CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Such interesting descriptions and so much going on! I am liking this story a lot and am glad you posted it! Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!
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The book of the burning
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WESTRIAL
They could hear singing as they came to the tent, and as they entered it, there were many sitting, but some dancing slowly, in circles, and before them all there were drummers and cithar players and in their midst was a dark, dark haired woman, head raised and she sang out:
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
As Ethan watched the dancers moving about in circles, saw some sitting, legs crossed, eyes closed, chanting, some with prayer beads hanging from their fingers, he whispered, “I have seen them before. From afar. I have heard of them.”
Ethan sat down amidst them, and Teryn thought, “This one isn’t put off by anything. But there was nothing else to do and so he sat and Cody with him. Looking like a cat in water, Eva remained firmly at the entrance of the tent with Linalla
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
“What in the world is this?” Teryn wondered, as the singing went on. It was not like in the cathedrals. One man touched his hand and smiled, but turned back singing and these people seemed in an ecstasy of joy, There were the young, the silly like Ethan, who was really sort of silly, but the very old, the dark, the light, black and white, all manner of people in something that was obviously prayer. This was some sort of temple and yet… There was the joy as a great festival.
The beat of the drum changed suddenly, and the singer grew more strident, the dancers moved in an almost march.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
What did it mean? Ah, but, Ahnar was name for Annatar. Was this from the Royans? Oh, but… He grew silent.
He was holding Ned’s slender, smooth body between his legs, running his hands up and down his back, and through his hair, was what it was. What would happen to them, where this would go, neither one of them could say, and then one day it ended as quickly as if had begun.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
Back in the south lands, back with Uncle Ned.
While they were in the midst of it, while Ned was making love to him, he heard a scream, and Ned rolled over, terrified. Teryn sat up, terrified to see his father.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “What are you?”
Ned rose up, but then Teryn’s father was gone, running down the stairs. Quickly they dressed and headed after him, through the house, into the barn.
“Alveric!” Ned called out.
“Damn you!” roared the voice of Teryn’s father.
He came back into the house running with a great pitchfork.
“Alveric!” Ned shouted.
And then, just like that, in a gout of blood, Teryn saw Ned, pinned to the ground, his face showered with blood, twitching.
He went to his knees, and Ned looked at him, lips trembling like the rest of his body until, quite quickly, his green eyes lost all color and went dull as stones, his lips still open.
Teryn did not scream. His father made no noise. No one said anything. There was no noise. Nothing.
Ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
Holding Ned’s slender, smooth body between his legs, running his hands up and down his back, and through his hair, was what it was. What would happen to them, where this would go, neither one of them could say, and then one day it ended as quickly as if had begun.
Oh God! Oh Gods whom he had never believed in, whom he could not be bothered to think about, that was how it had begun. He had made himself stop thinking about Ned, stopped thinking about the day Ned died in his arms, and he had fled and never returned home. He had loved Ned. He had loved Ned perfectly. Ned had raped him. Ned had been weak and wrong, but the love was not wrong. How could love ever be wrong? And in those moments, without moral, without story, Ned had been his first lover and, somehow, they had loved perfectly. And his father had loved him, and maybe loved his own pride and blood and pitchfork and death had been the result and oh…. Oh gods.
“Teryn!” Cody whispered beside him in alarm.
Oh Gods, and even out on those streets, love. And the night when Anthony had finally come, love. And love was tearing him apart. Love was breaking his heart.
The singer called out: “Hyam Mo Am Manawate Varayana!”
And the people sang back:
“Hyam Mo Am Manawate Varayana!”
They sang
“Hyam Hyam Hyam
Hyam Mo Am Manawate Varayana!”
Beside the singing woman a man chanted
“Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear.”
ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna Ahnar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna.
As the music died down, the man who had touched Teryn before said, to Teryn, who was red faced and wet faced and losing composure, but not embarassed at all, “Maha Tanavi,” pointing to the singing woman, whose eyes had been on them just a moment, but which were lowered now in contemplation, “would have you dine with us tonight.”
“Ahna and Ahnar are the names of love,” Ahnayari said as she ripped into the flat bread and passed it to the reluctant Linalla.
“Names for Varayan,” Ethan said. “Ifandell Modet spoke of them.”
“Yes,” Ahnayari said. “For though you are disciples of Modet, she was a disciple of Vikram Adanda. He was one of the five teachers of love.”
Linalla and Eva seemed supremely disinterested, but Ethan said, “I have heard something about them.”
“The Ard came, and he was the Word for some,” Ahnayari said, “He was the incarnation in which Varayan came to teach the world to find silence and peace in themselves and then create compassion in the whole world. Annatar came into the world as Varayan the lover. He came to show the world the path to peace through direct love and devotion. Before was the Age of the Ard, and it will not pass, and between it was the Age of War, and it is said as long as the world endures, war shall not pass either, but now is the Age of Love as was before, as shall return again and again. For this is what the world is made of.”
It was here that Eva sneered and Linalla snorted.
“Did I say something, Princess?”
Linalla said, “You are not the first prophetess to talk of love and love throw out flowers. What you say is fine and good in this tent, but I grew up in the court of Essail and there is little room for love there.”
“Then perhaps you should make room?” Ahnayari suggested, blandly, and passed Linalla the tomato curry.
“Perhaps in all the places where love is not love should be planted. One of our sages once said, “Now, the Dark Age has come. Plant the Ursuham, the Name of God.”
But Ethan finished
“It is not the season to plant other seeds. Do not wander lost in doubt and delusion. Imbeth said it. In the Books of Gold.”
“Yes,” Ahnayari nodded.
“This is the Age of War,” Linalla said. “There was war in the north and so we fled, and my mother and my father made alliance with the House of Sussail to protect us, but that turned out to mean nothing. Now we are going to my Uncle Cedd as soon as possible, and what we will meet when we get there, I cannot say.”
Linalla took a breath, then said, “I have never been one for prophecies and prophets unlike my cousin and his family.”
Ahnayari looked undisturbed, but now she looked to Teryn.
“I knew you were singing about love,” he said. “Even though I didn’t understand the words. I knew. And… I remembered love. Love I made myself forget. And it was beautiful, Lady. But… I confess, I do not understand how this can be an Age of Love. This is an age of Battle. There is was in the north and in the south. This is a time of war at the end of times of war. Love is so…”
“Weak?” Ahnayari said.
“Simple,” Eva said.
Cody had not spoken, and Ethan studied them all. Linalla had stopped talking.
“But if love was weak,” Ahnayari said, “why was it at the base of all your life, Teryn? Even the dark places where you thought it was not? And if it was so weak, then why have you spent your life armoring yourself against it?”
Teryn did not answer.
Ahnayari turned to Eva.
“Sister, you have the look of one who has mistaken desire and seduction for love, and perhaps you no longer recognize it.”
Eva’s eyes flashed, but only for a moment. There was no harm in Ahnayari who did not smile, but looked on her steadily.
“Anyone who thinks love is weak, or simple simply has not attempted it. War ends in war, strife in strife. All ends in all. Only love, ending in itself, brings joy.”
NEXT WEEK WE RETURN TO: IF I SHOULD FALL
They could hear singing as they came to the tent, and as they entered it, there were many sitting, but some dancing slowly, in circles, and before them all there were drummers and cithar players and in their midst was a dark, dark haired woman, head raised and she sang out:
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
As Ethan watched the dancers moving about in circles, saw some sitting, legs crossed, eyes closed, chanting, some with prayer beads hanging from their fingers, he whispered, “I have seen them before. From afar. I have heard of them.”
Ethan sat down amidst them, and Teryn thought, “This one isn’t put off by anything. But there was nothing else to do and so he sat and Cody with him. Looking like a cat in water, Eva remained firmly at the entrance of the tent with Linalla
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
“What in the world is this?” Teryn wondered, as the singing went on. It was not like in the cathedrals. One man touched his hand and smiled, but turned back singing and these people seemed in an ecstasy of joy, There were the young, the silly like Ethan, who was really sort of silly, but the very old, the dark, the light, black and white, all manner of people in something that was obviously prayer. This was some sort of temple and yet… There was the joy as a great festival.
The beat of the drum changed suddenly, and the singer grew more strident, the dancers moved in an almost march.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
What did it mean? Ah, but, Ahnar was name for Annatar. Was this from the Royans? Oh, but… He grew silent.
He was holding Ned’s slender, smooth body between his legs, running his hands up and down his back, and through his hair, was what it was. What would happen to them, where this would go, neither one of them could say, and then one day it ended as quickly as if had begun.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
Back in the south lands, back with Uncle Ned.
While they were in the midst of it, while Ned was making love to him, he heard a scream, and Ned rolled over, terrified. Teryn sat up, terrified to see his father.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “What are you?”
Ned rose up, but then Teryn’s father was gone, running down the stairs. Quickly they dressed and headed after him, through the house, into the barn.
“Alveric!” Ned called out.
“Damn you!” roared the voice of Teryn’s father.
He came back into the house running with a great pitchfork.
“Alveric!” Ned shouted.
And then, just like that, in a gout of blood, Teryn saw Ned, pinned to the ground, his face showered with blood, twitching.
He went to his knees, and Ned looked at him, lips trembling like the rest of his body until, quite quickly, his green eyes lost all color and went dull as stones, his lips still open.
Teryn did not scream. His father made no noise. No one said anything. There was no noise. Nothing.
Ahna āmar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna
Holding Ned’s slender, smooth body between his legs, running his hands up and down his back, and through his hair, was what it was. What would happen to them, where this would go, neither one of them could say, and then one day it ended as quickly as if had begun.
Oh God! Oh Gods whom he had never believed in, whom he could not be bothered to think about, that was how it had begun. He had made himself stop thinking about Ned, stopped thinking about the day Ned died in his arms, and he had fled and never returned home. He had loved Ned. He had loved Ned perfectly. Ned had raped him. Ned had been weak and wrong, but the love was not wrong. How could love ever be wrong? And in those moments, without moral, without story, Ned had been his first lover and, somehow, they had loved perfectly. And his father had loved him, and maybe loved his own pride and blood and pitchfork and death had been the result and oh…. Oh gods.
“Teryn!” Cody whispered beside him in alarm.
Oh Gods, and even out on those streets, love. And the night when Anthony had finally come, love. And love was tearing him apart. Love was breaking his heart.
The singer called out: “Hyam Mo Am Manawate Varayana!”
And the people sang back:
“Hyam Mo Am Manawate Varayana!”
They sang
“Hyam Hyam Hyam
Hyam Mo Am Manawate Varayana!”
Beside the singing woman a man chanted
“Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear.”
ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna Ahnar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna.
As the music died down, the man who had touched Teryn before said, to Teryn, who was red faced and wet faced and losing composure, but not embarassed at all, “Maha Tanavi,” pointing to the singing woman, whose eyes had been on them just a moment, but which were lowered now in contemplation, “would have you dine with us tonight.”
“Ahna and Ahnar are the names of love,” Ahnayari said as she ripped into the flat bread and passed it to the reluctant Linalla.
“Names for Varayan,” Ethan said. “Ifandell Modet spoke of them.”
“Yes,” Ahnayari said. “For though you are disciples of Modet, she was a disciple of Vikram Adanda. He was one of the five teachers of love.”
Linalla and Eva seemed supremely disinterested, but Ethan said, “I have heard something about them.”
“The Ard came, and he was the Word for some,” Ahnayari said, “He was the incarnation in which Varayan came to teach the world to find silence and peace in themselves and then create compassion in the whole world. Annatar came into the world as Varayan the lover. He came to show the world the path to peace through direct love and devotion. Before was the Age of the Ard, and it will not pass, and between it was the Age of War, and it is said as long as the world endures, war shall not pass either, but now is the Age of Love as was before, as shall return again and again. For this is what the world is made of.”
It was here that Eva sneered and Linalla snorted.
“Did I say something, Princess?”
Linalla said, “You are not the first prophetess to talk of love and love throw out flowers. What you say is fine and good in this tent, but I grew up in the court of Essail and there is little room for love there.”
“Then perhaps you should make room?” Ahnayari suggested, blandly, and passed Linalla the tomato curry.
“Perhaps in all the places where love is not love should be planted. One of our sages once said, “Now, the Dark Age has come. Plant the Ursuham, the Name of God.”
But Ethan finished
“It is not the season to plant other seeds. Do not wander lost in doubt and delusion. Imbeth said it. In the Books of Gold.”
“Yes,” Ahnayari nodded.
“This is the Age of War,” Linalla said. “There was war in the north and so we fled, and my mother and my father made alliance with the House of Sussail to protect us, but that turned out to mean nothing. Now we are going to my Uncle Cedd as soon as possible, and what we will meet when we get there, I cannot say.”
Linalla took a breath, then said, “I have never been one for prophecies and prophets unlike my cousin and his family.”
Ahnayari looked undisturbed, but now she looked to Teryn.
“I knew you were singing about love,” he said. “Even though I didn’t understand the words. I knew. And… I remembered love. Love I made myself forget. And it was beautiful, Lady. But… I confess, I do not understand how this can be an Age of Love. This is an age of Battle. There is was in the north and in the south. This is a time of war at the end of times of war. Love is so…”
“Weak?” Ahnayari said.
“Simple,” Eva said.
Cody had not spoken, and Ethan studied them all. Linalla had stopped talking.
“But if love was weak,” Ahnayari said, “why was it at the base of all your life, Teryn? Even the dark places where you thought it was not? And if it was so weak, then why have you spent your life armoring yourself against it?”
Teryn did not answer.
Ahnayari turned to Eva.
“Sister, you have the look of one who has mistaken desire and seduction for love, and perhaps you no longer recognize it.”
Eva’s eyes flashed, but only for a moment. There was no harm in Ahnayari who did not smile, but looked on her steadily.
“Anyone who thinks love is weak, or simple simply has not attempted it. War ends in war, strife in strife. All ends in all. Only love, ending in itself, brings joy.”
NEXT WEEK WE RETURN TO: IF I SHOULD FALL
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
The memory of Ned comes back to haunt the characters, very interesting. I really liked the end line “Only love, ending on itself, brings joy.” Singing is also always good too. Great writing and I look forward to If I Should Fall next week.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I sat down and read this before going to the comments. I'm glad you liked that line. I liked it too. I felt a great sense of truth for what was being said, and I think these other people, who had lived in a jaded world, felt it too.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
IF I SHOULD FALL ISN'T READY YET, SO UNTIL IT IS: HERE IS THE BOOK OF THE BURNING
CHYR
Because the scabbard hung at his side, Orem kept reaching down to touch the sword and remembering there was none. As the two of them came out into the clearing again, the others were looking at them and Orem saw the new look on Theone’s face. She hadn’t opened her mouth yet, but he shook his head. She nodded. She understood. He could not discuss it. She looked to Anson. Where was their ritual? Who was to confirm them? She felt so unable. Everything was happening around her, and she knew he felt the same. She crossed the small space between them and touched his hand.
“We are cousins,” she said. “And soon we will be kings and queens.”
Anson gave her a small, but not entirely convincing smile. All this time Mahonwy had been speaking with Ohean and now he said to him, “The time for rags has ended. As Ohean and Iffan opened things, so Iffan and Ohean must end them.”
And he took the cloak from his shoulders even as Ohean put off the old beat up coat, and he placed on Ohean’s back the cloak of white and silver that winked back and forth, and then he handed to Ohean the long and twisting horn and he placed the reins of his white horse in the wizard’s hands and then he said, “With this I leave the world. From now on there will be only four. After today I will not enter this world’s realm again. Gilvaethwy has gone forward and I must go on.”
And he bowed to Ohean now, and he kissed the young wizard’s hand and as he did, Anson saw Ohean, ancient for the first time ,and grand and high, and then Mahonwy left, and with him dismounted five others, and the whole troop of men on the hillside were silent as Mahonwy and the five left. They went deeper and deeper into the woods until finally one of the men said, “And now that is the end of them, and it is our time that is now upon the world.”
