The Book of the Broken

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT AS OUR FRIENDS PREPARE TO LEAVE THE FORST, STRATEGY TAKES PLACE IN DAUMANY


THE OLD FOREST




Thano had departed from them days ago, heading west instead of north.
“You needed another magician, and you had one,” Thano said to his cousin. “Now that you are safely to the Rheged border, I will return to the Wyvilo lands. We will meet again on the Rootless Isle.”
Thano embraced Ohean and then Anson. He mounted his horse, shifted his bag over his shoulder, and departed. Watching him leave, Myrne had the strange feeling that something was about to happen, that they were in a sort of preparation and that, when it happened, they must all be together again.
This feeling of anticipation turned to agitation in the end. Myrne was not able to sleep that night, and a little irritated that Imogen did. All she could think of was how much she had felt in charge of her life until now, how she had thought she was able to travel all alone and how she had learned she could fight scarcely at all. The Princess of Westrial was snoring lightly, and Myrne got up and wrapped her cloak about herself, moving through the fallen leaves as quietly as possible to find Wolf. By the remnants of the fire, she saw Ohean talking with Anson. Part of her wished to listen to their words, but she was distracted from this, looking over Wolf, asleep on the ground, his knees drawn to his chest while he made a pillow of his arms.
“Wolf!” she whispered, leaning down. “Wolf!”
“Wha…” he began, and pushing his face into his hands he snored sharply.
“Wake up!” she hissed, almost offended, hitting him in the shoulder.
“What?”
This time he looked up at her sleepily, almost but not quite offended.
“Wake up, damn you.”
Wolf shook himself and sat up, his red hair sticking up. It was red gold in the remnants of the firelight she noticed, as was the prickly hair growing on his face and in the cleft of his chin.
“Teach me to fight.”
“What in the world?” he shook himself, sounding awake for the first time.
“Teach me to fight!” Myrne said. “I saw what you did out there.”
“I’m sleeping, Myrne.”
“Fuck your sleep!” she hissed.
She reached into his belt and pulled out his sword and the sound rang in the clearing.
“Teach me!” she commanded, walking off into the forest.
“Damn you!” he swore, but not entirely with anger. He pushed himself up on his hands and sprang after her, taking up his second best sword.

In the clearing, where swords clashed, Ohean looked away from the fire and from Anson, Michael and Polly.
“Young love,” he murmured, watching Myrne and Wolf in the night.
“Do you think they know?” Polly murmured sitting back on her hands against the tree.
“Not yet,” Ohean said, “though I have a mind to tell them. It might save a lot of trouble in the end.”
“I wonder if she knows how goodlooking he is,” Polly said, and when Michael looked at her, she said, “It’s no need to pretend you’re jealous, and there are goodlooking men all around. But he looks like a red headed version of you,” she said to Anson.
“My lady,” Anson gave a crooked smile, “are you flattering me?”
“I never flatter,” Polly said with her own smile.
“Enough of them,” Michael said, “More of this sword you spoke of.”
“Legend says the Sword of Sevard was left in this wood, was planted in a great tree.”
“I never heard the tale until recently,” Ohean said, as if to dismiss it, but Michael said, “I have.”
When Ohean looked at him, Michael said, “Friend Ohean, you are Royan through and through, but I am a man of Inglad. We know the tale. We even know the tree. A great tree in the center of the wood.”
“But where is the tree?” Anson’s eyes opened wider.
“It is the Council Oak,” Polly spoke this time.
When they looked on her in surprise, Polly continued, One of the children of the forest people and had been plaiting her hair into a crown of berries, and now she kissed the girl on the cheek and, her hand in the girl’s hair, said, “Now for the truth. Now for the reason I came to know Michael.”
“She was searching for that sword,” Michael said.
“And all I ever found was a deep wound in a tree where that sword had been placed.”
“Then…” Anson said. “It is gone.”
“Gone if it was ever there,” Ohean said, and Polly said, “But it was there. And now it has been moved.”
“By whom I wonder,” Anson sat back against a tree, wrapping his arms about his knees while the swords of Myrne and Wolf clashed.
“Damn!” Wolf cried.
“By a mage,” Ohean said.
Now they looked at him.
“If what you say of the sword is true, it was ensorcelled. No mere marauder could have stolen it or, for the most part, even seen it.”
When Michael looked at Polly, Ohean said, “You underestimate my cousin. She is a true mage, and she would have known it. A Royan mage drew this sword, and I even know where he took it. He took in into Rheged.”
“How can you…?” Anson said.
“It is in Rheged,” Ohean said with certainty. “It is in Rheged, and it is yours. All the more reason to reach that land as soon as possible.”
As the smored fire crackled, and dark grey light came from a far, Anson said, “You’re not going to tell me how you know, are you?”
“Not at the moment,” Ohean said, rising, wrapping his cloak about him. “Try not to annoy, and let me sleep.”




DAUMANY




He did not come to the House of Okimini in royal clothes or in his armor, but was led from the chapel he had stayed in that night, and brought in between Odo and Robert. The oratory was filled with the peers of the land, cousins and descendants of the first Dayne who had settled in Daumany three hundred years ago. Today, beside her husband, was even the Lady Herleva, to see her son, tall and slightly balding, and there, with white in his temples, though remarkable looking and fit, And Herleva saw Edmund King of Hale, North Hale and Inglad. Here was a power, here was a certainty that her son’s shaky reign would last, perhaps be even greater than his father’s.
The Great Oratory was divided into the court of gathering, where everyone stood, and it ended in the heavily engraved wall with the images of Yawata, Okimini, Inushi and Phahatan. Between Lady Okimini and Lord Inushi, was a great door, and through this Rufus entered to stand before the Thirty-Seven Peers, the lords and dukes of the land. As he entered, the doors closed behind him and only Odo and Robert remained.
Still further in, past this hall, in the inner sanctum of the Oratory, the monks sang:

Astrakay astrakay adohaem ladohaenam
Astrokay astrokay adohaem ladohaenam
Saska saskya, enno dum saski

Saskata set amboragaya
Astokay endo mysotahae
Ando leas taman noramate
Ando am gastaham

But right here, before the Thirty-Seven was Gerbear, the old White Monk who had stood at King Robert’s death bed, who was the Abbot of High Monastery and the successor to Holy Saint Remy. At his invitation, Robert and Odo stripped Rufus of his robe, and so Rufus stood naked in the middle of the Peers. He was tall and in some ways surprisingly plain, his body white, but across his back and arms, angry scars as if he had just been wounded in battle.

Saskata set amboragaya
Astokay endo mysotahae
Ando leas taman noramate
Ando am gastaham

