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“Farah, I think you’re very well aware that there are no times that aren’t troubled.”
It took a great deal of effort, but I did not allow my body to step away.
“You know of my father,” I whispered.
With a single nod of his head, he replied, “I do. It says much of your king that you’re standing right there.”
At that, I felt a frisson of fear in my chest.
“You would not have done the same?” I asked hesitantly.
“I would not have banished you,” he answered. “But I am not king. My father would have thrown you and your mother in his prison and allowed you to rot there, perishing in squalor, not thinking of you again. And King Gallienus would have had you executed. Also without thought.”
It must be admitted that I could only agree with Mars that Prince True was not at all like his father. I’d noticed that quickly.
“Sadly,” he looked back to the windows, “we suffer for our father’s sins.”
The skirmishes he was ordered to instigate to regain that tract of land.
Amongst, I reflected, other things.
It was shocking to learn that perhaps we had something very important in common.
“It will be good, through our union, that our countries will know peace,” I remarked.
“Eight hundred and seventy-three men,” he stated in a terrible, agonized way that made me hold my breath.
He looked again to me.
“All sons. Some of them brothers. Some of them husbands. Some of them fathers. All gone. And that was just in the last of our campaigns against Firenze.”
Oh my.
I was seeing that I did not have on my hands a future husband who was a man of a neighboring nation that we did not get along with who also was in love with another woman.
I had a broken soldier on my hands who knew the precise number of his men who had fallen to his father’s follies and he understood how terrible a price that was to pay in return for nothing.
It was at that my chest warmed, and I moved closer to him, reaching out a hand and wrapping my fingers on his biceps.
He looked down at it, and before I could speak, his gaze came back to mine, and he did.
“I know your nation’s ways, Farah. And I will not ask you to betray who you are. Your customs, your practices, your religion. I have agreed to take you to wife, and in doing so, it is you who I will take, not a you I force into a mold that is not your own.”
Could I believe what my ears were hearing?
He uncurled my fingers from his arm and then held my hand in both of his as he turned fully to me and continued.
“I will simply ask you to be of the Dellish in one thing. You will sleep beside me every night and you will take no other, except me, as I will vow to take no other, except you. I understand this is not your way, but it means much to me. I can imagine it is a great deal to ask, but I must ask you grant it. That I would know my wife was only my own, and I would give my wife the knowledge that I am only hers.”
And it was at that, my chest did not feel warm.
It burned.
“I will grant that, True,” I whispered.
And it was then, with his hands squeezing mine in an endearing way, I saw my betrothed smile for the first time.
When I witnessed that tender beauty, I was all of a sudden fiercely gladdened that this tall, straight man of feeling and character was only my own.
11
The Arrival
Queen Ha-Lah Nereus
The Plain, Dune Desert, Outside Fire City
FIRENZE
Aramus had forced me to ride to the Fire City in front of him on his steed.
And during our long journey by sea and by land, even if he had threatened other far more unforgiveable deeds he intended to do to me, that was the only thing he forced.
When we were at sea, my mind was consumed with this threat.
And even though my accommodation was his cabin (and his bed in his cabin), although he was a large man, and the bed was not large, in the night when he joined me, he turned his back to me and slept without an inch of his body touching mine.
And he ignored me the entire voyage.
As I did him.
When we hit land, I was consumed with understanding the fruition to his warning was nigh, and the fact I would absolutely not forgive him if he carried it through.
But as we traversed that dusty, hot, bleak landscape, in the night I shared the pallet of my husband’s tent, but that husband did not force his body on mine.
And as one day melted into the other (somewhat literally, this land was hot), I came to understand that his frustration at our conversation might have made him say the words.
However, that was not the man my husband was.
I also came to understand the significance of this.
And regrettably, it was then I came to understand that perhaps upon our marriage, I’d made a rather large blunder.
Now, as we made our final approach to Fire City, so much time had passed where I’d used righteous anger to make my arguments—arguments about things that held great import to me, and I felt I was right in them, but in doing so holding my husband at bay—I did not know how to break through the wall I myself had built between us.
I had spent more time with him these past weeks than I had in the whole of our marriage.
Through it, I saw how he was with his lieutenants. Boisterous and filled with humor and often-times rowdy. But there was genuine affection between them, and true loyalty.
Not to mention, he was a formidable captain. He expected order and compliance. He ran a tight ship and was skilled at it, but he was not dictatorial. He could be stern. If something was done wrong, he could be harsh. But wrongs were rarely done, and regularly he was attentive, had a listening ear, and was most the time jovial and approachable.
Thus, his seamen followed him due to respect.
And fondness.
Yes, I had most definitely made a blunder.
