I vowed to spend the day walking around the palace, but though I went down a few halls I was more or less lost without Raleigh. and from what I saw when I looked out of the windows, the castle was many towers, many buildings, multiple courtyards, a small city. I had spent all my life on the Rootless Isle, and then in wide open spaces. I didn’t know what to do. At last I retreated to my rooms, to looking through books and, at last, to sleep.
It was not Raleigh who came to take us to supper, but a new servant named Rafferny. I would come to know a great deal of him in time, but for now I knew only he was tall and lemon colored and dignified, not much on talking, which was fine as I was not at the moment much on listening.
He led us further than we had gone before. Ralph had eaten when I asked food to be sent to the rooms and I, of course, had dined with Grandfather earlier. But right now, at the stair that had led up to the small hall, we now followed a stair that led down to another floor, and it wound down for some time before coming out into a wide, high but private seeming hall of white stone lit with great swinging brass lanterns and from here we entered into the feasting hall, greater and higher than anything I’d ever seen. It was filled with well appointed Royan, and even I, who had seen the Three Ladies, and the wonders of the Great Forest, was nearly water kneed at the site. I could only wonder what Ralph thought, and when I turned around I said, “Stop gaping and close your mouth.”
We were led to the high table, Ralph beside me, me to the left of my grandfather in his great high backed chair, and on the other side of me Prince Amr, who had surrendered his rightful place, and his son Idris as well as an old, but beautiful, dark skinned woman with hair like twisting silver wires. This was Ermengild, Queen of Chyr, kinswoman to my grandfather and, therefore, to me. These were the days when her heir and daughter had just disappeared and often she was inconsolable with grief.
All of the meal was an unwelcome blur of too much conversation but, I learned, uncommonly sober, because of the deaths of so many men. The long high windows displayed the darkening sky going from deep purple to black, and, in time, quiet, we threaded our way out of the hall, and out of the palace, a long and winding journey and into the hills.
In the shadows we saw mounds and now, as we approached the hills, bearing torches I saw they were biers with the dead. In the center of them was my uncle Geranhir, the kindly man who had died under my care. As I stood beside Ralph, my hood pulled up, and those bearing the torches they tried to preserve against the wind placed them at the bottom of the biers, a tall, fierce woman, grey robed, high breasted with short twiggy hair stepped forward and sang.
“From the very abyss I cry to you,
O Varayan!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Varayan, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
I wait for the Varayan, my soul waits,
and in his arm I hope!”
As she sang, and some of the people hummed in a low rhythm, as the wind blew on, the low fires at the bottom of the piers blossomed, and all around us great torches to the dead rose up. They burned well into the night, until there was nothing but ashes. Until we waited for them to cool and to sweep the ashes into urns and, our dead consumed, carry their remains back home.
—AND RALPH?
—Yes? What of him?-
—What became of him?
—Why, he lives, and lives very well, I might say.
—But how did you know him?
—I have told you.
—But you are leaving something out.
—I leave much out.
—Do not leave this out.
—After Thano, around Thano, was Ralph.
—The love of your life?
—Do not be jealous.
—I am not being jealous, merely inquiring.
—You are being slightly jealous and I am not going to lie.
—But you have never spoken of him, and I have never seen him?
—Have I seen every man you have loved?
Silence
—He was a love of my life. A love of this long life.
A fuller truth, one we think of once Anson is asleep, one which stays inside of us as the fire in the forest banks and darkness comes….
In the company of the Travelers was a tall Royan named Ralph. He was handsome and dragon eyed and I wondered if he might be the one I had seen in the card spread that said I would be drawn to a dragon. Still, I had spent most of my life alone, and so when I saw that, whenever I sat up late at night, looking up at the stars, rehearsing the songs I had learned in the woods, or practicing my magic, he was coming near, and sitting by me I said, “Friend, Ralph. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing at all,” he smiled at me almost foolishly, foolishly, but like a dragon all the same. “I just like to be around you.”
I nodded my head.
“I have had very little of people being around me in my life,” I said.
“Could you bear it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said at last. “I think I could.”
The fire crackled, and there was the sound of a log falling. But I could hear nothing else, and we were far from the Travelers, only under the stars. The wind came through the grasses, and I felt Ralph’s hand touch mine. My first instinct was to draw back, but I did not.
We were like that for some time, and had he moved to kiss me I might have moved away in shock, but he was more direct. His hand went between my thighs, softly, gently, and I felt the heat going through me, my sex rising. I was nearly lost.
Then, just like that, I wondered, what shame? What embarrassment? You are in the very dark with no one to see you. And here he is daring what he is daring. Why make it difficult? I stood up for him and I felt him loosen my trousers and pull them down. Though he was taller, I drew him to me up so I could do the same. He smelled of light sweat, of earth and the heat of the day, the heat of his body. We stood together, silent. Without words we lifted each others shirts and stood silent and naked on the grassy plain, until I perceived that he was nervous, but I was not nervous anymore. I was stiff as a board, humming with energy and power, and so I lay down in the grass and drew Ralph to me.
