‘Of course. I think too much of her to insult her.’
‘That’s the first step anyway. If you approached her on any other footing, she’d probably kill you.’
‘Kill?’ Kring blinked in astonishment.
‘She’s a warrior, Kring. She’s not like any other woman you’ve ever encountered.’
‘Women can’t be warriors.’
‘Not Elene women, no. But as I said, Mirtai’s an Atan Tamul. They don’t look at the world the same way we do. As I understand it, she’s already killed ten men.’
‘Ten?’ Kring gasped incredulously, swallowing hard. ‘That’s going to be a problem, Sparhawk.’ Kring squared his shoulders. ‘No matter, though. Perhaps after I marry her, I can train her to behave more properly.’
‘I wouldn’t make any wagers on that, my friend. If there’s going to be any training, I think you’re the one who’ll be on the receiving end of it. I’d really advise you to drop the whole idea, Kring. I like you, and I’d hate to see you get yourself killed.’
‘I’m going to have to think about this, Sparhawk,’ Kring said in a disturbed tone of voice. ‘This is a very unnatural situation we have here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Nonetheless, could I ask you to serve as my oma?’
‘I don’t understand the word.’
‘It means friend. The one who goes to the woman – and to her father and brothers. You start by telling her how much I’m attracted to her and then tell her what a good man I am – the usual thing, you understand – what a great leader I am, how many horses I own, how many ears I’ve taken and what a great warrior I am.’
‘That last should impress her.’
‘It’s just the simple truth, Sparhawk. I am the best, after all. I’ll have all the time while we’re riding to Zemoch to think it over. You might mention it to her before we leave, though – just to give her something to think about. Oh, I almost forgot. You can tell her that I’m a poet too. That always impresses women.’
‘I’ll do my best, Domi,’ Sparhawk promised.
Mirtai’s reaction was none too promising when Sparhawk broached the subject to her later that afternoon. ‘That little bald one with the bandy legs?’ she said incredulously. ‘The one with all the scars on his face?’ Then she collapsed in a chair, laughing uncontrollably.
‘Well,’ Sparhawk murmured philosophically as he left her, ‘I tried.’
It was going to be an unconventional sort of wedding. There were no Elenian noblewomen in Chyrellos to attend Ehlana, for one thing. The only two ladies who were really close to her were Sephrenia and Mirtai. She insisted on their presence, and that raised some eyebrows. Even the worldly Dolmant choked on it. ‘You can’t bring two heathens into the nave of the Basilica during a religious ceremony, Ehlana.’
‘It’s my wedding, Dolmant. I can do anything I want to. I will have Sephrenia and Mirtai as attendants.’
‘I forbid it.’
‘Fine.’ Her eyes grew flinty. ‘No attendants, no wedding – and if there isn’t a wedding, my ring stays right where it is.’
‘That is an impossible young woman, Sparhawk,’ the Archprelate fumed as he stormed out of the room where Ehlana was making her preparations.
‘We prefer the term “spirited”, Sarathi,’ Sparhawk said mildly. Sparhawk was dressed in black velvet trimmed with silver. Ehlana had summarily rejected the idea of his being married in his armour. ‘I don’t want a blacksmith in our bed-chamber to help you get undressed, love,’ she had told him. ‘If you need help, I’ll provide it – but I don’t want to break all my fingernails in the process.’
There were noblemen by the score in the armies of western Eosia, and legions of clergy in the Basilica, and so that evening the vast, candlelit nave was almost as packed as it had been on the day of the funeral of the revered Cluvonus. The choir sang joyful anthems as the wedding guests filed in, and incense by the bale perfumed the air.
Sparhawk waited nervously in the vestry with those who were to attend him. His friends were all there, of course – Kalten, Tynian, Bevier, Ulath and the Domi, as well as Kurik, Berit and the Preceptors of the four orders. Ehlana’s attendants, appropriately, were, in addition to Sephrenia and Mirtai, the kings of western Eosia and, oddly enough, Platime, Stragen and Talen. The queen had given no reason for these selections. It was altogether possible that there were no reasons.
