The Book of the Blessed

Kingsboro

Lorne did not leave with them. Those who were leaving tightly embraced those who remained, but they had all packed their bags and soon they were following Ohean. Conn felt stupid for not knowing there were stables in the Temple, but then there was everything in the Temple, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. Some of the First Years were working here, and in that place was a red headed young man.

“Are we ready, Master?” he asked Ohean.

“Yes, Wolf, and these are our new companions.”

“So you are true Blue Priests?” the tall redheaded boy said in amazemnent, folding his hands together and bowing with respect.

“Yes,” it was Gabriel who spoke, surprised to be honored so.

“And Master says this one will be a mage?” Wolf gestured to Conn.

Ohean made a small grunting noise, reaching into his saddle bag and pulling his hood over his head.

“It would seem so.”

“It is so,” Ohean said.

“Well, now let us be off. There is much to do.”

“Master, is this where you got that sword from last year?” Wolf asked.

“It is.”

“It is a magic sword?” Wolf whispered.

“Yes,” Ohean replied. “And it bears this particular magic about it: if you stab a man with it, he will die.”

Wolf only frowned and said to the Blues who were between laughing and trying to stop from laughing, “He’s always this way. You’ll learn.”

They rode north toward the Everdeen District and Varayan Hill, and then west until they came to Milno Bridge and crossed the great river, blue in the early spring, and entered Kingsgarth with its high palaces and gardens. They were coming nearer and nearer to the great castle, the Kingsboro, and when Connleth pointed this out, Ohean said, “We are not only coming nearer to it. We are coming into it.”

Conn remembered hearing that there was a public section of the palace that the people often came in and out of, the outer courts, and while Cal had visited here with Fero, Conn had never come this close to the long expanse of the Boro. It was like a small city, and indeed, he had heard how once upon a time it was the original city, but the city had long ago exceeded those rose colored walls. Now they saw the high towers and long walls, the walls beyond walls and beyond them the great buildings and towers of the Kingsboro, all the color of rose colored earth, red tiled and rosy like a sunset. They walked past several gates, going more north along the castle street where there were not only great houses but very humble homes, and then turning north they arrived at the main gate of the Kingsboro, and Conn looked on the high towers and long walls, and beyond them, rising higher, other walls, and the deep towers and the Great and Greater Keep, lofty and filled with crystal windows glinting back the late day sun.

Passing through the gate, Ohean left the horses with the porter, and after giving him three gold coins, traced a sign of blessing over them and him, and then, without pushing away his hood, continued walking. As they entered the main bailey, four massive towers from each corner of the court looked down on them, but Ohean walked straight ahead to the wall before them, of ancient grey stone, and began walking along its side to where they saw a long stair which zigzagged and looked down dizzyingly upon the main gate. As they walked up the stairway went to a great wall and Ohean said, “This is where we will end, for this is what I wanted you to see.”

This high wall was more pink than rose, and on it, so unlike the rest of this Ayl castle, were the enameled greens of palm trees, and the slender paintings of brown men and women leaping up and over white and brown bulls, faded with time but still bright. Derek had never seen such art, and Ohean spoke.

“Past that wall is the true palace, which is built very high and not reached by here. In time of war it could easily be defended and these stairs taken down, but such a thing has never been tried.”

“Lord Ekkrebeth—”

“Call me Ohean.”

“Ohean,” Connleth said. “It is beautiful, but why have you brought us here?”

“To show you the age of the world. How old is the Kingsboro, and how old is Westrial?”

“Westrial,” Derek began, “it happened when the Ayl came here, intermarried with the Royan, founded a new kingdom, of the West Ayl, as Sussail is of South Ayl and the Royans and the Sincercians. It was over a thousand years ago.

“And what was before that?”

“The Imperium. When the Sinercians came. They left, but some of them, like Quinton and Matt’s ancestor’s, stayed.”

“But before that?” Ohean said. “Or did they tell you of before that in the Temple?”

“We heard the songs, and the legends. Some of them,” Matteo said. “I would have known more, but I am only in my third year.”