The lords of the land, and his brothers, fell to their knees so only Rufus and Old Gerbear stood. Now Gerbear pulled out his cruse of oil, and Rufus went to his knees before the holy man. Gerbear dipped two fingers in the oil, and began to trace signs between Rufus’s eyes, over his lips, between his breasts.
“Rufus son of William son of William son of Richard, son of Indmund, son of Stephen, son of Richard, son of Richard, son of Logobard son of Roland, King of all Daumany. Rise.”
Rufus rose, his hands outstretched, and his brothers dressed him in his robe, tying it and then, with no noise, they led him into the inner chapel where he reverenced Okimini, and the head of the Red Monks and the head of Black Monks conferred upon him the Regalia.
He came back out into the assembly of the Thirty-Seven, crown on his head, red mantle over his shoulders, the Sword of Kings lain flat across his hands. They and his brothers fell to their knees.
Odo was the first up. He came to his older brother, who often felt like a younger brother, held out his hand and said, “Let me present you, Rufus.”
Rufus took his hand. When Rufus turned to him, Richard shook his head, He would remain in here. Odo was a symbol of the priesthood, It was right he should present his brother. They came out of the doors, and at once the chanting of the monks ceased.
“My people!” Odo cried out, “I present to you, your King, Rufus, Third of that Name. Long live King Rufus!
Rufus could see his mother, her eyes more hopeful than she wished. And he could see Edmund, grinning wolf like. They shouted along with everyone.
“Long live King Rufus! Long live King Rufus!”
The den rang off the walls of the House, and now, Rufus could hear trumpets blaring outside, announcing to the whole city of Chinom that a new King reigned in Daumany, blaring, Rufus imagined, even across the sea.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Big developments for Rufus indeed! I am enjoying this story a lot and look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Big developments including I'm pretty sure I end up changing his name to Rufus.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Before the feasting comes to a height,” Anson said, “we will have to move the girls to the next vale.”
Hood in black, cleaning his nails with an old knife, Ohean said, “Why?”
“Things will happen.”
“I daresay they will,” Ohean said. “The Green One will be present. Things have happened before, and you my friend have often been a part of them.”
“They are not fit for girls.”
“I disagree,” Ohean said. “Everything that is fit for boys is fit for girls, and your sister is a princess. If Myrne is no princess she is the closest thing to it. Let them stay and see or do as they wish.”
“Forgive me,” Anson said, tugging at Ohean’s hood, “for what will doubtless seem my hypocrisy, but my sister is not going to stay here for an orgy and neither if Myrne.”
“Orgy,” piped of Wolf.
“Most likely,” Ohean said in a bored tone.
“Very well, we will remove ourselves, but we will all remove ourselves.”
“Did you think I’d be staying?” Anson said.
“How do I know what you’d be doing? When I wasn’t around you made yourself at home at many a Blue Temple.”
Anson opened his mouth.
“No one’s blaming you,” Ohean said, silencing him, “so there’s no need to play the hypocrite.”
While Anson looked like he was still searching for words to say, Ohean approached his cousin, Polly who was speaking to Derek and Conn.
“We will be traveling into the next valley after we eat,” Ohean said. “Apparently the evening’s festivities are considered too much for princesses.”
Polly cocked her head and smiled and then said, “Ohean, you were always so practical you were almost impractical. I take it this is not your idea.”
“It is Anson’s,” Ohean almost whispered. “He thinks the little eyes of princesses should not see certain things.”
“Well,” Polly allowed, “do not be too hard on him. He may be right.”
“Shall we see you in the morning?” Derek said, scooping Conn under his arm.
“I think,” it was Conn who spoke now, “you will see us both in the morning.”
“What?”
Conn walked away a few paces and Derek followed him
“These last few days we have had no time together,” Conn said, “and when we do I wish it to be our time, not part of some grand orgy.”
“So you’re going with them and leaving me again?”
“You could come too,” Conn said. “Only you don’t want to.”
Derek blinked at him through his black lashes.
“Everything in you wants to see what happens tonight when the Green God comes. You want to be part of that and I couldn’t keep you, so that means you do not get to judge or be angry when I say I will be on the other side of the hills discovering something else.”
Derek grasped his wrist.
“Are you some strange and lonely mage growing ever distant from me, from us, or are you one of us? A Blue Priest given to the mysteries?”
“I am both. I am the door from what was to what will be. What must be.”
Derek stared at him in irritation rather than awe, then shook his hand and said, “Go. Just go.”


As evening approached and Derek Annakar sat looking through the trees at the river shooting far below, he said, “I could stay here awhile.”
Beside him the fat friar said, “you would.”
“I feel healed, and had no idea of how much healing I needed until I came to this wood.”
“There is much healing in the wood,” Friar Claire said, “And what is more, much healing you and your priests can offer.”
“I never knew,” Derek noted, looking down, looking through the huts up the hill, “Exactly what all the legends about Robin Hood and his Merry Folk were about. I knew—I heard—there were outlaws, and tht this wood was sacred, but…”
“This would has been sacred from time out of mind,” Claire said. “It is one of the places of power where the Ildor, the First Folk lived and where they crossed out of their world and into ours and still do. This place is the meeting of the worlds and Michael and Polly are the Robin and Marion, for always, in this forest there is a Robin Wood, or Hood, and his Maid Marian, King and Queen, Priest and Priestess of the Green.”
“As I am of the Blue.”
“Aye.”
“I thought,” Derek began. “Conn thought actually, and I saw when he showed me, that we saw the Lord of the Green, that he beckoned to us. At first he seemed only like a stag, but as we followed he seemed like a horned man. The closer we came, the harder it was to say. And then he was no more. Or rather, he was everywhere.”
“He welcomes you here,” The Brown Friar said. “Technically the brown monks are of the New Faith, but we came out of the old. We were once the priests and priestesses of the Earth. It is said in old stories that Ilmaro the Trickster was the father of Faunus or Omnus, the old Sinercian name for the Lord of Nature. But there ar e also oldr stories that said this very Lord was as old as the Titans, the first Gods who set the limits of the earth. The truth, The Trickster and the Lord of the Wood, the Green God and the Blue are One, coming from each other, reflecting upon the earth to men as different things. Think of the most intense moments of the rut when you served as a Blue priests and tell me you did not know the Wild God in them.”
“And the Merry Folk….” Derek murmured.
“Are all the people who come into this wood and make their home here. Some have lived here for generations, between Chyr and Westrial, between the world of men and the world beyond.”
Derek thought of the morning, when dense fog rose up from the river bed and the stretch of green he could see beyond him, which was the other side of the river, which was Chyr seemed to rise in black shadow from the white mist.
“I know the look on your face,” the Friar said. “It is a look of sadness.”
“Yes,” Derek said.
“Sadness,” Friar Clare concluded, “because you cannot stay.”


"Where do we go?" they asked Connleth for the first time. All of them were in their blue robes, hoods up in a circle.
“We go where we were always to go. We go to Chyr. But we go directly. We go to establish ourselves there.”
“We follow Ohean and Anson?” Quinton said.
“No,” Connleth said. “They have their own path, and it is roundabout. In the end it will lead to us and we will lead to them, but now you follow me.”
No one protested. Downbelow Sara and Jon and Nialla were with the wagons. They could chose to whatever.
Matteo pushed back his hood revealing his large wrinkled brow and in his deep, froglike voice, he said, “When do we leave?”
“We leave now.”




NORTHERN BORDER COUNTRY



It had been days since they had departed from Rob, Polly and their Wild Men. Tonight, Myrne dreamed of bedbugs. She was under that old cover she’d had when her bed had gotten them, and when she woke red welts were on her. As she stretched she saw bloody marks on her body and as she lifted up her gown quickly, she saw all her body was dark red, slick with blood. She moved to pull off the robe


and woke in the darkness of the hut where they stayed on the edge of the forest. It was cool and a breeze shook the half open window as early autumn air came through. As she arose from the pallet beside Imogen, she saw Wolf, standing by the window, the moon shining on his hair.
“I had a dream,” he said in that quiet voice that was no whisper, but did not wake Imogen.
“I dreamed too.”
“I must go to Essail,” Wolf said. “Ambridge, I think. I will ask Master to look more clearly in the bones when morning comes, but time is of the essence.”
“We are nearly in Reghed.”
“And not far from Ambridge either,” Wolf said. “No, I must go.’
“Why?”
“I just told you,” Wolf said, not quite impatiently, “I don’t know. I only know I have to go. And that there will be great bloodshed if I do not.”
“I dreamed of blood as well,” Myrne said. “I thought… It was something different though.”
Wolf nodded, but said nothing.
“It would be nice if the gods were more generous with their warnings,” Myrne said.
Wolf nodded, looking more distracted than anything and said, “But that is what the bones are for.”

“And I had the terrible dreams all night,” Wolf said.
“Even after we spoke?”
“Aye.”
“But I saw no expression of it on your face,” Myrne said while they ate the next morning.
“You watched while I slept?” Wolf looked pleased, but Ohean said, “If that’s the only thing you can take away from last night, then you deserve your horrible sleeping.”
Wolf looked at Ohean, but still seemed to be thinking of Myrne. He shook his head.
“I dreamed…. I dreamed I was covered in blood.”
“I dreamed of no such thing,” Ohean said when Wolf looked to him.
“Nor I,” Anson said.
Wolf thinks he should go east, toward Ambridge,” Myrne said.
A look past between Wolf and Ohean. Anson thought of asking what it meant, but Ohean only nodded.
“I am thinking I should go with him,” Myrne said.
“We were going to Rheged,” Imogen protested said.
“And you still can,” said Wolf. “But I think we must go north and east.
“After all,” Myrne said, “I would never have fallen into your company if not because I was head that way anyhow.”
They were quiet a while and then Imogen said, “If no one says it, then let me. You and Myrne ought not be parted.”
Ohean nodded and Anson said, “Maybe the same way we must go to Rheged, you must accompany Myrne. If she is right.”
“Will you cast the bones?” Myrne asked Ohean.
Ohean nodded.
“Fetch me the bones.”
He had traced a circle in the dirt, and though Wolf had seen Ohean do this before, he had never asked about how it was done. He saw scratching, with a wand he had cut from a tree, circles, scratching them out, casting stones and bones, gathering them up and casting them again, setting them and resetting them until, suddenly, his eyes wide, he stopped.
“Saint Clew,” he said. “Saint Clew. In Durham. A day south of Ambridge.”
“My sister’s monastery,” Anson said.
“Hilda,” Ohean began, gathering up the pebbles and the bones.
“If you are leaving, you must do so at once. Hilda is in danger. Do not ask what it is. Beyond this I cannot say. You must be with her when she becomes Abbess of Saint Clew.”


