24
GATHREN FOUND IT funny the way Iahir always watched her rebraid her braid. This time, he told her he wanted to see her with her hair down, that he wanted to fuck her with her hair down, and there was such heat in his eyes that a thrill went through her.
“That will just mean my hair is the way,” she teased him.
She had long hair because it was traditional for orcs to have long hair.
Truly, there were as many male elves with long hair as female elves, too, but it was a growing fashion, she knew, for the male elves to keep their hair cut short, as Iahir did.
She personally found her long hair a bit of a nuisance, but she was used to it, and braiding it kept it mostly out of the way.
They barely had time for her to braid her hair. They packed everything, found their horses in the stable, (She still had not named the horse) and set off on the road.
It was early. The sky was growing lighter, but the sun had not yet risen.
They rode off southeast, and the sky grew lighter ahead of them.
Iahir fumed for the first part of the journey about the servants who’d come in on them, and she found this sort of funny, too, because he was being so entitled about it. He was so very used to not being disturbed, and he also seemed to bring up the fact that other people had seen her naked a lot.
She didn’t mind his being possessive of her body, she found.
She sort of liked that. She did not wish to be possessed by anyone—indeed, Iahir nae Cirlahir could try, but he would find that it was impossible to keep her if he tried.
But she liked the idea of his wanting her so much that he didn’t want anyone else to have her. She wanted him that way, too.
After a while, though, he fell silent.
And then the topic changed to what might happen when they got to Cirlahir. He said that she could not stay in the main keep, but that she could come in with them when they first arrived. “You can meet my mother, at least. I’ll go straight to her.”
“Mother?” she said. She was entirely confused.
She had assumed his mother was dead. He had never spoken about his mother, only his father.
She did not want to say that aloud, however, Your mother is alive?
It seemed rude and awful. Instead, she said, “I was under the impression I wouldn’t be accepted into the main keep at all. ”
“Well, she won’t really acknowledge you,” said Iahir. “I mean, she’ll acknowledge you, but it won’t stick.” He touched his temple. “My mother is ill.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “I’m very sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m very used to it. She’s been this way my entire life,” he said. “You can meet my brother, too, but he’s much the same way these days.”
She furrowed her brow. “Iahir, you could have said something about this, ever.”
“I suppose,” he said.
“It’s only that you keep these things all hidden for some reason. And it makes sense when it comes to people at court, but… with me… you could have…” Did he not trust her?
“I am telling you now,” he muttered, irritated. “I don’t like going home, though. I don’t like thinking about it, and I don’t like talking about it.”
She wanted to touch him. They were too far apart on horseback. “Well, it must have been very difficult for you, that is all, growing up this way. How old is your brother? When did he begin to present in the same way as your mother? What sort of illness is it?”
Iahir didn’t answer any of these questions. He only let out heavy sighs, as if he was disappointed in her.
Well, then. She would not ask questions, then.
They rode straight through. The road from the inn to Cirlahir was straight and clear.
It was emptier than perhaps it should have been, though Gathren did not know about such things.
She knew that Cirlahir was on the ocean, and that many elves had summer houses there, that sometimes, male elves in Parliament, for instance, would travel from Renegahan to Cirlahir each weekend to be with their families in their summer houses on the water.
There was likely no Parliament anymore, and she supposed the elves would not be visiting summer homes. They would be frightened, hiding from the orcish invaders, perhaps?
Or would they have all have retreated to their summer homes to hide here, away from the capital, where the orcs had slaughtered so many?
Whatever the case, they encountered no obstacles and very little traffic, no one going one way or the other except a few stray carriages here and there.
So, they arrived in Cirlahir just after luncheon, though they had not stopped to eat anything, just kept on riding.
Cirlahir was a blue city, as if it had been made to mirror the blue of the waters that lapped against the shores on the other side.
The walls were blue, many of the towers were blue, the streets were lined with glittering blue stones.
The blue seemed to come from a specific sort of stone, something that had been quarried exclusively to build all of this.