And I didn’t know how to rectify it.
Further, it was important (but difficult) to admit to myself that there was not a small amount of pride that was holding me back.
In the course of my twenty-seven years of life, I had often found myself stumbling on pride, mostly around those times I had to admit I was wrong.
And this wrong was not about what was of great import to me.
But how I’d chosen to communicate it.
Therefore, we were currently riding to a great city in the richest realm of our land, I was soon to be faced with being introduced as the queen of my own beloved realm, wife to a man who was not truly my husband, this to kings and queens, princes and princesses.
And even as I sat in front of him on his horse, his arm loose around my waist, we were still oceans apart from one another.
“You speak to the dolphins,” he grunted over my head (for he was tall and unless he dipped to my ear, that was the only aim his words could take).
I blinked at the sand before me.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, my frame tightening.
“I watched you. On my ship. You stood at the bridge regularly and you did it for some time. You weren’t thinking. You weren’t pondering. Dolphins swam with us. You speak to them.”
He’d…
Watched me?
I felt something inside me flutter.
Though I could have no mind to it.
Because something else inside me was filled with fear.
“I—” I started.
“Do you speak to the whales as well?”
“My king—”
“It’s naught to be concerned about,” he declared. “It is not a magic we have in our land, but I know in the Northlands and Southlands, men speak with their animals, women speak with their own.”
I continued to study the landscape as my breathing escalated.
His voice lowered.
“But I know naught but the mermaids who speak to the beasts of the sea
.”
Well…
Hmm.
“Do you have mermaid blood?” he asked.
One could say that.
“It would explain your affinity for these creatures,” he stated. “Is this where your magic comes from?”
One could say that too.
Knowing what I knew of him now, I thought it safe to whisper, “Yes.”
My husband had no response.
As he’d broken our very long silence, I searched for something to say.
Before I found it, he broke our current much briefer silence.
“Why did you not share this with me, wife?”
“We weren’t exactly communicating very well, my king.”
“No, we were not,” he grunted. “Though it was not for lack of trying on my part.”
Drat!
This was all too true.
“It is…the mermaids are…” I stammered.
“Greatly mythicized,” he finished for me. “Even hunted simply for the purpose of study. And in olden days, when they were friendly, they were captured and held as pets, forced to perform for entertainment, or murdered and dissected to try to understand their magic. They learned, and they fled, hiding themselves away from beings of the land. And those who hold their blood hold this same allure, a fascination, an other, to be studied, prodded, tested.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“And you did not think I could and would protect you from this if it was to be known about you?” he demanded.
I blinked at the landscape again.
Aramus kept speaking.
“You did not think I would accept you as wife, the King of Mar-el, the Protector of the Seas, you having the actual blood of the seas?”
Carefully, I noted, “You don’t protect all beings in the seas.”
“A dolphin does not sleep beside me, destined to bring me an heir, Ha-Lah,” he returned.
Well, there was that.
It would seem it was high time I swallowed at least a bit of my pride and attempted real communication with my husband.
I had opened my mouth, determined to do that, though uncertain how I would, when I noticed it in the distance.
And my back shot straight.
Therefore, when the words came out of my mouth, they were not conciliatory. They were also not tentative appeasement or concession.
They were, “Wh-what is that?”
I was surprised when his loose arm at my waist became a tight one around my stomach.
“Do not fret, wife. It is the Wall of Fire around Fire City.”
Of course it was.
I had heard of it.
However, seeing it, even from our distance, I could not credit it.
And as our horses drew closer, I feared it.
Aramus had brought five galleons with us. He’d left some men to guard the ships, but the rest he brought with us. Five hundred rode at our back, with his seven lieutenants amassed right behind our lead.
But I did not have good feelings about this, as we approached that wall of fire and it got bigger, and longer, and more frightening.
What magic was this?
I knew not.
What I knew was that it was grave, and it was powerful.
As if he read my thoughts, Aramus spoke again.
This time, he bent to do it in my ear.
“There is much tar under this land. Tar that burns lasting and hot. The logs are magical, my queen, for they never burn away. The tar is not.”
I twisted in my seat to look up at him.
His visage and frame, from the beginning, had not been an issue.
He was not known amongst all as the most handsome man in our realm.
He simply was.
Large, bulky frame, massive shoulders, long trunks for legs.
His seemingly acres of skin the color of midnight.
His head was shaved, as all Kings of Mar-el kept their scalps, though his jaw was bearded.
His eyes were a warm brown.
His features broad and strong.
His teeth, so white and straight, the many smiles I’d seen him give his men over the past weeks made my heart feel oddly light.
And his scarrings were things of beauty.
They were the honored scars of a seasoned sailor.
