Mist-Maker. Tol kept the thought to himself.
They passed other alcoves and other wives. When they reached Valaran’s niche, she was there, kneeling in a properly reverent position. Eyes closed, in profile she resembled a fine ivory cameo.
Once past her, one of the Ergothians murmured, “A beauty, but cold, they say.”
Tol bit his lip to hold back a grin. The notion of Valaran, his Valaran, being cold was ludicrous.
The warriors finally reached the center of the domed hall. There, under the atrium where Pakin III had lain in state, stood Amaltar. Priests of Corij were arraying him in bits of ancient bronze armor. Tol and the Riders went to their knees.
“The arms of Ackal Ergot!” one warrior whispered.
Amaltar was being dressed in the very armor worn by the founder of the empire. It did not fit him well. Ackal Ergot had been a powerful man; the breadth of his cuirass as well as his infamous deeds testified to that fact. The priests would place a piece of armor on Amaltar’s lesser frame, then take it away and pad it with wads of linen. Ackal Ergot’s greaves stretched from his descendant’s ankles to well above his knees. The tasset, a skirt of bronze meant to hang to the tops of the thighs, nearly brushed the tops of the greaves.
Amaltar looked much better than he had the last time Tol had seen him, however. His skin was still sallow and his shoulders stooped, but some of the old firmness had returned to his expression. He beckoned the men forward and greeted each by name, saving Tol for last.
Tol replied, “Greetings, and best wishes on this mighty day, Your Majesty.”
“A great deal of nonsense, isn’t it?” said Amaltar, holding out his arms so the front half of Ackal Ergot’s cuirass could be fitted to his chest. “Important nonsense, of course. Tradition matters so much in affairs like this.”
Once he was strapped into his ancestor’s bronze breastplate, Amaltar called for a stool. He sat down heavily, glad to take the weight off his feet. He seemed suddenly old to Tol, far more than his fifty-odd years.
“I summoned you men particularly to be my honor guard,” he said. “The ceremony requires that no one walk ahead of me, but nothing prohibits an escort walking alongside.
“You, Lord Tolandruth, will walk behind me-bearing this.” Amaltar snapped his fingers, and Valdid appeared from the curtained labyrinth. He carried a flat golden case in his arms. Red-faced with strain-the case was obviously quite heavy-the chamberlain hastened to the new emperor’s side.
Amaltar pushed the face of his signet ring into a hole in the front of the box and twisted his hand. With a click, the lid of the box released.
Tol wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see, perhaps a jeweled necklace or a ceremonial dagger. He wasn’t prepared for what Amaltar lifted from the case. It was a simple circlet of white metal, darkly speckled with age. Neither gold nor silver, the circlet was innocent of jewels or engraving of any sort. It looked like very old iron.
“The crown of Ackal Ergot,” said Amaltar, holding the head-sized ring reverently.
The warriors stared in awe. This was the most legendary artifact in the realm, the original crown worn by the first emperor on the day he proclaimed the Ergoth Empire. As befitted a conqueror, it was made from Ackal’s own sword, edges blunted and hammered to fit his regal brow. The crown was kept in the vaults beneath the palace, seeing the light of day only during coronations. The usual imperial crown was a golden one, made at the order of Ackal Ergot’s son, the second emperor, Ackal II Dermount.
Amaltar returned the iron crown to its red velvet bag and placed it carefully back in the case. He closed the lid, locked it, then bade Tol come forward and take the case from the sweating Valdid.
Tol bowed deeply. “I am honored beyond words, Majesty!”
Amaltar smiled thinly. “It’s the only blade I’ll allow in my presence. Do take care of it.” A veil seemed to cover his countenance. “They say Ackal’s sword was tempered by the fire of the captive dragon Blackwyrm, and quenched in the blood of a hundred foes. Do you think that’s true?”
Tol supported the heavy gold case with both arms as he answered, “Ackal Ergot was a mighty man, Your Majesty. Heroes of the past accomplished many tremendous deeds.”
Amaltar took his ancestor’s bronze helmet from a priest and perched it on his knee. “Ackal Ergot was no hero. He was a bloodthirsty savage.”
The other warriors were shocked at hearing the founder disparaged, but Tol remembered being privy to similar opinions from old Pakin III.
Amaltar added, “But he did have vision.”
Oropash appeared, trailed by the senior wizards of the two orders. The chief of the White Robes was pink-cheeked and well-scrubbed, and he wore a crisp robe of shining silk. His mostly bald pate was newly shaven for the day’s ceremonies. He was already sweating.
Tol remembered his predecessor, Yoralyn. She had been an altogether different sort, already ancient by the time he’d met her and tough as boot leather. A sharp, conniving rogue like Mandes could easily get the better of one like Oropash. He was a willow tree, bending before Mandes’s storm. Yoralyn had been an oak.
It was time to depart. To create the illusion Amaltar was outside the city prior to “storming” it, the imperial entourage would depart Daltigoth incognito, then form up on the road before the Great Ackal Gate. Lower ranking wizards handed out identical hooded gray robes that all, including the emperor, were to don.
Oropash and Amaltar led the group out of the tower. The imperial consorts and their offspring took to their chariots and were driven away. More chariots arrived for the imperial party.
As Tol climbed aboard with Hojan and the charioteer, he saw the white catafalque rising above the forest of banners in the plaza. Nearly journey’s end for Amaltar, this was the beginning of a far longer voyage for the spirit of Pakin III.
One at a time, the chariots rattled through a narrow postern in the south wall of the Inner City, behind the wizards’ enclave. The sun was well up by now and the day promised to be hot. The single cloud hovering over the palace had grown denser and darker. Tol wondered if there would be a storm. It seemed impossible, especially on this day.
The streets were thronged. A wedge of cavalry cleared the way for the chariots. People high and low from all over the empire had journeyed to Daltigoth for this day, this moment. City merchants and country gentry, laborers and craftsmen, farmers and their families, all passed in a blur.
Tol noticed a brown-haired man about his age leaning on his hay-fork, gripping it with large, work-worn hands. But for the hand of fate and the grace of the gods, that could have been Tol standing by the wayside watching the speeding chariots instead of riding in one.
A surprising number of other races were represented.
Tol saw gnomes and dwarves, as well as woodland elves in leather and face-paint. A quartet of Silvanesti elves, elegantly attired in silver and green, had hired human guards to keep the crowd hack from them, but the hirelings couldn’t stop the curious from gawking. The crowd found the mysterious Silvanesti as great a treat as the coming coronation.
Even rarer folk appeared: centaurs,, wild and swarthy; even Tarsans, with their characteristic flat cloth hats and canvas sailors’ trews. Tol wondered whether Hanira had come to the coronation. He sincerely hoped not. Life was complicated enough just now.
Foresters wearing animal skins jostled cheek by jowl with kender. Bare-chested herdsmen from the south jockeyed for a good view with stocky yeomen from the northland coast. Most remarkable of all, Tol spotted a few minotaurs in the crowd. Their bulls’ heads towered above those around them; each carried an ax of heroic proportions resting on one massive shoulder. No one had bothered (or dared) to ask the minotaurs to put their lethal weapons away.