The book of the battles

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, yes, lets of moving pieces

 

[ChrisGibson]

AFTER A WEEK OF NO BOOK OF THE BATTLES, LETS END THE WEEK WITH A WHOLE LOT OF BOOK OF THE BATTLES


When he was seven years old, a tall handsome man on a horse rode up the hill through the autumn leaves and called, “Boy, can you lead me to the man called Ash?”
“My name is Osric!” he shouted out.
“A sober name for such a little thing,” the knight said. He was dragon eyed and wide nostriled with cinnamon colored hair and golden brown skin.
“Ash calls me Wolf. He is my foster father.”
“Yes talking, young Wolf. More leading.”
Wolf eyed him cautiously and said, “But who are you?”
“Protective of your master,” the knight said, rubbing his jaw and grinning. “And yet, do you not think he could protect himself?”
“Ash is a mighty wizard!” Wolf declared. “He doesn’t have to worry about anything! Still,” the boy said. “who are you.”
The knight smiled indulgently, nodding his head and said, “You are his fosterson more than you know. My name is Ralph.”
“Well, then come on,” the red headed boy said, and led Ralph up the hills through the crunch of autumn leaves. When they came to the house, Ash was outside in a open tunic whittling a staff and he looked up from his stump and said, “Took you long enough.”
“Glad to see you too, Ash.” Ralph leapt off his horse. A red headed woman came out of the house and she said, “Is it company?”
“It is, Clauda,” Ash said. “My old friend. He will be staying a few nights. Wolf, could you care for his horse while we talk?”
Wolf nodded curtly and he heard Ash saying, “But did you bring them?”
“Well, you asked me to, right?” Ralph said.

This was how Wolf came to know Ralph, and the knight from the West, who lived in the court of King Idris, but traveled through all the lands of the West told Wolf of how, once, Ash had raised a storm to destroy an entire fleet of Dayne ships.
“It turned out that a wizard of the White Tower was in league with them,” Ralph said. “This is how Ash first came to the White Tower, not as a student, but as an investigator. There was no love for him in those days—”
“Or now,” Ash added. “But his grandfather is Lord of the White Tower, Tallyson, and his power was undeniable. After he had taken care of Koruko, for that was the mage in league with the tower, his Grandfather and the Council convinced him to come back for a year.”
“I knew you were something,” Wolf said to Ash.
“Of course he’s something!” Cauda looked on her son with irritation. “He is the greatest mage is the Old Kingdoms or the Young.”
“Pass the bread, would you,” Ash said, as was his way, and though Cauda did, Ralph kept talking.
“We all went to Dayne, for Ash’s grandfather was still King and he loved Ash. Ash was the apple of that old man’s eye. Even though he was sixteen, almost seventeen, but not quite, when he told King Math that they had to go to Dayne before Dayne came to them, he obeyed. That was in the days before Edmund, when the Dayne still controlled Hale. Ash showed up on those shores with the armies of Elmet and Rheged at his back and… goddamn! S’cuse me for swearing, m’lady.”
“I’ve heard a goddamn or two in my day,” Cauda said.
Yes, that’s right. Before Edmund’s reign, Sweyn and Svig had ruled the three kingdoms, taken them from the weakened Wulfstans, set themselves up all over the coast to continue at close range the raiding they had done. Only later would Wolf learn they’d had magical help from members of the White Tower, members Ohean had quickly put down quickly. Edmund had been on his throne thirty years. It was easy forget there was a time when he was across the sea in Daumany, wishing for his throne, and it had been in those days that a very young Ohean had stood beside his grandfather and confronted the aging King Sweyn.
“It is no use speaking of it now,” Ash had said. He turned to Wolf and said, “It is time for young wolves to be in bed.”

