The morning after the storm, sun gradually parted the clouds and lightened the grey sky. Ahead of everyone Teryn rode beside Cody, and now, coming from the east, he saw a band of people, many in fine silks, moving toward the south just opposite them. He heard them singing
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
Ahna Ahnar ahna āmar
Amar āmar ahna ahna.
Ah but they were in Chyr now. Or were they? This was the border country, and they must have been, at any time, going from one land to the other. It seemed as if the devotees were anout to just miss the army, but if they even saw it, moving slowly behind, they would not have cared.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
Ahna Ahnar ahna āmar
Amar āmar ahna ahna.
“Cody,” Teryn said, at last. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Cody said, shrugging as they rode on.
Then Cody said, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Teryn was about to say, “I don’t know,” but then he said, “Because of what happened. Because of what we did.”
Cody said nothing. Teryn continued. “It’s not something you’ve done last night and… I have done things like that. I shouldn’t have let that happen. Not to you. I should have—”
“Look,” Cody said. “I’m not a child.”
“I know you’re not.”
“But you don’t act like it. I’m actually older than you. By three years almost.”
“It’s just that…. I don’t feel young. I feel like I’ve done a lot. And you make me feel… not innocent, but not like I did. I don’t ever want to drag you into something you don’t want.”
“I am a man grown,” Cody said. “My choices are my choices.”
Cody looked tired and a little confused.
“Now, look. I… I haven’t really wanted to talk about what happened. And I still don’t. Not really. But… I don’t really regret it. I don’t want to do it again. I don’t think I could. I felt like I wasn’t myself, and… I don’t like feeling that way or thinking too much about it. But I don’t really regret it. I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“Well,” Teryn said, after a while, “as long as we’re together.”
Cody said, “I didn’t even know we were together. I mean, I wasn’t sure. But… yes.”
They rode side by side, not speaking, only looking at the valley beyond them.
Teryn was murmuring the song of the disappearing devotees.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna Ahnar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna.
Ahna Ahnar ahna Ahnar
Ahnar Ahnar ahna ahna
ahna Ahnar ahna āmar
āmar āmar ahna ahna.
“They’re going to Westrial,” Teryn said. “This is the new Age, right? The Age of Love? They’re bringing it to Westrial.”
Then he said, “I don’t like the minsters. But maybe I’d go to those guys. I don’t know that I could be one of them, but maybe I could try. I don’t think anyone has all the answers, but some? Maybe. I felt love with those folks, and that’s what they say they are. So it’s not a bad place to start.”
Cody smiled at him kindly.
He said, “It’s not a bad place to start at all.”
VAHAYAN HILL
WESTRIAL
A raven came to Prince Adrian with the news of Senach’s doings.
“Father sent out ships to tail the Daumans. Any of them who are fleeing from Sussail will be harassed by Senach. And isn’t it wonderful, but your mother is sending troops too?”
“Mother’s no fool,” Linalla said. “She doesn’t want to look bad, and now she knows how things will end. If she were putting herself at risk, I’m sure there’s not a single ship that would have left a harbor in Essail.”
Adrian was about to say that this was a low thing to say about one’s mother, but then he’d been raised by his mother and Queen Bereneice had nothing good to say for her neice Morgellyn.
“Say,” Linalla began, “I was supposed to be going to Essail, but that was to make allegiance against Daumany, and I don’t think Daumany’s going to be much of an issue anymore. And Bohemond was…”
“They say Queen Isobel’s brother is very handsome.”
“He is,” Linalla said. “This is why he fucks everything with breasts.”
Adrian blinked at her, and Linalla said, “After all, he fucked Eva many times. I don’t like him. He’s too old, and I don’t relish being queen in Sussail one day when I could be queen in my own home now.”
“I don’t follow,” Adrian said.
“Then you should,” said Linalla. “My mother killed my father. That’s just a fact, and though I try to forgive her I can’t. Why should my eight year old brother be a pretend king when I can be a real queen? I would never have tried it before, but I’ve heard my uncle will be the High King, not that we’ve ever had a High King before. I know Essail and Senach became two kingdoms fighting over having a woman on the throne, but EssailI will accept me. With the proper support.”
“I would support you,” Adrian said.
“I was going to ask it,” Linalla said. “I think you would make a good husband.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
Adrian considered this.
“I would,” he said, at last.
Then he said, “Would I be King?”
“You will be King of Senach one day.”
“Then I would not be King of Essail.”
“I would be Queen,” Linalla said. “And you would be my husband.”
Isobel sat up in the makeshift bed, watching the children sleeping in the shallow basket before them. Black haired and golden, with tiny noses and tiny lips, they were perfect and presently Myrne began weeping.
“I need to get back to my son,” she said. “I need to be a mother again.”
“Things will be better from now on,” Isobel said, lying on her side. “Now we will have peace in the land. For a time at least.”
