What was supposed to happen then was the princess and her attendants stepping gracefully out of the grand carriage which was pulled up inside the forecourt gate. There should have been rose petals floating down to carpet the pavement for her dainty feet, lily water fountaining into the air to sweeten it for her delicate nose (indeed, given the heat, the stench rolling off the assembled multitudes was enough to make a pig faint), and the bride should have been led along a processional way lined with writhing dancers and puffing, plucking or pounding musicians to a bridegroom made breathless with this first revelation of her veiled form—
In practice, nothing happened. The carriage door remained closed. A few rose petals landed half-heartedly on the pavement, the crowd carried on cheering and the musicians continued bravely to play, but no princess emerged. By twos and threes, the musicians fell silent. The cheering grew ragged. People started to look at each other and shrug. Nobody knew what to do.
We waited. We were on the great curved portico overlooking the main forecourt, on a circular dais at the head of the grand gilded staircase. On one side of me were the collected nobilities of Gil and Sathelforn, with my parents in the position of honour. I could see my mother had kept her promise to keep Shree and Angel close to her, although Angel was barely recognizable at first, shaven, long hair neatly tied back, even the First Memorian's chain of office around his throat. Silently and fervently I blessed my mother.
We waited. On my other side was the Miisheli delegation, including nine Fraths Minor and several dozen lesser peers, also the Bequiin Ardin, who was conspicuously sombre in his plain grey robe. I was interested to observe no gaps in the ranks of the Fraths Minor. Beside them were the envoys from Storica, Calloon, Luc, Plav and a dozen other nations of the new Compact; but significantly, I could see no representatives from Tata and Grisot. The High Prince of Sathelforn, the Frath Major and Arkolef occupied gaudy high-backed thrones on platforms behind the dais. The Frath Major had his hand over his eyes.
We waited. I looked across the crowded forecourt of the Gilgard, where a thousand banners in the colours of the three nations were rapidly fading in the hot sun. Beneath them was a sweating multitude of the humbler people of Gil, most of whom were looking sorry they'd come. The burst of enthusiasm, or relief, that greeted my appearance had given way to abject puzzlement in the heat.
We waited. Eight minutes, nine minutes, ten minutes. There was plenty of time for reflection. Layer after layer of silk joined the sodden mass plastered to my skin; an intolerable itch migrated around my body and finally took up residence in the small of my back. Beside me, the Primate shifted from foot to foot. Unfortunately, it would not have been thinkable for anyone to approach the carriage—according to immemorial Miisheli custom, it would have obliged the bride's kinsmen to go berserk in defence of her honour, which would have run foul of the ageless Satheli law making violence at a religious ceremony punishable by death, which would have clashed in turn with Oballef's ancient statute against capital punishment. We were at an impasse.
We waited. Finally, the door of the carriage swung open. The forecourt susurrated with the sound of thousands of lungs drawing in a deep breath. A shining silver waterfall poured itself out of the carriage—and then there she was, my princess, my bride, Rinn of Miishel. The silver waterfall was her nuptial gown, which didn't actually seem to be on her, although my eyes were too bad at that range to tell for sure until she stepped over and past it. The crowd drew another breath, and then erupted into sound: whatever she was or was not wearing, they loved it. They also seemed to love her. Unattended, she strolled along the lane left clear for her, ignoring the crowd, looking neither to the right nor the left. Rather belatedly, the rose-petal and lily-water brigades remembered themselves, after which she seemed to be floating towards me through a cloud of pink and silver spray. I squinted, cursing my weak eyes.
"Chasco?"
"Yes, lord Scion?"
"What's she wearing?"
After a pause, he said, "She's wearing a great deal of gold, lord Scion."
"Anything else?"
"Not that I can see, my lord."
I threw a glance at the thrones behind me. Arkolef looked politely diplomatic, no doubt under the impression that Rinn was following another of those quaint Miisheli wedding customs. The High Prince of Sathelforn looked frankly appreciative. Only the Frath Major was grim, and there was a suggestion of habit there, as if this were not the first time his beautiful cousin had enlivened some boring old ritual by taking all her clothes off.
