The chamberlain cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Yes, m’lord, but we have been unable to locate her.”
The Lord Roland’s face went pale. “What? What did you say?”
“We cannot find her, m’lord, I am sorry. She presented her invitation at the western gate yesterday, but she did not arrive at Tannen Hall to secure her guest quarters. She is undoubtedly elsewhere in the city, perhaps visiting friends.”
The Lord Roland whirled, sweeping his arm angrily across the newly erected dressing table. A silvered glass tray with a toilette set went flying off the table, shattering on the marble floor in a great hail of bottles of cologne, combs, and razors. The chamberlain leapt out of the way to avoid the flying glass shards.
“Oh, you know that, do you?” he snarled, storming through the debris toward the office door. “For all you know, she has been abducted or ravaged or worse.” Or is trysting with one of the other dukes or nobles in the comfort of their private halls in the inner circle of Bethany, he thought. For all you know, Edactor, they have draped her in jewels, promising her wealth and a safe exit from the Bolglands in return for her favors. At this moment she could be wrapped, naked, her skin gleaming, in their finest silk sheets, entwining her glorious legs around their pasty chests, giving herself to Ivenstrand or Baldasarre or MacAlwaen, when it could be me.
New beads of sweat sprang out in his already-perspiring forehead at the thought. Perhaps it had even been arranged before her arrival; perhaps she had been wooed by one of the ambassadors who had come to the court of Ylorc to pay tribute to the despised Bolg king on behalf of one of Tristan’s rivals. Perhaps they were even now lying in bed, laughing at him, indulging in splendid lovemaking between bouts of merriment at his expense, chuckling at his looming marriage to the Beast of Canderre amid bouts of torrid debauchery.
The shock on the face of the chamberlain as he strode past the man did little to clear his head. The blood of rage, and something darker, was pounding behind his eyes, filling him with painful arousal, making his hands shake in fury.
“Now, go to the captain of the palace regiment and have them comb the streets. Find her. I want to see her before the wedding, here, in my office. I have important diplomatic issues I need to discuss with her before I can concentrate on throwing my life away and binding myself for all time to that hag from Canderre. Is that clear, Edactor?” He seized the door handle and dragged the heavy door open with an emphatic scream of iron hinges. “Find that woman and—”
He stopped, his voice cracking like a youth’s as he skidded over the last word. Standing outside the doorway was a trembling little girl bedecked in a frilly white gown, flowers entwined in her hair. It was one of Madeleine’s handmaidens, bearing the traditional bridemeal for him, a tray laden with pastries and steaming tea, fresh porridge and aromatic sausages. The bridemeal was customarily cooked by the bride herself on the morning of the wedding as a promise of future repasts she would provide as a wife, though undoubtedly Madeleine had merely ordered that it be prepared by the palace servants. Tristan could not fault her at that. He had done the same with the flowers he was supposed to handpick and present to her as the bridegroom. He stared down at the girl in dismay, then coughed.
“Find that woman, Edactor, and when you have, thank her for this splendid breakfast. Tell my Lady Madeleine that her devoted bridegroom awaits his ladylove at the Altar of Fire in the basilica.”
Ashe was almost to Bethany’s northwestern gate when he felt a strange tremor on the surface of his skin.
The sun was just cresting the horizon, shining on his face, lighting the path before him and casting his shadow, grotesquely elongated, behind him. Ahead in the near distance the towers of Bethany reached skyward to meet the rising sun, gleaming with promise. Deep within those streets, beyond the city walls, Rhapsody was waiting for him, a clandestine meeting planned in autumn. It was all he could do to contain his exhilaration. The pain that had once radiated constantly through his chest and body was gone; there was joy to be had in inhaling the fresh, cold air, joy in being alive, for the first time since boyhood.
But now, no more than a league from the northwestern gate, something bristled in the air behind him, causing the dragon within him to stir.
