asked from where she sat at the council table, “why do you act as if you were in Edmund’s court and not give the woman her true title. She is Queen Myrne and her son is the Prince.”
“If she and this Osric can hold their land,” Sir Anthony said.
“They hold two kingdoms,” Isobel said, “with the support not only of their own lords, but of Rheged, Elmet and Ossariand, and the two kingdoms they hold are two more than you do, so it is time to call them King Osric and Queen Myrne.”
“There was a time,” Anthony said to Cedd, “when a Queen did not sit in King’s Council.”
“There was a time when a lord knew his place,” Queen Isobel said. “In your life time you only knew Queen Tourmaline who died young and Queen Essily who did not even receive her title, so I cannot blame your tongue for not knowing when to keep still, but I am from Sussail where we know what a ruler is, so have a car, Anthony, before I show you.”
Here Cedd could not help but laugh into his beard until Isobel’s eyes flashed, and Cedd said, “Apologize to the Queen.”
“Forgive me, your Grace.”
Isobel nodded in curt acceptance.
“But,” Lord Francis said beside his brother, Anthony, “before we drifted from our original point of conversation we were speaking of the situation in the north and what it means for us.”
“What it means for us,” Lord Buwa of Southmountain said, “is we have not established our allegiances.”
When Isobel looked to him, Lord Buwa said, “Your majesty, we have an allegiance with Sussail, which we assume is allied to Daumany, but if Daumany should go to war with the north.—“”
“But it is already at war with the north,” Cedd said. “William eats at Ambrdige every night.”
“But does that mean we must eat at Ambridge every night?” Anthony said. “I have no love of Edmund, and Inglad is on our northern border. Surely he is waiting to hear something from us. Everyday we do nothing—”
“Idris has already done something,” Francis said, “and he is the King’s brother in law. Word is that Imogen will bear him a son soon. Morgellyn has declared for no one yet, but can she not declare for Edmund and Inglad.”
“We must wait, it seems,” Cedd said.
“But how long, your Grace?” Lord Buwa demanded.
“As long as we can without going to war,” Cedd said. “I thought we were done with Daumans and done with wars. I don’t ever want to see young men heaped up as corpses, farms destroyed, women raped, children made orphans.”
Cedd shook his head.
“Not in my Westrial, not during my reign.”
Isobel had been standing at the window, looking over the Great Market. Late spring, and the sun shone on the city with all of its people far from battle and the troubles of war.
“Friends,” she said, “might I have a word with my Lord?”
They all looked at the Queen suspiciously, but Francis said, rising, “Of course, your Grace.”
“No,” Isobel said, “it is not right that you all should leave. We will go out in the hall. It is fair news, but the King must here if first.”
The Queen left the room, and Cedd followed her out into the hall.
“Isobel,” he began, but she placed a hand on her stomach.
“Isobel?”
“I have missed my courses for the third time. I wanted to make absolutely sure.”
Cedd help Isobel away from him, looking her up and down as a smile dawned on his face.
“He will be strong and healthy, and no son of either of your sisters. I am bearing you and Westrial a son.”
MORE BOOK OF BATTLES TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Wow lots going on and good to get back to this story! Ohean is going through and learning a lot! Isobel is pregnant! That was some great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Isobel is pregnant indeed and full of fire. Sorry I just saw your post now.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
OLD COMPANIONS BECOME NEW FRIENDS, AND A MISSION BEGINS
OHEAN
They were coming, Ohean knew. He was used to this second sensing, but ever since the Ethame, all of his powers were stronger. If he leaned into the Wind, he could know all things, perhaps even the very end of this journey.
But then when that goes, my humanity goes as well. We must, at all costs, stay human. He knew that tomorrow They would arrive, whoever they were, and then Ohean would know why he was needed and what he was supposed to do. Right now he was reading a man’s cards.
“And you have the Knight of Fire,” Ohean said. “Right here, on the east corner, the Knight of Fire means something will arise to tweak your temper, but if you can hold onto your anger, then great victory will come your way…”
Looking around the tavern to see Anson, and Austin, he sensed very strongly that they were a unit or the beginning of one. He had experienced them in many worlds and in many lives together, lives he would not tell them about, but where they had been long standing friends, other worlds where, at this moment, they were also together. This is why they had been brought together here
In his youth, in his real youth, not this simply being younger than forty, Anson had no patience and no peace. Even as a general in the first Dauman Wars, he had learned that much power did not make peace. It made the need to control, to see into things, and now he was just beginning to learn the way of the Serpent and the Dragon, of real magic. He felt the desire to use it, push the envelope a little and look into the future, to see who was coming tomorrow.
The next morning Ohean was awakened by a sharp knock on the door of the vardo.
“What is…?” he began.
“I’ll get it,” Anson said, crawling out of bed in his under things, hair rumpled.
“Lay back down,” Ohean said.
Anson did not look as if he was sure about the propriety of lying back down, but he did so warily, watching Ohean as he did, and then sunlight streamed in from the door as the wizard opened it, and he clapped his hands.
“You are here!” he cried “You are both here! Now we can begin!”
“Sir…” Austin heard the unsteady voice of one woman begin. “We were just looking for directions—”
“Enough,” Ohean said. “Come in.”
“I’ll tie up the horses,” another woman’s voice said, and then Austin could hear her coming up the vardo steps.
The inside of the vardo darkened now, and Austin, sitting up in bed, focused on a tall woman with very dark and very dirty hair, a travelstained cloak, hanging from her shoulders.
“I am Ohean,” Ohean said, “and this, sleeping in the pallet over there, is Anson.”
“Pleased,” Anson said, sitting up and saluting, while he tried to smooth down his hair.
The young woman smiled and she said, “My companion who—” the door came open again, and the woman continued, “This is my friend and journeying companion. Her name is Dissenbark. And I,… my name is Theone.”
“We’ve been traveling for the last day,” Theone said, once they were sitting outside of the vardo eating what Dissenbark and Anson had prepared.
“And I had been told, by this woman, Yarrow—”
“Yarrow!” Ohean interrupted.
“You know her?”
“Not by that name,” Ohean said, “but yes. She spoke to me, saying she must send someone to join me.”
Anson, who had seen no woman of any time come to them since they’d left the Isle thought, reminded himself that these days Ohean was not always simply Ohean. Had he met this Yarrow in a dream, or in another world?
“Well, I am that one,” Theone said, tearing the light muffin in two and dipping it in honey,” And I have found you. This is the first thing that’s gone right.”
“Surely not the first thing,” Dissenbark poured more of the creamy milk into the blue mug Theone was drinking from, and the dark haired woman smiled.
“Actually, many things have gone right, the greatest of them being finding my friend, Dissenbark. We met just as winter set in, and spent the time on a farm south of here.”
“They would have kept us,” Dissenbark said, “for Farmer Remor said he liked a witch to keep the milk sweet and charm the rats away. I set a blessing on his milk and on his meat, but said it was time to moving along. After all, the Lady Nimerly had sent me to the south some time ago, on a mission, and it was time to move on it.”
“Nimerly!” Anson said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Dissenbark answered. “I came to her after last year when there were fires all over Westrial and Cedd came to the throne. It was not allowed to burn witches, but arsonists they could and so many of us fled. I led many of my fellows sisters and brothers to the Rootless Isle. I stayed a little time, but in the end, I said I had to be moving and so she gave me this to do.”
“Then know this,” Anson said, “I am Anson Athelyn, brother of Cedd and Prince of Ondres. My aunt is Nimerly, and we have just left that same Rootless Isle. This man you see beside you is none other than the mage Ohean, and beside him is Lord Austin Buwa. We were given no specific reason to leave, but only sent south, or rather Ohean said we must go south.”
“And now I know we were to meet you,” Ohean said, simply.
“Oh, Ohean,” Austin said, amazed, “is this always how magic works?”
“No,” Ohean said at the same time Dissenbark did, and both of them laughed, ruefully.
“Much of the time,” Dissenbark said, “it does not work at all.”
Dissenbark headed back to the stove by the vardo, where Anson was frying flapjacks, and they heard him say:
“Dissenbark…? That’s an interesting name…”
“You are on some sort of quest,” Ohean said in a low voice, folding his hands together. “You are aiming to do something.”
Theone said, “Well yes.”
“And being pursued. Or you were pursued.”
Theone blinked at him.
“Look,” he said. “Your business is your own, and I will not tell you what you should and should not do. But the six of us are in this together, and I suggest you tell me what we’re going toward.”
Theone sat up and took a breath..
“I was going to do it on my own. I hadn’t planned on having to divulge my plans to… anyone.”
“Not even that girl. Not even that Dissenbark.”
“I didn’t ask her to come with me,” Theone said, desperately. “Or, you, begging your pardon. I was fine on my own—”
“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Ohean, disregarded this, and reached under his cloak, into a shirt pocket for an old cigarette.
“Well, at any road this is my thing,” Theone said. “This is my… task. It has to do with me.”
“Then why am I here? And why have I been sent. And why the rest of us and Dissenbark—what an awful name—to you, and why are we together?”
Ohean stood up. “My dear, you are on the Wind, now. You neither know where it comes from or whence it goeth. This is not about you anymore. If it ever was, which I doubt, and you need to know that.”
Theone blinked and cocked her head like a surprised dog, because she hadn’t seen Ohean light the cigarette, but there it was, smoldering, and then he said:
“Now, that’s what I’m going to tell you, and it’s for you to decide what you want to tell me. But I suggest you do it in good time, because I sense there isn’t much more time to lose.”
“Anson, Prince of the Scullery, come from the kitchen and rest a while,” Ohean said.
“See, he’s a good man,” Anson said to Dissenbark. “Always watches out for me.”
“You work too much,” Ohean chided, “I’ll not have you wearing your knuckles away.”
“Where is she?” Dissenbark shielded her eyes and looked about for Theone.
“Gone into town,” Ohean shrugged from where he sat on a rock.
This was the first warm day and the sky was a deep blue. Dissenbark looked doubtful, and Ohean said, “I’ll tell you what? If your friend has truly run off, she’s left her horse and things behind and you’ve got us now, so don’t worry.”
Dissenbark didn’t say anything. She felt it disloyal to admit that, for a moment, she had thought that maybe Theone had run off.
“She had the look of someone who needed to be by herself,” Austin said.
An hour or so later, they saw the figure of Theone coming from town, her black hair all down her back, dust on her hem.
“Where were you?” Dissenbark demanded, wiping strands of orange hair from her face.
“Clearly I was in town,” Theone said. Then she said, “I must speak to Mage Ohean. May I?” she directed this to him.
He nodded and stood up.
“Anson?”
“I’m his,” Anson said. “I should never be away from him.”
“Well, then I’m not going to be the odd bitch left out,” Dissenbark threw her dishtowel against the vardo.
“For just the once,” Ohean said, placing a gentle hand on Anson’s shoulder, “we will be parted.”
Anson did not argue this, but only nodded, and even though it was a brief parting, Ohean found that it hurt him a little, having spent such a long time on the Island separated from Anson. He and Theone went off a ways.
“My father’s name was Heli and my mother was called Essnara. She was a princess of the royal house of Immrachyr.”
“Yes,” Ohean said, nodding. “She disappeared. They say she went to the South.”
“In search of the Jewels of Lia. She did not find them. She found my father and, in time, she died.”
“But,” Ohean said, “there was another of that house, Ethan of Meresell. He learned more about the wherabouts of the Beryls,” Ohean said to Theone’s surprise. “And he also disappeared to these parts.”
“I was taken,” said Theone. “After my mother died, the Hands took me to be raised as one of their Women. There, in the House of the Black Star, I met Ethan, and he told me he was going to find the Stones. He disappeared. But now I am going to find them, too. I don’t know what else to do. And I feel like I must.”
“Do you even know where they are?”
Theone said, ‘You know so much. All of these secrets and you know so much.”
“If you knew me better you would not be surprised by that,” Ohean said.
“They are in the Temple in Nava.”
Ohean bawked and made a strange noise.
“What?”
“You thought to walk into that place by yourself?” he said. The wizard shook his head. “Now I know why we were sent to you. You will need my help, and all of it, to enter that place. To take those Stones. Lia and all the Anyar be with us.” He shook his head, “It is a place of infernal enchantments.”
Theone was quiet a moment, then she said, “But you will help me.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s why I’m here.”
He was about to walk off when Theone called him again.
“Yes?”
She was quiet, then she put her hands to her mouth and said: “Ohean… this is my life. I have guarded this with my life. I am being chased.”
“Yes,” he said.
“How do I know…. That I can trust you?”
He neither smiled nor frowned, but there was something terrible in his face and then the enchanter told her: “Because I say you can.”
And with a ripple of his robes, he headed off toward the vardo.
The sun was landing on the leaves
And motes were turning in its beams
The water bubbled from the springs
When Laryn, coming from the woods
Goddess born
She taught the first young birds to sing!
O, katamasara
Ojealia fatassina
Mempledebe omna indras
Phenous
O, Lia, duart, Duarte,
Duara principina
O saladana
“That was a song!” Austin said, approving, as Dissenbark finished singing and they sat in the red light of the campfire.
“I believe it was a ballad by Judith of Basincourt. I learned it as a girl, back in Vand.”
“You’ve traveled along way,” Hace marveled.
“I don’t even know where Vand is,” Theone said.
To the southwest of Eshaan in Chyr. Some of the Chryan kings have come from there, but it’s its own territory, really. And it was the place of my girlhood. I’ve been traveling since I was nine,” Dissenbark, pulling her knees to her chest added, “That said, this is the first quest I’ve ever been on.”
