[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
have been horrified; a girl of Galweigh breeding and future high position
learning the trade of a sailor, even a sailor of the air? A woman who would
one day negotiate the fate of the Family the confidante of a Rophetian
commoner? Unthinkable.
As Kait was wont to do, she had cherished the friendship and guarded it as she
guarded her own dark secrets and, giving a nod to Rophetian theology, had
decided the Family could go to Tonn s hell if they couldn t understand what
Aouel meant to her.
The airible rose higher and the first flat gray light of dawn that edged the
horizon to the east suddenly illuminated the inside of the cabin. No sight of
the sun yet, but it wouldn t be long. Kait shivered at the narrowness of the
margin of their escape; below, in the darkness that still blanketed Halles,
eyes watched the sky, waiting for the first beam from the sun to fall across
the top arch of the stone tower in the city square. That light would herald
the arrival of the station of Soma, and start the ringing of the single alto
bell that would mark the greeting of the new day and launch the wedding
processions from
Dokteerak House and the Galweigh Embassy into the streets. And would culminate
in the destruction of the Dokteerak Family, and perhaps a large part of the
Sabir Family as well.
For an instant, staring into that pale light, Kait saw a reflection of the
lean, hungry face of the Sabir
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Lisle,%20Holly%20-%20Secret%20Texts%201%20-%20Diplom
acy%20Of%20Wolves.html (102 of 273)8-12-2006 23:41:38
Diplomacy of Wolves
Karnee, and for an instant she felt his touch. And in that instant, her
traitorous heart hoped that he would escape destruction.
* * *
The first beam of sunlight struck the top arch of the black Tower of Time
through cloudless skies, and at once the bell ringer filled the air with the
single, repeated tolling of the station of Soma. First station of morning, the
First Friend of the New Day.
As if the gates of the Galweigh Embassy were linked to the bell, they swung
Page 78
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
open at the first note, and ten trumpeters and ten drummers stepped into the
street. They were gorgeously dressed in the Galweigh red and black, their
faces covered from forehead to nose with fringes of gold beads, their
instruments poised at the ready. Behind them came ten handbell players, and
behind them, ten wood-flautists, and behind them, fifty dancers.
The bell of Soma rang seven times, and the last note hung in the air, and the
musicians waited still, poised until the final shivering whispers died
away into the morning hush. Then, at a spoken signal from someone still in the
compound, they launched into the Wedding Dance. The dancers leaped in the
street, catapulted themselves into the air, and launched into great, rattling
flips and clattering spins. The heavy fringes of beads rattled like another
phalanx of drummers on their metal costumes. The dancers carried curved swords
that they swung at each other s legs with blinding speed and jumped over as
they moved forward; they shouted the names of the god of the week, who was
Duria, the spinner, and the god of the day, Bronir, who was the god of joy
and they never missed their footing. Graceful, glorious
they presented a grand and noisy spectacle.
The sides of the streets all the way from the embassy to the Dokteerak House
were already lined with workingmen and women dressed in their finest clothing,
out to see and be seen. The paraglese of the
Dokteeraks and the city s parnissas had already jointly declared Durial
Bronirsday a holiday, and the common people of Halles were determined not to
miss an instant of the grand wedding parade that had come to amuse them; free
entertainment came hard in the city, and not often.
Behind the acrobatic sword dancers came the jugglers; oddly, all of them
juggled flashing swords, three at a time. The folk who lined the streets
murmured to each other that the trick wasn t so much
everyone knew jugglers never used sharpened swords. But everyone agreed that
the way light caught the edges of the false weapons made them look sharp.
The concubines followed the jugglers. They flirted with the crowd as they
swayed forward, waggling their hips, jutting their breasts, seeming a bit
uncomfortable in the unaccustomed covering of their wedding finery.
The people of Halles had hoped for trained tigers next, or perhaps for some of
the weird beasts that inhabited the Scarred lands, but none were forthcoming.
Instead, sixteen powerful litter bearers in full
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Lisle,%20Holly%20-%20Secret%20Texts%201%20-%20Diplom
acy%20Of%20Wolves.html (103 of 273)8-12-2006 23:41:38
Diplomacy of Wolves dress uniform brought out the first litter, in which sat a
handsome man and a rather sturdy-looking woman, both oddly dressed in heavy
cloaks, with the customary beaded fringes covering their faces from forehead
to upper lip. Behind this first litter came a seemingly endless succession of
others, each litter gaudier than the last, each couple swathed and veiled in
more or less the same manner. Crimson and black, a sanguinary Galweigh river
studded with flashes of gold poured forth from the embassy, and in that
outpouring the breathtaking gleam of gemstones seemed as common as mere stones
in the bottom of an ordinary river. Glittering faceted rubies and cabochon
onyx on everything; studding the litters, the litter bearers, the bride s
family. A few of the more knowledgeable marked the unending flow of gemstones
as almost surely glass, but even they had to admit the glitter made for a
gorgeous spectacle.
A choir of male singers accompanied the last litters, those of the
ambassadors, the Galweigh paraglese, and finally the bride. They sang the
standard selection of wedding songs, dedicating the marriage to
Maraxis, the god of sperm, seed, and fertility, in whose month the wedding
took place, and dedicating the bride to Drastu, the goddess of womb, eggs, and
fertility.
As was customary, the bride was completely veiled; the younger married women
in the crowd tried to make out the lines of her face beneath the swaths of red
Page 79
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
silk and the gold-beaded fringe (for seeing the eyes of a bride before her
wedding was supposed to be an omen of fertility in the coming year) but had to
content themselves with responding to the generous waving of her jewel-studded
hands.
Those gems, everyone agreed, were real. The Hallesites passed rumors back and
forth about the bride. She was beautiful and kind, she had taken a meal in the
street, eating common food, she had been generous with gifts and money to
those she d encountered in the streets. She had good wide hips, excellent for
bearing babies. Breasts big enough that those babies would have plenty of
suckle. She wasn t clever or witty and hadn t seemed terribly ambitious
always a plus in a woman who would be the bride of a second son.
Altogether a fine young woman that was the common consensus. Perhaps too
good a girl for their paraglese s second son, who had the reputation
throughout the city for being spoiled, and something of a shit.
Another batch of sword jugglers and musicians followed the bride s litter, but
they weren t any great surprise. As wedding parades went, the people decided,
this one hadn t been bad. A few tigers, less clothing and more cleavage on the
concubines, and perhaps a couple of fire-eating midgets and it would have been
perfect.
* * *
In the White Hall of the Sabir House in Calimekka, brilliant morning sunlight
slanted in through colored glass windows, throwing harlequin patterns of
tinted light across the carved white marble floor so that it looked like a
field of jonquillas and rubyhearts and bluebells bursting out from beneath a
sudden snow.
The delicate vaulted arches of a vast stone canopy soared over the circular
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]