The Book of the Blessed

Morgellyn

Over a month ago, the torch fires had been seen early one night, and the towermen had communicated back and forth. By midnight the bells were ringing in Herechester. They rang low and long but not as long or low as they might. A king was dead, but not their king. Queen Moregellan had been awakened by a servant and dressed herself to come into the Small Throne room where her husband sat. She was annoyed by his sympathetic look.

“I have something to tell you my dear,” he began.

She told herself she should feel more warmly toward him, that he was only trying to be a sympathetic husband, but anyone in the world knew death bells, and she knew the death bells of a kinsman king, and she certainly knew the strange pattern of death bells that meant the father of the Queen was dead.

Morgellyn was taller than many women, with long thick hair she always wore down, fine and wavy, almost like the gold of the legendary fleece from the eastern legend. In the night she wore a great white gown that swept along the floor and she sat down now at the table beside her husband.

“So my father has gone to join my mother at last,” she said.

Though Stephen King of Essail nodded his head, Morgellyn had no idea where her father had gone. He had wanted to make a good marriage for her, and when she was sixteen, Stephen, widowed but not by the love of his life, had arrived at the court of Kingsboro Castle. Anthal had thought he would have to talk his daughter into a marriage, and he had been very gentle about it, but Mother was gone and she had always been a little foolish. It was a shame to leave the girls, and she felt a little sorry for Anson, though he was old enough to walk away from this, go as far away as possible, possibly even to his mother’s people. Morgellyn knew exactly where she was going, so she married Stephen with little prompting. The wedding had taken place in Estelwild Abbey outside of Kingsboro, and then they had immediately gone north to Herechester and the castle that dominated that great city, Sunderland.

When a servant brought a cup of mulled wine, the Queen thanked him negligently with a wave of the hand and lifted the pewter cup to her lips.

“I suppose that bastard is King now.”

“No,” Stephen said, misunderstanding, “it will be Cedd.’

Morgellyn looked at her husband as if he was the stupidest man alive, which, sometimes she thought, could be possible.

“Make no mistake,” she said, “in my family Cedd is always the bastard when I speak of bastards.”

“What of Anson?”

“Anson,” she pronounced, putting the steaming cup from her, “is no bastard. He is simply not going to be accepted by the Council. I knew nothing of his mother. She was before mine. But she was no beloved queen, and she was no Ayl. The council wants the goodwill of Edmund in the north—ah another bastard—and Cedd is a kinsman of his.”

“My Queen you would do well to respect the King of the North.”

“Fuck the King of the North,” Morgellyn murmured, carelessly. “Usurper. Who can’t even get up a child. If only you would take my advice and make bids among the oldest families who still have Wulfstan blood, then we could marry Linalla off to one of them and really begin something.”

“By something you mean a civil war?”

Morgellyn humphed and took up her cup.

“The Queen is grieving,” the house steward said. “If this makes her feel better—”

“If I want to feel better I’ll chop off your tongue and follow with your hands,” Morgellan snapped. “I am not child. Not anymore.”

“Yes, your Grace,” Bendick said, bowing quickly. “Forgive it, your Grace.”

“Some people are a little too free in this house,” Morgellyn continued, sitting deeper in her seat, “a little too often.

“No,” she continued, “I am not mourning for a man who was already old when I was born and had the good fortune to outlive three of his wives. We must leave for Kingsboro in the morning and bring Linalla with us to secure a marriage.”

Stephen asked his wife, “Do you have anyone in mind?”

She reflected, with greater irritation, feeling a throbbing in her left temple, that her husband might have thought of this himself.

“There will be many lords at the gathering.”

“Anson? He’s next in line to the throne.”

Are you stupid?

“He’s her uncle,” Morgellyn said, “and I don’t see much of a future for him in Westrial. He is very low hanging fruit. All the North is ruled by Edmund.”

“But the old kingdoms are individually ruled by earls, the Earl of Hale, or North Hale or….”

“Too far north,” Morgellyn shook her head. “The children of Senach are too young for marriage. Sussail? Hermudis has a don. Or I am thinking we should turn to the Royan kingdoms. I have heard Idris is at Kingsboro right now, and a fairer man I have never seen. I would not look to other Sendic kingdoms.”

“No?”

“Cedd will marry Imogen off as soon as possible. She’ll have a veil on her head and be either the next queen of Sussail or Senach before out father’s cold in the tomb.”

“She should like that.”

“I’m going to bed,” Morgellyn said, suddenly.

“We have to be up early in the morning.”

She had kissed her husband briskly and, wrapping her night gown tight around herself, departed.

It was only the next morning, while they were dressing, the news came that the bells they had heard were of an entirely different order. How could she have known this pattern? Father still lived, but Cedd was to receive the crown. Clearly it meant old Anthal was dying, and so Morgellyn asked herself if this new information changed anything, then realized it did not.

She wondered if her brother suspected that the coronation was so rushed because Father had some sort of plan to control what kind of king Cedd would be? Surely Cedd could not believe Father was doing it for his welfare? But here is the thing: men are stupid. And vain. Perhaps Cedd fancied that Father wanted him safely crowned so that the Council could not give the crown to Anson. But Morgellyn knew her father, and she knew which child he favored, and so that could not have been the answer.

Yes, men were stupid. When Morgellyn had married Stephen, she had not been so bothered by his amazing stupidity, and her good sense told her that if he was smarter he would be less easily controlled. Control was what she wished for above all, and Morgellyn never deceived herself on this score. But the last comment about Imogen! Morgellyn had not seen her in two winters, but if she was the same—and it turned out she was—the girl would sooner kill herself than be married. Well, maybe she could end up like Hilda.

