Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Tonight, he sensed mostly weariness and relief. They had been here long enough, and, through work and time, what had been terrible anguish had muted to bearable sorrow. Now it was more than time to go home and take up their lives again. Except, perhaps, for Selenay, the time for grief was over, and the time to move on had come.

  And that was as it should be.

  When morning came, he was barely able to get dressed and out of his tent before Selenay's servants swarmed all over it. Her tent had already been struck, and she was finishing a strong cup of chava and a buttered roll while in her saddle, as he escaped from the collapsing tent still tying the laces at the collar and cuffs of his shirt.

  One of the "pages" handed him a similar cup and roll and waited, impatiently, for the empty cup. Another brought Kantor a bucket of grain; the Companion immediately plunged his nose into it and began his own breakfast. Prudently, Alberich ate and drank before getting into the saddle; there wasn't a chance he'd be given a chance to finish unless he did.

  The chava wasn't scalding hot, as he had feared it might be, but the heavy admixture of cream and sugar, and the color, like thin mud, warned him that it was probably from the bottom of the pot.

  It was; even with the help of cream and sweetening, it nearly made his hair stand on end. But it certainly woke him up. He handed the empty cup to the page, who took it and vanished; the second whisked off the bucket the moment Kantor lifted his head from it.

  All around them, tents were falling in the thin gray light of predawn. Selenay gave her cup to a page just as Ylsa and Keren walked their Companions into what had been the royal enclosure. Alberich was in the saddle a moment later.

  Selenay looked around at the vanishing camp. "Is breaking camp always like this?" she asked, a little dazed.

  "A camp, we Sunsguard seldom had," Alberich admitted.

  "I got the impression last night that everyone was pretty impatient to be out of here. But don't take my word for it," Keren shrugged. "I don't usually serve with the army."

  "That speech you should make before we leave, I fear," Alberich told Selenay in an undertone. "But it will be the last, until Haven we reach. This, I can promise."

  She grimaced, but nodded. "I hope you two know where I'm supposed to be?" she asked the other two.

  "That's why we're here," Visa told her. "They sent us to fetch you."

  Selenay gestured broadly with one hand. "Well, lead on, since you know where we're going."

  The procession—for procession it would be, even when it wasn't going through a village—had already begun to form up on the road. Keren and Ylsa went straight to the front of it, where the rest of Selenay's guards were waiting. The funeral wagon would not be immediately behind her, but would be the first of the string of wagons.

  Bard Lellian, in charge of the ceremonial part of the journey, came up and introduced himself.

  "Majesty, I have devised something I hope will meet with your approval," he told Selenay, ignoring the rest of them in a way that told Alberich that his single-minded focus was due to anxiety, not an intention to slight them. "It will not be the ordeal that stopping for speeches would have been. You will merely have to drop back and take your place on foot behind the coffin when we reach any sort of town, along with the rest of the notables who have been deemed of high enough rank to follow you afoot. That is all; simply follow afoot, and—do whatever you feel impelled to do."

  Selenay's relief at the simplicity of the arrangements was obvious.

  "Then, when you have dropped back, the riders here at the front will all divide to either side of the road, let the wagon and the walkers pass, and fall in behind the last of the walkers, except for two Bards with muffled drums," the Bard finished. "Those will ride in front of the wagon." He peered anxiously at her; he was not a young man, but he didn't seem to know Selenay very well. "I hope that meets with your approval?"

  :He's a specialist in this sort of thing,: Kantor confided. :Funeral dirges, memorial ballads, funerary rituals—rather a melancholy profession, I would think, but apparently it suits him. This is the first time he's had anything to do with the Royals, though, and he's nervous.:

  "I think it is very fine," she told him, and he smiled with relief. "You must have worked terribly hard to come up with something this—appropriate—at such short notice."

  Now he blushed with pleasure, and murmured a disclaimer. She raised her head to assess the state of preparations even as he thanked her.

