Soul of the Fire (34 page)

Claudine took a gulp of wine. She had to catch her breath. She stared at nothing as she spoke.

“
Minister Chanboor is a man of honor. His policies have been good for Anderith. He has been respectful of the laws Edwin has proposed.” She took another gulp of wine. “We are fortunate to have Bertrand Chanboor as the Minister of Culture. I have a hard time imagining another man who could do everything he does.”

Linscott lifted an eyebrow. “Quite a ringing endorsement, from a woman of your renown. We all know that you, Claudine, are as important to those laws as Edwin.”

“
You are too kind,” she mumbled, staring into her cup. “I am just the wife of an important man. I would be little missed and quickly forgotten were I to have broken my neck out there tonight. Edwin will be honored long and well.”

Linscott puzzled at the top of her head.

“
Claudine thinks far too little of herself,” Dalton said. He caught sight of the seneschal, impeccably dressed in a long-tailed red coat crossed with a sash of many colors, opening the double doors. Beyond the doors, the lavers, with rose petals floating in them, awaited the guests.

Dalton turned to the Director. “I suppose you know who will be the guest of honor tonight?”

Linscott frowned. “Guest of honor?”

“
A representative from the Imperial Order. A high-ranking man by the name of Stein. Come to tell us Emperor Jagang’s words.” Dalton took another sip. “The Sovereign has come, too, to hear those words.”

Linscott sighed with the weight of this news. Now the man knew why he had been summoned, along with the other Directors, to what they had thought was no more than an ordinary feast at the estate. The Sovereign, for his own safety, rarely announced his appearances in advance. He had arrived with his own special guards and a large contingent of servants.

Teresa’s face glowed as she smiled up at Dalton, eager for the evening’s events. Claudine stared at the floor.

“
Ladies and gentleman,” the seneschal announced, “if it would please you, dinner is served.”

She spread her wings, and her rich voice sang out with the somber strains of a tale more ancient than myth.

Came the visions of icy beauty,

from the land of death where they dwell.

Pursuing their prize and grisly duty,

came the thieves of the charm and spell.

The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

 

Alluring of shape though seldom seen,

they traveled the breeze on a spark.

Some fed twigs to their newborn queen,

while others invaded the dark.

The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

 

Some they called and others they kissed

as they traveled on river and wave.

With resolve they came and did insist:

every one touched to a grave.

The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

 

Roving to hunt and gathering to dance,

they practiced their dark desires

by casting a hex and a beautiful trance,

before feeding the queen’s new fires.

The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

 

Till he parted the falls

and the bells chimed thrice,

till he issued the calls

and demanded the price.

the bells chimed thrice and death met the Mountain.

 

They charmed and embraced

and they tried to extoll

but he bade them in grace

and demanded a soul.

The bells fell silent and the Mountain slew them all.

And the Mountain entombed them all.

With an impossibly long note, the young woman concluded her bewitching song. The guests broke into applause.

It was an archaic lyric of Joseph Ander and for that reason alone was cherished. Dalton had once leafed through old texts to see what he could learn of the song’s meaning, but found nothing to shed light on the intent of the words, which, there being a number of versions, weren’t always the same. It was one of those songs which no one really understood but everyone treasured because it was obviously a triumph of some sort for one of their land’s beloved venerable founders. For the sake of tradition the haunting melody was sung on special occasions.

For some reason, Dalton had the odd feeling that the words now meant more to him than ever before. They seemed somehow nearly to make sense. As quickly as the sensation came, his mind was on to other things and the feeling passed.

The woman’s long sleeves skimmed the floor as she held her arms wide while bowing to the Sovereign, and then once again to the applauding people at the head table beside the Sovereign’s table. A baldachin of silk and gold brocade ran up the wall behind and then in billowing folds out over the two head tables. The baldachin’s corners were held up with outsized Anderith lances. The effect was to make the head tables appear as if they were on a stage—which, in many ways, Dalton supposed they were.

The songstress bowed to the diners at the long rows of tables running down each side of the dining hall. Her sleeves were overlaid with spotted white owl feathers, so that when she spread her arms in song she appeared to be a winged woman, like something out of the ancient stories she sang.

Stein, on the other side of the applauding Minister and his wife, applauded apathetically, no doubt envisioning the young woman without her feathers. On Dalton’s right, Teresa added enthusiastic calls of admiration to her clapping. Dalton stifled a yawn as he applauded.

As the songstress strode away, her arms lifted to wave in winged acknowledgment of the whistles trailing after her. After she’d vanished, four squires entered from the opposite side of the room carrying a platform atop which sat a marzipan ship floating in a sea of marzipan waves. The ship’s billowing sails looked to be made of spun sugar.

The purpose, of course, was to announce that the next course would be fish, just as the pastry deer pursued by pastry hounds leaping a hedge of holly in which hid aspic boar, had announced one of the meat courses, and the stuffed eagle with its huge wings spread over a scene of the capital city of Fairfield made of paper board buildings had announced a course of fowl. Up in the gallery, a fanfare trumpeted and drums rolled to add a musical testament to the arrival of the next course.