The next morning his mother had woken him and said, “The Master says you are to go with him and Sir Ralph. It is chilly this morning. Bundle up.”
They had ridden through the hills half the morning, under the high red and gold trees of northeastern Rheged. They rode for days until it was Ralph who said, “We are now in the land of Hale.”
Isn’t that ruled by the Edmund?” Wolf said. “My mother said we fled from it. That Edmund killed my father.”
Yes, that’s right,” Ash said. “But we will be here only for a little while.”
Mother never speaks of Father,” Wolf said.
I’m sure she has her reasons.”
I wonder what he did.”
Boy,” Ralph said, “Your father was the—”
Was the best of men,” Ash said, his eyes flashing at Ralph who immediately stopped talking.
He should know is all,” Wolf heard Ralph whispering that night and Ash hissed, “He will know when he should.”
But—”
If you think you know how to raise a child,” Ash returned, “by all means take him with you when you go.”

The last day, they descended into the rockier areas, and gone past shooting and roaring waterfalls. The fell into narrow areas under high hills and Wolf fancied that he heard knocking against the walls, but surely this was the roaring of the waterfalls. Now they passed under a waterfall and while the rushing water roared in Wolf’s ears and Ralph’s arm protected him from falling, Ash, black cloak gathered about him, knocked on a crack on the wall in a strange pattern.
“Do not be afraid,” Ash said.
“Why?” Wolf began, but even as he spoke, the crack opened and the boy’s eyes widened as a dull fire could be seen through it. The crack in the wall opened to a door and now he heard the hammering. Ohean came down the stairs first and when he entered, a little man with broad shoulders stopped beating the glowing metal at his anvil long enough to say, “Akkrebeth? And who are these you have brought?”
“Sindri,” Ash said as Wolf blinked, looking about to see what were, plainly, dwarves working in a great smithy, “this is the boy Osric, Eoga’s son, and this is Sir Ralph Curakin, my old friend.”
“Then I’m sure I’m pleased,” the dwarf called Sindri said in a voice that said he had no time to take his eye from his work.
Ralph handed Ash the bag and Ash said, “I have brought these to you that they might be restored and… enchanted.”
Sindri lifted up a glowing sword and then plunged into water that bubbled and hissed and he came forward on his squat legs to open the bag. Wolf gasped at the same time as the dwarf.
“Are these the Wulfstan crowns?”
“What’s left of them,” Ash said.
Sindri lifted a dinted half circle and said, “This was the work of Svig?”
“Yes, his word about the reign of the King and Queen of the Three Kingdoms.”
“It will be easy enough to reforge. But surely not for that bastard Edmund.”
“What do the Dwarves know of Edmund?” Ralph began.
Sindri looked up at the tall knight, his eyes glinting.
“Enough, warrior,” Sindri said.
“It is not for him,” Ash said. “It is for the grandson of Edward Ironside who will in time be King, who is born of a half Royan woman.”
“Ah,” Sindri nodded. “I see. The ancient crowns of Locress were bound in enchantment, but never those in the north. You want crowns that bound the lord and the lady to the land.”
“And the land to the lord and lady.”
Ash nodded.
“Why not you?” he said to Ash.
“I am no smith,” Ash said, “and Hale is not my land.”


Stretching across the flat top of a hill were the long rose colored walls of Herreboro, the town and the castle. The rose walls and wide white stone gates of the castle were ancient, the remain of a long gone Royan palace, but the pinker towers and higher walls of the Great Keep were Sendic, going back six hundred years to the first lords of Herreboro. Across the valley Herreboro rose above, was the white walled monastery and over it all the sun shone on the spring time green valley out of a sky of translucent blue. Colorful crowds came through the great doors of the abbey while the monks sang.


Karaniya mattha kusalena,
Yan tam santam padam abhi-samecca;
Sakko uju ca suhuju ca,
Suvaco cassa mudu anatimani.

Santussako ca subharo ca,
Appakicco ca sallahukavutti;
Santindriyo ca nipako ca,
Appagabbho kulesu ananu giddho.

The monks and the monastery had been here long before much of the city or the ancestors of most of the inhabitants. They had been the White Monks, from the south, who had come in the days of Saint Dewy and Saint Davydd and established themselves from Sussail, all through what had been the Royan kingdoms, and they had watched, almost impassive, as in the north, the Royan population of the north kingdoms gave way to the Hale. They gave the thrice honor, Honor to the Ard, Honor to the Teaching of the Way and Honor to the Communion, the body of monks and nuns and all those who attached themselves to them. They revered all and converted none and so, in the end, converted many. The Hale who came to settle in the North were weary of their old gods and even their old priests of power, and so the White Order, and in time the Grey Order had flourished.

