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The Book of the Broken

RUVAL CONTINUED TO PURSUE THEONE, MEANWHILE, WOLF TELLS MYRNE MORE ABOUT HIMSELF AT SAINT CLEW.


The next morning and the sunlight that came with it brought back memory, and with memory came pleasure, and neither one of these was useful. This is why lovemaking wasn’t useful. That is why it should rarely happen. He willed himself to unarousal and rose from the bed of this silly man, this blond man, ignoring anything good or charming about him or his body. After they’d sat smoking and drinking in the common room of the inn, the man had told him everything, and the less he gave the more this one gave. He said his name was Jim, and in return he was given a name: Ruval.
Out in the world it was easier to have a name, and so he decided he would be Ruval. He pulled on his things quickly. If Jim woke up, then Jim would ask questions. He might be soft and sweet because the less you wanted a man, the softer and sweeter he would become. And Ruval, who did not believe in kindness, also thought cruelty was a waste of time. Anything unnecessary, anything that got in the way was to be shunned.
And so he left.
Back in his rooms he thought of that brief waking up moment when he had forgotten that he had forgotten, when he was remembering who he had been, and there was a field of grass, green under the great yellow sun, and the sun was on his skin, and he remembered the smell of sweet breath and he remembered, or at least dreamed of, lovemaking. That was why this kind of thing was dangerous. That was why, back in the House, they had sent the Women to you once a week, and then once every two weeks and then with increasing rarity. If you had a lapse and went to them, so be it, but it was frowned upon.
“They don’t do much for me,” he told his Master.
The Master had said that was good. It meant he would never be controlled by sex. The Master understood so little.

By the time the sun was fully up, Ruval was on his horse and riding down the main street and out of town. Jim had told him everything. There had been a black haired, black eyed girl. Beautiful, almost frightening if he understood what that meant? Ruval said he did, and that was so. She had been grimy and ragged, but full of power and quite obviously on a mission. Jim had asked if he could help her. She said thank you but no. She would not stay in towns. She was on foot. She was headed southeast along the Corzan Road.
Ruval trotted quickly, but always looking on either side of the road. If she was walking, then he could easily overtake her. By the time the sun was full up, he was long out of town. He had not asked much about this woman. He had been given her face, and the order to kill her, bringing back her heart and her head. Inquisitiveness was not appreciated and, at any road, Ruval hadn’t any. He knew his orders. He’d carried them out for his Masters many times before.
There, in the sunlit distance, was a farmhouse, and beside it the red sides of a barn. It was bright as blood in the deep blue morning light, and spurring his horse and wrapping himself tighter in the cloak, Ruval rode toward the farm with the closest thing he could feel to cheer.



THE ABBEY OF
SAINT CLEW



“I do not remember you,” Hilda said.
Myrne looked to Wolf and then to Odo before she said, “I was in hiding, with your brother Anson, and until now we have been in the company of Anson and Ohean. My name is Myrne, daughter of Ceoldane of Herreboro, twice born of the royal line of Wulfstan.”
“Then I will declare as well,” Wolf said.
“Whatever for?” said Myrne.
His sword rang as he pulled it from its scabbard.
“I am Osric Wulfstan, son of Eoga, grandson of Edward and heir to the thrones of Hale, Inglad and North Hale, and if by my breath and body I can aid you, then I shall.”
Myrne looked up at him until she was conscious that everyone was looking up at Wolf. She did not want to be counted as one of those who was shocked. No one spoke for some time.
“You are in good hands,” Wolf continued. “I was battle trained by Idris of Rheged himself, and by his very steward, Ralph Curakin, and every morning as we traveled north I trained with the Prince Anson and, as we all know, there are few lords mightier in warcraft.”
But it was Hilda who said, “I appreciate your aid, your aids, Graces.” There was a question mark at the end of her voice, and she inclined her head quickly and, lord like, not like a servant boy this time, Wolf did the same.
“Hilary,” Hilda said, “have rooms made for our guests, closest to the chapel. Have towels, water and refreshment made for them. If you wish,” she turned to Wolf and Myrne, “you may join us for evening prayer. Or other wise rest yourselves until the second bell when we will all dine in the main hall.”
Myrne was amazed by Hilda’s poise, by how no one questioned Wolf at all, and she knew that, for at least the next few moments, she had to master that poise as well. While the other travelers, monks and nuns, were being led to their chambers, Myrne walked behind Wolf who walked behind Hilary and a nun, entering a door that led to a long cloister walk before turning away from the main body of the monastery, and entering a larger house.
“Traditionally the men stay below and the women above,” the nun said. “We have few guest here now.”
“Well by all means,” Myrne said, “let us observe tradition, but I must speak to the Lord Osric first.”
Wolf blinked down at her and Hilary, turning her face away said to Myrne, “I will go to your rooms and prepare them for you.”
Myrne inclined her head regally, and Wolf, not quite as regal, did the same, and then went up the steps, sword clinking at his side while Myrne, lifting her skirts, followed.
Once the nun had shown Wolf his room, clasped her hands, bowed and turned around, Myrne walked into the room, shutting the door.
“I am not sure if we’re supposed to do that—” Wolf began, but Myrne said, “I need you to start talking. Now.”
“Myrne,” Wolf said in the voice that reminded her of men trying to placate her, “I’m not entirely sure what you want me to say.”
“Even you’re not that great of a fool!” Myrne said, suddenly slapping him.
“You don’t know what to say? You don’t know what to say! Howabout you say how in all the nine hells you are the heir to the Thrones of Hale and Inglad? Howabout why none of this has come up in any of our conversations? Howabout why you would shout it out in the courtyard of the Abbey of Saint Clew?”
Wolf looked surprisingly calm and Myrne marveled at her rage.
“I have never told anyone,” Wolf said, “and I was not sure I ever would. But when you endangered yourself, telling our guest who you were, I knew I had to speak as well.”
Myrne folded her arms over her chest.
“Edward Ironside was the King of the Three Kingdoms before Edmund.”
“Yes,” Myrne said.
“Edmund was his last born son and the only one who ruled all three of the kingdoms,” Wolf continued, and Myrne opened her mouth to say she knew this, but Wolf held up a hand.
“Edmund fell out with Svig the Boneless, King of Dayne. This we know, and for years the two of them raged across the North and in time Svig died. Then Edmund ruled for a time, then he was exiled when Svig’s son Sweyn came to rule and ruled for many years before being put aside by Edmund.
“But Edmund had two brothers, Edward and Edred,” Wolf continued. “Their mother was not Emma, the treacherous Dauman queen, but Queen Maude. Ironside, and then in succession, his two sons, ruled over Inglad when they were banished from Hale and North Hale. They ruled both for a short time, Edward before dying—”
“Or being poisoned,” Myrne said.
“Being killed,” Wolf said, “and then Edred—”
“Who was also killed.”
“Though I have heard it said,” Wolf continued, “that Edmund attempted to find all of his nephews and nieces and could not reach the White Tower before Sweyn did his acts of murder, and though I have also heard it said that the Baldwin family had a hand in the infamy, my mother told me plainly that it was Edmund himself who found my grandfather Edred in prison and slashed his throat. My father Eoga was there, and he sought to establish some life for himself near the border countries, but with the aid of the Baldwin’s, Edmund’s men found him one night. My mother was a common born woman, but his legal wife, and she fled, still pregnant, to Rheged, which is where I was born, and where my master found me.”
“Ohean,” Myrne said quietly.
“Aye.”
“But he said you would never call him master again,” Myrne said. “He said everything would change. He must have known something.”
“He said he was raising me to be a prince,” Wolf said, “and that the best way to rule was to serve.”
“Edward’s younger brother was Edred,” Myrne said.
Wolf nodded and Myrne said, “He ruled after his brother. He would have taken the kingdoms back, or he would have tried. But it was Edmund who snatched his sons and his nephews from him. He went to Herreboro. He would have united with the Earls of Herreboro, themselves of the line of Wulfstan. He had a secret marriage with Lysanne Lady of Herreboro, and it was to be published in the open when the wars were over. But when it was made known that Edmund and the Baldwins had killed him, then the marriage was kept a secret. And so Linalla bore my father. No one ever inquired into his birth. Many northern lords lost their fathers.”
“Then we are kin.”
“But you already knew this.”
“I did not know how close.”
“Cousins in the second degree, both you and myself the nephew and neice to Edmund who is a traitor.”
Wolf did not speak for a time and then he said, “What do we do?”
“Our duty here,” said Myrne. “And then, at last, the two of us will go to the North, to meet my father in Herreboro, and now that the King has returned, we will take action from there.”


MORE TOMORROW
 
That was an excellent portion! Things are really starting to come together with people showing who they really are and preparing for battle. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
TONIGHT THERE WILL BE NO POSTING OF THE BLOOD, BUT A HEFTY PORTION OF BOOK OF THE BROKEN



They took tea together that evening, Hilda and Odo. Hilary served, then left the room while the two of them sat, legs folded under themselves, before the low table. Odo poured the tea and Hilda spoke at last.
“Father was going to marry me off to a prince, and he was displeased that I could not marry a king the way Morgellyn did. I told him I did not care, I wanted to come here. I believe Father sent me here because he thought that I would have more power as abbess than the wife to any of the minor princes that were around and ready to wed. Also, he thought to make some sort of bargain with God.
“But I wanted peace. There was such turmoil in me, such anger and fear in my soul. I felt so unhappy, always wanting something, always this or that and I thought maybe here, in this house, I could finally gain some measure of peace. And after all these years my mind is still, like Saint Iyo in the poem. I blow out the candle, my mind, all over the place, always leaping, is stilled. And then tonight I am told that in my own home the Queen of Inglad has made designs on my life.”
Odo had always loathed men who spoke to fill the space, and so he never spoke until he actually had something of use to say. Tonight everything that came to his mind seemed useless.
“In the very place where I come to peace, this woman seeks my life. Or to ruin me.”
“To rape you,” Odo said.
“What?”
“It comes clear,” Odo said. “She said she did not wish you dead but ruined. She plans to have you raped, thus making you unable to become Abbess so she might put another in your place.”
“One of her damnable Baldwin cousins,” Hilda swore.
Hilda sat back and lifted her tea cup to her lips.
“Edith and Edmund. Three kingdoms and they want more. Do they not have enough?”
“You know,” Odo said, “that scoundrels and puppy dogs never know the meaning of the word enough.”


