by Rick Shelley
"Tomorrow, we will take Carillia home to the land of the gods," Silvas said, knowing that his people expected him to say something. "We will never forget her here. We will raise a shrine to her memory in the courtyard of the Seven Towers." Then he turned and headed for the main entrance, to his right. He took the wide staircase up to the private apartments above.
Maria was waiting for him on the landing. Silvas came to a halt one step below, which put their eyes almost at the same level.
"I knew the instant you opened the door to leave her," Maria said. "I couldn't help that."
"I know." Silvas took the final step up to the landing. They turned toward the doorway leading into their living quarters. Silvas put his arm around Maria's shoulders. "These last two days can't have been easy for you."
"But not so hard as they've been for you," Maria replied.
"We have much to talk about." Silvas thought how vast an understatement that was.
Maria giggled. "Only the world, the universe, and all of time."
Silvas smiled. "I was uncertain how you would react to all that has happened. I scarcely know how to react myself."
"Did you never suspect that you might one day attain such a station?"
"I scarcely conceived that anyone could. Like everyone else in this world, I had my place, my duties. There was no time or purpose to be served in dreaming of fancies so far beyond them. And you?"
Maria shrugged. "A young girl dreams of many things, but never of this. All I knew of gods was the One God the Church told us about. It sorrows me to know the lies that have been fostered, even by the gods themselves. When the gods scheme and war and lie, where do humans look for succor?"
They went into the large sitting room. Maria sat on the cushioned divan that Koshka had told her came from Persia. Silvas went to a window that overlooked the side of the bailey where Carillia's shrine would be built.
"The gods care little for mortals, for what they are, do, or believe, except as it pleases their own vanities," Silvas said. "The gods don't even create religions. Men do that. Only if the rites and rituals of a religion appeal to a god's vanity will he lend it power, and make it his own." Silvas hesitated before he added, "Carillia was an exception. She cared, or she never would have spent so many centuries helping me to help them."
"And she wouldn't have passed her gift on so you could continue to help," Maria said.
"So we can continue." Silvas turned from the window to face Maria. "It may not be easy. I had a visitor while I sat in vigil." He related the tale of Mikel's appearance, choosing to speak the words aloud rather than merely project them into Maria's mind. She closed her eyes. She did more than listen, she experienced everything that Silvas had seen and heard, as fully as if she had been present, but Maria absorbed the meeting more quickly than Silvas had lived it.
When Maria opened her eyes again, Silvas was sitting on the sofa, close to her, leaning even closer.
"It will be difficult," Maria said.
The few inches of space between their eyes might almost not have existed. They were connected so totally at that moment that neither would have noticed a hand passed between their faces. More than at any time since the instant when Carillia passed her divinity to them, their beings merged fully. Eternities expired in a blink as their minds and souls spun tightening orbits around each other, culminating in a flash of light within them that might have given birth to entire universes. Maria had no chance to think, to respond, to any of the myriad wonders that exploded around her, around them, as they existed at the center of being itself. She and Silvas were truly one mind, one being, experiencing the universe together, and driving tendrils of themselves thoroughly into every mote of each other.
The moment ended. In unison, they took deep breaths and leaned back, away from each other, letting their individual bodies sink against the cushions of the divan.
"We need time to learn to use what we have," Silvas said at last, as overwhelmed by the experience as Maria. "And time is the one leisure we may not have."
"You are the champion who destroyed the Blue Rose heresy," Maria said. "Even the gods must take some pause before attacking." Part of her mind stood apart and wondered at the font that provided such thoughts. They came unbidden, almost unrecognized until they were spoken.
"Some pause," Silvas agreed. "But will it be enough?" He stood quickly, almost leaping to his feet. "It will have to do." He paced to the window and back. "We'll make what use we can of whatever time there is. For now, perhaps something to eat."
Koshka fetched supper in with the aid of two lads from the scullery. As usual, he seemed to know exactly when he was wanted, and with what. And then he left, taking the serving boys with him.
