“Are you all right, my lord? You disappeared.” Oisín touches the elbow of his sleeve.
“Perfectly. Just wandering.” Neither of those things are a lie in their simplest terms, and the words do not struggle to pass his lips.
Oisín’s expression evens, and he smiles. Already, the short hours of noon are turning to evening, and Iohmar’s party is gathering what they’ve spread, eager to reach Rúnda’s court. Iohmar has not eaten, nor does he wish to, and calls the ancient creature to him with a soft whistle. Galen joins him as Oisín returns to the others, unaware of the remnants of Iohmar’s foul mood, combing his fingers into the creature’s fur and swaying with wine.
Iohmar seats himself between the creature’s downy shoulder blades and feeds Lor from his finger with a whisper and a twist of thistle. He allows his folk to go before him, his kingsguard at the lead as he brings up the end of the procession. Galen watches him but does not question the choice.
The shadows reminded him of those rippling across his borders. Both are some form of strange magic, even if the shadows hold no great power or intent to harm. Their unusual presence is a tug at an uncomfortable old scar. It is unfair for Iohmar to compare them to those other cruel monsters. Resenting his thoughts, he casts his magic far out, passing it over all warm and living and welcoming things. He reaches his mountains and their familiar embrace, past those lands beyond, through the thoughtless winds.
He crashes against the endless void of the rippling lands like a douse of cold water, a bitter sensation bringing a sour taste to his throat even from such a distance.
But nothing moves. Nothing is disturbed. Endlessness greets him on the other side. And he withdraws, with nothing to worry and fret and weep over but his own nightmares.
9
A Great Feasting
Dusk turns to night several times over before they reach Rúnda’s court.
His people do not shy from darkness, lighting lanterns and singing their way through the hours without light, Iohmar humming with them. Mist hangs in the deepest forest until it breaks with a sudden burst of sunlight and salted air, and Iohmar’s lands transition into the queen over the sky’s.
Rúnda does not greet them. Her presence is nearby, an explosion of warmth and energy like wind and rivers, a familiar weight in the back of his mind. Iohmar does not extend his magic enough to find her—she is likely looking down from some great height—but relaxes in the joy and affection of her people greeting his. Later, when the heat of the day has passed and twilight brings supper and feasting and drinking, she will appear in her dining halls to celebrate with her people and welcome her guests. She will pounce on him with a great many questions appropriate for a lady to ask a lord and sit an acceptable distance so no one watching will become suspicious of the nature of their relationship.
Sometime in the night, one will visit the other’s chambers. Nothing prevents them from courting each other, but the privacy makes their meetings all the sweeter.
Rúnda’s court is a glorious pillar of ash-gray stone streaked with silver, and it shoots into the sky. Carvings of plants and animals and ancestors long passed wrap its round walls like vines. Iohmar still hasn’t seen them all. The tower butts against a cliffside, a massive knife of rock with no soft mountain slope on either side, a natural wall that’s been sung of in the songs of his kin for as long as he can remember, for as long as his grandfather could. Where the wall of rock ends—just past the roundness of the tower growing from it—is the sea, sharp and bitter cold. He cannot glimpse it from this distance, not with the woods between here and there, but its presence and power sit in the magic of the air. Lor will soon see those roaring waves.
Where the forest ends, a step into another realm, is desert. It is vast and empty and devoid of life. Few wander those dunes. Heat is as much a living beast as the wind is about Rúnda’s tower.
But it is not the same emptiness as that in the rippling lands.
Those neighboring places could be reached should Iohmar travel far beyond the opposite side of the knife blade of rock, down the shore of the sea until Rúnda’s kingdom fades. He hasn’t ventured near since leaving his own Halls to drive the creatures from these lands alongside his parents and Rúnda’s own mother. A scar still cuts the landscape. Trees have returned to the dead places, he’s heard, but the land will never be as it was.
“It was a long time ago now,” he murmurs to Lor, gathering the child in the crook of his arm. Lor gurgles.
Rúnda’s folk greet him at the woven bridge, welcoming visitors into the palace. Several languages fall on his ears. They are all old dialects, graceful sounds, and there is not a creature in Iohmar’s court or Rúnda’s who does not understand them upon birth. Iohmar wonders at the shadows and their silence.