“Lady Myrne, do you find the place strange?” Odo asked, sitting beside her in the empty vestibule.
“My Lord, why would it ever be strange to me? I have seen many an abbey. My father supports one.”
“But I was thinking you were of the old ones, schooled on the Rootless Isle.”
Myrne nodded.
“Besides, it has been said that up in the North there is a resurgence of the old religion.”
“It comes from a discontent with the new one,” Myrne said, “and the alliance Edmund has made with many of the White Monasteries. But that is more politics than religion I imagine.”
“Forgive me,” Odo said. “I grew up a prince.”
“And your brother is a king,” Myrne said.
“I cannot but help mix my religion and my politics.”
“I do everything I can to help it,” Myrne said. “I revere the Way. Is it not true that in your own country you worship your olds gods, which are ours by different names, and you still practice the Way?”
“It is so. That was the compromise, or rather the way of things taught by the Grey Monks—”
“Who themselves came to you from my own Hale. They are a dying breed unfortunately, and yes, I do know how men use gods to fight their battles, but as for me, I was taught that when The Ard, The Great Teacher, came, he came to teach all men that the gods they sought in heaven were actually to be found within, and I have no quarrel, but only great agreement with that.”
“You are a most fascinating woman,” Odo said.
“Not really,” Myrne shrugged.
“Yes,” Odo insisted. “Really.”
They looked up to see Hilary enter, and she said, “Lady Myrne, there are guest here for you.”
She frowned, and at once a voice behind Hilary said, “Well not only for her, but yes.”
Myrne was startled to see Pollanikar, the granddaughter of Nimerly, and beside her, in green, his cloak thrown back, Michael Flynn.

“What in the world?” Myrne exclaimed. “And how did I not sense you?”
“Or me?” Wolf said.
The dark skinned Pollaninkar looked very proud and prim and she said, “Wolf did not sense us because no matter how good a tracker he is, Michael is better, and you did not sense me,” she said to Myrne, “because I am witch trained on the Rootless Isle, just like you. We did not wish to be known.”
“Did you do this on your own accord?” Wolf said.
“We are far too close to Ambridge for my comfort,” Michael said, “Edmund is no friend of mine.”
“Ohean sent us,” Pollanikar said. “He believed you would need us.”
“Ohean,” Wolf said, tenderly. “Good old Ohean. But damn him.”
Polly nodded and smiled, placing one long hand over the other.
“My sentiments indeed.”






ULFIN



Ulfin had not been sure who would win the war. He had left the palace in Ambridge one night and traveled through the south, through Inglad into Westrial and, at last, to the women of the Rootless Isle. He told no one, for the Royan were feared among the Hale. Here, on the Isle of Crystal, only greed outweighed his fear.
When the women came to him on their great raft and asked whom he sought, he replied in truth, “The woman who journeyed north some time ago, greatest of prophetesses. Nimerly, the Crystal Lady.”

“I am not the greatest prophetess among us,” she said, “For that you must go to my daughter, Meredith.”
Meredith was sixteen and dark. Ulfin felt foolish before her cool expression and told her “I seek to know who will win this war.”
“And whom you should stand beside?”
“Yes,” Ulfin said. “Always.”
“The Lord Ulfin is cautious.”
“Some would say caution is the best part of wisdom.”
“Some would,” Meredith shrugged.
“Will you tell me?”
“I will tell you,” she said, “but there is a price.”
“I have gold.”
“I do too. That is not my price.”
“Then what is?”
“Wed me.”
“I have a wife.”
“When your people crossed the sea a man could have more than one wife and women had more than one man some times. This I know. You turned away from those customs, but we Royan never outlawed them. Here, in this house, they are still honored.”
“That is fair and good,” said Ulfin, “but out in the real world—”
“The world that tells you nothing of the future? The world you are leaving to learn from me in my false world?”
“Forgive me, Lady, but you know what I mean. I could never bear you on my shoulder beside my wife, tell her and the world you were my second wife, and we all live in a castle together—”
Here, the girl Meredith with her twiggy crown of hair, threw her head back and laughed so scornfully, Ulfin, who was beaten by no man, felt slapped in the face by a woman.
“I do not want to stand at your side,” she said, and her voice was toneless. “And I do not want to live in a castle. Not with you, at least. I want you to put a baby in my belly, and I will not allow you to do that if you are not my husband.”
A girl so young and so beautiful saying this! His cock rose up, so firm it ached, a drop of sticky liquid beaded from the head of his prick, pressing against his underwear.
“Later, I may wed in the open or not at all. I only insist on having your baby.”
“And you know once will do the trick?”
“Do not pretend to be simple, for you are not, Lord. I have watched your progress. But we must marry tonight. The sooner we start, the better.”

They were married in the old way, but at her talk, Ulfin forgot prophecy and knew only that he, five and forty, with a nubile girl before him, wanted to fuck. He plunged his cock deep in her and she cried out, a virgin. He fucked her slowly at first and then quicker, her voice rising in pain or pleasure he could not tell. He grew harder and harder the more she cried out, and it wasn’t long before his body was seized in orgasm, and he shivered hard, shook, and came inside of her.
Later, as he dressed to go, she said simply, “Edmund will win. Support him, and your power will remain.”
He tucked in his shirt.
“Do you care if my power remains?”
“I very much care,” the girl said, stretching under the sheet and watching him almost lazily.
“If you are not yet the father of my child, you soon will be.”

By the end of the year, Ulfin was standing beside his proud wife in the Basilica of Aidan, and they watched as Archbishop Longerilplaced the crown on Edmund’s head, and he was declared king to cheers that, perhaps, had more Dauman voices that Hale. In those days it had been the white gold haired Ulfin, prepared to hold onto power, who cheered the loudest. After all, he had been the ruler of the Three Kingdoms, and now it was Edmund. How could that be? At the feast afterward, in the halls of Whitecastle, they did the delicate dance, the one that said, after all the fighting, the most powerful man in the Three Kingdoms still lived untouched, for in the end, it was undeniably and openly Ulfin who had acknowledged Edmund. It would always be a sticky issue that Ulfin seemed to have given the conqueror his kingdom, and five years into Edmund’s reign, in the sight of all, he gave his daughter Edith as wife and Queen.
The look on Edmund’s face when he had accepted Ulfin’s proposal to marry into his family, caused such pleasure in Ulfin he told himself over and over again to look humble, actually to look like nothing. But by the end of the day Ulfin had received another cause for surprise if not outright rejoicing, a note all the way from the Crystal Isle, written in a girl’s fluid, round hand.
“After five years, I am with child.”




It was but an hour later they began to gather in the large nave, and it was filled with a golden light. From the walls the murals of gods and saints looked down, their faces flickering in the gold light of candles in the wall sconces. Wolf remembered the tales he had heard in his boyhood, the tales any Sendic knew, how in the beginning there was darkness until the lord of light lit the great flame of creation. Even when the New Faith had come the old stories has not died. Those tales could never die.
That old world of magicks and witchcrafts, of giants and trolls and cold malevolent spirits, of fallible gods still worshipped by the Dayne, still worshipped by the Hale, quiet as it was kept, had been banished by the light of the new faith, the light of reason, the light not of many small gods without, but of God resting quietly within.
But just now there was the striking of a great tympani, and then it came again, a few moments later, and beside him he looked to Myrne who looked up at him. They stared on as, to the slow repetition of the tympani, the monks and nuns entered, led by Gertrude in her dark habit. Odo’s White monks from across the sea were mixed with the black, and some acolytes not yet made, came in long white robes lifting up, on great golden candlesticks, burning white candles. Slowly they processed down the row between the people of the village who were gathered this night to witness the ordination of the abbess.
As the monks and nuns entered the hall, filling it with more lights, banishing the darkness, and Hilda came, bareheaded, her dark hair growing again, in a bare white robe.
They sang over Hilda as she knelt before the image the Ard.

The sun grows dark,
The earth sinks into the sea,
The bright stars
From heaven vanish;
Fire rages,
Heat blazes,
And high flames play
Against heaven itself.

The incense burned at the altar, and Gertrude’s hands rested upon her. As Gertrude stood and the other women undressed her until she as bareheaded and old in plain white, they sang on.
Now Hilda stood looking much as she normally did, but that her robes were the robes Gertrude had worn earlier, and now she was given the great white candle that only the Abbess bore, and a a crown of flowers placed on her head. None cheered, but all bowed to her, and then they watched as, like a bride, she was led to her quarters.


So now it was done, and now she was Abbess, and wouldn’t Ambridge be shocked by tomorrow? The deed was done. As she dressed down to her shift, and turned back the covers, Hilda thought of how lovely it would be to show her face in Edmund’s court and casually bring up a rumor of a plot.
“Lady?” Hilary called from outside.
“Hilary, it is late and I must rise early.”
“But I do not, and I am here to watch you.”
“Watch me?”
“After…” Hilary’s voice spoke from the other side of the door. “after you know what has been said is supposed to happen.”
Hilda went to the door to demand, “And how did you hear—?”
But as she opened it, the door flew back, and men dressed as monks, whom she had never seen, pushed her to the bed. She saw Hilary, terrified, a knife to her throat and now there as a blade to Hilda’s as well.
“Keep quiet,” one of the monks said, hiking up his robe as the others lifted Hilda’s. She made the highest noises she could until a dagger bled her cheek.
“Keep sweet,” he continued, “and this will all be over in a moment—”
But even at that moment he was silent, and blood falling from his mouth, he toppled across Hilda, a dagger in the back of his neck.
As chaos broke, suddenly, Osric Wulfstan, hair blazing, arms chopping methodically, was upon the other monks, felling them quickly while yet another fell by by a dagger. Coming next into the room was Myrne, who quickly coldcocked the monk who had held Hilary, and behind her was Michael Flynn and Pollanikar.

