SOLAHN
“I hate being here,” the Queen said from the roof of the Wheat Palace. “We’re not near the city. I feel far from everything, and there is no word from the son the Gods so recently returned to me.”
And then Yarrow touched the Queen’s hand, which Iokaste had not expected, and she squeezed it.
“No worries,” Yarrow said. “See, the armies are coming just as you desired.”
Beyond the palace were many tents, the blue of Macaena, the red of Ithank, the yellow banners of Tynarreos. There were the tents of the dukes of Baumand and Riverwide and always more riders were coming from the east.
“Any day now the allies from Armor will arrive.”
“Perhaps,” Iokaste said.
“No perhaps,” Yarrow shook her head. “It is your own land.”
“It is a fickle one. Armor stays powerful by not being rash. The king is a cousin and not a close one. Ilthanwy of Armor will always wait to see which way the wind blows.”
Yarrow said nothing, and just now she saw a rider coming toward the palace, across the fields, not over the road, and he was waving the red banner of a herald. Screaming, though he could not have seen her from this height: “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”
“Yarrow?” Iokaste put a hand out to the enchantress.
Linking hands and lifting their skirts they turned, went across the roof and headed for the stairwell back to the receiving hall of the palace.
This was a four story descent, and arriving in the hall of checked black and white stones, her brother came running up the steps.
“I know, Hektar,” she said. “We saw him riding from the palisade.”
The stairwell lead to a screen behind the dais and there a servant placed the circlet on Iokaste’s head and then she went around to sit on the throne, and all rose as the herald entered, with the herald’s privileges, running and screaming, “The word of the Queen.”
She nodded. He approached.
He was brown with traveling, and his stringy hair was chocolate colored. Colon of Hatzumemas. He murmured, “You Majesty, in riding from Penlacar I received one message, but met a dying man with an arrow in his back who gave me a second. The second first.”
The Queen nodded, trusting the herald’s judgment.
He passed her the letter and she read, her face tightening. She did not weep, rather she passed the letter to Yarrow.
Yarrow, passing it to Hektar, told him, “Rendan and Mehta have been abducted. Whoever has done it is asking for no ransom, but apparently seeks revenge has on Bellamy.”
“What does Rendan have to do with Bellamy?”
“Somehow they have mistaken him for his uncle,” Yarrow said. “The fools.”
She touched the Queen’s hand.
“By my art I will discover them. I go now,” she said, and the sorceress departed from the throne room.
As she was leaving, the herald said, “The other matter has to do with Bellamy.”
The Queen raised an eyebrow and the herald said, “He has done what we thought he would not attempt. He has united with Rufus of Daumany and they have put their men, combined with Phineas’s, on three fronts.
“Even I know that is a risk,” the Queen said.
“Chyr, he knows, does not have time to refuse him or Tealora, and as for us, he does not expect much fight out of you, I am afraid,” Colon replied.
“He has given the conquest of Chyr to Phineas, who desires it, but he is even now, riding in this direction to engage us.”
“But what of Rufus?” Hektar demanded.
Colon said, “Rufus of Daumany has other concerns entirely.”
Seven ships made their swift way across the water, and all were painted black, the many oars of each dipped in, came out of the water and the ships raced on. At their head was one with a white mast and on that mast was a black hand.
Under the mast, all wrapped in black, hands behind his back was the High Priest of Mozhudak, Phineas. For days a great look of triumph had been on his face, and then, yesterday it had turned still as stone and his eyes had narrowed. Beside him, his green eyes reflecting back the sea, was his Wand, Urzad.
One of the sailors, all in black, came up the deck and positioned himself to face Phineas.
“My Lord?”
Phineas looked down at him with raised eyebrow.
“My Lord, we will reach the coast of Chyr by the morning.”
“Good.”
“And if all is right, then Bellamy should already be nearing the stronghold of Queen Iokaste. There were rumors that the prince lived, but none have seen him. Iokaste is only the wife of a dead king and, soon Bellamy will have the victory over her.”
“Bellamy can hang himself,” Phineas declared stepping down. “The only capacity in which he is at all useful to me is as the husband of Tealora. He should have come immediately with her and received the crown. Where is she?”
“She is still in Penlacar.”