  :We seem to be ready to move out,: Kantor told his Chosen.

  "Would you sound a call for silence, please?" Selenay asked the Bard, who snatched up the trumpet at his saddle bow, and played a four-note flourish.

  Silence fell immediately, and Selenay rode Caryo up onto the bank beside the road so that everyone could see her.

  "This seems to be a moment that requires a speech," she said, into the waiting silence. "But a speech, to me, means something that has been prepared for the ears of strangers, and after all that we have been through together, I think that none of us are strangers now." She paused and looked up and down the road, and Alberich knew that she was making certain each and every one of those in this cortege felt she lad made eye contact with him. "Perhaps some day, when our losses are not so fresh, our wounds are not so raw, we will be able to look back on our victory as a victory, with more pride than sorrow. And we should. It was not only my father's sacrifice that won the day, it was the sacrifice of every single person who perished or was wounded, and every one of you who held a weapon, who wielded your Gifts, who tended a beast, kept us fed, or served any other task here. The victory belongs to all of you, and never, ever let anyone tell you differently."

  She took a breath, blinked hard, and continued. "And even if the enemy had won here, he would never have taken Valdemar, for Valdemar is more than land; Valdemar is the people, and the spirit that lives in those people, and that spirit can never be conquered." Now she looked at the sealed coffin, draped in black, and covered with a pall upon which the arms of Valdemar were embroidered—a pall that had once been Sendar and Selenay's battle banners, and which were still stained with blood. Not just Sendar's blood either, but that of all those who had been with him, whether wounded, or fallen. "He knew that, and he trusted to that spirit to carry on, no matter what happened to him. You have shown that spirit is alive in all of you, and he could have no better tribute than that, nor would he have asked for anything more." Another pause. "And I do not ask for anything less."

  :Well said, my Queen,: he Mindspoke to her, and was rewarded by a brief flicker of her eyes in his direction.

  "Now it is time for all of us to tender him our final service," she finished. "Now—let us bear him gently home."

  And she rode down the bank to her place at the head of the procession, and lifted her hand in signal.

  Alberich took his place at her side, with Keren and Ylsa to the right and left. She dropped her hand, and they moved forward on the road to Haven.

  And though there had not yet been a ceremony, or a coronation, everyone in that procession knew that this was the moment when the Heir truly took up the reins of power. And so, in silence but for the sound of hooves and feet and wheels on the road, the reign of King Sendar ended, and the reign of Queen Selenay began.

  20

  THE journey north accomplished for Selenay what the cleanup of the battlefield had done for everyone else; it allowed her to indulge in the full expression of her mourning—in public. Until the moment of departure, she had held her grief firmly in check, perhaps feeling that with so many others suffering, she should not further burden them with her own grief. If she wept, she did so only in private; everyone knew she mourned, but she did so quietly. But on his journey, her public duty was to mourn, to be the symbol of Valdemar's grief, and at last she could give free rein to all of the anguish she had held inside.

  It seemed that everyone along their route wished to pay heir final respects to the King; farmers left their fields, shepherds their flocks
, tradesmen their crafts. Villagers and townsfolk lined both sides of the road, and the road itself was carpeted with rushes, flowers and herbs whenever they entered a town, so much so that the wheels of the wagons were muffled and cushioned against bumps. People carrying baskets and great bouquets of blossoms, and even hand-woven garlands and blankets of flowers, brought them up and placed them on the wagon as it crept past them at a slow walk, until it overflowed with blooms and foliage, and nothing of the black-draped coffin could be seen. And they wept, which had the effect of freeing Selenay's tears.

  It was exhausting for her, but at the same time, it was exactly what she needed. Alberich and Crathach saw to it that she got plenty to drink, plenty of clean handkerchiefs, and the occasional arm about her shoulders. The Healer concocted soothing eyewashes to rinse her sore eyes and face with whenever they stopped. She ate with growing appetite, which was no bad thing, and was so emotionally exhausted by the time they camped for the night that she slept soundly and without waking. Her little pages saw to it that she had everything she needed, faithful as hounds. And each day that passed saw a little easing of the tension within her that had kept her so near to the breaking point.