Hilda sat on the bed, pulling her knees to her chest and rubbing her throat.
“Lady, forgive me,” Hilary fell to her knees. “A nun passed my door suggesting someone see to your welfare. She said she feared the danger you were in and so, after all your kindness, I could not see you alone. On my way here the monks, or the men I thought to be monks, found me. They said they would lead me to you because these chambers are new. I did not know. I am so sorry.”
“You could not know,” Hilda said, shaking her head as she rubbed her throat. “All monks must look the same to you, more or less. They used your kindness.”
Just then Odo came storming in at the head of three monks, looking more like a prince that a holy man.
“How in the world did they get in here?” he demanded, then turning to Michael and Polly added, “How did you get in here?”
“There are many questions,” Abbess Hilda said, still rubbing her throat, “but there is no use trying to answer them tonight, and now that the threat has passed, let us dress after morning prayers and go on a journey. For the answers will best be found in Ambridge.”

NEXT WEEK WE WILL RETURN TO THEONE AND FIND OUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HER AS SHE IS PURSUED BY RUVAL AND TOMORROW THERE WILL BE A SPECIAL POSTING OF THE BLOOD.
 
That was a great portion! I am glad the rape was prevented. So much content and a lot going on. I am enjoying this story and look forward to more of this next week and The Blood tomorrow.
 
TO SUPPLEMENT THE TINY PORTION OF THE BLOOD, WE HAVE A TINY PORTION OF BOOK OF THE BROKEN. WE WILL RETURN TO BOTH LATE SATURDAY NIGHT EASTERN TIME IN THE UNITED STATES

TWENTY



The Lord replied, “Even though you detain me, I will not eat any of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it unto me.” Then Manallyn inquired of the Lord, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?”
And he replied, “Why do you ask my name, which is Mysterious?”

- The Book of the Shades




THE DAUMAN MARCHES




Theone made good time throughout the night. The horse understood her, and she didn’t give the mare a name because she assumed she must already have one, and if they remained together long enough, then surely the horse would tell her.
At first, when she knew she should leave, a heavy weight fell on her heart, a tiredness and a fear and a we-might-as-well-give-up-ness. But as soon as she had mounted the horse and, with a note to the family, promised to send her back though she didn’t know how, Theone’s heart lightened as she rode away, down, down and south, not stopping. The horse was glad of a run too, and both their hearts were light as they galloped through the night. In an hour’s time she made the foot journey of one day.
“The wind is in you,” Theone bent down to whisper in her ear.
Deep into the night when she saw a river, Theone guided the red horse from the road, down to the water. The night was safer when there was a horse to mount, and she never realized how bleak and sad she had been until she wasn’t.
“That man… at least I know he is after me. At least he has a face,” Theone said half to the horse and half to herself. “And he is in a tavern in an inn tonight. Probably finding out about me.”
She thought, though she had a horse, chances were that his horse was faster, and though she was ahead of him, chances were he could sniff out her path.
“Olea, lead me to a good place. Lead me to a secret place where I can rest. Or send me someone,” Theone whispered. “Please, Lady.”
“My dear,” she whispered into the horse’s tender ear, “we’re going to have to ride again, and very soon.
“Lady, forgive me but I am not asking safety of you. I demand it, Lady. I’m sorry but I need this. I demand this.”
She was so firm she knew it was a done thing, and for the first time, as she mounted, Theone was not afraid.


“MY NAME IS THEONE,” she declared, because they had tried to tell her she didn’t have a name.
She had loved her father, though her father had done bad things. So he said. She now knew that he was like that man in the tavern, like the men she knew all too well. He’d born the Black Star on his wrist, same as she did now.
“I came back to myself,” is what he told her. “They don’t let that happen. I came back to myself.”
He had loved her mother and they had left together. They’d thought that the Borders were a far enough place to go. Mother had red brown skin and eyes the color of caramel. Mother had black, black hair like Theone herself. She came from the Western lands. “We must go back there,” she’d insisted.
She was right, but Father didn’t think so at the time.
Then, one year after Mother had died, They came on their tall black horses, swathed in their dark cloaks and they said, “You have something that belongs to us.”
Father had fought them, but he was just an old man now, and they knocked him down. Or had they killed him? They took her away. One man lifted Theon up. She was nine years old, and he said into her ear as he sat her before him, “You have no name. None of you do. He let you think you did.”
And they rode off.
They rode for many days, and she went from horse to horse. She cried the first day, but the man she rode with told her, “Stop, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Even at nine she had some idea of the horrible things men could do in order to give you something to cry about. So she shut up and they went east and east until they arrived at the Place of the Hand.
Unceremoniously she was dropped off in the midst of girls like herself, most black or dark haired, many paler than she. There was one extraordinary girl, fair with golden hair. They were kept by sad eyed girls about thirteen years old. One was not sad at all. She said:
“Here we care for the girls. You are older so, though I’ll care for you, you can care for those there.”
“My name is Theone,” she said by way of introduction.
“You have no name,” the girl said, simply. “No one here does. No one here ever has.”
And then something changed in that girl’s eyes and she said, “But I’m going to get one. One day. I’m going to have bunches of sons. I’m going to have a great one. He will be a great Hand, and I will be Mother of the Hand.”
Theone didn’t know what she was talking about, and was certain that it wouldn’t do to ask, so she observed. The Hands, the Men with the Black Stars, she did not understand what they did, but as she grew older, she realized what she did. Or was supposed to. Her father had been one, and had fallen in love with one of the Women. He had taken that Woman away when he had left. That was her mother. But that was forbidden. Long ago the original Hands had abducted women. Some still did. When they had destroyed a village they took women and killed men. If a boy was fierce they took him too, raised him as a Hand. None of this happened any more. The Hands had long since stopped recruiting.
A Hand could neither love nor marry, but as a man he had needs. Once a week, or twice sometimes, or for the advanced ones, once in a month, a Woman was sent to fulfill the needs of a Hand. This did not mean a Woman left once a month. She might, depending upon her importance, her beauty or her talents be sent to several in one night. If she conceived she was secluded. If the child was a girl she was placed in the Nursery where Theone lived now and raised to repeat the whole cycle. If the child was male, that was something more like. The Woman went to the Great House where she raised that son until he was five and separated from her. If she wished she could choose to conceive again or be retired, but from then on she gained a name: Mother of a Hand, the greatest honor a Woman could have. She might, possibly, even leave the Place of the Hand and live as a free woman. That, theoretically, this whole system meant a Hand might one day get a child on his own daughter or his sister, that the creatures he used as his whores were most certainly his cousins, seemed of no consequence. At least he was not lying with his mother. And,, every generation or so, a new stock of Women was brought in from the outside to keep things fresh.
Theone gathered, though certainly not from being told—no one told her anything—that her mother had been one such recruit. She had come out of Ossar,from Chyr, or rather been taken. Chyr was the heart of the Royan Kingdoms, and her mother was beautiful and had the rarity of possessing a name. No one had ever tried to beat it out of her.
So it had been when Esnarra was brought to be part of the Women, and this is how Theone’s father had come to love her.
One of the Old Women—which was another way to be retired—told her this.
She was told this right before her fourteenth birthday.
On the day she turned fourteen, as she was being dressed all in black satin, her hair brushed to sleekness, one of the Women came to her and whispered, “Tonight, you shall go to a man.”
 
This was a wonderful surprise. Some very strong female characters which is always nice to see. Excellent writing and I look forward greatly to more tomorrow!
 
A Hand could neither love nor marry, but as a man he had needs. Once a week, or twice sometimes, or for the advanced ones, once in a month, a Woman was sent to fulfill the needs of a Hand. This did not mean a Woman left once a month. She might, depending upon her importance, her beauty or her talents be sent to several in one night. If she conceived she was secluded. If the child was a girl she was placed in the Nursery where Theone lived now and raised to repeat the whole cycle. If the child was male, that was something more like. The Woman went to the Great House where she raised that son until he was five and separated from her. If she wished she could choose to conceive again or be retired, but from then on she gained a name: Mother of a Hand, the greatest honor a Woman could have. She might, possibly, even leave the Place of the Hand and live as a free woman. That, theoretically, this whole system meant a Hand might one day get a child on his own daughter or his sister, that the creatures he used as his whores were most certainly his cousins, seemed of no consequence. At least he was not lying with his mother. And,, every generation or so, a new stock of Women was brought in from the outside to keep things fresh.
Theone gathered, though certainly not from being told—no one told her anything—that her mother had been one such recruit. She had come out of Ossar,from Chyr, or rather been taken. Chyr was the heart of the Royan Kingdoms, and her mother was beautiful and had the rarity of possessing a name. No one had ever tried to beat it out of her.
So it had been when Esnarra was brought to be part of the Women, and this is how Theone’s father had come to love her.
One of the Old Women—which was another way to be retired—told her this.
She was told this right before her fourteenth birthday.
On the day she turned fourteen, as she was being dressed all in black satin, her hair brushed to sleekness, one of the Women came to her and whispered, “Tonight, you shall go to a man.”