‘Don’t do that, Sparhawk,’ Kurik told his lord.
‘Do what?’
‘Don’t keep pulling at the neck of your doublet like that. You’ll rip it.’
‘The tailor cut it too tight. It feels like a noose.’
Kurik did not answer that. He did, however, give Sparhawk an amused look.
The door opened, and Emban thrust his sweating face into the room. He was grinning broadly. ‘Are we just about ready?’ he asked.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ Sparhawk said abruptly.
‘Our bridegroom grows impatient, I see,’ Emban said. ‘Ah, to be young again. The choir’s going to sing the traditional wedding hymn,’ he told them. ‘I’m sure that some of you are familiar with it. When they get to the final chord, I’ll open the door, and then you gentlemen can escort our sacrificial lamb here to the altar. Please don’t let him run away. That always disrupts the ceremony so much.’ He chuckled wickedly and closed the door again.
‘That’s a very nasty little man,’ Sparhawk grated.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Kalten said. ‘I sort of like him.’
The wedding hymn was one of the oldest pieces of sacred music in the Elene faith. It was a song filled with joy. Brides traditionally paid very close attention to it. Grooms, on the other hand, usually scarcely heard it.
As the last notes died away, Patriarch Emban opened the door with a flourish, and Sparhawk’s friends formed up around him to escort him into the nave. It would be perhaps inappropriate here to dwell upon the similarities of such a procession to the gathering of bailiffs escorting a condemned prisoner to the scaffold.
They proceeded directly across the front of the nave to the altar where Archprelate Dolmant, robed all in white trimmed with gold, awaited them. ‘Ah, my son,’ Dolmant said to Sparhawk with a faint smile, ‘so good of you to join us.’
Sparhawk did not trust himself to answer that. He did, however, reflect rather bitterly on the fact that all his friends viewed the occasion as one filled with an enormous potential for humour.
Then, after a suitable pause, during which all the wedding guests rose to their feet, fell silent and craned their necks to gaze towards the back of the nave, the choir broke into the processional hymn, and the bridal party emerged from either side of the vestibule. First, one from either side, came Sephrenia and Mirtai. The disparity of the size of the two women was not immediately noted by the onlookers. What was noted and what raised a shocked gasp from the crowd was the obvious fact that both were clearly heathens. Sephrenia’s white robe was almost defiantly Styric. A garland of flowers encircled her brow, and her face was calm. Mirtai’s gown was of a style unknown in Elenia. It was of a deep, royal blue and seemed to be unseamed. It was fastened at each shoulder with a jewelled clip, and a long gold chain caught it below the bust, crossed the Tamul woman’s back, encircled her waist and then hugged her hips to the intricate knot low in the front with the tasselled ends nearly reaching the floor. Her golden arms were bare to the shoulders, flawlessly smooth, yet solidly muscled. She wore golden sandals, and her now-unbraided and glossy black hair flowed smoothly down her back, reaching to mid-thigh. A simple silver band encircled her head. About her wrists she wore not bracelets but rather burnished steel cuffs embossed with gold. As a concession to Elene sensibilities, she was not visibly armed.
The Domi Kring sighed lustily as she entered and with Sephrenia at her side, paced slowly down the aisle towards the altar.
Again there was the customary pause, and then the bride, her left hand resting lightly on the arm of old King Obler, emerged from the vestibule to stop
so that all present might view her – not so much as a woman, but as a work of art. Her gown was of white satin, but brides are almost always gowned in white satin. This particular gown was lined with gold lamé, and the long sleeves were turned back to reveal that contrast. The sleeves themselves were cut long at the backs of the arms, reaching quite nearly to the floor. Ehlana wore a wide belt of beaten mesh gold inlaid with precious gems about her waist. A fabulous golden cape descended to the floor behind her to add its weight to her gleaming satin train. Her pale blonde hair was surmounted by a crown, not the traditional royal crown of Elenia, but rather a lacework of gold mesh highlighted with small, brightly-coloured gems interspersed with pearls. The crown held her veil in place, a veil which reached to her bodice in the front and overlaid her shoulders in the back and was so delicate and fine as to be scarcely more than mist. She carried a single white flower, and her pale young face was radiant.