And then Orem and Kenneth mounted their horses, and a horse chose Arvad and one chose Inark, and a kingly one chose Anson and a noble one, Theone, and Ohean mounted a white one and positioned himself toward the clearing where was the pool, where Kenneth and Orem had been cleansed.
And then they all watched Ohean, and he reaised the horn to his lips and blew. The sound was clear and strong, and deeply tenor. It broke through the trees and blew the birds out of them. And then, rearing up on his horse, galloped forward, and Anson was beside him, and Orem came behind and Theone was behind him, and then came Arvad and then Inark and then the whole large, black cloaked and helmeted horde of the Silver Star and of the Gold.
These woods were wide and open. There were hillocks and pools, rising and descending, deeply green, mossy places, pools of cool water. They raised through these, over clumps of grey stone studding the ground, over the black, cool earth and then up, up and finally out of the wood.
Down below, the land stretched to a plain, and already, on the plain they could see what seemed like a moving forest and what must have been the hill people. In the distance, always to their left, stretched the eternal blue haze of the Throndon. South of them were tented armies with many banners, and on the sea great ships, cannons extended. It was all too much to take in, though Anson, trying to be something like a king, did. So many troops coming and, as he looked to the south, out of the high hills there, on horses, came more. But they all centered around one, great, long, walled place beside the sea, its towers rising to glint in the sun.
“Yrrmarayn,” Ohean pronounced. “The Crystal City.”
AMBRIDGE
Even in the council hall of Castle White Stone, deceptively bright with sunshine, they could hear the noises of outrage on the street.
Edith sat alone on the throne her husband had ruled from for thirty years, and the Archbishop of Senae, making his uncomfortable seat beside the Archbishop of Ambridge, noted that the Queen was wearing, not her usual tiara, but the heavy crown of Inglad. The last woman who had worn this on her head had been Ossa, the last Ingladi Queen who, dying without issue, had passed her throne and Inglad into the hands of the House of Hale.
“What is she playing at?” he wondered. “Does she truly think she will sit on the Throne as Queen Regnant?”
Ah, but she does sit on the throne as just that, right now? And will she do it once that child is out of her belly? And is there even a child in her belly? Where is Allyn? Allyn did not take kindly to her announcement. Ah, that one never hid anything well, and he has been gone these many days.
“Your Grace,” the herald was beginning, “shall I tell you a report of the fighting in the west?”
“I do not need you to tell me it will rain tomorrow when I can look out of my window, and I do not need you to tell me that the west is lost. I only need to know about my men on the Eastern Strrand.”
“Your Grace, there is a message from the Baron of Richmond saying he is on his way—”
“He has said he is on way!” Edith banged her fist on the side of the throne, “for the last five days.”
Outside the noise was increasing, becoming more panicked. Damn them all.
“He is not coming,” her cousin Ardith said.
Edith’s eyes flashed to the senior member of her family who sat beside her now that Allyn was gone.
“He is not coming,” Ardith said. “None of them will,” the younger girl went on.
“You ought to sue for peace with Osric as soon as you can.”
Sir Roderick entered the hall, baring his sword and saluting the Queen.
“Your Grace!” he called.
The Queen looked down on her lover.
“Roderick?”
“Your brother has returned, at the head of an army.”
She rose.
“God be praised,” she began, though she thought, “What men, from where? How long could she hold out against a brother at the head of an army? Surely he was still loyal to her? Yes?”
“And,” Roderick said, “There is also other news. Visitors.”
“Visitors?”
Edith thought then said, “Send them in, and then we shall go out to greet the Lord Baldwin.
Now a rather rough man came in, wearing a brown cloak, needing to shave his dirty blond beard, and beside him was a pretty enough girl. They were dressed like nobles pretending to be peasants, for their clothing was fine, but plain and the blond man said:
“At the urging of Queen Myrne Wulfstan and Osric her King, I would ask you to surrender your crown.”
“How dare you!” she snapped.
“Guards! Surround them.”
“Not—” the man lifted a finger, “so quickly. I am Cynric HalfDayne and this is my lady, Hilary. We are cousins and embassadors to Queen Myrne and outside of your city now, are fifty-thousand soldiers gathered in her name to take your city. You may surrender now, or surrender at the walls. I would, however, leave us unmolested. Things will go much better for you if you do.”
“Watch them,” Edith growled as she stepped down from her throne and left the hall with a detachment of guards.
Left in the hall, surrounded by lords and troops, Cynric turned to Hilary and said, “Are you frightened, my love?”
Hilary looked around the great hall, its lancet windows, its white stone, its many lords, and she said, “This is the least frightened I have ever been on this place.”
From the walls of the city, Edith Baldwin looked down on the soldiers spread across the fields to the river Ahm. But it was was Allyn at the head of the army and he smiled up at her. Like a wolf. They were all bearing the Eagle of House Baldwin, but Allyn turned to them and in a movement, with a gesture, the banners all turned and Edith all but fainted beside Roderick when she saw, not the golden eagle Edmund had adopted to define his reign, nor even the triple crown of House Anred from which Edmung and his brothers had stemmed, but the ancient simple, the howling grey wolf on white, the original banner of the Wulftans.
“What…” Edith began, trying to rouse herself, “in the world… is…”
“I think,” Roderick said, holding her gently, “when your father died that was when it all began. With you giving Edmund no children, you gave yourself no power. You were never in your husband or the court’s favor. It was then Allyn began to suspect he would never be King. And so, at your bidding, “he abducted Edmund. From what I hear it was Edmund who got himself killed, but once Edmund was in Hale, he had to die anyway, and once he was dead. Osric and Myrne had to come for his throne. He had usurped it from their grandfathers. It was his by murder and they were the only heirs to it. Your loyal people, your ties were in North Hale, but North Hale was gone from you. You should have fought for it. So, when Allyn saw this new stunt, that you would pretend to be pregnant or get yourself pregnant and hold onto power, he threw himself on the mercy, or rather made a deal with the Wulfstans. And there he is.”
“They will make him a puppet king!” Edith fumed.
“No,” Roderick said. “They are mercy, but their mercy is the mercy of wolves. There will be no pupper kings in Inglad. They will make him Lord of Ambury.”
“The burned down bishopric?”
“The city is burned, but it is still a city at the head of a county of cities. And… I do not think it will be a bishopric again.”
Edith shook her head.
“What do I do?”
“Open your gates, my love.”
“And where is this Osric? And where is this Myrne? Could they not even come to their own conquest?”
“The only message I received was a cryptic one,” Roderick told her as they walked the parapet, preparing to come down into the city. “They had other business to attend to.”
“Other business—!” Edith’s voice rose to a howl.
Then she said, “Other business.”
As they walked to the guard tower, Edith Baldwin said, “When I was Queen and high and fair, and she was nothing, I asked Allyn why I feared her. I thought I was foolish.
“I was right to fear her.”
MORE TOMORROW
CHYR
Because the scabbard hung at his side, Orem kept reaching down to touch the sword and remembering there was none. As the two of them came out into the clearing again, the others were looking at them and Orem saw the new look on Theone’s face. She hadn’t opened her mouth yet, but he shook his head. She nodded. She understood. He could not discuss it. She looked to Anson. Where was their ritual? Who was to confirm them? She felt so unable. Everything was happening around her, and she knew he felt the same. She crossed the small space between them and touched his hand.
“We are cousins,” she said. “And soon we will be kings and queens.”
Anson gave her a small, but not entirely convincing smile. All this time Mahonwy had been speaking with Ohean and now he said to him, “The time for rags has ended. As Ohean and Iffan opened things, so Iffan and Ohean must end them.”
And he took the cloak from his shoulders even as Ohean put off the old beat up coat, and he placed on Ohean’s back the cloak of white and silver that winked back and forth, and then he handed to Ohean the long and twisting horn and he placed the reins of his white horse in the wizard’s hands and then he said, “With this I leave the world. From now on there will be only four. After today I will not enter this world’s realm again. Gilvaethwy has gone forward and I must go on.”
And he bowed to Ohean now, and he kissed the young wizard’s hand and as he did, Anson saw Ohean, ancient for the first time ,and grand and high, and then Mahonwy left, and with him dismounted five others, and the whole troop of men on the hillside were silent as Mahonwy and the five left. They went deeper and deeper into the woods until finally one of the men said, “And now that is the end of them, and it is our time that is now upon the world.”
And then Orem and Kenneth mounted their horses, and a horse chose Arvad and one chose Inark, and a kingly one chose Anson and a noble one, Theone, and Ohean mounted a white one and positioned himself toward the clearing where was the pool, where Kenneth and Orem had been cleansed.
And then they all watched Ohean, and he reaised the horn to his lips and blew. The sound was clear and strong, and deeply tenor. It broke through the trees and blew the birds out of them. And then, rearing up on his horse, galloped forward, and Anson was beside him, and Orem came behind and Theone was behind him, and then came Arvad and then Inark and then the whole large, black cloaked and helmeted horde of the Silver Star and of the Gold.
These woods were wide and open. There were hillocks and pools, rising and descending, deeply green, mossy places, pools of cool water. They raised through these, over clumps of grey stone studding the ground, over the black, cool earth and then up, up and finally out of the wood.
Down below, the land stretched to a plain, and already, on the plain they could see what seemed like a moving forest and what must have been the hill people. In the distance, always to their left, stretched the eternal blue haze of the Throndon. South of them were tented armies with many banners, and on the sea great ships, cannons extended. It was all too much to take in, though Anson, trying to be something like a king, did. So many troops coming and, as he looked to the south, out of the high hills there, on horses, came more. But they all centered around one, great, long, walled place beside the sea, its towers rising to glint in the sun.
“Yrrmarayn,” Ohean pronounced. “The Crystal City.”
AMBRIDGE
Even in the council hall of Castle White Stone, deceptively bright with sunshine, they could hear the noises of outrage on the street.
Edith sat alone on the throne her husband had ruled from for thirty years, and the Archbishop of Senae, making his uncomfortable seat beside the Archbishop of Ambridge, noted that the Queen was wearing, not her usual tiara, but the heavy crown of Inglad. The last woman who had worn this on her head had been Ossa, the last Ingladi Queen who, dying without issue, had passed her throne and Inglad into the hands of the House of Hale.
“What is she playing at?” he wondered. “Does she truly think she will sit on the Throne as Queen Regnant?”
Ah, but she does sit on the throne as just that, right now? And will she do it once that child is out of her belly? And is there even a child in her belly? Where is Allyn? Allyn did not take kindly to her announcement. Ah, that one never hid anything well, and he has been gone these many days.
“Your Grace,” the herald was beginning, “shall I tell you a report of the fighting in the west?”
“I do not need you to tell me it will rain tomorrow when I can look out of my window, and I do not need you to tell me that the west is lost. I only need to know about my men on the Eastern Strrand.”
“Your Grace, there is a message from the Baron of Richmond saying he is on his way—”
“He has said he is on way!” Edith banged her fist on the side of the throne, “for the last five days.”
Outside the noise was increasing, becoming more panicked. Damn them all.
“He is not coming,” her cousin Ardith said.
Edith’s eyes flashed to the senior member of her family who sat beside her now that Allyn was gone.
“He is not coming,” Ardith said. “None of them will,” the younger girl went on.
“You ought to sue for peace with Osric as soon as you can.”
Sir Roderick entered the hall, baring his sword and saluting the Queen.
“Your Grace!” he called.
The Queen looked down on her lover.
“Roderick?”
“Your brother has returned, at the head of an army.”
She rose.
“God be praised,” she began, though she thought, “What men, from where? How long could she hold out against a brother at the head of an army? Surely he was still loyal to her? Yes?”
“And,” Roderick said, “There is also other news. Visitors.”
“Visitors?”
Edith thought then said, “Send them in, and then we shall go out to greet the Lord Baldwin.
Now a rather rough man came in, wearing a brown cloak, needing to shave his dirty blond beard, and beside him was a pretty enough girl. They were dressed like nobles pretending to be peasants, for their clothing was fine, but plain and the blond man said:
“At the urging of Queen Myrne Wulfstan and Osric her King, I would ask you to surrender your crown.”
“How dare you!” she snapped.
“Guards! Surround them.”
“Not—” the man lifted a finger, “so quickly. I am Cynric HalfDayne and this is my lady, Hilary. We are cousins and embassadors to Queen Myrne and outside of your city now, are fifty-thousand soldiers gathered in her name to take your city. You may surrender now, or surrender at the walls. I would, however, leave us unmolested. Things will go much better for you if you do.”
“Watch them,” Edith growled as she stepped down from her throne and left the hall with a detachment of guards.
Left in the hall, surrounded by lords and troops, Cynric turned to Hilary and said, “Are you frightened, my love?”
Hilary looked around the great hall, its lancet windows, its white stone, its many lords, and she said, “This is the least frightened I have ever been on this place.”
From the walls of the city, Edith Baldwin looked down on the soldiers spread across the fields to the river Ahm. But it was was Allyn at the head of the army and he smiled up at her. Like a wolf. They were all bearing the Eagle of House Baldwin, but Allyn turned to them and in a movement, with a gesture, the banners all turned and Edith all but fainted beside Roderick when she saw, not the golden eagle Edmund had adopted to define his reign, nor even the triple crown of House Anred from which Edmung and his brothers had stemmed, but the ancient simple, the howling grey wolf on white, the original banner of the Wulftans.
“What…” Edith began, trying to rouse herself, “in the world… is…”
“I think,” Roderick said, holding her gently, “when your father died that was when it all began. With you giving Edmund no children, you gave yourself no power. You were never in your husband or the court’s favor. It was then Allyn began to suspect he would never be King. And so, at your bidding, “he abducted Edmund. From what I hear it was Edmund who got himself killed, but once Edmund was in Hale, he had to die anyway, and once he was dead. Osric and Myrne had to come for his throne. He had usurped it from their grandfathers. It was his by murder and they were the only heirs to it. Your loyal people, your ties were in North Hale, but North Hale was gone from you. You should have fought for it. So, when Allyn saw this new stunt, that you would pretend to be pregnant or get yourself pregnant and hold onto power, he threw himself on the mercy, or rather made a deal with the Wulfstans. And there he is.”
“They will make him a puppet king!” Edith fumed.
“No,” Roderick said. “They are mercy, but their mercy is the mercy of wolves. There will be no pupper kings in Inglad. They will make him Lord of Ambury.”
“The burned down bishopric?”
“The city is burned, but it is still a city at the head of a county of cities. And… I do not think it will be a bishopric again.”
Edith shook her head.
“What do I do?”
“Open your gates, my love.”
“And where is this Osric? And where is this Myrne? Could they not even come to their own conquest?”
“The only message I received was a cryptic one,” Roderick told her as they walked the parapet, preparing to come down into the city. “They had other business to attend to.”
“Other business—!” Edith’s voice rose to a howl.
Then she said, “Other business.”
As they walked to the guard tower, Edith Baldwin said, “When I was Queen and high and fair, and she was nothing, I asked Allyn why I feared her. I thought I was foolish.
“I was right to fear her.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Wow lots happening and it looks as if who rules is changing! I am really enjoying this story and am constantly surprised at what happens next. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE WAR IN THE NORTH CONCLUDED, DOWN IN WESTRIAL, CEDD AND ISOBEL PREPARE TO FIGHT THE COMBINED STRENGTH OF THE DAUMANS AND THE BLACK HAND. AT SEA, MEHTA HAS A MEETING WITH SOMETHING FAR FROM HUMAN.
WESTRIAL
“My lady, are you well?”
Isobel blinked. It was true, she had been looking in so long she did not even see the broad sky outside of the carriage, the long sun bright white clouds, the valley beneath. But the valley was filled with soldiers, and they were a moving army.
“Francis, yes. Thank you,” she told him.
She slipped the letter into her bosom again. Richard did not ask what it had said.
Isobel wished she could have ridden on horseback, as she had ridden into the city of Kingsboro when she had come as the bethrothed to King Cedd. But she was too heavily pregnant and, at any road, Cedd hadn’t even wanted her here. She should have been in Kingsboro.
But now the carriage came to a halt, and it was a moment before Isobel said, “Francis?”
“I will see what the matter is,” Francis said, and lightly he leapt from the carriage.