“It doesn’t seem very safe,” Austin remarked said.
“It isn’t,” said Ohean. “And friend or no, when we get to Nsva—I will not speak its old name—I may ask you to part from me.”
“I will never part from either of you,” Austin said with a sudden fierceness. And then he remembered himself, ducked his head and said, “Please don’t ask me to.”
“You’re just beginning to have your life. I don’t want it cut short on account of anything I do.”
Austin nodded, but began picking up the plates, and Dissenbark said, “I know you must have something for us. Some sort of song.”
“I have no songs,” Austin said. “Not tonight.”
Dissenbark was about to try again when Austin said, “But my Lord, the Prince of Ondres is great a singer, as is Lord Ohean.”
Anson stopped in the middle of polishing the blade that glinted in the night, smiled and said, “Surely, Ash would like to sing.”
“Surely I would not,” Ohean said. “Anson, I know you have a song, and I would to hear one from you.”
“I suppose I do,” the Prince of Ondres said, and it seemed to Dissenbark the handsome, bronze haired man made much pretense of not wanting to sing it.
“It is by Delloran, the poet mage who was devoted to Ahnar. It is not sweet like some of the old ones. It is a poem of passion, and I learned to sing it young.”
“Sing it,” Theone said, “Or say it. For us.”
“I will stand,” Anson said while Austin stopped in the midst of cleaning the dishes, and Austin who had risen to pack away the uneaten food stopped as well. Anson added, “And probably sway a bit. And… No, I will do a newer poem. Let us save Delloran for later.”
They all nodded to this.
Anson closed his eyes, and chanted.
This is not the beginning of the end,
but rather end of all endings
the beginning of all beginnings
the winning of everything lost which
we were told, in faith, is always found again
every soul
is found again
all love lost
is found again
all chains bound are broken
all deficits compensated
all hungers, all thirst sated
amidst six jugs of water and the mother
of God
even every lost sock
every strayed thing
since we strayed from that first Garden
is found even now in the desert
that water, should become living water
should become wine, to become blood
and become body, and flesh, and my eternal
body joined to yours
that our tears,
poured out for a thousand days in darkest dungeons
in minds for years beaten and pillaged by dread,
by disappointment,
that our sweat, secreted from bodies demoned by panic
must become living water
that is the inevitable miracle of this wedding day
“That…” Theone began, “was…”
“It was damned beautiful,” Dissenbark said.
“Anda,” Ohean said, tenderly, “Who made that poem?”
Now the Prince of Ondres, warrior that he was, went red.
He said, quietly, “Why it was me, Ash.”
MORE AT THE END OF THE WEEK
OHEAN
They were coming, Ohean knew. He was used to this second sensing, but ever since the Ethame, all of his powers were stronger. If he leaned into the Wind, he could know all things, perhaps even the very end of this journey.
But then when that goes, my humanity goes as well. We must, at all costs, stay human. He knew that tomorrow They would arrive, whoever they were, and then Ohean would know why he was needed and what he was supposed to do. Right now he was reading a man’s cards.
“And you have the Knight of Fire,” Ohean said. “Right here, on the east corner, the Knight of Fire means something will arise to tweak your temper, but if you can hold onto your anger, then great victory will come your way…”
Looking around the tavern to see Anson, and Austin, he sensed very strongly that they were a unit or the beginning of one. He had experienced them in many worlds and in many lives together, lives he would not tell them about, but where they had been long standing friends, other worlds where, at this moment, they were also together. This is why they had been brought together here
In his youth, in his real youth, not this simply being younger than forty, Anson had no patience and no peace. Even as a general in the first Dauman Wars, he had learned that much power did not make peace. It made the need to control, to see into things, and now he was just beginning to learn the way of the Serpent and the Dragon, of real magic. He felt the desire to use it, push the envelope a little and look into the future, to see who was coming tomorrow.
The next morning Ohean was awakened by a sharp knock on the door of the vardo.
“What is…?” he began.
“I’ll get it,” Anson said, crawling out of bed in his under things, hair rumpled.
“Lay back down,” Ohean said.
Anson did not look as if he was sure about the propriety of lying back down, but he did so warily, watching Ohean as he did, and then sunlight streamed in from the door as the wizard opened it, and he clapped his hands.
“You are here!” he cried “You are both here! Now we can begin!”
“Sir…” Austin heard the unsteady voice of one woman begin. “We were just looking for directions—”
“Enough,” Ohean said. “Come in.”
“I’ll tie up the horses,” another woman’s voice said, and then Austin could hear her coming up the vardo steps.
The inside of the vardo darkened now, and Austin, sitting up in bed, focused on a tall woman with very dark and very dirty hair, a travelstained cloak, hanging from her shoulders.
“I am Ohean,” Ohean said, “and this, sleeping in the pallet over there, is Anson.”
“Pleased,” Anson said, sitting up and saluting, while he tried to smooth down his hair.
The young woman smiled and she said, “My companion who—” the door came open again, and the woman continued, “This is my friend and journeying companion. Her name is Dissenbark. And I,… my name is Theone.”
“We’ve been traveling for the last day,” Theone said, once they were sitting outside of the vardo eating what Dissenbark and Anson had prepared.
“And I had been told, by this woman, Yarrow—”
“Yarrow!” Ohean interrupted.
“You know her?”
“Not by that name,” Ohean said, “but yes. She spoke to me, saying she must send someone to join me.”
Anson, who had seen no woman of any time come to them since they’d left the Isle thought, reminded himself that these days Ohean was not always simply Ohean. Had he met this Yarrow in a dream, or in another world?
“Well, I am that one,” Theone said, tearing the light muffin in two and dipping it in honey,” And I have found you. This is the first thing that’s gone right.”
“Surely not the first thing,” Dissenbark poured more of the creamy milk into the blue mug Theone was drinking from, and the dark haired woman smiled.
“Actually, many things have gone right, the greatest of them being finding my friend, Dissenbark. We met just as winter set in, and spent the time on a farm south of here.”
“They would have kept us,” Dissenbark said, “for Farmer Remor said he liked a witch to keep the milk sweet and charm the rats away. I set a blessing on his milk and on his meat, but said it was time to moving along. After all, the Lady Nimerly had sent me to the south some time ago, on a mission, and it was time to move on it.”
“Nimerly!” Anson said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Dissenbark answered. “I came to her after last year when there were fires all over Westrial and Cedd came to the throne. It was not allowed to burn witches, but arsonists they could and so many of us fled. I led many of my fellows sisters and brothers to the Rootless Isle. I stayed a little time, but in the end, I said I had to be moving and so she gave me this to do.”
“Then know this,” Anson said, “I am Anson Athelyn, brother of Cedd and Prince of Ondres. My aunt is Nimerly, and we have just left that same Rootless Isle. This man you see beside you is none other than the mage Ohean, and beside him is Lord Austin Buwa. We were given no specific reason to leave, but only sent south, or rather Ohean said we must go south.”
“And now I know we were to meet you,” Ohean said, simply.
“Oh, Ohean,” Austin said, amazed, “is this always how magic works?”
“No,” Ohean said at the same time Dissenbark did, and both of them laughed, ruefully.
“Much of the time,” Dissenbark said, “it does not work at all.”
Dissenbark headed back to the stove by the vardo, where Anson was frying flapjacks, and they heard him say:
“Dissenbark…? That’s an interesting name…”
“You are on some sort of quest,” Ohean said in a low voice, folding his hands together. “You are aiming to do something.”
Theone said, “Well yes.”
“And being pursued. Or you were pursued.”
Theone blinked at him.
“Look,” he said. “Your business is your own, and I will not tell you what you should and should not do. But the six of us are in this together, and I suggest you tell me what we’re going toward.”
Theone sat up and took a breath..
“I was going to do it on my own. I hadn’t planned on having to divulge my plans to… anyone.”
“Not even that girl. Not even that Dissenbark.”
“I didn’t ask her to come with me,” Theone said, desperately. “Or, you, begging your pardon. I was fine on my own—”
“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Ohean, disregarded this, and reached under his cloak, into a shirt pocket for an old cigarette.
“Well, at any road this is my thing,” Theone said. “This is my… task. It has to do with me.”
“Then why am I here? And why have I been sent. And why the rest of us and Dissenbark—what an awful name—to you, and why are we together?”
Ohean stood up. “My dear, you are on the Wind, now. You neither know where it comes from or whence it goeth. This is not about you anymore. If it ever was, which I doubt, and you need to know that.”
Theone blinked and cocked her head like a surprised dog, because she hadn’t seen Ohean light the cigarette, but there it was, smoldering, and then he said:
“Now, that’s what I’m going to tell you, and it’s for you to decide what you want to tell me. But I suggest you do it in good time, because I sense there isn’t much more time to lose.”
“Anson, Prince of the Scullery, come from the kitchen and rest a while,” Ohean said.
“See, he’s a good man,” Anson said to Dissenbark. “Always watches out for me.”
“You work too much,” Ohean chided, “I’ll not have you wearing your knuckles away.”
“Where is she?” Dissenbark shielded her eyes and looked about for Theone.
“Gone into town,” Ohean shrugged from where he sat on a rock.
This was the first warm day and the sky was a deep blue. Dissenbark looked doubtful, and Ohean said, “I’ll tell you what? If your friend has truly run off, she’s left her horse and things behind and you’ve got us now, so don’t worry.”
Dissenbark didn’t say anything. She felt it disloyal to admit that, for a moment, she had thought that maybe Theone had run off.
“She had the look of someone who needed to be by herself,” Austin said.
An hour or so later, they saw the figure of Theone coming from town, her black hair all down her back, dust on her hem.
“Where were you?” Dissenbark demanded, wiping strands of orange hair from her face.
“Clearly I was in town,” Theone said. Then she said, “I must speak to Mage Ohean. May I?” she directed this to him.
He nodded and stood up.
“Anson?”
“I’m his,” Anson said. “I should never be away from him.”
“Well, then I’m not going to be the odd bitch left out,” Dissenbark threw her dishtowel against the vardo.
“For just the once,” Ohean said, placing a gentle hand on Anson’s shoulder, “we will be parted.”
Anson did not argue this, but only nodded, and even though it was a brief parting, Ohean found that it hurt him a little, having spent such a long time on the Island separated from Anson. He and Theone went off a ways.
“My father’s name was Heli and my mother was called Essnara. She was a princess of the royal house of Immrachyr.”
“Yes,” Ohean said, nodding. “She disappeared. They say she went to the South.”
“In search of the Jewels of Lia. She did not find them. She found my father and, in time, she died.”
“But,” Ohean said, “there was another of that house, Ethan of Meresell. He learned more about the wherabouts of the Beryls,” Ohean said to Theone’s surprise. “And he also disappeared to these parts.”
“I was taken,” said Theone. “After my mother died, the Hands took me to be raised as one of their Women. There, in the House of the Black Star, I met Ethan, and he told me he was going to find the Stones. He disappeared. But now I am going to find them, too. I don’t know what else to do. And I feel like I must.”
“Do you even know where they are?”
Theone said, ‘You know so much. All of these secrets and you know so much.”
“If you knew me better you would not be surprised by that,” Ohean said.
“They are in the Temple in Nava.”
Ohean bawked and made a strange noise.
“What?”
“You thought to walk into that place by yourself?” he said. The wizard shook his head. “Now I know why we were sent to you. You will need my help, and all of it, to enter that place. To take those Stones. Lia and all the Anyar be with us.” He shook his head, “It is a place of infernal enchantments.”
Theone was quiet a moment, then she said, “But you will help me.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s why I’m here.”
He was about to walk off when Theone called him again.
“Yes?”
She was quiet, then she put her hands to her mouth and said: “Ohean… this is my life. I have guarded this with my life. I am being chased.”
“Yes,” he said.
“How do I know…. That I can trust you?”
He neither smiled nor frowned, but there was something terrible in his face and then the enchanter told her: “Because I say you can.”
And with a ripple of his robes, he headed off toward the vardo.
The sun was landing on the leaves
And motes were turning in its beams
The water bubbled from the springs
When Laryn, coming from the woods
Goddess born
She taught the first young birds to sing!
O, katamasara
Ojealia fatassina
Mempledebe omna indras
Phenous
O, Lia, duart, Duarte,
Duara principina
O saladana
“That was a song!” Austin said, approving, as Dissenbark finished singing and they sat in the red light of the campfire.
“I believe it was a ballad by Judith of Basincourt. I learned it as a girl, back in Vand.”
“You’ve traveled along way,” Hace marveled.
“I don’t even know where Vand is,” Theone said.
To the southwest of Eshaan in Chyr. Some of the Chryan kings have come from there, but it’s its own territory, really. And it was the place of my girlhood. I’ve been traveling since I was nine,” Dissenbark, pulling her knees to her chest added, “That said, this is the first quest I’ve ever been on.”
“It doesn’t seem very safe,” Austin remarked said.
“It isn’t,” said Ohean. “And friend or no, when we get to Nsva—I will not speak its old name—I may ask you to part from me.”
“I will never part from either of you,” Austin said with a sudden fierceness. And then he remembered himself, ducked his head and said, “Please don’t ask me to.”
“You’re just beginning to have your life. I don’t want it cut short on account of anything I do.”
Austin nodded, but began picking up the plates, and Dissenbark said, “I know you must have something for us. Some sort of song.”
“I have no songs,” Austin said. “Not tonight.”