During the meal, Maria talked of what she had done during the days of Silvas's vigil, focusing on the trivia of getting to know her new home and the people of the household. Neither Silvas nor Maria wanted to dwell on the worries that Silvas had brought out of his vigil.
"You haven't slept at all since coming to the Seven Towers?" Silvas asked at one point.
"No, I guess not," Maria replied. "There's been too much to do. I'm really not tired yet." The last was said with amazement. "I did rest for a few moments the first night."
Silvas leaned back and looked into the distance over Maria's head. "I feel as if I could sleep for a week, but I also feel as if I could go on for another week without sleep, at need."
"We're different now," Maria said.
"Yes, but…" Silvas shook his head and smiled faintly at the memories that came. "Carillia slept, sometimes to excess. I think she enjoyed sleep."
"I do, too, in its place," Maria said. "Not all of the time."
Silvas looked at the golden platter in front of him. "I think that eating might be the same, something done more for pleasure than need now." He shrugged. "It seems right, but I don't feel any call to start fasting in order to prove the proposition."
"I hope not." Maria giggled. "I've never eaten so well in my life as these last two days."
They lingered over the meal, as if time were the last thing they might lack. Evening twilight settled and moved on into night before they finished. Then Silvas sighed.
"I think we should have a word with Bay before the nights gets much deeper."
"He gives good advice?" Maria made it a question, although she knew the answer.
"Always, though it's not always palatable," Silvas said.
They went to the mews, following a circuitous path from the keep to the curtain wall, around to one of the outer towers, then down into the stables. Bay was standing with his head out the open top half of his stall door. Bosc was sitting on a bale of hay in the corridor.
"She had to drag you out?" Bay asked.
"No." Silvas did not bother with the disguise of a smile. "I came out because it was time. I had a visitor. Mikel, the Unseen Lord. We have things to discuss." Quickly, with great economy of words, Silvas laid out the details of Mikel's visit.
"We need to offer what meager pageantry we can, of course," Bay said when Silvas had finished.
"I don't want to put on a false show," Silvas said. "That would be worse than nothing."
"Not false, but what we can," Bay said.
"You have suggestions?" Silvas asked.
"I will order the arrangements," Bay offered. "You have other concerns to occupy you."
"This must be done with some precision," Silvas said.
"I do know what is needed," Bay assured him.
"We'll need to leave early," was Silvas's next comment.
"But not too early," Bay countered. "It will suffice if we leave when the sun is over the new sea passage between England and France."
"What?" Silvas and Maria shouted the word in unison.
"You do recall that the sun was in the wrong place when we came home, don't you?" Bay challenged.
Silvas hesitated before he nodded. "It passed completely out of my reckoning, though. I had too much else to think upon."
&nbs
p; Bosc spoke then. He remained seated on the bale of hay and did not even look up. "When the earth trembled and shook during the battle at Mecq, England was torn loose from its roots and twisted about. Scotland is to the north now; Salisbury far in the south. Ireland has been ripped loose as well and rides the waves west of Wales. A strip of ocean, never less than seven leagues in width, separates England from the rest of Europe. We have been cast adrift like lepers."
"Not adrift," Bay said. "Merely anchored in new places. The old world is changed."
Silvas took a deep breath and cast his mind out into the void to look and question. He was scarcely aware that Maria's consciousness stayed locked to his, seeing exactly what he saw. The world was laid out below them just as Bosc had said. Quickly then, Silvas opened his eyes in the stable again.
"Auroreus always said that when the gods did battle among themselves it could be a terrible time for mortals," he said.
"This new world doesn't even recall the old," Bay said, looking toward Bosc. "Perhaps beyond the walls of the Seven Towers, no one below the land of the gods knows the truth of the old world."
"How can that be?" Maria asked, too quickly, before she gave herself a chance to look for the answer within.
"I know not," Bay said. "But such observations are my gift."