There had been five courses, each with at least a dozen specialties. That meant there were seven courses yet to come, each with at least a dozen distinctive dishes of its own. Music from flute and fife and drum, jugglers, troubadours, and acrobats entertained the guests between courses as a tree with candied fruits toured the tables. Gifts of mechanical horses with opposing legs that moved in unison were passed out to the delight of all.

Meat dishes had included everything from Teresa’s all-time favorite of suckers—she had eaten three of the infant rabbits—to fawn, to pig, to cow, to a bear standing on its hind legs. The bear was wheeled from table to table; at each table its hide, draped around the roasted carcass, was pulled back to allow carvers to slice off pieces for the guests. Fowl ranged from the sparrows the Minister favored for their stimulation of lust, to pigeons, to swans neck pudding, to eagles, to baked heron that had been re-feathered and held by wires in a display depicting them as a flock in flight.

It was not expected that everyone would eat such a plenitude of food; the variety was meant to offer an abundance of choice, not only to please honored guests, but to astonish them with opulence. A visit to the Minister of Culture’s estate was an occasion long remembered, and for many probably became a legendary event talked about for years.

As they sampled the dishes, most people kept an eye to the head table, where the Minister sat with two wealthy backers he had invited to dine at his table, and the other object of great interest: the representative from the Imperial Order. Stein had arrived earlier to the whispered oohing and aahing of all at his man-of-war outfit and cape of human scalps. He was a sensation, drawing the inviting looks of a number of women weak in the knees at the prospect of winning such a man to their bed.

In vivid outward contrast to the warrior from the Old World, Bertrand Chanboor wore a close-fitting, sleeveless, padded purple doublet embellished with elaborate embroidery, gold trim, and silver braiding over a simple sleeved short jacket. Together, they gave his soft rounded shape the illusion of a more manly frame. A frill of white stood above the dublet’s low, erect collar. A similar ruff stood out at wrists and waist.

Slung over the shoulders of the doublet and short jacket was a magnificent dress coat of a deeper purple with fur trim running around the collar and all the way down the front. Below the padded rolls standing at the ends of the shoulders, the baggy sleeves had slashes lined with red silk. Between the spiral slashes, galloon braiding separated rows of pearls.

With his intent eyes, his easy smile—which, along with those eyes, always seemed directed at no other than the person with whom he had eye contact at the moment—and his shock of thick, graying hair, he struck an impressive figure. That, and Bertrand Chanboor’s presence, or rather the presence of the power he wielded as the Minister of Culture, left many a man in awed admiration and many a woman in breathless yearning.

If not watching the Minister’s table, guests cast stealthy glances at the table beside it, where sat the Sovereign, his wife, and their three grown sons and two grown daughters. No one wanted to stare openly at the Sovereign. The Sovereign was, after all, the Creator’s deputy in the world of life—a holy religious leader as well as the ruler of their land. Many in Anderith, Anders and Haken alike, idolized the Sovereign to the point of falling to the ground, wailing, and confessing sins when his carriage passed.

The Sovereign, alert and perceptive despite deteriorating health, was dressed in a glittering golden garment. A red vest emphasized the outfit’s bulbous sleeves. A long, richly colored, embroidered silk stole was draped over his shoulders. Bright yellow stockings laced at mid-thigh to the bottom of teardrop-shaped puffed and padded breeches with colored slashes. Jewels weighed each finger. The Sovereign’s head hovered low between his rounded shoulders, as if the gold medallion displaying a diamond-incrusted mountain had, over time, weighed so heavily on his neck that it bowed his back. Liver spots as large as the jewels mottled his hands.

The Sovereign had outlived four wives. With loving care, the man’s latest wife dabbed at the food on his chin. Dalton doubted she was yet out of her teens.

Thankfully, even though the sons and daughters brought their spouses, they had left their children home; the Sovereign’s grandchildren were insufferable brats. No one dared do anything more than chuckle approvingly at the little darlings as they rampaged unchecked. Several of them were considerably older than their latest stepgrandmother.

On the other side of the Minister from Dalton, Lady Hildemara Chanboor, in an elegant silvery pleated gown cut as low as any in the room, gestured with one finger, and the harpist, stationed before but below the head table’s raised platform, gently trailed her soft music to silence. The Minister’s wife directed the feast.

It actually needed no directing from her, but she insisted she be acknowledged as the regal hostess of the majestic and stately event, and therefore from time to time contributed to the proceedings by lifting her finger to silence the harpist at the appropriate time so that all might know and respect her social position. People were spellbound, believing the entire feast turned on Lady Chanboor’s finger.

The harpist certainly knew when she was to let her music end for an impending slated event, but nonetheless waited and watched for that noble finger before daring to still her own. Sweat dotted her brow as she watched for Lady Chanboor’s finger to rise, daring not to miss it.

Though universally proclaimed radiant and beautiful, Hildemara was rather thick of limb and feature, and had always put Dalton in mind of a sculpture of a woman chiseled by an artisan of greater ardor than talent. It was not a piece of work one wished to consider for long stretches.