Na ca khuddam samacare kinci,
Yena vinnu pare upavadeyyum;
Sukhino va khemino hontu,
Sabbe satta bhavantu sukhitatta:
Ye keci panabhut'atthi,
Tasa va thavara va anavasesa;
Digha va ye mahanta va,
Majjima rassaka anukathula
Dittha va ye ca adittha,

For hundreds of years there was no other Communion, but when Queen Ossa of Inglad had died without issue, her cousin, Ceowulf had come to the throne, holding Hale in one hand, and his new kingdom of Inglad in the other. Centuries older, Inglad was the more refined land, and he had moved his capital to Ambridge and married his sons to southern women. The moment Inglad came into Wulfstan hands was the moment that Hale fell under Inglad influence, and the mighty lords of Inglad had sent their younger sons up north to claim the vast tracts of wild land and land that was not so wild, and so the barons had been established, men Halish in name only, and with them had come the priests.
In Inglad the Communion was dominated by the priests and there was the eternal struggle between the monks and nuns who considered the Communion to be all the faithful praying, and the priests who considered the Communion to be their vast network of clerics, supported by the funds of the faithful. In the 1550’s, when the Kings of Hale had become Kings of Inglad, the priests established themselves here as well, and when Edmund had come to the throne he had reestablished them and made them his eyes and ears so that, at the first council Myrne and Wolf had held, it was Lady Ashley Herreboro who had told her daughter and her son by marriage, “The first thing you must do is exile the priests.”
Ashley Senae had been born in Inglad, like Michael Flynn who sat at table with them.
“After you exile the priests, you must exile the barons who will not side with you.”
“She is right,” Michael said.
“But exile is a harsh thing,” Wolf murmured, “and something we all know. And one day we shall come to Inglad anyway.”
“The people of Inglad who have always been in Inglad are one thing,” Michael Flynn said, and Lady Ashley nodded. “But these barons are a hybrid. Halishmen who do not mingle with other Hale, and Ingladi who have never been to Inglad or at least do not remain there. They are completely in Edmund’s pocket, and you do not attend to them and the priests…”
“If you do not attend to them,” Lord Toman Herreboro said, “this war may take a very long time.”
And so it was that the monastery that had sat on the hill and witnessed the arrival of the priests two hundred years earlier had seen them depart, and Abbot Cuthbert, this day, sat legs folded under him in the midst of his monks, chanting blessings over the couple in white who sat, also cross legged, side by side.

Ye ca dure vasanti avidure;
Bhuta va sambhavesi va,
Sabbe satta bhavantu sukitatta.
Na paro pararam nikubbetha,
Natimannetha katthaci nam kinci;
Byarosana patighasanna,
Nannamannassa dukkhamiccheyya.

They had sat like this in this abbey a year earlier, the dark haired girl scarcely twenty years old beside, all in armor, but carrying no sword, the tall, orange haired slender green eyed man with ivory skin. Together they bowed their head.

Mata yatha niyam puttam
Ayusa ekaputtamanurakkhe;
Evampi sabbabhutesu
Manasambhavaye aparimanam.
Mettanca sabbalokasmim
Mansambhavaye aparimanam;

The nave of the abbey continued to fill with lords and ladies, some dark brown and golden skin Royans, some white skinned Hale and Daynes, all legs folded beneath them, hands folded as the monks chanted before the young King and his young Queen.


The night before they’d left, Ohean said to Cauda, “We will be gone some time. I cannot say how long. In the hills she’d heard no news of what had happened to them, but her nights were filled with dreams of the past, her days with the dread that, perhaps, Ohean was leading her son to his destiny. He had been twelve the first time Ohean told him plainly the truth of his father and of the crowns, and when Wolf had asked about them, Ohean said, “Never you mind.”
But today, she saw the troops riding through the hills, riding for her cabin, and she thought, “Well it has happened. I am not sure what it is, but something has happened.”
And she didn’t give a damn about her own safety. She’d been hiding here for twenty years ot protect her son, and here were the banners of Hale and so when she came out, she saw a handsome, but slightly rabbity faced warrior in a blue cloak over silver armor.
“An Ambridge man,” she thought, and she came out to him, folding her arms over her chest.
“Lady Cauda?”
“I am,”
“The wife of the late Eoga?” the man dismounted, and all around soldiers were dismounting.
“I am the widow of that great man,” she said.
And then, to her surprise, the rabbit faced man genuflected, and all around her men went to one knee.
“We are here to lead you to your son, the King, who will meet you in Kester.”