When Theone was told this she trembled though, as the sun was coming up that morning she could not remember the nature of the tremble. It was fear, but it was a shivering in the groin. Was it possible that she’d wanted this? That on some level they all wanted this? Something had ached in her, between her thighs, when she was told, “Tonight, you shall go to a man.”
“He will not be young,” the Woman continued. “He will be a decade or so older. Not one of the boys. The boys don’t know what they’re doing. I go to the boys. Someone like me, all veiled in black, face covered. I come to a boy and give him his first time, teach him the arts of the rut all night. Tonight a man will teach you.”
“Will he hurt me?” she wanted to know.
“At first. A little. Quite possibly. He knows you are a virgin though. We’ve been sending him women all week so he won’t be one of those deprived men, the ones who’ve done so long without they fuck a girl to death. One day, though, when you are older you will have one. You won’t be able to walk straight for a day. But that’s not for a long time.”
Suddenly Theone could see her whole future stretching before her, years and years of being fucked by a series of different men, the men who had kidnapped her, the men who had whispered, “I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Up until this moment when her hair was being brushed, it had never been real.


When it was over she felt pressed out and sort of sore. She lay on the bed a moment, and then sat up a bit and he said, “There’s a lass,” touching her gently. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Since the time she had been taken from her father she had always feared these men. Now she remembered her father must have been one of them. Could he have fathered some of them, perhaps?
“It wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said.
In the dark she could see the Black Star against his wrist as he stroked her shoulder, and she realized she was supposed to say something, so she said, “No.”
“See, there’s a lass. And you’ll even learn to like it. Better and better. You can come to me the night after tomorrow. Not too quick, but then we don’t want too much time to pass. You’ve been opened up now, my girl. We don’t want it to close. We want you to have a taste for it.”
He said all this while he stroked her. “We’ll learn many things together.”
When she had come, he had been in a black robe, not the tight leather pants and vest and hooded cloak she always saw. He was stern, but not unkind, and he had undressed her gently, letting the gown fall from around her shoulders. And then he had guided her hand to his robe and helped her undress him. For the first time she had seen a naked man. Twenty-five or something years old he was, and she didn’t know how she felt about him. Maybe if there had been some choice in it, maybe if she had been like Girl Eleven who had that look in her eyes and wanted to bear sons, then maybe she would have awakened to him.
The feelings she had while he caressed her breasts and licked them, sucked on her nipples, ran a long hand down her body, were conflicting because he kept saying, “Easy, girl. Easy,” as if she was a horse or something, and every time it felt pleasant, she made herself feel nothing. Until the moment she was shocked at his mouth between her legs. It was meant to ease her, but when he realized it didn’t do anything, then he brought her to the bed and silently, gently, but firmly, put his hand between her legs, opened her, lay across her and began to fuck her. It hurt and he said, as he fucked her with the steadiness of a shuttle in a loom, “Breathe in, breathe out, let go, the pain will pass.”
And then he was too into it to teach or have much mercy. And he was just battering her. As he shuddered and came on top of her, Theone realized, “He could be getting me with child. Right now.”
He climaxed, and as he collapsed on top of her she thought, “But that is the point. Not just their pleasure. They want to make more.”
She thought: “Like they made me.”
The man was lazily thumbing one of her nipples, and his hand was between her wet thighs.
“I’ll wipe that up in a bit,” he said, rolling over. Then he said, “You’d better call me something.
“You can call me Gimble.”
“You can call me Theone,” she said with a sudden rush of pride. She sat up, feeling an ache between her legs as he looked at her in surprise, cocking his head. “You can always call me Theone. That is my name.”


CAIR DARONWY




“If we must leave for the south before winter sets in,” Anson decided, “then we cannot wait for Cedd to arrive from Kingsboro. We cannot wait for the wedding.”
“I did not want to say it,” Ohean said. “In fact, I refused to say it.”
“But it is so,” the Prince of Westrial stated.
Before the fire, holding hands lightly, were Imogen and King Idris.
“Brother,” Princess Imogen said, “I would rather you stand beside me at my wedding than Cedd.”
She looked to Idris.
“Let us wed, now. Why should even a night pass?”
Idris stared at her, but Anson said, “Where would you find a priest?”
“This is not the land of the Communion,” Idris reminded him. “Kyril could perform this.” He looked to Ohean. “Why, my cousin could do this.”
“Oh, would you?” Imogen fairly sprang from her chair and clasped Ohean’s hand.
He looked down at her.
“I will do it,” Ohean said, “but it must be done in the day, where the people of Dynas Madden can see it. Rheged cannot awake to a new Queen.”
“What will the people say?” Anson protested, “Surely they will assume you are dishonored and married swiftly to cover it.”
“Again, Rheged is not Westrial,” the Princess Sayaana said. “There is no shame or bastardy, and none would marry to cover up an early conception. Even so, it would look hamfisted of Idris to marry her so quickly for that reason. No, the people will take it on face value that Imogen weds so that we may see it and be on our way.”
The tall, black King of Rheged rose, and he pulled a bell hanging from the wall, but the sound came from far off, deep in the castle, and a few moments later at the door appeared Sir Ralph Curakin. Ohean blinked, and Ralph looked on him, but Idris had summoned his knight for his own reason.
“Send a herald through the palace, Ralph, and one through the town. Let them know I am wedding the Princess Imogen in two days time, the morning after the next.”
If Ralph was surprised, he was professional enough not to show it. He stomped one foot, bowed and, saluting the King, departed.
“Then it is done,” Imogen replied, pleased, squeezing Idris’s hand.
“Yes,” her brother agreed, though Ohean thought his face was still troubled. “It appears that it is.”


Anson opened up a silver case and handed a cigarette to Ohean, who lit his, and the smoke of the cigarette touched the soldier’s nostrils.
“My mind is not at ease,” Anson said. “They say in the south, and in the south, where I’m sure we will end up, Daumans are gathering. And now that you have awakened me, I have strange dreams of an imminent danger. I spent ten years fighting the last war against the Daumans, and now, while we head to the Hidden Tower, it seems like Rufus could get his hands on the north any day. While we go to weddings and spite Cedd then head off to a secret tower, Rufus will catch our kingdoms in a pincer grip.”
Anson took a deep breath, and then a long drag from his cigarette.
“They say your own Mages have ways to put the mind at ease.”
“Well, the easiest mind is a dead one,” Ohean said. Then, at the surprise in Anson’s eyes, “but foolishness aside. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it.”
“I want to stop being troubled all the time,” Anson said. “I went to war, and since I came back it is as if I am always at war. I am afraid for no reason. I tremble for no reason. Until you came back to me, I drank until I couldn’t stand it, whored till I was sore, and woke up to begin the mess all over again.”
“My love,” Ohean promised, “when we have done what we must do, then I will take you to the Rootless Isle. We will both go there and recover from all of our fears.”
Anson looked up at him.
“You are afraid too?”
“With much knowledge comes…. Too many fears,” the wizard shook his head. “It does seem like this is a natural part of the life of a soldier… or of a mage.”
“Then I don’t want to be either,” Anson said. “Or rather, I don’t want to be mad. I feel I’m going to go mad. Everyone in my troop died when we went to fight the Daumans, and I was left alive. But only half alive.”
“You never told me,” Ohean said.
“I never could.”
Ohean nodded slowly as they sat together on the side of the bed.
“I know, too, what it is to be touched by such shadows you dare not speak of them even to yourself.”
“There are those creatures in the fairy tales who take away your soul, half of it so they can command you, and leave you with the other half. This is how I feel every day. And it is worse because… because people applauded me,” Anson scratched his rough jaw. “Because I was the hero of Mount Cathlynn.”
“You are Anson son of Anthal, Prince of Ondres, Bearer of the Sword of Two Names.”
Anson kissed him, long, deeply, fell upon him so heavily it reminded Ohean of those times when they were much younger, when, as a boy, Anson, already tall, would fall asleep on him.
Ohean, carefully lay on the bed, cradling Anson, holding him so tightly he hoped he might pull all the pain and all the fear, all of the doubt out of his body, through the rich fabrics of their clothes and into himself. The loneliness, the pain he had felt in dark places, came to him now and he wished anything but that for the long tall man he was holding, stroking that bronze colored hair.
Give me this pain. Give it to me. Let me take this fear, this dread I knew was there but… in some ways did not.
Anson gave a great shuddering heave, and Ohean could not tell if he was weeping or only breathing.
“Often I…” Anson began, “Often I have felt so lonely and so solitary I could die. Thank all the Gods you are here tonight.”

MORE TOMORROW
 
That was an excellent portion. A lot of characters coming together and a lot going on as always. I am glad Theone’s first time wasn’t too bad. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
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Well, I imagine Theone's experience, so far, is as good as it can be. What comes next, we shall soon see.
Ah, and that rhymed.
 