And those of a ship’s captain.
And those of a royal son.
And last, those of a king.
I could see them on his arms and I knew under his sleeveless, belted tunic, they rode up his back, over his shoulders and pectorals.
They were also across his nose, his cheekbones, and around his temples.
These last were the scars of a prince (nose and cheekbones) and later, after we lost his father, the ones of a king had been added (temples).
He was magnificent.
And although I knew the Firenz had ceremonial piercings…
And the Airenzian had ceremonial ink…
Not a being in that land who I’d seen had our skin.
Or our scars.
And I was suddenly afraid.
I turned forward and watched coming closer that great wall that seemed now to stretch left and right across the entire horizon, rose stories into the air, its fire burning high and bright, forcing the very air around it to dance.
And I made my decision, not for myself—for my king and my people who followed us.
Then I called upon it.
It was weakened when I was not close to the sea (and I was definitely not close to the sea).
But I had to do what I must.
The shimmer started as a feel at the small of my back.
It grew as it traversed up my spine, my neck, over my scalp.
I then cast it out and it flickered the air before us, going wide, bending back behind us, until all were shrouded with its invisible shield.
It was a great effort so it took more of just that to remain straight in the saddle before my husband and not whither with the sudden fatigue.
I had thought I was the only one to see, as I was the only one (I knew) who held magic.
I was wrong.
“Calm,” my husband whispered in my ear, and at the sound, another shimmer slid down my spine, this one much different. “Wife, if we face other than we expect behind those gates, do you not think my men know how to use the swords and sickles at their sides?”
I stared at the wall of fire getting ever closer in front of us.
“We board ships, Ha-Lah,” he told me. “And when we do, we do not use canons.”
“Of course,” I murmured.
“You will be safe.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
I felt his surprise.
Then I felt his arm ever tighter around my stomach and there was a growl to his tone when he said, “They will not accept us, wife. Prepare. They will find us odd. They will be appropriate, or they will court the wrath of their king. But they will look on us as curiosities. Hold your head high, my queen, for you know our beauty, our bounty, our loyalty and our strength. It matters not what they think. We will ride through their city to their palace and endure their stares and we will know the mightiest of kingdoms rides through. And we are all that matters.”
I forced myself to nod.
He gave me a squeeze with his arm and for the first time since he knew me, his voice held humor. “But your magic is appreciated.”
That was endearing.
As much as I wanted to think of my husband as endearing, I could not.
The Wall of Fire of Firenze was getting closer.
So I made myself nod again.
Aramus gave me another squeeze before I felt his lips leave my ear.
I found I was correct.
As we grew even closer, the Wall of Fire stretched across the horizon and rose three stories into the air. One could see it was made of great logs coated in glistening black beneath the red-hot flames.
And when we were but one hundred yards from the gates, with a mighty shriek
, they started to open, still aflame.
I put even more effort into keeping my breath modulated as my husband held my back tucked tight to his hefty front and our steed did not falter as we rode through.
Once through, I saw it was unnecessary, as nothing could get over that wall, but it was there: ten-foot wide pits filled with bubbling tar abutted the wall on the inside. And if a being could jump that wall (which they could not, unless they had magic, or a catapult), they would not at first sink in that tar. The pits were covered with stanchions, the peaks of which were honed to lethal points.
So if you did not burn to death, or sink through the tar, you impaled yourself.
These fortifications told true the tales of this warring nation and its efforts to keep the citizens of this city safe.
I was so enthralled by all of this, I didn’t notice at first.
And I might not have noticed it then if my husband’s hand spanning my side did not grip my flesh in what felt like a reflexive gesture.
It was then I saw the people. People I had seen on occasion during our journey, nomads and much more populace around the many rivers, brooks and streams that snaked green with vegetation through the vast austere plains and dunes of sand.
Black hair, brown skin, tall, the adults pierced profusely, even the children had piercings in ears and nostrils.
And they were running toward us.
My body tensed head to toe.
And then the petals flew.
The cheer went up.
Some threw coins at our feet.
And men arrived with bows fit with arrows which made me gather my magic again, the small of my back tingling, only for their women to light parcels affixed to the tips and for the men to aim the flaming arrows in the air and let fly. Arrows that then exploded in mid-air with a small pop! before their shafts fell harmless to the ground.
“Salu, Prottetori dei Mari!” they shouted.
“Salu, La Grande Bellaza del Mar!” the cheered.
“Do you know what they’re saying?” I whispered as I saw a young boy bend low and toss coins in our path as a girl at his side smiled brightly up at us as she threw crimson flower petals into the air.
“Hail, Protector of the Seas. Hail, The Greatest Beauty of the Sea,” Aramus translated.