Ashe reined the gelding he had taken from the battlefield at the edge of the Krevensfield Plain to a halt and turned around to taste the wind, allowing his dragon nature to sense more fully. At the outer edges of his consciousness he felt stealthy movement, dark shadows, elongated like his own in the morning sun, creeping eastward from beyond the Phon’s western bank. Though the dragon was powerful in its awareness of the minutiae of the world around him, Ashe could not look into men’s hearts. There was no doubt in his own, however, that his sense of foreboding was well placed.
Black anger flashed through his mind, resonating throughout his body. Another incursion, another manipulation of the F’dor. Another attack that would doubtless allow the demon to prey upon the unsuspecting, spilling more innocent blood. He was accustomed to intervening in such incursions.
Not, however, when the woman he loved, and had been separated from for what seemed like an eternity, was finally within his reach. His anticipation of seeing Rhapsody, gowned in her wedding finery, had been the only thing that had kept him from madness over the last months.
Ashe looked back at the wakening city coming to light with the dawn. Growling a string of ugly profanities, he tugged the reins and turned west again, leaving the shining light of daybreak in Bethany to cast longer, angrier shadows ahead of him now.
Rhapsody was growing desperate. The great clock in the bell tower of the Regent’s Palace had struck the quarter hour twice in the time she had been standing at the street corner’s edge, waiting to flag down a passing coach. She had watched carefully from the grated window in the abandoned cistern the afternoon before, and had noted carriages passing every few minutes, their drivers calling their availability for hire. Now, however, the streets of northern Bethany were deserted; all the townspeople were either at the palace hall preparing the wedding feast, or standing outside the fire basilica, hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal couple. Undoubtedly every available carriage was currently employed delivering the invited guests from Tannen Hall to the basilica, even though it was only a few streets away.
She stamped her foot in frustration. How foolish it had been to forsake the comfort and proximity of the guest lodging for a night alone in an empty stone cistern. Ashe had never come; she had passed the time waiting writing sonnets in her worn journal by candlelight, trying to keep her heart from betraying her. By sunrise she had given up trying to fall asleep and had gone to the northern well, drawing water to cleanse herself with before dressing for the wedding. The square in which the well stood was crowded with squabbling men and women, shrieking babies, and children running madly about in the excitement of the wedding; it had been a simple task to slip in and out without notice.
Now she was dressed and ready, but had no way to get to the wedding.
The gown of stiff amethyst silk was glorious; she had reveled in the crisp touch of it the night before, running her hands down the skirt to smooth any wrinkles that had occurred in its transport to her hiding place. In the morning light the color was even more stunning, dusky and rich, matching exactly the sparkling jewels she had purchased to accentuate it. Her slippers, formed of satin dyed to match the dress, would never survive the long walk to the basilica in the filthy snow of the cobbled roadways. Her gown would fare no better.
She looked anxiously up and down the empty street, wondering if her purchases, her preparations, in fact, her visit to Bethany had been in vain. In that moment in the distance she heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.
A moment later a tinker’s cart rounded the corner a few streets away. An ancient mule, mottled skin visible beneath her tattered blanket and wearing blinders over her eyes, plodded slowly through the cobbled streets, pulling the rickety wagon hung with chamber pots, cooking pans, tarnished oi
l lamps, and scores of other metal objects, all clattering into each other in quiet cacophony. Rhapsody chuckled.
“Excuse me,” she called to the grizzled tinker as the cart approached. “By your leave, sir, might I beg a ride of you? I must get to the royal wedding.”
The man, wearing an eyepatch over one eye, turned and stared at her. Obviously the sight of a wedding guest in a gown and velvet cloak was confounding, Rhapsody thought, because for a moment the shock on his face was so great that she feared he might fall from his seat. The reins dropped from his hands and the mule, sensing the slack, ambled to a stop.
Gathering her skirts, Rhapsody hurried across the roadway and climbed nimbly into the cart beside the tinker.
“Thank you,” she said in relief. “I was afraid I was going to miss it.”
The man nodded dumbly, still staring at her with his solitary eye. Rhapsody waited for a moment, then picked up the reins and gently put them into the tinker’s hands.
“Shall we?” she asked politely.
The man cleared his throat nervously and the mule, noting the change in tension on the reins, began to plod forward, wares crashing, on the way to the Regent’s Palace and the basilica of fire.
