CHYR
THE CITY OF
YRRMARAYN
Theone leaned against Soren’s chest in the great sudsy pool while he washed her hair.
“Do you know I had to send the attendants out?” she said. “They were going to bathe me. They want to have a coronation too. Not the attendants but these lords. I don’t understand any of this. We’ve got Phineas right out there on the water, our good old friend Phineas, and they can’t decide do we have a coronation first, or do we win the war and then have a good old crowning or what?”
Soren chuckled, scooping up handfuls of water to pour on her head, taking a sea sponge and squeezing suds onto her shoulders and rubbing her neck.
“They’re just excited.”
“And you are staying here tonight. With me? Right?”
“Where else would I stay?”
“Which reminds me, they must think you’re my husband?”
“Aren’t I?”
Theone turned around to see if he was being serious. This was one of the times she couldn’t tell.
“We’re going to have to have some sort of wedding. If I’m going to be the Queen, what are you?”
“The Queen’s fuck—”
“Watch your mouth,” Theone flicked water back on him.
Soren laughed and dunked her in the water. As Theone came up, spluttering, he sat up higher in the large pool and said, “No, I can’t really imagine that Ronnerick fellow introducing me like that.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned we are wed,” she said. “I just don’t know the… rubrics of the ritual.”
“What do rubrics matter?” Soren pronounced the word with some disdain.
“They matter a great deal when it comes to an heir.”
“Heir?” Soren put his sponge in the water and struck a foolish pose. “Ha! The old seed’s potent as all that?”
But then, in the next look Theone gave him, he blinked.
“Thea…” he began.
“Are you…?”
Theone nodded. “Maud has the Sight. She is… like us. Not a witch, but… witchy. And she saw it clear as anything. Inark never thought about it, but I went and asked her and she just looked at me and said, “Yep.” Just like that, and then went back to card reading. She’s studying that now.”
Soren still looked mystified and stupid. He wrapped his arms around her.
“Oh, we’ll take real good care of you this time.”
“You took excellent care of me the last time.”
“Better care,” Soren said. “And… and we can set all sorts of charms around you. This baby will be a prince. Or a princess. Nothing will happen this time.”
“Soren…” she began.
But in the warm water, suds over his body he still knelt there, holding the side of his face to her belly.
Despite the Dauman and Solahni ships in the harbor, there was a light mood in the city of Yrrmarayn. Once burnt, long forgotten, it was, once again, the center of things. And there was a Queen again, a Queen from out of legend who had passed through dark places and emerged from under the earth like Tanquare herself, and like the Goddess of Death who emerged to bring the spring, she brought the tall and handsome, bone white, black haired Prince Soren and all of his soldiers.
So even while there was fear, there was joy, and not just in the temples, but in the great halls, the old holy songs were heard:
“Varayan is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of Varayan, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
He is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: He shall help her, and that right early.
The foe raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
Erkovan and Eskovan are with us; the Varayan of the Hosts is our refuge.
That great palace had lain in ruins for centuries, and then all of the time of Ermengild’s reign, it had awaited her daughter, then her granddaughter. Day after day servants moved through it cleaning rooms that had never been dirtied, dusting tables where none had ever set, making and remaking beds in which none had lain. Tonight there was a Queen in the land, and tonight Ohean, or Owen, had returned from out of legend and he bore with him the King of Locrys.
Come, behold the works of the Varayan, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
Elladyl says, Be still, and know that I am She: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
Varayan of the Hosts is with us;
Elladyl who defends the Royan,
She is our refuge.
And as the music died, and as the night quieted there were new arrivals. The fires burned high in all the courts of the Glass Castle, and the gates were open to all. Indeed, this day Vandmen and Thaary men, princes, lords, servants, the golden skinned, the brown and the black, the white men long settled all mingled as one, Chryans, toasting each other with great joy. There were even seen those not entirely human, and though they were marveled over, none feared, for tonight, while the stars burned high, there was no space for fear.
