Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change
Page 36
The music ceased and a voice called down ceremoniously; solemn, but with laughter in it. Rudi recognized Oak Barstow Mackenzie, the First Armsman. This was his home as well, of course.
“Who comes to Dun Juniper near the holy season?” he said. “Do you claim entry by blood-kinship as Mackenzies yourselves, or by guest-right, or do you offer tale or goods or skill?”
“The chief of the Clan comes, the Mackenzie Herself,” Rudi replied.
His mother took it up: “And the Ard Rí, the High King himself, the Lady’s Sword, comes to guest his kinfolk.”
There was a story of how Lugh had come visiting in disguise in ancient times, and had proven His worth by listing the skills He commanded. Mackenzie ritual always paid some slight homage to that.
The weight of the gates would have dragged if only the hinges had supported them, massive though those were. He could hear the clunk and chung as the locking bars were winched out of the way, and then teams pushed the gates open. The inner corners rested on salvaged railway wheels, and those ran on sections of track set into the entryway. Rudi dismounted and lifted his wife down; the others joined him, and the formality dissolved in a shouting mob as the dwellers in the home of his childhood surged around him.
That ended with Mathilda and himself and Juniper and his foster father Nigel Loring being carried shoulder-high behind a pair of strutting pipers playing “Rudi’s Tain,” through the streets of the settlement. It was a welcome relief from the elaborate deference of the north-realm, and they were suitably careful of Mathilda while he and the others were tossed about like chips of driftwood in a Pacific storm.
Most of the homes in Dun Juniper were built against the inside of the wall, knee-high fieldstone foundations and close-fitting squared logs above to the shingled roofs. The woodwork was colorfully carved in sinuous running designs, but none so much so as the Hall that had started as a rich man’s hunting lodge built over the old foundations of Jeb’s farmhouse, and it blazed with lamp-light and firelight through the big windows, a blur of gold and glittering color through the white fog of the snow.
It had been a long low building to start with; the early Mackenzies had doubled its size by lifting the roof and putting on another layer of huge squared logs. That roof loomed above them through the snow now, the end-rafters at east and west extending upward to spirals that faced each other deosil and tuathal, sunwise and its opposite, to balance the energies. Pillars ringed it on three sides, with the beam-ends of the second story gallery extended out over the court that surrounded it; they were carved into the heads of the Mackenzie totems, Tiger and Bear and Elk, Coyote and Fox and Wolf and more, with great wrought lanterns of iron and glass hanging from their jaws.
Somehow nobody had thought of lifting the Rimpoche; he looked about with keen interest as the others were set on their feet.
“Not altogether unlike some things in Tibet,” he said. “We share a liking for bright colors and symbolic carving, at least.”
“We had a lot of time in the winter and needed to practice woodworking, at any rate,” Juniper said.
Nigel Loring chuckled. “It was already mostly like this when I arrived, and I thought everyone here must be either barking mad, or fallen into a book,” he said.
“Or that it was the biggest, gaudiest Celtic-Chinese restaurant in the world,” Juniper said, leaning aside to give him a quick kiss. “Sweet-and-sour corned beef and deep-fried cabbage, perhaps.”
The oldsters do love their jargon, Rudi thought tolerantly as all three of them laughed.
The crowd went solemn again as they were set down; Rudi straightened his bonnet and plaid. The pipers put aside their drones; harp-music came as the doors of the Hall with their silver cat-head bosses swung wide. He recognized his younger half sister Fiorbhinn’s touch on the strings, and voices were raised—the pure sweet ones of preadolescents, mostly her gang of musical mischief-makers. For once they were solemn, and there was an ethereal loveliness as they sang:
“Who will go down to the holy groves
To summon the Shadows there
And tie a garland on the sheltering leaves—”
Maud Mackenzie brought the guest-cup, a horn of hot cider with spices; now that she was Tanist and acknowledged successor to their mother as Chief of the Clan that duty fell to her. Rudi felt a pang as he took it; this wasn’t his home anymore, not really. That feeling was redoubled when Juniper guided him to the High Seat with its carved ravens. He smiled at her grin and wink and took it, hanging the Sword from one of the carved bosses.
Aunt Judy—Oak’s mother, and his mother’s oldest friend—plunked a piece of her carrot cake down on the arm of his chair; she was an herbalist and healer of note, the founder and manager of the Clan’s medical tradition, and also a very fine cook.
“What’s a king for, if not to enjoy a piece of cake?” she said.
Rudi leaned back with a sigh and took a forkful. The Hall smelled of the dinner cooking, and of the great fir-tree in one corner—the decoration had just started. There would be music and dancing beforehand; it was a very grave situation indeed that Mackenzies didn’t consider improvable by some song and dance. And storytelling, and riddles, and…
“What’s a king for indeed?”