Rinn reached the foot of the gilded staircase and climbed to just above the heads of the crowd. She stopped there and turned around, hands on hips, chin high, and surveyed the multitude in the forecourt. Though her back was to me, I could tell: this was no gracious acknowledgement of the citizens' adulation. There was languid contempt in the curve of her elegant back: Who are these unattractive people? that posture seemed to be saying; and what is that awful stench? The look was still on her face when she turned and continued up the stairs.
Oh, there was no doubt she was beautiful, though the closer she got, the less she looked like her portrait. In the portrait, she'd been blonde; but her hair which was gathered tightly on top of her head in a golden clasp and cascaded from there over her shoulders and halfway down her back, had been dyed in a score of rainbow colours, lock by separate lock. The effect was striking, except it reminded me of my mother's knitting basket. Her face was like a cat's, triangular, with wide winged cheekbones slanting down to a dangerously pointed chin; enormous cat-eyes, green-irised, with a thick fringe of gold lashes. Fangs and whiskers would not have seemed out of place.
As for the rest of her, she actually was wearing more than jewellery; that is, there was a thin loincloth of some shimmery material tied around her milky haunches, and she had sandals on her feet. Beyond that, she was carrying about as much metalwork as in the portrait, including that interesting gold contraption that pushed her breasts up and out in the Miisheli style but otherwise left them bare, under enough spiked chains and studded necklets to have achieved modesty if only they'd stopped shifting about. The way she moved made that impossible. I'd wager every man there was wishing he could change places with me for just one night—except the Frath Major.
Rinn suffered herself to be led on to the dais and placed beside me. The Primate, as shaken as ever I'd seen him, linked our hands and then hesitated. The script called for him to lift the outermost of Rinn's veils at that point, but she wasn't wearing any, and he was not good at improvising.
Rinn yawned, again like a cat. "Hurry up, goatface," she said to him in charmingly accented Gillish. At that moment, I came as close as I ever would to genuinely liking her. But when the Primate turned away from us to call on the gods of the three nations, she playfully dug several of her knife-pointed nails into the palm of my hand and giggled when I jumped.
"They tried to make me wear ugly, stupid clothes like yours," she whispered, "but I would not wear them."
"No, really?" I murmured.
"No! I tore them in the carriage—like so!" The nails ripped across the back of my hand.
"That would do it, I suppose." I gritted my teeth. "Didn't the attendants try to stop you?"
"Yes! But I slashed at their faces—like so!" Again the damned nails. I caught her hands and held them firmly in both of mine, not caring what the crowd thought. In that overheated atmosphere, they probably saw it as a sign of ungovernable passion.
Rinn may have thought so, too. She seemed pleased. "Tonight," she whispered, pushing her thigh against mine, "I will make your back into ribbons. Like so!"
I sighed. And resolved, on the souls of my ancestors, that my first private act as a husband would be to trim my wife's nails.
* * *
10
IF I HADN'T been watching through the jaundiced eyes of a participant, I'd have enjoyed myself. Somebody, and I suspected it was the Bequiin Ardin, that great Miisheli scholar, had crafted a very clever ceremony from bits
and pieces of the three different traditions, enough of each to satisfy everybody, nothing that would offend or nauseate anybody. All the important deities were mentioned at least once, the interminable Satheli confessions were boiled down to a few crucial sentences and human sacrifices were omitted altogether out of deference to tender Gillish and Satheli sensibilities.
Speaking as a critic and connoisseur of cult practices, I think the only mistake was to include the Miisheli rite of entrail-divination. Six bulls' bellies were sliced open, and, although the priests foresaw wonderful things in the resulting carnage, the forecourt stank like an abbatoir in the hot sun long after the blood had been swilled away.
Other than that, the weaving of traditions was a masterpiece. I had to admire the artistry of it, even as the net of oaths and solemn undertakings to a daunting number of gods tightened around me, binding me for ever to that clinking cat-clawed Miisheli slut. I kept thinking that this ceremony would make a fine appendix to our compendium of cults; then I would remember that the book would never be written now, that the little cults of Gil would have to blossom and die without me, and I would sink back into misery until distracted by the next rolling phrase or entrancing morsel of folklore, and the cycle would begin again.
