Page 25 of Valdemar

“A King needs a co-ruler, a companion, an advisor, and if dire need calls for it, someone to take up the burden of rule should he fall. Isla, please come before me now.”

Isla stepped forward, and bowed her head in turn. Jorj reached for the boy’s crown, held it aloft like the first, and placed it on her head. “And so I crown you Queen Terilee, the first of her name, and co-ruler of this land. May you reign over us with patience, empathy, and wisdom!”

Isla had decided to honor their Hawkbrother allies by taking as her coronation name the one that they had given her, the same name as the river that flowed through this proto-city they were calling Haven. Kordas approved; it was a good choice, and he most certainly did not want her to, even implicitly, be tagged as secondary to him, which she might have been if she’d been crowned as Queen Valdemar. Begin as we mean to go on. That meant in equality. Queen in her own right.

She stepped back, Jorj retreated into the pack of prelates, and Beltran stepped forward. “People of the Kingdom of Valdemar!” he shouted, his face full of joy. “Behold your leaders! King Valdemar and Queen Terilee!”

The cheers almost drowned out Rothas’s choir. Kordas couldn’t help it—two silent tears coursed down his face as he clutched Isla’s hand and waved his free hand to the crowd. Tears of relief, as well as the emotion that welled up in him.

They were crowned. They were King and Queen. There had been no explosions, no appearance of assassins or Imperials set to ruin, no swarms, murders, or disintegrations, all of which were historically frowned upon in public events.

Apparently, nothing had gone wrong.

• • •

By noon, enough congratulations and handshaking had taken place that Kordas’s hands felt bruised. Out on the lawn a kind of “moveable feast” was taking place; anyone who volunteered to cook had been given wood for a fire and something to cook on it, and what they did with those things was up to them. Kordas and Isla wanted this to be a celebration of Valdemar itself, not a celebration of them. There was a series of trestle tables with flavored and embellished breads to go with what was being cooked, meats supplied by Kordas’s farms and hunting parties that had gone out every day for the last week—yes, there was no shortage of pork—and vegetables from those same farms. Down in the town, exactly the same thing was going on, but with the breads supplied by the bakers there, not the Palace kitchens, and meats and vegetables bought from the local farmers and hunters by Kordas himself. And there was free wine. That was the contribution of the mages and even some of the various religious dignitaries that happened to have some magic. Water into wine was not a terribly difficult transformation, and although the nonexistent fountains were not flowing with it, there were plenty of vessels to scrub out and hold it. Low alcohol, of course. It would be a very, very bad idea for most of the population to be drunk and insensible! Because, after all . . . in tales, there was always some sort of emergency in the middle of a celebration. Your belly would burst before you could drink enough of this stuff for it to intoxicate you. That was a precaution suggested by Sai.

The ones who were not completely free to do as they liked today were the guards on their regular shifts, and those who had elected to cook and distribute food. But everyone had been able to view the coronation itself, and Restil and Isla had done their best to ensure that even those who were working would get some time off to enjoy the rest of the celebrations.

Meanwhile, the highborn had all crowded into the Great Hall to sit down to their own feast—dishes more elaborate than the simple grilled stuff down in Haven and out on the lawn, but nothing to compare to the feasts of the days back home. Still! Several special dishes appeared, and there were baked and sweetened treats in abundance, some of them the gift of the Hawkbrothers, most of them produced to Sai’s recipes. Kordas’s appetite was small, but watching his lads stuff themselves with the unaccustomed goodies at least brought a smile to his face.

Ball games spontaneously sprang up, interrupted when the Hawkbrothers played the grand joke of their bondbirds intercepting and stealing every ball in midair. There was entertainment too, although for the most part, babble and gossip muted it, and no more than half of the eaters paid any attention to it.

But not when Rothas sang.

If Kordas had not known that Rothas Sunsinger had never even seen a lute until a fortnight ago, he never would have believed it. The way he played sounded to Kordas’s ears like the work of a master. And the music pouring from his throat, golden and full, somehow managed to ease his heart, his doubts, and his tension, all at once.