47
The ceremonial procession of nobles had just begun as Rhapsody hurried to her seat next to Rial in the secondmost inner Ring of the circular basilica. The crowd, which now filled the entire central square of Bethany and had swelled through the streets all the way to Tannen Hall, were murmuring with excitement, pushing and pressing to get a closer look at the wedding party.
One by one the dukes of each of the Orlandan provinces, and the lesser nobles whose lineage had a historic significance in Roland, were coming down a shining carpet of royal purple that blanketed the long southern aisle leading into the temple; a similar carpet adorned the northern aisle, ending in the center at the round basilica. Each stone in the mosaics of flames that decorated the outskirts of the circular building, giving it the appearance of the sun when viewed from above, had been polished to a glittering sheen. As each nobleman passed, the crowd erupted in cheers.
Quentin Baldasarre, the Duke of Bethe Corbair, was entering the basilica just as she sat down. The duke’s face was haggard and wan, his burning eyes the only betrayal of an otherwise stolid expression.
“Where have you been, my dear?” Rial asked worriedly. “I was beginning to think you had changed your mind and returned to Ylorc.” He took her hand and slipped it through the crook of his arm. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you. I apologize for my lateness; it was a miscalculation of several factors.” Rhapsody shuddered as Ihrman Karsrick, the Duke of Yarim, entered next. He was dressed in black silk breeches, with a white shirt, gleaming silver doublet, and cape, and wore upon his head a great horned helm, much like the figure who had aided the Rakshas when she fought him in the basilica of the Star the previous summer. A moment later she saw that the benison at the altar wore a similarly horned helm, though his robes, like his helm, were red. That would be Ian Steward, the Blesser of Canderre-Yarim, Tristan’s brother, she thought, staring at the young man’s sober face through the flames of the fire from the Earth’s core that burned in the center of the basilica.
A fanfare of trumpets blasted, sending a rumble of excitement through the crowd and prompting the invited guests to rise. A great shout went up as Tristan, in his sky-blue and white wedding garb and a long white cape trimmed in ermine, appeared at the edge of the northern aisle. His eyes scanned the Rings of the basilica, coming to rest after a moment on the section in which Rhapsody and Rial stood. Then, with two young male pages in tow, he strode defiantly down the aisle to the Altar of Fire in the center of the basilica and bowed perfunctorily to his brother.
Another cheer, this one louder than all the others, went up. Rhapsody and Rial looked south. Madeleine of Canderre stood, bedecked in a beautiful white silk gown glowing with the sheen from the thousands of pearls that encrusted it, her hand on the outstretched arm of her father, Cedric Canderre. She was fashionably pale, her face and neck powdered white, her long hair swept severely back and woven with ribbons of state and flowers native to Canderre. The duke’s expression was mild, but Rhapsody thought she read great sadness in his eyes, even as distant as she was from him.
As the bride and her father proceeded down the aisle, followed by two tiny handmaidens bearing chests similar to the ones that followed Tristan to the altar and the ridiculously long train of the wedding gown, Rhapsody felt a gentle touch on her elbow.
“Well, there you are, my dear,” came Llauron’s warm, cultured voice. “I am so happy to see that you are well, and able to attend the wedding.” He leaned forward conspiratorially with a twinkle in his eye. “Was that a tinker’s cart I saw you alight from a few streets away? An interesting choice of transportation for a guest of the regent.”
“Hello, Llauron,” she replied, kissing the Invoker politely on the cheek, then eyeing him suspiciously. The seven years she had spent with the Rowans had not removed the sting of his failure to send reinforcements to help her in Sorbold. “We peasants travel in such carts all the time, and are rarely invited to royal occasions.” She turned back to watch, fascinated, as Madeleine arrived at the Altar of Fire. “I’ve never seen a wedding ceremony in Roland before.”
“ ’Tis a barbarous thing,” said Rial humorously, bowing to the Invoker. “Well met, Your Grace. I imagine you agree?”
Llauron chuckled. “Indeed; we of the true faith favor simplicity and none of their crude rituals. Strange, given that we worship nature in all its untamed glory, while they are the supposedly more civilized sect. Ah, well.”
