"Jack would like better than anything in the world to ride a Hill horse." Harry heard the beginning of his laugh far inside him before it burst out into the air; and she raised her head and looked inquiringly into his face. He shook his head at her and said, "My heart, your Jack shall have a hundred of our horses, and welcome," and then he bent his head and kissed her, and she drew him down beside her. A few minutes later Narknon, with an offended growl, climbed off the bed and stalked away.
Mathin was a trifle paler than usual when Corlath's army mounted and set their faces to the east, but he sat easily on Windrider and looked all around him as if reminding himself of what he thought he had lost; but most often he looked at Harimad-sol, riding at the king's right hand. The army moved slowly, for there were litters to carry, and they need not hurry. Even the desert sun overhead seemed glorious rather than relentless, and their king was to marry the damalur-sol who bore Gonturan the Blue Sword, and the Northerners had been defeated, at least for their time, and probably for their children's time, and perhaps even their grandchildren's; and Damar was still theirs. And it was as well also that the army was moving slowly for the sake of Jack Dedham and Richard Crewe, who were riding Hill horses, and finding Hill horsemanship a little more difficult than Harry had, and were dismayed at the idea of being able to stop a horse at full gallop simply by sitting down a little harder in the saddle. Harry, when she was not with Corlath, rode circles around them and teased them and made Sungold do all sorts of fancy passes and turns, not really to annoy them but only because she could not contain herself for happiness. Sungold bucked and bounced till even Harry had to clutch at his mane to stay on—Jack had the temerity to laugh—and behaved not at all like a well-schooled war-horse, and seemed just as happy as she.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When they reached the City a fortnight later, the City gates were open again, for what the people's kelar had told them was confirmed by messengers that Corlath sent; and on the laprun field there were thousands of the Hillfolk waiting to cheer their king and his bride, for the messengers had taken it upon themselves to tell more than Corlath had charged them with. All those who had come to the City for safety had stayed, and most of those who had elected to stay in their own land in spite of the Northerners now exultantly left those lands to hasten to the City and see their king's marriage; for somehow the news flew over the mountains and across the desert in all directions, and all of Damar knew of Harimad-sol, and that she would be queen; even into the fastnesses of the filanon, and a hundred of Kentarre's folk traveled to the City in the company of the people of Nandam's village—including Rilly, who was beside herself with excitement, and her mother, who was beside herself with Rilly—to attend the wedding. The City was decked with flowers, and long trailing cloaks of flowers had been woven which were thrown around Corlath's shoulders and Harry's, and over Tsornin's withers and Mabel's, and the ceremony was performed in the glassy white courtyard before Corlath's palace. People were hanging from windows and balconies, and clinging to the stark mountainside where there was not purchase for a bird's claws, and lining the walls, and crowded into the courtyard itself till there was barely space for the king and queen to walk from the palace door to the courtyard gate, where they waved and smiled and threw kaftpa, the traditional small cakes that were good luck for anyone who could catch one and eat it. And they threw armfuls and armfuls of them, that anyone who wanted one might have one, and everyone wanted one. Then they retreated again. Their wedding night they spent in the little room with the waterfall, in the blue mosaic palace. Before they slept Corlath began the long task of telling Harry all the tales of Aerin, as he had once promised he would. The telling stretched over many of their evenings together, for Harry never wavered in her desire to hear them all—and when she had heard them all, her patient husband was required to teach them to her; and when she had learned all he had to teach, she made up a few of her own, and taught them to him.
Gonturan was hung on the wall of the Great Hall, where Harry, like all Riders before her, had cut her hand on the king's sword and been made another of the company. The king's sword hung opposite, for only the king's and queen's own swords could hang on display in the Great Hall. Gonturan had spent many years wrapped in cloths in an old wooden chest, black with age, since the last time she hung in the Great Hall. And after the wedding feasts everyone went home, because there would be no traveling in the winter rains.
The filanon stayed in the City till the rains were gone, partly to pay the respect due to the City and the king they had turned away from many years before; and partly for reasons that became obvious—although everyone already knew what was happening—when in the spring Richard Crewe married Kentarre, and returned with her and the filanon to the western end of Damar, although he carefully avoided the Outlander station. Thus the filanon became once again well known to the king and his City, for the Damarian queen often visited her brother, and he her. Richard was never entirely happy riding as the Hillfolk rode, but he had a talent for woodcraft and archery that might almost have been a Gift.
He taught his sister to hold a bow properly and to put an arrow more or less where she wanted it to go, but Harry failed to rise above the merely competent.
"Do you talk to your arrows, and tell them to find the stag that has to be in that brush up ahead somewhere and stick him?"
"Did you tell Gonturan to knock down the mountains on Thurra's ugly head?"
This conversation took place almost a year after Gonturan had been hung on the wall of the palace, and Harry could laugh.
Kentarre's first child was a daughter with blond hair and grey eyes, and she was born before the rains came again. Harry's first child was born a fortnight later—"Ah, bah," Harry said, with her hand on her belly, when the messenger came from the west with the word, and the winter's first rains fell over them, and dulled the stone of the City; "I did want to be first." The child was a son, with black hair and brown eyes.
Jack grew as skilled on horseback as any Hillman, for all that he had come to it so late; and Mathin took him to his home village, where he learned how the Hills trained their young horses. He was good at this too, and Mathin's family liked him, but always he found himself returning to the stone City, where Corlath seemed more content to stay since Harry now stayed with him. And the year that young Tor Mathin was two years old, Jack was called to a banquet in the Great Hall, where he had attended many banquets before, and to his own amazement he was made a queen's Rider, to sit with the fifteen king's Riders, for Corlath had made no more since the war with the North. Gonturan, which Jack had held once before on a mountaintop, lightly and kindly drank three drops of his blood, while he stared at the cut and for once had nothing to say.
"We Outlanders must stick together," said Harry, smiling.
Jack looked up at once and shook his head. "No—we who love the Hills must stick together."
The year after Jack was made a Rider, Harry bore another child, and this one was a daughter, and she had red hair and blue eyes, and a wry whimsical smile even in her cradle. "You're calling her Aerin, of course," said Jack, tickling her with the end of his sash while she giggled and clutched at it.
"I'm calling her Aerin Amelia, and Forloy and Innath and Mathin and I are riding west as soon as she's six months old, to invite Sir Charles and Lady Amelia to the Naming, here in the City. Will you come with us?" Harry was holding her baby, and as Jack, startled, stopped looking at her and instead looked up at her mother, Aerin grabbed the sash and stuffed as much of it as would fit into her mouth.