“No matter,” Ohean said as his eyes swept over the faded painting of a leaping dolphin.

“Before that was Ankar, and Ankar stretched all across the Ayl Kingdoms, even into Hale. It fell on hard times in the end, but it was the heart of the Royan lands. Westrial was the heart of Ankar. It’s old name was Locrys. Westrial has lasted a thousand years, but Ynrukando’s lasted three thousand years, three thousand years before the last of its kings fell to the Sinercians. But those who were left of that bloodline fled north to establish Rheged, Elmet and Ossariand. You have been told than Kingsboro was built by the Ayl Kings, but this is not quite true. It was rebuilt. This palace was built on the ruins of the old, which we stand upon now. Those were its walls. These stones were brought from the isle of Solea, and they are from before the days of the Third Creation. They come from the time of the Last Creation.”

Derek did not ask what this meant, and Ohean continued, “I tell you this, because few things survive from that time. But the Blue House is one of those things.”

New people were approaching, but Derek did not dare look away from Ohean.

“The Blue Priests fled Soléa at the end of the last creation and re established that temple,” Ohean said. “They built the doors from the Red Tree and the Black Tree and the White. I tell you this because we are leaving this place and going into a deep and ancient magic, and before you go into it, you must also understand that you have come from it as well.”

But now he had stopped talking, and Connleth recognized Prince Anson. Beside him were two girls in heavy cloaks, leading ponies, and the Prince said, “We will meet Pol on our way out of the city.”

“You have brought Imogen?” Ohean said.

“Lord Ohean, please don’t tell me I should go back with my brother—” the princess began, and Connleth realized she was the dark haired princess he had seen on the festival processions to Purplekirk.

“Of course I wasn’t,” Ohean said. He made a brief gesture over her, and Conn blinked, no longer able to focus on her features no matter how he tried.

“That’s better,” Ohean said. “Cedd has a heedless mind, so let him forget about you for the next day or so. Maybe longer. That’s what we need,” he murmured. “All who see us will forget us, that’s what we need.”

Conn realized that Ohean’s musings were magic, saw the long brown hand moving about as he spoke.

“Now,” he said, turning to Anson, “We should go.”

They met Pol Kurusagan and Austin Buwa in the Everdeen District, not long after joining Jon and Nialla, the brother in law and sister of Conn Aragareth. They were also joined by a Marnen girl named Sara and her brother Theo and, to Derek’s surprise. Obala, who had once lived in the Blue House but gone back to keeping her herds on the fields near the river.

“We are heading for the river,” Nialla told her brother. “We are going to Obala’s herd to travel with them,”

“It is time for us to be moving,” the large, dark woman said.”

Kingsboro is a great city, and Derek had rarely left it since he’d come seven years ago. It seemed, traveling south to the Ram Road and then along the river, on the pastoral road with all the herders, that they would never leave its boundaries. The Great Walking Road, where the Marnen and the many other herding people were entering and leaving the city traveled, stretched out for many miles with river to the right and pasture to the left, a strand of country in the city walls and, at last, it gave way to the stockyards and to the old neighborhoods of the stockyard workers. The living quarters were as diverse as collections of old tenements or almost farm houses. This whole stretch was like great crowded villages with no city life about them, and only in the distance, to the far west could they see the great buildings of Kingsboro. At last passed through the Ram’s Gate, that great door with the two large figures of ram headed men, hands on knees, sharp eyes looking out onto the world from their goatish faces, and Wolf, Myrne, Imogen, Thano, Ohean, Anson, Derek and their whole crowd along with the herders and the cyclists, those walking or riding on donkeys and horses came out of the great city.

Now the road traveled amidst hills and dipping vales, and they passed through the small suburbs of the King’s City and now and again, over the hills, they could see the luxurious River Road, the other way out of the city for the great cars and buses wheelhouses, wagons and sedans. Before long these two roads would come together into the King’s Road and travel east.

“But we will travel north,” Ohean informed them.

New friends and new enemies

await our companions

in

The Book of the Broken