A few moments later, the handsome man, far better looking than Anthony, and with a much better personality, held out his hand to the Queen.
“Teryn Wesley has finally returned, and with him the Princess Linalla.”
But when Isobel stood beside her husband and Anthony, and they saw Teryn riding up the hill they noted two other young men and Cedd said, “That one must be Ethan of Senach, my cousin. The other… I cannot say.”
Soon he learned this was Cody Williams, a herald from Essail sent with the Princess Linalla and that they had all come to Westrial for safekeeping.
“Which is ironic,” Princess Linalla pronounced, “considering everything. I do not think Mother knew that Edmund would switch his war from the north to the south.”
Linalla looked to Isobel.
“Your Grace,” the princess said, “I do not think my mother knew Sussail was so weak.”
“I did not think you would enter my country with such an uncivil tongue,” Queen Isobel returned, “considering that, whatever you may one day be, at this time you are a little girl with no crown.”
Linalla’s eyes flashes, but she curtseyed quickly, and Teryn, beside Isobel, whispered, “I missed you, Your Grace.”
“And I you. Friends together again.”
Teryn looked more moved than she’d ever seen him and she said, “Something happened to you.”
“Isobel, many things happened to me.”
“Including that elfin boy, Cody?”
“He is a great part of it, yes, but not the only part.”
“Will you tell me more, later?” the Queen asked as she went back to the carriage with her long absent steward.
“I will, soon. If you would hear it. My heart is not afraid. Not like it was.”
“Now is mine,” Isobel said. “We have friends coming.”
She took the letter from her bosom and kissed it.
She had not seen her in years. Two years younger, a northerner, white as snow but with powerful Royan blood. That girl had been the strongest witch of her year and, with the exception of Isobel, the only princess from the Young Kingdoms schooled at the Rootless Isles. Many nights had they sat up talking before life had taken them their separate ways. For the last year and a half, Isobel had reigned in Kingsboro and watched Myrne Herreboro’s progress from a distance. Her heart almost aching for her old friend. Two days ago, though, she had received the letter with the news of the imminent conquest of Ambridge and the one line she treasured and reread even now.
“Sister, I am on my way.”
.
MEHTA
Mehta became used to the waves, and quicker than she ever expected to. The movement of the ship, the swish endless wash of the water, was so different from the land, but she had spent so much of her life on land she did not hunger for stable earth.
After three days of hugging the coast or seeing it in the distance they struck out into places where the water was as gold as it was blue and she could see the life of the sea beneath the glass waves. The sky above as an endless stretch and the ari was warm every day,
“I don’t know where I am,” she said to Karmine one day, and the pirate woman asked her, “Does it frighten you?”
“No,” Mehta told her. “It makes me feel free. More free than I’ve ever been before.”
“You could stay with us,” Karmine said. “A woman like you. You could stay with us forever if you wished.”
She did wish it, but for some reason her heart grew sad with it, and then Karmine said.
“I think you wish for something else.”
“Maybe,” Mehta said.
“You want me to tell you since?” Karmine said. “You want me to tell you that you are in love with a handsome southern prince—a King if all goes right—who will have many princesses who come with strong allegiances and wealth thrown at him. How in the world would he choose you? And even if he did, how would his family accept it?”
“Well, now that is the truth,” Mehta said, gripping the ship’s sides. “And we must live in reality.”
“Fuck reality,” Karmine declared. “Reality is… when people tell you to deal with it, it is their way of saying accept the limits we have placed on you. But you have passed under the earth and onto the sea with sorcerers at your side and seen a great jewel taken from a mighty demon. It is we and our choices that our limited. Not reality. Make sure you choose what you wish. If what you wish fails, there is always a place for you with the Sea Women.”
“Bless you, Karmine,” Mehta told her.
“Oh!” Mehta cried out.
She had never seen a whale before. She knew they were huge. Once she had talked to a ship’s captain telling of her whales and he told her, “Think of the largest creature you can. Then imagine him twice as large.”
The ship did not rock, for it was far below the water, sailing in the opposite direction of the ship. But now she realized that this was not the proper shape, as the great length of the whale went on, it undulated, like a serpent, and Mehta remembered the tales of the Great Sea Serpent, but Karmine seemed undisturbed, and now she saw…. Hair, streaming back from a whale sized head, and for a moment, with a long revolution, the head looked up and across a moon wide face, with placid, wide lips and thin, pupilless eyes, Mehta stared into a face.
It was gone just like that, leaving Mehta shaken, remembering a face, perfectly round and easily large as half a human body, with a merry pink tongue sticking out and pupilless, narrow tilted eyes that smiled at her. But now it was gone, and Mehta blinked at Karmine for confirmation.
“She was a Nereid,” Karmine said. “You have been blessed.”
“A… what?”
“They are the mothers of the mermaids,” Karmine said. “There are many mermaids, but only fifty Nereids, all sisters, the daughters of Nereos the Old Lord of the Sea and his wife the goddess Doris. They watch over the oceans and seas though Nereus’s mother is Tethys, the Goddess of the Sea, the Sea itself, the Lady of the Depths, sometimes called Aiuryn. A Nereid has smiled upon you.”
“Are they… animals?”
“Child, no!” Karmine said. “That is heresy. They are to the sea what… the Wood Folk are to the forests, or the Duegar to under the earth. They are goddesses, of a sort. Not the High Gods, who are God, but… more than a fairy, less than God. I… destroy it by trying to define it. Only know that you have seen one of the Nereid, and so you have been blessed.”
“I wonder where she was going,” Mehta murmured.
Karmine smiled.
“Perhaps to tell her mother about you.”
WESTRIAL
“We go on until we meet them,” Cedd said that night as they sat in the tent. “We do not allow them to come into Westrial.
“We could, perhaps,” Anthony noted, “simply enter Sussail.”
He looked to Isobel.
“I would not speak against it,” the Queen said. “Only, I do not think we could get there in time. The Short Country is called the Short Country for a reason. No, we should hope to meet them at Herbacum. This means they will enter a little onto Westland territory, but we will have the uphill advantage.”
“It is you who should have been the general,” Francis smiled on her.
“I am no general,” Isobel shook her head. “Only a princess who saw her father fight in the first wars.”
“Yes, and fight alongside William, against us,” Anthony noted.
Teryn was irritated by his one time lover. Why would he say such a thing at such a time?
“That isn’t fair,” Prince Ethan said beside Princess Linalla. “The very reason the five lands suffer is because too often we have fought against each other. Now Inglad is gone from us into Hale hands, no matter how friendly those Hale may be. But Essail and Westrial are in the House of Aethelyn, and we of Senach are your cousins. Sussail, momentarily exiled from us is one with us again.”
Ethan shook his head. “We have to get away from petty squabbles.”
Isobel nodded, liking the prince, and King Cedd said, “My cousin is right. We are not fighting old battles and, quiet as this is kept. We are not fighting for Sussail. We are fighting to defend ourselves.”
“We will not even enter Sussail,” Isobel said.
“Really?” Francis and Anthony spoke at the same time, through the former in surprise and the latter in doubt.
“My father made his bed, and now he must lie down in it,” The Queen said. “Whatever certain people may think,” her eyes passed quickly over Anthony Pembroke, “I am Queen of Westrial, and my lord is its King.”
MORE NEXT WEEK. HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Mehta was very lucky to see a Nereid. Hopefully that means good luck for her. Isobel is showing some good leadership. Excellent writing and I look forward to more next week! I hope you have a great weekend too!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Yes, Mehta was lucky. i mean, when's the last time you saw a Nereid. I feel like Isobel has been waiting to take leadership in this court where, as she said, they have never known a powerful woman.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
MYRNE
The King and Queen sat in their high seats looking at the land pass far below them.
Eryk Waverly came to them and genuflected.
“Ambridge has fallen,” he said. “Are their any orders you have to communicate?”
King Osric looked to his wife, and she nodded.
“See that the former Queen is kept in Whitestone Palace and that she is left to administer it as any lady would govern a household. See that Cynric is instituted as interrum governor and that any hostility he may have faced is amended.”
“And Lord Baldwin?”
Allyn Baldwin may remain with his siter for a time, or he may go to his reward in the south. Everything else we will see to when we return.”
“And your Graces?”
“Yes?” the King and Queen said together.
“What of the cousins? The Lady Ardith and her sisters? What is to be done with them?”
“When Edmund sought to be king he murdered every Wulfstan scion he could,” Myrne said. “Those girls are not even Baldwins. If memory serves me, they are connected to the Herrells, the former Queen’s maternal family. Allow them to live on as they did before.”
“The Queen is gracious.”
“The Queen is wise,” Osric said as he looked out of the window of the skyliner. “The very reason Edmund and the Baldwins fell was because they were so cruel no one was left to help them in their time of trouble. It will nto be so with us..”
“And relay to the former Queen that she will maintain the title she held before her marriage to Edmund. That she will remain Lady Edith Duchess of Herreboro.”
“She should be thankful for that,” Eryk said.
“She will not be,” Myrne predicted. “She will think how the queens of dead kings are still referred to as Queen and never remember that at the hands of others she would have been beheaded or shut in a convent. That is the type of woman she is.”
Eryk cracked a smile at his cousin, and then saluted the monarch’s and left the large apartment where they sat.
“We’re almost there,” Kryse Lord of Cleave said, looking out the window as he re-entered. “We have a remarkable captain in Ralph Curakin by the way.”
“Lord Kryse,” King Osric began, “how long has Cleave had flying ships?”
“As long as Ossariand,” Kryse said. “As long as the Royan kingdoms have. And the skyliners are more than flying ships. They are… well, all of Royan technology is also charged with magic.”
“And yet,” the King noted, touching his small beard, “as long as the Royan cities and Hale have had this, the Hale cities have lived two hundred years behind the Ayl. The Dayne more so.”
“It is because your ancestors tried to conquer this land and impose their ways,” Lord Kryse said, honestly. In the Young Kingdoms, and especially in the north, there were too few of us to hold all the land you came to and really, there was no need. And so we retreated to our cities. Those who did not go into the west to live in Rheged or Elmet. But we have kept our knowledge and never shared it because the Hale lands have ever been divided, never one.”
“May that change,” King Osric murmured.
“Your Grace, it already has,” Lord Kryse pointed out, “else how would and the Queen be riding to Westrial with one hundred thousand troops on four skyliners?”
ISOBEL
She wished for the Rootless Isle, or maybe even her girlhood when, dressed in the old unbleached robe, she came to the steps of the temple, and entered under the simple lintel into the old court where many girls and many boys too were sitting about quite and at peace, and then she went across that court under the next door to the first to pools and there she stooped and lathed water up and down her arms and then passed to the next pool and now to the last room where she undressed and bathed, and came out, and the white robe was wrapped about her and she came into the central court to sing with the maidens:
magē hadavata utum tēmāva pirī æta
mama raja magē prakaśa kaverda;
magē diva dakṣa lēkhakayā pǣna vē.
oba minisun vaḍāt viśiṣṭa vannē
obē tol karuṇāva abhiṣēka kara æta,
deviyan vahansē siṭa sadahaṭama oba āśīrvāda kara æta.
Isobel stood before the open door at the end of the court, swinging a smoking censor as other girls came up to lay cakes on the altar and joining the singers. She could hear Meredith singing:
deviyan vahansa, obagē siṁhāsanaya sadahaṭa ma pavatinu æta;
yuktiya jayakontaya obagē rājyayē jayakontaya vanu æta.
oba dharmiṣṭhakamaṭa prēma karana hā duṣṭakamaṭa dvēṣa,
ebævin deviyan vahansē, obē deviyan vahansē, obē mituran ihata oba niyama kara tibē
prītiya tel saman̆ga oba ālēpa visin.
And now, to her great surprise, Meredith of the twiggy hair came forward to her and handed Isobel the censor, and Isobel took it, and marched with it into the holy place, laying it down on the darkened ledge of an altar and then reaching back while Melisiane handed her the lamp.
obagē siyalu sivuru bara gandharasa hā agil saha kæsiyā kurun̆du samaga suvan̆da ya;
æt daḷa samaga alaṁkāra māligā siṭa
nūl mē saṁgīta oba satuṭu karayi.
rajavarungē diyaṇiyan obē gauravayak kāntāvan atara ya;
obē dakuṇu pættē ōpīr ran rājakīya manāliya vē.
As they sang she lit the seven lamps and with each lighting more light fell upon the ancient image, older than this place, where sat, in her worn pleated skirt, the goddess of pupiless eyes, plaited hair, and girlish smile. She reached back, again and again, for the cakes to lay them out on the altar before Her, and when it was gone, she censed the ancient face of the Goddess, and then turned to leave. Later, after many had made their visitations, when the the stone chamber still smell of frankincense and the floor was warm with the body warmth of all who had visited to sit with the Goddess in quiet, she would do so as well.
That image was older than anything else in the Rootless Isle. No one remembered from where it had come, though some said it came far from the East, from the same place as the new religion came, that it came from the Flooded Time. To Isobel, as she entered the quiet of the Holy Place while the candles had burned two hours lower, the image was the Goddess, just as old, from before the beginning of days and now, at last, she rested in her presence.
The rest, the prayer, ahd turned into mild slumber when Isobel heard her name called. She knew it was Myrne, and it was not long before the dark haired girl entered, making the sign of binding and folding her hands to her chest as she knelt before the goddess.
“Issa, did you hear me calling you?” she reprimanded, but before the older girl could answer. Isobel said, “It does not matter. Nimerly says its time.”
“Have I been gone long?” Isobel asked.
“Long enough for Nimerly to send me after you.”
Isobel smoothed her unbleached gown. Back home it would have been silks, but here, on the Rootless Isle, she felt freer, more herself than she’d ever been before.”
“Come, Little Sister,” she held out her hand to Myrne. “It is time.”
“Sister,” Queen Myrne held out her hands as the the wind from the landing skyliners blew her cloak and her dark hair all about her.
On the top of Vahayan Hill, the pregnant Queen Isobel came to her. About them, Cedd and Wold, Anthony, Ralph Curakin, their closest companions stood. Beside Princess Linalla, Prince Ethan looked down the hill and saw the men of Daumany setting up camp on the other side of the vale.
Isobel placed her hands in Myrne’s and the women stood together,r eyes closed. Isobel felt the tears press between her eyelids and roll down her face.
When she opened them, Queen Myrne was smiling though her own wet eyes were sober.
Myrne said, “Sister, it is time.”
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
The King and Queen sat in their high seats looking at the land pass far below them.
Eryk Waverly came to them and genuflected.
“Ambridge has fallen,” he said. “Are their any orders you have to communicate?”
King Osric looked to his wife, and she nodded.
“See that the former Queen is kept in Whitestone Palace and that she is left to administer it as any lady would govern a household. See that Cynric is instituted as interrum governor and that any hostility he may have faced is amended.”
“And Lord Baldwin?”
Allyn Baldwin may remain with his siter for a time, or he may go to his reward in the south. Everything else we will see to when we return.”
“And your Graces?”
“Yes?” the King and Queen said together.
“What of the cousins? The Lady Ardith and her sisters? What is to be done with them?”
“When Edmund sought to be king he murdered every Wulfstan scion he could,” Myrne said. “Those girls are not even Baldwins. If memory serves me, they are connected to the Herrells, the former Queen’s maternal family. Allow them to live on as they did before.”
“The Queen is gracious.”
“The Queen is wise,” Osric said as he looked out of the window of the skyliner. “The very reason Edmund and the Baldwins fell was because they were so cruel no one was left to help them in their time of trouble. It will nto be so with us..”
“And relay to the former Queen that she will maintain the title she held before her marriage to Edmund. That she will remain Lady Edith Duchess of Herreboro.”
“She should be thankful for that,” Eryk said.
“She will not be,” Myrne predicted. “She will think how the queens of dead kings are still referred to as Queen and never remember that at the hands of others she would have been beheaded or shut in a convent. That is the type of woman she is.”
Eryk cracked a smile at his cousin, and then saluted the monarch’s and left the large apartment where they sat.