And so she learned of how this man was Eryk Waverly, Inglad enough, for his aunt was the Lady Ashley Senae. He was from a baronial family. The Waverlys had been Inglad men who, when Hale first inherited the wealthier southern kingdom, had gone north to establish themselves and their courtly ways. They called themselves Halish but, as could easily be seen by this Lord Waverly, there was little of Hale about them. Like most barons, they married not Halish women, but southern ones, and so Lord Waverly, half Dauman, had wed the Lady Margaret Senae and this Eryk was their offspring. He explained all of this in a drawling voice and introduced Cauda to the wheat haired Cynric.
“Now my cousin, here, he is a true born Hale.”
Cynric ignored this, but explained to Lady Cauda that even now her son and his new bride were marching into North Hale to take back the land of the hated Baldwins. Cynric was the son of the last of the Senae sisters, Mallory, a wild girl who had followed her sisters north and fallen for a wheat haired, half Dayne called Sturllson and, looking at Cynric, Cauda thought this made complete sense.
Cynric was easy to talk to, did not feel very royal and eased her transition into Castle Herreboro where she became instantly aware of her split ends and the callouses on her skin.
“I was never raised to live the life of a lady,” she had explained to Ashley Herreboro.
“And yet,” the highborn woman said, “a king chose you for his queen, to bear his son, and look on that altar, your son is a king.”

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.

When Eryk Waverly had entered the abbey, checking his sword at the nave by the door monk, he saw Hyla, holding the Prince Blake to her chest and said, “Are you staying out her in the vestibule?”
“I will come in when the crowd applauds so that Blake can see his mother and father crowned.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Eryk said. “You should be in the front!”
“With the royal family?” Hyla smiled from the corner of her mouth. “Right where the scullery maids belong.”
“You are much more than a scullery maid.”
Hyla looked surprised, but she said, “Eryk Waverly, you are right. I am also a chambermaid and a nanny.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but Hyla said, “I feel no shame for what I am, and a crying baby should not be in the front of an abbey. Here is fine. Now go see Abbot Cuthbert crown our King and Queen.”







This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skilful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born
May all beings be at ease.

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.


When Cuthbert rose, Wolf rose and Myrne rose. Now, all the assembly began to rise as the choir, the one thing the priests had brought that remained, sang:

Whether standing or walking,
seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

And then, without the aid of a book, as would have been used in the Great Cathedral in Ambridge, the Abbot Cuthbert began to speak to the young man and to the young woman before him.
“Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the Kingdom of Hale according to their respective laws and customs?”
Wolf looked down at Myrne, who smiled up at him, and then turning to face Cuthbert, they replied: “I solemnly promise so to do.”
“ Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?”
“We will.”
“Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of the Hale and the Royan, respecting the gods and customs of all?”
Wolf recalled that, in Westrial, at Cedd’s coronation, this bit had been much longer and about the Communion and preferecing it above all religions. He assumed that, had he been crowned in Ambridge, the rite would have been much the same, but there there was no mention or religion at all. He imagined that Myrne would have noticed this as well. But she has begun speaking but for him, and now he joined her.
“All this,” the said, “We promise to do.”
Myrne cleared her throat, for there was more, and she led Wolf in saying: “The things which we have here before promised, we will perform, and keep. So help us, O Lord.”
And so Cuthbert anointed their heads, their chests and palms, and now Ralph came forward and Cuthbert removed the veil from the pillow he bore and on it, identical, were two golden tiaras, glinting in the low afternoon abbey light. As they were placed on the altar, Ralph raised them and sang out:
“Behold, in the east, Osric, your undoubted King. Behold in the west, Myrne, your undoubted King. Behold in the north, Osric, your undoubted King. Behold in the south,” he called holding the golden crowns aloft, “Myrne, your undoubted Queen. Behold, Hale, Myrne and Osric, your undoubted Queen and undisputed King.”
“My people, I here present unto you Osric and Myrne, your undoubted rulers. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?”
And all in that great abbey cried aloud: “Aye!” as Ralph handed on crown to Cuthbert, and he placed it on King Osric’s head, and then the next to Myrne, and crowned her his Queen and she was his King.
“Amen,” Cuthbert murmured, clasping his hands. “Amen.”