Dissenbark was about to try again when Austin said, “But my Lord, the Prince of Ondres is great a singer, as is Lord Ohean.”
Anson stopped in the middle of polishing the blade that glinted in the night, smiled and said, “Surely, Ash would like to sing.”
“Surely I would not,” Ohean said. “Anson, I know you have a song, and I would to hear one from you.”
“I suppose I do,” the Prince of Ondres said, and it seemed to Dissenbark the handsome, bronze haired man made much pretense of not wanting to sing it.
“It is by Delloran, the poet mage who was devoted to Ahnar. It is not sweet like some of the old ones. It is a poem of passion, and I learned to sing it young.”
“Sing it,” Theone said, “Or say it. For us.”
“I will stand,” Anson said while Austin stopped in the midst of cleaning the dishes, and Austin who had risen to pack away the uneaten food stopped as well. Anson added, “And probably sway a bit. And… No, I will do a newer poem. Let us save Delloran for later.”
They all nodded to this.
Anson closed his eyes, and chanted.
This is not the beginning of the end,
but rather end of all endings
the beginning of all beginnings
the winning of everything lost which
we were told, in faith, is always found again
every soul
is found again
all love lost
is found again
all chains bound are broken
all deficits compensated
all hungers, all thirst sated
amidst six jugs of water and the mother
of God
even every lost sock
every strayed thing
since we strayed from that first Garden
is found even now in the desert
that water, should become living water
should become wine, to become blood
and become body, and flesh, and my eternal
body joined to yours
that our tears,
poured out for a thousand days in darkest dungeons
in minds for years beaten and pillaged by dread,
by disappointment,
that our sweat, secreted from bodies demoned by panic
must become living water
that is the inevitable miracle of this wedding day
“That…” Theone began, “was…”
“It was damned beautiful,” Dissenbark said.
“Anda,” Ohean said, tenderly, “Who made that poem?”
Now the Prince of Ondres, warrior that he was, went red.
He said, quietly, “Why it was me, Ash.”
MORE AT THE END OF THE WEEK
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Much going on with Ohean and his ever expanding group of travellers. I am so glad you decided to post this series of stories despite not being sure about them. They are very good and I look forward to more at the end of the week!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
That really does me good. Thank you so much for saying that. I have become more sure and more in love with this story by sharing it with you.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
“Sing me that song again, Anlah,”
Ohean burrowed into the covers like a small animal and Anson, pleased to please, “I got another one, if it makes you happy?”
Ohean nodded and Hace said, “I’ll not sing it, cause the ladies are sleeping. I’ll whisper it to you.”
You brought me here that I might love you
and not that I should please myself
but that you should please me
and I would delight in your light
until this moment I knew that
if I walked, dusty footed to the Mount of Iru,
proof of a love I had not felt,
then after they peeled me from the weary rocks,
and well after this weary life
you would reward me
not with the sight of love
but with the love
but the love is now
now the possession, and from the corner
of my eye the procession of torch bearers
and sweet singers
water lingers in the bottom of baptism jars
before its transformed to sweet and heady wine
and this is the time of song and sense,
desire deep as well, water washing out all hells
that fired every mind, burnt every foot that
traveled on this road to the wedding
you should have called you kiss a wedding tent,
you should have called your arms a the love long meant,
descending, burning with goldenfire,
lift the veil
When he was done, they both heard a light snoring in the corner of the vardo, and Anson crossed the wooden floor to look down at Pol beside Austin.
He looked down at him tenderly, wishing for something. Thinking of touching his cheek, but instead he only said, “Good night, friend,” and then then climbed back to his bedpile with Ohean.
The vardo was divided in two sections, and in the darkness of one, Dissenbark said, “Now I understand?”
“Understand?”
“Why you are the way you are.”
Theone squinted in the dark to find Dissenbark, and waited for the other woman to continue.
“I was always…. Loud, too trusting maybe. You,… you don’t trust anyone. You’re not open. I guess you never had a girlfriend. Or never knew what one should be. From what you said. The Women you talk about are the only women you’ve ever known.”
“And my mother. But every woman I ever knew was a Woman, one of those. To me they’ve always been one and the same. Even my mother. She was one. So, I don’t know anything else. You, and that lady I stayed with, Yarrow. But then she’s more than a woman, I think. I’m sure.”
Dissenbark nodded.
“And you lost your baby. And your man. You’ve got deep hurt,” she said. “You and that Pol. His hurts are deep too.”
“I think he’s good,” Theone said. “I think they all are.”
“You are right,” Dissenbark was certain.
“And I think Pol loves Anson.”
“I think he does too.”
“No,” Theone said. “I mean, I think he loves him.”
“Oh,” Dissenbark said. Then, “Well, the Master Ohean is a great mage. I can tell that. The whole West knows of him and on the Isle he was all they spoke about. He is not like the witches in Westrial and the Sussain lands. In Royan country they’ve got real men of power and I know he’s one. Though he doesn’t show it off. I can’t imagine he’d suffer anyone to take Anson from him.”
“I think,” Theone said with a small smile, putting it all together, “He wouldn’t either. Mages don’t know everything, though. They can’t.”
SUNDERLAND
So here was Sunderland. Teryn reminded himself that the last time he had been in the presence of the royal family of Essail, h had been at the much smaller Remond House. It was, by normal standards, a palace, but only a day or so from the Westrial border. It had been aupon coming to the borde that Teryn realized what a long journey he eas in for, and he had traveled for days in this land that was not his own. He reminded himself that the people of Essail were Ayl just like himself, but how could thye be just like himself. This was another land, and in his meeting with their Queen, Morgellyn, he realized that she was nothing like her brother, King Cedd. No, this was a foreign land. He might as well have been in Hale. Part of him began to wish that he had traveld with a larger party, towodner just how safe it was to come inot the presence of the Queen of Essail.
Yes, and I must remember that technically there is a king, that she is regent for this eight year of son of hers, to pay the boy all the respect I would pay King Cedd. It had been the night before, after a journey of days, that he had seen the grey stone many towered length of Sunderland, rising over the great city, and understand that here was the true seat of the power of the Kings and Queens of Essail.
Teryn had sent a letter to the palace two days before, one last night from the inn where they had stayed and now he came bearing the banner of Westrial. The gates were opened and he came into the great bailey, dismounting his horse. From a balcony the Queen was waving and, shortly, beside her young son, both with coronets on their heads.
“Your Grace,” Teryn bowed low. He bowed twice.
The little boy bellowed, “Be welcome to my court, Lord Teryn.”
Teryn’s eyes rose to meet the Queen’s and then he averted them immediately afraid of what she would read in them, or what he would see in hers.
“And how is my sister, Isobel?” Morgellyn asked over supper, lifting her cup of wine. As King Charles lifted his cup, his mother said, “That’s enough, dear.”
“She fairs well and sends her love,” Teryn assured her. “Last I left there was word that she was carrying an heir.”
“Wonderful,” the Queen said. “It’s all I’ve been hoping for.”
“I thought it would be, Lady,” Teryn said. “I will be sure to convey your joy.”
“Yes,” morgellyn replied sitting back in the chair that was like a great wooden throne. “and I will have to send my own personal regards.”
“Your brother the King will be awaiting them eagerly.”
Teryn wanted to stop himself from talking. What was he. He was nothing, much less than nothing and raised up to something, given the title of a lord and sent here to banter with a Queen, born a pricness, born from a line or princesses, a woman who, it was quite possible, as she sat across from him, beautiful, golden haired, red lipped, had murdered her own husband.
But he was here for a job. Isobel had sent him, and she was a queen as well, his Queen, and the daughter of a Queen, noble and good, wise and kind, and so he spoke on.
“I had hoped to see the Queen Hermudis while I was here.”
Does she see through me?” Teryn wondered. “Does she see what I am? Does she see my nerves?”
“Lord Teryn,” she left days ago. “Hermudis went north to the border to visit her cousin, King Edmund.”
Did she know that’s exactly what I wanted to know? That I wanted to know what took place between Hermudis and Edmung And how to I get word to her from her daughter, word between them? Isobel has given me very little to learn.
Because she trust you to figure these things out for yourself.
Isobel will never order. Almost never order. She espects you to be a partner in this.
Tonight, when I am alone, I will have to make a list of questions, figure out what needs to be known, what must go back ot Kingsboro.
I must find out how to… find out.
Teryn scanned the room, looked at the young pages, saw one who was pouring the Queen’s water, who had been beside her when she had come down. He was not the only one, but there was something about him. His eyes met Teryn’s and Teryn fought with pulling them away, and then held Teryn’s glance. He waited for the boy to pull away, for he was the same age as Teryn. Thin like Teryn, not very tall like Teryn, almost silly looking, dark haired dark eyed, definitely uncertain looking.
Teryn remained in the hall long enough for the dessert, the sweet wine and the minstrel to sing a melody he did not care for, now and again his eyes meeting those of the dark haired boy who looked little bit like one the silly elves they said Father Yulemas employed to make his toys during the Winter Solstice. But as that song came to an end, and some courtiers were rising to leave, Teryn made a show of yawning and Queen Moregellyn said, “Would you like to be shown to your chambers?”
“Thank you, your Grace. Could you spare your wine pourer.”
“What?” the Queen said, shaking her head as if noticing him, and this was the same time she seemed to notice her sons, half asleep.
“Eva, take the children to bed. Cody,” she said to her wine pourer, “Lead Lord Wesley to his chambers, please.”
Cody clicked his heels together in an almost comic fashion and bowed his head, and Teryn rose, pressing his fingers together and bowing to Morgellyn in the old fashion as Cody came around the long table, and Teryn went to meet him.
“The Queen has put you in the East Tower,” Cody told him as they headed down a long hall. “The place has just been fitted with lifts. I hear that Kingsboro has had them for years.”
“It has them now,” Teryn told Cody, “I have not really been there for long”
“In the west country they have all sorts of things,” Cody was saying, “including wizards, which makes you wonder, if the Royan have so much more, then how come they lost all the Sendic lands? But then from what I hear, these were the lands they didn’t really want And then I guess they didn’t really lose them I mena, Royan still live here.”
“I am half Royan,” Teryn said, as they stepped into the lift.
“That makes sense,” Cody said, as the brass doors swung shut and the lift jerked its way up. “That’s why you’re so golden and handsome.”
“Thank you,” Teryn said. “How much longer is this ride?”
“A few more stories, then we get off and walk to another lift.”
Teryn nodded his head and Cody said, “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“It’s not really bad at all,” Teryn said.
During the walk between the first lift and the second, Teryn noted that this castle of grey stone wasn’t nearly as impressive as the Kingsboro, but kept this to himself an it was in the second lift, while Cody was talking, that the boy’s voice suddenly rose and he stopped while Teryn looked him dead in the face.
“What are you doing?” Cody’s voice drifted off, helpless.
“You can’t pretend you don’t like it. Your body is telling me you like it.”
“Please stop?” Cody begged.
Teryn’s hand was slipped into the tight hosiery cody was wearing, slipped under his codpiece, massaging him, and Cody was trembling, afraid at his own body’s response.
“Do you really want me to stop?” Teryn asked him, his hand still massaging Cody.
Cody didn’t say anything. His face went from white to green and Teryn stopped. Something triggered inside of him by the look of horror and shame on the other boy’s face.
“Very well,” Teryn said. “But if what I just showed you makes you want more, then you know to find me.”
Blank faced, not looking at Teryn, while the lift came to a jolting holt, Cody nodded his head and waited for the doors to open.
It was wrong to do that to that boy, Teryn reflected. Cody might have been as old as eighteen, but he had not seen the things that age one. He had been in Cody’s place once.
It was a long time before he could forgive himself. He could not understand himself for the longest time. He had grown up believing rules were at the heart of everything, and rules were constantly being broken. Now, after what had been done to him, after how he felt about it, the country of rules made little sense to Teryn. He could not stop thinking of his uncle, and when he saw him he wanted to run to him. He knew there was a rift between them. Ned could not look at him.
One day toward winter, he went after his uncle into the fire room. He embraced him and Ned did not throw him off, but he cringed a little.
“Please,” Teryn pleaded. “Please.”
“Teryn, what?”
He clung to Ned’s back, not letting go.
“I love you,” he told him.
“I love you too. That’s a good boy.”
“I’m not a boy.”
“You are,” Ned said, patiently, while the boy clung to his back.
“If I was a boy why did you do what you did to me?”
Ned stiffened, wordless.
Teryn turned around and stood in front of him. He sank to his knees.
“Ned,” he almost cried.
“Terry, what are…?”
Teryn was unfastening Ned’s trousers, and Ned said something neither one of them much understood, and then Teryn’s mouth was on him. It was the only thing he knew to do. He’d seen it done before. He didn’t even know what effect it would have. It was as if his mouth instructed him.
Ned said nothing. His hands rested in Teryn’s hair, and then they came up. Teryn dared to touch Ned’s side’s. His body was so tense as Teryn worked on him. They were in total silence and Teryn didn’t want to stop. He was afraid of what might happen if he stopped.
But finally it was Ned who pulled himself out of Teryn’s mouth murmuring, “That’s enough.”
Teryn fumbled with Ned’s belt, and pulled him onto the ground.
“We can’t,” Ned began. Then, in a different voice, “Are you sure?”
But Teryn was already opening to him, and swiftly, Ned pulled down his pants and his underwear while Teryn’s hands ran under his shirt.
“Don’t spit this time,” Teryn said. “I’ve got something better.”