“We’re almost there,” Kryse Lord of Cleave said, looking out the window as he re-entered. “We have a remarkable captain in Ralph Curakin by the way.”
“Lord Kryse,” King Osric began, “how long has Cleave had flying ships?”
“As long as Ossariand,” Kryse said. “As long as the Royan kingdoms have. And the skyliners are more than flying ships. They are… well, all of Royan technology is also charged with magic.”
“And yet,” the King noted, touching his small beard, “as long as the Royan cities and Hale have had this, the Hale cities have lived two hundred years behind the Ayl. The Dayne more so.”
“It is because your ancestors tried to conquer this land and impose their ways,” Lord Kryse said, honestly. In the Young Kingdoms, and especially in the north, there were too few of us to hold all the land you came to and really, there was no need. And so we retreated to our cities. Those who did not go into the west to live in Rheged or Elmet. But we have kept our knowledge and never shared it because the Hale lands have ever been divided, never one.”
“May that change,” King Osric murmured.
“Your Grace, it already has,” Lord Kryse pointed out, “else how would and the Queen be riding to Westrial with one hundred thousand troops on four skyliners?”
ISOBEL
She wished for the Rootless Isle, or maybe even her girlhood when, dressed in the old unbleached robe, she came to the steps of the temple, and entered under the simple lintel into the old court where many girls and many boys too were sitting about quite and at peace, and then she went across that court under the next door to the first to pools and there she stooped and lathed water up and down her arms and then passed to the next pool and now to the last room where she undressed and bathed, and came out, and the white robe was wrapped about her and she came into the central court to sing with the maidens:
magē hadavata utum tēmāva pirī æta
mama raja magē prakaśa kaverda;
magē diva dakṣa lēkhakayā pǣna vē.
oba minisun vaḍāt viśiṣṭa vannē
obē tol karuṇāva abhiṣēka kara æta,
deviyan vahansē siṭa sadahaṭama oba āśīrvāda kara æta.
Isobel stood before the open door at the end of the court, swinging a smoking censor as other girls came up to lay cakes on the altar and joining the singers. She could hear Meredith singing:
deviyan vahansa, obagē siṁhāsanaya sadahaṭa ma pavatinu æta;
yuktiya jayakontaya obagē rājyayē jayakontaya vanu æta.
oba dharmiṣṭhakamaṭa prēma karana hā duṣṭakamaṭa dvēṣa,
ebævin deviyan vahansē, obē deviyan vahansē, obē mituran ihata oba niyama kara tibē
prītiya tel saman̆ga oba ālēpa visin.
And now, to her great surprise, Meredith of the twiggy hair came forward to her and handed Isobel the censor, and Isobel took it, and marched with it into the holy place, laying it down on the darkened ledge of an altar and then reaching back while Melisiane handed her the lamp.
obagē siyalu sivuru bara gandharasa hā agil saha kæsiyā kurun̆du samaga suvan̆da ya;
æt daḷa samaga alaṁkāra māligā siṭa
nūl mē saṁgīta oba satuṭu karayi.
rajavarungē diyaṇiyan obē gauravayak kāntāvan atara ya;
obē dakuṇu pættē ōpīr ran rājakīya manāliya vē.
As they sang she lit the seven lamps and with each lighting more light fell upon the ancient image, older than this place, where sat, in her worn pleated skirt, the goddess of pupiless eyes, plaited hair, and girlish smile. She reached back, again and again, for the cakes to lay them out on the altar before Her, and when it was gone, she censed the ancient face of the Goddess, and then turned to leave. Later, after many had made their visitations, when the the stone chamber still smell of frankincense and the floor was warm with the body warmth of all who had visited to sit with the Goddess in quiet, she would do so as well.
That image was older than anything else in the Rootless Isle. No one remembered from where it had come, though some said it came far from the East, from the same place as the new religion came, that it came from the Flooded Time. To Isobel, as she entered the quiet of the Holy Place while the candles had burned two hours lower, the image was the Goddess, just as old, from before the beginning of days and now, at last, she rested in her presence.
The rest, the prayer, ahd turned into mild slumber when Isobel heard her name called. She knew it was Myrne, and it was not long before the dark haired girl entered, making the sign of binding and folding her hands to her chest as she knelt before the goddess.
“Issa, did you hear me calling you?” she reprimanded, but before the older girl could answer. Isobel said, “It does not matter. Nimerly says its time.”
“Have I been gone long?” Isobel asked.
“Long enough for Nimerly to send me after you.”
Isobel smoothed her unbleached gown. Back home it would have been silks, but here, on the Rootless Isle, she felt freer, more herself than she’d ever been before.”
“Come, Little Sister,” she held out her hand to Myrne. “It is time.”
“Sister,” Queen Myrne held out her hands as the the wind from the landing skyliners blew her cloak and her dark hair all about her.
On the top of Vahayan Hill, the pregnant Queen Isobel came to her. About them, Cedd and Wold, Anthony, Ralph Curakin, their closest companions stood. Beside Princess Linalla, Prince Ethan looked down the hill and saw the men of Daumany setting up camp on the other side of the vale.
Isobel placed her hands in Myrne’s and the women stood together,r eyes closed. Isobel felt the tears press between her eyelids and roll down her face.
When she opened them, Queen Myrne was smiling though her own wet eyes were sober.
Myrne said, “Sister, it is time.”
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
MYRNE
The King and Queen sat in their high seats looking at the land pass far below them.
Eryk Waverly came to them and genuflected.
“Ambridge has fallen,” he said. “Are their any orders you have to communicate?”
King Osric looked to his wife, and she nodded.
“See that the former Queen is kept in Whitestone Palace and that she is left to administer it as any lady would govern a household. See that Cynric is instituted as interrum governor and that any hostility he may have faced is amended.”
“And Lord Baldwin?”
Allyn Baldwin may remain with his siter for a time, or he may go to his reward in the south. Everything else we will see to when we return.”
“And your Graces?”
“Yes?” the King and Queen said together.
“What of the cousins? The Lady Ardith and her sisters? What is to be done with them?”
“When Edmund sought to be king he murdered every Wulfstan scion he could,” Myrne said. “Those girls are not even Baldwins. If memory serves me, they are connected to the Herrells, the former Queen’s maternal family. Allow them to live on as they did before.”
“The Queen is gracious.”
“The Queen is wise,” Osric said as he looked out of the window of the skyliner. “The very reason Edmund and the Baldwins fell was because they were so cruel no one was left to help them in their time of trouble. It will nto be so with us..”
“And relay to the former Queen that she will maintain the title she held before her marriage to Edmund. That she will remain Lady Edith Duchess of Herreboro.”
“She should be thankful for that,” Eryk said.
“She will not be,” Myrne predicted. “She will think how the queens of dead kings are still referred to as Queen and never remember that at the hands of others she would have been beheaded or shut in a convent. That is the type of woman she is.”
Eryk cracked a smile at his cousin, and then saluted the monarch’s and left the large apartment where they sat.
“We’re almost there,” Kryse Lord of Cleave said, looking out the window as he re-entered. “We have a remarkable captain in Ralph Curakin by the way.”
“Lord Kryse,” King Osric began, “how long has Cleave had flying ships?”
“As long as Ossariand,” Kryse said. “As long as the Royan kingdoms have. And the skyliners are more than flying ships. They are… well, all of Royan technology is also charged with magic.”
“And yet,” the King noted, touching his small beard, “as long as the Royan cities and Hale have had this, the Hale cities have lived two hundred years behind the Ayl. The Dayne more so.”
“It is because your ancestors tried to conquer this land and impose their ways,” Lord Kryse said, honestly. In the Young Kingdoms, and especially in the north, there were too few of us to hold all the land you came to and really, there was no need. And so we retreated to our cities. Those who did not go into the west to live in Rheged or Elmet. But we have kept our knowledge and never shared it because the Hale lands have ever been divided, never one.”
“May that change,” King Osric murmured.
“Your Grace, it already has,” Lord Kryse pointed out, “else how would and the Queen be riding to Westrial with one hundred thousand troops on four skyliners?”
ISOBEL
She wished for the Rootless Isle, or maybe even her girlhood when, dressed in the old unbleached robe, she came to the steps of the temple, and entered under the simple lintel into the old court where many girls and many boys too were sitting about quite and at peace, and then she went across that court under the next door to the first to pools and there she stooped and lathed water up and down her arms and then passed to the next pool and now to the last room where she undressed and bathed, and came out, and the white robe was wrapped about her and she came into the central court to sing with the maidens:
magē hadavata utum tēmāva pirī æta
mama raja magē prakaśa kaverda;
magē diva dakṣa lēkhakayā pǣna vē.
oba minisun vaḍāt viśiṣṭa vannē
obē tol karuṇāva abhiṣēka kara æta,
deviyan vahansē siṭa sadahaṭama oba āśīrvāda kara æta.
Isobel stood before the open door at the end of the court, swinging a smoking censor as other girls came up to lay cakes on the altar and joining the singers. She could hear Meredith singing:
deviyan vahansa, obagē siṁhāsanaya sadahaṭa ma pavatinu æta;
yuktiya jayakontaya obagē rājyayē jayakontaya vanu æta.
oba dharmiṣṭhakamaṭa prēma karana hā duṣṭakamaṭa dvēṣa,
ebævin deviyan vahansē, obē deviyan vahansē, obē mituran ihata oba niyama kara tibē
prītiya tel saman̆ga oba ālēpa visin.
And now, to her great surprise, Meredith of the twiggy hair came forward to her and handed Isobel the censor, and Isobel took it, and marched with it into the holy place, laying it down on the darkened ledge of an altar and then reaching back while Melisiane handed her the lamp.
obagē siyalu sivuru bara gandharasa hā agil saha kæsiyā kurun̆du samaga suvan̆da ya;
æt daḷa samaga alaṁkāra māligā siṭa
nūl mē saṁgīta oba satuṭu karayi.
rajavarungē diyaṇiyan obē gauravayak kāntāvan atara ya;
obē dakuṇu pættē ōpīr ran rājakīya manāliya vē.
As they sang she lit the seven lamps and with each lighting more light fell upon the ancient image, older than this place, where sat, in her worn pleated skirt, the goddess of pupiless eyes, plaited hair, and girlish smile. She reached back, again and again, for the cakes to lay them out on the altar before Her, and when it was gone, she censed the ancient face of the Goddess, and then turned to leave. Later, after many had made their visitations, when the the stone chamber still smell of frankincense and the floor was warm with the body warmth of all who had visited to sit with the Goddess in quiet, she would do so as well.
That image was older than anything else in the Rootless Isle. No one remembered from where it had come, though some said it came far from the East, from the same place as the new religion came, that it came from the Flooded Time. To Isobel, as she entered the quiet of the Holy Place while the candles had burned two hours lower, the image was the Goddess, just as old, from before the beginning of days and now, at last, she rested in her presence.
The rest, the prayer, ahd turned into mild slumber when Isobel heard her name called. She knew it was Myrne, and it was not long before the dark haired girl entered, making the sign of binding and folding her hands to her chest as she knelt before the goddess.
“Issa, did you hear me calling you?” she reprimanded, but before the older girl could answer. Isobel said, “It does not matter. Nimerly says its time.”
“Have I been gone long?” Isobel asked.
“Long enough for Nimerly to send me after you.”
Isobel smoothed her unbleached gown. Back home it would have been silks, but here, on the Rootless Isle, she felt freer, more herself than she’d ever been before.”
“Come, Little Sister,” she held out her hand to Myrne. “It is time.”
“Sister,” Queen Myrne held out her hands as the the wind from the landing skyliners blew her cloak and her dark hair all about her.
On the top of Vahayan Hill, the pregnant Queen Isobel came to her. About them, Cedd and Wold, Anthony, Ralph Curakin, their closest companions stood. Beside Princess Linalla, Prince Ethan looked down the hill and saw the men of Daumany setting up camp on the other side of the vale.
Isobel placed her hands in Myrne’s and the women stood together,r eyes closed. Isobel felt the tears press between her eyelids and roll down her face.
When she opened them, Queen Myrne was smiling though her own wet eyes were sober.
Myrne said, “Sister, it is time.”
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
The King and Queen sat in their high seats looking at the land pass far below them.
Eryk Waverly came to them and genuflected.
“Ambridge has fallen,” he said. “Are their any orders you have to communicate?”
King Osric looked to his wife, and she nodded.
“See that the former Queen is kept in Whitestone Palace and that she is left to administer it as any lady would govern a household. See that Cynric is instituted as interrum governor and that any hostility he may have faced is amended.”
“And Lord Baldwin?”
Allyn Baldwin may remain with his siter for a time, or he may go to his reward in the south. Everything else we will see to when we return.”
“And your Graces?”
“Yes?” the King and Queen said together.
“What of the cousins? The Lady Ardith and her sisters? What is to be done with them?”
“When Edmund sought to be king he murdered every Wulfstan scion he could,” Myrne said. “Those girls are not even Baldwins. If memory serves me, they are connected to the Herrells, the former Queen’s maternal family. Allow them to live on as they did before.”
“The Queen is gracious.”
“The Queen is wise,” Osric said as he looked out of the window of the skyliner. “The very reason Edmund and the Baldwins fell was because they were so cruel no one was left to help them in their time of trouble. It will nto be so with us..”
“And relay to the former Queen that she will maintain the title she held before her marriage to Edmund. That she will remain Lady Edith Duchess of Herreboro.”
“She should be thankful for that,” Eryk said.
“She will not be,” Myrne predicted. “She will think how the queens of dead kings are still referred to as Queen and never remember that at the hands of others she would have been beheaded or shut in a convent. That is the type of woman she is.”
Eryk cracked a smile at his cousin, and then saluted the monarch’s and left the large apartment where they sat.
“We’re almost there,” Kryse Lord of Cleave said, looking out the window as he re-entered. “We have a remarkable captain in Ralph Curakin by the way.”
“Lord Kryse,” King Osric began, “how long has Cleave had flying ships?”
“As long as Ossariand,” Kryse said. “As long as the Royan kingdoms have. And the skyliners are more than flying ships. They are… well, all of Royan technology is also charged with magic.”
“And yet,” the King noted, touching his small beard, “as long as the Royan cities and Hale have had this, the Hale cities have lived two hundred years behind the Ayl. The Dayne more so.”
“It is because your ancestors tried to conquer this land and impose their ways,” Lord Kryse said, honestly. In the Young Kingdoms, and especially in the north, there were too few of us to hold all the land you came to and really, there was no need. And so we retreated to our cities. Those who did not go into the west to live in Rheged or Elmet. But we have kept our knowledge and never shared it because the Hale lands have ever been divided, never one.”
“May that change,” King Osric murmured.
“Your Grace, it already has,” Lord Kryse pointed out, “else how would and the Queen be riding to Westrial with one hundred thousand troops on four skyliners?”
ISOBEL
She wished for the Rootless Isle, or maybe even her girlhood when, dressed in the old unbleached robe, she came to the steps of the temple, and entered under the simple lintel into the old court where many girls and many boys too were sitting about quite and at peace, and then she went across that court under the next door to the first to pools and there she stooped and lathed water up and down her arms and then passed to the next pool and now to the last room where she undressed and bathed, and came out, and the white robe was wrapped about her and she came into the central court to sing with the maidens:
magē hadavata utum tēmāva pirī æta
mama raja magē prakaśa kaverda;
magē diva dakṣa lēkhakayā pǣna vē.
oba minisun vaḍāt viśiṣṭa vannē
obē tol karuṇāva abhiṣēka kara æta,
deviyan vahansē siṭa sadahaṭama oba āśīrvāda kara æta.
Isobel stood before the open door at the end of the court, swinging a smoking censor as other girls came up to lay cakes on the altar and joining the singers. She could hear Meredith singing:
deviyan vahansa, obagē siṁhāsanaya sadahaṭa ma pavatinu æta;
yuktiya jayakontaya obagē rājyayē jayakontaya vanu æta.
oba dharmiṣṭhakamaṭa prēma karana hā duṣṭakamaṭa dvēṣa,
ebævin deviyan vahansē, obē deviyan vahansē, obē mituran ihata oba niyama kara tibē
prītiya tel saman̆ga oba ālēpa visin.