  It was not that she ceased to care, or became numb, as the days passed. It was more as if the worst of her grief was a finite thing, a barrel that had only seemed bottomless until she began allowing it to flow freely.

  By the time they reached Haven, and the procession made its slow and solemn way through the city to the Palace, that pinched and overstrained look had left her. She wore her sorrow and her loss like a cloak, with grave dignity, rather than being bowed down beneath their intolerable burden.

  She needed that release, for as the journey reached its end, she was about to undertake her final ordeal; the entrance to Haven marked the day of Sendar's official funeral. Haven had been waiting too long to put it off for even one more day—and that wasn't a bad thing. The funeral, though it would be exhausting for all concerned, especially Selenay, would put closure to everything.

  They all camped overnight just outside the walls at the Royal and Home Farms, and servants from the Palace brought them all formal mourning garments, Formal Whites, Greens, and Scarlets. The line for the bathing facilities and even to use the horse troughs and pumps for a bath, was a long one, and Alberich (as did many others) elected to bathe in the river instead; the faint, weedy fragrance of the river water was no match for the strong horse soap they used on themselves as well as their mounts. When they arrived at the gate of the city in the early morning, they looked as if they had all come straight from the Palace itself, and the wagons carrying tents, belongings, and a small mountain of dirty clothing had already gone up the hill, leaving only one single wagon, the one that had carried Sendar to his final rest.

  The Court joined them at the first gate; the Lord Marshal, the Seneschal, and the heads of Bardic, Healers' and Heralds' Circles all walked with her behind the coffin, while the rest joined the riders. The coffin itself was transferred by a hand-picked group of the Guard, with great solemnity and ceremony, to a more ornate carriage used solely for state funerals before Sendar made his last journey through the streets of his capitol.

  And Talamir joined them as well; Alberich was glad enough to relinquish his place at the young Queen's side and join the rest of her bodyguards.

  But Talamir did not so much ride to meet Selenay as appear. It was a very strange moment for Alberich, when the official greetings were over and suddenly, in a pause and a pocket of silence that seemed created for him, there was Talamir.

  And Talamir was changed, vastly changed.

  It was more than just the twenty years that had been added, overnight, to his appearance. It was more than just that his hair had gone silver-white, like the mane of a Companion. After all, Alberich had found gray roots to the hair at his temples this very morning, when he had stolen a moment at an unoccupied mirror. It was much, much more than that. There was an otherworldly stillness about the Queen's Own, a distant look in his eyes as if he was always listening to something no one else could hear, and a faint translucency about him, as if his flesh was not quite solid enough to contain all of the light of his spirit. And a sadness that had nothing to do with the all-too-mortal grief he displayed so openly for his King.

  It made Alberich shiver a little, and he sensed he wasn't the only one—but not everyone seemed to notice the change. Selenay didn't, for one. But perhaps she was too young, too involved with her own grief, or both—

  Alberich was just glad to acknowledge Talamir's thanks, and drop back farther into the procession, selfishly grateful to Talamir for having recovered quickly enough to take his proper place back; it hadn't been a position he had been comfortable with. He hated being in the public eye, on show. Now, in the Formal Whites that the young Queen had asked him to don for the funeral, he was just one Herald among many.

  Besides, now we're into Haven, we come into Court protocols and precedence, all the pomp and ceremony that I know nothing about. The arrival of the state funeral coach had been the first sign that he was rapidly getting out of his depth of experience.

  He and the other Heralds—and the Royal Guards that were left—rode alongside the walkers, between them and the crowds of onlookers and mourners. Here, as out in the country, the streets were carpeted with flowers and the green herbs of mourning, rue and rosemary, but there were far, far too many people here to allow folk to pile more flowers on the carriage; it would have been covered within a single block. That was all right; they seemed content enough to strew their blossoms in the path of the carriage and the procession.

