That, I suppose, was in truth their wedding feast. There can seldom have been one more bizarre or less worthy of the event, but of the happiness it launched there could be no doubt. Next day they were blazing rather than merely shining, and it was a blaze that did not cool. It warmed everyone around them, it spread through the first salvings of Zyphryr Coryan, it radiated out over Assharral, changing, softening, quickening the renewal, down to the scruffiest urchin re-mustering pigs in a Gjerven swamp. Fuelling Beryx’s inexhaustible energy, his joy in doing what he was bred for: exercising all his natural gifts, not merely to maintain but to reconstruct an entire realm.
Assharral needed it all. It takes longer to build than to destroy, and longer yet to rebuild what has been ruined. Some things can never be restored. The Morhyrne’s cone now sags like a hunchback’s hump. They still boat round the lava on the harbor road, waiting till it is cool enough to begin tunneling. Bridges will always span it in many central streets. And south Morrya will be desolate for the rest of my life. It took the first blast’s full impact: every tree felled for a hundred miles, live things incinerated within thirty, asphyxiated within fifty, the earth within seventy miles shrouded under pumice and lava clots and ash.
With time and patience the other provinces will be healed, sometimes improved. But nothing can restore the bloodline of the imperial stud mares, slaughtered with their unborn foals, nor refound the school of the Climbrian dancers, wiped out to the youngest recruit. Or resurrect the human dead, all dear to someone, who lie in so many unknown graves. And it will take longer than the reclamation of Morrya to wash the salt from fields in so many human hearts.
More than once in those first months I wanted to echo Moriana’s wail of “But where do we start?” So many things crying, This first. We were lucky, for the land’s sake, to begin just before the Wet, and unlucky for the sake of its folk. I cannot tally the miles I rode in the rain as lieutenant-at-large, racing the plague into squalid refugee camps, organizing shelter, food, medicine, then kicking over the wheels in town and village and farm, trying to reconcile the die-hards who abhorred Beryx with the bloodhounds who only wanted Moriana’s head. Mayors and governors, fencing posts and seed corn, returned fugitives, renegade soldiers, discharged priests, town plans and ownerless milking cows; Gjerven farmers persuaded to repopulate Morrya and give the Ulven room. And I had only to tidy the edges and prepare for the great new plans: tax changes, a dismantled religion, a new government.
To Beryx it was all an incentive. “I love building,” he told me once. “And I’ve never had such a chance. In Hethria we started at dirt, and in Everran I left before the fun really began.” From which I assume he defined “fun” as twenty-five hours work a day on Assharral, with extra minutes found for Moriana, and some spare seconds allotted to such mundane necessities as food and sleep.
Moriana worked with him, hour for hour. They could rarely be pried apart, even after their quarrels, which flared over a clause in the new constitution or a civil appointment, some high-handed action in her old manner or a disputed precept in Math, his treatment of some balky underling or an unacceptable part of her aedric apprenticeship. I walked in on the end of more than one storm: the room littered with hurled books and broken inkpots, an official seal poised like a slingstone in Moriana’s hand, a pile of shattered plates and an overset table vibrating from Beryx’s mindspeech, at a volume that would shake Zyphryr Coryan. <Use your HEAD, for once!>
Sometimes she would heed. More often she would yell back. The time I recall best she bawled like a maddened tree-cat and threw.
The seal caught him on the cheekbone and ricocheted onto an intact cup. In the silence I heard the fragments come to rest, fall by ticking, diminishing fall.
Then in a foam of dusty white skirt she whirled out onto the balcony, gripping the carven lily balustrade till I thought the stone would crack. Glaring, rigid to her fingertips, over the half-patched prospect of Zyphryr Coryan.
I had the wit to stand stiller than the stone. My slanted view showed me Beryx’s shoulders. I listened to his breathing, distinct as the fall of cup shards, alone amid the scattered reports and requisitions of a new order, strewn under the painted cupola of a once-formal reception room.
Then he took his own five strides to the door and slid his arm tightly round her waist.
For a moment they were both utterly still. But then I heard her sigh. Her fingers relaxed. Intuition rather than information told me she had leant back in his arms, laying her head against his chest. And I heard her whisper, barely audible.
“How can you bear this? Any of this? Anything to do with me?”