The stone itself was a kind of marble, she thought.
It resembled the ocean, or perhaps a cloudy sky.
It was shot through with lines of white like the foam of waves, and it was otherwise various shades of blue and green.
It was all very beautiful, and the architecture itself was the kind of delicate perfection of the elves.
Cirlahir felt both elevated and sophisticated, in that way of the elvish nobility, but also casual and less formal, a place of sand and surf and relaxation.
It was beautiful, but it reminded her of the architecture of the Silvan elves, who always seemed to incorporate the natural elements of the land into their buildings.
In Bilkwood, for instance, the entire castle had been carved into the mountain, and the waterfall had rushed right next to her window.
Gathren had not thought about being there in some time. She had not thought about what it had been like to be part of the orc army.
The gates of Cirlahir were shut up tight and there was no one manning them, which Iahir pronounced odd, but he took them round the city to another entrance, an arch cut into the stone that the main keep stood on.
The main keep was blue, like everything else in the city, and it rose, majestic, on a set of high cliffs, its highest spire holding a torch that was lit to help ships see where the shore was so that they could stay deep enough to avoid damage.
This arch was far, far down, at the base of the cliffside. Inside the arch, sand had blown in against the wooden door, very high, nearly burying the door handle. There was a dial above the door handle. Iahir turned it this way and that and then the door swung open.
They entered a narrow dark passage. With their horses they had to follow each other and could not walk abreast. It smelled of salty brine and fish.
But at the end of the passage, they came to a large open area, open to the sky above, in fact. Water was washing into it, the waves coming in as the servants here rushed to and fro, paying it no mind at all.
“My lord,” called someone in recognition. “Welcome home. Was anyone expecting you?”
“No,” said Iahir. “Can you have someone take the horses to the stables?” He nodded at a sloping path that led upward, presumably to the stables, which were further up, out of the reach of the water.
“Certainly, my lord,” said the servant, coming to take the bridles of the horses from them both. The servant looked Gathren up and down but said absolutely nothing about her, did not acknowledge her presence in any way.
But then, perhaps they were used to Iahir bringing his women here, and he was one for having women of different races, and she was just one in a long line of them, and why had she come here after all?
Iahir reached back and took her hand in his.
“Stay close to me,” he murmured, and they began to climb a set of stairs that circled this open area.
They were not made of blue stone, just a regular gray nondescript stone, but the railings that separated them from the out of doors had little blue stones decorating the tops of the spindles.
They climbed for a very long time. The servants below and the waves washing in, they all were very small now.
Finally, however, they entered the keep, and shut a door behind them, and the sounds and smells of the ocean were shut away. The interior of the keep seemed like any other castle, though the outer walls were all made of blue stone.
She wanted to stop and gape at nearly everything, but Iahir moved quickly, because this was his home, and he was used to it, so she had to stop gaping and keep up with him.
He held her hand, pulling her along behind him, and they dodged servants here and there, some of whom acknowledged him.
My lord, we did not know you would be coming home.
Has anyone readied your rooms for you or will you be staying in your town house?
He spoke to them politely, telling them he would be, indeed, in the town house, and they all looked at her when he said this and she wondered why she had let him bring her here. She wondered what she was doing here at all.
Finally, he pulled her into a sitting room, all done up in seafoam greens and dark purple. It was decorated with sea shells—a large conch sitting in the center of one of the coffee tables—and starfish and white lace.
A woman was seated at the window, a canvas in front of her. She was painting on it, but from what Gathren could see, the painting was only a mass of swipes, so many colors mixed together as to look brownish or grayish. It was a blob.
Iahir let go of Gathren’s hand to go over to the woman.
She looked up. She was older, but she looked just like Iahir—the same delicate features, the same white-blond hair, her eyes just as light gray. “Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“Hello, Mother,” he said.
“How long will you be here? You’re never here long.”
“I don’t know,” Iahir said. “Perhaps some time, really.”
“Do you like the painting?”