And now, to her great surprise, Meredith of the twiggy hair came forward to her and handed Isobel the censor, and Isobel took it, and marched with it into the holy place, laying it down on the darkened ledge of an altar and then reaching back while Melisiane handed her the lamp.
obagē siyalu sivuru bara gandharasa hā agil saha kæsiyā kurun̆du samaga suvan̆da ya;
æt daḷa samaga alaṁkāra māligā siṭa
nūl mē saṁgīta oba satuṭu karayi.
rajavarungē diyaṇiyan obē gauravayak kāntāvan atara ya;
obē dakuṇu pættē ōpīr ran rājakīya manāliya vē.
As they sang she lit the seven lamps and with each lighting more light fell upon the ancient image, older than this place, where sat, in her worn pleated skirt, the goddess of pupiless eyes, plaited hair, and girlish smile. She reached back, again and again, for the cakes to lay them out on the altar before Her, and when it was gone, she censed the ancient face of the Goddess, and then turned to leave. Later, after many had made their visitations, when the the stone chamber still smell of frankincense and the floor was warm with the body warmth of all who had visited to sit with the Goddess in quiet, she would do so as well.
That image was older than anything else in the Rootless Isle. No one remembered from where it had come, though some said it came far from the East, from the same place as the new religion came, that it came from the Flooded Time. To Isobel, as she entered the quiet of the Holy Place while the candles had burned two hours lower, the image was the Goddess, just as old, from before the beginning of days and now, at last, she rested in her presence.
The rest, the prayer, ahd turned into mild slumber when Isobel heard her name called. She knew it was Myrne, and it was not long before the dark haired girl entered, making the sign of binding and folding her hands to her chest as she knelt before the goddess.
“Issa, did you hear me calling you?” she reprimanded, but before the older girl could answer. Isobel said, “It does not matter. Nimerly says its time.”
“Have I been gone long?” Isobel asked.
“Long enough for Nimerly to send me after you.”
Isobel smoothed her unbleached gown. Back home it would have been silks, but here, on the Rootless Isle, she felt freer, more herself than she’d ever been before.”
“Come, Little Sister,” she held out her hand to Myrne. “It is time.”
“Sister,” Queen Myrne held out her hands as the the wind from the landing skyliners blew her cloak and her dark hair all about her.
On the top of Vahayan Hill, the pregnant Queen Isobel came to her. About them, Cedd and Wold, Anthony, Ralph Curakin, their closest companions stood. Beside Princess Linalla, Prince Ethan looked down the hill and saw the men of Daumany setting up camp on the other side of the vale.
Isobel placed her hands in Myrne’s and the women stood together,r eyes closed. Isobel felt the tears press between her eyelids and roll down her face.
When she opened them, Queen Myrne was smiling though her own wet eyes were sober.
Myrne said, “Sister, it is time.”
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a very interesting portion! Good to get so much of Isobel at this important time. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Each Age is born within an Age, the seeds of the Age of Love bein born in the midst of the Age of War, the embryo of War born in the last days of the Age of Struggle, and in those liminal times, when Age moves to Age, that thing called magic swells through the cracks, and the lines between the worlds, fainter than one thinks, often fade away altogether.
- from The Book of Blackness, Ollam Vygesserit
CHYR
THE CITY OF
YRRMARAYN
Maud Princess of Thaary was tired all the time. Was it only a little over a fortnight that Ermengild had breathed her last, that the counts had all but prepared to roll over and allow Bellamy to walk into their land and sit on the White Throne with his nothing of a wife? How quickly everything had happened. She’d never even had the chance to reach Thaary, to receive her crown. No, she had sent Sebastian back with her ring and a call to her lords. She had never lived there, not since she was six, did she know she could count on them? She’d wondered. With Ronnerick and Dessanon she’d headed immediately to their house at Meresell and there, they had drawn lords to them before marching south, here, to the Crystal City. Oh, how beautiful it had been, beautiful and unprepared, and there they were met by General Aylahn and the eastern lords.
“Five hundred years ago, the Solahni burnt this city to the ground, and they took from it the Great Beryl,” Aylahn said. “Ermengild spent her whole reign, rebuilding the city, waiting for the Beryl’s return. We will not suffer this place to be ruined again.”
And then, from all about, men came toward the city, prepared to make their stand against the Daumans and the Solahni here, and Maud heard how the Commots and the borders, and the people of Vand were on their way. Three days previous, she had seen the black masted ships and lost heart. For now, Phineas was coming, not Bellamy. Magic was a thing she knew, but it was not something she possessed. That was when Maud had learned to put a brave face on things, make a show of courage, and then go to her chambers, her back in knots, and cover her spliting head with a cold or with a warm cloth. Her stomach roiled then, and her bowels were like pudding.
Times like this she was glad to be with Ronnerick. Glad to know Dessanon had gone out on a ship for the south already.
“My lady,” Ronnerick said, one evening, while he stroked her head. “My dear young lady, it would serve you to remember that, in the end, though we strive, we are all in the hands of that Great Lady. She is our Mother. Go to her. She will never let you down.”
Let you down? Let you down? Well, now that was what they always said, and that was more or less promised in the Book of the Burning, but the Lady’s dependability was so different from what she wished it was. Her parents dead in a burning castle, Ethan, vanished into the south, never to be seen again. At night she remembered this. As Maud drifted to sleep she thought, “Now he is dead.” And then she knew she didn’t believe this. She wished she could. Damn hope that kept her from being free, that kept whispering to her that some how, some way, he lived.
When she arose, Maud took up Ronnerick’s staff and chose to climb the Grey Tower. It rose over Cair Paryn, and it was the tallest tower in all the city. Built in the days of Mahonry, it was said, she had never ventured up it before. She climbed now. She climbed and climbed the spiral stair until her hips hurt. Off of the sides shot chambers and galleries, but she was not interested in them. To the top, she needed the top of the thing, and when she had reached it, she stopped, breathing, sitting down on the last stair and catching her skirts under her.
Then Maud arrived in the top tower room. It was wide as the throne hall below with flagstones, now that she looked at them, of glass, opaque like stones of dark water. And the conical inside of the roof going up and up was of brass. There was no dust, and the place must have born an enchantment on it. This was the Tower of Anden, and Maud approached its wide windows now to look over the city. From here she could look out over the Vale or Ardur, to the trees and beyond and, small as ants she saw one all in silver on a white horse, and there were others with him, but mainly, she saw two men in black and they led a great troop of men in black, and there was a black banner with a gold and silver star, rather than the White Hand. Everyone parted for them as they approached the city and Maud, heart fluttering, filled with despair, walked about the roundness of the tower room to see, far below, sailing toward the estuary of the Severn, dangerous toys, the ships of Phineas, barracading the city.
“I tried,” she murmured. “Lady, I tried.”
She wanted to swoon, to put her hands in her head and to weep and then die, but that was not her way. She wished it was. So she stilled herself, picked up the black staff, and prepared to descend and meet the enemy.
SOLAHN
THE CITY OF
SOLDERANE
Yarrow stood beside the Queen in a blue black gown, and her hair fell to either side of her shoulders, as if she were dressing for a party. Beside her, Iokaste faced the mirror while her maid, Meylin, tied the leather cuirass over her breast and Laidan stood behind her, tying her copper hair in the coils that would go under her helmet.
Yarrow moved away from the Queen of Solahn to look out of the great window where Hektar was mustering the troops. Tonight they would move on. Tonight, they would march.
Iokaste said, “When I was a girl, just come out of my grandfather’s court, I had no idea what it meant to be a Queen. How if, back then, someone told me that my son would be far off, mistaken for dead twice, and my husband dead before I’d reached my my fiftieth year? What if I had been told then, that when I was at an age far past the bearing of children, I would put on armor, like a warrior maid of old, and march against my husband’s killer?”
“Better for you to meet him before he meets you,” Yarrow said, reaching for the great long, black, silver tipped staff that lay against the window sill. She moved across the room, her gown rustling on the cool floor.
“My art failed me and I know not why. In the end all I could tell was that Rendon and Mehta were well. Beyond that, more vision was withheld from me. But with that knowledge we can move.”
As if on cue, the Lord Axom with his trim black beard entered the room and said, “My ladies? Are we prepared to move?”
The Queen’s maids moved away from her, bowing, and in came a young soldier girl with a brass helmet. She bowed and handed it to Iokaste.
The Queen spoke.
“Now we move. Now we meet Bellamy before he can meet us. He will never stand at the gates of the holy city.”
Yarrow, her black staff lifted, moved ahead of them while Axom and the young soldier, Phoebe, anxiously moved beside her.
“My lady,” Phoebe began, “we will follow you in all things. But the Lord Hektar suggests we push straight onto Endom, where the prince is staying.”
Iokaste shook her head.
“He will leave Endom in a day. He expects that I will remain as I am, a trapped bird with no prince of a son and no husband. Our greatest advantage is how little he fears us. We will let him leave the city. That path will take him south, past the Hellafast. From there we will come down.”
Her strategy had excited Phoebe who, up until now, had only known the Queen as a respectable woman of royal blood with little battle knowledge.
“And then,” Yarrow concluded, as they came out of the palace to the roaring crowds, “we will push them into the sea.”
Rising a little above the vale, and over the sea at the head of the Saffern, on a set of hills stretched out the walls of pale grey and light great and of white, stretched
the great gates dark as pwetwer etched in whirls of silver of the first, octagonal wall of the crystal city of Yrrmarayn. Across the calm water were the hills of Westrial. Three more walls inside of that first rose up higher on hills and out of these walls houses of palest crey, silver grey, silver white rose up, towers gilltering with more window than tower, the steep tile rooves of slate and of white stones, the tower turrets not copper, but burnished burning silver, pennants snapping white, and above them all Cair Paryn, the Crystal Castle, all windows winking the burning sun, its tiles and tower tops of glinting silver and proudly snapping white banners, and on the highest one, over the highest tower was a great banner and on it was a green tree with spreading branches.
“It’s so…” Arvad began, and Kenneth who had looked so grave looked at him with love in his dark eyes and said, “Magnificent.”
“Yes,” Arvad agreed.
Theone and Anson stood quietly together and finally she said, “It is… magnificent. Truly it is and yet…” she looked to him.
In a small voice, Orem, who had never known anything fine, or anything fine to belong to him, said, “And yet it’s home.”
Ohean, wrapped in his cloak against the wind, was just as silver as the towers of the Castle, and he said, reining his horse and riding in the direction of the city, “Then let us go home. Tonight there is a Queen in Chyr, and she will sleep in the Crystal City that has awaited her five hundred years.”
TOMORROW: IF I SHOULD FALL
- from The Book of Blackness, Ollam Vygesserit
CHYR
THE CITY OF
YRRMARAYN
Maud Princess of Thaary was tired all the time. Was it only a little over a fortnight that Ermengild had breathed her last, that the counts had all but prepared to roll over and allow Bellamy to walk into their land and sit on the White Throne with his nothing of a wife? How quickly everything had happened. She’d never even had the chance to reach Thaary, to receive her crown. No, she had sent Sebastian back with her ring and a call to her lords. She had never lived there, not since she was six, did she know she could count on them? She’d wondered. With Ronnerick and Dessanon she’d headed immediately to their house at Meresell and there, they had drawn lords to them before marching south, here, to the Crystal City. Oh, how beautiful it had been, beautiful and unprepared, and there they were met by General Aylahn and the eastern lords.
“Five hundred years ago, the Solahni burnt this city to the ground, and they took from it the Great Beryl,” Aylahn said. “Ermengild spent her whole reign, rebuilding the city, waiting for the Beryl’s return. We will not suffer this place to be ruined again.”
And then, from all about, men came toward the city, prepared to make their stand against the Daumans and the Solahni here, and Maud heard how the Commots and the borders, and the people of Vand were on their way. Three days previous, she had seen the black masted ships and lost heart. For now, Phineas was coming, not Bellamy. Magic was a thing she knew, but it was not something she possessed. That was when Maud had learned to put a brave face on things, make a show of courage, and then go to her chambers, her back in knots, and cover her spliting head with a cold or with a warm cloth. Her stomach roiled then, and her bowels were like pudding.
Times like this she was glad to be with Ronnerick. Glad to know Dessanon had gone out on a ship for the south already.
“My lady,” Ronnerick said, one evening, while he stroked her head. “My dear young lady, it would serve you to remember that, in the end, though we strive, we are all in the hands of that Great Lady. She is our Mother. Go to her. She will never let you down.”
Let you down? Let you down? Well, now that was what they always said, and that was more or less promised in the Book of the Burning, but the Lady’s dependability was so different from what she wished it was. Her parents dead in a burning castle, Ethan, vanished into the south, never to be seen again. At night she remembered this. As Maud drifted to sleep she thought, “Now he is dead.” And then she knew she didn’t believe this. She wished she could. Damn hope that kept her from being free, that kept whispering to her that some how, some way, he lived.
When she arose, Maud took up Ronnerick’s staff and chose to climb the Grey Tower. It rose over Cair Paryn, and it was the tallest tower in all the city. Built in the days of Mahonry, it was said, she had never ventured up it before. She climbed now. She climbed and climbed the spiral stair until her hips hurt. Off of the sides shot chambers and galleries, but she was not interested in them. To the top, she needed the top of the thing, and when she had reached it, she stopped, breathing, sitting down on the last stair and catching her skirts under her.
Then Maud arrived in the top tower room. It was wide as the throne hall below with flagstones, now that she looked at them, of glass, opaque like stones of dark water. And the conical inside of the roof going up and up was of brass. There was no dust, and the place must have born an enchantment on it. This was the Tower of Anden, and Maud approached its wide windows now to look over the city. From here she could look out over the Vale or Ardur, to the trees and beyond and, small as ants she saw one all in silver on a white horse, and there were others with him, but mainly, she saw two men in black and they led a great troop of men in black, and there was a black banner with a gold and silver star, rather than the White Hand. Everyone parted for them as they approached the city and Maud, heart fluttering, filled with despair, walked about the roundness of the tower room to see, far below, sailing toward the estuary of the Severn, dangerous toys, the ships of Phineas, barracading the city.
“I tried,” she murmured. “Lady, I tried.”
She wanted to swoon, to put her hands in her head and to weep and then die, but that was not her way. She wished it was. So she stilled herself, picked up the black staff, and prepared to descend and meet the enemy.
SOLAHN
THE CITY OF
SOLDERANE
Yarrow stood beside the Queen in a blue black gown, and her hair fell to either side of her shoulders, as if she were dressing for a party. Beside her, Iokaste faced the mirror while her maid, Meylin, tied the leather cuirass over her breast and Laidan stood behind her, tying her copper hair in the coils that would go under her helmet.
Yarrow moved away from the Queen of Solahn to look out of the great window where Hektar was mustering the troops. Tonight they would move on. Tonight, they would march.
Iokaste said, “When I was a girl, just come out of my grandfather’s court, I had no idea what it meant to be a Queen. How if, back then, someone told me that my son would be far off, mistaken for dead twice, and my husband dead before I’d reached my my fiftieth year? What if I had been told then, that when I was at an age far past the bearing of children, I would put on armor, like a warrior maid of old, and march against my husband’s killer?”
“Better for you to meet him before he meets you,” Yarrow said, reaching for the great long, black, silver tipped staff that lay against the window sill. She moved across the room, her gown rustling on the cool floor.
“My art failed me and I know not why. In the end all I could tell was that Rendon and Mehta were well. Beyond that, more vision was withheld from me. But with that knowledge we can move.”
As if on cue, the Lord Axom with his trim black beard entered the room and said, “My ladies? Are we prepared to move?”
The Queen’s maids moved away from her, bowing, and in came a young soldier girl with a brass helmet. She bowed and handed it to Iokaste.
The Queen spoke.
“Now we move. Now we meet Bellamy before he can meet us. He will never stand at the gates of the holy city.”
