Healer's Wedding, page 36
She’s the girl you love with the purity of your heart and body… and you’ll find in her bed everything you thought lovemaking would be.
…they’d been discussing her.
Among other things. The Empire. The Chatcaava. They’d barely known one another yet. The race of her heart, fear and desire and confusion. Jagged concern—something about drugs. Had Lisinthir been dying? And then… then at last a kiss, one that tasted of blood, and after it, a softness that took her breath away because it gave to Jahir’s wounded heart the certitude that he was not broken, and could be loved, and that… perhaps… there was a path for him that did not lead to dishonor and dissipation, but, one day… perhaps… to love. And children. And her.
The memory was layered with the future’s kisses, most of which did not involve her. But Jahir and Lisinthir had given her this kiss… the one that had freed Jahir to contemplate the possibility of a future with her.
When she opened her eyes, they were streaming, and the words nearly stopped in her choked throat. “I love you,” she whispered, and meant them both.
And, shaded white and gold, like the joy of wedding bells: “We love you too.”
She cuddled into him, and after a moment, she kissed him, and she hoped this time for the minimal chance that might see those children realized sooner rather than later.
/You awake, ariihir?/
Jahir opened his eyes onto the light of a late morning, poured over the bed like another blanket. Sediryl’s head was under his, and the smell of her in his nose, and he felt the rightness of it so intensely that for once he had no desire to rise. /I am./
/Oh, you’re so happy!/ A gleeful pleasure, tripping like musical notes from a piano, bobbed through the mindline. /Don’t get up. Be lazy for once./
He smiled, eyes closing; through the skin pressed against his there came a gestalt of bodily processes, of partial dreams and vague response to light. /She’ll be awake soon and hungry./
/When you’re ready, come down to the solar. And for Her sake, don’t dress up. Come in bathrobes and pajamas, or whatever the Eldritch equivalent is. The servants are all taking a well-deserved holiday after yesterday, it’s just family./
/Then in a while./ He considered asking how his partner had passed the night, decided he was not up to conversation… chuckled at Vasiht’h’s emphatic agreement, which manifested as the sensation of someone tucking the blankets closer over him and tiptoeing out.
He drowsed then, contented. In the distance the flames of the mind-mages of Escutcheon formed the points of an anchoring web, as if his spirit could rock in a hammock held in their center. The house was as quiet as Vasiht’h promised; most of the minds around him slept, satisfied with their labors and their celebrations. Their dreams acted like a soporific, redoubling the warmth of the summer morning sunlight.
Sediryl yawned, some time later. She moved her head without lifting it so she could see his face… smiled, shy and happy. He returned it, and for a long while they simply rested together, looking out the window. When she finally spoke, it was as if they’d already said all the intimate sweetnesses, and could move on to their life together. “Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.”
She chuckled, rueful. “You’re never ever going to answer that question enthusiastically, are you.”
“I do enjoy eating…”
“But,” she murmured, shaking her head. She kissed him. “Well I could eat an ox, so let’s go find one.”
“I’m told we need not dress.”
“Oh good, because my hair is all tangles and I want to eat now, not in a few hours after you’ve combed them all out.”
“Shall I?” he asked, pleased.
“You absolutely shall, since you’re the one who put those tangles in.”
They wandered down then in dressing gowns like the most indolent of their peers, anticipating the same board set out every morning and finding instead a table set for two, with the most delicate of the daytime porcelains perched on top of discreet food stasis discs. Sediryl stopped at the door and laughed. “Oh, he said he’d make us breakfast and he did. Your partner is such a gem.”
Jahir lifted one of the champagne flutes and sipped. “Sparkling verjuice. Possibly even your home’s.” He offered it to her and she tried it.
“Oh, that’s good. And the rest of this looks wonderful too. Quiche… with mushrooms! Just what I needed, actual fuel.”
He laughed and pulled out her chair for her.