TONIGHT WE RETURN TO OLD FRIENDS AND MYRNE AND WOLF REACH AMBRIDGE



CHYR​


To Connleth Arragareth, the stones and pillars of the great Temple of Niakkarran shared the same quality as the rest of the city. As the sun set over it, striking everything as red as it was golden, you could see the original great temple, large as as a small city, and at once you could see its ruinations, the years when it had been abandoned and attacked. And then, when you shifted your eyes past the ruins, you could see the villages that had risen up over the centuries, filling the wide pillar spaces of the anterooms and courtyards between the holy buildings, the sacred pools which had become swimming pools and drinking troughs, the palm trees lining the walkways into sacred chambers than had become avenues for barefoot villagers and cloaked and hooded shepherds to water sheep. One great street of tall stone tenements revealed itself to be the ancient walls of the temple which, over time had been repossessed by the people, and then, over the grounds of an old shrine was built a new one that had succumbed to yet another one, and all of Niakkarran had this dizzying quality, the feel of an ancient city grown out of rock and gone back to rock only to sprout a new city halfway out of the old.
Beyond what must have been the temple precincts spread maize colored houses, houses of white stone, old cement houses, and though it was easy to see what was new, it was not as easy to know what was old or how old.
“This is nothing like Kingsboro,” Gabriel said, as they walked through the old winding streets.
“Akkrebeth did show us how parts of the palace were founded over the ruins of an old palace,” Derek allowed. “But no. Nothing like this, where everything seems to be made of everything.”
The everything being made of everything gave a mad quality to the city so that even now Connleth saw a line of town houses and flats and as he looked at them harder realized that once upon a time these had been a palace, and then saw in the heavy stones and crenels, a fortress, and then once again he saw them as the townhouses they were. Everywhere buildings seemed to be melting back to their original stone and rising up as something new.
“It’s been this way since we crossed the border,” Connleth said.
They had followed Obala across the Waymouth Bridge, a long bridge of stone that looked over the great deep drop to the fast flowing Ahm. They had come out of greenery into greenery and one road led to Rheged, but the south road led into Chyr, the oldest of the kingdoms of Ankar. At first they had no concept of what it meant to be the oldest, for they were in the same green hills as on the other side of the river, and then coming out into the same villages. But it was when they left behind Obala and Sara and even Jon and Nialla and traveled to the city of Tezzedeka, that they began to understand what a different country they were in.
Chyr was as green and lush as Westrial, though warmer, and to the surprise of Derek and Gabriel, they even saw white men, though not as many as would be in the white lands. They saw all sorts of people, the golden skinned Solahni, and Sinercians and the almond eyed Ikebukrans with their curved swords and multicolored hair as well as their cousins, the Haean. All through the day, traveling to the city, they had seen, in place of wooden or daub farm houses, houses of stone, round and high like beehives and old as those in an ancient land would be, and coming to Tezzedeka they entered the first truly ancient city they’d ever been in. Derek had been in places where houses were old. He had been born in an old house, but this was the first place he’d been to where even the cottages were ancient, where you could feel that for ages on ages life had gone on in this spot and when it seemed to end, it simply rose up again in another form. The streets of Tezzedeka were the first place where he’d seen house windows cut three feet deep into a wall and mysterious faces smiling down at him and then turning away to return to conversation with each other and disregard him.
Quinton had been walking far too long without compliant before Matteo said, “Enough,” and put him on one of the horses, and even now, on occasion, he could hear his lover wince. But he said nothing to Connleth because he knew that if Connleth was driving them to travel this much in a day or in the last several days he had a reason. When they had left Kingsboro with Ohean and the Prince and all of their other companions, there had been a feeling of great exhilaration, and it had carried to those days when they were on their own going through the West Country and laying with whomever they encountered. But since they had rejoined Conn and come under his leadership, and since they had traveled into Chyr, there had been a different feeling over all of them, something of a deep and holy pilgrimage. No one stopped them on their travels, and all who bowed to them bowed to them as holy men. After all, if the Blue priesthood had not exactly come from Chyr, it had been in Chyr before it was in Westrial, and in every town they passed there was a respectable sized Blue Temple. Matteo had seen the windowless sides of one as he had come into Tezzedeka and wondered about visiting, but Conn was not leading them there.
“It is here,” Conn said.
Then as today in Niakkaran, there had been the gently playing of shawns, the small clap of a tambourine, music that was never far off, and now they followed Conn into an alley, but this was no empty and abandoned alley. It was not crowded, but Matt, leading the pony Quinton was on, saw that this was because the day was ending. This was one of the arcade bazaars where people set up shop to stay off the hustle and bustle or the profound heat and light of the streets. A few merchants; a seller of bangles and trinkets, a woman with the last of her kabobs and pastries, were still doing business, but most were closing their stands. There were doors in the walls, borrowed rooms from people’s houses, that were shops in the day now being closed for the night, but now Conn tapped on the last door of the alley, one which was semi open and from which they heard a singer proclaiming:


Bemejemerīya maji neberi
ke’idimē wede ‘idimē mani tezawere
ina huletenyawi ye’irisu jegina t’enikara neberi

Sositenyawi yekewakibiti geredwa
bezafochi wisit’i yinori yeneberewi
inich’etu mechēmi āyimotimi
sebati weredu
ohi ina sebati weredu!

“What?” Matt wondered. The song was utterly unfamiliar, but when Derek smiled and whisper sang to the melody he knew, Matteo understood.

First was the mage
Who moved from age to age
And second was his hero strong…

Conn motioned for Matt to remain in the alley along with Calon and Gabriel who held the other horses, and he entered the room.
A man came forward, bowing, and began:
“Yetekeberachihu wegenochi inikwani bedehina met’achihu.”
At once, Conn went into the Westyl tongue, the language that was neither the Old Chyran nor Sendic, but by which most cultured people in all of the kingdoms spoke.
The man nodded and replied in kind.
“Sir,” Conn said, “we seek to visit this fine establishment, but also we see rest.”
“There is rest here,” he said. “Not so at all houses of wisdom. And there is,” he craned his head over Conn, “stabling for your horses. For, as you may see, the building is large and much of it is given to being an old inn for travelers going toward the heart of the land. This house is connected to that inn by a stairway and we share a kitchen. I will send out my lad to attend to your horses and, perhaps, my maidservant will run baths upstairs.”
Derek laughed, lifting his own armpit and taking a great wiff.
“What a very gentle suggestion,” he said in Westyl to the Keeper, “And an offer we will all accept.”

Derek had only heard of Houses of Wisdom and longed to sit down and stay even though he was embarrassed of his travel stained state. Matt and the others were led away to the inn, but the Keeper said to Derek, “My Lord, there are baths here in the House.”
Derek looked about. He could smell coffee being pounded and coffee brewing.
“You could tell my love for the place.”
“You are one of those priests from the East, from our furthest outposts,” the Keeper said. “Yes, and you, young lord,” he nodded to Conn. “Let me show you the way.”
There were hushed voices having a heated discussion at one table, and youngish loud voices talking of very little at another. Trails of cigarette and cheroot smoke tendriled through the air, and now, as they entered into a second room only divided by a rice curtain, they could hear the singer at his loot lift his voice to another song:

Inē yemiwedewi bētihi bicha nenyi
yetewededechiwi iraswa āyidelechimi
iwinetenya fik’iri legenizebi newi
leyazewi šat’ini āyidelemi ”
iwinetenyawi tewedaji liyu newi
jimirihi ina mech’ereshahi mani newi?
yanini sīyagenyu.

As they passed through the rice curtain, they could hear the sizzling food and smell meat and bread beyond a small doorway in this darkened, cool room.As they went down that doorway, to their right was the opening to a kitchen and the kitchen was lit and half outdoors. Conn saw that it opened to a central courtyard and he wondered at the shape of these buildings, but the hall opened to a bathroom and the Keeper said, “Here. Here. Take your ease and I will prepare food and drink.”

Since they had arrived in Niakkaran, Derek had tried to understand the streets and the buildings, and now he remembered they had come here through an alley. So were the bath and the kitchen facing the side of a street or another alley? He wondered, was all the block one great building? He has seen a courtyard. Or were there several buildings joined together?
“Most likely,” Conn said, “it is a bit of both.”
He had traveled into Chyr with Ohean before, and informed Derek, “There were probably several buildings, and some of those buildings may have been joined into one, doors and hallways were made to join some together and walls to put some apart. Likely you could never tell where one ended and one began. That great house we passed with the women sitting in the window is possibly somehow linked to where we are now. Oh, there would be discreet walls to divide it, but it would not be like in Kingsboro where all the houses and shops are separate structures from each other.”
“And even in Kingsboro that is not always the case,” Derek remembered.
For many of the great mansions had ground floors, and even first and second floors that were shops and eateries, and at night they were cleared out so that the homeless and the vagrant or, if one preferred, the poor and travelers who paid a small fee had a place to sleep. On the opposite side of all that were servants quarters and kitchens reached by alleys and then, on the second or the third floors of those great houses, reached by private alleys and elegant staircases were gardens and over the gardens still three more stories where the wealthy lived, their world high above the streets. In times when Derek, as a Blue, had the prestige and fortune to be in such settings he saw that, while from the main streets one saw a sheer faced six or seven story building with. Perhaps, a nod toward style, when you went through black iron gates into private alleys and up into the elevated gardens, you could see, even in what seemed the rougher parts of Kingsboro, fountains, patios, many windowed entries into ballrooms and parlors, ornate turrets and bays and expensively tiled roves. And there were little bridges, connecting great house to another so that the wealthy never had to touch the ground, except at certain point and only if they wanted to, castles in the air, a world of rose and gold and jade colored towers peeping above cool greenery, inward looking and removed from the world below.
“I suspect it is not like that here at all,” Conn said. “And I prefer that.”
They splashed about in a deep stone tub filled with cool water though Conn thought, the spigots could be made to send down hotter water if he so desired, and at this moment he did not. This bathroom, floored by stone flags, was both dark and clean with no foul smells, no dampness. But he could see that there were shower stalls on the other side of this little wall, so this was public. A staircase beyond them led up to faint noise and Conn said, “Do you suppose that is the inn the Keeper spoke of?”
“I would guess we are in the bathing tubs for the inn,” Derek said, “And the regular showers are for the visitors to the House of Learning, for properly speaking a House of Learning is supposed to have everything you could wish for.”
“This is why I wanted us to stay here,” Conn said. “The Blue Houses, the ones that are not temples, are based on Houses of Learning, for in Chyr, where everyone reveres the Old Gods, Houses to Adaon are everywhere and used by everyone.”
Derek did not say, “What are we waiting for?” But he did stop lounging and scrubbed himself quickly, leaping out of the bath and changing into a fresh blue robe.
When they came out, a handsome young man put plate and bowls before them, placed his hands together, bowed and removed himself. Despite the heat of the day outside, it was cool in this windowless place, and they set to on hot bean soup and chicken and beef wrapped in flat breads. In this room, a new singer was clapping a tambourine on his thigh and singing to three who sat on the floor, listening.