“BUT I SHOULD BE the one to go to her,” Anson insisted, his hand grasping his sword at his side. He looked to Imogen. “We should go to her.”
“And what would you do?” Ohean said. “You do not even know the sort of danger she is in.”
“Do you?” Anson looked at Ohean.
“The dream was not given to me,” Ohean spread out his hands, “I know nothing, and think Myrne knows little. This I do know, Anson. We have our path and Wolf and Myrne have theirs. They are not alone.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said. They are not alone, and not without guidance. And this is Wolf’s hour. It must be. Will you trust me?”
“Need you ask?” Anson said.
Ohean nodded curtly. “Let us go out and bid them goodbye.”
Ohean added, pulling up his hood, “I was going to say help them back, but Pol and Austin did that already while I we were talking.”
Outside by the horses, Wolf turned to Ohean and he said, “We have never been parted. Not really.’
“What makes you think we are being parted now. Really?”
“I think things are on their way to change,” Wolf said.
Ohean did not look at him right away and then he said, “I believe they will. But do not do anything foolish. Do not do anything too rash too soon.”
Wolf looked, though he was taller, chastened, and like the servant who had grown up in Ohean’s house. When he spoke, however, it was not with the words of a servant.
“I will do as I must.”
“Fair enough.”
“Will you send me off with your blessing, Master.”
Ohean reached up to place his hands in Wolf’s spiky hair.
“Go in strength, possess all gates that are yours. May splendor reign upon you and may you return in peace. May your enemies know no rest, and your foes fall before you.”
Ohean put down his hands and added, “I do not think you will ever call me Master again.”
“I am a little bit afraid,” Wolf said. “What do you think of that?”
“Only a fool never knows fear. You will return to me one day,” Ohean said, “But I believe you will return greatly changed.”
“You look after that Wolf,” Anson said, almost growling as he embraced Myrne.
“I told him to look after you,” Imogen told her friend. “I wish I was coming, but Ohean won’t hear of it.”
“And neither will I,” Anson frowned at this sister. “You’re on the run from Cedd as much as I am.”
Imogen quickly kissed Wolf and then Myrne, insisting, “Give Hilda our love.”
“And spit in Edmund’s face,” Anson said, “If you see him.”
“I’ll do more than spit in Edmund’s face if I see him,” Wolf called as he brought the horses to them.
Wolf embraced Anson quickly, and the two men clung fiercely for a time before parting, and then Wolf vaulted onto a black horse, and then lifted Myrne up before him. Slowly they began to ride away, down the hill, winding down the valley, north of the great forest, following the River Urden, and Anson, Ohean and Imogen saw their shadows stretching long before them, over the valley where the sparkling Urden ceased its glinting as evening came.


MORE AFTER THE WEEKEND

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! This is a complicated story to keep up with so I will have to read this a few times. I am still enjoying it quite a bit though. Excellent writing and I look forward to more after the weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, I will agree with that. There's a lot going on.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE ROOTLESS ISLE




The moon rose high, and it was the first chill of the year. Nimerly came out of the Small House beside the temple. There was a bare table and she had taken off the clay cup from the table and taken it to Lady Well, where she had dipped it and drunk of the water, then left the cup on the ledge.
She was not the first to go out into the fields, to walk down from the hills where the high houses were built and descend to the long grasses. She had washed her hair in rosewater and combed it nearly straight. Young looking she was and in the same white gown any girl going out into the fields would wear. But she had cast the last spell, the final fith fath to make her indistinguishable.
Now she was in the tall grasses, and walking through them she heard the sounds and the sighs, heard staggered cries and now, walking through a natural path, to a clear walkway she entered the woods and saw the revelries. In the midst of them was a young man. He blinked at her, eager. She beckoned to him.

It had been more years than were worth counting, that first time she had gone out to the fields. She did not think of herself as beautiful then. She was sixteen and ungainly, and though she had been through the training, still she was hung up on love and sex. Her mother had said, “For some it is a love match, but for us, we are the Goddess, giving ourselves to the God. This is a holy act.”
She’d paid no attention to Messanyn, or rather she had heard her, then refused her, taking the love of her life out into the fields. Her whole being had been enfolded in that love and in that lovemaking and when, some time later, he had left her and left her heart crushed, then Nimerly began to understand what her mother meant. In those first days it was impossible to function as a priestess, overcome by how she felt as a gilted woman, and it was some time before she had gone to the fields or gone anywhere with a man.
Tonight, when she came up from the fields, she went into the Silent House and sat cross legged and silent, burning the sage and sweeping the smoke all over her body. She could, she knew, still bear children, though that was coming to an end, and so it was part of her duty to allow time or his seed in her body before she went to the bath.
She poured into the warm water, cold water from the Goddess Well, and basil and time and ewe milk. She undressed and scrubbed every part of her body before rising to recite the prayers which would make her virgin again and priestess again, she who, having lain down in the grasses with many men, belonged to no man. Having done the holy acy, she tamped down her breasts, her sides, her pubis, her generous buttocks with the towel.
The pleasure did not go away, no not at all. She still rejoiced in the pleasure of that young boy, eager, unsure, a little afraid. And there had been others with far too much bravado and some who were, Nimerly was sure, awful men. But they all became the same man in the Rite.
It was nearly a decade after the first time she had gone out into the grasses, that she went down again. This was the first time she had felt the magic of it, more sense than seeing, dimly bodies folding together, drawn to each other, and him. Little speech passed between then. It was a work of hands and mouths and sighs, and she had returned to her house not wanting to bathe, but only to savor what had taken place in the dark. The next morning, as she bathed and rose from the waters purified, she already knew what she had suspected then, that she was pregnant.
“That is how it is,” Messanyn had said. “I had thought not to see a grandchild, but at last I see two. Now and again we are commissioned to find a particular man of a particular line ,and then again there are love matches, but often it is in the fields, in the dark, that we gain our children. So did I gain you. So have you gained this one.”
And so Meredith was born. Nimerly knew that by the reckoning of the Rootless Isle her heritage was strong, daughter of a Lady who was daughter of a Lady who was first neice and granddaughter to those previous and so forth and so forth, and she knew they had many lineages and she through them. She knew that the question of who was her father would have been met by a silence both reverent and offended, but a part of her thought this could not be right. After all, where was the land where a boy who asked who is mother was met only silence. Ash was her kin. He had been raised by his father. Senaye, his mother, had not always been present but he knew her as well. When Nimerly gave birth to Meredith, she could not help but think her daughter was a little impoverished for her virgin born status.
Now, several years later, when Meredith had been followed by Viviane, and several others, Nimerly sat at her desk and thought, there is possibly one more. And certainly, hadn’t Mother been the same way, giving birth to Essily when everyone had thought she was far too old.
But now her thoughts were distracted for, from the southeast, she saw a trail of torches, people making their way to the Isle. Briefly through her mind passed tales of the Burning Time, and then she stood and made her way to the great hall, striking the bell.
By the time she was there, met by her daughters and three guards, Meredith said. “We have visitors.”
Her tone left open what manner of visitors they might be, and Nimerly took the old wand, her first wand, light and almost hollow with the years, and drawing it to her like a dagger she said, “Let us go out to meet them.”
The journey down from the compound of temples and houses, through the fields to the borders was not as quick as merely looking, and by the time they were there, the visitors were already approaching. Winding toward her were men and women, mostly women, with children and carts, some old women riding along brimmed hats hiding their faces.
“I know you,” Nimerly said, lowering her torch as she saw the woman at their head.
“You are the goodwife Dissenbark Layton.”
“Lady,” Dissenbark sketched the sign of the elements across her chest and over her shoulders, “We have come here as refugees. Receive us.”