The meal was leisurely. Their walk back to the bedroom was even more so, and Jahir combed her hair and then mussed his handiwork… so it went. They talked, curled up together, and touched. Bathed, undid the good of the bath, bathed again. Ate whatever was sent up, and it was at intervals, and such dishes! “This is all your partner’s family’s handiwork, you know. Chocolate-covered strawberries? Ladyfingers soaked in… what, rum and cream?”
“Shall we complain?”
“Don’t you dare! Here, eat this… ah, I see. If I want you to eat, all I have to do is feed you. By hand. Like a baby bird—” A peal of laughter. “All right, don’t bite! I didn’t mean it!”
So there was laughter too, and that was best. The day aged from morning to afternoon, and from afternoon to sunset, and at last his wife shooed him out. “Go, take a walk. I want a long soak with candles.”
“I could help…?”
“Your help is not relaxing,” Sediryl answered, mouth twitching as she attempted to hide her smile. “Look at that wicked twinkle in your eye. You know it, too. Goddess, I had no idea what you were hiding under that mild surface.”
“Am I not tender enough, my lady?”
She lifted a pillow and threatened it with him. “Your tenderness kills me. Look at me, I’m shattered.” She started laughing again. “Really, go reassure people we’re fine and let me…” She paused, her shoulders relaxing, and her bliss spilled from her like clear water. “Ah, let me breathe for a little. Or I won’t believe this is real.”
“I understand.” He kissed her brow. “Call if you need me.”
“I’ll come find you. We can take a walk… that would be a nice change. And under the stars. I love summer nights. Do you remember hiking back from our jaunts in the evenings, back when we were younger?”
“I never forgot them.”
She halted, struck, and looked up at him in wonder. “No… I guess you never did.” She sighed, a melted sweetness. “I love you.” And, kissing him: “Go, before I change my mind!”
He dressed and closed the door gently on his bedchamber, which would never again be solely his, and let his brow rest against the door. Smiling… oh, yes. Then he passed through the halls and down the stairs, the banister cool and solid under his palm. The house remained somnolent, though he could sense people moving through it now. He avoided them, and took one of the side doors out into the gardens, following the path to the dais. It would remain erect until after the feast; for now it stood abandoned though the edges were lit just enough to prevent accidents. The benches had been removed, but the flowers remained in their vases, and woven up the arch, held fresh by the magic of the Alliance.
Was that not a perfect metaphor, at that.
“Wonder I will countenance,” said a voice behind him. “But not that touch of resignation, cousin. Banish it, won’t you, or I shall have to see to it myself.”
Jahir looked over his shoulder at Lisinthir and smiled. “I am not truly distrait. Only contemplating how far yet we have to go.”
“Live now, my dear. We have the luxury of doing so for a few days.” Lisinthir stepped up alongside him, staring past the dais at the sky, which had lost the last of sunset’s ember oranges and given way to a vespertine lilac in the west, and a deeper amethyst everywhere else.
“The Queen?” Jahir asked.
“Napping.” Lisinthir threw him a rueful smile, but there was awe in it, and anticipation. “She has conceived.”
“Has she! Did she tell you what to expect, then?”
Lisinthir’s smile was gentle, though his tone was rueful. “She has insisted that it should be a surprise.”
Jahir laughed. “She knows, then, and is teasing you.”
“Yes.” A grin then. “So I shall have to prepare for either eventuality, a boy or a girl. I thought to ask…” Lisinthir hesitated, who did so rarely. “Would it distress you if I were to name my son for your father?”
Jahir grew still.
“I do not respect mine, you perceive, and I would not name so much as a pig for him. But your father made you, and that is worth honoring.”
“My father also made Amber,” Jahir murmured.
Lisinthir said, “Whom you also love, though he has treated you poorly of late.”
“I wish…” Did he wish Amber had come? He wished his brother had, but the man who’d repudiated their mother… he didn’t know that man.