None of Rúnda’s folk appear particularly like or dislike Iohmar’s. They are all shapes and sizes, colors, and features. Some bear animal-like extremities more radical than Iohmar’s, some nearing human in their plainness. It is their magic that holds a different tinge, imbued with salt and sea and desert heat, not the damp earth and woods and breath of the trees of Iohmar’s. Their talents are spread further and not so concentrated. Where Iohmar’s folk excel in singing trees and stones and earth to shape their needs, these people are of the sea and all her terror, the dry forest and the deserts and, with great wildness, the winds.
Iohmar knows there are likely other folk in other lands save for these two and the humans in their own little magic-drained realm, but he has never come across them. His trees extend forever and forever past the heart of the woods. Anyone who ventures in is likely to never find their way out or to come to a place where they lose themselves entirely. No one has crossed Rúnda’s deserts or oceans, and far enough in the other direction brings them to
the ripplings.
Their world is so vast. So small. When he was a child, Iohmar sometimes imagined the winds could carry him far up until they reached the stars.
A woman approaches, half Iohmar’s height and with horns of a stag so large and broad they bow her head. Colorful robes brush the mossy ground, and baubles hang from the points of her horns, stones and gems and carved trinkets. Waddling to the side of his mount, she grins at him from a tanned face both smooth and aged. Deer fur creeps along her temples, brown and spotted as a fawn’s. Her smile is warm. She never speaks but greets him at every visit. Some memories still catch in his mind of being a child visiting this court and her doing the same to his parents. He smiles in return, touching the tip of her horn with respect when she pats his leg.
Others swarm them, none quite so bold to touch the king beneath the earth, but they smile and welcome their friends. They run their hands along the creature Iohmar rides. The beast shivers and purrs at the attention. Iohmar slips from the creature’s back and lets the children—there are many more in Rúnda’s court—lead it away with sugars and fruits as they giggle and run rings under its long legs. Dangerous as tales of the creature are, it is never aggressive to any Iohmar holds in regard.
His kingsguard are swallowed up in the welcoming crowd, allowing themselves to be led away; they are safe here and do not need to hover about their king. Iohmar lets his people and their celebration sweep into the tower while he lingers in the shade of the woods.
Galen hovers behind him in the following silence.
“You’ve been quiet,” he says.
“No more so than usual.”
“Nothing is troubling you?”
Iohmar squints at him, but Galen’s face is concerned, eyes light. “Nothing more than usual.”
Galen purses his lips. Lor gives a shriek, reaching for Iohmar’s horns. It’s become a habit, and Iohmar lowers his face until their noses brush and the boy’s arms can reach the curl of his horns. His lips pull into a smile of their own accord. He wanders under the stone gates as Galen drifts after.
“I can hear you thinking,” Iohmar murmurs.
“Have you told Rúnda about the babe?”
“No, a letter didn’t seem correct. Neither did the crows.”
Galen tucks his hands into his long sleeves, stepping beside Iohmar to nod at the child. “Are you going to explain to her the circumstances?”
Chambers are always prepared for Iohmar. He knows by heart the pathway winding up and up and up into the sky. Feasting will begin soon, and he wishes to change from the duller traveling robes draping his shoulders. Instead of continuing into the palace, he turns left and up the nearest stairwell. On his left, thick stone walls rise. On his right, the spiraling hallway is secured with vines and branches so thick that only mere glimpses can be seen down into the palace. Iohmar slips his fingers between the cracks as he ascends.
“I’ll decide from moment to moment,” he says. Rúnda will think him as foolish as Galen does, and he wishes for her to love Lor.
The staircase leads ever on and on until Iohmar reaches the uppermost levels. One higher would bring him to the quarters of Rúnda and her queensguard. She’s taken him to the roof in the past, and though Iohmar has stood on mountaintops and let the wind fling him over peaks and above the human world, the height of it made his legs weak.
His chambers are as he recalls: small and simple, with shades of dark stone and wood and cloth, rich furs draping the bed. The hearth is already lit and radiating heat. A single window, unobscured by glass, lets in the wild breeze. Scents of salt and sand swirl in, and he breathes like it’s his first breath after drowning, tasting them on the back of his tongue. Galen is watching him, but he kicks off his boots and reclines along the bed, sinking deep into the furs, inspecting the ceiling. He coaxes trees to grow within the stone walls whenever he is here. Even so high in the tower, his ceiling is knotted with grizzled branches and smatterings of leaves. Rúnda’s ceiling should be sprouting wisteria by now.