“Yefik’irenyamochi yets’edeyi wek’iti met’itwali
yihi ye’ābwara sahini ye’ātikiliti sifira inidīhoni
yemenigišite semayati k’ali met’a
yenefisi wefi beberera iniditinesa!

“Baḥiru be’inik’u temola
yech’ewi regiregama inide kawitari t’afach’i yihonali
dinigayu kema‘idini wisit’i ānidi rubī yihonali
sewineti mulu nefisi yihonali!”


Nodding their heads and murmuring, two turbaned old men sat on the floor, drinking coffee and playing chess, and in the next room, the teacher was getting louder:

“Yezīhi dīgirī timihiriti besebati kifilochi yetekefele sīhoni be’āt’ek’alayi begoneti ijigi bemīyamiru k’elemochi tegelit’wali. Yešine migibari gidētawochi behulumi bota bet’ibik’i tefet͟s’amī nachewi. yemelekoti baḥiriyi ፣ baḥiriyi baḥiriyatina fits’imina betamanyineti teleyitewi begidaji teleyitewali.
“Inami inide ābatachini bego ādiragī ina yemorali gezhi inidemehonachini met’eni le’irisu yalenini migibarati be’isu layi tets’i‘ino lemasaderi bedenibi yiselalu። mahiberawī nuro...”

Now Derek supposed if he had not been so hungry, or so engrossed in the music or in the very quiet of the place, he would have seen and heard quicker. He was surprised at his own surprise. In the corner, on the other side of what would have been the wall to the kitchen, and a corner they had surely passed, were two great rubber plants but through them, with this being the only thing to hide them, were two men fucking.
Derek’s toe pushed Conn’s and Conn turned to look. The very darkness of the room afforded some privacy, along with the plants, but not a total privacy, and while Conn felt himself hardening, his whole understanding of the place changed. Unlike a Blue House where things might be discreetly hidden away, the House of Learning revealed all.
Even as the singer finished there was a shuddering of coming on the other side of the plants, and all stopped, turning slowly, almost reverentially, to look, and then turning away. Conn did not feign his hunger and his desire to keep eating, and the two men got up from behind the plants, and linking hands, went to the shower rooms. Meanwhile, without shame, two boys who had been listening to the singer went ino another corner, where there was not even a screen of plants, but only a pallet of mats, and began undressing. As they began to kiss and link bodies, and the rice curtain from the other room opened to allow in Gabriel, Calon, Matt and Quinton, all freshly bathed, the singer lifted his voice and strumming his lute quickly, cried:


Fik’iri kesu gari minimi gininyuneti yelewimi
āmisitu yesimēti hiwasati ina sidisitu āk’it’ach’awochi
gibu memokeri bicha newi!
Betewedajineti yetešerawi mesihibi ፡፡
beḫwala minalibati fek’adi
ke’igizī’ābiḥēri yimet’ali!

The feeling which, after so many years, Conn was finally coming to understand struck him. It was the feeling that tightened his scrotum and made his cock stiff, where in the midst of experiencing the holy, in the midst of attempting to transcend, he understood what true transcendence was, what his path was. The path was beyond good and evil, or at least beneath them. It moved with emotion and sometimes left him feel confused by his own actions. The very first times, and if he was honest, more than the very first times, when he’d found himself having sex with his sister’s husband, deep inside of Jon and enjoying it, were like this. He unnerved, even ashamed of his own actions. It had been like this far back in the woods when he had told Derek he would not come to him at the orgy, and he had ended pouring his seed into Thano all night, and then doing the same with Jon in the morning. Now, perhaps, he could finally learn to bow to the desire.
While they all swayed to the music, Conn, lowered himself to his knees and crawled under the table, He lifted Derek’s robes and felt Derek twitch, and then he took Derek in his mouth and began to suck him.


Fik’iri kesu gari minimi gininyuneti yelewimi
āmisitu yesimēti hiwasati ina sidisitu āk’it’ach’awochi
gibu memokeri bicha newi!

Betewedajineti yetešerawi mesihibi,
beḫwala ፣ minalibati ፣ fek’adi
ke’igizī’ābiḥēri yimet’ali!


His mouth and tongue moved up and down Derek’s penis, feeling him grow larger, harder in his mouth, feeling the familiar budding uplift of his cock, tugging on his scrotum and massaging it, thrusting his finner along taint and into ass while Derek, along with the music, cried out at the table. As the guitar increased, so did the snaking of Conn’s head. He was in the sex possession as happened now and again. He was at worship, cock worship, the idol, the image of the God, swelling in his mouth.
Conn held onto Derek’s naked hips under this robe, but he felt Derek moving away now, standing up, coming down under the table with him. Derek took him by the hand, and he came up from under the table with him, while the music grew wilder, and the others clapped their hands, Derek freed himself of his robe and stood there, milk white, black haired, red lipped, and he undressed Conn as well, While the shawms played and the lovers made love, while the other Blue Priests clapped their hands, Derek embraced Conn, and they kissed in the private open, in the dark back room of the wisdom house where anyone could come but few did. They held onto each other like wrestlers and kissed like long lost lovers and as the music wound down, and first cries of orgasm were heard from others, they sank to the floor to twist together in love.


AMBRIDGE​




Osric Wulfstan rode between Myrne and Polly who thought, How handsome he is, How strong. How very regal.
But he was always like that. I wonder if he knows.
The journey up to Ambridge was that of a day, and the three of them traveled without Michael—whom, having a price on his head, they had left at the abbey—but with Hilda and a small troop of monks joined by Odo. They went up the valley, crossed the river, and were coming into Ambridge by evening. The gates opened for them easily, for this was the Abbess of Saint Clew, joined to the Abbot of Saint Fundagast in Daumany, the Prince Odo.
“How courteous they are,” Wolf commented, as they dismounted in the flagstone courtyard, and King Edmund, came out to greet them, surrounded by functionaries. “I wonder what is truly moving in their heads.”
Earlier they had discussed what Queen Edith’s plans had been.
“To disgrace me of course,” the newly made Abbess Hilda had said, but Odo turned to her and said, “Friend, there are, for royals, plans within plans and still more plans. You know this.”
They had both grown up in courts and now Hilda acknowledged this, but it was Polly who said, “Queen Edith has a cousin, Rowena.”
“I remember this,” Hilda had murmured. “Rowena was to enter the order. She was at Saint Clew a year, and then she was gone.”
Pollanikar nodded.
“This Rowena would have been moved in to replace you,” Polly said.
“Can they even do that?” Myrne demanded.
“If I had been disgraced,” Hilda said, “the King could have made an emergency move to put Rowena in, and this is probably what Edith planned.”
But, upon entering the castle, Hilda spoke not a word to King Edmund. The Abbess of Saint Clew marched across the flags of the court and through the high Waydan Door into the main hall of Whitestone Castle, with as much command as Gertrude had ever employed. The courtiers in their rich gowns of scarlet, emerald, indigo, saffron, women in high hats, hair covered by sheer veils, swirled about to face her, ceased all conversation, ready for her appearance, hardly seeing Odo, Wolf , Myrne or Polly.
Before her throne, amidst her family, stood the tall, auburn haired, Queen Edith. She was all in white and white stones, a high, veiled hat perched on the end of her head as she made a small bow.
The Queen began to speak, the Abbess slowly approached her.
“Abbess, I heard of the trouble you encountered, and of the enemies who sought to take from you your virtue, and I am glad that you have survived intact—”
But no sooner was this lie out of Edith’s mouth, then in a swirl of black, Hilda stepped forward and smacked the Queen solidly across her face.
“Lying whore!” the Abbess of Saint Clew’s voice rang from high white walls while Queen Edith, with the help of her brother, came up off the ground.
“All in this house know of your plot to deflower me, and how you sent false monks into my house and how they were subdued.”
Her voice rang through of the high walls, not swallowed by the banners hanging from them, and King Edmund said, “Sister—”
“Abbess!” Hilda hissed.
“Abbess,” Edmund said again, “this charge is a grave one.”
But just then they heard a shrieking, and the Queen turned around and said, “Unhand her.”
Pollanikar, the only Royan in the room, held by the scruff of her neck the Lady Rowena Baldwin, and Hilda said, “Tell me truthfully, did you plan for her to replace me?”
“I don’t know what you mean—” Edith began.
“The truth! The truth!” Rowena cried, brown haired, white throated in a red gown cried. “Tell the truth!”
“Tell it,” Polly encouraged.
“A lie may see war with the South,” Hilda added. Regardless of how Cedd and Morgellyn felt about her, they would have to defend her, and both of them were marrying into the House of Sussail. News had come the other day that Imogen had been betrothed to the King of Rheged and Reghed had never had patience for Edmund.
“Rowena,” Edith turned to her cousin, looking sad and surprised, “Did you plan this?”
“I did not!” the brown haired woman stepped back, but did not escape Polly.
“Admit it,” Allyn Baldwin said, gently, “and your punishment will probably be small.”
Polly released Rowena in disgust, and Hilda frowned as Rowena cried: “I did nothing! You know I had nothing to do with it.”
“Cousin, please,” Edith’s face grew more sad, and Rowena cried out.
“Liars, all! Uncle Ulfin plotted this out!” she told Hilda. “He told Edith. Edith told the King. The truth—”
But Ulfin Baldwin turned, and the pale haired, pale eyed man stared into the blue eyes of brown faced Polly. For a moment they knew one another, and then, just like that, he took out a knife. Polly took in a breath as the knife whizzed past her neck and there was a spraying fountain of blood. But it was not hers. Rowena collapsed on the ground, gasping, scratching at her bleeding throat, and then, after gurgling helplessly, she was dead.
Queen Edith, all her white clothes sprayed with red, stood aghast, and her father looked back at her.
“My lord, King Edmund, in the name of the Abbey and the Holy Communion of God, take this man away,” Hilda said. “In the name of the Holy Orders he has plotted against and your very Throne, have him sent away.”
“Send him away!” Myrne’s voice trembled with horror. She had not expected to speak. She certainly had not expected to be seen and from the looks of all around her, their expectations were the same.
Myrne took a breath, inspired by Wolf as well as frightened for him.
. “I am Myrne Ceoldane, Daughter of Edric of Herreboro and a lady of the Rootless Isle by my mother’s blood. You know me well. In the name of the ancient houses, send that man away.”
And then, in the court, they were all looking at Ulfin, and slowly the chant built.
“Send him away! Send him away!”
“Away! “Away!”
“Away!” Odo pronounced, and Hilda demanded, “Away.”
“Edmund’ll be only too glad to do it,” Odo said as the guards surrounded Ulfin. “He’s been looking for a way to get rid of Ulfin for years. Plotter. Murderer of his own kin. It’s all over for him now.”

