Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

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 oil 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.

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-Tarim, 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.”