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Yuletide 2010
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2010-12-18
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The Sola's Last Ride

Summary:

Afterwards, it always seemed as though she'd spent six months crying.

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Work Text:

Afterwards, it always seemed as though she'd spent six months crying. She hadn't, of course: there'd been the funeral and the wake, her children, the Riders, the small groups of people who came down from their Hills and up from the lowlands to the City, to pay their respects to the sol. An endless stream of people to talk to, to comfort; an equally endless stream of things to do. Their son had of course been trained to take his father's place; they had taught him well. But there were dozens of tasks that needed the hand of the former sola, and the Queen's Riders—her Riders—were not the least of them.

Nevertheless, afterwards, she always remembered the tears: climbing into bed at night and missing him; turning corners and expecting him to be there, smiling at her. He had been sick for years, slowly fading away, growing smaller and smaller in his robes until he was too weak to raise his sword and, after that, too weak to leave his bed. Still, his death had been a shock.

She worked through it—as she knew she must—though the joints of her fingers were swollen and her shins ached walking the length of the stone corridors. Most of the Riders were old, too: elderly Riders for an elderly Crown—they left service when Tor died and retired to their villages high in the Hills to raise chickens and teach their grandchildren to sit on a horse. The few that Tor and their son had chosen together stayed in the City, and Aerin spent long winter evenings, wrapped snug in layers of wool, talking with her own Riders, deciding who would stay with her daughter-in-law the sola, and who would leave the City when Aerin did.

But still she cried.

*

One day she woke up and knew it was time to go. It was spring, and the servants had thrown open the thick damask curtains to let beams of light dance across her too-large bed. She'd slept badly: kept waking through the night, cold; kept thinking about the hills, about the City, about Tor. And just as Ganthe opened the door to bring in a sturdy breakfast of eggs and toast and tea, she'd thought of the Lake of Dreams, and of Luthe.

She had not, of course, spent the past forty-five years without thinking of him occasionally when she broke bread, or when the sun set in particular shades of gold and pink and amber—but mostly she had thought of Damar, and of all that she loved within it. And in those decades Luthe had quietly slipped from her thoughts: grown taller in her infrequent dreams, but hazier. She had her husband, and never regretted it.

But that morning she knew it was time to leave the City. All her grandchildren had grown too big to comfortably sit on her knees—and most of them were far too big to want to, besides; the sol had every bit as good an understanding of the treasuries as his father had had; and she had spent the winter mostly feeling old, restless, and terribly alone.

*

It ended up taking a good month to get away. She supposed that was what happened when you were a beloved dowager Queen, and a slightly faded heroine to boot. There were many announcements to make, and many feasts to attend; there would not have been nearly so many if only, her son had pleaded, she had told any of them where she was going. But she hadn't—she didn't know herself—and so all the old Riders travelled back to the City from their chickens and their grandchildren to say goodbye, and wish her well, and ask her perhaps that if she pleased she would visit them.

*

She woke up on the shore of the Lake of Dreams. It was a crisp morning, and her horse Mira was whuffling away in the bushes. She’d been woken by the tickle of Scathen nosing under her chin, and rolled over to find Luthe standing above her, smiling a little, his face familiar and fond. "Come," he said, and she stood, slowly, letting her feet stamp out their aches and her back crackle as it did. The lake was, as it always had been, vast—the distant shores lost in a rising mist—and the lake edge not ten steps away from where she stood—and she was thirsty, so she walked over and drank a long mouthful, while Luthe stood, watching.

"I don't think," he said, "that one drink is enough to cause you any harm; but you are not quite—not quite—where I expected to find you; and it is a long walk back to my house, even for Mira, so it would be best to move swiftly in case I am wrong."

"Hello," she replied.

*

It was a long ride, back through the forest. She caught glimpses of the lake through the trees every now and then—so they were following the shoreline—but back by half a mile, or so she judged. Luthe walked very quickly, long legs striding unerringly through the forest, even though they followed no path she could descry; quickly enough that Mira grew tired and they had to stop by a stream so he could drink. "This stream feeds into the lake," Luthe told her, but offered no more: "Eventually, you will come to know all of the streams that feed into my part of the lake—but it's no use explaining them to you now." Apart from that, they spoke very little: she mentioned Tor once or twice, and Luthe said that he was very sorry to hear of his death, and looked it. Hours later, they broke into a clearing; not the clearing of Luthe's house, but one that would suffice for lunch, so she unwrapped the last of the bread and cheese from her saddlebags, and sat down to have a bit of a nap in the sun. Her shins hurt, and her feet; her wrists ached, as they were wont to, and her hair weighed down on her neck.

From that clearing to Luthe's house seemed to take very little time at all—a ride through dense forest, light flickering through the leaves of the vast trees above her, birds trilling as they flew from branch to branch, and strange rustlings in the undergrowth. A fast journey, albeit punctuated by strange breezes from odd directions, sudden chills in the air followed by oddly warm stretches under the sun. Once, she sat up very straight for a moment and something clicked in her back, something that hadn't clicked for as long as she could clearly remember. After that, her knees seemed more willing to hold her upright, and her shins ached less.

Luthe stopped them twice more: once, in the middle of a very brisk southerly, which swirled around her and made the skin prickle at the back of her neck. Her hair fell down out of its loose bun and tangled around her; locks of it looked tinged with auburn as it blew around her face—a colour it had not been these thirty years. The second time they stopped was in a very warm patch of sunlight, in a circle of the tallest oaks she had ever seen. She did not dismount, just sipped the water he gave her and rested her face against Mira’s neck for a moment as she stretched out her spine and rolled her ankles.

*

When they arrived at Luthe's house, back on the shore of the Lake of Dreams, the sun was setting and the mist was beginning to roll in again across the water. She dismounted with something almost like ease, pulled her saddlebags off Mira’s back, and followed Luthe inside.

"How are you feeling, my dear?" he asked.

"Quite well," she replied, for she had spent many years as the sola, and politeness was a habit—but her voice surprised her, lacking the quaver of old age. She looked down at her hands: the knuckles unswollen and all the wrinkles and small wounds of a lifetime gone, and a lump rose in her throat at the loss. Luthe took her hands in his much larger ones, careful as he almost always was, and she turned them over, silent, to find herself relieved beyond words to find that the palm of her hand still carried a scar.