Yarrow, her black staff lifted, moved ahead of them while Axom and the young soldier, Phoebe, anxiously moved beside her.
“My lady,” Phoebe began, “we will follow you in all things. But the Lord Hektar suggests we push straight onto Endom, where the prince is staying.”
Iokaste shook her head.
“He will leave Endom in a day. He expects that I will remain as I am, a trapped bird with no prince of a son and no husband. Our greatest advantage is how little he fears us. We will let him leave the city. That path will take him south, past the Hellafast. From there we will come down.”
Her strategy had excited Phoebe who, up until now, had only known the Queen as a respectable woman of royal blood with little battle knowledge.
“And then,” Yarrow concluded, as they came out of the palace to the roaring crowds, “we will push them into the sea.”
Rising a little above the vale, and over the sea at the head of the Saffern, on a set of hills stretched out the walls of pale grey and light great and of white, stretched
the great gates dark as pwetwer etched in whirls of silver of the first, octagonal wall of the crystal city of Yrrmarayn. Across the calm water were the hills of Westrial. Three more walls inside of that first rose up higher on hills and out of these walls houses of palest crey, silver grey, silver white rose up, towers gilltering with more window than tower, the steep tile rooves of slate and of white stones, the tower turrets not copper, but burnished burning silver, pennants snapping white, and above them all Cair Paryn, the Crystal Castle, all windows winking the burning sun, its tiles and tower tops of glinting silver and proudly snapping white banners, and on the highest one, over the highest tower was a great banner and on it was a green tree with spreading branches.
“It’s so…” Arvad began, and Kenneth who had looked so grave looked at him with love in his dark eyes and said, “Magnificent.”
“Yes,” Arvad agreed.
Theone and Anson stood quietly together and finally she said, “It is… magnificent. Truly it is and yet…” she looked to him.
In a small voice, Orem, who had never known anything fine, or anything fine to belong to him, said, “And yet it’s home.”
Ohean, wrapped in his cloak against the wind, was just as silver as the towers of the Castle, and he said, reining his horse and riding in the direction of the city, “Then let us go home. Tonight there is a Queen in Chyr, and she will sleep in the Crystal City that has awaited her five hundred years.”
TOMORROW: IF I SHOULD FALL
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! I really enjoyed seeing more of Maud again! She is such a strong woman. This whole portion was full of new things that made it a good one. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow of If I Should Fall!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Oh, I'm so glad that you enjoyed reading tonight, and I'm delighted you love Maud and the rest of my women. She's been gone a while and it's good to have her back in the story. She doesn't feel strong at all, as is the case with many strong people. She feels at her wit's end, and has no idea that Ethan is across the preparing to come home to her. Maud, Maud, Maud. If there's one thing I regret there's not enough Maud.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
AS THEONE IS CROWNED, MYRNE AND ISOBEL WORK THEIR MAGIC AND ARE JOINED BY A MYSTERIOUS SORCERESS
YRRMARAYN
She was halfway down the tower when she heard the noise. Neither in body nor in spirit did Maud possess the ability to hasten toward destruction. But as she descended, gradually she heard that these were not noises of terror. These were sounds of joy, and as she came nearer to the ground she heard even, “Where is she? Where is Maud?”
Maud did not stop at the entrance to the Tower from the parapet, but descended even to the Court of the Tree where, finally she came out, dizzied and wearied, into the light of day, and crossed the old yard into one of the side galleries that let out into the throne room. But by now there were shouts of wajoy and trumpet blasts in earnest, and she pushed her way through one of the back galleries and then she was behind the tapestry of the Tree which stood behind the Throne, and she came out into the throne room, and when she did, there were applause and people racing toward her, and all the court seemed full of joy, and then Aylahn look her hand, and the general’s braids were falling loose around her dark face.
“See, see,” she said, And Maude saw.
At the entrance of the throne room was a beautiful girl, a woman really, with skin the color of honey and clear dark eyes, black hair falling down her back in tendrils. Not in coloring, but in the structure of her face she was the very image of a painting of Ermengild, and what was more, of a portrait of the Princess Esnarra.
Beside her was a tall, bronze haired prince with a chiseled face. His storm blue cloak was swept from his broad shoulders, and he bore a mighty sword. His eyes were blue green as the sea and though the two of them looked grave there was a quiet joy in them. Before them, wrapped in silver and white was Ohean the Penannyn, for long ago she had seen him at the house of Birch and Yarrow, and beside him was, yes, Birch herself. Birch was coming toward her, and Maud saw the two young men in black, who were not Hands, who by the looks on their faces, kind, joyful, sparkling of eye, could not possibly be Hands.
Celandine and Essily had come in the night, and Nimerly had joined them.
Now Celandine spoke to Maud.
“Niece and daughter,” she said, taking Maud’s face in her hands, “We are well met, and this well done!”
“I…” Maud began, and she saw Ronnerick, on his staff coming near her and also the young woman with black hair. “I… do not understand.”
“The Battle is nearly won,” Essily said. “That is for you to understand.”
“I know you,” said the young woman. “I am Theone, your friend. This man here with the golden hair and devious look in his eye is my cousin Prince Anson of Westrial, Birch’s son, for in truth, she is Essily, the sister of Nimerly of the Rootless Isle, one time consort to Anthal of Westrial. My mother was Esnarra, and though she died. I am restored.”
Maud felt herself trembling and shaking while Theone continued. “Long ago, I was kept by the Hands, and that is where I met Orem, who you see before you. He is my love and his armies, and the armies of Kenneth fight for Chyr, not against it. So be comforted.
“But know this also,” Theone said, “I know you, Maud, because once, by magic, your love Ethan showed me to you, when he was inprisoned. He is inprisoned no longer. He lives, and he is with Prince Rendan of Solahn, fighting Bellamy. He lives, and loves you, and thinks of you always.”
And at this Ronnerick, who was Ethan’s grandfather began to weep, and then Maud, who had kept herself so together for so long, buried her face in Yarrow’s neck and wept a long while. Theone looked to Anson and saw that even that often grim character had wet eyes, and then Maud stopped.
Her face was wet. She dried it with the back of her hand, and then she stood before Theone. She looked at Anson. She took both of their hands, joined them, and then she said, “My Lady, and my Lord.” And she knelt.
And then Yarrow knelt as well, and Anson was alarmed to see Ohean kneel, and Ronnerick was doing the same, and suddenly all, all, in the hall knelt and there was silence.
This lasted until Anson thought he would dissolve and weep again, so overcome with emotion was he, and then Ohean stood up and said “Theone, reveal what is upon your breast.”
At this Theone remembered the Beryl, and reaching into her blouse she lifted it, and it glowed like a star, blue and then white and then blazing and Ohean declared:
“Now the Beryl had been returned to the City by the Great-grandchild of Ermengild. All Hail the Queen.”
And rising, they all sang: “All Hail! All Hail!”
SOUTHERN WESTRIAL
VAHAYAN HILL
They ate a small supper on the hill, but Isobel and Myrne ate nothing at all.
“It has been a long time since we’ve done this,” Isobel said.
“Izza,” said Myrne. “We have never done this. And you have never been pregnant.”
“I’ll be fine. The baby will be fine. We’ll all be fine Remember what Mother Illis used to say.”
“Everything you do at this moment is a version of what you have done before,” Myrne nodded. “Well, then.”
As the two women talked, the men did not speak. Wolf had seen Cedd at a distance, when he was only the servant of Ohean and Cedd had seen him never. But now as he looked at the other king they, indeed all in that tent seemed to be saying to each other, “We are excluded from this. These women are a thing we are not.”
Far from their courts, and in gowns and cloaks of dull brown and black, barefoot now as the day was passed, their dark hair hanging from one white face, on brown, the two young women did not looked as much witches as they looked queens, and Wolf remembered the old tales of times when to be a queen was to be an enchantress.
“Wolf,” Myrne said, touching his hand, “It is time for you all to to go. Would you be so kind as to occasional tend the fire if… we forget.”
Wolf had used the crowns with his wife, but never without her. Magic was not a thing he was overly comfortable with, and he had seen her cast out her spirit to search for things. She meant, he knew, not if we forget, but if we are so our of our bodies we cannot attend to them.
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“Then she is truly a witch after all,” Francis remarked when they were outside of the tent and the sky was darkening.
“Aye,” Wolf said.
“How do you feel about that, King Osric?”
Wolf raised an eyebrow.
“I had heard in times past the Hale killed their men of magic and since the Communion we have all tried to repress it.”
“I was raised by Ohean Penannyn in Rheged,” Wolf said. “I am not mage, but I respect it. And there is no telling me wife anything. That’s the first lesson.”
Francis Pembroke nodded as he gathered wood with Wolf, and he said, “I’m sure the King has thanked you for coming to our aid. I must as well, though I perceive you could not have done it for love of him, but, I am guessing, for the sake of Ohean, somehow.”
“And for Anson,” Wolf said. “Mainly for Anson. But Myrne did it for Isobel.”
“Yes,” Francis said as they came nearer the tent. “Everyone loves the Queen.”
“How long have you?” Wolf asked. And then he said, before Francis dropped the wood. “I am sorry. Only I could see it in your eyes, and I know well that though the King respects his wife, he can love her no more than like a sister. That is damn fine woman in there, and she should have love.”
Francis was grateful that the sky was darkening, for his cheeks were hot.
“The King himself has said as much. To her and specifically to me.”
“Ah,” Wolf said, “then he is a better man that I figured him for.”
As they pushed through the tent the fire was burning low and to the right of it, hands stretched to each other while they sat, legs folded under them the women were chanting, their eyes closed:
mema ek dekak vē da Ravn sadahaṭama
mava vē sohoyuriyō vē! "
mema ek, deka, tuna, vē,
sohoyuriyō mava vana atara,
ema diyaṇiya vana gnāṇaya æta
samasta dæka æta manasikāraya
vaḍā behevin pahata, an̆duru
striya hā minisā saha
ādaravantayangē vē dakvā ihata,
kumarun vē , æta bera,
æta maraṇa kaṭayutu rōda hatara,
paha nam, eya duma hā hayavana,
ginnen hā kuṇāṭuva, sadahaṭama
upan æta æta!
As Wolf stoked the fire, and Francis briefly looked over Isobel, the women continued to chant, and did not break off. Wolf looked up at Francis and nodded, and Francis nodded and the two of them walked out of the tent, Francis closing the flap behind him. This Wolf has at once, the comradeliness of a common soldier and the courtliness of a king.
To the south, past the hill, the Dauman armies were camped, and underneath them, on the wide of Westrial sat, large as some castles, the skyliners, the smooth sides shining faintly in firelight. About the ships were the armies of Westrial and those which had come with King Osric. Singing could be heard from around campfires and, above them, the stars rose higher, the Wanderer blazing in the east.
Now Francis saw clearer what he had just began to see in the distance, a rider, threading his way through the camp and then coming up the hill to the where the kings and Teryn, Ethan, Linalla and Cody were gathered. As she came the rider came nearer, Francis could see this was a woman making so boldly and so unimpeded for the kings and now, as she came to them, she dismounted from a black horse and threw back her hood. She was a Royan woman, neither old nor young, though her hair was long and thick and black and she said, “Where are the Queens?”
“Madam,” Anthony Pembroke said, “You cannot simply ride up here and ask to see—”
“Wolf!” the woman turned to King Osric, her voice changing, “show me the Queens.”
“Yes, Lady,” Wolf said simply.
The woman turned to King Cedd and charged, “Watch the horse,” and then as if he were a stable servant and not the King of Westrial, she left him.
Without question, or impediment, King Osric led this woman to the tent and Prince Ethan said, “She is a witch too. You can tell it, and probably from the Rootless Isle. A witch’s business is a witch’s business and not for us to inquire upon.”
“It may be,” Francis reasoned, “that they summoned her.”
Cedd said nothing, but only looked into the fire.
As she entered the tent, though they had not broken their chanting for anyone else, or known anyone else, Myrne and Isobel suddenly looked up and the dark woman said, “Daughters. Two is good, but three is perfection.”
And then, as Wolf turned to go, the woman sat down with them, and they joined hands in a circle, chanting.
YRRMARAYN
Theone sat in the bathtub, leaning against Orem’s chest, while he washed her hair.
“Do you know I had to send them out?” she said. “They were going to bathe me. Apparently Ermengild’s attendants were here. They wanted to bath me and everything. And… They want to have a coronation. I don’t understand any of this. We’ve got Phineas, right out there on the water, our good old friend, Phineas, and they can’t decide do we have a coronation first, or do we win the war and then have a good old crowning or what?”
Orem chuckled and poured out of some of the water with a onto her head and then onto his shoulders and began to rub her neck.
“They’re just excited.”
“And you are staying here tonight. With me? Right?”
“Where else would I stay?”
“Which reminds me, they must think you’re my husband?”
“Aren’t I?”
Theone turned around to see if he was being serious. This was one of the time she couldn’t tell. “We’re going to have to have some sort of wedding. If I’m going to be the Queen, what are you?”
“The Queen’s fuck—”
“Watch your mouth,” Theone flicked water back on him.
Orem shuckled and dunked her in the water. As Theone came up, spluttering, he sat up higher in the large pool and said, “No, I can’t really imagine that Ronnerick fellow introducing me like that.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned we are wed,” she said. “I just don’t know the rubrics of it.”
“What do rubrics matter?” Orem pronounced the word with some disdain.
“They matter a great deal when it comes to an heir.”
“Heir?” Orem put his sponge in the water and struck a foolish pose. “Ha! the old seed been as potent as all that?”
But then, in the next look Theone gave him, he blinked.
“Thea…” he began.
“Are you…?”
Theone nodded. “Maud has the sight. She is… like us. Not a witch, but… witchy. And she saw it clear as anything. Inark never thought about it, but I went and asked her and she just looked at me and said, “Yep.” Just like that, and then went back to card reading. She’s studying that now.”
Orem still looked mystified and stupid. He wrapped his arms around her.
“Oh, we’ll take real good care of you this time.”
“You took excellent care of me the last time.”
“Better care,” Orem said, “and… and we can set all sorts of charms around you. This baby will be a prince. Or a princess. Nothing will happen this time.”
“Orem…” she began.
But in the warm water, suds over his body he still knelt there, holding the side of his face to her belly.
“so what do we do now?” Anson said, closing his book. He looked out of the window onto the dark sea, where the lights of Chyran ships twinkled, guarding the city from Phineas’s boats.
“Get up?”
“Hum?”
“I said get up. And put a shirt on.”
“Which shirt, Anson rose and crossed the carpetted floor to his wardrobe. “Have you ever seen so many shirts? Once upon a time, when I live in a lord’s house on the border, it was something like this. But not like… I’ll wear this one? What do you think of it.”
It was red silk, the color of wine and Ohean said, “A little ostentatious for a midnight trip, but everything you wear is…” Ohean looked at him longingly, “Good.”
Anson pulled his shirt on, and Ohean pulled him out of the room and down the hall.
“Where are we going?”
“I just told you. On a little midnight trip.”
Anson caught up with him enough to hold him by the hips and look at him directly.
“Did you ever wonder why Theone got a Beryl and you didn’t get anything?”
“Well… no,” Anson said. “I never really thought of it.”
“Well, you should have. Now, we’re going to get what’s yours.”
“Where?” Anson said as they made a turn and began going down a long, wide flight of steps.
Ohean looked at him solemnly and then continued down the steps to the next hall.
“Why, from your grave, of course.”
MORE TOMORROW
YRRMARAYN
She was halfway down the tower when she heard the noise. Neither in body nor in spirit did Maud possess the ability to hasten toward destruction. But as she descended, gradually she heard that these were not noises of terror. These were sounds of joy, and as she came nearer to the ground she heard even, “Where is she? Where is Maud?”
Maud did not stop at the entrance to the Tower from the parapet, but descended even to the Court of the Tree where, finally she came out, dizzied and wearied, into the light of day, and crossed the old yard into one of the side galleries that let out into the throne room. But by now there were shouts of wajoy and trumpet blasts in earnest, and she pushed her way through one of the back galleries and then she was behind the tapestry of the Tree which stood behind the Throne, and she came out into the throne room, and when she did, there were applause and people racing toward her, and all the court seemed full of joy, and then Aylahn look her hand, and the general’s braids were falling loose around her dark face.