And when he had gotten it, Teryn guided Ned inside of him, looking up at his uncle, looking up at his long face and thin nose, at his almost pleading eyes. Under his shirt, Ned’s body was so smooth, and inside him, though it hurt a little, the only word to describe how Ned felt was necessary.
That time as before, it was Ned who came. Teryn did not, but holding onto his uncle as his body writhed, a tremor passed through Teryn, and when they lay together in the bed pile, something past good or bad filled him. He wanted to lay here holding Ned and being held by him, never letting go.
And so it began. In time what felt good on a deep level became good on every level. Though Ned had been first to do this to him, in the end, he was the lover and he called Ned to him in his room in the house, at the farm, in a bower in the barn. For two years they came together in secret places, making love, and however it had started, this, holding Ned’s slender, smooth body between his legs, running his hands up and down his back, and through his hair, was what it was. What would happen to them, where this would go, neither one of them could say, and then one day it ended as quickly as if had begun.
“Only it didn’t begin quickly,” Teryn remembered. What was that? Was there a knocking at the door?
While they were in the midst of it, while Ned was making love to him, he heard a scream, and Ned rolled over, terrified. Teryn sat up, terrified to see his father.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “What are you?”
Ned rose up, but then Teryn’s father was gone, running down the stairs. Quickly they dressed and headed after him, through the house, into the barn.
“Alveric!” Ned called out.
“Damn you!” roared the voice of Teryn’s father.
He came back into the house running with a great pitchfork.
“Alveric!” Ned shouted.
And then, just like that, in a gout of blood, Teryn saw Ned, pinned to the ground, his face showered with blood, twitching.
He went to his knees, and Ned looked at him, lips trembling like the rest of his body until, quite quickly, his green eyes lost all color and went dull as stones, his lips still open.
Teryn did not scream. His father made no noise. No one said anything. There was no noise. Nothing.
There was a knocking at the door. Teryn roused himself from the horror that feel on him like ice water now and again. Unfolding his thin legs from under him, he pushed up from the bed and opened the door.
Standing there, a question in his eyes and on his mouth, was Cody.
THE ZAHEM BORDER
One thing I liked about riding on horseback,” Dissenbark declared, “was that we went quicker than in this wagon,”
“Vardo,” Pol corrected.
Dissenbark shrugged and said, “But of course the thing I didn’t like about riding horseback—”
“Was riding horseback,” Theone declared.
“Exactly!”
Theone, on her roan, laughed and said, “It’s not bad once you get used to it.”
“I don’t ever want to get used to it!” Dissenbark declared.
“Hey look, the land’s hilly!” Austin waved.
They were coming to a vale, and across the vale was a line of trees so green they were almost blue, and above them rose the aforementioned hills and Theone said, “When we come between those hills we will be in Zahem, and we will be some days from their holy city.”
“It sounds so much nicer when you call it that,” Theone said, pulling her cloak a little closer about her. “And not the other name.”
“I imagine that’s why the Zahem renamed it,” Ohean said. “It was a great city when they came to it, and they had to have it. They still keep the Temple, but the Temple and its rights and the One it serves were there long before them Daumans. I’m afraid no amount of pleasant names can cover what it was.”
“You know what?” Dissenbark said, “I don’t think I want to talk about that place anymore. Seeing as we’re soon to be there, anyway.”
“Begging your pardon, Ohean, I’m with Dissen,” Anson Dell said.
“Right enough,” said Ohean. “Let’s talk of something else.”
“You have any more poems for us?” Dissenbark turned to Anson whom rode ahead of them on his own horse.
“I’m all poemed out,” the prince told her. “For now. I used to have a little book where I wrote them all.”
“How did you start that, Anson?” Theone turned to him.
He shrugged.
“Most of my life I felt like no one, and no one much wanted to hear me. When they learned I could fight, folks were glad of it, and around the fires, during the first Dauman war, I cheered the boys up with a song. That’s when I learned my other gifts. When I wrote down my thoughts, my lines, that was a part of me that belonged to me. So, I guess I got good at it.”
“You got very good at it,” Theone said. But Anson looked to Ohean.
“What?” Ohean told him. “You know how I feel about your poems.”
And that was all he got out of him, but for Anson, who smiled quietly, this was enough.”
That night they were in the very woods they’d seen in the distance, and in the midst of the rising hills. The woods were filled with chittering and bird song, the distant howl. That night, while Anson and Theone built the fire, Dissenbark and Ohean moved about the encampment tracing a circle and Austin, back in the land where magic was said to not exist, saw a visible shimmering come for a time. He thought, “He’s doing that for us. So that we’ll know it’s there.” He thought that it was always there, that with Ohean Pendarow they would always be safe.
“I don’t rightly get this thing we’re doing,” Dissenbark said.
“I mean, all my life I’ve seen mages and priests and, I think, even the occasional fairy. But suddenly here I am involved in real stuff. This is the stuff of Gods and magic and… I don’t know what I’m doing messing around with it. Any of us.”
“I’ve got to,” Theone said.
“Well, yes, you’re royalty. But me and Pol, say. And Lord Buwa over there. I mean, Ohean over there, rolling his cigarettes. Yes you.” She said to the mage, who had raised an eyebrow.
“You may cut a very plain face, but this is your world, Gods, sorcerers, lost stones. But, they haven’t had much to do with me. Or with what I’ve seen. Little girls who become mothers when they’re scarcely old enough to breed. Young boys used by old men. Landlords who cheat their tenants. Slavers. I once saw a whole village chained and dragged away. I’ve seen those things.” She pointed to Theone. “You’ve lived them.”
Theone nodded. In the firelight, her eyes had taken the color of the flames, and flickered with them.
“All I know,” Austin said, “is this is where my friends go, I go with him.”
Dissenbark nodded.
“Well,” she said, “I think I’m supposed to be here too. Still,” she looked to Ohean, “You say that these Stones belong to Addiwak. That she is upset because they lie in the temple of this demon, or some such, who is her enemy. But, I think it’s a lot more things in this world that Addiwak and all her kin up in the great beyond should be more concerned about. That’s all.”
Austin Buwa and Anson both looked at Ohean, but the wizard, taking a long drag from his cigarette, was very quiet.
“I feel the same way Dissen feels.”
“Master?”
“She’s right,” Ohean said. “There is a war in the north that may soon spread south. Shouldn’t I be up there? Beside Wolf, next to Myrne. Shouldn’t I be doing everything I can. Instead of journeying to this Temple on some quest?”
“Don’t you start to doubt,” Theone said. “Or I’ll doubt. You’re going for the same reason I am, Ohean. Because it’s all we know to do. This is what’s kept me going. It’s my destination. And… maybe the reason we are with you is because of what we’ve been through. Maybe there’s a reason in it all. I’ve got to believe that.”
IN OBSERVATION OF SUKKOT, THERE WILL BE NO POSTING TOMORROW.
Ohean burrowed into the covers like a small animal and Anson, pleased to please, “I got another one, if it makes you happy?”
Ohean nodded and Hace said, “I’ll not sing it, cause the ladies are sleeping. I’ll whisper it to you.”
You brought me here that I might love you
and not that I should please myself
but that you should please me
and I would delight in your light
until this moment I knew that
if I walked, dusty footed to the Mount of Iru,
proof of a love I had not felt,
then after they peeled me from the weary rocks,
and well after this weary life
you would reward me
not with the sight of love
but with the love
but the love is now
now the possession, and from the corner
of my eye the procession of torch bearers
and sweet singers
water lingers in the bottom of baptism jars
before its transformed to sweet and heady wine
and this is the time of song and sense,
desire deep as well, water washing out all hells
that fired every mind, burnt every foot that
traveled on this road to the wedding
you should have called you kiss a wedding tent,
you should have called your arms a the love long meant,
descending, burning with goldenfire,
lift the veil
When he was done, they both heard a light snoring in the corner of the vardo, and Anson crossed the wooden floor to look down at Pol beside Austin.
He looked down at him tenderly, wishing for something. Thinking of touching his cheek, but instead he only said, “Good night, friend,” and then then climbed back to his bedpile with Ohean.
The vardo was divided in two sections, and in the darkness of one, Dissenbark said, “Now I understand?”
“Understand?”
“Why you are the way you are.”
Theone squinted in the dark to find Dissenbark, and waited for the other woman to continue.
“I was always…. Loud, too trusting maybe. You,… you don’t trust anyone. You’re not open. I guess you never had a girlfriend. Or never knew what one should be. From what you said. The Women you talk about are the only women you’ve ever known.”
“And my mother. But every woman I ever knew was a Woman, one of those. To me they’ve always been one and the same. Even my mother. She was one. So, I don’t know anything else. You, and that lady I stayed with, Yarrow. But then she’s more than a woman, I think. I’m sure.”
Dissenbark nodded.
“And you lost your baby. And your man. You’ve got deep hurt,” she said. “You and that Pol. His hurts are deep too.”
“I think he’s good,” Theone said. “I think they all are.”
“You are right,” Dissenbark was certain.
“And I think Pol loves Anson.”
“I think he does too.”
“No,” Theone said. “I mean, I think he loves him.”
“Oh,” Dissenbark said. Then, “Well, the Master Ohean is a great mage. I can tell that. The whole West knows of him and on the Isle he was all they spoke about. He is not like the witches in Westrial and the Sussain lands. In Royan country they’ve got real men of power and I know he’s one. Though he doesn’t show it off. I can’t imagine he’d suffer anyone to take Anson from him.”
“I think,” Theone said with a small smile, putting it all together, “He wouldn’t either. Mages don’t know everything, though. They can’t.”
SUNDERLAND
So here was Sunderland. Teryn reminded himself that the last time he had been in the presence of the royal family of Essail, h had been at the much smaller Remond House. It was, by normal standards, a palace, but only a day or so from the Westrial border. It had been aupon coming to the borde that Teryn realized what a long journey he eas in for, and he had traveled for days in this land that was not his own. He reminded himself that the people of Essail were Ayl just like himself, but how could thye be just like himself. This was another land, and in his meeting with their Queen, Morgellyn, he realized that she was nothing like her brother, King Cedd. No, this was a foreign land. He might as well have been in Hale. Part of him began to wish that he had traveld with a larger party, towodner just how safe it was to come inot the presence of the Queen of Essail.
Yes, and I must remember that technically there is a king, that she is regent for this eight year of son of hers, to pay the boy all the respect I would pay King Cedd. It had been the night before, after a journey of days, that he had seen the grey stone many towered length of Sunderland, rising over the great city, and understand that here was the true seat of the power of the Kings and Queens of Essail.
Teryn had sent a letter to the palace two days before, one last night from the inn where they had stayed and now he came bearing the banner of Westrial. The gates were opened and he came into the great bailey, dismounting his horse. From a balcony the Queen was waving and, shortly, beside her young son, both with coronets on their heads.
“Your Grace,” Teryn bowed low. He bowed twice.
The little boy bellowed, “Be welcome to my court, Lord Teryn.”
Teryn’s eyes rose to meet the Queen’s and then he averted them immediately afraid of what she would read in them, or what he would see in hers.
“And how is my sister, Isobel?” Morgellyn asked over supper, lifting her cup of wine. As King Charles lifted his cup, his mother said, “That’s enough, dear.”
“She fairs well and sends her love,” Teryn assured her. “Last I left there was word that she was carrying an heir.”
“Wonderful,” the Queen said. “It’s all I’ve been hoping for.”
“I thought it would be, Lady,” Teryn said. “I will be sure to convey your joy.”
“Yes,” morgellyn replied sitting back in the chair that was like a great wooden throne. “and I will have to send my own personal regards.”
“Your brother the King will be awaiting them eagerly.”
Teryn wanted to stop himself from talking. What was he. He was nothing, much less than nothing and raised up to something, given the title of a lord and sent here to banter with a Queen, born a pricness, born from a line or princesses, a woman who, it was quite possible, as she sat across from him, beautiful, golden haired, red lipped, had murdered her own husband.
But he was here for a job. Isobel had sent him, and she was a queen as well, his Queen, and the daughter of a Queen, noble and good, wise and kind, and so he spoke on.
“I had hoped to see the Queen Hermudis while I was here.”
Does she see through me?” Teryn wondered. “Does she see what I am? Does she see my nerves?”
“Lord Teryn,” she left days ago. “Hermudis went north to the border to visit her cousin, King Edmund.”
Did she know that’s exactly what I wanted to know? That I wanted to know what took place between Hermudis and Edmung And how to I get word to her from her daughter, word between them? Isobel has given me very little to learn.
Because she trust you to figure these things out for yourself.
Isobel will never order. Almost never order. She espects you to be a partner in this.
Tonight, when I am alone, I will have to make a list of questions, figure out what needs to be known, what must go back ot Kingsboro.
I must find out how to… find out.
Teryn scanned the room, looked at the young pages, saw one who was pouring the Queen’s water, who had been beside her when she had come down. He was not the only one, but there was something about him. His eyes met Teryn’s and Teryn fought with pulling them away, and then held Teryn’s glance. He waited for the boy to pull away, for he was the same age as Teryn. Thin like Teryn, not very tall like Teryn, almost silly looking, dark haired dark eyed, definitely uncertain looking.
Teryn remained in the hall long enough for the dessert, the sweet wine and the minstrel to sing a melody he did not care for, now and again his eyes meeting those of the dark haired boy who looked little bit like one the silly elves they said Father Yulemas employed to make his toys during the Winter Solstice. But as that song came to an end, and some courtiers were rising to leave, Teryn made a show of yawning and Queen Moregellyn said, “Would you like to be shown to your chambers?”