“Because you came back.” He had dropped his cheek forward on her hair, his shoulders relaxing too. “Because you could laugh. After everything.”
I would have withdrawn, but I feared the shift of a dust-grain under my boot would break the spell.
“Because you took the brave way. Not to run. Even at the end. Because you chose to live with it. To make amends.”
She made a rueful noise in her throat. Her hands lifted and disappeared and I knew she had clasped them over his. Together, silent in the noonlight, they looked out over Assharral.
Before I could creep backward, ease away, she spoke again.
“They still hate me.”
He did not reply. I did see his arm tighten, in a way she must have felt in every rib.
“They think—they say—I’m not sorry. I’m happy. Instead.”
He turned his head to give me a half-profile. His voice belied what that look said.
“You have no need to weep and wail and put on sack-cloth. I never wanted that. I never expected it.” Her body must have transmitted surprise to equal mine. He shook her lightly and I heard the smile wake beneath that determination, implacable as an avalanche. “You were and you are a Morheage. Arrogance was bred in you.”
She made another sound, between a snort and a sob. He shook her again. “Crawling over my feet—or theirs—doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do to fix the damage. And there, the Four know, you’re filling the cup over. I see that’s Morheage as well.”
This time it was more laugh than sob. “So you say. But you’ve been besotted all along.”
“So I have.” The faint amusement faded. “But the rest will need time, Aihi. A lot of time. You know that. They have to let the hate out as well as leave it behind. They’d need that, however sorry you looked.”
Aihi,my stunned mind repeated. The abbreviation, the deepest Assharran love-name, for Aiahya: Beautiful one.
Both of them had grown entirely still. I almost imagined I could hear them breathe.
I did hear her sigh, before the shift of her skirt told me she had moved in his grasp. A wind drew up over the balustrade and the smells of lava-dust and mud and newly planed timber came with it, ruffling the mingled blackness of their hair, sheeny as water in the sun.
Then, with a different inflection, she murmured, “Were you always like this?”
“Oh, no.” He had caught the shift as well as the sense. He sounded just too bland. “When I was a king, I had to be serious.”
“Serious?” It was nearly outrage. “You?”
“All those people, you see. There all the time. Depending, relying on you. Expecting, if there’s a crisis, that you’ll meet their expectations. Be twice as pompous as them.”
“And of course you were?” Now laughter breathed through that lovely, teasing voice.
“Oh, dear.” I could hear the grin. “I only slipped up once. Shocked my hearthbard speechless. I made a joke when the dragon came.”
“Beryx—!”
“It just slipped out, I swear. . . .”
“Just slipped out, oh, yes. The way they did with me?”
She tried to turn. He pinned her firmly to his chest.
“Certainly not. Now, I’m an aedr, and we don’t care what we say. The crazier the better. So, my erstwhile empress, you can forget any hopes of standing on your dignity.”
The eye-corner visible over his shoulder kindled to dangerous gold flecks. She lifted her gaze and then her hand to the seal’s bruise on his cheekbone. Then she said demurely, “So you really earned this, didn’t you?”
I felt my own breath stop. And I felt the moment he started laughing out loud, then flung his arm wide so she fell back in his grasp laughing harder still, while I shot out of sight-range and prepared to crunch up to the doorway as they came inside, the light back on them, restored to happiness’ equilibrium. Ready to work again.
* * * * *
Even in the Wet I could feel Assharral responding to that joyfulness, like plants when the year turns and the sun’s stride lengthens, and every green thing answer with leaf and bud and flower. The rhythm quickened as the Wet receded. When the real sun fell into step with ours there were times when, bone-weary, I sang on the road.
So I came back from a trip to Darrior, head full of half-raised buildings and burgeoning plans, lungs full of the smell from burnt-out fields under short, new green grass. We were still quartered in Ker Morrya, since our old house was under the lava flow. At the door I met the good smell of stew and a riotous welcome from the twins, but from Callissa an oddly constrained smile.
Still full of euphoria, I left the advance to her. We were in bed, our feet in a swathe of moonlight, an eygnor’s song on air that tingled with the newborn Dry, when she said in a small, braced, constricted voice, “Alkir?”
And when I answered, “What is it?” she said, “I—want to go away.”
When I could speak, I said, “Where? How? Why?”
