The Book of the Blue House

That night was the first time Conn was in the Hall of Gathering. He had never been to the sanctuary, so he did not know that this hall rested on the other side of the offering rooms that surrounded the offering pool. It’s thick, round pillars of cool, blue stone supported the temple above. All about the hall, lying down, squatting on their hams, legs folded under them, were the residents of Hyrum House, and Conn was always surprised by how many there were, and how different they all were. There were more dependents like him than he had suspected, and they were all sitting down on the ground or on the steps of this sunken room. There were no tables and no chairs except the one that the man called Ekkrebeth, in his own blue robes that were different in hue from everyone else’s, was sitting in.

He was a Royan, his skin caramel brown with touches of red in it, as if a permanent sunset was upon him, and his head was clean shaven. He robe was voluminous and almost open at his breast, but it was an electric or sea blue different from the robes of everyone else in the House and his hands were long and red brown and somehow powerful, as was his face that was young and quiet, and seemed to be waiting, but not waiting for silence, for that was what he already had.

“Master Ekkrebeth, have you been to the palace?” Cal asked.

“Have you been to the palace, and has the King had anything to say about what will come?” another asked, and Ekkrebeth looked around the room, and now Conn thought that he was not here to ask, but maybe to answer all of these questions.

“Will Prince Anson have to fight?’

“Have you seen the Prince?”

“If Cedd is the heir to the throne, then why does not Cedd do the fighting himself?”

“Do you think the King will go into battle or is he too old?”

“Will Chyr help?”

“Do you think the Dauman will cross our border?”

“Of course they won’t.”

“They did before, they did. For years they sat on the Throne in Ondres.”

“But never again. Never again.”

“How can you say that when half of us in here are descended from them and those invasions?”

And all this time, the man called Ekkrebeth said nothing. His face was still, and his eyes lowered, and occasionally he shared a glance with Abbot Hyrum, but it was the Prior Eutropius who said, “You all ask so many questions, and you do not give Ekkrebeth a chance to speak.”

Ekkrebeth smiled, and he said, “Firstly, I have not been to the palace. For that would be unwelcome.”

“But you are the King’s councilor,” they protested. “You are the king’s Voice. The King swore to always hear you.”

“Well you know the Arcbishop and the High Prince are against that, and I wish to cause no trouble, so I am far off until I am needed again.”

Again there were outcries from the Blues against this, though it was mostly only the young speaking.

“There is more for me to do in Chyr, and in Rheged, in the old kingdoms, and in the secret places than standing in the court of an old king with new allies who do not want me,” Ekkrebeth said, “and I am headed off soon into the north, for the truth is war is coming. There will be war in the south, and I will look for help in the north and in the west.”

“But what of Prince Anson?”

“The Prince always leads his troops into battle. I have no doubt he will do so again.”

“Look at how calm he is,” Derek marveled, seemed almost outraged. “The Lord Ekkrebeth is a man above me, for everyone knows he loves Anson and Anson loves him, yet now they are parted, and he must merely accept the way of things!”

“I came back here,” Ekkrebeth said, “to be among my brothers, and to take solace in the House of Adaon before departing, to learn of your news, and you are here to learn of my news, before I return to the north.”

“He’s a Blue?” Conn said. “He does not seem like a… He is different.”

“He is different but he is part of us,” Gabriel explained as one old priest began to speak to Ekkrebeth in a quavering voice.

“He is a mage,” Derek said. “Ekkrebeth is a sorcerer of great reknown.”

“The only sorcerer I’ve ever heard about around here is Ashe of Margate.”

“Duckling,” Cal said tenderly, clapping Conn’s head, “That isAshe of Margate. Or Ohean Pendarvis, his given name. Ekkrebeth is his great name, and it is the name we give him when he comes here.”

“He is ours and we are his.” Gabriel said solemnly, almost like a chant.

“Will the Age of Love begin now?” Raphaelin asked.

“That is not for me to say. I am no prophet,” Ekkrebeth answered, “and as far as I see we are still very much in the Age of War. These matters are spoken of by the Adaon Adaonim whom you see on the streets, coming more and more westward from Nyssa. They have another vision of Adaon which has been given neither to you nor to me, and I would believe them…”

“Ekkrabeth is a different branch of the same tree,” Lorne explained, and Conn did not pretend he understood.

Derek shook his head.

“We are not explaining it well. We sound foolish. I will explain it to you later, Conn. That and a great many other things.”

“I need to talk to you,” Derek said. “I need to speak to you in private.”

Derek had been, frankly, irritated the whole day, and Conn wondered if Derek had some words of irritation to say to him. If he did, so be it.

“In your room?” Conn suggested.

