mybfbm

?> mybfbm

mybfbm

| | |

Devin tried, riding through the cheerful birdsong...

Friday 4 June 2010

Devin tried, riding through the cheerful birdsong of a glorious spring morning, to imagine how the Prince might be feelingHe thought that he could, but only just: a guess more than anything elseAmong other things, perhaps first of all things, Alessan was going to a place where his mother was dyingNo wonder he had urged his horse ahead; no wonder he wasn't speaking now He is entitled, Devin thought, watching the Prince ride, straight-backed and self-contained in front of themHe's entitled to whatever solitude, whatever release he needsWhat he carries is the dream of a people, and most of them don't even know it And thinking so, he found himself drawn out of his own confusion, his struggling adjustment to where they wereFocusing on Alessan he found his avenue to passion again to the burning inward response to what had happened here, and was still happeningEvery hour of every day in the ransacked, broken-down province named Lower Corte And somewhere in his mind and heart, fruits of a long winter of thought, and of listening in silence as older and wiser men spoke, Devin knew that he was not the first and would not be the last person to find in a prada logos single man the defining shape and lineaments for the so much harder love of an abstraction or a dream It was then, looking all around at the sweep of land under the wide arch of a high blue sky, that Devin felt something pluck at the strings of his heart as if it were a harpHe felt the drumming of his horse's hooves on the hard earth, following fast behind the Prince, and it seemed to Devin that that drumming was with the harp-strings as they galloped Their destiny was waiting for them, brilliant in his mind like the colored pavilions on the plain of the Triad Games that took place every three yearsWhat they were doing now mattered, it could make a differenceThey were riding at the very center of events in their timeDevin felt something pull him forward, lifting and bearing him into the riptide, the maelstrom of the futureInto what his life would have been about when it was over He saw Erlein glance over again, and this time Devin smiled back at himHe saw the habitual, reflexive irony leave the wizard's lean face, replaced by a flicker of doubtDevin almost felt sorry for the man again Impulsively he guided his horse nearer to Erlein's brown and leaned chanel j12 over to squeeze the other man's shoulder "We're going to do it!" he said brightly, almost gaily Erlein's face seemed to pinch itself together"You are a fool," he said tersely"A young, ignorant fool He said it without conviction though, an instinctive response Later he would remember this moment tooHis words, Erlein's, his laughter under the bright, blue cloudless skyForests and the mountains on their left and in the distance before them now the first glimpse of the Sperion, a glinting ribbon flowing swiftly north before beginning its curve west to find the sea The Sanctuary of Eanna lay in a high valley set within a sheltering and isolating circle of hills south and west of the River Sperion and of what had been AvalleIt was not far from the road that had once borne such a volume of trade back and forth from Tigana and Quileia through the high saddleback of the Sfaroni Pass In all nine provinces Eanna's priests and Morian's, and the priestesses of Adaon had such retreatsFounded in out-of-the way parts of the peninsula, sometimes dramatically so, they served as centers of learning and teaching for the newly initiated clergy, repositories of wisdom and chanel earings of the canons of the Triad, and as places of withdrawal, where priests and priestesses who chose might lay down the pace and burdens of the world outside for a time or for a lifetime And not just the clergyMembers of the laity would sometimes do the same, if they could afford "contributions" that were judged as appropriate offerings for the privilege of sheltering for a space of days or years within the ambit of these retreats Many were the reasons that led people to the SanctuariesIt had long been a jest that the priestesses of Adaon were the best birth doctors in the Palm, so numerous were the daughters of distinguished or merely wealthy houses that elected to sojourn at one of the god's retreats at times that might otherwise have been inconvenient for their familiesAnd, of course, it was well known that an indeterminately high percentage of the clergy were culled from the living offerings these same daughters left behind when they returned to their homesGirl children stayed with Adaon, the boys went to MorianThe white-robed priests of Eanna had always claimed that they would have nothing to do with such goings-on, but there were stories belying tiffany heart tag necklace that, as well Little of this had changed when the Tyrants cameNeither Brandin nor Alberico was so reckless or ill-advised as to stir up the clergy of the Triad against their ruleThe priests and the priestesses were allowed to do as they had always doneThe people of the Palm were granted their worship, odd and even primitive as it might seem to the new rulers from overseas What both Tyrants did do, with greater or lesser success, was play the rival temples against each other, seeing, for it was impossible not to see, the tensions and hostilities that rippled and flared among the three orders of the TriadThere was nothing new in this: every Duke, Grand Duke, or Prince in the peninsula had sought, in each generation, to turn this shifting three-way friction to his own accountMany patterns might have changed with the circling of years, some things might change past all recognition, and some might be lost or forgotten entirely, but not this oneNot this delicate, reciprocal dance of state and clergy And so the temples still stood, and the most important ones still flourished their gold and machial, their statuary, and their cloth-of-gold vestments for chanel classic handbags servi