"They are," Silvas agreed. He looked around in his mind for any imminent threat in the mews, but found none. "This will bide until we have leisure for it."
"Leisure, or need," Bay replied.
– |"What do you think we'll face when we get to the land of the gods?" Maria asked while she and Silvas were retracing their steps into the keep.
"I have no idea," Silvas said. "And I doubt that we could discover much in the time we have before morning. I've had only distant glimpses of the Shining City." A place you can't get to unless you're already there, he thought, recalling one nightmarish vision he had experienced of it.
"We could look for new memories of it," Maria suggested. "There must be something we can reach within ourselves."
"The memories will come when there is something to spark them," Silvas said. "I see no advantage to forcing them. That is the easy way to provoke false memories."
"Whatever you think best."
Silvas stopped suddenly and turned toward her. They were in a passageway within the main curtain wall, dimly lit by torches a distance ahead and behind them, in deep shadows.
"You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss your notions, Maria." There was an urgency to his voice that puzzled her. "The only difference between us is a matter of experience, and that isn't always the most important quality. The ability to see a situation from a point of view that isn't colored by ages of experience can sometimes be priceless."
"Then?"
Silvas shrugged, and they resumed their walk. "In part, it's because I hope for the insight of inexperience that I don't think we should look ahead this time. I want to give us both that advantage."
Maria did not attempt to analyze the warm feeling that Silvas's words gave her. She just basked in it.
There was wine waiting when they got to their rooms. "A special vintage, one of my favorites," Silvas said.
Maria sipped it cautiously, watching Silvas over the rim of the goblet. The spicy wine tickled her tongue and brought a pleasing warmth to her insides when she swallowed it. She took a second, more generous, drink and let the wine swirl around in her mouth for a moment before she swallowed. This wine was better than any she had ever tasted before coming to the Glade. The thin, acidic wines that occasionally found their way to Mecq had never invited lingering.
"I never knew that wine could taste this good." She set the goblet down gingerly.
Silvas stared at her. She showed no discomfort at the scrutiny. It was no more than if she had been looking in a mirror.
"I'm not Carillia," Maria whispered. "I couldn't be her, and I won't try."
"I would never ask it," Silvas said. "Whatever we have become, it's something new. I don't believe this world has ever seen our like before."
"There's no one to say what we should or shouldn't do then," Maria said. "Even Brother Paul could find no way to stricture us."
Silvas laughed softly, recalling the vicar of Mecq and his earnest faith. "Don't underrate the good churchman. A cleric can always find grounds for stricture."
Maria laughed in return, but the laughter did not last. It drowned in the intensity of their eyes as they stared at each other. Maria stood, walked around the table, and sat on Silvas's laps.
"We are one now," Maria whispered as she touched Silvas's cheek.
The touch was something beyond the experience of either of them. It snatched away their breath, then wrapped them in a tight cyclone of light and color, a dazzling kaleidoscope that pressed them together and lifted them from the room. Their bodies merged into one, as if physically, leaving a double-vision, double-sensation panorama around them. Heart danced with heart, touching, steadying to the same beat. Thoughts laced together, a dual stream that became one. The cyclone moved them in time and space. They saw the lands that had given birth to the different people of the Seven Towers, the lupine gurnetz and the porcine esperia. They saw futures and pasts, some that would be, and some that had never been, or would never have been.
They saw each other. They became each other. For a time, there was only one being with both memories, and the two of them experienced the union in every fiber of their being.
Then they were two again, but not completely separate. When the cyclonic tour ended, they were in darkness and in silence, together in bed, with no memory of undressing or moving from the sitting room. Their separate bodies came together again, this time in more mundane fashion, repeating in the flesh what they had already done in spirit.
Maria extended her arms to gather Silvas in as he came down on her. They were naked and alive, sealing their destiny together. Though this was the first time that Maria had taken a man into her bed, there was nothing unknown or frightening about it. She was every woman since Eve… and Carillia was there at her side.