WE WILL RETURN TO OUR FRIENDS SOON.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to read a Nimerly centric portion! I like her quite a bit and this was interesting. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a good weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thank you. I'm having a sleepy night. I will message you. I didn't want to post too much tonight after all that had happened in the last few issues.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE FOREST


“Before the feasting comes to a height,” Anson said, “we will have to move the girls to the next vale.”
Hood in black, cleaning his nails with an old knife, Ohean said, “Why?”
“Things will happen.”
“I daresay they will,” Ohean said. “The Green One will be present. Things have happened before, and you my friend have often been a part of them.”
“They are not fit for girls.”
“I disagree,” Ohean said. “Everything that is fit for boys is fit for girls, and your sister is a princess. If Myrne is no princess she is the closest thing to it. Let them stay and see or do as they wish.”
“Forgive me,” Anson said, tugging at Ohean’s hood, “for what will doubtless seem my hypocrisy, but my sister is not going to stay here for an orgy and neither if Myrne.”
“Orgy,” piped of Wolf.
“Most likely,” Ohean said in a bored tone.
“Very well, we will remove ourselves, but we will all remove ourselves.”
“Did you think I’d be staying?” Anson said.
“How do I know what you’d be doing? When I wasn’t around you made yourself at home at many a Blue Temple.”
Anson opened his mouth.
“No one’s blaming you,” Ohean said, silencing him, “so there’s no need to play the hypocrite.”
While Anson looked like he was still searching for words to say, Ohean approached his cousin, Polly who was speaking to Derek and Conn.
“We will be traveling into the next valley after we eat,” Ohean said. “Apparently the evening’s festivities are considered too much for princesses.”
Polly cocked her head and smiled and then said, “Ohean, you were always so practical you were almost impractical. I take it this is not your idea.”
“It is Anson’s,” Ohean almost whispered. “He thinks the little eyes of princesses should not see certain things.”
“Well,” Polly allowed, “do not be too hard on him. He may be right.”
“Shall we see you in the morning?” Derek said, scooping Conn under his arm.
“I think,” it was Conn who spoke now, “you will see us both in the morning.”
“What?”
Conn walked away a few paces and Derek followed him
“These last few days we have had no time together,” Conn said, “and when we do I wish it to be our time, not part of some grand orgy.”
“So you’re going with them and leaving me again?”
“You could come too,” Conn said. “Only you don’t want to.”
Derek blinked at him through his black lashes.
“Everything in you wants to see what happens tonight when the Green God comes. You want to be part of that and I couldn’t keep you, so that means you do not get to judge or be angry when I say I will be on the other side of the hills discovering something else.”
Derek grasped his wrist.
“Are you some strange and lonely mage growing ever distant from me, from us, or are you one of us? A Blue Priest given to the mysteries?”
“I am both. I am the door from what was to what will be. What must be.”
Derek stared at him in irritation rather than awe, then shook his hand and said, “Go. Just go.”

“We should go to get Mariamne,” the Friar suggested. “she has been gone the whole afternoon. Bless my big bottom.”
He heaved himself up, and Derek said, “You could rest and I could find whomever you need.”
“Mariamne, the woman of the great wood,” Friar said. You may go with me if you would see more of our home, but I’m afraid you might get lost going alone.”
But Derek did want to see more and know more, and he followed the Friar who said, This will be the place where you bathe anyway, so it’s good you see it now.”
They traveled out of the clearing and down a sloping way into a valley where a woman stood below them, under a pool and then Derek, touching the Friar said. “I’ll scoot down and get her myself, in thinking of the old friar’s fatness, despite how hale and hearty he was, he thought of Quinton, and how he wouldn’t want him scrabbling down a hill either. Derek was down there in a moment, and he saw the woman, nut brown skinned, in a gown green as a pea, or green as the sun on a summer leaf, and her amrs were bare, and her hair was a rich red down her back and over her shoulders. She bent looking into the waters, but he was charmed by her small lips and steady eyes, by the flower crown and the gown.
“Derek Annakar, you have come for me?”
“Lady… “ he tried, “Lady Polly… Mariamne?”
She rose up from the pool and smiled at him warmly, standing at his side.
“You have met my Robin?”
“I… I have.”
“you know how it is,” she said, “I f the Greenwood is the Greenwhood in truth, it must always have its Robin and Robin must always have his Marian. Come, you msut be as hungry as I am.”
Despite the long and robe, she was scampering up the hill quicker than he and she held a hand out to him and he was surprised at her strength.
When they had topped the hill, springing out of the trees like orange blurs, their tails bottle brushes, came tow silent foxes to either side of Mariamne and she said to them, “Greet our friend, Lord Derek.”
The foxes looked at him, their yellow eyes so curious, but so dignified that Derek gave a slight bow and then said, “But I am no Lord.”
Mariamne had kissed the Friar on the cheek and they all began walking twoad the encampment under the great arches of the trees.
“You are a blue priest of the third rank, are you not? Around these parts we honor the old ways, and this makes you a lord.”
Like, Michael the night before, Mariamne did not disguise her knowledge or tell him how she knew. As they went walking, she said, frankly, “I use the pool to look into a great many things and when I sleep a great many things look to me.”
“Mariamne is the Seeress of the Wood,” the Friar said, skilled in such things. “Some say she is one of the most powerful enchantresses in the land.”
“Some say a great many things,” Mariamne dismissed this. “I am the Lady of the Greenwood, that is all, and the Lady must see.”
As they came into the clearing, Robin appeared, and he picked up Mariamne and swung her by the hips and she laughed and then as he brought her down she punched him playfully.
“I’m too big to be twirled around by a grown man.”
“Even by me,”
“Especially by you,” she laughed, “and you’re too little of a man to be twirling about women.”
Even so, now Derek saw Robin was plenty strong, and though he was not tall for a man, he was of a height with Mariamne, and she had lain her head on his shoulder while he wrapped an arm about her waist, and they walked about the others, stopping at cook fires and laughing, telling jokes, looking earnest. Clearly the Lord and Lady of the wood.
“Many come here,” the Friar said. “But in the last years many of Westrial have come from the east and the south fleeing lords who charged high rents and sheriffs who showed no mercy. Also, holy men, those who used to stay in the smaller Greenwood, have made their way here. And King William of Englad, for over there, to the north east is Englad, and those who flee from that king’s justice make their way through the Fen Country up the river and, at last, into the Greenwood. Some pass through it to reach Chyr or Rheged. Some pass to stay in Westrial, but these days, now that King Anthal is dead and Cedd sits the throne some find Westrial not what it once was.”
“The King’s City is a good place for a man who is still free,” Derek said. “But it is not as it was. A pall hangs over it. The presence of Ohean and Prince Anson made it a place of light, but they knew when to leave.
“The world is on the tip of a great change,” the Friar said. “But at this moment, why speak of such things? We cannot change them except to pray for grace that they change for the better and the Gods give us such strength as we need in the morning to fight the battles we must. Right now there is life and light and cooked food, fried bread, new ale and friendship and song., Let us enjoy these.
Derek did not know how unrelaxed he had been until tonight with his belly full of food and half drunk on ale, pleased and sleepy by one of many cook fires. For, though many of these men were Robin’s immediate court, there were several who had simply come to live among them and were keeping their own fire and feeding their own families and Derek felt Alan’s hand companionably around him as they sat on blankets backs to trees, and he said, “So now we are in the heart of the Greenwood.”
“Nay, friend Derek,” Alan said, “Or rather, we are in the first heart and there is a deeper, truer heart.”
“Eh, what’s that?”
“Have you not seen the good folk coming through the forest?” Robin asked. “For you have been here several days. You almost miss them, Their home, Melinthindor , over the mountains in what would be Rheged if it were not theirs first, that is the true heart of the Greenwood.”
“Who goes there?” Quinton asked.
“None but those invited by the Ancient Ones. They came their long ago, in the first days of the Second Creation and you would take it at your peril to waltz right in.”
Alan began to strum his balisoo, and he sat up a little. He did not sing, but his instrument in the background as he told the tale.
“In the days of the sorcerer kings of Erech, long before the Night Wars or before the first of the white tribes came out of the North, there had been war between that line of dark wizards born of Daylan and their kindred, the Vomor, mightiest and eldest of the Erl, that is, the elves.