“See, see,” she said, And Maude saw.
At the entrance of the throne room was a beautiful girl, a woman really, with skin the color of honey and clear dark eyes, black hair falling down her back in tendrils. Not in coloring, but in the structure of her face she was the very image of a painting of Ermengild, and what was more, of a portrait of the Princess Esnarra.
Beside her was a tall, bronze haired prince with a chiseled face. His storm blue cloak was swept from his broad shoulders, and he bore a mighty sword. His eyes were blue green as the sea and though the two of them looked grave there was a quiet joy in them. Before them, wrapped in silver and white was Ohean the Penannyn, for long ago she had seen him at the house of Birch and Yarrow, and beside him was, yes, Birch herself. Birch was coming toward her, and Maud saw the two young men in black, who were not Hands, who by the looks on their faces, kind, joyful, sparkling of eye, could not possibly be Hands.
Celandine and Essily had come in the night, and Nimerly had joined them.
Now Celandine spoke to Maud.
“Niece and daughter,” she said, taking Maud’s face in her hands, “We are well met, and this well done!”
“I…” Maud began, and she saw Ronnerick, on his staff coming near her and also the young woman with black hair. “I… do not understand.”
“The Battle is nearly won,” Essily said. “That is for you to understand.”
“I know you,” said the young woman. “I am Theone, your friend. This man here with the golden hair and devious look in his eye is my cousin Prince Anson of Westrial, Birch’s son, for in truth, she is Essily, the sister of Nimerly of the Rootless Isle, one time consort to Anthal of Westrial. My mother was Esnarra, and though she died. I am restored.”
Maud felt herself trembling and shaking while Theone continued. “Long ago, I was kept by the Hands, and that is where I met Orem, who you see before you. He is my love and his armies, and the armies of Kenneth fight for Chyr, not against it. So be comforted.
“But know this also,” Theone said, “I know you, Maud, because once, by magic, your love Ethan showed me to you, when he was inprisoned. He is inprisoned no longer. He lives, and he is with Prince Rendan of Solahn, fighting Bellamy. He lives, and loves you, and thinks of you always.”
And at this Ronnerick, who was Ethan’s grandfather began to weep, and then Maud, who had kept herself so together for so long, buried her face in Yarrow’s neck and wept a long while. Theone looked to Anson and saw that even that often grim character had wet eyes, and then Maud stopped.
Her face was wet. She dried it with the back of her hand, and then she stood before Theone. She looked at Anson. She took both of their hands, joined them, and then she said, “My Lady, and my Lord.” And she knelt.
And then Yarrow knelt as well, and Anson was alarmed to see Ohean kneel, and Ronnerick was doing the same, and suddenly all, all, in the hall knelt and there was silence.
This lasted until Anson thought he would dissolve and weep again, so overcome with emotion was he, and then Ohean stood up and said “Theone, reveal what is upon your breast.”
At this Theone remembered the Beryl, and reaching into her blouse she lifted it, and it glowed like a star, blue and then white and then blazing and Ohean declared:
“Now the Beryl had been returned to the City by the Great-grandchild of Ermengild. All Hail the Queen.”
And rising, they all sang: “All Hail! All Hail!”
SOUTHERN WESTRIAL
VAHAYAN HILL
They ate a small supper on the hill, but Isobel and Myrne ate nothing at all.
“It has been a long time since we’ve done this,” Isobel said.
“Izza,” said Myrne. “We have never done this. And you have never been pregnant.”
“I’ll be fine. The baby will be fine. We’ll all be fine Remember what Mother Illis used to say.”
“Everything you do at this moment is a version of what you have done before,” Myrne nodded. “Well, then.”
As the two women talked, the men did not speak. Wolf had seen Cedd at a distance, when he was only the servant of Ohean and Cedd had seen him never. But now as he looked at the other king they, indeed all in that tent seemed to be saying to each other, “We are excluded from this. These women are a thing we are not.”
Far from their courts, and in gowns and cloaks of dull brown and black, barefoot now as the day was passed, their dark hair hanging from one white face, on brown, the two young women did not looked as much witches as they looked queens, and Wolf remembered the old tales of times when to be a queen was to be an enchantress.
“Wolf,” Myrne said, touching his hand, “It is time for you all to to go. Would you be so kind as to occasional tend the fire if… we forget.”
Wolf had used the crowns with his wife, but never without her. Magic was not a thing he was overly comfortable with, and he had seen her cast out her spirit to search for things. She meant, he knew, not if we forget, but if we are so our of our bodies we cannot attend to them.
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“Then she is truly a witch after all,” Francis remarked when they were outside of the tent and the sky was darkening.
“Aye,” Wolf said.
“How do you feel about that, King Osric?”
Wolf raised an eyebrow.
“I had heard in times past the Hale killed their men of magic and since the Communion we have all tried to repress it.”
“I was raised by Ohean Penannyn in Rheged,” Wolf said. “I am not mage, but I respect it. And there is no telling me wife anything. That’s the first lesson.”
Francis Pembroke nodded as he gathered wood with Wolf, and he said, “I’m sure the King has thanked you for coming to our aid. I must as well, though I perceive you could not have done it for love of him, but, I am guessing, for the sake of Ohean, somehow.”
“And for Anson,” Wolf said. “Mainly for Anson. But Myrne did it for Isobel.”
“Yes,” Francis said as they came nearer the tent. “Everyone loves the Queen.”
“How long have you?” Wolf asked. And then he said, before Francis dropped the wood. “I am sorry. Only I could see it in your eyes, and I know well that though the King respects his wife, he can love her no more than like a sister. That is damn fine woman in there, and she should have love.”
Francis was grateful that the sky was darkening, for his cheeks were hot.
“The King himself has said as much. To her and specifically to me.”
“Ah,” Wolf said, “then he is a better man that I figured him for.”
As they pushed through the tent the fire was burning low and to the right of it, hands stretched to each other while they sat, legs folded under them the women were chanting, their eyes closed:
mema ek dekak vē da Ravn sadahaṭama
mava vē sohoyuriyō vē! "
mema ek, deka, tuna, vē,
sohoyuriyō mava vana atara,
ema diyaṇiya vana gnāṇaya æta
samasta dæka æta manasikāraya
vaḍā behevin pahata, an̆duru
striya hā minisā saha
ādaravantayangē vē dakvā ihata,
kumarun vē , æta bera,
æta maraṇa kaṭayutu rōda hatara,
paha nam, eya duma hā hayavana,
ginnen hā kuṇāṭuva, sadahaṭama
upan æta æta!
As Wolf stoked the fire, and Francis briefly looked over Isobel, the women continued to chant, and did not break off. Wolf looked up at Francis and nodded, and Francis nodded and the two of them walked out of the tent, Francis closing the flap behind him. This Wolf has at once, the comradeliness of a common soldier and the courtliness of a king.
To the south, past the hill, the Dauman armies were camped, and underneath them, on the wide of Westrial sat, large as some castles, the skyliners, the smooth sides shining faintly in firelight. About the ships were the armies of Westrial and those which had come with King Osric. Singing could be heard from around campfires and, above them, the stars rose higher, the Wanderer blazing in the east.
Now Francis saw clearer what he had just began to see in the distance, a rider, threading his way through the camp and then coming up the hill to the where the kings and Teryn, Ethan, Linalla and Cody were gathered. As she came the rider came nearer, Francis could see this was a woman making so boldly and so unimpeded for the kings and now, as she came to them, she dismounted from a black horse and threw back her hood. She was a Royan woman, neither old nor young, though her hair was long and thick and black and she said, “Where are the Queens?”
“Madam,” Anthony Pembroke said, “You cannot simply ride up here and ask to see—”
“Wolf!” the woman turned to King Osric, her voice changing, “show me the Queens.”
“Yes, Lady,” Wolf said simply.
The woman turned to King Cedd and charged, “Watch the horse,” and then as if he were a stable servant and not the King of Westrial, she left him.
Without question, or impediment, King Osric led this woman to the tent and Prince Ethan said, “She is a witch too. You can tell it, and probably from the Rootless Isle. A witch’s business is a witch’s business and not for us to inquire upon.”
“It may be,” Francis reasoned, “that they summoned her.”
Cedd said nothing, but only looked into the fire.
As she entered the tent, though they had not broken their chanting for anyone else, or known anyone else, Myrne and Isobel suddenly looked up and the dark woman said, “Daughters. Two is good, but three is perfection.”
And then, as Wolf turned to go, the woman sat down with them, and they joined hands in a circle, chanting.
YRRMARAYN
Theone sat in the bathtub, leaning against Orem’s chest, while he washed her hair.
“Do you know I had to send them out?” she said. “They were going to bathe me. Apparently Ermengild’s attendants were here. They wanted to bath me and everything. And… They want to have a coronation. I don’t understand any of this. We’ve got Phineas, right out there on the water, our good old friend, Phineas, and they can’t decide do we have a coronation first, or do we win the war and then have a good old crowning or what?”
Orem chuckled and poured out of some of the water with a onto her head and then onto his shoulders and began to rub her neck.
“They’re just excited.”
“And you are staying here tonight. With me? Right?”
“Where else would I stay?”
“Which reminds me, they must think you’re my husband?”
“Aren’t I?”
Theone turned around to see if he was being serious. This was one of the time she couldn’t tell. “We’re going to have to have some sort of wedding. If I’m going to be the Queen, what are you?”
“The Queen’s fuck—”
“Watch your mouth,” Theone flicked water back on him.
Orem shuckled and dunked her in the water. As Theone came up, spluttering, he sat up higher in the large pool and said, “No, I can’t really imagine that Ronnerick fellow introducing me like that.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned we are wed,” she said. “I just don’t know the rubrics of it.”
“What do rubrics matter?” Orem pronounced the word with some disdain.
“They matter a great deal when it comes to an heir.”
“Heir?” Orem put his sponge in the water and struck a foolish pose. “Ha! the old seed been as potent as all that?”
But then, in the next look Theone gave him, he blinked.
“Thea…” he began.
“Are you…?”
Theone nodded. “Maud has the sight. She is… like us. Not a witch, but… witchy. And she saw it clear as anything. Inark never thought about it, but I went and asked her and she just looked at me and said, “Yep.” Just like that, and then went back to card reading. She’s studying that now.”
Orem still looked mystified and stupid. He wrapped his arms around her.
“Oh, we’ll take real good care of you this time.”
“You took excellent care of me the last time.”
“Better care,” Orem said, “and… and we can set all sorts of charms around you. This baby will be a prince. Or a princess. Nothing will happen this time.”
“Orem…” she began.
But in the warm water, suds over his body he still knelt there, holding the side of his face to her belly.
“so what do we do now?” Anson said, closing his book. He looked out of the window onto the dark sea, where the lights of Chyran ships twinkled, guarding the city from Phineas’s boats.
“Get up?”
“Hum?”
“I said get up. And put a shirt on.”
“Which shirt, Anson rose and crossed the carpetted floor to his wardrobe. “Have you ever seen so many shirts? Once upon a time, when I live in a lord’s house on the border, it was something like this. But not like… I’ll wear this one? What do you think of it.”
It was red silk, the color of wine and Ohean said, “A little ostentatious for a midnight trip, but everything you wear is…” Ohean looked at him longingly, “Good.”
Anson pulled his shirt on, and Ohean pulled him out of the room and down the hall.
“Where are we going?”
“I just told you. On a little midnight trip.”
Anson caught up with him enough to hold him by the hips and look at him directly.
“Did you ever wonder why Theone got a Beryl and you didn’t get anything?”
“Well… no,” Anson said. “I never really thought of it.”
“Well, you should have. Now, we’re going to get what’s yours.”
“Where?” Anson said as they made a turn and began going down a long, wide flight of steps.
Ohean looked at him solemnly and then continued down the steps to the next hall.
“Why, from your grave, of course.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion and you were right I did like it a lot! I may read it again before the next portion tomorrow so I can keep up. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
IN YRRMARAYN WE APPROACH THE BEGINNING OF THE END AS THE FINAL BATTLE IS ABOUT TO COMMENCE
YRRMARAYN
The wide corridors of the palace were all in blue white darkness but for the occasional torch, and they went down these until they came to the main hall, before the throne room.
Today it had been filled with joyous people and the light of the sun. Now it was in cool darkness, as if there was nothing but peace, and no one was preparing for war. Out past this hall was a courtyard, filled with white moonlight, and palace guards stood at either side of the great gate.
“Wait!” they heard someone call out of the darkness.
And it was Inark, a great cloak wrapped about her. It flapped behind her in the breeze. Beside her was a young man, her same height but bound to grow taller, and she said,“This is Sebastian. He has become my special friend in the palace. Where are you going?”
“I really don’t know,” Anson said. “Ohean is about to show me something.”
Ohean did not explainwhat that something was, but simply said, “We need horses.”
One of the guards came from his post and greeted Ohean.
“We’ll be needing horses,” the wizard told him. “We have some place to be.”
“I can go right to the stables,” Sebastian said, trotting off.
“Your Grace, you’ll be needing a guard,” the soldier said to Anson.
Anson thought about this, expecting Ohean would give him council, but when none was forthcoming, he said, “No. I think a witch and a sorcerer will be enough.”
Though the palace slept, the city did not, and they trotted through the wakeful streets of Yrrmarayn, past the taverns where folk were singing late at night and soldiers were tottering out half drunk.
“It’s a lovely place from here,” Anson said, “from a horse’s back.”
He said nothing else, but Inark, trotting beside him added, “But you are thinking of when you had no horses’s back?”
“Aye. Of what I was. Even in this city, some boy must be now what my friend Pol was not too long ago. If I am to be a King then thing ought to be as joyful in the low parts of my city as that Tower of Ansen so high above us.”
They trotted down and down, through the three walls that surrounded the concentrically higher parts of Yrrmarayn and then out of the South Gate, and onto the Road. They had trotted only a little while between the great, white stone dragons and the little houses that lined the roads and began the suburbs when suddenly Ohean reigned his white horse and cried out, and they began to gallop in earnest.
They rode past the guards who defended the city. They rode past the troops in their tents, all from the surrounding counties, those who, even at night were coming to the battle. They rode past King Gellen’s wood people, who, for the most part prepared to sleep outside. They rode past the little tract of wood. In the light of the white moon they rode past farms and small villages, and the spring air was cool but good and the little hills were in the distance, but soon Anson saw that there was only one hill, long and black and high in the night and Ohean, his silver white cloak settling about him, slowed his horse and stopped before this.
“I know,” Inark began in a small voice, “where we are.”
“I don’t,” Anson said,
“We are where I buried you thirtys centuries in the past,” Ohean said. “This is King Iffan’s Howe.”
The hill seemed long and low, but as they approached it, Anson could see it was high as the stone walls around the city. As they rode slowly down the path Ohean placed them on a winding place, white chalked and opening to a flat space. He dismounted and walked to a flat, long stone. It was up past their waist and long as three men, wide as several. When Inark peered across, it she saw that it did not lie only beside the hill, but before what they could barely see, of a great lentil.
Sebastian gasped, and looked over the lozenge shape of the black stone. The moon shone upon it and, just barely, just faintly, he could see whorls swirled into the stone, a faint light spinning through them.
“This is the door,” said Ohean.
“And what do we do?”
“What you do,” Anson said, placing a hand on Ohean’s shoulder, “is open the tomb.
“I think,” Ohean said after a moment, “It is for you to open the tomb. We have crossed over into Westrial now. This is the land of Locress, and this tomb is yours.”
Anson opened his mouth to ask how he would perform this task. Inark had already started to ask, and stopped herself. Now the Prince shrugged and placed his hands on the surface of the stone because it seemed that was appropriate. He closed his eyes, waiting for something to happen, feeling a little foolish, slightly half asleep. The air was cool on him and the smooth stone was now a little rough, cold on his hands. The slickness of the swirl pattern on the rock pressed upon his hands and then it was cooler.