“What is all this about Anson being the new king?”
“The High King,” Isobel said.
Then she said, “You are wondering what it will mean for me? For my children.”
“I did not say it so boldly, but there it is,” Myrne said.
Then she said, “Well, I’ve got three kingdoms. You can always have one.”
Isobel laughed, and Myrne said, “I don’t think Inglad will ever properly be ours, and I don’t think it should be.”
“I am not afraid,” Isobel said. “Whoever is king in Westrial, I am still Queen, and my children are still Prince and Princess. Cian and Arsennon.”
Myrne nodded her head. She nodded longer than she meant to, but this was in part because she was tired. Isobel finally said: “There’s something else on your mind?”
“Yes,” Myrne said at length.
The Queen of Hale looked to the tent flap to see if anyone was outside of it, to see shadows moving on the other side. She lowered her voice.
“And when will you tell Cedd,” she whispered, “that your children aren’t his?”
SOUTHWEST MARCH
Caedmon, Second of that Name, and by God’s grace King of all Westrial, had sent word that he was on his way. In the end his slow progress had been a blessing, for many of the ships that had escaped the Yrrmarayn harbor came up the estuary to raid the villages of Chyr and Westrial and were met by Cedd’s troops.
As night fell on the end of their second day, and they drew camp, knowing they would reach Yrrmarayn in the morning, Pol played a small stringed instrument, and Conn Aragarath sang lightly.
While hair adorns my aching brow,
This heart will beat sincerely;
While ocean rolls its briny flow,
So long I’ll love thee dearly.
Oh! tell the secret, tell,
And under seal discover,
If it be I, or who is blest,
As thy pure heart’s best lover.
A simple, youthful swain am I,
Who love at fancy’s pleasure;
I fondly watch the blooming wheat,
And others reap the treasure...
That night, before they slept, a wind swept across the plains, and in the darkness the trees creaked under it. Cedd stood beside Anthony, watching them sway, and then he trembled all over and fear pricked all his body. His mind could not catch up with what he was seeing and he said, only, “The swaying of the trees. The swaying of the trees.”
But Conn, apprenticed in the ways of magic as well as the ways of sex, said, “No… Those trees are moving. Those trees are leaving their very beds to answer the call of their King.”
Even before Cedd reached Yrrmarayn, he’d heard the word, that Anson was being hailed as Iffan the King Returned, the ruler of Locrys.
“And what does this mean for us?” Anthony said. “What? Will he take his seat in Ondres and form his kingdom from there.
“No,” Cedd said. “No, that will not be the way of it.”
The whole ride was across an open plain and, if now and again they saw ripples in the land as if trees had been dug up, they saw no trees. Now and again, in the distance, Cedd saw a tangle of trees with Solahni or Daumans caught up in them, or a rivulet where a boat seemed as if it had sailed right into a thicket of trees, and though the elms and oaks and ashes moved no more than Cedd had ever seen them do in the past, he was shaken. He remembered the times when Essily had lived in the castle and said, no matter what, Ossar was an enchanted land, and it always would be.
When he came to the city of Yrrmarayn, his armies had already been seen, and though the fields were still strewn with the wreckage of war, the battle was done. Silver armored, Anson came with his troops, and for a time, Cedd wondered where he’d gotten such troops until he saw among the men, Wolf and his Hales, Rheged and Chyran troops and troops most strange whom he could not look at for long, who were, frankly, not human.
“Brother!” Anson leapt from his horse, coming to Cedd as if there had never been any difference between them. And Anson was silver and gold, gleaming with a bright sword at his side and a cloak burning bright.
Cedd slid from his horse and came before his brother. He went to one knee.
Beside Anson were King Osric as well as Ohean, in bearing so like Sanaye Cedd wondered how he could not have known her. There were also soldiers, obviously Black Stars. But…. Not. And here was plainly Austin Buwa, and some tall, fair man at his side.
“Cedd,” Anson said, “why are you kneeling?”
Cedd took Anson’s hand, kissing it, and said, “Because you are my lord, and my King.”
Anson raised his brother up so now they stood face to face.
“Then let King Caedmon ever be called King as in days of old, when two men always bore the title, as in the time when our father was King and so were you. Once a king, always a king. So shall it continue to be.”
Anthony prepared to applaud, perhaps intentionally mistaking Anson’s words, perhaps wishing to intend that nothing had changed, but Cedd said to his brother, “I accept the title, as every woman who was ever Queen is still so. But I cannot rule, and I do not wish to. Now I understand. How could you ever be High King unless there were Kings under you?”
He clasped his brother’s hands and kissed them. “You are King over me in Westrial, and so in time shall you be King over all Locress. Take this as my blessing in the last moment I am head of our family. As you once swore yourself to me, though I was too evil to accept it, Anson, I am your servant, and you are my lord.”