“Then she is not yet Queen,” Phineas said. “He thought he would treat Chyr like a leftover, to claim when he wished? He does not understand.”
“He understands that my lord wants it.”
Phineas frowned. “But he does not understand. He does not understand what Chyr is. He is a fool.”
“Let it not trouble my lord,” Urzad spoke up. “Whether he comes with Tealora tomorrow or the day after or in a year this still means there is no Queen and that Chyr is ripe to be taken.”
“You are right,” Phineas looked to his Wand. “You are always right, my Urzad.”
The ship’s captain said, “When we arrive, will we march across and enter Immrachyr by force?”
“Chyr?” Phineas snapped. “Chyr?”
General Fan blenched.
“Ohean himself, with Yarrow, entered Enrick Elkanahir with the express desire to take the Beryl from the hands of the Dark One. They destroyed the Temple in the hopes of taking that Beryl and putting it in the Crown of their Queen and that Queen was to sit on a throne in the Crystal City of Yrrmarayn which has awaited her all these years.
“No, we are not going to Immrachyr. We are marching into Yrrmarayn and when we arrive, we will raise it to the ground.”
“The Crystal City,” said Urzad, “will be the City of Ashes.”
YRRMARAYN
That night, as they stood on the parapet overlooking the sea, Princess Maud of Thaary turned to General Aylahn and confessed to the other woman, “I wish I’d had the proper coronation like I said.”
“There was no time.”
“And from the look of things even less time than we thought. Well,” Maud put down her binoculars, “I imagine they think the city’s filled with nothing but sad innocent people. Whatever the powers of Solahni spies and Phineas’s magic, not much of either can come into this land.”
“He has no idea we’re fortified.”
Maud smiled and said, “As much as I would love to lean down from the walls of the Crystal City itself and wave at our friend Phineas, I think it’s better that we send Admiral Basil with a fleet to engage them.
A smile spread across General Aylahn’s broad, dark face, and she fingered one of her thin braids. “They’re hoping to surprise us and—”
“And don’t even suspect we’re coming for them,” Maud concluded.
“Gives you a warm feeling inside.”
“Doesn’t it?” the Princess agreed.
UNDER THE EARTH
“Are you going to read to me out of that book of yours?” Ohean asked.
“Well, you’ve just woken up,” Anson said. “And you haven’t been well.”
“I fail to see what my waking up or my health for that matter have to do with my ability to hear one of your poems.”
Anson smiled at him.
“Read me something, or at least remember something.”
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“I can do that,” said Anson, lifting a finger. He crossed the room and went to his satchel. A moment later he pulled out the red and gold book which was a little battered now and half filled.
“What shall I sing? What is the type of song my Ohean needs?”
“Something that reminds me,” Ohean sighed and sat down, “of last night.” Then he said, “Not the whole demon smiting business, but afterward. In here. When you were the way you were.”
Anson colored and he said, “I had been so tense. I was afraid I’d lost you and I can’t lose you again.”
“Again?” Ohean said.
Anson pressed on, “I was wild with grief. I couldn’t get enough of you. And I don’t think you could get enough of me.”
Ohean shrugged and smiled. “I wasn’t complaining.”
Anson grinned and opened the book, beginning to read:
nude as birth
blowing out smoke
they had the same body
the same hands
he crushed out his cigarette, and kissed his other self
who could taste the remnants
for a moment, he breathed out smoke too
they were kissing and then very quickly
making love,
trying to keep quiet
body and brain
heart the same
same shit rushing through them…
that they were safe and protected,
innocent still
this just felt too good for words
utterly, totally, rough,
there was nothing but love and the taste of his body
“There should be more than that,” Anson commented.
“I think that’s plenty,” Ohean said, pulling on his tunic and scooping the larger man into the crook of his arm.
“I thought you were ill.”
“I told you I wasn’t too ill to listen.”
“Or apparently for other things.”
Ohean shrugged. Anson read:
fire
quaking
shaking
trembling
waking
the second coming and coming
and the erupting
hard, now opening.
he came
over me my lover moves quickly
breathes quickly
makes a strangled scream
his ass is soft as velvet,
solid as metal
“He is rigid in my arms.”
they hold each other
hot in the silence
“That,” Ohean said, lowering Anson’s face that he might kiss his chin, “is just about right.