‘Where did they get the gowns on such short notice?’ Berit whispered to Kurik.
‘Sephrenia wriggled her fingers, I’d imagine.’
Dolmant gave the two of them a stern look, and they stopped whispering.
Following the Queen of Elenia there came the crowned kings, Wargun, Dregos, Soros and the Crown Prince of Lamorkand, who was standing in for his absent father, and by the ambassador of Cammoria, who was the representative of that kingdom. The Kingdom of Rendor was unrepresented, and no one had even thought to invite Otha of Zemoch.
The procession began slowly to move down the aisle towards the altar and the waiting bridegroom. Platime and Stragen brought up the rear, one of them on each side of Talen, who bore the white velvet cushion upon which rested that pair of ruby rings. It should be noted in passing that both Stragen and Platime were keeping a very close eye on the youthful thief.
Sparhawk considered his bride as, with glowing face, she approached. In those last few moments while he was still able to think coherently, he realized something at last which he had never fully admitted to himself. Ehlana had been a chore when she had been placed in his care years ago – not only a chore, but a humiliation as well. It is to his credit that he had felt no personal resentment towards her, for he had realized that she had been as much a victim of her father’s caprice as he was himself. The first year and more had been trying. The girl-child who now so radiantly approached him had been timorous, and at first had spoken only to Rollo, a small, somewhat bedraggled stuffed toy animal which in those days was her constant and probably only companion. In time, however, she had grown accustomed to Sparhawk’s battered face and stern demeanour, and a somewhat tenuous friendship had been cemented on the day when an arrogant courtier had offered Princess Ehlana an impertinence and had been firmly rebuked by her knight-protector. It was undoubtedly the first time anyone had ever shed blood for her (the courtier’s nose had bled profusely), and an entire new world had opened for the small, pale princess. From that moment, she had confided everything to her knight – even things he might have preferred she had not. She had no secrets from him, and he had come to know her as he had never known anyone else in the world. And that, of course, had ruined him for any other woman. The slight, as yet unformed princess had so intricately intertwined her very being with his that there was no possible way they could ever be separated, and that, finally, was why they were here in this place and at this time. If there had been only his own pain to consider, Sparhawk might have held firm in his rejection of the idea. He could not, however, endure her pain, and so –
The hymn concluded. Old King Obler delivered his kinswoman to her knight, and the bride and groom turned to face Archprelate Dolmant. ‘I’m going to preach to you for a while,’ Dolmant told them quietly. ‘It’s a sort of convention, and people expect me to do it. You don’t really have to listen, but try not to yawn in my face if you can avoid it.’
‘We wouldn’t dream of it, Sarathi,’ Ehlana assured him.
Dolmant spoke of the state of marriage – at some length. He then assured the bridal couple that once the ceremony had been completed, it would be perfectly all right for them to follow their natural inclinations – that it would not only be all right, but was in fact encouraged. He strongly suggested that they be faithful to each other and reminded them that any issue of their union must be raised in the Elene faith. Then he came to the ‘wilt thou’s’, asking each of them in turn if they consented to be wed, bestowed all their worldly goods upon each other and promised to love, honour, obey, cherish and so forth. Then, since things were going so well, he moved right along into the exchanging of the rings, neither of which Talen had even managed to steal.
It was at that point that Sparhawk heard a soft, familiar sound that seemed to echo down from the dome itself. It was the faint trilling of pipes, a joyful sound filled with abiding love. Sparhawk glanced at Sephrenia. Her glowing smile said everything. For a moment he irrationally wondered what protocols had been involved when Aphrael had applied to the Elene God for permission to be present, and, it appeared, to add her blessing to His.
‘What is that music?’ Ehlana whispered, her lips not moving.
‘I’ll explain later,’ Sparhawk murmured.
The song of Aphrael’s pipes seemed to go unnoticed by the throng in the candlelit nave. Dolmant’s eyes, however, widened slightly, and his face went a bit pale. He regained his composure and finally declared that Sparhawk and Ehlana were permanently, irrevocably, unalterably and definitively man and wife. He then invoked the blessings of God upon them in a nice little concluding prayer and finally gave Sparhawk permission to kiss his bride.