SOUTHERN HALE




That bells rang long into the night, and one of the soldiers loaned out by Duke Richard had asked, “What in the world is that?”
“Those are coronation bells,” Edmund noted. “I remember them well.”
Allyn could not remember coronation bells. He had only been four when Edmund was crowned at Ambridge. Edmund had left Hale to the Herreboros and North Hale to the Baldwins. Now, Allyn thought this might have been unwise. Since Osric and Myrne had begun their conquest, cartloads of priests and bishops carrying all the wealth they could, oil paintings and gold trimmed furniture pilled up with rich carpets, had crossed the border, thrown inelegantly from their estates and cathedrals. The border lords who had refused to bend the knee to the new regime came back with much less and filled the court of Ambridge with their grumbles of complaint as well as, Allyn noted, their empty bellies.
“We should camp down for the night,” Edmund said as the sun set. He said, “I wonder how they were crowned. After all, Svig destroyed the old crowns.”

But by the dying fire, as first watch was taken by Beaumond, Raymond and Alberic, one of the Ambridge guard born up in North Hale said, “The crowns were damaged, split into pieces, but gold cannot be destroyed. Just as the Wulfstans were not destroyed. Both were preserved by the same man.”
“Who?”
“Ohean Pendarow.”
Ohean Pendarow!
The name that was only heard, whispered about, moving through the west, sometimes at the side of the old king Anthal in Westrial, so it was said, the lover of Prince Anson, the would be king who had fled into the West. But when Edmund had known him, he had been a boy riding with another boy, a handsome, cinnamon haired young knight, and though Ohean was not tall and in many ways not physically impressive, there had been something in his flashing eyes.
“Do you wish to be King?” Ohean had asked him.
“I hear you are a bastard prince with witchy powers.”
The young knight’s hand went to his sword, but Ohean had shaken his head.
“Surely that is not the only thing you have heard, you who are little more than a bastard yourself. Do you wish to be King or no?”
“Can you make me?”
“I can help.”
“You and the Baldwins.”
“Yes,” Ohean nodded. “They too.”
“And those who help raise you up and can help tear you down.”
“Well, now that’s always true,” the boy Ohean had said.

“It is said that after your nephew Eoga died,” the Marchman said politically, “his wife, Cauda, fled to Ohean. Ohean it was who had the golden crowns found. They were in he hands of Sweyn’s son, Tostig. He took them around the same time he defeated their fleet. Possibly the same time he met you, your grace, and he had them reforged.”
The whole time he helped to place a crown on my head, he hid the old crowns and my nephew.
Well, now, Edmund thought as he drifted into sleep, he was a sorcerer.

When Edmund woke he realized it was not his bladder. No. He had sensed a thing, as any good soldier would. He blinked. Allyn was standing over him.
“Come,” Allyn said. “We have to be on our way.”
“On our way,” Edmund grumbled. “You little fool, it’s in the middle of the—”
But then Allyn’d blade was to his throat, and his brother-in-law grinned down on him madly.
“Don’t make a noise,” Allyn said, “and don’t worry about calling Richard’s men. Just rise.”
Edmund was a mighty fighter, but here was the time to admit Allyn was as well. Edmund rose up, his back against the tree, the sword point at his throat. Edmund turned his head just long enough to see Raymond, legs out like a rag doll, head lolling, his neck glistening and red.
“Your cousins just had to insist on sending their men,” Allyn said. “Well, no matter, they will be buried with respect. No need for dishonor, but you are going with me. With us.”
Edmund could hear the other soldiers packing and he said, “They agreed to this?”
“Oh, yes,” Allyn said. “These men are my men. I am the head of the Ambridge guard and they have been waiting for me to be King. I should have been King.”
While Allyn spoke, Allyn disarmed him, removing every dagger Edmund had on him, and Edmund thought, “Why did I take him for a fool? Why did I forget he was head of the guard, an accomplished soldier. Why did I forget he was so strong?”
“I will be King,” Allyn said, shooving the bag over Edmund’s head.
“Now, let’s go.”