“Not from you,” responded the voice on my arm. “And I know we’re happy here and it’s not that I don’t want to stay and I know you do. And I don’t want to go back to Frimmor. Not now.”
Despite this disorderly advance I knew she had been nerving herself to this a long time, that it demanded courage, and the knowledge it would be unwelcome made her more afraid.
I drew her closer and said, “I won’t eat you, love. Where do you want to go? And why?”
She took a deep breath and charged.
“Hethria,” she said.
This time I was struck quite dumb. She turned over and began speaking quickly, hurrying in her attack.
“I know you’d rather stay because of Beryx and they’ll soon be mending the army and they’ll need you if there is a war with Phaxia and you were born in Assharral, but Fengthira told me she’s going back to Eskan Helken soon, they can manage here now, and she can’t bear too many men for too long, and once she goes—” She stopped dead. Then flung herself. “It’s the twins.”
Thinking I understood left me further confounded. The small earnest voice ploughed on.
“It took me a long time to—admit what they are. But they are. We have to make the best of it. And even if they’re not as important as Beryx thinks, the start of a new cycle and the first aedryx to grow up in Math, and all that—whatever they are—they shouldn’t be denied the chance to—be that. Just like anyone else. And Fengthira’s the one who must teach them, we all know that.” I didn’t, I thought, wondering how far this had gone behind my back. “But she won’t stay here. Even for them. So—so—I thought”—her voice had dwindled—“we—should go to her.”
Hethria. Sand and Sathellin. No army. No resurrection and perhaps consummation of the life begun at fourteen, when I walked away from my father into a barracks, into another world. No share in my new lord’s achievement as it came to flower. Idle my remaining life away, deny my nature, as Beryx had denied his when he renounced Everran. But he had Assharral now. And all to fulfill nature in my sons.
It was selfish, base, instinctive, and I could not help it. I said, “But do you want to go—yourself?”
“Not really,” she said at last. “But the twins. . . .”
With thought’s celerity I considered sending them and staying myself, coercing Fengthira into staying, Beryx into teaching them, refusing to let them learn at all. Now I knew how he had felt, caught between integrities and being pulled apart.
“Love,” I said. “You’ve rather . . . sprung this on me. Could it wait a little? Give me time to think?”
I had not deceived her. It was a defeated, lifeless voice which responded, “Whatever you want.”
* * * * *
I thought, and thinking took the edge off life. When I reported next day, and Beryx jumped up from the plans and scribes and advisers and objectors, exclaiming, “Fylghjos! How did it go?” When Moriana added in warmest welcome, “Alkir! At last!” And I was instantly embroiled in the current quarrel which thereupon climaxed in a hail of flying inkpots, until Beryx shook her by a handful of hair, commanding, “Quiet, shrew,” and she said, “Shan’t. Alkir can settle it.” And he said, “A word from me gets us precisely nowhere,” and she said, “Alkir, the standard. He wants to use Everran’s stupid shield and vine and we should keep the moontree, it belongs to Assharral. Tell him he’s wrong.”
When I said without the old fear, “If I’m judge you can’t dictate the verdict,” she yelled, “Partisan!” and he shouted, “Bully!” but the resulting fracas gave me time to think. So at its end I said, “Why not something quite new?”
They chorused, “What?” And remembering that dawn revelation in Morrya, I said, “Why not a lythian?”
But even when they cried in delight, “Flametree!”—“Moontree!”—“Green leaves—”—“We’re both fire—”—“And it belongs to Assharral!” When Beryx said, “Thank the Four for Alkir,” and Moriana gave me the full blaze of that new smile, adding, “I knew you were on my side,” there was a chill where there should have been only achievement, and belonging’s warmth.
It did not thaw when, as we shared a piece of cheese and a ferroth over my report, Beryx asked, “Has Callissa said anything about Hethria?”
I nodded. And his eyes, so uncomfortably perceptive, altered from warm hope to dashed understanding. Before he said flatly, “Oh.”
Moriana, who had her own ways of arriving where his arts took him, put down her cheese and said, “Pox on Math!”
His eyes turned to her, briefly amused. She said, “I couldn’t command him now anyway, yazyk.” It is gutter-slang for thief. She considered. “Let’s conquer Hethria and Alkir can be governor—no.” A wicked glance at Beryx. “That would threaten Everran. Worse than the worst Ammath.”