They remember the name of Aislinn, the one who dwelt alone, eldest of the Vomor and daughter of Ulle the Sea. Though Aislinn was an elvenmaid, she was the oldest and fairest living, and older even than Maia herself. She rivaled Mara for power, and in the early days of the world she did teach Laryn to sing and Nessle to be silent. She was a favorite of Elial and privy to the councils of Oromos Lord of the Sky.
And when that erl maid beheld the destruction of her people, she cried out, “Oh, my Lady and my Mother, avenge your people! For the Erechmen, once our kin and friends have betrayed us!”
And at once the waves of the sea rose up, and Great Ulle, Queen of the Deep swept the Isle of Erech beneath the waves.
All that survived were five ships, led by Osse, the prince whom Tiglash Pamanasher had expelled for saying, “The Vomor are our kindred, shame be on all of our heads if we make war upon them.”
And Osse and his line lived. They settled in the northern lands of the West. In time they came into contact with their distant kin to the south, the men and women of Enroghed whose queens and kings were of the royal line of Daia. And Osse’s people became the people of Assendath, golden of skin and red of hair. Their lands are warm and fair and they speak with dragons. Their people of power are women for the most part, called the Ruoada Whit, Red Witches, the Witches of the Place of the Lotus, and the Lady of the Lotus rules them.
But the line of Enroghed was descended from Niamh. She it was who would have been Queen in Erech long ago, but her brother deposed her, and there was great war. She left the city of Erech and settled at Dynas Parrian in the Southern Isles called also the Sunlit. There the true line thrived in the face of the false kings or Erech until the days of the Warrior Kings who put down all their enemies and ravished the Sunlit Lands so that the Queens fled to the coast and built up Assarnach. But in time they lost their power even there, and that is another tale.

This is the tale of what became of the Elves of the Vomor, those who remained of the once great cities of Los Bannados and San Dramacar.
The last of the princes of Los Bannados was Araw the Black, and he was young by erl standards, though to the reckoning of men who now live, older than many nations when the armies of Erech waged war upon the Vomor, and were mighty enough in arms and in magic to defeat them. Araw was of the house of Erech, for his mother was Branwen, the many times great aunt of Tiglash Pamanasher, and when Los Bannados was laid waste, Araw fled with his mother and sisters and those who remained of Los Bannados and they went into the mountains where to this day the last of the Vomor still have cities. There are many tales told of the Vomor under Araw, those who survived Los Bannados and of how for many years until the time of Ohean the Mighty, there was war between the men of the West and the Vomor of the Mountain Passes, for the Vomor memory is long, and Araw could not forget the grief Erech had caused, even once Erech was no more.
Of the High Folk of Los Bannados only the White Men of Sparhahn and the Gold People of Assendath have much of a shared history. The scions of Los Bannados do not enter into the histories of the Plainsmen, or the Enroghedi and Engladmen until the arrival of Iaryn.
In the days when all of the West was united against the threat of the Resurgency, Iaryn the daughter of Araw sailed down the River Ilam in a green barge, surrounded by dark haired maids, the color of nuts, all in white, and where the boat sailed, lotuses sprung up out of the water in it’s wake. Araw did not wish for the aid of the elves of the South, but his daughter went against his wishes to procure their aid. And this is how she met and loved Mendrick King of the Ildor, and their child was Indul, whose name means Nightflower.

MORE NEXT WEEK

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get back to this story! I am a bit drunk so I don’t know if I will remember all the people written about but I can always go back and re-read. This story is different but I am enjoying it a lot! Excellent writing and I look forward to more next week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

None of the people in the long rambling tale need to be remembered They're just background and in the final version a synopsis will be given and Ohean will tell the whole story later. Next time.... I think there's an orgy.

 

[ChrisGibson]

A TALE CONTINUES AND LUST BEGINS

And now comes the tale of the founding of Melinthindor. For the other city that had fallen to the Erechmen was San Dramacar, and some of the Vomor went to live in the place now called Amlahn, but many went to their cousins the Ildor, and to the woods south of the Ildor land. Some went far south to find new seas saying that the Vomor were a sea people as the Ildor were wood people and the Ystrad mountain folk, and that the Vomor would never be happy again unless they were by water. However this ran, those Vomor followed Yvandom into the south, and they have never been seen again.
However Yvandom’s brother was Yhavo, who many now know as Ivo—the exalted one—and he was a mighty warrior, the son of the King of San Dramacar, and many said that had he been old enough, then in the days of the last war, San Dramacar may not have been defeated. But in this time of war, Ivo was leading the Ildor and the Vomor, and this is how Indul found him, and loved him and they went on many journeys and defeated many wicked sorcerers and powers and monsters and even elves, but in the end they returned to the West Wood and Ivo united for himself the Vomor who remained in the woods and some of the Ildor and they established Melinthindor.



Before the supper was done, Robin had surprised them by saying that they might wish for bathing and that when the company bathed they went down to the very pool the Lady Mariane had been gazing into.
“Why the surprise?” she asked.
“I thought it was sacred.”
“And so it is. But is the body not sacred? You are a Blue Priest after all, surely you know that?”
Her face was not mocking, but it laughed at him.
Before the music he had seen Niall and Jon go into that direction, and now it was late and many were going to sleep. Mariamne had said “I have left clothes and soap stones and many good things, and there is a hot spring connected to that pool so it is always a warm place.”
When Nialla and Sara had come back from it they were laughing and combing their hair with Mariamne, and Derek imagined they were both glad to have a bath. But as for him, he was glad to have a doze and drink too much and it was only now, as he felt himself getting a second wind, and others seemed to be dozing in corners or on piles or three by three in the red light of the old fire, that Derek thought it was time for him, at last to clean, and he felt his body itching, his civilized body tired of the country dirt.
He was surprised by the light he saw, surprised that paths were lit in the forest and the path to the pool had torches on either side lighting the way. Truly this was a place of enchantment. He came down the decline and in the night where something were lit by white stars high above and the grass was golden red from torchlight, all things seemed different. The pool glittered in the dark, and Derek stepped into the waters. Sighing as their warmth melted away the day that had passed, he squeezed his eyes together and dunked his head and thought, “There is more than just the dirt of the day that clings to me.”
As he blew water out of his mouth and shook it from his hair and eyes he blinked, and was nearly startled. But a Blue Priest was trained in poise and trained to give nothing away and so he merely said, “Alan.”
“What are you doing?” Alan asked him.
“I could ask you that,” Derek said. “In fact, it would make more sense if I did ask you that.
“I thought it was clear. I saw you naked and in this water, and so I came to you.”
“That as it may be, I am not working as a Blue.”
“Then do not come to me as a Blue, and at any road, I am working as a Green.”
“Youi are a Green Priest?’
“We are all Green Priests,” Allan said. “I choose you. Come to me, let your body and your heart remember what it’s forgotten.”
Derek opened his mouth to say something that he immediately knew was prudish.
“You are in a conundrum, your body confused, your mind knit up because you have stopped being who you are, because right now you are like all the men who come to your Blue Temple.”
“Conn and I are… Not as we have been. We parted poorly.”
= “Yes, I thought as much,” Alan said. “Only, this path you take and the heaviness you feel. It is not for him. Your bath was for me. Only you did not know it.”
Allan was fair. He was like a taller, darker version of Quinton. He smelled of the lavender and in the water and his breath had the faint scent of wine. Derek longed to touch him and, at any road, Allan’s hand had reached under the water and grasped his penis.
“Will you tell me to stop?” Allan asked him.
But Derek had lost his voice. He was a Blue Priest. He should have known the first rule, why priests traveled together, why they regularly had sex rather than steering away from it. He felt like all of himself was melting into the large hardness in Alan’s hand, Allan pulled Derek to him, and as if he were starving, Derek’s body clung to Allan. His hands ran up and down his back and he pressed his face to Allan’s, thrusting his tongue in in his mouth, receiving Allan’s hungry kisses.
When they could separate for a moment, Allan said, “The moss, the moss and the bushes, shall I take you there under the trees?”
“Take…?” Oh, is that how he meant it. Derek felt cheap and light and he climbed out of the water into the coolness of the night, not caring about the chill in the air, not caring if anyone saw them. He thought of Conn and their argument, his frustration over how far they felt from each other, and with a desperate fury, he pulled Allan to the mossy ground and gave himself to him.