“That would be best,” Derek said.

The room was unlit and Conn thought of the other night, when the moonlight had come in shining on the small naked body of Jon, stretched across Nialla and grinning.

Derek took a deep breath, and he was playing with his hands, and looking at the floor, not, in fact, looking angry.

“This is hard for me,” Derek said, “because I feel like a fool.”

“What?” Conn said.

“Please forgive me,” Derek told him. “I am jealous.”

“What?” Conn began, then stopped himself, realizing he’d just said that.

Derek turned around and held him lightly by the shoulders.

“When you first came here, when you first came to me, it wasn’t long before I felt the way I could not say, couldn’t even say until today, that you were mine.”

“But,” Conn started, not understanding, “but I am yours.”

“No, you’re not,” Derek said, as if informing him. “No one owns anyone else. You are not mine. And when you talked about being a Blue—”

“I wasn’t serious,” Conn began. Then he said, “Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t completely serious, but…”

“All I could think of was you with all those other people, and that’s not fair because, of course, I am a Blue. It’s not fair to be angry about you doing what I do at least three days of each week, what I have done for nearly four years. It’s just that, it was easier to do it when there was no one to come home to.”

Conn decided it was best to say nothing. It seemed like Derek was thinking things out and needed to come to his own words.

“Gabriel is not mine. Cal is not mine. Lorne is not mine. Not even Raphael when he was my partner was mine. No one has ever been mine. What we do together is… communal. We’re friends. There’s love, but it isn’t… exclusive. Isn’t…”

“Possessive?” Conn suggested.

“Yes,” Derek said. “And I feel possessive of you, and that’s wrong.”

“But you do possess me,” Conn said. “Or did you, with all that you do know, not know that?”

Derek looked almost comically in despair for a while and then he said, “How do I convince you that I love you?”

“It seems as if you are the one in need of convincing,” Conn said.

“No,” Derek shook his head and pushed his black hair from his face. “But how can you love me? Knowing what I do. What I will do? And how can I be envious of you looking at another man when…”

“When you more than look at several?”

“Yes.”

Conn shrugged.

“People are strange.”

Derek grimaced more than smiled, but he chuckled.

“Yes, Conn. People are. I am.”

“Maybe if you feel like this,” Conn began, “you should stop being a priest.”

Derek did not answer immediately, and then he said, “There… is something to that.”

Conn laughed outloud and he laughed so hard Derek turned around and looked at him with irritation.

“Oh, take that look off your face!” Conn said.

“I was fooling with you,” Conn told him. “A Blue Priest is what you are. I understand this and don’t think much about it. What you do with other men means little to me. Less than I thought it would. If you cannot grow up, I can. I am not only with you because I feel like I have to be. I have had no desire to be with anyone else but you.”

“Then know this,” Derek said, touching Conn’s hand. “A Blue is the only call I’ve ever known. It is a strong call. It is a vocation, truly, and when I serve in the temple it is pleasure to me. I feared you feeling the pleasure I feel with other men that I feel with them. But when it is done, and even when it is going on, I love you and you fit to me like no other, and when I am not serving, I look at no others. I long for no others but you.”

Conn thought, I wonder how that can be true, for the other night when he’d seen Jon twined with his sister, his first thought was envy, a hot wish that he was Nialla, a desire to run the back of his hand over the soft buttocks of Jon. He had never been with any other man than Derek simply because his longings were new, not because he was some creature of virtue, and he knew this. But he sensed that right now he could not tell Derek. He sensed that, as much as he was coming to love Derek Annakar, and as wise as Derek was in sex, he was not wise in love. So Conn said, “Tell me of Ekkrebeth, as you promised.”

“Ekkrebeth,” Derek began. Then, “Yes. We of the temple, we have a mild magic, all the ancient orders do. But once we were all mages. The Blue Mages now live in the north, and Ekkrebeth is of their number. He is the greatest of their number.”

“But who is Ekkrebeth?” Conn asked again.

“He is one of the Avayan.”

“And who are the Avayan?”

“They are the faces of the Gods. It is said the Gods are too mighty, too different from the world now to enter it as themselves, and so they enter it through avatars. Annatar entered as the Ard, this is what the New Faith says, and brought their new religion, and also he was Rava the Hero, and before that he was the Beloved Shepherd Adaon, whom we serve. It is said that he is Ekkrebeth as well, that Ekkrebeth is a face of the God Himself.”

“Is this true?”

“I do not know,” Derek said. Then, “I often think so, but cannot know for sure.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Derek bawked at this.

“You do not ask someone such things.”

“Maybe you do not,” Conn said. “But if I ever meet him, perhaps I will.”