“Femaere,” he said agreeably. But the cloud did not lift. I was finding that the hardest of all to withstand when he released me, saying with decision, “You don’t want to go. Enough said.”
But there was plenty more to be thought. It did not help when the twins came up that night, saying, “Da, we don’t want to go to Hethria either. Silly old Ruanbrarx.” When even my blinkered eyes could see they were valiantly denying their dearest wish in life.
I said, “It isn’t settled,” and on that craven compromise fled to the labor that had been so joyful, and now had lost its taste.
* * * * *
Next evening I was riding home from the Rastyr, through one of those breathtaking sunsets the Morhyrne bequeathed us, which continued with barely muted splendor long after the Wet. The sky flamed mulberry and coral and crimson, a light like liquid copper bathed the land beneath. Out of it from the roadside copses came Fengthira and her mare, like a horseman of legend, steeped in the gold of time itself.
The mare fell into step. The rider scanned the sky. Then she said baldly, “If t’is fighting tha thinkst tha craves, Hethria’ll give thee tha fill. Not with men. T’is the oldest fight. The one that started when the first pharraz scraped a furrow with a stick, and the wind blew in wild oats. Tha blood knows it. Just as his knows that.” She gestured up to Ker Morrya, ringing the mountain with a necklet of lamps.
I sought a mannerly way to say it was not my fight, that I despised it, despised my selfishness. Thought resignedly that she would already know, and said, “I know I should go. For the twins’ sake, if nothing else.”
“But t’is against tha wish. And Everran’s holy Sky-lords forfend that a man do anything against his wish.”
When I made no reply she snorted. “He’ll not coerce thee. Heardst me tell him in Gjerven, he’s learnt his lessons too well. Through is sometimes worse than Round, and he was ever Through, so now he goes Round twice. He was ever, Do as I wilt, so now t’is, Take tha choice. And ever Act, not Abstain, so now t’is, Abstain, when he should act. Soft, ah. Told you it was right, didn’t I? Ah. For him. But I’m another cup of tea.”
My surprise became a tingle of fear. She snorted again.
“I’ll not use the arts to turn or twist or force thee. Just tell thee a few truths. Not about tha boys, tha knowst they’re the hope of Pharaon Lethar, and a new race of aedryx, and the sons he’ll never have. Canst not make that budge tha heart, however it spurs tha head. And for thaself, I’ve told thee, art a Stiriand to tha granite backbone. Think now what that means to tha wife.
“Thinkst I’ve no right to meddle,” she anticipated me. “Were I he, I daresay I’d not. Dost not think tha’s treated her hardly, ah? Hast kept and honored and been faithful to her. And thinks, because tha gave up real soldiering for the Guard and then stayed in it when honor forbade thee, t’is rather she owes thee. Ah. Now think on tha waiting in Stirsselian. Pleasant, was it?” I shuddered. “And how long didst wait? A month? But when tha went whistling off to tha soldier games in Phaxia, she waited two whole years for thee. Never sure when she woke at morning that tha wast not crowbait a week already, and she left a widow with two brats on her back. Not to mention,” with irony, “losing thee. Think on that, when tha minds Stirsselian, waiting to know tha folk slain without a hand’s turn tha couldst do for them, and they dead by their own choice.”
She nodded at my flinch. “And when th’art wanting to put her to army discipline and bearing with her poor manners and finding her tantrums vex thee and wishing she’d not build her whole life round tha sons, think thee on why she does. That t’is possible tha’st looked down tha long stone nose and let her see tha just tolerates her once too often. So she’s turned away from thee, because tha wouldst not let thaself come first with her, and put them in tha place.”
“I didn’t! I haven’t!” I could bear it no longer. “I never—”
“Hold tha peace,” she said inexorably. “I’m not done. Think tha too, when th’art favoring that tender will of thine, that she came with thee from Frimmor to Zyphryr Coryan and never said a word, and then fled with thee to Phaxia, and then let thee browbeat—yes, I said browbeat, and tha’lt hear me out!—her into Stirsselian, as t’were a high-headed filly that tha’d bring to hand or make it the worse for her—no, tha’lt hear me, if I have to use a Command. And tha’d go tha merry way back to soldiering, and let her suffer again as tha didst in Stirsselian—I said, Quiet! Not once, but as often as tha canst manage it in the span of tha life. Then tha wonders why she’d go to Hethria, to have thee as well as her sons safe.” Her eyes were blazing on me, cold and clear and pitiless, untinged by the sunset light. “By the bones of Deve Saedryx Korven, Stiriand, if there’s granite in tha backbone, there’s more of it in tha head!”