“How dead I was,” he commented, “before you. Even when you came I did not recognize you.”
“Recognize me?” Anson said.
Ohean clarified. “I didn’t see that I had been sent to love you.”
There was a perfunctory rap on the door, and then Theone simply walked in.
“The two of you,” she said. “It’s great. It’s wonderful. I mean it’s glorious!”
They both looked at her.
“Dissenbark is awake.”
The first thing she demanded was to sit up and have something hot to drink. The second thing, upon discovering her discomfort, was to be led to a toilet. When she had returned, cussing and swatting off her would be helpers, she sat down in a chair and sipped the boillion Regni had poured her.
“So,” she said, “after it had been explained to her, “A true enchantress? Now how do you like that?”
“So she is like you?” Arvad said to Ohean.
“Like me, yes,” Ohean said. “But more like herself. A wizard is a wizard, a witch is a witch, though there are witchy enchanters and wizardly witches. The two do cross, and magic is magic. But witches are of the earth. Wizardry is from beyond the earth. We came, and our magic came from across the Sea in the land of the Infinite East.”
“That is what I thought,” Dissenbark said, sitting up straighter. “But it does not explain what I am. I have known conjure women, some. And they possessed some wizard lore. But they were not of great power, and they were not wizards. And I am no wizard. So, Ohean, if you can, tell what I am.”
“You are of the earth,” it was Essily who spoke. “This is why we knew you as a sister when you came.”
“And it is why being under the earth awakened you. Why you became so powerful here,” Ohean said.
Andvari and Regni nodded.
“You will have heard of Mahonry,” Essily said, “and of how the Gods sent him and the children of men from the Infinite East into this world. Some said it was a punishment but, of course, wiser ones knew they were sent here because this was the original place of Men. Men were made of the Earth as were the Muspel of fire. Men were made of earth as were the Dwarves, as were some of the Wood Folk. Their mother was Amana, and so they had to return here.”
“But some,” Regni said, “never left. Most of them died out or they married with the men who returned with Mahonry. But those who had never left had the power of the earth as many of those who had crossed the sea had enchantment and the power of the sea and beyond. Those who had the earthly power were the witches. In time that original enchantment died out for the most part.”
“Over time the powers of most witches became smaller and smaller. Fewer and fewer were trained. It became weaker. Those who possessed the gift had nothing or no one to awaken it,” said Essily.
“But you,” Regni told her, “have had much to awaken it. The Demon was the last impulse that called up the power in you. Now it will never go away.”
“I imagine,” she said, smiling at Ohean, “you’re enough to awaken something in me. Not to mention Essily and Yarrow and all that has happened.”
“Or Anson,” Essily reminded her.
“And,” Ohean added, “not to mention Theone, or Soren, or Kenneth.”
They, all three, looked at him, and Theone said, “I have the ability to scry. Some little things like that.”
“And we could both,” Kenneth looked at Soren, “cast little confusions or confoundments. But…”
“We’re not witches or anything,” Soren completed the thought. “Now that we’re not Hands, we’re not much of anything.”
“Where did you think the power of the Hand came from?” Andvari said in a chiding voice.
“From… Mozhudak. Or… Something.”
“You’ve paid no attention,” Regni shook his head. “The song. Remember the song.”
He recited:
Out of the ruin of Talmaze went the Men of Gozen
and settled they at the mouth of the Bay of Enlad,
and there they built the city that would be
the place of Mozhudak.
There, at the mouth of the world of the damned
they worshiped and there he leapt from the earth.
There they served him and made their pact,
half the priesthood, half the soldiers,
this the origin of all Hands.
The place they lived of old
was Enrick Elkanahir
though now men call it,
fairer, Ennalisa.
“You thought you were Dauman, and doubtless by now you must have some Dauman blood. But the Hands are the children of Gozen, enslaved by their own choice, the last of the children of Gozen. Those people did not come from the Utter East with Mahonry. They were the ones who stayed and—”
“A race of witches,” Theone said.
“Yes,” Andvari said. “That was the original reason we sided with you in the Time of Trouble and helped to build the Temple. Once your people were Earthborn. Before and after you were Hands… or the Women of the Hands, you were the Children of Gozen. And you, all of you, are witches.”