In the end, it was the soporific music of the Satheli eel-dance that put me to sleep on my feet. The forecourt swam in and out of focus; the monotonous wailing of the reed-pipes rose and fell, rose and fell, accompanied by a drum like a mother's heartbeat as an unborn child might hear it in the womb. The slender line that tied me to the waking world slipped its knot.
Suddenly it was not Rinn beside me, but Calla; the music was the voice of despair singing out from the doomed city of Iklankish, the drum was my own heartbeat as the points of the Pleasure fell towards my chest. The great wave rose up out of the western horizon, tipped with dead ships and foam the colour of milk. Higher it rose, blotting out the bloody sky. The music whimpered into silence. A man's firm, familiar voice began speaking, but the words were puzzling: now the two are one. That made sense in a way, but not, I told myself, the way the speaker seemed to intend it, and the true meaning was just beyond my grasp. Then the wave came.
I let Calla's hand drop and lifted my arms to hold back the water—but it broke around me, clamour upon clamour of it, battering my ears like the thunder of thousands of lost voices. I opened my eyes and looked around, and then slowly lowered my arms. It was the sound of voices. The people were cheering. The ceremony was over.
I was married.
My bride and I were separated after that, she to be bathed in maszel oils and prepared for the marriage bed, me to be fed to bursting point at the grand nuptial feast. They didn't even give me time to change my silks. It was straight down to the Hall of Harps, staggering with exhaustion the whole way, to be ceremoniously dumped at the apex of a great horseshoe of eating benches, between Arko and the Frath Major. There were no women present, but maybe half a thousand men, including all the foreign delegations and the cream of the Gillish and Satheli nobility, plus all those high Miisheli peers who had accompanied Rinn and the Frath Major to Gil. I could not see the Bequiin Ardin, which surprised me, however, Shree and Angel were sitting together about a third of the way around one arm of the horseshoe. I envied them for the animated discussion they were locked into. My own dinner partners were not very strong on conversation.
Arkolef, poor stupid soul, was so radiant that you would have thought he was the bridegroom. In graceful, vapid phrases, he went on and on congratulating himself, myself, the Frath Major, the High Prince of Sathelforn (who had the misfortune to be seated on his other side), the Primate, the Flamens in general, and the entire populations of all three new allies. It was almost enough to put me to sleep again, but I rather wanted to stay awake. I felt the Frath Major would bear watching.
He was being noticeably watchful himself—it was partly that he still seemed to be nervous of me, but there was a curiously possessive element as well. We own you now. He might as well have said it out loud. He was watching me as I've seen a horsetrainer watch a valuable animal that needs to be tamed—wary of the iron hoofs, but eager to be in control, waiting for just the right moment to teach the meaning of the spurs. The High Prince's words came back to me: no Tig, no treaty. I was certain of one thing: whatever the purpose for which Miishel had bought me, I was going to be as difficult as possible.
Course after course flowed in an unending river from the kitchens. The Frath Major and I swapped a few courteous nothings now and then, but mainly we observed each other from the corners of our eyes. Both of us drank sparingly and ate little of each course—although, with fifteen or sixteen courses, that still amounted to far too much. It was as if both of us wanted to keep clear heads for an approaching battle of wills. Not until the short breathing space between the ninth and tenth courses did we exchange any significant words.
He leaned towards me and said in his rather precise Gillish, keeping his lips tight against his teeth, "We shall be seeing the Kaana soon. You have heard of the Kaana, I think."
"The Kaana! Yes, yes, of course I've heard of it." I stared at him with the beginnings of pleasure. "You mean it's going to be performed here? Tonight?"
He gave me a reproving look. "Naturally. You could not go to your bride before seeing the Kaana. It is our custom."
"Oh, I'm not objecting—I'm delighted. The Bequiin Ardin wrote a monograph on it, years ago; I can remember reading it in the archives in Exile. But I never thought I'd see it performed with my own eyes, especially not in the Gilgard."