Sparhawk tenderly lifted Ehlana’s veil and touched his lips to hers. No one actually kisses someone else very well in public, but the couple managed without looking too awkward about the whole business.
The wedding ceremony was followed immediately by Sparhawk’s coronation as Prince Consort. He knelt to have the crown Kurik had carried into the nave on a purple velvet cushion placed upon his head by the young woman who had just promised – among other things – to obey him, but who now assumed the authority of his queen. Ehlana made a nice speech in a ringing voice with which she could probably have commanded rocks to move with some fair expectation of being obeyed. She said a number of things about him in her speech, mostly flattering, and concluded by firmly settling the crown on his head. Then, since he was on his knees anyway and his upturned face was convenient, she kissed him again. He noticed that she got much, much better at it with practice. ‘You’re mine now, Sparhawk,’ she murmured with her lips still touching his. Then, though he was far from decrepit, she helped him to his feet. Mirtai and Kalten came forward with ermine-trimmed robes to place them on the shoulders of the royal pair, and then the two of them turned to receive the cheers of the throng within the nave.
There was a wedding supper following the ceremony. Sparhawk never remembered what was served at that supper nor even if he ate any of it. All he remembered was that it seemed to go on for centuries. Then at last he and his bride were escorted to the door of a lavish chamber high up in the east wing of one of the buildings that comprised the Church complex. He and Ehlana entered, and he closed and locked the door behind them.
There were furnishings in the room – chairs, tables, divans and the like – but all Sparhawk really saw was the stark reality of the bed. It was a high bed on a raised dais, and it had a substantial post at each corner.
‘Finally,’ Ehlana said with relief. ‘I thought all of that was going to go on forever.’
‘Yes,’ Sparhawk agreed.
‘Sparhawk?’ she said then, and her tone was not the tone of a queen, ‘do you really love me? I know I forced you into this – first back in Cimmura and then here. Did you marry me because you really love me, or did you just defer to me because I’m the queen?’ Her voice was trembling, and her eyes were very vulnerable.
‘You’re asking silly questions, Ehlana,’ he told her gently. ‘I’ll admit that you startled me at first – probably because I had no idea that you felt
this way. I’m not much of a catch, Ehlana, but I do love you. I’ve never loved anyone else, and never will. My heart’s a little battered, but it’s entirely yours.’ Then he kissed her, and she seemed to melt against him.
The kiss lasted for quite some time, and after a few moments he felt one small hand slide caressingly up the back of his neck to remove his crown. He drew his face back and looked into her lustrous grey eyes. Then he gently removed her crown and let her veil slide to the floor. Gravely, they unfastened each other’s ermine-trimmed robes and let them fall.
The window was open, and the night breeze billowed the gauze curtains and carried with it the night-time sounds of Chyrellos far below. Sparhawk and Ehlana did not feel the breeze, and the only sound they heard was the beating of each other’s heart.
The candles no longer burned, but the room was not dark. The moon had risen by now, and it was a full moon that filled the night with a pale, silvery luminescence. The moonlight seemed caught in the filmy net of the curtains blowing softly at the window, and the glow of those curtains provided a subtler, more perfect light than that of any candle.
It was very late – or to be more precise, very early. Sparhawk had dozed off briefly, but his pale, moondrenched wife shook him awake. ‘None of that,’ she told him. ‘We only have this one night, and you’re not going to waste it by sleeping.’
‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘I’ve had a busy day.’
‘Also a busy night,’ she added with an arch little smile. ‘Did you know that you snore like a thunderstorm?’
‘It’s the broken nose, I think.’
‘That may cause problems in time, love. I’m a light sleeper.’ Ehlana nestled down in his arms and sighed contentedly. ‘Oh, this is very nice,’ she said. ‘We should have got married years ago.’
‘I think your father might have objected – and if he hadn’t, Rollo certainly would have. Whatever happened to Rollo, by the way?’