These arrivals came all robed in blue, their blue robes swishing about them in the night except for one in red, and at the head of the blue robed me came one carrying a black wood staff, and when he stopped at the table of table of the Queen and the Man who would be King of Locrys, he lowered his hood and was the most handsome white man they had ever seen, alabaster, chiseled jaw with delicate elven features and thick lashes over his blue eyes.
“Derek Annakar!” Anson sprang up.
Theone knew not what to say, and Kenneth and Soren looked on him, blinking, thinking the same thing.
But Conn was around the table first and clinging to Derek who looked down on him and kissed him roughly.
Gabriel, Quinton, Matteo and Cal lowered their hoods along with some Conn did not know, and lastly, to the greater joy of Anson, Pol Kurusagan lowered his red hood.
“I sense,” Theone said, “that all of us have much in common, much to discuss.”
“My Lady,” Pol opened his arms and went to one knee, and others followed, even Conn, who was holding Derek’s hand.
That night, for Soren and Theone and for Kenneth as well was like a time when, sure no one was like them, they met others with whom they could share their experiences. From Theone and Soren, Derek learned more of Gozen, and Cal and Matteo spoke with Theone about the childhoods and youths where their bodies were given to others, and they had no say in it.
Soren said, “This conversation fills me with shame.”
“But it should not,” Calon said to him. “You were part of the same thing. It is only, when we came to the Temple, what we learned to do taught us to give pleasure and feel pleasure, and what you were taught was the same thing, but with pleasure removed, the body as a tool. You must have been little more than a baby the first time you were sent to a woman. You were used in an evil way as much as Queen Theone.”
“Queen Theone,” Theone marveled.
“But this is who you are,” Gabriel said, “and though you were never meant to be free, and Soren was never meant to be free either, here you are, full of a love for each other you were never meant to feel.”
“And now we are together as well,” Conn said to Derek.
“The parting had lasted long enough, my love,” he said to Conn, “and we shall never be parted again.”
“But we are what we are,” it was Quinton who spoke in his quiet voice, the little bronze haired man with the lame foot, “and tonight we will go into the fields where the men are, as is our call, and offer what comfort they desire.”
“And then before dawn we will move east,” Derek said.
“East?” Conn looked surprised, almost upset.”
“East,” Pol Kurusagan said. “And you must be with us. We have come for you. There is one last appointment for us.”
“Where are we going?” Conn said.
And Pol said, “To meet a king.”
Anson Aethalyn could not sleep. Nude after lovemaking, he stood in the starlight, looking from the open balcony onto the dark sea where the lights of Chyran ships twinkled, guarding the city from Phineas’s boats.
“Get up,” Ohean said.
“Hum?”
“I said get up. And put a shirt on.”
The dark room was partially filled with warm light from lamps which responded to words of command. Even many of the wealthiest places in the White Lands barely had such technology.
Lionlike, Anson crossed the carpeted floor to the wardrobe.
“Have you ever seen so many shirts? No one in the Kingsboro ever had clothes like this!”
As Anson marveled over the garments, Ohean, beginning to pull on the clothes he’d thrown to floor, continued to marvel over his lover’s golden body.
“I’ll wear this one,” Anson said. “What do you think?”
It was red silk, the color of wine, and Ohean said, “A little ostentatious for a midnight trip, but everything you wear is…” Ohean looked at him with a devilish smile, “good.”
Anson pulled his shirt on, and Ohean pulled him out of the room and down the hall.
“Where are we going?”
“I just told you. On a midnight trip.”
Anson caught him by the hips and looked at him directly.
“Ash,” he used the familiar old name, “Where in the devil are we goig?”
Ohean said, “Why, to your grave.”
The wide corridors of the palace were all in blue white darkness but for the occasional torch, and they went down these until they came to the main hall before the throne room.
Today it had been filled with joyous people and sunlight. Now it was in cool darkness, as if there was nothing but peace, and no one was preparing for war. Out past this hall was a courtyard, filled with white moonlight, and palace guards stood at either side of the great gate.