“You are a mage,” Ohean reminded him. “As much as me. And not without resources.”
Callasyl!
I am here.
Lend me your strength.
Lean into the stone, the sword said, and accept your own.
And then a strength was moving through his palms, into the stone, back into him. He opened his eyes for just a time, and there was a gasp, at his ear, where Inark stood. Slowly, from his hands, into the patterns on the stone, silver white light had shone, and now it was spreading across the whole rock, now, there were patterns along the great lentil, hidden by the stone. The stone moved, to the right, soundlessly, and there was the opening of the Howe.
Anson stepped forward and entered the blackness, and now came Ohean, and then Inark and Sebastian, and as they entered there was a faint glow, and by the glow Sebastian wondered out loud. The walls were all of glass, polished blocks of smooth glass, like blocks of melting ice, lined the entry above and to their sides. The path went for sometime to and end, and then it turned to the right. Anson looked at Ohean. Ohean said nothing at all, only raising an eyebrow. And when Anson realized that Ohean wasn’t going to say anything at all, he said, “I guess we should go.”
And then they began traveling down the path.
Anson was going to say: “Familiar, isn’t it,” because he expected to be in a labyrinth. Only after the first turn he remained in that direction for a long while, and there was light the whole time. The more they traveled, the broader the way grew, and the the brighter the light. Once they turned right to left and it seemed to Anson that they were traveling in something like a deepening, ever brighter, ever higher, square. Now, as they came to the entrance of a great, bright hall, on the walls opposite them were carved, in frosted glass, trees, with tiny oval leaves, birds, sitting in the trees, lights burning in the glass heights of the path until at last they arrived in a white chamber.
“It is like that first time,” Anson said. “Below the earth. But… not.”
“It is fitting,” said Ohean, “for that first treasure was for Theone, and a younger thing from another time. These gifts are for you, more ancient, and far more close.”
Anson was used, now, to entering first, to the truth that Ohean had stepped back in order that he might truly be a prince.
This was a room whose walls seemed like water. The floors were clear and glistening and at the end of the room, over a rising mound, glinted a silver pillar.
“Is it always like this?” Sebastian whispered, “under this hill?”
“Nay,” Ohean said. “In those days when Iffan died I remained her, disconsolate for a long while, and there was light, but when I left, and when I sealed the stone so that none but Iffan himself might open it, then it darkened forever. And these thirty centuries it has remained so.”
Even while he was speaking, the top of the silver pillar opened and there were, unfolding from it, branches of silver, and budding from them, silver white leaves. All of the branches glowed, and now Anson saw this was a silver tree, and from it snowed softly, white stars, shedding a light over the once darkened mound. Now what was darkened was light, and they all saw that on a great base of crystal was a high casket of frosted glass, and at the top of it was a long transparent figure of a man in rest, Iffan First King of Essen.
With no noise, this top retreated, and then the sides of the casket fell away and now, for only a brief moment, there was, full armored, the body of the King. And then the air of the chamber touched it, and with a small puff, the body fell to dust.
Anson let out a small noise, but Ohean, a hand to his mouth, murmured, “What matters the old body when this one is present? Go forth and take what is yours.”
Anson looked back dumbly at Ohean, but he nodded and walked toward what now was only a base with a heap of dust upon it, though the ancient, tattered clothing remained, and as Anson neared it he saw, for just a moment, a shield, a sword, a necklace, a helm and then, suddenly, the heap of clothing rose up.
It rose and took form and suddenly greaved hands clutched the sword and, but the pressure on her hands, Inark realized Ohean had not expected this either, The helmet, which was tipped over, fell off, and from out of the neck hole there rose a head. The empty slippers filled and then firmed with feet and, before them, nut browned, green eyed, golden haired, stood one like Anson, but not like Anson, older, a thin beard bordering his face. Sebastian sank, trembling to his knees. Iffan, King of the Chyr and Locress.
Anson, mouth half opened, went from Iffan, to Ohean behind him.
“But… how… But.. you said…”
“However many times a soul come into this life, each life is its own life,” Ohean said. “It is like… a signet ring. And you are the stamp. And…” Ohean looked to Iffan… “You are the stamp.”
He looked lovingly, strangely, at Iffan.
“I ended the day I died,” Iffan said. “There is nothing after me that I know.”
“But…” Anson looked to him. “I could… I would… remember you? Being you?”
Iffan nodded.
“I would remember all the lives,” Anson said. He looked to Ohean. “All of our lives. Even Avred Oss. For Avred Oss was not the first, but the last. I would be King of Locress. The King before and to come and to come again.”
“For that is who you are,” Iffan told him, though Ohean said nothing. “You would remember if you were joined to me. I would become you. We would not be two imprints, but one.”
“That is really why I am here,” Anson said, “Isn’t it?”
He looked to Ohean, and then to Iffan.
“Ohean thought you were here for other gifts,” Iffan said. “But true enough, it is for this.”
“Well,” Anson said as this were a matter of fixing a wheel on a wagon, “how do I do this?”
Iffan stretched his hands out, and he said, “Press you hands to my own.”
Anson waited only a moment, and then he did, and when his palms touched with Iffan’s, he shuddered as one shocked, and both of their hands were like pools stones had been dropped in, rippling a little. Looking at each other gravely, they walked into one another while Inark and Sebastian looked on, amazed, and the merging form was light, pale white, and then there stood Anson, and he turned around to behold Ohean, but his face was graver now, and Ohean stepped forward, looking younger himself, and he touched Anson’s cheek.
“My name is Iffan,” Anson said now. “That was what my mother named me, and that is who I will be. Iffan the Twice Born.”
He was quiet again. Now, they realized, he bore not only Callasyl with the gleaming beryl in its hilt, and the stone which hung about his throat, and now he bore the shield with the green tree over the white. The light from the silver tree was snowing down, much slower now, and Anson, now Iffan, said, “This is my land, and I am the King, and I feel it crying, Ohean.”
He looked at the rest of them.
“We must go. It is day, and the battle has begun.”
TOMORROW WE RETURN TO IF I SHOULD FALL
YRRMARAYN
The wide corridors of the palace were all in blue white darkness but for the occasional torch, and they went down these until they came to the main hall, before the throne room.
Today it had been filled with joyous people and the light of the sun. Now it was in cool darkness, as if there was nothing but peace, and no one was preparing for war. Out past this hall was a courtyard, filled with white moonlight, and palace guards stood at either side of the great gate.
“Wait!” they heard someone call out of the darkness.
And it was Inark, a great cloak wrapped about her. It flapped behind her in the breeze. Beside her was a young man, her same height but bound to grow taller, and she said,“This is Sebastian. He has become my special friend in the palace. Where are you going?”
“I really don’t know,” Anson said. “Ohean is about to show me something.”
Ohean did not explainwhat that something was, but simply said, “We need horses.”
One of the guards came from his post and greeted Ohean.
“We’ll be needing horses,” the wizard told him. “We have some place to be.”
“I can go right to the stables,” Sebastian said, trotting off.
“Your Grace, you’ll be needing a guard,” the soldier said to Anson.
Anson thought about this, expecting Ohean would give him council, but when none was forthcoming, he said, “No. I think a witch and a sorcerer will be enough.”
Though the palace slept, the city did not, and they trotted through the wakeful streets of Yrrmarayn, past the taverns where folk were singing late at night and soldiers were tottering out half drunk.
“It’s a lovely place from here,” Anson said, “from a horse’s back.”
He said nothing else, but Inark, trotting beside him added, “But you are thinking of when you had no horses’s back?”
“Aye. Of what I was. Even in this city, some boy must be now what my friend Pol was not too long ago. If I am to be a King then thing ought to be as joyful in the low parts of my city as that Tower of Ansen so high above us.”
They trotted down and down, through the three walls that surrounded the concentrically higher parts of Yrrmarayn and then out of the South Gate, and onto the Road. They had trotted only a little while between the great, white stone dragons and the little houses that lined the roads and began the suburbs when suddenly Ohean reigned his white horse and cried out, and they began to gallop in earnest.
They rode past the guards who defended the city. They rode past the troops in their tents, all from the surrounding counties, those who, even at night were coming to the battle. They rode past King Gellen’s wood people, who, for the most part prepared to sleep outside. They rode past the little tract of wood. In the light of the white moon they rode past farms and small villages, and the spring air was cool but good and the little hills were in the distance, but soon Anson saw that there was only one hill, long and black and high in the night and Ohean, his silver white cloak settling about him, slowed his horse and stopped before this.
“I know,” Inark began in a small voice, “where we are.”
“I don’t,” Anson said,
“We are where I buried you thirtys centuries in the past,” Ohean said. “This is King Iffan’s Howe.”
The hill seemed long and low, but as they approached it, Anson could see it was high as the stone walls around the city. As they rode slowly down the path Ohean placed them on a winding place, white chalked and opening to a flat space. He dismounted and walked to a flat, long stone. It was up past their waist and long as three men, wide as several. When Inark peered across, it she saw that it did not lie only beside the hill, but before what they could barely see, of a great lentil.
Sebastian gasped, and looked over the lozenge shape of the black stone. The moon shone upon it and, just barely, just faintly, he could see whorls swirled into the stone, a faint light spinning through them.
“This is the door,” said Ohean.
“And what do we do?”
“What you do,” Anson said, placing a hand on Ohean’s shoulder, “is open the tomb.
“I think,” Ohean said after a moment, “It is for you to open the tomb. We have crossed over into Westrial now. This is the land of Locress, and this tomb is yours.”
Anson opened his mouth to ask how he would perform this task. Inark had already started to ask, and stopped herself. Now the Prince shrugged and placed his hands on the surface of the stone because it seemed that was appropriate. He closed his eyes, waiting for something to happen, feeling a little foolish, slightly half asleep. The air was cool on him and the smooth stone was now a little rough, cold on his hands. The slickness of the swirl pattern on the rock pressed upon his hands and then it was cooler.
“You are a mage,” Ohean reminded him. “As much as me. And not without resources.”
Callasyl!
I am here.
Lend me your strength.
Lean into the stone, the sword said, and accept your own.
And then a strength was moving through his palms, into the stone, back into him. He opened his eyes for just a time, and there was a gasp, at his ear, where Inark stood. Slowly, from his hands, into the patterns on the stone, silver white light had shone, and now it was spreading across the whole rock, now, there were patterns along the great lentil, hidden by the stone. The stone moved, to the right, soundlessly, and there was the opening of the Howe.
Anson stepped forward and entered the blackness, and now came Ohean, and then Inark and Sebastian, and as they entered there was a faint glow, and by the glow Sebastian wondered out loud. The walls were all of glass, polished blocks of smooth glass, like blocks of melting ice, lined the entry above and to their sides. The path went for sometime to and end, and then it turned to the right. Anson looked at Ohean. Ohean said nothing at all, only raising an eyebrow. And when Anson realized that Ohean wasn’t going to say anything at all, he said, “I guess we should go.”
And then they began traveling down the path.
Anson was going to say: “Familiar, isn’t it,” because he expected to be in a labyrinth. Only after the first turn he remained in that direction for a long while, and there was light the whole time. The more they traveled, the broader the way grew, and the the brighter the light. Once they turned right to left and it seemed to Anson that they were traveling in something like a deepening, ever brighter, ever higher, square. Now, as they came to the entrance of a great, bright hall, on the walls opposite them were carved, in frosted glass, trees, with tiny oval leaves, birds, sitting in the trees, lights burning in the glass heights of the path until at last they arrived in a white chamber.
“It is like that first time,” Anson said. “Below the earth. But… not.”
“It is fitting,” said Ohean, “for that first treasure was for Theone, and a younger thing from another time. These gifts are for you, more ancient, and far more close.”
Anson was used, now, to entering first, to the truth that Ohean had stepped back in order that he might truly be a prince.
This was a room whose walls seemed like water. The floors were clear and glistening and at the end of the room, over a rising mound, glinted a silver pillar.
“Is it always like this?” Sebastian whispered, “under this hill?”
“Nay,” Ohean said. “In those days when Iffan died I remained her, disconsolate for a long while, and there was light, but when I left, and when I sealed the stone so that none but Iffan himself might open it, then it darkened forever. And these thirty centuries it has remained so.”
Even while he was speaking, the top of the silver pillar opened and there were, unfolding from it, branches of silver, and budding from them, silver white leaves. All of the branches glowed, and now Anson saw this was a silver tree, and from it snowed softly, white stars, shedding a light over the once darkened mound. Now what was darkened was light, and they all saw that on a great base of crystal was a high casket of frosted glass, and at the top of it was a long transparent figure of a man in rest, Iffan First King of Essen.
With no noise, this top retreated, and then the sides of the casket fell away and now, for only a brief moment, there was, full armored, the body of the King. And then the air of the chamber touched it, and with a small puff, the body fell to dust.
Anson let out a small noise, but Ohean, a hand to his mouth, murmured, “What matters the old body when this one is present? Go forth and take what is yours.”
Anson looked back dumbly at Ohean, but he nodded and walked toward what now was only a base with a heap of dust upon it, though the ancient, tattered clothing remained, and as Anson neared it he saw, for just a moment, a shield, a sword, a necklace, a helm and then, suddenly, the heap of clothing rose up.
It rose and took form and suddenly greaved hands clutched the sword and, but the pressure on her hands, Inark realized Ohean had not expected this either, The helmet, which was tipped over, fell off, and from out of the neck hole there rose a head. The empty slippers filled and then firmed with feet and, before them, nut browned, green eyed, golden haired, stood one like Anson, but not like Anson, older, a thin beard bordering his face. Sebastian sank, trembling to his knees. Iffan, King of the Chyr and Locress.
Anson, mouth half opened, went from Iffan, to Ohean behind him.
“But… how… But.. you said…”
“However many times a soul come into this life, each life is its own life,” Ohean said. “It is like… a signet ring. And you are the stamp. And…” Ohean looked to Iffan… “You are the stamp.”
He looked lovingly, strangely, at Iffan.
“I ended the day I died,” Iffan said. “There is nothing after me that I know.”
“But…” Anson looked to him. “I could… I would… remember you? Being you?”
Iffan nodded.
“I would remember all the lives,” Anson said. He looked to Ohean. “All of our lives. Even Avred Oss. For Avred Oss was not the first, but the last. I would be King of Locress. The King before and to come and to come again.”
“For that is who you are,” Iffan told him, though Ohean said nothing. “You would remember if you were joined to me. I would become you. We would not be two imprints, but one.”
“That is really why I am here,” Anson said, “Isn’t it?”
He looked to Ohean, and then to Iffan.
“Ohean thought you were here for other gifts,” Iffan said. “But true enough, it is for this.”
“Well,” Anson said as this were a matter of fixing a wheel on a wagon, “how do I do this?”
Iffan stretched his hands out, and he said, “Press you hands to my own.”
Anson waited only a moment, and then he did, and when his palms touched with Iffan’s, he shuddered as one shocked, and both of their hands were like pools stones had been dropped in, rippling a little. Looking at each other gravely, they walked into one another while Inark and Sebastian looked on, amazed, and the merging form was light, pale white, and then there stood Anson, and he turned around to behold Ohean, but his face was graver now, and Ohean stepped forward, looking younger himself, and he touched Anson’s cheek.
“My name is Iffan,” Anson said now. “That was what my mother named me, and that is who I will be. Iffan the Twice Born.”
He was quiet again. Now, they realized, he bore not only Callasyl with the gleaming beryl in its hilt, and the stone which hung about his throat, and now he bore the shield with the green tree over the white. The light from the silver tree was snowing down, much slower now, and Anson, now Iffan, said, “This is my land, and I am the King, and I feel it crying, Ohean.”
He looked at the rest of them.
“We must go. It is day, and the battle has begun.”
TOMORROW WE RETURN TO IF I SHOULD FALL
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! We are learning so much about the past that relates to the present. So Anson is Iffan now? It is cool to read about his past lives. Great writing and I look forward to If I Should Fall tomorrow.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Yes Anson is Iffan, but then Anson always was Iffan. Past lives. They're complicated.