MORE TOMORROW
 
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It was great to get back to old friends and see the travellers reach Ambridge. That Ulfin is one evil guy and I am glad he was found out. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
There was a lot going on in this section tonight, wasn't there. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm so glad you enjoyed.
 
THE DAUMAN MARCHES




That morning, from the top of the hill, she looked down into a little valley and in the midst of the green trees was smoke and the smoke came from a narrow chimney, and the chimney came from a little stone house.
You will be safe there. That house is the safest house in the world for you, daughter.
Theone knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt, and so she rode down to it. She disappeared into the woods on her roan, knowing that when she came out of the greenery she would be at the house and someone would be there to greet her.




“Why are you like that?”
Theone did not answer immediately. Though, of course, she was the only other person in the room, she was always sure he was speaking to someone else.
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“That first time you were frozen because you were nervous. But now, everytime…” Gimble said, “I feel when you are about to open up to me. And then you close. I feel when you are about to let go, to enjoy, to let it be more than a service—”
“But it is a service.”
“Thinking of it that way, holding onto your pride, won’t make you one bit freer one bit sooner,” Gimble told her. “You know that, don’t you?”
When she said nothing, he added, “This… your refusing to feel, this you having a name… This pride… this is a symptom of you coming from the Outside. The man who got you on that Woman—”
“He was my father.”
“Women don’t have fathers,” he said, evenly. “Neither do Hands. Hands have mothers. That man did you a great disservice, Theone.”

“What was your mother like?” she asked Gimble one afternoon when they had finished. Gimble was apparently important enough to receive a woman in the middle of the day, at least occasionally.
“She is like,” Gimble corrected, “a very lovely Woman who raised me in the House of Mothers until I was five. Of course, all the Women there are Mothers. They are not like the Women who come to us at night.”
“Of course they are,” Theone said, amazed by this piece of stupidity. “That’s exactly what they were in order to become the Mothers of Hands, and had they had a girl, possibly your own sister, then they’d be sent right back to doing what I’m doing with you.”
Gimble frowned at her and said, “You think you know so much, Theone.”
Well, she knew that, at least. Any respect she had for Gimble went when she realized he could be so sentimental about his mother and have no idea what her life must have truly been.
“Wouldn’t you like to become a Mother? Wouldn’t you?” he asked her. He looked so young. He was flat faced, and flat featured, determined. “And you have only lain with me? If I got you with child do you know how special you would be? Because they would know the father. That is so rare. I have no father. Most of us don’t. Can’t you see why I’m keeping you with me? You’ll be free if we have a son together. Come on, Theone.”
She understood that this was the closest thing Gimble had felt to love. If it wasn’t love outright.

That night, for the first time, when she lay under him she was aware of him. His mouth open, his eyes closed, his face slack, his thin body trembling with a thin gloss of sweat, murmuring things to himself. He loved her. He was trying to make a child with her. He was, in a way, like her father must have been. He was sweet. As sweet as a Hand could be. And pressed under him, in his bed, she let him place her hands on his back and hold him, and she let herself care for him, and be touched by him. And she was startled when her body trembled and with him, she came.


The sun was past its midpoint in the sky when the roan broke through the wood, and the shadows of trees lined the gold lit grass. She dismounted, embracing the mare around her great neck, and then, leading it by the reins, she went toward the brick house. But as she did, the front door opened, and out came two women, one with wheat colored hair and golden skin, the second, dark skinned in blue, black haired.
“She is here,” the wheat haired woman said.
The dark haired woman in blue replied, “It’s about time.”.
When Theone blinked at her, the black haired woman spoke.
“We were told you would come,” she said to Theone, . “And you will stay here this night, and none shall come into this valley that can harm you. This is my friend, Birch, and I am Yarrow, Woman of this Wood. Be welcome.”
Remembering the power of this one, simple sentence, the girl nodded and said: “I am Theone.”


CHYR


His mouth and tongue moved up and down Derek’s penis, feeling him grow larger, harder in his mouth, feeling the familiar budding uplift of his cock, tugging on his scrotum and massaging it, thrusting his finner along taint and into ass while Derek, along with the music, cried out at the table. As the guitar increased, so did the snaking of Conn’s head. He was in the sex possession as happened now and again. He was at worship, cock worship, the idol, the image of the God, swelling in his mouth.
Conn held onto Derek’s naked hips under this robe, but he felt Derek moving away now, standing up, coming down under the table with him. Derek took him by the hand, and he came up from under the table with him, while the music grew wilder, and the others clapped their hands, Derek freed himself of his robe and stood there, milk white, black haired, red lipped, and he undressed Conn as well, While the shawms played and the lovers made love, while the other Blue Priests clapped their hands, Derek embraced Conn, and they kissed in the private open, in the dark back room of the wisdom house where anyone could come but few did. They held onto each other like wrestlers and kissed like long lost lovers and as the music wound down, and first cries of orgasm were heard from others, they sank to the floor to twist together in love.


The Blue One saw his reflection, and in loving it he became the Twins; Erkovan and Eskovan. They made love in every position and when Eskovan came, all of his seed spilled out to make the stars and the planets. It made Elial, Goddess of the Stars and of the Dark night sky. That is the oldest creation story.
“Erkovan’s seen exploded inside of Eskovan, and there it became an egg. For thousands upon thousands of years the egg was in him and one day it came from his mouth. When the egg cracked it became the endless waters, deep and abysmal and in those waters was Aiuryn, the woman of the abyss and Rhan, Queen of the Deep, From Aiuryn came Ulle King of the Deep and Vara the mother of waters. But the cracked shell made the earth itself, Mama Selu. Elial was mother to Sineah the Sun and Olea the Moon, and in time, when she sang, some of those stars sang back to her and they became the Kuaelar, the race of the living stars. But Erkovan and Eskovan were lords of the sky and always they were making love, moving back in forth, keeping it all going. So this is what we do. We make love, we share ourselves constantly. We explode in and over each other and cause joy and shock and keep the world going.”


They blink in and out of half sleep. Conn thinks, we should get a bed. We should go into the showers and dress and go to a proper bed. This was not what we came for? No, when Conn woke this morning and he was coming to niakkaran, he did not imagine that it would lead to he and Derek, curled together on the floor, his appreciate of Derek like that very first time they had met, when he was seventeen and Derek was a strange and beautiful young man he looked up to.
“What did you say?” Derek murmured, turning to him.
“You are still as strange and beautiful as the first time I looked at you.”
Derek kisses him as if they are alone. The room is dark, the music has stopped, but all around them are the sounds, sometimes rough, sometimes gentle, now and again, ecstatic, of sex. The young server boy who had brought them food, and come out again and again with drinks, sometimes it seemed, come out unnecessarily, and now he lay slumped against the wall, his trousers down while Cal knelt before him, his head snaking as he worked up and down on the boy’s penis.
Many of the lovers lay against the wall, half asleep, still kissing, and now Conn turned his lazy eyes to see why the music had stopped, for the old musician lay, spread eagle on the floor, pressed under Matteo while, buttocks flexing and unflexing, he slammed into him and he gave for an entirely new music. Even the gentle old Keeper of the house had come into the ecstasy, the robe thrown from his old brown body while on kneeling on Quinton, whose eyes blinked up black at the ceiling, he rode the little blue priest into elation.
“And what comes after all this,” Conn wondered. “What comes after the fucking?”
Creation, the ancient story Derek had told said.
“And… what comes after creation?”
Derek, smiling drunkenly at him, caressed his cheek and whispered:
“Love.”