“Sediryl’s mother did not come either,” Lisinthir said. “But they will have a second chance to redeem themselves when you kneel for the coronet.”
The magnitude of the future’s responsibilities struck him suddenly. Staring at the dais, he felt it: that he’d married the girl of his dreams, who also resided in the body of the future Empress of the Eldritch. “God and Lady, Lin.”
“No fear,” Lisinthir said, low. “You are not alone… and rarely has anyone been companioned by such luminaries as those who array themselves as your allies now.”
He exhaled. “I know. And yet, so much before us.”
Lisinthir slipped an arm around his shoulders. “Joys as well as duties.”
“Yes.” Jahir smiled a crooked smile at him. “I worry too much.”
“And on this occasion, you are not allowed.” Lisinthir turned to face him and gathered his hands. When he started moving, Jahir allowed himself to follow, and then they were dancing on the darkened platform, beneath stars. A waltz, as it must have once been performed among people who could touch hands rather than wands or sheathed knives. This, Jahir thought… this was the vital spark that had drained from their society, and taken with it all hope of a rebirth they could kindle on their own. If this dais had been raised by alien hands, still it had been set among Eldritch fields, and Eldritch flowers, and it had seen an Eldritch union enacted in the traditional way.
“Better,” Lisinthir murmured.
“Always,” Jahir said. “And… Lin… I would be honored, did you bestow my father’s name on your heir.”
“Our future, Healer.”
“Our future,” Jahir said, and felt it.
From the shadows at the edge of the dais, Sediryl called, “Is there room for more up there?”
“Come,” Jahir said. “All of you.”
As Vasiht’h padded up the stairs, turning to give the Queen Ransomed a hand up, Sediryl drifted toward them. Jahir wrapped her into his arms, and then Lisinthir into his.
“We saw you from the windows,” Sediryl said. Flash then of her view: two silhouettes against a sky of twilit purple, dancing with stately grace, coats catching the light on their edges as they flared. “And we couldn’t resist.”
“We’re so glad you didn’t,” Lisinthir said. “And now, I shall teach my lady to waltz, for there will be formal dancing at your crowning. Beauty? Shall we?”
“Oh yes! I would like to learn this dancing on the ground.”
Vasiht’h grinned. “You two should practice too. Just think of the sensation you’re going to make when you do it without gloves! Proof that practice at the mind-talents is a good idea.”
“If you want to touch your partner,” Sediryl said, laughing. “I had plenty of partners during my come-out that I was very glad not to have to touch.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that anymore.”
“No.” Sediryl looked up at Jahir, impish. “Shall we? Or would you prefer I partner you, Vasiht’h? You will have to learn as well, you know. Extra legs won’t excuse you.”
“Don’t worry. I give Sehvi about six minutes before she notices all this and comes out after us.”
Sediryl laughed. “Then I am free to ask this dance, and I do. Milord?”
“My lady.” Jahir gathered up her hands. “The stars are our ballroom.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, they are.”
Appendices
The Species of the Alliance Universe
The Alliance is mostly composed of the Pelted, a group of races that segregated and colonized worlds based (more or less) on their visual characteristics. Having been engineered from a mélange of uplifted animals, it’s not technically correct to refer to any of them as “cats” or “wolves,” since any one individual might have as many as six or seven genetic contributors: thus the monikers like “foxine” and “tigraine” rather than “vulpine” or “tiger.” However, even the Pelted think of themselves in groupings of general animal characteristics, so for the ease of imagining them, I’ve separated them that way.
* * *
The Pelted
The Quasi-Felids
The Karaka’An, Asanii, and Harat-Shar comprise the most cat-like of the Pelted, with the Karaka’An being the shortest and digitigrade, the Asanii being taller and plantigrade, and the Harat-Shar including either sort but being based on the great cats rather than the domesticated variants.
The Quasi-Canids
The Seersa, Tam-illee, and Hinichi are the most doggish of the Pelted, with the Seersa being short and digitigrade and foxish, the Tam-illee taller, plantigrade and also foxish, and the Hinichi being wolflike.