  The muffled drums, augmented now by more mounted and walking musicians, made a dull throbbing through the too-quiet streets. That was the strangest part of all, the quiet in the city. Alberich was used to the noise of Haven, but today, the silence was broken only by the sound of people sobbing, and even that was muffled, as if the mourners did not want to spoil the solemnity of the occasion by being too vocal.

  They stopped three times in the course of the morning, at three of Sendar's favorite temples, for memorial services that were mercifully brief—just long enough that the walkers could rest before carrying on. Similar services were being held all over the city, and would be all day, and well into the night, but these comprised the official funeral for the citizens of Haven.

  And it took most of the day to get from the city gates to the Palace Gates. They took one break at noon, at one of the huge Guildhouse Squares; Selenay and her entourage retired to the Needleworkers' Guildhouse for rest and a meal, while Sendar's coffin lay in state in the enormous Guildhall of the Wool-merchants' Guildhouse, and lines of folk, some of whom had traveled for a day to be here, filed past.

  Then the procession began again after two candlemarks, stopping twice more for two more memorial ceremonies. And at long last, they entered the Gates of the Palace. By then, they were all exhausted, even those who had only joined the procession when it entered Haven.

  Sendar was to be interred in the crypt beneath the floor of the Palace Chapel, along with the rest of his line; all was in readiness there, and had been, presumably, for days. The Guard now marched off to their barracks, leaving a much shrunken company to enter the chapel behind the coffin. They all filed inside, where at least it was possible for those who had been walking for so long to sit down.

  Candles had already been lit all over the chapel although the last light penetrated the western windows, and the interior was overly warm, with the golden and reddish light making it appear warmer still. Incense warred with the scent of lilies for supremacy. The chapel was packed solid, shoulder to shoulder; Alberich, who had been riding all day rather than walking, took a standing position up against the wall beside the Royal pew. He was glad to be there, truth to tell; the stone wall felt cool against his back.

  It could have been awful; speaker after interminable speaker eulogizing the King, until grief turned to benumbed boredom. And that would have been a terrible thing to do to S
elenay. But someone had been wise; there were no interminable eulogies, only a few, brief speeches by those who had known and loved Sendar the best, punctuated by some of the most glorious music that Alberich had ever heard. Not for nothing was this also the site of Bardic Collegium; the Bards had exerted themselves to the utmost, and even though he had thought that the depths of his grief had been plumbed and exhausted, it was the music that brought tears again to his eyes. Anyone who could have listened to such music and not wept must have had a heart of stone.

  Needless to say, when it came time for the last of the speakers—Selenay—she mounted the podium with reddened eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. But her voice was clear and steady as she spoke.

  "Sendar was my King as well as my father," she said simply. "He was outstanding at both tasks. It can't have been easy to rule this unruly land of ours, and at the same time govern an ungovernable child, being father and mother to her—but he did it, and did it well. I will spend the rest of my life missing him; wishing he could be here to see—so many things. I suspect Valdemar will miss his steady hands on the reins, too. I can only pray that I can be as wise and compassionate a ruler as he was; I doubt very much if I can ever equal him as a parent. And I would gladly give my own life to have our positions reversed." She raised her head a little. "Nevertheless, such a sacrifice demands more than just words; it demands deeds. It demands that we be worthy of it; it demands that we all go beyond what we think is enough, making our own sacrifices in the name of a better life for all of Valdemar. That, in the truest essence, is what he did. That is what I will do. That is what he would expect of all of us; he deserves, and should have, nothing less than excellence as a fitting tribute to his memory. Only then can we be worthy of such a great and terrible gift—the life of a King."

  She sat down in silence. And it seemed to Alberich that she had surprised many of her listeners—nonplussed some—and actually startled others. They were not sure how to react to her. This was not the speech of a young woman, overwhelmed with grief, that they had expected to hear....