His Gift. He’s using his Gift.The soothing, uplifting feeling, the happiness, those weren’t coming from Rothas. They were coming from within Kordas himself, evoked by the Gift, which seemed to have no difficulty working through the shields. Rothas was the center of rapt attention, the focus of every eye. And the boy knew how to perform, in the sense of playing the audience, too. Somewhere he’d gotten his hands on, or been given, a good pair of buckskin trews, a white linen shirt embellished with embroidery, and a pair of fine boots, all of which were nothing like the simple garb he had arrived in. His golden hair had been trimmed and styled—Kordas thought he detected Stevin’s hand there—and his posture was erect and at ease, his expression cordial and welcoming. Without a doubt he was the finest performer Kordas had ever heard, and that included in the Emperor’s Court. Then again, the Emperor didn’t use Gifted Bards for entertainment purposes. The ones he had been able to coerce or reward into his service were reserved for his personal pleasure or as what the Old Men had called Rothas—as weapons. The ones he hadn’t were either executed or imprisoned, if they could not escape elsewhere. No one had been allowed to practice any sort of magic without the Emperor’s permission and knowledge, and that included Bardic Mind-magic. The Bardic gift always came with ethical questions.

There wasn’t so much as a whisper as long as Rothas performed; in fact, most people put down their food and listened with complete attention. And it wasn’t that the songs were all that good—except for two that Kordas was pretty sure were the lad’s own compositions. He sang what you’d expect of a rural musician at a happy occasion: a couple of simple drinking songs, story songs with happy endings, joke songs that had the audience roaring with laughter despite the fact that they weren’t exactly sophisticated, and his two original pieces, one about the pleasures of a simple man’s life, and one, his only love song, that could not have been about anyone other than Lythe.

This did not prevent people from staring at him in adoration and longing. And probably everyone either wished it was about them, or wished they had a love like that. Even Kordas, who had recognized the Gift at work and was somewhat armored against it, was moved. He reached for Isla’s hand, only to find once again that she was reaching for his.

Fortunately, before anyone had a chance to act on whatever impulses that song evoked, Rothas went straight into a comic song, followed by that staple of the traveling musician, a “farewell” song. Essentially, “We’ve had a lot of fun, and now the show is done, thank you and good night. I’ve had a lovely time, glad you enjoyed my rhyme, and all these songs of mine. So now I’ll drink some wine!”

And the Gift was put into use there, too; Kordas would not have been able to ask Rothas for another ballad even if he’d wanted to. Clever lad. If he hadn’t done that, he ran the risk of annoying or even angering people when he refused to perform anymore.

My highborn are learning to accept the word “no”—but a celebration like this one does remind them of the old days, when no one lower-born than they are was allowed to use that word around them.

Rothas was the final performer of the evening, and now the servants all bustled in, cleared what was left of the food, left the wine, and bustled out.

But the evening wasn’t quite done yet.

The Hawkbrothers hadn’t yet added their contribution.

Beltran stepped out in front of the high table and quelled the noise with a short burst from his trumpet. “If you will all proceed to the Coronation Field,” he pronounced, in his most stentorious voice, “our friends and allies, the Tayledras of k’Vesla, have a surprise for all!”

The “surprise,” as everyone involved in the coronation knew, was to be a display of illuminations in the sky above the Palace, lights and music that would be heard and seen clearly from all parts of Haven and the Palace. Kordas set the tone by standing up, offering his hand to Isla, and making his way out to the somewhat trampled grass, where servants had brought out stools, rugs, and cushions from the living quarters all over the Palace. The sun was just setting, and Rothas was, without a doubt, speeding to his quarters to share his precious candlemark or so with Lythe before he fell insensible.

And probably tell her what a triumph he was. Well, he should. I just hope she doesn’t start to feel like she’s standing in his shadow.

Hawkbrother illusions were not limited to the darkness, and he knew that they had a full program planned, so he and Isla settled into their chairs and prepared to be amazed.

All the colorful little messenger birds had been relocated to the new Vale, but thousands of their illusory counterparts filled the sky in swirling patterns that reflected the last of the sunlight, accompanied by a chorus of birdsong. The oohs and ahs of appreciation hopefully gratified the mages, who were arrayed up on the wall in order to have the best perspective on what they were doing. As dusk fell, the birds transformed to silver moths, and the birdsong to the sound of tinkling wind chimes that somehow played meandering melodies. The darker it got, the more the moths glowed, and they began to merge into larger and larger moths. Finally there was just a single, enormous moth, hovering silently over the Palace, its light obscuring that of the moon. Where it went, the eyes followed.

And then the real show started.

Fountains and cascades of colored light rose in the air and fell from the wall. Bursts of colored lights appeared in the sky and lingered. A gigantic dyheli King Stag whirled, danced, and pranced across the sky. An enormous pair of firebirds made a courting flight, skimming directly over the royal party. A herd of silver horses danced an intricate dressage performance high in the air. Wonder after wonder etched in all the colors of the world flamed and faded, until at last, the show ended with curtains of color swirling around the sky to the sound of Tayledras harpsong, and a single silver horse galloping in and out of the sheets of color so that its silver turned pink, blue, purple, green, yellow.