“I will tell you about the Wolf, and save the Dragon for later.”
- Anson Aethelyn
At last I parted from the Travelers, when they were going north and I toward the sea. I was surprised when Ralph came with me, and he said, “You don’t have the tongue of Rheged and you are not from Sussainy. You do not know this land at all, I do not think, or how to get to Cair Daronwy.”
I did not deny him, He was my dragon, or so I thought. We traveled under the stars and under the high sun through the cities which were growing larger, hanging off of the sea cliffs like dangerous grey acrobats, and beneath us the sea slowly rolled into coves and crashed upon rocks and crumbling cliffs. Sea birds winged and the smell of salt was in the cool air. We could make it to Cair Daronwy before the month was out.
One morning we stayed in a cave, not feeling much like going to the inn and the town below, and I cursed Ralph for not buying a horse and he said, “Could you afford two? And then I simply shrugged. This, he said, was the last day of our journey anyway.
The sky was more and more grey and as we reached the cave, it gave up its rain. In the cave Ralph said, “I will make a fire.”
“How?” I demanded, sneezing and cursing him.
“I am a craftsman,” he said. “Just watch.”
He struggled with the wood in the cave for sometime before I took mercy on the both of it, and said a drying spell over the wood.
“Now,” I said.
He frowned up at me, but in a few minutes the fire was going. I lay an enchantment on it and Ralph said, “We have all our dry clothes?”
“We do,” I nodded.
He began to undress by the light of the fire, his perfect body golden brown, his buttocks the firmest, brownest globes, his breast high and proud, the fire russet on his curls. He smelled of the sweat of the day, and he stepped out into the rain and I knew he wanted me to come. I wanted to come to him. I stripped quickly and came out into the rain, but it was cold to me and Ralph laughed as he spluttered in the blue grey darkness where the water and storm hid us from view. He kissed me then, and his mouth tasted of the cigarettes we had smoked and of lunch, and when I kissed his throat there was still on his skin, the saltiness of the sweat of the day. He brought me into the cave, and I fell to my knees taking him in my mouth. He looked up to the heaven’s, hands open like one rejoicing, and I felt the power of desire running through me. In the end we lay bathed in the warmth of the fire, curled like a two headed serpent pleasuring each other on our clothes pile while the rain poured outside. His mouth opened on me and he cried out, arching, filling my mouth with the slick heat of his coming.
We ate in time, and later that night, he lay down and guided me inside of him, urging me to ride him as I had never done before, losing control, giving a cry louder than his, I felt my body shaking, my teeth rattling, pulled my soul back to me as it seemed to by flying away while over and over again, I shot my seed deep inside of him.
Exhausted we slept.
The Royan are far older than the Sendics, the name we give the Ayl and the Hale. Royan was a name we came by only later. Of old we were called the Ossar, the Children of Osse and Innis Ossar was the ancient name of this whole land. The people of Ossar before the Rufanians came were Ossar and even before the Ossar were the Tribes, the First and their kin, the Itzumi and the Chan in the far north.
“In the most ancient of times, to the east and far to the east, past the shores of Solea,” my mother had told me when I was a boy, “into the Inner Sea, and further than that, on the shore of the Ebony Sea which is further than you can imagine right now, but which you may see in time, there was a city called Amar, and it was the capital of great land.”
“Is this a fairy tale?”
“You can take it as one, and many people have, but you would do better to listen.”
So I listened, wrapping my blanket tighter about me.
“There was a mighty race of folk called the Nefil. Some say they were relatives of the people of Amar, but both were might in magic in the morning of the world, and after a long war, the Gods sent a great flood which spoile the world. After that flood was the time of Osse.”
“Osse, the oldest of our fathers, had a vision from Addiwak, and the Goddess commanded him to settle even further west, beyond the Inner Sea, but most of his people would not have it. Five ships though, left with him, and they sailed even further, they sailed to this land. There were already older people living there, and it was from the mixing of the old and the new that the Royan were born.”
“But what of the others left behind, the other Amar, in Eteria.”
“Many years past. They forgot their magic and in time married with the other folk of that land. They married with other races as had we, and in time rose one among their number called Rufus. He had a brother named Romelas and they decided to build a great city, but there was a ridiculous quarrel, and so he killed Romelus and named the city after himself, Rufus.”
“The Rufanians?”
“In time,” Mother said, “they founded that great empire that came even here, and so we are kin to them, of a sort. But the Royan had a long history already. As I have said, some of the Royan married with the Tribes and Travelers of the low lands in what is now Sussainy, the land of the Ayl and of the Hale, but some other wed with the High Folk, the Hidden Folk and became people of magic, and so developed the Da’Shayne and the Ossain, the oldest Royan. In time, from across the sea, from Solahn and from the people who lived in Daumany before the Daumans came more people, and these became the Hayarami and so the three trees of the Royan were born, and among these many other tribes.”
“But what about Rheged?” I said. “Where does Rheged come from?”
“That is another tale. A later one. But—”
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of distant bells, high up.
“Let us to the great hall,” Ralph shot up with a swiftness that belied his usual languor.
I had a difficult time catching up with him, and now the hall was filling with members of the household. Ralph waited for me, and now my uncle came, followed by Raleigh as the bells continued to toll and a low horn blew from the highest towers.
“The Dayne,” Prince Amr reported. “Their dreadnoughts have been spotted. They’re two days away.”
“Ash wasn’t here last time,” my cousin Idris said. “He is now. Maybe he can help repel them.”
Or we can get in our own ships and turn them away,” Amr said, touching his sword.
Now the hall was filled with various suggestions of what to do, but I said, “Let them come.”
No one heard me, there were so many ideas, so I, Ralph and my grandfather the King stood silent.
I put up my hand until people began to see it, and some turned to me.
“Let them come,” I repeated.
“What?” It was Ralph who looked at me as if I was mad.
But now I was walking away from them, through the growing crowd, heading back to higher towers. For the first time I felt powerful and in my place since I had come to this castle, and so I shouted back, “Let them come!”