"It is our custom," he repeated warily. He seemed confused by my reaction, which added to my pleasure. The Kaana! For me, this was the only good thing to happen all day. I sat up straight, rummaging in the ragbag of my brain for the details of the Bequiin's monograph.
"Let me see—if I remember correctly, the Kaana incorporates a number of survivals from the ancient Fathidiic tradition, isn't that right? Fascinating."
"Yes." He took a rare gulp of wine from his beaker.
"In degenerate forms, of course," I added thoughtfully. "Only to be expected, since it's more than a thousand years since Fathan fell."
"Yes," he said again. His eyes were suspicious, and something else. Nervous, perhaps. My attack of enthusiasm was unwelcome. I slapped him on the shoulder, feeling almost friendly, and looked around with high anticipation.
I was not the only one. When the Kaana was announced, all the Miishelu who were not too drunk or too torpid with food or already unconscious sat up and began to take notice. What barbarians they were! One could always tell by the formal getup: the more horns and spikes and other sharp objects a nation had poking out of its finery, the more likely it was to be bloodhungry, battle-happy and given to burning things—and the Miishelu were in almost the same sartorial class as the unlovely Sherank. Watching them, I wondered if the princess's metalwear would render her totally unapproachable, not that it mattered much to me. Anyway, the Omelian tailors had sewn me into my own silks, and I had no idea how I was going to get them off when the time came, assuming I survived the culinary onslaughts of the feast.
But I would worry about that later. Already the area inside the horseshoe was being swept clean for the Kaana (the previous entertainment had involved some old and rather incontinent rippercats) and the drums were being carried out and set into position—big broad drums like laundry vats, little squat drums with bells tied to the rims, drums like tree trunks and pancakes and cooking pots, a whole shipload of drums; and in the centre, a round platform about thirty feet across and three or four feet tall, its sides chased with brass writings that were pure old Fathidiic. I glanced over at Shree and Angel, seeing with satisfaction that Angel was busy with a notebook where his trencher used to be. Then the drummers came and I forgot my friends, forgot that I was married to a woman I didn't know and was reasonably sure I wouldn't like, and lost myself in the ancient magic of the Kaana.
It was a pageant, but more than a pageant; a ritual, but more t
han a ritual; a historical document, written in drum-beats and intricate bodily movements whose meanings had not changed for nearly fifteen centuries. The drums began, muffled at first, low and expectant. The hall was hushed. I held my breath.
Out of the shadows at the end of the room came a fantastic figure, twelve feet or more tall, proportionately broad, swathed from shoulders to floor in a goldcloth cape. Its head was enormous, a great flat gold-foil face frozen in a lofty smile, stylized eyebrows upswept to signify cruelty—the mask of Fathan. The giant stepped on to the platform and began to sway back and forth with an oddly stilted grace. I knew that this represented the Fathidiic Empire in the years of its greatest power and pride, not to mention its spiralling corruption and viciousness, when it ruled more than half the known world and unwisely declared itself to be more glorious than the empire of the gods.
Other figures, masked but of normal stature, began to emerge from the shadows and dance among the drummers, mounting one by one on to the platform: Fathan's subject nations. The masks were white, etched with exaggerated lines of pain and hunger; the cloaks were sewn in artful rags. I thought the symbolism was not very subtle. When all the nations had taken their places on the platform, cringing around the towering figure of Fathan, the Dance of Tyranny began.
It was good theatre. No, it was great theatre. Twelve pairs of feet thudded in perfect synchrony, beating out a complex rhythm that echoed in my bones and made the little hairs bristle on my neck—for the platform was itself a great drum, the masterdrum, and its brazen voice engulfed the rhythm from the others. The dance dramatized the episodes of Fathan's wickedness—the giant swayed among his victims, swinging a battleclub in one hand and a triple-curved sword in the other, and the nations fled and fell and writhed and died in orchestrated chaos, never missing a beat. It was beautiful, and unspeakably violent. All that was missing was real blood.
Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady Page 7