Under the great tree, Ohean blinked his eyes. When he came awake, it was as if Anson was waking up too.
“Avred Oss,” Ohean said. “The last great king, he from whom the kings of Westrial and Hale, Rheged and Elmet are descended. He who in the dark days after the Empire had fallen, made one last glorious stand.”
“And you were Annatar, the great mage.”
“I have known it,” Ohean said, “but I could not remember it until now.”
“And in other times…”
“Other heroes.”
“And even in other worlds,” Anson said.
“Life after life, life reflecting upon life, and all the time we were together. And I feel myself stretching. If I I reach out I feel all of those lives.”
“In one world I am a king sleeping under a hill with knights and a great round table. In another, we are heroes at the beginning of time striding up mountains, fighting forests beasts. And in another, I saw you in a strange city, riding rails, carrying a great sword and…”
“And we need all of these lives,” Ohean said. “I could even see into the future of this one, but for now we must sink into the present. We have work to do, and the work has little to do with Cedd or your seat at Ondres.”
“For a while I thought we would join Wolf and Myrne, but no.”
“No,” Ohean shook his head.
“We go south, past Sussail, out of the lands of the Royan and of the Sendics.
“We head to the Dauman Marches.”
THE DAUMAN MARCHES
Theone made good time throughout the night. The horse understood her, and she didn’t give the mare a name because she assumed she must already have one, and if they remained together long enough, then surely the horse would tell her.
At first, when she knew she should leave, a heavy weight fell on her heart, a tiredness and a fear and a we-might-as-well-give-up-ness. But as soon as she had mounted the horse and, with a note to the family, promised to send her back though she didn’t know how, Theone’s heart lightened as she rode away, down, down and south, not stopping. The horse was glad of a run too, and both their hearts were light as they galloped through the night. In an hour’s time she made the foot journey of one day.
“The wind is in you,” Theone bent down to whisper in her ear.
Deep into the night when she saw a river, Theone guided the red horse from the road, down to the water. The night was safer when there was a horse to mount, and she never realized how bleak and sad she had been until she wasn’t.
“That man… at least I know he is after me. At least he has a face,” Theone said half to the horse and half to herself. “And he is in a tavern in an inn tonight. Probably finding out about me.”
She thought, though she had a horse, chances were that his horse was faster, and though she was ahead of him, chances were he could sniff out her path.
“Olea, lead me to a good place. Lead me to a secret place where I can rest. Or send me someone,” Theone whispered. “Please, Lady.”
“My dear,” she whispered into the horse’s tender ear, “we’re going to have to ride again, and very soon.
“Lady, forgive me but I am not asking safety of you. I demand it, Lady. I’m sorry but I need this. I demand this.”
She was so firm she knew it was a done thing, and for the first time, as she mounted, Theone was not afraid.
“MY NAME IS THEONE,” she declared, because they had tried to tell her she didn’t have a name.
She had loved her father, though her father had done bad things. So he said. She now knew that he was like that man in the tavern, like the men she knew all too well. He’d born the Black Star on his wrist, same as she did now.
“I came back to myself,” is what he told her. “They don’t let that happen. I came back to myself.”
He had loved her mother and they had left together. They’d thought that the Borders were a far enough place to go. Mother had red brown skin and eyes the color of caramel. Mother had black, black hair like Theone herself. She came from the Western lands. “We must go back there,” she’d insisted.
She was right, but Father didn’t think so at the time.
Then, one year after Mother had died, They came on their tall black horses, swathed in their dark cloaks and they said, “You have something that belongs to us.”
Father had fought them, but he was just an old man now, and they knocked him down. Or had they killed him? They took her away. One man lifted Theon up. She was nine years old, and he said into her ear as he sat her before him, “You have no name. None of you do. He let you think you did.”
And they rode off.
They rode for many days, and she went from horse to horse. She cried the first day, but the man she rode with told her, “Stop, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Even at nine she had some idea of the horrible things men could do in order to give you something to cry about. So she shut up and they went east and east until they arrived at the Place of the Hand.
Unceremoniously she was dropped off in the midst of girls like herself, most black or dark haired, many paler than she. There was one extraordinary girl, fair with golden hair. They were kept by sad eyed girls about thirteen years old. One was not sad at all. She said:
“Here we care for the girls. You are older so, though I’ll care for you, you can care for those there.”
“My name is Theone,” she said by way of introduction.
“You have no name,” the girl said, simply. “No one here does. No one here ever has.”
And then something changed in that girl’s eyes and she said, “But I’m going to get one. One day. I’m going to have bunches of sons. I’m going to have a great one. He will be a great Hand, and I will be Mother of the Hand.”
Theone didn’t know what she was talking about, and was certain that it wouldn’t do to ask, so she observed. The Hands, the Men with the Black Stars, she did not understand what they did, but as she grew older, she realized what she did. Or was supposed to. Her father had been one, and had fallen in love with one of the Women. He had taken that Woman away when he had left. That was her mother. But that was forbidden. Long ago the original Hands had abducted women. Some still did. When they had destroyed a village they took women and killed men. If a boy was fierce they took him too, raised him as a Hand. None of this happened any more. The Hands had long since stopped recruiting.
A Hand could neither love nor marry, but as a man he had needs. Once a week, or twice sometimes, or for the advanced ones, once in a month, a Woman was sent to fulfill the needs of a Hand. This did not mean a Woman left once a month. She might, depending upon her importance, her beauty or her talents be sent to several in one night. If she conceived she was secluded. If the child was a girl she was placed in the Nursery where Theone lived now and raised to repeat the whole cycle. If the child was male, that was something more like. The Woman went to the Great House where she raised that son until he was five and separated from her. If she wished she could choose to conceive again or be retired, but from then on she gained a name: Mother of a Hand, the greatest honor a Woman could have. She might, possibly, even leave the Place of the Hand and live as a free woman. That, theoretically, this whole system meant a Hand might one day get a child on his own daughter or his sister, that the creatures he used as his whores were most certainly his cousins, seemed of no consequence. At least he was not lying with his mother. And,, every generation or so, a new stock of Women was brought in from the outside to keep things fresh.
Theone gathered, though certainly not from being told—no one told her anything—that her mother had been one such recruit. She had come out of Ossar,from Chyr, or rather been taken. Chyr was the heart of the Royan Kingdoms, and her mother was beautiful and had the rarity of possessing a name. No one had ever tried to beat it out of her.
So it had been when Esnarra was brought to be part of the Women, and this is how Theone’s father had come to love her.
One of the Old Women—which was another way to be retired—told her this.
She was told this right before her fourteenth birthday.
On the day she turned fourteen, as she was being dressed all in black satin, her hair brushed to sleekness, one of the Women came to her and whispered, “Tonight, you shall go to a man.”
