The Book of Battles

THE ZAHEM BORDER

One thing I liked about riding on horseback,” Dissenbark began, “was we went quicker than in this wagon,”

“Vardo,” Conn corrected.

Dissenbark shrugged and said, “But of course the thing I didn’t like about riding horseback—”

“Was riding horseback,” Theone declared.

“Exactly!”

Theone, on her roan, laughed and said, “It’s not bad once you get used to it.”

“I don’t ever want to get used to it!” Dissenbark declared.

“Hey look!” Austin pointed ahead of them.

They were coming to a vale, and across the vale was a line of trees so green they were almost blue, and above them rose more hills, and Ohean said, “On the other side of those trees is Zahem, and we will be some days from their holy city.”

“It sounds so much nicer when you call it that,” Theone said, pulling her cloak closer about her. “And not the other name.”

“I imagine that’s why the Zahem renamed it,” Ohean said. “It was a great city when they came to it, and they had to have it. They still keep the Temple, but the Temple and its rights and the One it serves were there long before them or even the Daumans. I’m afraid no amount of pleasant names can cover what it was. What it is.”

“You know what?” Dissenbark said, “I don’t think I want to talk about that place anymore. Seeing as we’re soon to be there, anyway.”

“Begging your pardon, Ohean, I’m with Dissen,” Conn said.

“Right enough,” Ohean agree. “Let’s talk of something else.”

“You have any more poems for us?” Dissenbark turned to Anson who rode ahead of them on his own horse.

“I’m all poemed out,” the prince told her. “For now. I used to have a little book where I wrote them all.”

“Since when?” Theone turned to him.

He shrugged.

“Most of my life I felt like no one, and no one much wanted to hear me. When they learned I could fight, the court was glad of it, and around the fires, during the first Dauman war, I cheered the boys up with songs. That’s when I learned my other gifts. When I wrote down my thoughts, my lines, that was a part of me that belonged to me. So, I guess I got good at it.”

“You got very good at it,” Theone said. But Anson looked to Ohean.

“What?” Ohean told him. “You know how I feel about your poems.”

And that was all he got out of him, but for Anson, who smiled quietly, this was enough.

 

That night they were in the very woods they’d seen in the distance, and in the midst of the rising hills. The woods were filled with chittering and bird song, the distant howl of a coyote or a wolf. That night, while Anson and Theone built the fire, Dissenbark, Conn and Ohean moved about the encampment tracing wards and Austin, back in the land where magic was said to not exist, saw a visible shimmering rise up where there hands passed. He thought, “He’s doing that for us so we’ll know the wards are there.”

Austin considered how the magic was always there, that with Ohean Pennanyn they would always be safe.

“I don’t rightly get this thing we’re doing,” Dissenbark said.

“I mean, all my life I’ve seen mages and priests and, I think, even the occasional fairy. But suddenly here I am involved in real stuff. This is the stuff of Gods and magic and… I don’t know what I’m doing messing around with it.”

“I’ve got to,” Theone said.

“Well, yes, you’re royalty. But me? And Lord Buwa over there? I mean, Ohean over there, rolling his cigarettes. Yes you,” she said to the mage, who had raised an eyebrow.

“You may cut a very plain face, but this is your world, Gods, sorcerers, lost stones. But, they haven’t had much to do with me. Or with what I’ve seen. Little girls who become mothers when they’re scarcely old enough to breed. Young boys used by old men. Landlords who cheat their tenants. Slavers. I once saw a whole village chained and dragged away. I’ve seen those things.”

She pointed to Theone.

“You’ve lived them.”

Theone nodded. In the firelight, her eyes had taken the color of the flames and now flickered with them.

“All I know,” Austin said, “is this is where my friends go, so I go with him.”

Dissenbark nodded.

“Well,” she said, “I think I’m supposed to be here too. Still,” she looked to Ohean, “you say that these Stones belong to Elial. That she is upset because they lie in the temple of this demon, or some such, who is her enemy. But, I think it’s a lot more things in this world that Elial and all her kin up in the great beyond should be more concerned about. That’s all.”

Austin Buwa and Conn both looked at Ohean, but the wizard, taking a long drag from his cigarette, was very quiet.

“I feel the same way Dissen feels.”

“Master?” Conn said.

“She’s right,” Ohean said. “There is a war in the north that may soon spread south. Shouldn’t I be up there? Beside Wolf, next to Myrne. Shouldn’t I be doing everything I can? Instead of journeying to this Temple on some quest?”

