#79 - You Never Asked

Ahrimaz walked up to Didara and buried his head in her side, standing with his hands flat on her belly.  Joyandfierceness  “What was that?”

Didara rumbled, turned her head and ran her trunk down his back.  “What?  I like the coat on you.  All that gold matches my toes.”  She raised one massive foot.  “We should go and let your family greet us and then let everyone get comfortable again.  Jagun and I think we should host a party in our new Ambassadorial Hall with its glorious hot pool and all your iti can come in if they want.”

“Our iti?”

“Dogs, cats, horses… even those birds and the deer the Cylak have.  All iti-igi.  She waved her trunk, pinching its fingers illustratively, like a man might wave a hand.  “Come on.  My crown is getting heavy.”

“It’s a weight of feather on you…” but Ahrimaz nodded at Ologbon and turned to face the hall door that was just being opened.  “This isn’t my world I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Just follow the deer, dear.”  The deer that were Pel’s coronshion were all there, harnessed up with every one of their bells, but no riders.  Most of them had, by now, lost their antlers but their harnesses jingled brightly. 

“Maybe a thumb length of leather not covered in bells?” Ahrimaz muttered nastily to himself.  “You’re not trying hard enough, Cylak.”

“What was that?”

“I was snarling about how much the Cylak love bells, Didi,” he answered, surprising himself that he just answered honestly, no dancing around for greatest advantage.  “I was being a prick.”

“What is that word?” Jagun jagun asked, pacing along behind them as they stepped out into the blinding sunlight of late winter sun on snow. “PRYK?”

Ahrimaz laughed.  “Prick is a slang term for the male of our species penis, mildly obscene and has overtones of ‘something that pokes’.” His voice faded as they walked down the street that was plowed down to the stones.

There was no way to go from stables to greeting place… he assumed the front portico of this little palace… without going out into the city.  The streets and courtyards were mostly too narrow to take any kind of short route, so they marched out to the widest streets of Innéthel, where two carts could normally pass each other, and the people had decorated as best they could.  Minor priests of both God and Goddess had apparently worked together because every lamp post, every overhanging beam that in the summer obviously held flower pots, had enormous decorative ice crystals hanging everywhere and in the centre of each fantastic creation a light shone.

“My little scorching Goddess,” Ahrimaz whispered to himself and Didara began rumbling a descriptive story song, pieces, snatches of sound, as she began composing her view of Innéthel, the City of Crystals, she seemed to be calling it.  Joyandfierceness

“You said that before,” Ahrimaz said.  And then the wave of sound from the crowds lining the decorated streets hit them.  It was almost a physical sensation, people had never seen anything like the elephants before and cheered themselves hoarse.  Ahrimaz resolutely kept his eyes ahead, looking at the back end of a bunch of deer rather than consider that all these people might want to see him.

It was actually a short walk around to the portico and Ahrimaz gasped when they turned the corner.  He recognized it as the doors of his own House of Gold.  The doors towered two storeys tall against the brightly painted wood and plaster House of the Hand.  They were wooden in this world but gilded and painted to look like gold.  The cleared pavement before them was bright yellow sandstone, with red grout between the blocks of stone, just as in the empire, with one enormous path leading to the doors, one leading off to the right to the temple of Aeono and a small path leading up the hill to the left and he knew, to join with the path to the Veil.

He stumbled as he realized that a tiny, dim version of his own world lay before him and Jagunjagun held him up with his trunk, poking him upright with his staff from behind.  “But… this is my empire’s doorway,” he said faintly.  “It’s just the rest of the palace doesn’t match.”

There were flame torches all along the temple path, burning  columns of flame ten feet high and fountains, still and filled with snow this time of year heading off to the hills.

The doors stood open and their deer escort opened up and took station on either side.  The crowd noise was making Ahrimaz’s ears ache and he thought he was used to being cheered.

Didara walked up the dozen steps in four strides as if climbing rough ground and  stopped right at the threshold.  Ahriminash, and Ahrimiar and Arnziel and the girls… all the girls… Ahrimaz couldn’t see for tears standing in his eyes.  Yolend and the baby next to Ahriminash, dressed in the flowing blue of the Yhom, her drummer and her piper attending her.  “Oh, you and your sound.  You loved the Cylak bells when we brought them,” Ahrimaz muttered.  Didara flipped a belled ear at him and he was silent.

Joyandfierceness  vibrated under his hand and Ahrimaz turned slowly to stare up at Didara horrified, ecstatic fascination dawning. “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant!” he snapped.

“You never asked,” she said. “Hush and pay attention.”