“Thank you, your Grace. Could you spare your wine pourer.”
“What?” the Queen said, shaking her head as if noticing him, and this was the same time she seemed to notice her sons, half asleep.
“Eva, take the children to bed. Cody,” she said to her wine pourer, “Lead Lord Wesley to his chambers, please.”
Cody clicked his heels together in an almost comic fashion and bowed his head, and Teryn rose, pressing his fingers together and bowing to Morgellyn in the old fashion as Cody came around the long table, and Teryn went to meet him.
“The Queen has put you in the East Tower,” Cody told him as they headed down a long hall. “The place has just been fitted with lifts. I hear that Kingsboro has had them for years.”
“It has them now,” Teryn told Cody, “I have not really been there for long”
“In the west country they have all sorts of things,” Cody was saying, “including wizards, which makes you wonder, if the Royan have so much more, then how come they lost all the Sendic lands? But then from what I hear, these were the lands they didn’t really want And then I guess they didn’t really lose them I mena, Royan still live here.”
“I am half Royan,” Teryn said, as they stepped into the lift.
“That makes sense,” Cody said, as the brass doors swung shut and the lift jerked its way up. “That’s why you’re so golden and handsome.”
“Thank you,” Teryn said. “How much longer is this ride?”
“A few more stories, then we get off and walk to another lift.”
Teryn nodded his head and Cody said, “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“It’s not really bad at all,” Teryn said.
During the walk between the first lift and the second, Teryn noted that this castle of grey stone wasn’t nearly as impressive as the Kingsboro, but kept this to himself an it was in the second lift, while Cody was talking, that the boy’s voice suddenly rose and he stopped while Teryn looked him dead in the face.
“What are you doing?” Cody’s voice drifted off, helpless.
“You can’t pretend you don’t like it. Your body is telling me you like it.”
“Please stop?” Cody begged.
Teryn’s hand was slipped into the tight hosiery cody was wearing, slipped under his codpiece, massaging him, and Cody was trembling, afraid at his own body’s response.
“Do you really want me to stop?” Teryn asked him, his hand still massaging Cody.
Cody didn’t say anything. His face went from white to green and Teryn stopped. Something triggered inside of him by the look of horror and shame on the other boy’s face.
“Very well,” Teryn said. “But if what I just showed you makes you want more, then you know to find me.”
Blank faced, not looking at Teryn, while the lift came to a jolting holt, Cody nodded his head and waited for the doors to open.
It was wrong to do that to that boy, Teryn reflected. Cody might have been as old as eighteen, but he had not seen the things that age one. He had been in Cody’s place once.
It was a long time before he could forgive himself. He could not understand himself for the longest time. He had grown up believing rules were at the heart of everything, and rules were constantly being broken. Now, after what had been done to him, after how he felt about it, the country of rules made little sense to Teryn. He could not stop thinking of his uncle, and when he saw him he wanted to run to him. He knew there was a rift between them. Ned could not look at him.
One day toward winter, he went after his uncle into the fire room. He embraced him and Ned did not throw him off, but he cringed a little.
“Please,” Teryn pleaded. “Please.”
“Teryn, what?”
He clung to Ned’s back, not letting go.
“I love you,” he told him.
“I love you too. That’s a good boy.”
“I’m not a boy.”
“You are,” Ned said, patiently, while the boy clung to his back.
“If I was a boy why did you do what you did to me?”
Ned stiffened, wordless.
Teryn turned around and stood in front of him. He sank to his knees.
“Ned,” he almost cried.
“Terry, what are…?”
Teryn was unfastening Ned’s trousers, and Ned said something neither one of them much understood, and then Teryn’s mouth was on him. It was the only thing he knew to do. He’d seen it done before. He didn’t even know what effect it would have. It was as if his mouth instructed him.
Ned said nothing. His hands rested in Teryn’s hair, and then they came up. Teryn dared to touch Ned’s side’s. His body was so tense as Teryn worked on him. They were in total silence and Teryn didn’t want to stop. He was afraid of what might happen if he stopped.
But finally it was Ned who pulled himself out of Teryn’s mouth murmuring, “That’s enough.”
Teryn fumbled with Ned’s belt, and pulled him onto the ground.
“We can’t,” Ned began. Then, in a different voice, “Are you sure?”
But Teryn was already opening to him, and swiftly, Ned pulled down his pants and his underwear while Teryn’s hands ran under his shirt.
“Don’t spit this time,” Teryn said. “I’ve got something better.”
And when he had gotten it, Teryn guided Ned inside of him, looking up at his uncle, looking up at his long face and thin nose, at his almost pleading eyes. Under his shirt, Ned’s body was so smooth, and inside him, though it hurt a little, the only word to describe how Ned felt was necessary.
That time as before, it was Ned who came. Teryn did not, but holding onto his uncle as his body writhed, a tremor passed through Teryn, and when they lay together in the bed pile, something past good or bad filled him. He wanted to lay here holding Ned and being held by him, never letting go.
And so it began. In time what felt good on a deep level became good on every level. Though Ned had been first to do this to him, in the end, he was the lover and he called Ned to him in his room in the house, at the farm, in a bower in the barn. For two years they came together in secret places, making love, and however it had started, this, holding Ned’s slender, smooth body between his legs, running his hands up and down his back, and through his hair, was what it was. What would happen to them, where this would go, neither one of them could say, and then one day it ended as quickly as if had begun.
“Only it didn’t begin quickly,” Teryn remembered. What was that? Was there a knocking at the door?
While they were in the midst of it, while Ned was making love to him, he heard a scream, and Ned rolled over, terrified. Teryn sat up, terrified to see his father.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “What are you?”
Ned rose up, but then Teryn’s father was gone, running down the stairs. Quickly they dressed and headed after him, through the house, into the barn.
“Alveric!” Ned called out.
“Damn you!” roared the voice of Teryn’s father.
He came back into the house running with a great pitchfork.
“Alveric!” Ned shouted.
And then, just like that, in a gout of blood, Teryn saw Ned, pinned to the ground, his face showered with blood, twitching.
He went to his knees, and Ned looked at him, lips trembling like the rest of his body until, quite quickly, his green eyes lost all color and went dull as stones, his lips still open.
Teryn did not scream. His father made no noise. No one said anything. There was no noise. Nothing.
There was a knocking at the door. Teryn roused himself from the horror that feel on him like ice water now and again. Unfolding his thin legs from under him, he pushed up from the bed and opened the door.
Standing there, a question in his eyes and on his mouth, was Cody.
THE ZAHEM BORDER
One thing I liked about riding on horseback,” Dissenbark declared, “was that we went quicker than in this wagon,”
“Vardo,” Pol corrected.
Dissenbark shrugged and said, “But of course the thing I didn’t like about riding horseback—”
“Was riding horseback,” Theone declared.
“Exactly!”
Theone, on her roan, laughed and said, “It’s not bad once you get used to it.”
“I don’t ever want to get used to it!” Dissenbark declared.
“Hey look, the land’s hilly!” Austin waved.
They were coming to a vale, and across the vale was a line of trees so green they were almost blue, and above them rose the aforementioned hills and Theone said, “When we come between those hills we will be in Zahem, and we will be some days from their holy city.”
“It sounds so much nicer when you call it that,” Theone said, pulling her cloak a little closer about her. “And not the other name.”
“I imagine that’s why the Zahem renamed it,” Ohean said. “It was a great city when they came to it, and they had to have it. They still keep the Temple, but the Temple and its rights and the One it serves were there long before them Daumans. I’m afraid no amount of pleasant names can cover what it was.”
“You know what?” Dissenbark said, “I don’t think I want to talk about that place anymore. Seeing as we’re soon to be there, anyway.”
“Begging your pardon, Ohean, I’m with Dissen,” Anson Dell said.
“Right enough,” said Ohean. “Let’s talk of something else.”
“You have any more poems for us?” Dissenbark turned to Anson whom rode ahead of them on his own horse.
“I’m all poemed out,” the prince told her. “For now. I used to have a little book where I wrote them all.”
“How did you start that, Anson?” Theone turned to him.
He shrugged.
“Most of my life I felt like no one, and no one much wanted to hear me. When they learned I could fight, folks were glad of it, and around the fires, during the first Dauman war, I cheered the boys up with a song. That’s when I learned my other gifts. When I wrote down my thoughts, my lines, that was a part of me that belonged to me. So, I guess I got good at it.”
“You got very good at it,” Theone said. But Anson looked to Ohean.
“What?” Ohean told him. “You know how I feel about your poems.”
And that was all he got out of him, but for Anson, who smiled quietly, this was enough.”
That night they were in the very woods they’d seen in the distance, and in the midst of the rising hills. The woods were filled with chittering and bird song, the distant howl. That night, while Anson and Theone built the fire, Dissenbark and Ohean moved about the encampment tracing a circle and Austin, back in the land where magic was said to not exist, saw a visible shimmering come for a time. He thought, “He’s doing that for us. So that we’ll know it’s there.” He thought that it was always there, that with Ohean Pendarow they would always be safe.
“I don’t rightly get this thing we’re doing,” Dissenbark said.
“I mean, all my life I’ve seen mages and priests and, I think, even the occasional fairy. But suddenly here I am involved in real stuff. This is the stuff of Gods and magic and… I don’t know what I’m doing messing around with it. Any of us.”
“I’ve got to,” Theone said.
“Well, yes, you’re royalty. But me and Pol, say. And Lord Buwa over there. I mean, Ohean over there, rolling his cigarettes. Yes you.” She said to the mage, who had raised an eyebrow.
“You may cut a very plain face, but this is your world, Gods, sorcerers, lost stones. But, they haven’t had much to do with me. Or with what I’ve seen. Little girls who become mothers when they’re scarcely old enough to breed. Young boys used by old men. Landlords who cheat their tenants. Slavers. I once saw a whole village chained and dragged away. I’ve seen those things.” She pointed to Theone. “You’ve lived them.”
Theone nodded. In the firelight, her eyes had taken the color of the flames, and flickered with them.
“All I know,” Austin said, “is this is where my friends go, I go with him.”
Dissenbark nodded.
“Well,” she said, “I think I’m supposed to be here too. Still,” she looked to Ohean, “You say that these Stones belong to Addiwak. That she is upset because they lie in the temple of this demon, or some such, who is her enemy. But, I think it’s a lot more things in this world that Addiwak and all her kin up in the great beyond should be more concerned about. That’s all.”
Austin Buwa and Anson both looked at Ohean, but the wizard, taking a long drag from his cigarette, was very quiet.
“I feel the same way Dissen feels.”
“Master?”
“She’s right,” Ohean said. “There is a war in the north that may soon spread south. Shouldn’t I be up there? Beside Wolf, next to Myrne. Shouldn’t I be doing everything I can. Instead of journeying to this Temple on some quest?”
“Don’t you start to doubt,” Theone said. “Or I’ll doubt. You’re going for the same reason I am, Ohean. Because it’s all we know to do. This is what’s kept me going. It’s my destination. And… maybe the reason we are with you is because of what we’ve been through. Maybe there’s a reason in it all. I’ve got to believe that.”
IN OBSERVATION OF SUKKOT, THERE WILL BE NO POSTING TOMORROW.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Great to get back to this story! So much going on and I may have to read this a few times to comprehend everything. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
More tomorrow
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT WE MEET THE PEOPLE OF TURNTHISTLE FARM, AND FAR TO THE NORTH, THE ENGINES OF WAR TURN IN AMBRIDGE
AMBRIDGE
“Here she comes,” Edith murmured from the parapet of Castle Whitestone, “can the walls close in just one bit more?”
Beside her, Allyn Baldwin said nothing. The procession of black and white monks had crossed the bridge spanning the Rive Ame and were entering the city.
“I suppose she’s coming to make her position known,” Allyn said.
“As we didn’t know already,” Edith said, watching as the procession from Saint Clew made its way into the city, approaching the palace. Edith pulled the veil than hung behind her conical hat over her face, not sure she could trust herself to hide her disgust. “She was the one who smuggled that bitch queen and her wolf into the north.”
“With Prince Odo’s help.”
“Yes,” Edith lifted a finger as they set down a winding staircase, “that does make things more interesting.”
Suddenly she stopped so quickly, Allyn almost stumbled into her.
“Sister?”
“You will go to the King and to William, his parasite and suggest that paying a visit to Odo is what will turn the abbeys around to our side.”
“Do you think it will?”
“I don’t give a damn if it will,” Edith said, tiredly, “but this will be your chance to have Edmund to yourself, to separate him from William and to separate him from Ambridge.”
“You mean for me to kidnap the King.”
“Could you say that louder?”
Allyn leaned into her in the dark staircase.
“Supposing it doesn’t work?”
“Supposing it does?” Edith said. “Do not weary me, brother. Now that Father is gone I understand all that he went through, no support.”
“Sister, I support you.”
Edith breathed out of her nose furiously and set down the stairs, lifting her skirts.
“Then do as I say.”
As she made her way through the corridors of the castle, the contents of Myrne’s letter still burned in Edith’s mind.
To the Pretender and Usurper who sits in the White Palace in Ambridge,
Let it be known that on this, the Fourth Day of April, in the year seventeen hundred-thirty, I Myrne Herreboro, Heir to the House of Wulfstan which you so treacherously rejected in the murder of your brothers and their sons, have born unto my husband, Osric, son of Eoga, son of the murdered Edward, rightful King of Hale, North Hale and Inglad, a son, a son who is born to the people of All Hale and of Inglad. He is black of hair, red of lip, white like the snow and shall be, in time, King of the Three Kingdoms, being called Blake Wulfstan, First of that Name.