“Don’t you start to doubt,” Theone said. “Or I’ll doubt. You’re going for the same reason I am, Ohean. Because it’s all we know to do. This is what’s kept me going. It’s my destination. And maybe the reason we are with you is because of what we’ve been through. Maybe there’s a reason in it all. I’ve got to believe that.” 

 

AMBRIDGE

“Here she comes,” Edith murmured from the parapet of Castle Whitestone. “Can the walls close in just one bit more?”

Beside her, Allyn Baldwin said nothing. The procession of black and white monks had crossed the bridge spanning the Rive Ame and were entering the city.

“I suppose she’s coming to make her position known,” Allyn said.

“As if we didn’t already know,” Edith said, watching as the procession from Saint Clew made its way into the city, approaching the palace. Edith pulled the veil than hung behind her conical hat over her face, not sure she could trust her eyes and lips to hide her disgust.

“She was the one who smuggled that bitch queen and her wolf into the north.”

“With Prince Odo’s help.”

“Yes,” Edith lifted a finger as they set down a winding staircase, “that does make things more interesting.”

Suddenly she stopped so quickly, Allyn almost stumbled into her.

“Sister?”

“You will go to the King and to Rufus, his parasite, and suggest that paying a visit to Odo is what will turn the abbeys around to our side.”

“Do you think it will?”

“I don’t give a damn if it will,” Edith said, tiredly, “but this will be your chance to have Edmund to yourself, to separate him from Rufus, and to get him away from Ambridge.”

“You mean for me to kidnap the King.”

“Could you say that louder?”

Allyn leaned into her in the dark staircase.

“Supposing it doesn’t work?”

“Supposing it does?” Edith said. “Do not weary me, Brother. Now that Father is gone I understand all that he went through. No support.”

“Sister, I support you.”

Edith breathed out of her nose furiously and set down the stairs, lifting her skirts before turning around and hissing:

“Then do as I say.”

As she made her way through the corridors of the castle, the contents of Myrne’s letter still burned in Edith’s mind.

 

To the Pretender and Usurper who sits in the White Palace in Ambridge,

Let it be known that on this, the Fourth Day of April, in the year seventeen hundred-thirty, I Myrne Herreboro, Heir to the House of Wulfstan which you so treacherously rejected in the murder of your brothers and their sons, have born unto my husband, Osric, son of Eoga, son of the murdered Edred and rightful King of Hale, North Hale and Inglad, a son, a son who is born to the people of All Hale and of Inglad. He is black of hair, red of lip, white like the snow and shall be, in time, Lord of the Three Kingdoms, being called Blake Wulfstan, First of that Name.

 

-Myrne, Queen of All Hale and Inglad

 

Edmund had said nothing and Willian had remained silent.

It was Allyn who cried, “Damn her!”

Edmund looked at his brother in law wearily.

“Damn her cunt! We had her. We will bring her back. I will split her cunt open!”

“Her cunt has already been split open,” Edith noted, “by having a son. And your threats, it would seem, mean nothing north of Ambridge.”

“One son and there will be several others,” Richard, the brother of Rufus said. “Your Grace, even if you never cede your throne to Osric and Myrne—”

“And I never shall.”

“Their children are your closest heirs.”

“And whose fault is that?” Edmund looked to Edith.

“Ask the whores you’ve been fucking for the last twenty-five years.”

The back of his hand came up and Edith said, “Think, Lord. Think carefully. Perhaps we Baldwins are not what we once were, but think before you do that.”

As Edmund lowered his hand, Edith thought how he would never have tried that a year ago, how a year ago the Baldwins had been mighty lords, and this black haired bitch and her fox haired husband whom she had never seen, but only heard about, had taken this all away from her. If only she had given Edmund a son, but she despised him, and their plains had always been to get rid of Edmund, to, in time, switch power to Allyn or one of nephews. Ah, but so go plans.

 

And now her. Now they all stood in the great hall as, black tent of a veil over her white robe and wimple, the golden crown of an abbess on her head, entered Hilda, Abbess of Clew. They genuflected and made the sign of reverence to the most holy religious figure in Inglad, more influential even than the Archbishop, and as Edith rose to look at her, she thought, “The whore who ruined my life! Little more than a girl, and nothing less than the sister of Morgellyn, that witchly cunt who killed her husband.”

“Your Grace,” Hilda said to the Queen, stretching out her hand.

Edith was nonplussed and then she realized that even the Queen was to kiss the hand of the Abbess. She did so. Still, feeling the cold gold of the ring on her lips, Edith pulled her veil back over her face, hoping it covered the look of hatred, hoping none could tell how much she wanted to bite off this bitch’s fingers.