My bridle hand was shaking. I could not speak. I shut my eyes a moment. There was no room for anger or shame or outrage, I simply wanted that flaying voice to stop.
“Hark’ee.” Though she spoke much more gently, still I shrank. “I know very well he’d never have cut thee so. And that t’is unjust. But t’is an easy matter to change the head, another to change the rest. If tha stayed in Assharral now, tha’d be thinking ever, I have played false to my sons. And if tha camest in tha present mind to Hethria, tha’d be thinking, I have played false to myself. So I’ve done what he’d not. I’ve taken a hot iron and fired tha conscience for thee. And if I’ve not changed tha head”—a gleam of mordant humor—“I’ll warrant it’s beaten a change of leads into tha heart.”
* * * * *
When I walked into our quarters Zem and Zam halted in mid-rush, took one look and retreated like whipped pups, clean out to their beds. Hurrying up behind them Callissa began, “Zem, Zam, what are—why—” Then her voice changed altogether. “Oh, what is it, my dear?”
I shut my eyes, in shame that it should show so glaringly on my face. Then her arms were round me. I should not feel ashamed, I suppose, to admit I was glad of them. Old schooling dies hard. But human nature is older still. I hid my face in her hair and was thankful she had not turned from me as I so often had from her.
When I lifted my head her eyes were full of purely unselfish anxiety and pain for my hurt. I was grateful for that too. Fengthira’s iron had bitten deep.
She said, “Sit down. I’ll get some—” And I sat. But I kept hold of her wrist. And when I said, “You’re what I want,” I saw the flash of unbelieving joy before she landed, off-balanced, in my lap.
“Callissa,” I said into her breast. “I’ll go to Hethria.” And stopped. She must not see it was the result of a flogging, not a free-made choice.
“I mean, we can go to Hethria. If”—I had to scout carefully—“you think it’s best for the twins.”
“Never mind the twins,” she said quite brusquely. “Alkir, what’s happened to you?”
There was no point in trying to lie. Whoever called love blind was blind himself.
“Fengthira—talked to me.”
She caught her breath.
“We’ll—we can go to Hethria.” And then something changed in me, nothing to do with the mind, so I could go on in honest truth. “I wouldn’t mind going. I’ve soldiered long enough.”
She took my face in her hands. Her eyes grew bigger. Then the tears started to roll down her cheeks. In some alarm I cried, “What is it? What have I done now?” And she clutched me round the neck and sobbed, “Can’t I c-cry because I’m h-happy, for once?”
* * * * *
It was easy after that. It was more than easy. I did not just rediscover Callissa, I truly discovered her, and after ten years marriage found myself whistling round like some just-wed lout. When I came to say, with some guilt, “I think I must ask for a discharge,” Beryx’s face lit up. Before he stammered, “No, I don’t mean I’m glad to see you go, I mean—oh, Four, you know what I mean!” He took another look. “I’m so glad you want to.” Another, with those too-perceptive eyes. “I’ll murder Fengthira, one day.” Yet another. Then a sudden grin blazoned joy all over his face. “Fylghjos, if you’re not careful, I’ll be shouting ‘Stand to’ myself!”
Fengthira agreed to escort us. She would have traveled faster alone, she was carrying the Well, bound for storage under her eye at Eskan Helken, “where none other can meddle with it,” but prolonged coaxing from Beryx persuaded her to march in human company, rather than be called back, somewhere in the desert, to extricate strayed recruits. When an entire baggage train had been assembled, culled, packed, unpacked and packed again, horses chosen and a day finally set, only one thing remained. To see Beryx and Moriana. To say farewell.
In their usual workroom we found only the onetime lordling now prenticed as Beryx’s much-tried secretary. His face lightened when he looked past his quill-store to recognize me. But when I asked, “The Lord and Lady?” he very nearly smiled. “They’re both up by the fountain, sir.”
It was just mid-morning, a superb morning of the early Dry, sumptuous blue sky, green things in full leafage but not yet overblown, enough damp to put a fizz in the air, with a first invigorating nip to herald the winter ahead. As we climbed the rough-hewn steps familiar sounds of altercation floated down.