-Myrne, Queen of All Hale and Inglad
Edmund had said nothing and Willian had remained silent.
It was Allyn who cried, “Damn her!”
Edmund looked at his brother in law wearily.
“Damn her cunt! We had her. We will bring her back. I will split her cunt open!”
“Her cunt has already been split open,” Edith noted, “by having a son, and your threats, it would seem, mean nothing north of Ambridge.”
“One son and several others,” Richard, the brother of William said. “Your Grace, even if you never cede you throne to Osric and Myrne—”
“And I never shall.”
“Their children are your closest heirs.”
“And whose fault is that?” Edmund looked to Edith.
“Ask the whores you’ve been fucking for the last twenty-five years.”
The back of his hand came up and Edith said, “Think, Lord. Think carefully. Perhaps we Baldwins are not what we once were, but think before you do that.”
As Edmund lowered his hand, Edith thought how he would never have tried that a year ago, how a year ago the Baldwins had been mighty lords, and this black haired bitch and her fox haired husband whom she had never seen, but only heard about, had taken this all away from her. If only she had given Edmund a son, but she despised him, and their plains had always been to get rid of Edmund, to, in time, switch power to Allyn or one of nephews. Ah, but so go plans.
And now her. Now they all stood in the great hall as, black tent of a veil over her white robe and wimple, the golden crown of an abbess on her head, entered Hilda, Abbess of Clew. They genuflected and made the sign of reverence to the most holy religious figure in Inglad, more influential even than the Archbishop, and as Edith rose to look at her, she thought, “Little more than a girl, and nothing more than the sister of that witchly cunt who killed her husband. The whore who ruined my life!”
“Your Grace,” Hilda said to the Queen, stretching out her hand.
Edith was nonplussed and then she realized that even the Queen was to kiss the hand of the Abbess. She did so. Still feeling the cold gold of the ring on her lips, she replaced the veil, hoping it covered the look of hatred, hoping none could tell how much she wanted to bit this bitch’s fingers.
THE ZAHEM BORDER
“Arvad,” the lanky farmer said, “ask Mehta why she’s staring at her arm so much.”
The pretty housemaid stopped when the farmer said this and went back to sweeping.
“I’m not staring at anything,” she said, taking her broom across the old wood floor.
“I think,” said the farmer, “she’s looking at that old bracelet.”
“I think that what she wants is for someone to go up to Nava and bring back some pretty things, ah, Arv?”
The young, red headed man smiled and Mehta turned her broom around and pounded it.
“You can’t deny this house is getting something toward empty. We’re a dairy farm , but we can’t survive on the milk and cheese from three cows forever.”
The farmer clapped his hands, declaring, “That’s the Mehta I like to see.”
The pretty blond girl still frowned at him, irritated by her master. Over them the green mountains that divided the Border from the Pass into Daumany spread themselves.
“It really is time you went to Nava,” she chided.
The farmer touched his chin. Arvad noticed the band that he always kept wrapped around his wrist.
“Do you?” he said with a funny smile, “think it’s time I go to Nava, Arvad?”
“Well, now I don’t know, Master. Only if you think you have to go to Nava.”
Mehta frowned sharply at the both of them and then the farmer smiled and said, “Well, all right. I guess I’ll go.”
“”When?” Mehta said, trying to look cross.
“Maybe today. Um,” he pulled a face. “Definitely today. Which one of you wants to come with?”
“Oh, Mehta. She’ll get a kick out of the bazaars. You can put her up in a real hotel.”
Mehta blushed and said, “It wouldn’t be proper, me traveling about with a man.”
“There’s nothing proper about you,” said the farmer.
“Well, in that case,” Mehta said, forgetting her sweeping, “I’ll have to get a nice shawl. And a decent dress. To wear into the city of course. Oh, and then we’ve got to get the horses ready…”
“The horses are ready,” the Farmer said.
Mehta looked at him.
“We’ve got to get provisions.”
“Provisions are in the wagon.”
She scowled at him, and the more she wanted to smile, the more she scowled.
“You are a horrible person,” she told him, suddenly looking at the pile of dirt on the floor and making a noise. She marched across the kitchen to find the dust pan in the pantry.
The two men looked at each other, and then began to chuckle.
“Thank God for women,” said the Farmer. A house isn’t a house without a woman.”
“You need a woman,” Metha told him as they sat side by side in the open air carriage plodding toward the city. “And I don’t mean a scullery maid. I mean a real Mrs. Nelson to take charge of this house.”
Farmer Nelson chuckled and shook his head, “What would I do if I didn’t have you to tell me what to do?”
Metha chose to ignore his irony and said, “Most probably starve and be dead by now. You and Lavran.”
She had been coming from up north, on the borders, a few years back when Metha had stumbled upon one raggedy, unkept farm with starving cows and the half starved Nelson. He wasn’t a farmer at all, then. Certainly there was a past to him, but it wasn’t her business what it was. He’d had a messy black beard from lack of care for himself which she had immediately had shaven. She’d decided that she would be the maid in this raggedy house and they had gone into the city then. That was where they met Lavrun. And Flo. But she was gone now, married to Curly down the road. They had built this house up and Metha, scarcely fourteen, but full of piss and vinegar, had demanded that Nelson find new clothes. The only thing he would not let her do was remove the black cloth that was always tied about his left wrist and had hung rather strangely from the rest of his decent clothes. In time she convinced him to simply wear a black band. His past was hidden and so was his wrist. The rest of Nelson, though, was tall, lanky, not so much pretty as somewhat handsome, and black haired, and she loved her master in a rough, protective way. He was truly the Master. Provided he did what she told him to.
“A wife…” he murmured again.
“And not a wench. Not one of those wenches,” she said. “I don’t mean a fill-up-the-bed for the night. Not unless she’s a slut who fills up the bed for a few nights in a row and knows how to care for a house. I mean, I can’t care for you always.”
Nelson’s flat, unpretty face gave her a sudden, bright smile and he said, “Ah, Metha, I thought you could though. I thought you could take care of everything.”
AMBRIDGE
After the service, William came to Hilda.
“One of your nuns said you wanted to see me, Your Grace.”
The Abbess was sitting in the garden of the palace, her hands folded over her lap while she watched the fountain flow.
“King William, it is time that we spoke,” she said, her voice quiet, her eyes still on the fountain.
Who was this strange woman, what was she, the daughter of a king, sister to kings and queens who ruled as such over a monastery, praying five times a day.
“Yes, Mother,” he said, and the words seemed strange in his mouth addressed to one so young.
“I hate this city,” she said. “I hate Ambridge. I will be candid. I despise your cousin the King and his wife.”
“I think,” William said, “as far as Queen Edith is concerned, that disdain is mutual?”
“And do you think she feels it less for you?” Hilda’s eyes met William’s now.
“Do you think she planned for your to be heir to her husband?”
“Holy One—” William began.
Hilda interrupted, “Please!”
“Why have you called me?”
“I did not call you in secret as some bishops would,” Hilda said. “Everyone knows I have called you and if they have imagination, they know why? I called to ask you whose side are you on?”
“Side?”
“Do you need me to define the word, or do you not know what a side is?”
“Abbess—”
“You know full well I am on the side of King Osric and Queen Myrne. I am a Wulfstan as well, through my mother Queen Emmeline. I have no desire to see Edmund ruling the three kingdoms after he killed off all Wulfstan competitors, including his brothers and nephews, and with the Baldwin’s help at that.”
“This is speculation, Mother, and—”
“And I certainly don’t want to see you, a Dauman, ruling over the Three Kingdoms. Hale will never except you, and I will never encourage Inglad to, so you should take that vision out of your mind, the vision I know is there.”
“You speak boldly.”
“I do,” Hilda said. “There will be a war. There already is a way in the North, and you have joined yourself to it, but if you do not stop you will have me to contend with as well as my sister Imogen and her husband King Idris. And when two of us are there, what of Anson—“”
“No one knows were Prince Anson is.”
“He went west, to learn as a mage at the hand of Ohean, to learn from his kin on the Rootless Isle, and he is Lord of Ondres. Essail is at your back door, as is Westrial and Senach—”
“Is small.”
“Senach is strong,” Hilda said. “Have a care that the war which rolls on in the North does not come to engulf all of Ossar, and have a care that, in the end, you are not on the wrong side of it.”
Hilda rose, and as she did, she rolled her black prayer beads about her long fingers.
“Your brother the Abbot of Fonteroy is already on my side. You know this. Your reign is young and your throne unsteady. Have a care, Lord.”
The Abbess of Clew bowed, and turning, with a swish of her black robes, she was gone.
OH, WHAT A TREAT! TOMORROW WE WILL RETURN TO THE BOOK OF BATTLES!
AMBRIDGE
“Here she comes,” Edith murmured from the parapet of Castle Whitestone, “can the walls close in just one bit more?”
Beside her, Allyn Baldwin said nothing. The procession of black and white monks had crossed the bridge spanning the Rive Ame and were entering the city.
“I suppose she’s coming to make her position known,” Allyn said.
“As we didn’t know already,” Edith said, watching as the procession from Saint Clew made its way into the city, approaching the palace. Edith pulled the veil than hung behind her conical hat over her face, not sure she could trust herself to hide her disgust. “She was the one who smuggled that bitch queen and her wolf into the north.”
“With Prince Odo’s help.”
“Yes,” Edith lifted a finger as they set down a winding staircase, “that does make things more interesting.”
Suddenly she stopped so quickly, Allyn almost stumbled into her.
“Sister?”
“You will go to the King and to William, his parasite and suggest that paying a visit to Odo is what will turn the abbeys around to our side.”
“Do you think it will?”
“I don’t give a damn if it will,” Edith said, tiredly, “but this will be your chance to have Edmund to yourself, to separate him from William and to separate him from Ambridge.”
“You mean for me to kidnap the King.”
“Could you say that louder?”
Allyn leaned into her in the dark staircase.
“Supposing it doesn’t work?”
“Supposing it does?” Edith said. “Do not weary me, brother. Now that Father is gone I understand all that he went through, no support.”
“Sister, I support you.”
Edith breathed out of her nose furiously and set down the stairs, lifting her skirts.
“Then do as I say.”
As she made her way through the corridors of the castle, the contents of Myrne’s letter still burned in Edith’s mind.
To the Pretender and Usurper who sits in the White Palace in Ambridge,
Let it be known that on this, the Fourth Day of April, in the year seventeen hundred-thirty, I Myrne Herreboro, Heir to the House of Wulfstan which you so treacherously rejected in the murder of your brothers and their sons, have born unto my husband, Osric, son of Eoga, son of the murdered Edward, rightful King of Hale, North Hale and Inglad, a son, a son who is born to the people of All Hale and of Inglad. He is black of hair, red of lip, white like the snow and shall be, in time, King of the Three Kingdoms, being called Blake Wulfstan, First of that Name.
-Myrne, Queen of All Hale and Inglad
Edmund had said nothing and Willian had remained silent.
It was Allyn who cried, “Damn her!”
Edmund looked at his brother in law wearily.
“Damn her cunt! We had her. We will bring her back. I will split her cunt open!”
“Her cunt has already been split open,” Edith noted, “by having a son, and your threats, it would seem, mean nothing north of Ambridge.”
“One son and several others,” Richard, the brother of William said. “Your Grace, even if you never cede you throne to Osric and Myrne—”
“And I never shall.”
“Their children are your closest heirs.”
“And whose fault is that?” Edmund looked to Edith.
“Ask the whores you’ve been fucking for the last twenty-five years.”
The back of his hand came up and Edith said, “Think, Lord. Think carefully. Perhaps we Baldwins are not what we once were, but think before you do that.”
As Edmund lowered his hand, Edith thought how he would never have tried that a year ago, how a year ago the Baldwins had been mighty lords, and this black haired bitch and her fox haired husband whom she had never seen, but only heard about, had taken this all away from her. If only she had given Edmund a son, but she despised him, and their plains had always been to get rid of Edmund, to, in time, switch power to Allyn or one of nephews. Ah, but so go plans.
And now her. Now they all stood in the great hall as, black tent of a veil over her white robe and wimple, the golden crown of an abbess on her head, entered Hilda, Abbess of Clew. They genuflected and made the sign of reverence to the most holy religious figure in Inglad, more influential even than the Archbishop, and as Edith rose to look at her, she thought, “Little more than a girl, and nothing more than the sister of that witchly cunt who killed her husband. The whore who ruined my life!”
“Your Grace,” Hilda said to the Queen, stretching out her hand.
Edith was nonplussed and then she realized that even the Queen was to kiss the hand of the Abbess. She did so. Still feeling the cold gold of the ring on her lips, she replaced the veil, hoping it covered the look of hatred, hoping none could tell how much she wanted to bit this bitch’s fingers.
THE ZAHEM BORDER
“Arvad,” the lanky farmer said, “ask Mehta why she’s staring at her arm so much.”
The pretty housemaid stopped when the farmer said this and went back to sweeping.
“I’m not staring at anything,” she said, taking her broom across the old wood floor.
“I think,” said the farmer, “she’s looking at that old bracelet.”
“I think that what she wants is for someone to go up to Nava and bring back some pretty things, ah, Arv?”
The young, red headed man smiled and Mehta turned her broom around and pounded it.
“You can’t deny this house is getting something toward empty. We’re a dairy farm , but we can’t survive on the milk and cheese from three cows forever.”