Here, in this place, Conn felt as if he were missing something, and missing it for no real reason. For no real reason he had parted from Derek and agreed to say in the vale beyond, and he could hear the music now, hear the pulsing of the celebration calling to him.
“I’ve lost it,” he realized.
Like Anson, who for the protection of his sister’s virtue or Myrne’s virtue, had separated himself from the wildness he had known so many times, Conn had lost his wildness, perhaps even become proud of his studies with Ohean and imagined it eclipsed his dedication as a Blue.
He rose from his pallet, hie body thrumming and followed the music, but no sooner had the music caught him, than his eyes beheld antlers, the great tree like rack of a stag, and as he approached slowly he saw the stag was on the body of a man, naked in the night, the moonlight on his pelted flesh. Conn followed him through the branches, neither of them making noise. He followed him up a hill until, the leaves and the moon and trees blurred his vision, and this time when he saw the man there was no rack. There was broadness of back in the night, loveliness of form and for a moment his eyes understood. One man, on hands and knees, pumping up and down, riding another who lay like a starfish beneath him, mouth open.
It was Ohean, and Anson was beneath him, and he knew he was not intruding, that this was a lesson, His mouth was dry, his cock stiff.
A hand lay gently on his shoulder and he turned around to see the planed features of Thano.
“Little one,” he said,” and the nightlight shone on his grey eyes.
He moved from Conn and held out his hand and the two of them went through the trees. In the distance Conn heard the song:

Ay hay, alay alay alay
Ay hay, alay alay alay
Nijow, ahana aravay
Ay hay alay alay alay

Thano undressed, and Conn lifted his robe and Thano made a mile in the leaves and branches. There he lay, opening his legs and Conn climbed between them, his hot body pulsing, the need in him burning as Thano received him, and for all of that night Conn remembered his fragility and the strength found in admitting desire.



Nearly toward morning, Matteo wiped sleep from his eyes. Pulling on an under robe, he separated himself from Quinton, whose mouth was open in a half smile. So this is what the Green Priests did or, at least, what the Green Priests could do. His heart was… not light. That was not the word. He was strangely drained and changed. He felt as if he’d been caught up in something. Well, wasn’t that what it was to be a Blue? Yes, but it was different, or maybe it was that the Blue Temple laws his home. He brushed dirt from his hair, reached under his robe and removed a leaf sticking to his thigh. There was something wild about last night and what had happened, not so much a letting go of himself as a being taken over that, frankly, he hoped to never happen again. It was something altogether too frightening for him. As he stumbled through the brush in the grey and early morning, Matt looked for the path to the bath and began to follow the path of low burning torches. In the bushes he saw one of the Merry Men, his trews pulled down, head thrust up, plowing a woman, his lips parted, her eyes unfocused with whatever ecstasy had come upon them. As Matteo’s dry mouth watched in sympathy, his penis rose and before he knew it he was stroking himself. He would have been undressed, naked and joining in had he remained a moment longer. What was this strange power that had not come until the song but was here now, that he was almost falling prey too?
Suddenly he heard something in the bushes that made him remove his hand from his cock, and he turned to see a man—No, but he had been mistaken because it passed so quickly. Not a man but a deer, a stag, many horned, watching solemnly, and then, no. It was, most certainly, a horned man looking at him with the utmost solemnity, and before Matteo could open his mouth or look fully, he was gone.
“That was the Green,” Matteo whispered. “That was the Green God. As Annar is the Blue.”
He knelt and placed his face to the earth, and remained like this for some time, and then went down to the brook. He was preparing to undress when he heard the sounds of struggling in the brush and turned to see, in the middle of it, in the large moss patch.bed, lit by the moonlight, Cal lay on his back, half sitting up, and Gabriel, white and beautiful, knelt on him, fucking himself quickly, his mouth parted, noise escaping his mouth.
“It’s alright baby,” Cal said, in a slow voice that held none of the sarcasm and drawl it often had. “It’s alright. I told you I’d always be here for you...”
Eyes closed, sweet Gabriel panted and pumped himself quickly on Cal whose hands rose up occasionally to touch him while his mouth opened wider until, at last, Cal rose from the bed and the moonlight was white on him when he turned around and began spending himself on Gabriel while Gabriel’s hands went around him. Conn knew he shouldn’t watch, but almost as he said it a new voice said, “Why wouldn’t you?”
He ached he was so hard and he realized that, in some way, he had ached for Quinton again and could nearly cry out for something that was so near to him even as he heard Gabriel moaning like someone being punched while Cal fucked him harder and harder and brought them all both the edge of climax, Matt, stroking himself, nearly fainting while he felt his own faintly sticky seed oozing around his fingertips.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Lust definitely began! That was a great portion. I hope Derek and Conn can make up when they meet again. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

There is still more of this unbridled night of lust and fuckery to occur.... but we shall see. We shall see.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Polly rose from Michael’s side, and she smiled to herself, almost laughed because they were still clothed and that was strange considering what had happened last night.
In the summertime the Green Lord came, the Green Song was heard and then the power of desire went through the warm wood. But last night this had all been a surprise, who had expected it? Not she. Polly had spent much of the day at the pools, meditating, and she hadn’t foreseen any of this. Alan had begun his song last night, and she had even felt desire in her heart, but it had brushed past her like a breeze.
This is because of the Blue Priests, no doubt, she thought. They have brought their God into this wood.
This wood was the Green Wood of the one of many names, the Hunter, the Lord of Beasts, the Lord of Trees and the God of the Green. Some called him the Witch’s Devil and the Sinericians had called him Pan. Because of her schooling she knew even further back he was called by other names, Aegipan, the the Goat Headed One, Khnum the Ram who dwells by the flowing waters.
The Blue Priests usually had their temples in the city, and though Polly wasn’t so silly as to take her thoughts seriously, she thought of the Blue God as a city god. This was not so. He may have been the God who gathered cities to him, Everyone who knew the past knew that before Kingsboro had been called that, it had born an older name, and Kingsboro had spread out from its great palace to eventually encompass villages that were the stunted remains of a once great city. That city’s names were still kept in ancient books in the White Tower, the Grey Tower and in the Black, and it had begun with the Blue Priests establishing their ancient temple, with the red door the white door and the black. Those priests had not come from Chyr across the plains, no they had come all the way from Atle before it was sunken. And Annar had many names and he was the Lord of many things. He was the Lord of men who loved men hence his priests did. But he was the lord of magics, the first of magician. He was the God of thieving, as well as discipline but also called The Light Hearted One, the Dancer. Oldest of Gods and the Young One. The Blue God was the Shepherd and Sacrifice. As a girl, Pollanikar had learned his ancient names, the Lover of Men, Adonis, Adonay, Aidonius Master of the Underworld. It was said, and in the Blue temples it was depicted, that he was the lover of Erkovan and Escovan, the Sky Twins. But it was also said that he was not their lover, but them both, for he had split him self. He held the Blue Flame and the Inner Flame of one Twin and the Outer of the Other. He was the Lover of the Queen of the Dead, but the Lover of all the male gods. He had been born many times in the earth. He was fluid, hence his Sinercian name, Mercury.
But, Polly reflected as she stepped lightly through bodies that lay together abandoned in sleep and the remains of pleasure, the old Sinecrian stories said that Mercury was the father of Pan. However some said that this was not so, but that the two gods were close. In her girlhood training, Polly had learned that Gods who were close, who were nearly the same, when brought together made a powerful magic. Adonay held sway over the Blue orgy, and Pan over the Green. No wonder when the Blue priests had entered the wood such things had happened.
She stopped. Polly had been on her way to the pool, but she went walking north toward the sound of the river. In the clearing under the new morning sky, she observed the large flock of wild geese. They had made friendly honking overtures to the geese kept by the woman Obala, but the two groups had not intruded upon each other. They made their way to Polly, stretching their necks and looping them like black serpents. As she walked the bank she saw a round circle of stones enclosing a mound of flowers and trees, Away from it was another such merry mound and Polly kept a thoughtful silence.
The stories told how Robin Wood had died in the abbey not far away, done in by a treacherous nun. But they did not tell that here, under these rich flowers and green blooms he lay. And they did not tell that Marion lay at his side. Nor did they speak of the other mound where a Robin and Marion from before also lay together. It was not true that there was always a Robin and Marion, but it was true that when the two had passed, the wood was guarded by their souls until the new should arrive. And when they did arrive, there was such a meeting with the new souls that the new Marion and the new Robin contained something of the old.
While she stood here thinking this was the place where one day she and Michael would rest, thinking that there was no telling what would happen to them in the end, she turned when she heard footsteps and saw Derek coming, looking flushed and fresh, happy, and full of peace.
“I had not seen you,” he almost laughed. “You blended with the green.”
“Well,” the young woman in the green gown shrugged.
“Did you rest well?” she asked.
“I…” Derek looked for a way to answer this and finally said, “Yes.”
He said, “There is something of the otherworld about you.”
“And about you as well, Derek Annakar of the white skin and black hair, of the eyes that can barely be see behind your thick lashes. I wonder if there is not mageblood in you.”
“I am no mage,” Derek laughed. “And I am almost totally Doman.”
“Almost,” Polly noted, “which does not mean completely.”
“I suppose we all have a little bit of the Old Blood,” Derek shrugged. “But mine is probably Ayl. Look at me. I’m no Royan.”
“All witches are not Royan and all Royan are not witches, as you well know.” Polly said. “I would bet there is Old Blood in you, and I think it must be powerful.”
Derek did not know how to answer this, so he said, “All Royan are not, but you are… Are you not? Or… did the Wood call to you and give you the sight?”
“The Wood called to me, yes,” Polly admitted, but I had the sight before it. My home is in the south, remember. On the Moving Isle.”
Well, yes, she was the kin of Ohean, which, Derek realized, meant Anson as well. She would have been descended from many generations of those holy priestesses.


