Scion of Cyador

VII

The cool spring rain patters on the roof tiles, collects there, and then flows in streams over the eaves, collecting in the rain gutters that line the structures and the white granite roads and ways of Cyad. Within Ryalth’s rooms, Lorn and his trader lady sit side by side in the bedchamber, propped up on the bed with pillows. On the table beside the bed a single lamp is lit.

Lorn holds a narrow, green-tinted, silver-covered volume in his hands, the one Ryalth had given to him to keep for her, years before, and insisted he read. “I’ve carried it everywhere, and yet there’s still not a mark on it.” He turns the book in his hands. “I still wonder how it came to your mother.”

“She never said. She just said it was special.”

Lorn nods, wondering how special…and whether the book is another subtle indication of how unusual Ryalth is-and why.

“You read from it often?” Ryalth asks.

“Not every night. I couldn’t when I was on patrol, and I didn’t want to take it with me.”

“Every eightday?”

“Usually.” He smiles. “Sometimes more often.”

“What do you think about the ancients now?”

“I don’t know about the ancients.” He frowns. “The writer was melancholy. They might not all have been like him.”

“Wouldn’t you have been, if you’d come from the Rational Stars to a wilderness? That’s what Cyador was, back then.”

“I’m not sure it still isn’t.” Lorn laughs.

“We have the prosperity of chaos, and the chaos-towers, and the roads and the harbor, all the things they built,” she points out.

“People are still unhappy.”

“Not all of them.”

“Some…” he teases.

“Enough.” She takes the book from his fingers, closes her eyes, and then opens it at random, handing it to Lorn. “Read this one.”

“You haven’t seen it.”

“Read it, please.”

Lorn clears his throat.

Chaos, and the promise of light,

Order, beckoning lady of night…

Should I again listen to which song?

We have listened oh so long.

Should I again fly on learning wings?

We have learned what yearning brings.

“That is melancholy,” she says. “Let’s try another one. You pick it.”

“And you read it,” he replies.

She nods.

Lorn closes his eyes and lets his fingers riffle through the smooth and heavy pages, finally stopping and handing her the open volume.

“This one always puzzled me,” she says as she looks at the slanted and antique Anglorian characters.

“Read it,” he suggests.

Ryalth’s voice is low, almost husky as she brings forth the words.

Cyad is no home for souls of thought,

who doubt the promises they have bought,

for the Magi’i offer Chaos as a Step to all.

The lancers back with fire their call,

their faces of cupridium’s silver-white

reflect each other’s chaotic light.

Should Sampson pick this temple,

here too, he would be blind,

his eyes untouched,

his simple trust

lost in the reflections.

She closes the volume. “I always wondered who Sampson was. He had to be blind, but the words suggest he wasn’t always, and yet, that he would be in Cyad, because everything reflects everything else, and gets lost in the reflections.”

“And that doesn’t happen?” Lorn laughs. “Think about the big dinner with my parents the other night, and the way Vernt and Ciesrt kept looking at each other. And Mycela, the way she just wanted to be a perfect consort, reflecting Vernt’s every wish.”

“That’s somehow sad, too.” After a moment, she adds, “You have to go the day after tomorrow. Would you read the one about pears now?” She hands him the volume.

He flips through the pages until he finds the words and begins, his voice soft in the dimness of the bedchamber.

Like a dusk without a cloud,

a leaf without a tree…

…to hold the sun-hazed days,

and wait for pears and praise

…and wait for pears and praise.

After he sets the book on the table by the bed, he turns down the lamp wick, and lets darkness fill the room. His arms slip around her, and hers around him.