The farmer clapped his hands, declaring, “That’s the Mehta I like to see.”
The pretty blond girl still frowned at him, irritated by her master. Over them the green mountains that divided the Border from the Pass into Daumany spread themselves.
“It really is time you went to Nava,” she chided.
The farmer touched his chin. Arvad noticed the band that he always kept wrapped around his wrist.
“Do you?” he said with a funny smile, “think it’s time I go to Nava, Arvad?”
“Well, now I don’t know, Master. Only if you think you have to go to Nava.”
Mehta frowned sharply at the both of them and then the farmer smiled and said, “Well, all right. I guess I’ll go.”
“”When?” Mehta said, trying to look cross.
“Maybe today. Um,” he pulled a face. “Definitely today. Which one of you wants to come with?”
“Oh, Mehta. She’ll get a kick out of the bazaars. You can put her up in a real hotel.”
Mehta blushed and said, “It wouldn’t be proper, me traveling about with a man.”
“There’s nothing proper about you,” said the farmer.
“Well, in that case,” Mehta said, forgetting her sweeping, “I’ll have to get a nice shawl. And a decent dress. To wear into the city of course. Oh, and then we’ve got to get the horses ready…”
“The horses are ready,” the Farmer said.
Mehta looked at him.
“We’ve got to get provisions.”
“Provisions are in the wagon.”
She scowled at him, and the more she wanted to smile, the more she scowled.
“You are a horrible person,” she told him, suddenly looking at the pile of dirt on the floor and making a noise. She marched across the kitchen to find the dust pan in the pantry.
The two men looked at each other, and then began to chuckle.
“Thank God for women,” said the Farmer. A house isn’t a house without a woman.”
“You need a woman,” Metha told him as they sat side by side in the open air carriage plodding toward the city. “And I don’t mean a scullery maid. I mean a real Mrs. Nelson to take charge of this house.”
Farmer Nelson chuckled and shook his head, “What would I do if I didn’t have you to tell me what to do?”
Metha chose to ignore his irony and said, “Most probably starve and be dead by now. You and Lavran.”
She had been coming from up north, on the borders, a few years back when Metha had stumbled upon one raggedy, unkept farm with starving cows and the half starved Nelson. He wasn’t a farmer at all, then. Certainly there was a past to him, but it wasn’t her business what it was. He’d had a messy black beard from lack of care for himself which she had immediately had shaven. She’d decided that she would be the maid in this raggedy house and they had gone into the city then. That was where they met Lavrun. And Flo. But she was gone now, married to Curly down the road. They had built this house up and Metha, scarcely fourteen, but full of piss and vinegar, had demanded that Nelson find new clothes. The only thing he would not let her do was remove the black cloth that was always tied about his left wrist and had hung rather strangely from the rest of his decent clothes. In time she convinced him to simply wear a black band. His past was hidden and so was his wrist. The rest of Nelson, though, was tall, lanky, not so much pretty as somewhat handsome, and black haired, and she loved her master in a rough, protective way. He was truly the Master. Provided he did what she told him to.
“A wife…” he murmured again.
“And not a wench. Not one of those wenches,” she said. “I don’t mean a fill-up-the-bed for the night. Not unless she’s a slut who fills up the bed for a few nights in a row and knows how to care for a house. I mean, I can’t care for you always.”
Nelson’s flat, unpretty face gave her a sudden, bright smile and he said, “Ah, Metha, I thought you could though. I thought you could take care of everything.”
AMBRIDGE
After the service, William came to Hilda.
“One of your nuns said you wanted to see me, Your Grace.”
The Abbess was sitting in the garden of the palace, her hands folded over her lap while she watched the fountain flow.
“King William, it is time that we spoke,” she said, her voice quiet, her eyes still on the fountain.
Who was this strange woman, what was she, the daughter of a king, sister to kings and queens who ruled as such over a monastery, praying five times a day.
“Yes, Mother,” he said, and the words seemed strange in his mouth addressed to one so young.
“I hate this city,” she said. “I hate Ambridge. I will be candid. I despise your cousin the King and his wife.”
“I think,” William said, “as far as Queen Edith is concerned, that disdain is mutual?”
“And do you think she feels it less for you?” Hilda’s eyes met William’s now.
“Do you think she planned for your to be heir to her husband?”
“Holy One—” William began.
Hilda interrupted, “Please!”
“Why have you called me?”
“I did not call you in secret as some bishops would,” Hilda said. “Everyone knows I have called you and if they have imagination, they know why? I called to ask you whose side are you on?”
“Side?”
“Do you need me to define the word, or do you not know what a side is?”
“Abbess—”
“You know full well I am on the side of King Osric and Queen Myrne. I am a Wulfstan as well, through my mother Queen Emmeline. I have no desire to see Edmund ruling the three kingdoms after he killed off all Wulfstan competitors, including his brothers and nephews, and with the Baldwin’s help at that.”
“This is speculation, Mother, and—”
“And I certainly don’t want to see you, a Dauman, ruling over the Three Kingdoms. Hale will never except you, and I will never encourage Inglad to, so you should take that vision out of your mind, the vision I know is there.”
“You speak boldly.”
“I do,” Hilda said. “There will be a war. There already is a way in the North, and you have joined yourself to it, but if you do not stop you will have me to contend with as well as my sister Imogen and her husband King Idris. And when two of us are there, what of Anson—“”
“No one knows were Prince Anson is.”
“He went west, to learn as a mage at the hand of Ohean, to learn from his kin on the Rootless Isle, and he is Lord of Ondres. Essail is at your back door, as is Westrial and Senach—”
“Is small.”
“Senach is strong,” Hilda said. “Have a care that the war which rolls on in the North does not come to engulf all of Ossar, and have a care that, in the end, you are not on the wrong side of it.”
Hilda rose, and as she did, she rolled her black prayer beads about her long fingers.
“Your brother the Abbot of Fonteroy is already on my side. You know this. Your reign is young and your throne unsteady. Have a care, Lord.”
The Abbess of Clew bowed, and turning, with a swish of her black robes, she was gone.
OH, WHAT A TREAT! TOMORROW WE WILL RETURN TO THE BOOK OF BATTLES!
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
It was good to get back to this story. Wow lots of disagreements and fighting. I can’t wait to read what happens next! Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! I hope you are having a nice night!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I am having a lovely night. Had a good meal. went to the last Sukkot service. met a new friend. took a good nap. And tomorrow there will be more battles
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT, MORE HIGH ADVENTURE
SUNDERLAND
“Oh, everyone knows it,” Cody said, stretching out like a cat and, Teryn noted, even seeming to purr a little as their bodies linked together. “It’s whispered about in Ambrdige from what I hear.”
“Yes,” Teryn said, sticking his fingers in Cody’s dark hair, “but a whisper is not the same thing as the truth.
“She killed him,” Cody lay on his side. “Eva, her right hand, is my cousin, and she told me.”
“Eva is the blond girl.”
“Yes. She’s not really a lady in waiting. Queen Morgellyn doesn’t have one. She was just a her servant, like always, and Morgellyn trusts her for everything.”
“And in turn Eva just trusts you?”
In the way Teryn said you was the certainly that Cody was the last person you would entrust such an eimportant secret to.
“Well, she’s my cousin. My father raised her. When people were wondering I asked her.”
“And she said, Yes, Cody, the Queen killed her husband.”
“You can’t say such things,” Cody put a finger to his lips.
Then Cody said, “Eva only said that whatever I guessed at was probably true, and that I knew the truth because I’d seen the Queen’s apothecary.”
“Apothecary?”
“She had a whole… laboratory full of herbs, all sorts of herbs, but mostly posions. That’s why she doesn’t have kids anymore.”
“Direweed.”
“Right. And ampedostale.”
“What’s that for?”
“For men. For everyone really. It prevents diseases… you know, the kind that happen in bed.”
Teryn raised an eyebrow. “I could have used that. Did you use some before coming to me?”
Cody blushed and turned away and Teryn caught himself admiring his slim white back, his small buttocks, his tucked in thighs.
“I didn’t think about it,” he said. “Should I have?”
And then before Teryn could answer, Cody said, “The other night, the first time I came to you I took staystrong.”
“I have heard of that.”
“It eases nerves, makes everything stand at attention.”
Cody was talking more to the pillow than Teryn, his back still turned.
Yes, this was seduction. Yes, a boy this loose tongued and this close to the Queen could tell him many things, but he was feeling an affection for him, and by the third time they had gone to bed together, Cody was responding to Teryn’s desire and Teryn began to respond to his so that they were creating something new in that bed, and as Teryn placed his hand on Cody’s shoulder he wanted to create it again.
“What if you stayed the night?” he said to Cody.
Cody turned around, still looking a little nervous, but he smiled, his brown hair falling in his elfin face.
“I’d like that,” he said.
AMBRIDGE
“I like that idea,” King William said when Allyn had spoken that evening. “I could go with you.”
Edith was about to speak, but she said nothing. She was relieved when Duke Richard said, “But I believe Queen Hermudis is on her way to see you.”
“I can’t make her wait,” William said ruefully, and Richard laughed over the indomitable Princess of Armor who had become Queen of Sussail.
“Well, the trip will be quick,” Allyn said. “We will ride up and be back in a week. We will take the Private Guard.”
“And some of the Inglad Guard,” Edith chimed in. Tonight she looked fair with only a thing veil under a light golden tiara and Hilda, sitting across from her, wondered, “What is she about?”
“And some of my men as well,” William said.
“Well, we hardly need that,” Queen Edith said. “The King is riding up to talk to your brother, a monk, not going to make war against the pretender Osric.”
“But he may be surrounded by Osric’s men,” Richard suggested.
“Then bring a white flag,” Allyn said, flippantly.
She wished he wouldn’t. Edith had thought to say the same thing, but one had to be so careful, to look less than obliging was to be suspicious and they could not afford that.
“William, Queen Edith said, “if you think that is necessary, then—”
But she stopped talking, for at that moment a falcon flew into the great all, squawking and Edmund murmured, “Goddamn.”
The falcon was never good news and Allyn said, “I wonder if that cunt has written us to tell us she is pregnant again with another ruler of the three kingdoms.
But this falcon belonged to the curly haired Duke Richard, and he placed a bit of meat into his mouth and then unfolded the letter from about its leg and read, scowling.
“Out with it!” William said to his brother.
“Osric has no more of Hale to take,” William said. “We no longer hold Sunderland. Somehow his east troops were met by troops who, unbelievably, seem to have come through the Giant Mountains.”
“What does he have helping him?” Allyn laughed, “Dwarves?”
“Whatever he has,” Richard looked at him the Duke scornfully, “he has Carchester, Cardeshire and all of Sunderland. Aidenton surrendered to him yesterday. As of now, King Wolf and is armies are literally at your door. The priests and bishops have been exiled and abbots and monks have risen in support of Osric and Myrne.”
“Then we cannot wait,” Edmund said to William. “Allyn and I will ride tonight. We must reach Odo at Canossa immediately.”
THE ZAHEM BORDER
No one was at Runthistle Farm but Arvad, who had assumed no one would come. The jingling jangling vardo with a princely man on a horse riding at its head, coming down the path and toward the door of the great house was a surprise. No one ever came to this part of the country, days from the city, close to the border. Arvad decided it was better to greet than to wait and see if they would ask hospitality from him, and the night was drawing on, anyway, so he put on his jacket and ran out of the door of the farmhouse. Runthistle House was like a long, high peaked, wide, unpainted barn itself, and Arvad came out of a central, swinging door, up the dusty walk to meet the brown faced man sitting in the wagon with a young, beautiful but strangely pink haired and delicate boned boy beside.
“Hail!” Ohean called.
And then Arvad said, “Will you all be staying the night?”
Ohean and Anson looked at each other, and from behind them, out of the vardo, Dissenbark shouted, “We are! I’ve been in this thing for two days. I need a room!”
“Dissen!” another voice chided her.
“And some good food and beer if you’ve got it,” she added.
Arvad put a hand to his face to cover a laugh.
“I think, we have it, Mistress….?”
“Dissen. And my shy, hidden friend back here is called Theone.”
“So you’re on your way to the city?”
“Yes,” Ohean said. “And we are perfectly capable of helping you prepare a meal.”
“Nonsense,” Arvad said, “Have another drink. This is all on me. I’ve got the farm for a while. My master and the true mistress of this place, one formidable Mehta, are gone to town to replenish stock.
“And yet,” Arvad said, “There is just enough for you.”
“I hope more than just enough,” said Anson. “I hope we’re not running you out of house and home.”
God he was beautiful! Tall, lantern jawed, a sword at his side so certainly a soldier.
“House, maybe,” Arvad said. “But certainly not house and home. That,” would be intolerable.”
Austin laughed and looked a Arvad with affection. Arvad, not entirely sure if he had imagined Austin’s affectionate gaze, but he smiled, and laughed back just the same.
“After the baby died there were only two things for me to do,” Theone said.
Arvad and Anson had built a large fire in the hearth together, touching hands, looking at each other, laughing, while Dissenbark raised an eyebrow and looked to Ohean, who seemed to notice nothing.
“Now, I could go back to serving the Hands, as I had before. Or I could lose my mind and stay in the infirmary. Certainly going to Ethan was an impossibility,” she shrugged. “He was gone.”
“And that’s when you decided to leave,” Arvad said, leaning across the fire, the light catching his green eyes, his red hair.
“Yes. There was nothing else for me to do. I didn’t even know how to get out of the house. I’d never seen an exit door. Gimble could have taught me. But… he was gone.