As evening approached and Derek Annakar sat looking through the trees at the river shooting far below, he said, “I could stay here a while.”
Beside him the fat friar said, “you could.”
“I feel healed, and had no idea of how much healing I needed until I came to this wood.”
“There is much healing in the wood,” Friar Claire said, “And what is more, much healing you and your priests can offer.”
“I never knew,” Derek noted, looking down, looking through the huts going down the slope below, “exactly what all the legends about Robin Hood and his Merry Folk were about. I knew—I heard—there were outlaws, and that this wood was sacred, but…”
“This Wood has been sacred from time out of mind,” Claire said. “It is one of the places of power where the Ildor, the First Folk lived, and where they crossed out of their world and into ours and still do. This place is the meeting of the worlds and Michael and Polly are the Robin and Marion, for always, in this forest there is a Robin Wood, or Hood, and his Maid Marian, King and Queen, Priest and Priestess of the Green.”
“As I am of the Blue.”
“Aye.”
“I thought,” Derek began, “that I saw the Lord of the Green, that he beckoned to us. At first he seemed only like a stag, but as I followed he seemed like a horned man. The closer I came, the harder it was to say. And then he was no more. Or rather, he was everywhere.”
“He welcomes you here,” The Brown Friar said. “Technically the brown monks are of the New Faith, but we came out of the old. We were once the priests and priestesses of the Earth. It is said in old stories that Ilmaro the Trickster was the father of Faunus or Omnus, the old Sinercian name for the Lord of Nature. But there are also older stories that said this very Lord was as old as the Titans, the Elder Gods who set the limits of the earth. The truth, The Trickster and the Lord of the Wood, the Green God and the Blue are One, coming from each other, reflecting upon the earth to men as different things. Think of the most intense moments of the rut when you served as a Blue priests and tell me you did not know the Wild God in them.”
“And the Merry Folk….” Derek murmured.
“Are all the people who come into this wood and make their home here much as… the dependents in the blue Temple. Some have lived here for generations, between Chyr and Westrial, between the world of men and the world beyond.”
Derek thought of the morning, when dense fog rose up from the river bed and the stretch of green he could see beyond him, which was the other side of the river, which was Chyr seemed to rise in black shadow from the white mist.
“I know the look on your face,” the Friar said. “It is a look of sadness.”
“Yes,” Derek said.
“Sadness,” Friar Clare concluded, “because you cannot stay.”

Conn felt inexhaustible that morning. He woke to the laughing face of Thano and the warm embrace of his arms.
“You gave as good as you got little one,” the old man said, “though I should not call you little one. There is not much that is little about you.”
Conn blushed in the grey light of morning, but even as he thought of parting from Thano, those thoughts which made sense in the outer world made no sense here, and in the space of the woods, they began laughingly, to turn back into the positions of last night and repeat the pleasures they had known, Exhaustion mattered little and orgasm was everything. Even the fear that they would be seen, laughed at, caught, made little sense as the sun began to shine through the green leaves and Conn, his balls and muscles sore, hit his last orgasm, crying out on his hands and knees from thrusting between Thano’s legs.
As the sun rose he tottered early in the morning toward the river, naked as the day he was born. Others were there and none was ashamed and he saw the lovely form of his brother in law. John’s usually shaven hair was a bronze thatch and he stood up to his knees in the water washing himself with soap rocks and a cloth. Some clothes were lain out on a rock which he must have washed earlier.
“Conn,” Jon began.
Here at the river, where they both stood naked, Jon said, “Conn, I am sorry. For everything. We haven’t spoken. We have been strange.”
They had been strange for years, since the time when Jon, before marrying Conn’s sister, had seized on Conn’s budding sexuality and seduced him. Their relationship, largely non existent, had become fucking in corners and quiet places, but in the last year, since his nephew had been born, Jon had stayed away from Conn and neither had spoken to the other.
Conn said nothing. He stood looking at Jon and now Jon realized whatever Conn had been, this was a tall, well made man the color of dark ivory with an ironic but gentle expression on his handsome face, his dark bronze hair tousled. In his robes, Conn looked noble, but now he looked like a young god, and like a god, he seemed wise.
“There are things to be amended,” Conn said, “And I think I am more capable of amending them than you.”
He took the soap rocks and waded deep into the water, Jon watching his calves, then thighs, then rounded buttocks disappear beneath the water. When Conn came up from the water like the Lord baptized, he held his hand out to Jon.
“Come,” he said.
Jon looked at him, lips trembling.
“Yes.”

Conn took him like a priest, took him with a firmness and confidence he had not felt, laying Jon down in the grasses and knowing where to touch him, how he longed to be known. That was the secret of sex. Men moaned, wept, came because they were touched in the places they had longed to be touched and loved where they thought no one would love them. So in the early morning, as the sun turned to full day, Conn loved him, and when they were through, they looked at each other with tears in their eyes, and Conn kissed Jon gently on his mouth.

When Conn saw Derek they embraced not because they were lovers, but because they were perfect, perfect brothers, both priests. How strange Conn thought as he kept clinging to the love of his life. They were not united by the love they had made to each other, but by the love they had made to others.
They gripped each other’s shoulders and looked into one another’s eyes.
“Together?” Conn asked.
Blinking back tears and never wanting to let Conn go, Derek nodded firmly.


“Where do we go?” they asked Connleth for the first time. All of them were in their blue robes, hoods up in a circle.
“We go where we were always going. We go west, into Rheged and then into Chyr. But we go directly. We go to establish ourselves there.”
“We follow Ohean and Anson?” Quinton said.
“No,” Connleth said. “They have their own path, and it is roundabout. In the end it will lead to us and we will lead to them, but now you follow me.”
No one protested. Downbelow, Sara and Jon and Nialla were with the wagons. They could make their own choice.
Matteo pushed back his hood, revealing his large wrinkled brow and in his deep, froglike voice, he said, “When do we leave?”
Connleth said: “We leave now.”


CONN AND THE BLUE PRIESTS HAVE LEFT THE FOREST.... TOMORROW WE RETURN TO THE WICKED

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad Conn and Derek made up and that the journey is continuing out of the forest. I liked hearing about the forest but I am very curious to see what happens next. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a nice night!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, you know, you can't stay in the forest forever. Well, I guess you can and some people do, but we're not staying in the forest. We've got to move on. I am having a pleasant night and hope to message you soon.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT, DISSENBARK AND HER FELLOW HEDGE WITCHES FLEEING WESTRIALAND KING CEDD ARRIVE AT THE ROOTLESS ISLE, AND THE USURPING EDMUND RETURNS FROM THE CORONATION OF WILLIAM RUFUS, BRINGING SORROW ONCE AGAIN TO THE CITY OF AMBRIDGE

THE ROOTLESS ISLE​

The moon rose high, and it was the first chill of the year. Nimerly came out of the Small House beside the temple. There was a bare table and she had taken off the clay cup from the table and taken it to Lady Well, where she had dipped it and drunk of the water, then left the cup on the ledge.
She was not the first to go out into the fields, to walk down from the hills where the high houses were built and descend to the long grasses. She had washed her hair in rosewater and combed it nearly straight. Young looking she was and in the same white gown any girl going out into the fields would wear. But she had cast the last spell, the final fith fath to make her indistinguishable.
Now she was in the tall grasses, and walking through them she heard the sounds and the sighs, heard staggered cries and now, walking through a natural path, to a clear walkway she entered the woods and saw the revelries. In the midst of them was a young man. He blinked at her, eager. She beckoned to him.