They walked all that morning with a black skinned boy called Polliaran, who may or have may not have been at the orgy the night before and was staying in the inn above the House of Learning. Matteo said that now that they were at their destination, he wasn’t going to move a muscle and Gabriel had said that he doubted very much that they were in their destination, but he wasn;t leaving either. They slept in their rooms on the top floor of the inn far from the love that had occurred the night before.
But Derek and Conn were awake, and they wanted to see Niakkaran. The city rose up high as if it was on hills, but the hills it was on, Conn realized, were older parts of the city. They came into a neighborhood called The Ridge, full of simple houses on small hills behind deep green trees, but where the parapeted street stopped, they looked down a cliff made not of natural rock, but of the generations of old buildings.
“Look,” Polliarran said, “There is it, the Old Temple.”
“It looks old in a Westrian kind of way,” Conn said. “But no older than a kirk in Kingsboro. Which, for this place, can’t be that old.”
“Look closer,” Polliaran said.
Conn looked down in the district called the Metrain, or the Belly, for he knew his languages. Rising above the swarming life of the city, Conn saw what looked like an old kirk, the traditional rose window and unpillared walls, the stain glass windows and steeples he was used to, which belonged to the New Faith. But the two towers that would have been bell towers back home were topped with brass domes, and the roof was flat.
“Say…” Derek began, and Conn followed his finger.
What Conn had taken to be a flat roof, when he actually bothered to stretch and look, was no roof at all. The walls of the immense rose colored kirk definitely encased a blue stone temple, and what was more, that temple’s domes roof was mostly gone and inside it and around it could clearly be seen, amongst worshippers and altars, houses. Conn squinted and saw shops even, amongst the temple rubble.
“Is it a kirk, a temple or a neighborhood?” Conn wondered.
“It is all,” Polliaran said. “For every time it stopped being one thing it became another.”
This gentle decay of a city, coupled with its instant repair continued to give Conn the vertigo he’d felt before. He felt as if he would never be in a proper city again until he was again in one where the direction was toward progress and away from living amongst ruins.
“You would have to go south for that. The true power is in the south,” Gabriel said later on.
“Then how did we end up here?” Matt demanded.
“Because we followed Ohean, and Ohean was heading for Rheged.”
“Besides,” the elfin faced Derek continued, “We needed to be here. Conn felt it. Conn led us here.”
This was quiet land, flat land once they’d crossed the river. Along the Two Rivers, stretching into Rheged was the land of Marnen Ro, no state but a nation within in nations of the Marnen people of whom Sara and Obola were. They were the herders who traveled the Great Road in a journey of two years to return here and as soon as they returned, other members of the family set out on the road to take their place. The Marnen were, of course, herders of geese and other fowl as well as herders of cows and sheep.
But here, Conn and his companions had met the people they’d only heard of, the men of Thadden Ro, which included the great valley in which they now lived, and the land on the other side of the mountains. The Thad, like their cousins the Marnen, were a tenting people, nomads as well, but they traded in horses and rarely took the Great Road. All through their travels between towns Derek, and Conn had seen the settlements of these nomadic people. The land was full, Cal and Quint and Matt judged, but not full of civilization.
“We’re in the northern valley,” Gabriel said, “in truth, not far from the great city of Immrachyr, but also isolated by the mountains from the great coastal lands and the north and the far south. This is a good place for us to be, to learn, to becomes ourselves.”
“You really believe we’re going to be a new Blue Temple?” Matt said.
Conn and Quint had said nothing. Neither had Cal.
“We’re going to be something that hasn’t existed before. That’s why we’re here,” Derek continued. “I don’t know if it’s going to matter soon or in a century, but that’s why we’re here. Before, the Blues came from the West into the East. But we’re coming from the East into the West.”
“Well,” Quint said, when he stopped playing with his foot. Matt lifted his lover’s twisted leg and began to massage it, “are we going to…. Visit an old Blue Temple or something, visit another house of wisdom?”
“We can do both,” Conn finally spoke, “but neither is our purpose. What we are about to do is build a Temple. We will be the House. We will be the Temple.”



WE'LL RETURN TO BOOK OF THE BROKEN IN A COUPLE OF DAYS
 
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That was a great portion! Some hot scenes and some plot advancing ones which was a good combination! Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!
 
AMBRIDGE




“They’ll send Ulfin to Highpoint,” Myrne said when she and Polly sat together in rooms off of Hilda’s apartment. “It is the northermost point in North Hale, out on an island. The windows are open even in winter. He’ll die there. In misery.”
“They will not forgive us,” Pollanikar said. “The power of the Baldwins is not over. I see that quite clearly.
“Maybe we should never have spoken,” Myrne said, “but I had to speak.”
“As did I,” Myrne said.
“Ulfin Baldwin is my father,” Polly said, simply.
“What?”
“I knew it when he looked into my eyes. He knew it too. My mother hinted at such a thing. He came to the women of the Rootless Isle to gain power, and my mother gave him a daughter, and his daughter has been his death. Maybe yours as well.”
Just then, the door opened, and a handsome, all too pleasant looking man with white blond hair and long features entered the room. Allyn Baldwin, and beside him was Queen Edith.
“Sir, Lady,” Myrne said, rising, “We have no quarrel with you.”
“Nor do we seek a quarrel with you,” Allyn said. He looked to Polly, “I would speak with the Lady Myrne.”
“Myrne,” Polly looked to her friend.
“Keep the Queen company,” Myrne said, nodding regally to Edith. “Sir,” she said to Lord Allyn, “let us walk.”


“My lady, I will be brief,” Allyn said. “I would propose marriage.”
“That is brief.”
“Does it surprise you?”
“Not… entirely,” Myrne turned to him. “The daughter of the Earl of Hale and the son of the Earl of North Hale.”
“Now the Earl of North Hale himself,” Allyn corrected.
“Yes,” Myrne said. Then, “No, the proposal does not surprise me. The timing does. Your father is barely on his way to prison.”
“We must look to practicalities.”
“Yes,” Myrne said.
“Edmund has no heirs.”
“The Lord Odo seems to think his brother is Edmund’s heir.”
“That is in question. When the Lady of Hale is joined to the Earl of the North, there would be no doubt who was King, and of course, who was Queen.”
“Yes,” Myrne said, folding her hands behind her back as they walked along the sunlit gallery, “Yes, I do see. But I cannot decide for myself. I must go to Hale and consult my father.”
“Absolutely,” Allyn agreed. going to one knee and kissing her hand. “I will send you with a wagon train of wealth.”



“She is a spirited girl,” Allyn said, “and a wise one.”
“The daughter of Herreboro, a Wulfstan, who was the one thing I held over the earl’s head,” Edith said.
“And now she is with us, allied to us,” Allyn said. “She will be a Baldwin, and my wife.”
“Will she be biddable?”
“She will be buyable,” Allyn said. “You ought to have seen the look in her eyes. She never thought to be a queen.”
Edith nodded, her eyes narrow, her mouth tight. Her fingers went to her throat before she murmured:
“Then why do I fear her?”







“I almost spoke like a fool,” Myrne told Pollanikar. “I was nearly as proud and flippant as I was the day I met Wolf.”
“I almost told Edith I was her sister,” Polly said.
When Myrne looked at her. Pollanikar told her how, years ago, Ulfin Baldwin had come down to the Rootless Isle to learn what the fate of the North should be, and there he conceived her with Meredith.
“So much,” Myrne said, “we have not told each other.”
“Well,” Polly decided, “the time for secrets is ended. At least secrets from each other.”
“Yes,” Myrne agreed. Then she said, “When Allyn said his bit about being practical, I was about to say that I was never one for practicality. I was about to say that there was already a man I loved. But then as soon as I said that, every time they saw me speak to Wolf they would have known it was he, and they would have killed him.”
“Then you do love Wolf?”
“Well, yes, I do,” Myrne discovered. Then she said, sitting down, “The only way to get out of this palace safe, the best way, is to go north with them thinking I am asking to wed Allyn, to be his wife so that one day I will be Queen of the Three Kingdoms.”
“How strange,” Polly sat back. “This morning I did not know I would be the death of my father, and you did not have it in your power to be the next Queen. And to think… you are giving that up.”
Myrne looked almost disgusted.
“I am giving Allyn up, that fox!” Myrne said. “That loathsome fish. And this damnable Ambridge. They can have it. But the moment he spoke of me being Queen…” Myrne shook her head. “It is I who have the royal claim, and he who thinks to benefit from it.”
In an even more quiet whisper, Myrne leaned in and told Polly, “Allyn has shown me one thing I will not marry Allyn Baldwin, but I will be Queen. Pollanikar, do me a favor?”
“Yes.”
“Send for Hilary. I need her to bear a thing to Hilda for Hilda to bear to Odo for Odo to give Wolf. No one must even see me look at him.”


Wolf was cleaning his fingernails and thinking what they really need was a good trimming when Odo entered, briskly, and said, “You’ll not be eating with us tonight. You’ll be with the servants and hide that fancy sword.”
“Wha?” Wolf began.
“Pretend you’re a servant just like you were before. No one noticed you when you came here and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
“I don’t understand.”
Odo knelt before Wolf.
“Look,” he said, “our friends Myrne and Pollanikar have brought some attention to themselves. Myrne has accepted the proposal of marriage from Allyn Baldwin!”
“What!” Wolf almost roared, and he would have thrown Odo off, but the tall, wiry man was stronger than he looked.
“Be silent!” Odo cuffed him on the head.
“It is deception!” he whispered. “And I do not dare say a word. Only…”
Odo reached into the great sleeve of his monk’s gown and pulled out a package.
“Open, read and burn the things you do not need to keep. I will stay here with you. When it is dark, I will sneak you out.”
Wolf frowned, and then the young redhead nodded and sat down under the window under the darkening sky, and opened the package that had come in so circuitous a manner from Myrne.













“By now you have been told the greatest part. Burn this letter if you can, immediately. Kingdoms count on it not being found. I have already sent letters to my cousins. You are to leave tonight, meeting Michael Flynn and Pollanikar, and head north to Kester, where we will meet again. I will leave in a matter of days. Even now I speak elliptically about many things I dare not write. I write of one who will be queen and the one who will, in time, be her king. More than that I cannot say.

-Myrne.

He knew she could not say a damned thing more, but he ached to hear more. He could not believe that this night they would be parted, but Odo was already saying, “I will lead you out with the monks to pray, and from the monks you will leave with Polly and Michael. It cannot be known that Myrne loves you or you are a dead man. It certainly cannot be known who you are.”
“Myrne… loves me?”
“You know this,” Odo said.
“Aye,” Wolf said after a time. “Still, it is good to hear.”
“As long as you hear the rest of what I am saying.”
Wolf nodded, and then he said, “But if Myrne is going to be Queen… to anyone…. She is a rival to your brother. She is… your rival.”
“She is not my rival,” Odo shook his head. “And Rufus already has a kingdom. And you are forgetting, if Myrne is to be Queen, it is because you are to be the King.”


MORE NEXT WEEK
 
Wow things are moving quickly now! So Myrne is to be a queen? That’s cool. Hopefully things work out for her. War seems to be right around the corner. Great writing and I look forward to more next week!
 
Yes, you have been saying it for a while ,but war certainly does seem to be around the corner, and after all her running away, Myrne has returned in a big way to face her destiny. Wolf's too, I suppose. It's sort of pins and needles time.
 
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