Others
Less easily categorized are the Aera, with long, hare-like ears, winged feet and foxish faces, the felid Malarai with their feathered wings, and the Phoenix, tall bipedal avians.
The Centauroids
Of the Pelted, two species are centauroid in configuration, the short Glaseah, furred and with lower bodies like lions but coloration like skunks and leathery wings on their lower backs, and the tall Ciracaana, who have foxish faces but long-legged cat-like bodies.
Aquatics
One Pelted race was engineered for aquatic environments: the Naysha, who look like mermaids would if mermaids had sleek, hairless, slightly rodent-like faces and the lower bodies of dolphins.
Other Species
Humanoids
Humanity fills this niche, along with their estranged cousins, the esper-race Eldritch.
True Aliens
Of the true aliens, six are known: the shapeshifting Chatcaava, whose natural form is draconic (though they are mammals); the gentle heavyworlder Faulfenza, who are furred and generally regarded to be attractive; the aquatic Platies, who look like colorful flatworms and can communicate reliably only with the Naysha; the wandering Sirelanders, who have come into and out of the setting; the newly discovered octopi of the world Theth-129, now named Amity; and the enigmatic Flitzbe, who are quasi-vegetative and resemble softly furred volleyballs that change color depending on their mood.
Eldritch Houses and Families
A list for those of you who are keeping track! This list is not complete, but it’s at least a start.
Pelted Partisans
Galare: Seni, Delen (Head of Household family, Northern), Nuera, Jesa (Head of Household family, Western), Nase, Emil, Catha
Jisiensire: Sarel, Meriaen, Mina
Mathanith: Sora (Head of Household family), Lona
Imthereli: Lauvet (Head of Household family), Keldi (defunct)
Laisrathera: Eddings (Head of Household family)
Neutral Houses
Thavelfin: Tera
Deriline: Mel, Atel
Galare’s Enemies
Asaniefa (Defunct)
Sovenil: Fesa, Telde
Ulurith: Dova
The Languages of the Pelted Setting
Eldritch
Most readers of this series will be familiar by now with some of the conventions of the Eldritch language; particularly that of shading words with colors meant to inflect their meanings. In the spoken language, these moods are indicated with single-syllable prefixes; in the written, with colored ink if people want to bother with them. (And as we learn in this text, the color modes are carried into other formats, like music.)
* * *
So, to refresh, the seven modes (three pairs, one neutral):
Gray is the normal/neutral mode, and requires no modifiers. It has one, though, if one wants to be obvious about one’s neutrality.
Gold is the best of all worlds, and foil to Black’s violent, angry, dire, or morose connotations. This pair is the extreme emotional end of the spectrum, good and bad.
Silver is the positive, hopeful shading, foil to Shadow mode, which gives negative (cynical, sarcastic, ironic, dreadful, foreboding, fearful, etc) connotations to words. If gray is in the middle of the spectrum, black and gold the ends, then shadow and silver are between them and the gray fulcrum.
White is the mode for holy things; its foil is Crimson, for things of the body. (If you want to be technical, Eldritch illustrations put it on a perpendicular line from Gold/Black, with gray still in the center: white above, crimson below.)
* * *
Eldritch is an aggressively agglutinating language: if it can make a word longer by grafting things onto it to add meaning, it will, and if that makes it harder for non-native speakers to pronounce anything without stumbling, so much the better. It’s also fond of vowels, and almost inevitably if you see an Eldritch word with more than one adjacent vowel, they’re pronounced separately. There are also no “silent” vowels (so Galare is not ‘Gah lahr’, but ‘gah lah reh’ or ‘gah lah rey’ depending on your regional accent). There are some cases where I’ve misspelled things, or I’ve continued to write out diphthongs instead of using diacritics, but for the most part if you pronounce every single letter you see in an Eldritch word separately, you’ll probably be doing it right.