“Wait!” they heard someone call out of the darkness.
And it was Inark, a great cloak wrapped about her. It flapped behind her in the breeze. Beside her was a young man, her same height but bound to grow taller, and she said,“This is Sebastian. He has become my special friend in the palace. Where are you going?”
“I really don’t know,” Anson said. “Ohean is about to show me something.”
Ohean did not explain what that something was, but simply said, “We need horses.”
One of the guards came from his post and greeted Ohean.
“We’ll be needing horses,” the wizard told him. “We have some place to be.”
“I can go right to the stables,” Sebastian said, trotting off.
“Your Grace, you’ll be needing a guard,” the soldier said to Anson.
Anson thought about this, expecting Ohean would give him council, but when none was forthcoming, he said, “No. I think a witch and a sorcerer will be enough.”
Though the palace slept, the city did not, and they trotted through the wakeful streets of Yrrmarayn, past the taverns where folk were singing late at night and soldiers were tottering out half drunk.
“It’s lovely here,” Anson said, “from a horse’s back.”
He said nothing else, but Inark, trotting beside him added, “But you are thinking of those with no horses?”
“Aye. Even in this city, some boy must be now what my friend Pol was not too long ago. If there is to be a new day then things ought to be as joyful in the low parts of this city as in the palaces.”
They trotted down and down, through the three walls that surrounded the concentrically higher parts of Yrrmarayn and then out of the South Gate, and onto the Road. They had trotted only a little while between the great, white stone dragons of South Gate and the little houses that lined the roads, massing until they began the suburbs, when suddenly Ohean cried out, and they began to gallop in earnest.
They rode past the guards who defended the city surrounds. They rode past the troops in their tents, all from the surrounding counties, those who, even at night were coming to the battle. They rode past King Gennel’s wood people who for the most part prepared to sleep outside. They rode past the little tract of wood. In the light of the white moon they rode past farms and small villages, and the spring air was cool but good and the little hills were in the distance, but soon Anson saw that there was only one hill, long and black and high in the night and Ohean, his silver white cloak settling about him, slowed his horse and stopped before this.
“I know,” Inark began in a small voice, “where we are.”
“I don’t,” Anson said,
“We are where I buried you thirty centuries in the past,” Ohean said. “This is King Iffan’s Howe.”
The hill seemed long and low, but as they approached, Anson could see it was high as the stone walls around the city. They rode slowly down the path to a flat stone rising more than waist high and long as three men, wide as several.
Sebastian gasped, and looked over the lozenge shape of the black stone. The moon shone upon it and, just barely, just faintly, he could see whorls swirled into the stone, a faint light spinning through them.
“This is the door,” said Ohean.
“And what do we do?”
“What you do,” Anson said, placing a hand on Ohean’s shoulder, “is open the tomb.
“I think,” Ohean said after a moment, “It is for you to open the tomb. We have crossed over into Westrial now. This is the land of Locrys, and this tomb is yours.”
Anson opened his mouth to ask how he would perform this task. Inark had already started to ask, and stopped herself. Now the Prince shrugged and placed his hands on the surface of the stone because it seemed fitting. He closed his eyes, waiting for something to happen, feeling a little foolish, slightly half asleep. The air was cool on him and the smooth stone was now a little rough and cold. The slickness of the swirl pattern on the rock pressed upon his hands, and then it was cooler.
“You are a mage,” Ohean reminded him. “As much as me. And not without resources.”
“Callasyl!
I am here.
Lend me your strength.”
Lean into the stone, the sword said, and accept your own.
And then power was moving through his palms, into the stone, back into him. He opened his eyes for just a time, and there was a gasp at his ear where Inark stood. Slowly, from his hands, into the patterns on the stone, silver white light had shone, and now it was spreading across the whole rock. Now, The stone moved to the right, soundlessly, and there was the opening of the Howe.