MORE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SATURDAY!

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a huge portion but it was good to get back to this story. I hope Edmund is ok as his sudden departure seems a bit forced. As to everything else that happened in this section it was very interesting and I look forward to more after Saturday!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Edmund's a rapist, the murderer of his own brothers---Merle and Osric's father and grandfather-- and their chief enemy, but if you hope he's okay, cool. I can't promise he is, though.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WELL, HERE'S A SURPRISE: THE LAST PART OF THE BOOK OF THE BATTLES


ZAHEM




The next morning as he was sending them off, Arvad said, “I wish I could come!”
Austin turned to Ohean and said, “I don’t feel right about just leaving him.”
“I have responsibilities,” Arvad said. “I can’t just abandon the farm.”
Dissenbark frowned. “It sounds like this is where I step off.”
Theone looked at her.
“You’ve got to go to the Temple,” she said. “I was wondering where I was in all of this. Well, Austin and Anson can’t leave Ohean. Arvad can’t leave the farm. You can’t leave your duty, and I can’t bear to see Arvad stuck here alone. I’ll stay.”
“I almost want to stay,” Austin said. “I haven’t been to Nava in years, and didn’t relish my last trip.”
“Austin will be staying with us,” Anson announced while Ohean shrugged. Dissenbark smiled with a strange triumph.
“And now,” Ohean announced, a strangeness coming over him. “I must speak. I must… It’s a blessing. And a prophecy.”
He took Arvad aside and said, “Soon, the one you have dreamed of will come, The heart inside of your heart, and when he does, you must recognize him. He will bear the same mark as your master. Love him. He will love you. Your souls have been together since before the beginning.”
They all looked at him and Dissenbark, coming out of the vardo with her bag of things said to Anson, “You have to love him. Never stop loving him.”
But Arvad looked at Ohean and said, “Master. I am no great mage. I can’t prophecy, but I can advise. If my heart is coming, then I see yours has already come. Don’t let him go.” He turned and looked to Prince Anson. “Don’t ever let him go.”



Mehta woke early the next morning, and then, remembering where she was, in a hotel, in a great city, willed herself back to sleep. There was no breakfast to cook, no fire to make ready, no Arvad to wake up and say milk the cows. She slept. Usually when she went to bed she was so exhausted she closed her eyes and then woke up with a sore back the next morning, but this morning sleep was soft cloud she sank into, and coming slowly up out of it, she went back into it again.
When she finally woke in truth, she was thinking of closing the curtains that let the light in, but Mehta realized it must be time to get out of bed, and so, with a great will she made herself leave it and walked across the room. Here there was an indoor bathroom, which they had at the farm house, sure enough, but that Mehta had spent a long time coaxing Farmer Soren to put in.
When she had washed her face and combed out her hair, she knew it was time to begin the serious work of finding a morning cup of coffee. She would wake Master Soren, and he was next door and so, in a frock, with her keys, and her marmalade hair tied back, she left the room and banged on the door three times.
“Ah,” he opened the door, holding his head, “For the love of…. Ah, Sweet Banthra! Kavana and Nar! Don’t you sleep, woman?” he rasped as she came into his room, which smelled of tobacco.
“I did sleep. I slept too long.”
“Sleep longer.”
“What time is it?”
“Scarecly nine!”
“Well, how long do you need?” she demanded.
“We were up all night. You were with me. You put away more Solandake than I ever could, and here you are… Gods curse you, witch!”
“I thought you’d want to get a good cup of coffee so we could start the day.”
As Soren stumbled to the bathroom and shut the heavy door, he muttered, “Goddamn you, woman…” and a few other choice epithets before he came back, the sound of a flushing toilet behind him.
“Look!” his hair was sticking up and, as usual, the black ribbon was hanging from his wrist, “I’m going to sleep another half hour, and—“
“I want to get a cup of coffee.”
“Then as my servant I urge you to serve and bring me up coffee. How’s that?”
Only in his trews Soren tumbled back into bed, his back to her, “and if service is as slow here as it was last time, that should be a half hour. I’ll see you then.”
“Master Soren!”
“That’s final,” he made a loud snoring noise. “See, I’m snoring.” He snored again. “No go.”
Soren persisted in his rude snoring, and then finally Mehta, knowing when she had lost, shrugged and went out of the room.

