SOUTHERN WESTRIAL
VAHAYAN HILL
They ate a small supper on the hill, but Isobel and Myrne ate nothing at all.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve done this,” Isobel said.
“Izza,” said Myrne. “We have never done this. And you have never been pregnant.”
“I’ll be fine. The baby will be fine. We’ll all be fine Remember what Mother Illis used to say.”
“Everything you do at this moment is a version of what you have done before,” Myrne nodded. “Well, then.”
As the two women talked, the men did not speak. As the servant of Ohean, Wolf had only seen Cedd at a distance, and Cedd had never seen him at all. But now, as he looked at the other king they, indeed all in that tent, seemed to be saying to each other, “We are excluded from this. These women are a thing we are not.”
Far from their courts, and in gowns and cloaks of dull brown and black, barefoot now as the day was passed, their dark hair hanging from one white face, on brown, the two young women did not looked as much queens as they did witches, and Wolf remembered the tales of old times when to be a queen was to be an enchantress.
“Wolf,” Myrne said, touching his hand, “It is time for you all to to go. Would you be so kind as to occasionally tend the fire if… we forget.”
Wolf had used the crowns with his wife, but never without her. Magic was not a thing he was overly comfortable with, and he had seen her cast out her spirit to search for things. She meant, he knew, not ‘if we forget’, but ‘if we are so out of our bodies we cannot attend to them’.
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“Then she is truly a witch after all,” Francis remarked when they were outside of the tent and the sky was darkening.
“Aye,” Wolf said.
“How do you feel about that, King Osric?”
Wolf raised an eyebrow.
“I had heard in times past the Hale killed their men of magic and since the Communion we have all tried to repress it.”
“I was raised by Ohean Penannyn in Rheged,” Wolf said. “I am not mage, but I respect it. And there is no telling my wife anything. That’s the first lesson.”
Francis Pembroke nodded as he gathered wood with Wolf, and he said, “I’m sure the King has thanked you for coming to our aid. I must as well, though I perceive you could not have done it for love of him but, I am guessing, for the sake of Ohean, somehow.”
“And for Anson,” Wolf said. “Mainly for Anson. But Myrne did it for Isobel.”
“Yes,” Francis said as they came nearer the tent. “Everyone loves the Queen.”
“How long have you?” Wolf asked. And then he said, before Francis dropped the wood,. “I am sorry. Only I could see it in your eyes, and I know well that, though the King respects his wife, he can love her no more than as a sister. That is a damn fine woman in there, and she should have love.”
Francis was grateful that the sky was darkening, for his cheeks were hot.
“The King himself has said as much. To her and specifically to me.”
“Ah,” Wolf said, “then he is a better man that I figured him for.”
As they entered the tent the fire was burning low and, on the other side of it, hands stretched to each other while they sat, legs folded under them, the two queens were chanting, eyes closed:
Mema ek dekak vē da Raven sadahaṭama
mava vē sohoyuriyō vē! "
mema ek, deka, tuna, vē,
sohoyuriyō mava vana atara,
ema diyaṇiya vana gnāṇaya æta
samasta dæka æta manasikāraya
vaḍā behevin pahata, an̆duru
striya hā minisā saha
ādaravantayangē vē dakvā ihata,
kumarun vē , æta bera,
æta maraṇa kaṭayutu rōda hatara,
paha nam, eya duma hā hayavana,
ginnen hā kuṇāṭuva, sadahaṭama
upan æta æta!
As Wolf stoked the fire, and Francis briefly looked over Isobel, the women continued to chant and did not break off. Wolf looked up at Francis and nodded, and Francis nodded and the two of them walked out of the tent, Francis closing the flap behind him. This Wolf had at once the comradeliness of a common soldier and the courtliness of a king.
To the south, past the hill, the Dauman armies were camped, and underneath them, on the side of Westrial sat, large as some castles, the skyliners, their smooth sides shining faintly in firelight. About the ships were the armies of Westrial and those which had come with King Osric. Singing could be heard from around campfires and, above them, the stars rose higher, the Wanderer blazing in the east.
Now Francis saw clearer what he had just began to see in the distance, a rider threading his way through the camp and then coming up the hill to where the kings and Teryn, Adrian, Linalla and Cody were. As the rider came nearer, Francis could see she was a woman making so boldly and so unimpeded for the kings and now, as she came to them, she dismounted from a black horse and pushed back her hood. She was a Royan woman, neither old nor young, though her hair was long and thick and black and she said, “Where are the Queens?”
“Madam,” Anthony Pembroke said, “You cannot simply ride up here and ask to see—”
“Wolf!” the woman turned to King Osric, her voice changing, “show me the Queens.”
“Yes, Lady,” Wolf said simply.
The woman turned to King Cedd and charged, “Watch the horse,” and then, as if he were a stable hand and not the King of Westrial, she left him.
Without question or impediment, he led this woman to the tent and Prince Ethan said, “She is a witch too. You can tell it, and probably from the Rootless Isle. A witch’s business is a witch’s business and not for us to inquire upon.”
“It may be,” Francis reasoned, “that they called for her.”
Cedd said nothing, but only looked into the fire.
As the dark woman entered the tent, though they had not broken their chanting for anyone else or acknowledged anyone else, Myrne and Isobel suddenly looked up, and the dark woman said, “Daughters. Two is good, but three is perfection.”
And then, as Wolf turned to go, the woman sat down with them, and they joined hands in a circle, chanting.