It had been more years than were worth counting, that first time she had gone out to the fields. She did not think of herself as beautiful then. She was sixteen and ungainly, and though she had been through the training, still she was hung up on love and sex. Her mother had said, “For some it is a love match, but for us, we are the Goddess, giving ourselves to the God. This is a holy act.”
She’d paid no attention to Messanyn, or rather she had heard her, then refused her, taking the love of her life out into the fields. Her whole being had been enfolded in that love and in that lovemaking and when, some time later, he had left her and left her heart crushed, then Nimerly began to understand what her mother meant. In those first days it was impossible to function as a priestess, overcome by how she felt as a gilted woman, and it was some time before she had gone to the fields or gone anywhere with a man.
Tonight, when she came up from the fields, she went into the Silent House and sat cross legged and silent, burning the sage and sweeping the smoke all over her body. She could, she knew, still bear children, though that was coming to an end, and so it was part of her duty to allow time or his seed in her body before she went to the bath.
She poured into the warm water, cold water from the Goddess Well, and basil and time and ewe milk. She undressed and scrubbed every part of her body before rising to recite the prayers which would make her virgin again and priestess again, she who, having lain down in the grasses with many men, belonged to no man. Having done the holy acy, she tamped down her breasts, her sides, her pubis, her generous buttocks with the towel.
The pleasure did not go away, no not at all. She still rejoiced in the pleasure of that young boy, eager, unsure, a little afraid. And there had been others with far too much bravado and some who were, Nimerly was sure, awful men. But they all became the same man in the Rite.
It was nearly a decade after the first time she had gone out into the grasses, that she went down again. This was the first time she had felt the magic of it, more sense than seeing, dimly bodies folding together, drawn to each other, and him. Little speech passed between then. It was a work of hands and mouths and sighs, and she had returned to her house not wanting to bathe, but only to savor what had taken place in the dark. The next morning, as she bathed and rose from the waters purified, she already knew what she had suspected then, that she was pregnant.
“That is how it is,” Messanyn had said. “I had thought not to see a grandchild, but at last I see two. Now and again we are commissioned to find a particular man of a particular line ,and then again there are love matches, but often it is in the fields, in the dark, that we gain our children. So did I gain you. So have you gained this one.”
And so Meredith was born. Nimerly knew that by the reckoning of the Rootless Isle her heritage was strong, daughter of a Lady who was daughter of a Lady who was first neice and granddaughter to those previous and so forth and so forth, and she knew they had many lineages and she through them. She knew that the question of who was her father would have been met by a silence both reverent and offended, but a part of her thought this could not be right. After all, where was the land where a boy who asked who is mother was met only silence. Ash was her kin. He had been raised by his father. Senaye, his mother, had not always been present but he knew her as well. When Nimerly gave birth to Meredith, she could not help but think her daughter was a little impoverished for her virgin born status.
Now, several years later, when Meredith had been followed by Viviane, and several others, Nimerly sat at her desk and thought, there is possibly one more. And certainly, hadn’t Mother been the same way, giving birth to Essily when everyone had thought she was far too old.
But now her thoughts were distracted for, from the southeast, she saw a trail of torches, people making their way to the Isle. Briefly through her mind passed tales of the Burning Time, and then she stood and made her way to the great hall, striking the bell.
By the time she was there, met by her daughters and three guards, Meredith said. “We have visitors.”
Her tone left open what manner of visitors they might be, and Nimerly took the old wand, her first wand, light and almost hollow with the years, and drawing it to her like a dagger she said, “Let us go out to meet them.”
The journey down from the compound of temples and houses, through the fields to the borders was not as quick as merely looking, and by the time they were there, the visitors were already approaching. Winding toward her were men and women, mostly women, with children and carts, some old women riding along brimmed hats hiding their faces.
“I know you,” Nimerly said, lowering her torch as she saw the woman at their head.
“You are the goodwife Dissenbark Layton.”
“Lady,” Dissenbark sketched the sign of the elements across her chest and over her shoulders, “We have come here as refugees. Receive us.”

AMBRIDGE​

He had arrived at Port of Helar in the evening, and though his lords asked if he would remain the night, Edmund said, “I want Ambridge. I want my city.”
Was he getting soft? After thirty years of rule, he often felt he was. Baldwin had made him soft. His alliance with the Baldwins was a deal with the evil one, and he could never get out of it. There would be no Edith tonight. There was never an Edith. Did she prefer to remain a virgin rather than give him an heir?
The ship made its slow way up the river. Sails and banners down until it came to the city of Ambridge of the high walls, black in the night. So it was, in secret, Edmund King of the Hales and Inglad, returned to his chief capital.
Even at night, the city was impressive, the crescent of the moon shining through clouds over the rows and rows of high slate roves. Off of the main avenues, past the high peaked houses, city life could be heard. As they approached Castle Whitestone, he was mildly annoyed to see Baldwin banners flying from the towers. After winning three wars and defeating the usurper Sweyn, he himself was defeated by one dreadful little family.
“Have those taken down by morning,” Edmund said to a guard who had appeared to be drowsing and jumped to life at the approach of the royal party.
The guard nodded and went, Edmund supposed, to tell his superiors. Wouldn’t Ulfin Baldwin be surprised by the morning?
Edmund ordered a bath and had his page strip him of his armor and his clothes and then lead him to the wash room. Soaking in the great stone tub, he thought of the new king across the sea, of Rufus with every hand turned against him, and the weariness in him gave way to other feelings. He rang the bell at the side of the tub, and when a servant entered, he said, “Send Fritha to me.”
“Fritha sleeps, Lord. Shall I wake her?”
Edmund thought on this, then shook his head.
“No, send another. Any other.”
He sank deeper into the bath, savoring, after much uncertainty, the thickness of his cock, the growing desire in his heavy balls, the certainty of having what he desired before the night was over, of not being refused.
When Edmund entered his chambers she was already there. He had never seen her, but surely in his fifty years, nearly thirty on the throne, she had seen him. What had she thought? He stood there, wrapped in a towel. This was not Fritha. He would not unduly frighten her. He simply unwound his towel and said, “Attend to it,” pointing to his erection, bobbing up stiff before him.
She looked confused, and he said, “Are you a virgin, Girl?”
“No, my, lord.”
“Then you know what to do.”
As she went to her knees before him, taking his penis in her uncertain hands, he said, almost irritably, “Yes, that’s it.”
She took it into her mouth timidly—the only word was timidly—and he said, “Do it appropriately. I am the King. Do not displease the King. Do it like you’d do your favorite lover.”
She was not Fritha, not good enough to make him forget, and he wished to forget. In the end, angered by her lack of skill, her insipid mouth, he lifted the wench up, and ripped away her gown. Fascinated by her stifled cry of fear, he threw her down on the bed, turning her around and, mounting her. Her fear felt good while he fucked her, and the rutting he could not hold back was accelerated by her crying. Just a slap here, a punch here, made her whimper and excited him all the more.
“Don’t stifle your screams,” he told her while he plowed into her, his large hands fascinated by the daintiness of her throat as he choked her.
“I want you to scream. It excites me when you scream.”
And so she screamed as he fucked her, and the more she screamed, the harder he fucked her until, at last, undone by orgasm, his body writhed like a fish and the veins stood out in his neck as his back arched. But even in this he fucked her so hard she kept crying out as his seed spilled into her.
When it was done, he remained in her a little longer, still thrusting as she wept, and then climbed off of her and slowly she turned around.
She did not know what to do. She simply lay there and Edmund said, “You may leave. Perhaps you are lucky. Perhaps I planted my baby in you. You may go.”
She did not leave easily. Blood was there, and it irritated him that she left it on the sheets, had gotten it on his cock. She crawled off the bed and gathered her ripped gown, and the stupid girl was trying to be quick—he could tell—but she was not quick enough, staggering and weaving to the door.
When she was gone and the door shut feebly behind her, the wench was quickly out of his mind. He was drifting off to sleep, thinking of that tempting Herleva back in Daumany, of the Dauman women who knew how to be lovers, of the young wenches in the palace who were here to be fucked, how it was almost better when he knew they didn’t enjoy it, knew they feared him. He passed into sleep.

In his sleep a woman came into the room. She was white robed, and shadows were under her eyes. On either side of her were two dead children. They stared at him with red eyes and ran fingers over their slashed throats. They opened their mouths, all three, but it was only the woman’s voice Edmund heard, saying plainly:
“Murderer.”

THERE WILL BE A SPECIAL SECOND PORTION TOMORROW​

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I was excited to learn more of Nimerly’s history. Excellent writing and I look forward to the special second portion tomorrow!