Fifty- Six
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 and the counts had all but prepared to roll over and allow Bellamy to walk into their land, sit on the White Throne with his nothing of a wife? How quickly everything had happened. Maud had 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 hadn’t lived in Thaary since she was six, did she know she could count on them? 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 spontaneous, and there they were met by General Aylahn and the eastern lords.
“Centuries 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 folk from all over came to 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 too. 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 splitting head with a cold or 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 Maud 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 and kept whispering to her that somehow, some way, he lived.
When she rose, Maud took up Ronnerick’s staff of black ebony, 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 and paved with flagstones of glass, opaque like stones in dark water. Cedar rafters in a spiderweb pattern supported a conical roof of brass. There was no dust here, 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 of 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 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, 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 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, Lord Axom of the 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 for 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 descend.”
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.”
CHYR
THE CITY OF
YRRMARAYN
The pale silverish walls of the crystal city of Yrrmarayn spread across the high hills at the head of the Saffern Estuary, its great gates dark as pewter, etched in whorling silver patterns. Across the calm water were the hills of Westrial. Three more walls inside of that first rose up higher on higher hills, and out of these walls houses of palest grey, silver grey, silver white rose up before glittering towers filled with windows windkingback the light. The the steep tile roves of houses and shops were white and pale slate, but the towers and turrets of palaces and great houses wer not copper, but burnished burning silver, pennants snapping white, and above them all was Cair Paryn, the Crystal Castle, all windows winking back 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 The Green Tree of Solea with all its 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 together quiet, and finally she said, “It is… magnificent. Truly it is and yet…” she looked to him.
In a small voice, Soren, 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 in 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.”
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 understood 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 joy 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 took her hand, and the general’s braids were falling loose around her dark face.
“See, see,” she said, and Maud 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.
Now Essily spoke to Maud.
“Child of Yarrow,” she said, taking Maud’s face in her hands, “We are well met, and this well done!”
“I…” Maud began, and she saw Ronnerick, leaning on his staff, come near her, and the young, black haired woman was approaching also.
“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 Soren, whom 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 imprisoned. He is imprisoned 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 Theone’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 said, “My Lady, and my Lord.” And she knelt.
And then Essily 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!”