He was right enough. It had taken the better part of a half hour, and when she came up he was more or less awake. She mixed a cup of coffee from the service and said, as she handed it to him, “The price of beans is going up, I hear. There’s a war down south past Solahn.”
Soren cheered her with a raised coffee cup, and then rolled over in bed, drinking his coffee there.
“You think I talk so much and talk about nothing.”
“That’s not so, Mehta.”
“It is,” she said, smiling. “It is a little. Maybe you’re right,” she shrugged.
“I think,” she sat in the large rocking chair by the door, “I’ve been obsessed with you finding a wife so that I would be free to find a husband.”
“You can find a husband anytime you want.”
“I’ve convinced myself it woudn’t be right to leave you.”
She put up a hand before he could continue.
“This is foolish because I don’t leave the house enough to find anyone. And maybe, deep inside, I don’t want to. Like you don’t want to.”
Soren stirred from bed and said, “Now, you’ve lost me.”
“I know, and you know I know, that you like your bachelor’s life. It’s enough lonely farm widows, young ladies, for you to run out and spend the night with, strange girls who blow in that come up to you giggling. Like that silly one last night I was afraid I’d stumble into this morning.”
Soren lifted his finger.
“And,” she said before he could speak, “there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. But I need to stop trying to make you the marrying type to justify why I won’t go and find myself some pleasure of my own.”
“I did love someone,” Soren said. “Once.”
Metha blinked.
He nodded.
“I loved her and I’m not likely to see her again, or be able to get to her. If she still lives. There… There was so much life in her I can’t imagine her dead, but I also can’t imagine her still in the place we were and…”
Mehta had put her coffee down and was looking at him intently. Soren was her best friend. She loved him. They had found each other and put the farm together.
“She’s from that old time,” said Mehta. “The time you hate to talk about.”
Soren nodded soberly.
“She was the good thing about it. She came into my life and let me know how little my life was. She made me human. I loved her. She loved me. We would have had a child together.”
This was one of the rare moments when Soren was not jolly and light. His face looked full of an old sadness when he turned it to the window, and Mehta said:
“Well, we’ll not talk of it. We’ll put it away and if one day you want to take it out, I’ll be here. All right?”
Soren nodded.

“Well, now what about these?” Mehta said lifting up a bolt of light blue silk. “See how they catch in the sun?”
Soren frowned at her and said, “what on earth would we do with that back at Turnthistle?”
“Well,.. I was just thinking it was pretty was all,,” she laid the bolt down gently. “I’m getting this bracelet by the way. “It’s all the way from Crozad—”
But she stopped then, because there was a drumming. A “bum, bum, bum, bum.”
“What the?” she began, but Soren was looking toward the sound of the drums and with the bag of feed he crossed the busy walkway that looked down over the low city. Regretfully Mehta glanced at the bolt, then surrendered it and joined him.
The main street was cleared, and at the head of a great procession came large men beating, slowly, bum, bum, bum, tympanis, beating like a dying gian’s heart, and behind them ranks and ranks of them, all in black, came the Hands, walking, not horsed. And then, lastly, there were men on horses, in black robes and in the midst of them, his hood down, his salt white face scanning all, Phineas, the High Priest. Above him was a banner, held aloft by servants. And this was the Black Star.
All noise in the city died. The procession made a turn now, into Temple Circle, and Mehta watched as the great doors, or what she could see of them, not blocked by other buildings, slowly swung open. Now the men were disappearing into it. One by one. Who knows how long the procession went on? When the drummers had been swallowed there was only complete silence.
The Temple was a long, structure. Long and low, but high at the same time for its main spires. As many times at Mehta had come to the city, as much as the city was dominated by the Temple ,somehow she had never looked at it. It had a way of resisting serious looking. It was surrounded by three courts called the Circle, and there was a wide space between it and the rest of the city. Now, suddenly, from each of the brass spires a white banner with a Black Star came up, and breaking across the city was a new sound, a trumpet from the highest tower, long and low and strangely chillingd.
Soren turned back to Mehta and said, “Put it out of your heart. Let’s ignore all of this and continue with our shopping, eh?”