“Not like that, here!”
“No, here!”
“Let go, idiot!”
“Oh, you spitfire!” Then a bubble of laughter and sudden silence, ending in a hurried “Let go!” as our heads topped the rim of the stairs.
Moriana came forward, trying not to blush, sparkling her eyes at me as she said, “You can’t talk, nowadays!” There was mud all over her skirts, and mud smeared Beryx’s white silk shirt as he bent beneath the perridel, resurrected by the Wet. Its gold-and-silver foliage danced above him, its shadow played on the dapple of inner sunshine in his eyes. “Come and see what we’re—oh!”
There had been an almost human chuckle behind her. A gurgle, a splash. And then a crystal, wordless melody, that flowed out unfaltering over the mountainside.
“It’s moving!” Moriana hurried back, we hurried after her.
Los Morryan was flowing again. The water welled up out of its black basin, sluiced away the mud, rose to bubbling silver music, spattered the rim to glittering wet, blowing spray onto the fan of newly emerald moss.
“You did it!”
“I said I would.” His eyes laughed at her, a dance of thought and joy and laughter that owed nothing to the motion of the perridel.
“Don’t be so smug!” She swiped at him. But he caught the hand and pulled her closer, and we all stood, watching reality’s motion, the crystal water freed to clear and sing and flow.
“Sir Scarface,” Zem said into the pause, “you told us aedryx couldn’t be kings.”
“No,” Beryx admitted gravely. “That was what I thought. But”—he gave the tail of his eye to Moriana—“I could hardly leave this—er—lady—to tidy the whole thing.”
Zem pondered. “Was it a Must?”
Green eyes met black. Wicked amusement blossomed in both.
“You could say,” agreed Beryx, straight-faced, “that it was a Must.”
His eyes turned, to scan my face with that perception I no longer had to fear. He smiled.
“Good luck, pharraz.” He knew the taunt would be understood, as I had once bade him, “Sleep well,” in his chains. “I won’t say thanks. It’s not enough. And anyway—I think you’ve made your own.”
He came to embrace us. Moriana followed, dimpling, but her voice did not tease. She said, “I hardly expected to say this. But thank you, Alkir.”
She kissed my cheek. Reflecting that I never expected that either, I returned the salute.
Beryx had turned to Callissa, who was looking like a recruit the first time the phalanx moves. With the merest spice of mischief in the laughter he reached for her hand. Bent over it, and murmured, “A safe journey, ma’am.”
She did not correct him back to “Callissa.” She did turn her fingers to shut them on his hand a moment, an almost convulsive grasp. Before she whispered, “Thank you,” and they both let go.
What she and Moriana did or said together, I did not see. Beryx had already turned to the twins.
“Behave yourselves in Hethria,” he told them. “Fengthira’s not like me.” They grinned in perfect understanding. He added, “One day . . . I’ll have work for you.”
Los Morryan bubbled on alone a moment, as the promise was sealed. Then the awkwardness of all partings overtook us. I said, “We’ll be back one day. To see the lythians flower.” And they nodded, growing solemn too.
From the stairhead I looked back. They stood together under the perridel, the light spangled with its inner magic in black eyes and green, Moriana waving, since she had the only free hand, and though the tree’s shadow was netted over them, they seemed to stand in some unfading sun. Moriana said something. Beryx retorted. They were laughing as we went out of sight.
* * * * *
Four times the lythians have flowered since that season, and I did not see. Fengthira spoke truer than she knew. There is a war to fight in Hethria, fiercer than any except the contest with Ammath. When they dammed the Kemreswash and bent the water southward they upset the desert’s natural balance, and though farms flourish now at all the Sathellin staging points, the salt is rising underneath. We shall be fighting indeed, through my time and perhaps my sons’ time, to preserve that balance, to stop the closure of the road and renewed desolation and loss of all the water won. I may never return to Assharral. Time cannot be reversed, nor can it be wholly halted, even by the power of the Well, and that they would refuse. Like Callissa and me, they will grow old, and wither, and die. But in my mind’s world they will stand forever, perdurable as the lovers on the Phathos’ card, their arms about each other: waving, laughing, bright in their own sunshine, under the silver leaves and golden flowers of the perridel.
The End