“You might not think it could be that hard to get away, to know how to get away. But the Place of the Hand is strong, and my mind was slow and sad. I was almost at the end of my sick time when I thought to ask if I could be a scullery maid for a while. Hyrax was displeased, but granted it. Of course, in the scullery, I could dig up scraps of information about the outside world.”
“And it was near the exit of the house, so you knew how to get out,” Dissen figured.
Theone nodded.
“That is right. And that’s what I chose. And the moment I chose it I was afraid. I knew I could get caught, and then… But what worse could be done to me? What I feared was not getting to succeed, not getting to take back that Stone and, of course, if I didn’t leave, then nothing would ever happen. So I left.”
“In the the night?”
“No, Austin,” Theone said, shaking her head. “In the middle of the day.
“In the deepest part of night, if I’d been caught people would have known I was sneaking away. In the middle of the day I was just someone walking out of the kitchen. I just strolled away. The day before I left, I had placed food outside, in a high, safe place where no animals would get to it. So I just left. I knew it would be a while before I was noticed. I took a carriage for three days because I couldn’t bring myself to steal a horse. Not then, at least. And then I walked and I walked until I did steal a horse. And well, you know the rest.”
Arvad sat back, rocking on his hills.
“You are so brave, Theone.”
She lifted her head to the rafters lost in the darkness above and said, “I think we’re all pretty brave,” and then she yawned.
“And pretty sleepy,” Ohean said, crushing out his last cigarette.
“Let’s round up the wreckage and head to bed.”
He stretched and yawned and they all separated, but as Austin said, “Here, I come—” he felt a wrist tug his arm and looked down to see Arvad on the floor, smiling up at him.
“Don’t go,” Arvad said. “Not just yet.”
“Where are you going?” Arvad reached for him as Austin was climbing out of bed.
“I didn’t know if you’d want me to stay.”
“I do,” Arvad said, leaning back into bed and pulling the blankets over his waist, “If you would.”
Austin said, “This is Zahem, where I lost my first love, and since we left the Rootless Isle, where I lost another love, that man has been on my mind. Anson and Ohean have each other, but I’ve been so hungry for affection, and you’re good and sweet and… I don’t want you to feel like I’m using you.”
Arvad leaned on his side, reaching up to touch Austin’s hair.
“I’m a big boy,” he said, his red curls falling in his green eyes, “I won’t be jealous or angry, and I don’t have to cling. Austin Buwa, you are not the only man who needs affection even if the affection last only for the night.”
“How could I only have affection for that last a night?” Austin said. “I want to sample everything life has. I want this. You know? And, if we can have something after it, stay friends, stay tender to each other, I’d like that. Alright? We may have sex for the night, but affection, kindness, tenderness, that can go on for far more than a night. I think it can go on for a lifetime.”
“If you’d like it, we could be tender to each other all night. I’d like it. I really would,” Arvad said, leaning over to turn off the lamp so that the last thing Austin saw was the smootness of his gold brown back, of his small, round buttocks.
“Would you?”
In the dark, Austin reached over to pull Arvad to him and answered: “Yes.”
TOMORROW NIGHT WE RETURN TO BRENDAN, KENNY AND BITS AND PIECES
SUNDERLAND
“Oh, everyone knows it,” Cody said, stretching out like a cat and, Teryn noted, even seeming to purr a little as their bodies linked together. “It’s whispered about in Ambrdige from what I hear.”
“Yes,” Teryn said, sticking his fingers in Cody’s dark hair, “but a whisper is not the same thing as the truth.
“She killed him,” Cody lay on his side. “Eva, her right hand, is my cousin, and she told me.”
“Eva is the blond girl.”
“Yes. She’s not really a lady in waiting. Queen Morgellyn doesn’t have one. She was just a her servant, like always, and Morgellyn trusts her for everything.”
“And in turn Eva just trusts you?”
In the way Teryn said you was the certainly that Cody was the last person you would entrust such an eimportant secret to.
“Well, she’s my cousin. My father raised her. When people were wondering I asked her.”
“And she said, Yes, Cody, the Queen killed her husband.”
“You can’t say such things,” Cody put a finger to his lips.
Then Cody said, “Eva only said that whatever I guessed at was probably true, and that I knew the truth because I’d seen the Queen’s apothecary.”
“Apothecary?”
“She had a whole… laboratory full of herbs, all sorts of herbs, but mostly posions. That’s why she doesn’t have kids anymore.”
“Direweed.”
“Right. And ampedostale.”
“What’s that for?”
“For men. For everyone really. It prevents diseases… you know, the kind that happen in bed.”
Teryn raised an eyebrow. “I could have used that. Did you use some before coming to me?”
Cody blushed and turned away and Teryn caught himself admiring his slim white back, his small buttocks, his tucked in thighs.
“I didn’t think about it,” he said. “Should I have?”
And then before Teryn could answer, Cody said, “The other night, the first time I came to you I took staystrong.”
“I have heard of that.”
“It eases nerves, makes everything stand at attention.”
Cody was talking more to the pillow than Teryn, his back still turned.
Yes, this was seduction. Yes, a boy this loose tongued and this close to the Queen could tell him many things, but he was feeling an affection for him, and by the third time they had gone to bed together, Cody was responding to Teryn’s desire and Teryn began to respond to his so that they were creating something new in that bed, and as Teryn placed his hand on Cody’s shoulder he wanted to create it again.
“What if you stayed the night?” he said to Cody.
Cody turned around, still looking a little nervous, but he smiled, his brown hair falling in his elfin face.
“I’d like that,” he said.
AMBRIDGE
“I like that idea,” King William said when Allyn had spoken that evening. “I could go with you.”
Edith was about to speak, but she said nothing. She was relieved when Duke Richard said, “But I believe Queen Hermudis is on her way to see you.”
“I can’t make her wait,” William said ruefully, and Richard laughed over the indomitable Princess of Armor who had become Queen of Sussail.
“Well, the trip will be quick,” Allyn said. “We will ride up and be back in a week. We will take the Private Guard.”
“And some of the Inglad Guard,” Edith chimed in. Tonight she looked fair with only a thing veil under a light golden tiara and Hilda, sitting across from her, wondered, “What is she about?”
“And some of my men as well,” William said.
“Well, we hardly need that,” Queen Edith said. “The King is riding up to talk to your brother, a monk, not going to make war against the pretender Osric.”
“But he may be surrounded by Osric’s men,” Richard suggested.
“Then bring a white flag,” Allyn said, flippantly.
She wished he wouldn’t. Edith had thought to say the same thing, but one had to be so careful, to look less than obliging was to be suspicious and they could not afford that.
“William, Queen Edith said, “if you think that is necessary, then—”
But she stopped talking, for at that moment a falcon flew into the great all, squawking and Edmund murmured, “Goddamn.”
The falcon was never good news and Allyn said, “I wonder if that cunt has written us to tell us she is pregnant again with another ruler of the three kingdoms.
But this falcon belonged to the curly haired Duke Richard, and he placed a bit of meat into his mouth and then unfolded the letter from about its leg and read, scowling.
“Out with it!” William said to his brother.
“Osric has no more of Hale to take,” William said. “We no longer hold Sunderland. Somehow his east troops were met by troops who, unbelievably, seem to have come through the Giant Mountains.”
“What does he have helping him?” Allyn laughed, “Dwarves?”
“Whatever he has,” Richard looked at him the Duke scornfully, “he has Carchester, Cardeshire and all of Sunderland. Aidenton surrendered to him yesterday. As of now, King Wolf and is armies are literally at your door. The priests and bishops have been exiled and abbots and monks have risen in support of Osric and Myrne.”
“Then we cannot wait,” Edmund said to William. “Allyn and I will ride tonight. We must reach Odo at Canossa immediately.”
THE ZAHEM BORDER
No one was at Runthistle Farm but Arvad, who had assumed no one would come. The jingling jangling vardo with a princely man on a horse riding at its head, coming down the path and toward the door of the great house was a surprise. No one ever came to this part of the country, days from the city, close to the border. Arvad decided it was better to greet than to wait and see if they would ask hospitality from him, and the night was drawing on, anyway, so he put on his jacket and ran out of the door of the farmhouse. Runthistle House was like a long, high peaked, wide, unpainted barn itself, and Arvad came out of a central, swinging door, up the dusty walk to meet the brown faced man sitting in the wagon with a young, beautiful but strangely pink haired and delicate boned boy beside.
“Hail!” Ohean called.
And then Arvad said, “Will you all be staying the night?”
Ohean and Anson looked at each other, and from behind them, out of the vardo, Dissenbark shouted, “We are! I’ve been in this thing for two days. I need a room!”
“Dissen!” another voice chided her.
“And some good food and beer if you’ve got it,” she added.
Arvad put a hand to his face to cover a laugh.
“I think, we have it, Mistress….?”
“Dissen. And my shy, hidden friend back here is called Theone.”
“So you’re on your way to the city?”
“Yes,” Ohean said. “And we are perfectly capable of helping you prepare a meal.”
“Nonsense,” Arvad said, “Have another drink. This is all on me. I’ve got the farm for a while. My master and the true mistress of this place, one formidable Mehta, are gone to town to replenish stock.
“And yet,” Arvad said, “There is just enough for you.”
“I hope more than just enough,” said Anson. “I hope we’re not running you out of house and home.”
God he was beautiful! Tall, lantern jawed, a sword at his side so certainly a soldier.
“House, maybe,” Arvad said. “But certainly not house and home. That,” would be intolerable.”
Austin laughed and looked a Arvad with affection. Arvad, not entirely sure if he had imagined Austin’s affectionate gaze, but he smiled, and laughed back just the same.
“After the baby died there were only two things for me to do,” Theone said.
Arvad and Anson had built a large fire in the hearth together, touching hands, looking at each other, laughing, while Dissenbark raised an eyebrow and looked to Ohean, who seemed to notice nothing.
“Now, I could go back to serving the Hands, as I had before. Or I could lose my mind and stay in the infirmary. Certainly going to Ethan was an impossibility,” she shrugged. “He was gone.”
“And that’s when you decided to leave,” Arvad said, leaning across the fire, the light catching his green eyes, his red hair.
“Yes. There was nothing else for me to do. I didn’t even know how to get out of the house. I’d never seen an exit door. Gimble could have taught me. But… he was gone.
“You might not think it could be that hard to get away, to know how to get away. But the Place of the Hand is strong, and my mind was slow and sad. I was almost at the end of my sick time when I thought to ask if I could be a scullery maid for a while. Hyrax was displeased, but granted it. Of course, in the scullery, I could dig up scraps of information about the outside world.”
“And it was near the exit of the house, so you knew how to get out,” Dissen figured.
Theone nodded.
“That is right. And that’s what I chose. And the moment I chose it I was afraid. I knew I could get caught, and then… But what worse could be done to me? What I feared was not getting to succeed, not getting to take back that Stone and, of course, if I didn’t leave, then nothing would ever happen. So I left.”
“In the the night?”
“No, Austin,” Theone said, shaking her head. “In the middle of the day.
“In the deepest part of night, if I’d been caught people would have known I was sneaking away. In the middle of the day I was just someone walking out of the kitchen. I just strolled away. The day before I left, I had placed food outside, in a high, safe place where no animals would get to it. So I just left. I knew it would be a while before I was noticed. I took a carriage for three days because I couldn’t bring myself to steal a horse. Not then, at least. And then I walked and I walked until I did steal a horse. And well, you know the rest.”
Arvad sat back, rocking on his hills.
“You are so brave, Theone.”
She lifted her head to the rafters lost in the darkness above and said, “I think we’re all pretty brave,” and then she yawned.
“And pretty sleepy,” Ohean said, crushing out his last cigarette.
“Let’s round up the wreckage and head to bed.”
He stretched and yawned and they all separated, but as Austin said, “Here, I come—” he felt a wrist tug his arm and looked down to see Arvad on the floor, smiling up at him.
“Don’t go,” Arvad said. “Not just yet.”
“Where are you going?” Arvad reached for him as Austin was climbing out of bed.
“I didn’t know if you’d want me to stay.”
“I do,” Arvad said, leaning back into bed and pulling the blankets over his waist, “If you would.”
Austin said, “This is Zahem, where I lost my first love, and since we left the Rootless Isle, where I lost another love, that man has been on my mind. Anson and Ohean have each other, but I’ve been so hungry for affection, and you’re good and sweet and… I don’t want you to feel like I’m using you.”
Arvad leaned on his side, reaching up to touch Austin’s hair.
“I’m a big boy,” he said, his red curls falling in his green eyes, “I won’t be jealous or angry, and I don’t have to cling. Austin Buwa, you are not the only man who needs affection even if the affection last only for the night.”
“How could I only have affection for that last a night?” Austin said. “I want to sample everything life has. I want this. You know? And, if we can have something after it, stay friends, stay tender to each other, I’d like that. Alright? We may have sex for the night, but affection, kindness, tenderness, that can go on for far more than a night. I think it can go on for a lifetime.”
“If you’d like it, we could be tender to each other all night. I’d like it. I really would,” Arvad said, leaning over to turn off the lamp so that the last thing Austin saw was the smootness of his gold brown back, of his small, round buttocks.
“Would you?”
In the dark, Austin reached over to pull Arvad to him and answered: “Yes.”
TOMORROW NIGHT WE RETURN TO BRENDAN, KENNY AND BITS AND PIECES
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Lots going on in different locations but I think it is all going to go together well in the end. Excellent writing and I look forward to more Bits and Pieces tomorrow.