“It doesn’t seem that barbarous to me,” Rhapsody protested as Tristan sank to one knee and bowed before his bride.
“Wait, my dear,” said Llauron, smiling. “We haven’t begun the Unification ritual yet.”
“What brideprice do you offer?” the benison asked Cedric Canderre.
“Forty thousand pieces of gold, one hundred Orlandan bars of platinum, fifty ingots of ancient rysin,” replied Cedric Canderre stoutly. “This is the bargain we have struck in accordance to the custom of the church and the laws of Roland.”
“I’d wager he’d have paid a lot more than that to be rid of her if Tristan had held out,” a guest in front of Rhapsody whispered to the elegantly gowned woman next to him, who nodded seriously.
“What is a brideprice?” Rhapsody asked Llauron.
“The amount her father is willing to pay Tristan Steward to take her off of his hands,” the Invoker replied with a chuckle. “It is the custom in all such weddings, but in this case, the vast amount is particularly resonant.”
Rhapsody watched doubtfully as Cedric Canderre produced a parchment scroll and a quill. “I suppose it’s not much different than the dowries paid in the farming community I was raised in,” she said uncertainly as Tristan examined the paper, nodded, then took the quill and signed the scroll on a wax tablet the benison held out for him to bear on. “Though usually it was seen as a gift from the bride’s family to help the couple start out.”
“Perhaps that was your experience. But here, should the bridegroom decide within one year’s time that his wife was not worth the brideprice, he may return her to her father, and must repay him half of it.”
“Half?” Rhapsody asked incredulously as Cedric Canderre kissed Madeleine on the cheek and withdrew to his seat within the Inner Ring. “Only half? Why?”
“Because, as she is no longer, er, untouched, she has been devalued.”
“But—”
“Now, Rhapsody, don’t sputter; it’s a fine system,” said Llauron jokingly. “The first anniversary is an extremely festive occasion in the Patriarch’s faith, as it means that the husband has chosen to keep his wife permanently. The parties are really quite splendid, I’m told. Ah, ah—now, don’t be flabbergasted, my dear; your face is red as a beet, not at all a complementary color to your lovely gown. I thought you had learned by now not to sn
eer at the customs of others.” He leaned closer and whispered in her ear. “I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see that you survived your ordeal and Khaddyr’s failure to meet up with you, and still met with success in your mission. I am very proud of you.”
“What—”
“Shh, my dear. The ceremony continues.” Llauron quickly turned his attention back to the altar. Rhapsody’s eyes narrowed, then she relented in her annoyance, amused in spite of herself. Llauron’s personable nature was always disarming. She made note to not let him wriggle out of providing an explanation for the mishaps in the forest, and looked back to the wedding ceremony.
Ian Steward was addressing his brother. “Tristan Steward, son of Malcolm Steward, Lord Regent of Roland and Prince of Bethany, what do you pledge to this woman?”
Tristan stood straighter, his auburn hair dark and plastered flat with sweat in the light of the altar fire.
“Field and fortune, family and fealty, by faith and the Fire, this is my pledge,” Tristan intoned.
As the benison asked for and received the same pledge from Madeleine, Rhapsody looked around, hoping to catch sight of Ashe. Though he hadn’t been able to meet her in the cistern, she hoped he would eventually catch up to her at the wedding. Whether he was here now, in the crowd somewhere, was impossible to discern, especially since his mist cloak shielded him from the normal means of detection. She sighed and settled back again to watch the ceremony.
The call of the pure element of fire from the wellspring caught her ear; there was music in the flames, music sweeter than the strains of the orchestra that was playing in the basilica.
How long she drowsed she did not know, but her attention snapped back at the benison’s next words.
“The pledge of field,” he said, his voice a drier, clearer version of Tristan’s. Tristan turned and nodded to his pages, as did Madeleine. One of each of the chests were quickly opened, and two pieces of parchment brought forward to the bride and bridegroom. Each piece was a map of the lands under their dominion, and together they laid the pieces on the altar, fitting them together to symbolize the union of their respective holdings.