This morning in Kingsboro, days after the coronation of a new king, Morgellyn laughed to herself as she lifted her skirts and, hair hanging behind her, went up the winding stair to her chambers, saying, “Maybe the convent.”

The Kingsboro

Anson had spent most of his life in this castle, this boro. He loved the sound of the word. His old father had told him, “We are not like the Hale who built the long houses, or like the Daumans who built castles only for themselves to dominate the land and tax the people. When we came, we built the Boro.”

The Boro was the great network of walls and towers and towered houses that could shelter a city, where endless apartments connected guests and lords and workers, and not simply the royal family. It was, Father had said, the physical embodiment of the land as a community. But even in the northwest towers, that most dense network of familiar apartments, there were spaces of great privacy and now Anson came to Ohean’s door, and said, “Well, here is me.”

“Yes,” Ash said. “Please come in,”

As Anson entered, he called, “Light.”

He heard that in Chyr they relied on the old magic for such things, but this was simply the new technology, and as he called for it, the anteroom was filled with a soft light.

“Not nearly as lavish as Father’s quarters,” Anson said, prying his boots off. “Or Cedd’s for that matter.”

“Do you mind if I shower?” Anson said to him.

“Not at all.”

“Do you think you could share it with me?”

Ash blinked and Anson laughed lightly.

“Say no if you wish.”

“I don’t know how hot you’ll like it?” Ash said. If we can agree on a temperature.”

“If I promise,” Anson clasped his hands together dramatically, “to not fight you about the water, will you get in with me?”

Ash stood up.

“It has been such a long time,” he said. “Are you ready for it?”

“Are you?” Anson said, and now Ash realized he was not trifling.

“Ash, are you ready for me?”

“I don’t really know,” he admitted after a moment of thought. “I’m not ready to not be with you.”

“Then come into the water with me,” Anson said to him.

Gravely, the magician smiled.

“How could I say no to such a reasonable proposition?”

Under the water neither speaks for some time. Ash takes the cloth and soap and, as if he were cleaning a golden statue, and gently washes Anson’s body. They take turns scrubbing and massaging each other and then, under the water, embrace. Anson is taller, bends down to lay his head against Ash’s, murmurs, “My own brother? My sister? Wanting to kill me.”

“Do not be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” Anson says. “Fear is not the feeling.”

Nothing happens for a while, and then he trembles.

“I thought I was past feeling this way. I thought I was past being touched by them.”

But he is not past it, and painfully, a man used to smiling or fighting his way through things, he convulses in Ash’s arms. How different from the rounds of drinking and even fucking, and now, of course, as hot tears mingle with the hot water, he understands why, after so long a time, they must be together and why, though there is love, the risk is so great.

So they turn off the water and, barely toweled, not speaking, go to the bed, Ash leading Anson into the darkness where they lay down in each other’s arms wearily and, at last, give way to kissing, to stroking, to releasing the most vulnerable feelings on both sides.

“Fuck me!” Anson whispers in the dark, turning over, and opening for Ash, who is surprised by this dark magic more than any enchantment he has ever worked.

Anson demands this of him so tenderly in the bed that tonight is their bed. Anson pushes his naked back to Ash’s front, lifts up his thigh, and reaches back for Ash, pulling him in.

“Fuck me like you did that first time. When we didn’t expect it.”

The first time neither of them has spoken of until now.

So quiet, in the dark. The lovemaking, the fucking, is just as much about how they got to this point as that moment itself, bodies together.

Anson is a surprise of tightness and moistness, of deep, deep, shocking, electrifying, deeps, hands pressing on Ash’s chest, moving down his chest to his stomach, moving to make his hips buck, taking Ash’s hands in his and moving them up his own chest, and then touching his own chest, massaging his own cock, coming down so that Ash’s hands can plant themselves in his dark, tawny hair, putting his own hands in his hair as, full of his own sex and power, he bucks up and down, riding him. Anson is so beautiful and skilled this way, so full of the same heat that is in Ash, both of their voices catching. Anson is arching his back, opening his mouth, planting his hands behind him, on either side of Ash, opening his mouth in swears and promises of love, whisper moaning:

“Fuuuuuccck—”

As he comes, he cuts himself off with the arc of hot semen, all up Ash’s stomach, a trail on his chest, speckles of desire under his chin.

Ash turned on the light for a moment because he wanted to see Anson’s face. He wanted to look over Anson’s body, long and lightly muscled, to run his hands over his tight little ass, and watch his body as he made him moan, but then he turned out the light because shadow was sacred. Fumbling and light touching grew into love and mounted to orgasm.

When it was over, they lay on their backs, chest heaving, breath shallow in the darkness, and Ash said, “How was it?”

Anson did not speak at first immediately. When he had gone on his hands and knees, his eyes had watered and the dimness of night vision had gone even dimmer from the pain of Ash pressing inside of him, the burning of being entered. He had let his gasps of pain escape, reaching back, cupping the smooth, round hills of Ash’s ass, so much meatier and rounder than his, and expertly pulled Ash back inside of him.

“It hurt like hell,” Anson said. “But when you were fucking me I didn’t want it to stop.”

It was the most feeling he’d ever had. It was the most intense thing he had ever known, save being inside of Ash, and feeling him react the same way, being deeper and deeper inside of him, again on the edge of everything, coming, exploding, his insides twisting, ascending out of his body.

“It still hurts,” Anson said.

“I can still feel you inside of me,” Ash confided, laughing as he turned to kiss him.

“I don’t want the hurt to stop,” Anson said. “I didn’t know something could be like this, you throbbing like a heart inside me. All night, all day, to ride through the city and sit in council, squeeze myself tight, and I’ll still be throbbing, Ash, feeling you deep inside me.”