Silvas and Maria consumed the night and each other. The experience went beyond words or emotions, beyond the simple fact of their repeated couplings. When it was over, they woke in each other's arms, their bodies still linked in the basic fashion of the species, their inner beings linked in a fashion never before known by anyone born of woman.
Dawn was near. Outside, a cock crowed, foreshadowing sunrise.
"Sleep was never so restful." Maria cradled Silvas's face in her hands and kissed him with a passion that might have threatened to suck the life out of a lesser partner. That might have led to renewed intimacies, but the night had been full enough of abandon to allow restraint at its close.
"An eternity of this could never suffice," Silvas replied when the kiss ended. "This night has given us a taste of something unique. It marks us forever."
They got out of bed and went back into each other's arms for a moment before moving into the normal routines and rhythms of morning. They had a busy day to face, though neither spoke of that until the sun was up and warm sunlight came in through the window. Even then they spoke of the day only as an outing, perhaps not a picnic in the forest, but certainly not as a pilgrimage full of sorrow and danger.
Servants brought hot water to the bathroom. After Silvas and Maria bathed together and dressed-Maria in a new gown she found waiting in the dressing alcove off of the bath-Koshka knocked discreetly on the door between the bedroom and the small sitting room, and they came out for breakfast.
"Everything is prepared," Koshka said, bowing his head twice. "Lord Bay has made all the arrangements."
Koshka left Silvas and Maria to their meal. They ate quickly, but with no great show of haste. There were assorted fruits, most of them new to Maria since coming to the Glade, cheese, hard rolls, and the delightful orange juice.
"Do you have any idea how long our journey will be?" Maria asked as they left the sitting room. They headed toward the stairs that
would take them down to the head of the great hall.
"I've given it no real thought," Silvas said. "I expect it will be just long enough to impress us with the vista of the Shining City."
It was an easy prophecy.
CHAPTER FIVE
Six of the normal human members of the castle staff carried Carillia out to a wagon in the courtyard. The days that had passed since her death had brought no change to her appearance. Her flesh was not mortal. It could not corrupt the way mortal flesh must. Virtually everyone who lived and worked within the Seven Towers lined the way from the keep to the gate, standing with bowed heads, saying their final farewells to the lady who had been mistress of the Glade-seemingly forever. Only Silvas, Bay, and Bosc remembered when Carillia had first come through the gate.
The morning was fair and sunny, warm without being hot. The wagon was draped in green and black for this journey. It had been freshly scoured the night before. The horses hitched to the wagon were a matched pair of white draft animals, large but not nearly as large as Bay.
Bay stood apart from the activity around the wagon. He was saddled and harnessed. All of his gear had been cleaned and oiled. A chestnut mare-dwarfed not only by Bay but also by the draft team-had been readied for Maria.
"Bosc and Koshka will ride the wagon," Bay told Silvas and Maria. "Girabelle will carry Maria nicely. Braf and six of his soldiers will march as escort." Gurnetz did not take easily to riding. But Braf and his folk could keep up with any horse, even at the gallop, and pass any but Bay in endurance.
"It is appropriate, Bay. Thank you," Silvas said.
Bosc was already on the drover's bench, the team's reins in his small hands. Koshka climbed up beside him. Satin and Velvet had not figured in Bay's planning, but the cats leaped up onto the bed of the wagon and took up position on either side of their dead mistress. No one attempted to persuade them to dismount.
Braf formed up his soldiers-armed with spears and short swords and clad in their customary armor of leather studded with metal rivets-behind the wagon, then looked toward Silvas and Bay for his orders. Silvas helped Maria to mount Girabelle, then he mounted Bay and nodded to Braf. Bay walked toward the front gate. Maria guided Girabelle into position next to Bay. As soon as they were out in front of the wagon team, Bosc flicked the reins to start the whites. Braf and his soldiers marched at the rear of the procession.