What neither of them had thought about was how near the hotel was to the Temple. That night, from their adjoining balcony they could see the structure, floodlit with torches.
“It was not like that last night,” Mehta said.
“No,” Soren murmured, sitting down, still looking at it.
The spires were lit, and the spires went all around it like the points of a crown. From out of the crown, every hour or so rose smoke and the heavy scent of incense, and now and again came the long, low horn.
“It’s not really a comforting place,” Mehta said.
Soren gave a harsh laugh.
“And it makes the city so silent. We were so happy before, I thought. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get back home to Turnthistle as soon as possible.”
“It is all the same to me.”
“Always I’ve known about the Temple. Only now I wonder, what sort of God is served there?”
“No God at all, despite what the Zahem have been lead to believe, but one of the Hidden Ones. In the history of the Zahem, the Priests rose up to help them in a time when the Prophets could not. But the truth is this priesthood is far older than Zahem, as if the Temple. The priesthood infiltrated Zahem and now they serve a Hidden One. A Dark One. That’s who the Hands and the Sorcerers make their vow to. It isn’t to be spoken lightly. It isn’t to be spoken of at all, really.”
Mehta looked at him.
Soren looked at her, and the black ribbon was around his wrist and suddenly he shook it off, and he laid out his open wrist before her.
She gasped.
“It was a long time ago,” Soren said, “and I didn’t have any name at all. They take your name. They take you. I scarcely got away with my life. I did not really. I had to work very hard to get that life back, and that name, and now we shouldn’t discuss this again.”
Mehta let out a long breath before speaking.
“Once I came to the home of a woman. To help her with her baby. Her whole family was killed by Hands The men were. The women were taken away. A troop of Hands, silent and all in black with long black swords. This girl had a charm given to her by what she swore was a fairy woman. Must have been or how would she have gotten away from them. She spoke of them. Of their eyes, these deadly eyes.”
Soren remained silent.
“Master, tell me you didn’t do that. Things like that. Kill people. Destroy families. Put the fear of hell in folks. Put spells on them. Tell me you didn’t really have a part in that business.”
When Soren still said nothing, she said, “That’s me being foolish. I don’t suppose you could have been a “good Hand”. A Hand that didn’t do any of that. Ahhh,” she sighed. “You told me, and that’s what matters, and you’re who you are now. Not what you were. I can’t… How can I make sense of any of it?”
All of this time Soren kept looking at the Temple.
“I have been frightened to tell you that, Metha, and I never knew until now. I wanted to start over again and forget there was a past. But there was. I thought I’d paid for it, but I haven’t even begun to pay for the things I’ve done, the person I was.”
Very sensibly, Mehta rose up and said, “And you can’t pay for it by obsessing. Good or bad what’s done is done. And what has to be done is we get up early in the morning. So let’s be up,” she nodded stoutly in the direction of the Temple, then back to her open door, “and to bed, and out of this place.”
She was gone and, despite his shame, Soren found himself, in a slightly painful way, smiling.


TOMORROW NIGH" EXTRA GOODIES AND THE APPENDIX

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an unexpected but good ending. I suspect there is a continuation in some form so I am not too sad about this end. Fantastic writing as always and I look forward to the extra goodies and appendix tomorrow and whatever else comes next!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, there is more to come, and I think there has been so much recent editing, that this was short because much of what was the book of the broken went into the book of the battles. A lot of new stuff is happening with this story, so it will be a while before we get back to it, but it will continue for sure.