• Welcome to The Worlds of Katherine Kurtz.
 

Recent

Welcome to The Worlds of Katherine Kurtz. Please login.

March 28, 2024, 04:37:25 PM

Login with username, password and session length
Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 27,486
  • Total Topics: 2,721
  • Online today: 180
  • Online ever: 930
  • (January 20, 2020, 11:58:07 AM)
Users Online
Users: 0
Guests: 114
Total: 114
Google (2)

Latest Shout

*

DerynifanK

March 17, 2024, 03:48:44 PM
Happy St Patrick's Day. Enjoy the one day of the year when the whole world is Irish.

Two Kingdoms 32: Crescents

Started by DoctorM, March 20, 2023, 07:04:09 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

DoctorM

TWO KINGDOMS 32 : CRESCENTS

This is the thirtieth part of an AU construction about a Gwynedd where the duel at Kelson Haldane's coronation went very differently indeed. We are now almost three years into the Gwynedd Wars-- Charissa's new kingdom at Valoret against the Haldanes in the south and the kingdom of Torenth in the east. This episode follows a week or so after "Bodies". As always, I do appreciate comments and thoughts.

****

These kingdoms are like ice, Aurelian thinks. Hard and beautiful, but brittle. The cracks are showing now, and the pieces are falling away, one after another.

****


Springtime in the Tolan lands, and there are oaths being sworn and treaties signed. The streets of the ducal capital at Tolan-by-Sea are thronged with townsmen come to see the eastern lords and their retinues.The corridors of the ducal palace are packed with lawyers and officials from across the south of Torenth, and clergy in Eastern vestments have been dashing back and forth from palace to cathedral solemnizing what's being done.

The morning's ceremony is the capstone of the last week. It's a day for crescents, and the walls of the ducal palace are hung with the blue and silver of Arjenol next to the Shadow Queen's own royal banners.

The ceremony today is being done in modern style, with the principals there to sign on their own before any Great Seals are applied. The grand hall at the ducal palace has been cleared out and tables have been set up with all the paraphernalia of a day for rulers and treaties— inks and pens and wax next to the great vellum sheets of the treaty. Up in the galleries, lawyers in their black robes have gathered like crows to watch their work bear fruit.

The Shadow Queen comes in to a flourish of trumpets. Charissa is wearing the antique Festillic crown she's made her symbol— the second Festil's crown, rescued from the Rhemuth vaults when she seized power. Her husband is on one side, her Inquisitor on the other. Behind her is a retinue gathered up from both Tolan and the court at Valoret. The supporters of the new order of things are there, and the Inquisitor's staff have spent hours planning out how to show off each of the new lords of Tolan and the West. The Queen's captain-general is somewhere off in the Rhendall foothills near Tarleton, sparring with the Earl of Kierney, but the Duke of Marley's henchman-in-chief Gwyllim is there to head Bran Coris' legation.

All week Aurelian has been changing masks. Like Carnevale, he thinks. One masked ball after another. He's been the Shadow Queen's Inquisitor around conference tables, and he's been the Queen's chamberlain at signings. Today he's in a ducal coronet and an ermine robe. He's the Queen's duke of Carthmoor today— the other Carthmoor, he likes to say —and he's there to show off the new kingdom's peerage.

Christian is at the Queen's side, of course. The Queen's husband is all in deep midnight blue, and there's been a prince's coronet run up for him in the austere style he favors. His jacket under his khilat robe is worked in silver wire with the arms of his new princedom of Kheldour.

There are more trumpets, and down at the other end of the hall the lords of Arjenol have arrived.

The ducal clan of Arjenol are here— Lionel with his half-brothers Matyás and Mahael behind him, and his son Alroy at his side. The two parties draw up and the Queen and Lionel grin at one another and advance out down the length of the tables.

This is what everyone has waited for. All week deals have been finalized and seals applied to treaties. All week processions and cavalcades have come down the city streets.  Nobles have assembled and re-assembled to watch the world change these last four days.

Kulnan first. The Makróri lords of Kulnan were no friends of King Wencit in Beldour, and they'd been providing horsemen for the Queen's forces in Gwynedd since the early days of her reign. The Makróri had come here to make it clear where they stood by pledging fealty to the new Kingdom of Tolan and the West.

Envoys from both Arjenol and the Haberlingen counts of Lorsöl had come, too, and ratified their own alliance. The Queen in her role as duchess of Tolan and Marluk had joined them in announcing a long list of carefully-crafted grievances against Wencit of Torenth and, as magnates of Torenth, pledging to bring a new order to Beldour.

Charissa and Lionel embrace when they meet, then step apart. The Queen nods at young Alroy and at Lionel's brothers. From the other side of the table heralds begin reading out the terms of the treaty. The High Contracting Parties, the lawyers have called the principals, and the treaty is one of perpetual amity and a full military alliance, offensive and defensive alike. The clauses follow one after the other— to make no separate peace with each other's enemies, to support one another with gold and steel when needed, to strive by the arts of war and peace to bring good order and governance to these lands.

Charissa and Lionel each nod at the reading of each clause: I do so assent. Behind the Queen Aurelian is imagining ice splintering and cracking. Every noble grievance in Gwynedd and Torenth is now in play. Every aristocratic ambition on both sides of the Rheljans can now seem possible. Chaos opens all the doors— there must be fifty men in this hall thinking that to themselves in half a dozen languages.

Lionel bends over the great sheets of vellum and signs them one after another. He's signing with his newly assumed title— Archidux, archduke.  He gestures to his brothers and they bend over the treaty with sealing wax and the new archducal seal.

Charissa takes up a pen and signs— Charissa Regina. She presses her Deryni signet against the vellum and lets it flash underneath her signature. Aurelian approaches with the seal of Tolan and the West— CHAR. REG. TOL. ET OCC. —and the Queen presses it into the crimson wax.

The Queen lets out a breath and she and Lionel embrace again.There's applause starting, drowning out the sound of bishops praying to bless the signing. Charissa looks round the hall and back at her husband. She takes Lionel's hand and reaches out for Christian's.

"My lords!" The Shadow Queen's voice carries over the applause and the prayers. "From today, everything changes! My kingdom stands with the Archduke— a new Tolan, a new West, a new Torenth! What we do here, what we do now, will re-shape the Eleven Kingdoms. Look to your fortunes, my lords. Choose a side and watch the world change around you!"






Jerusha

Loved reading this from Aurelian's somewhat sardonic point of view!  Yet it seems too perfect - will the cracks grow greater and shatter this new world order?
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night...good Lord deliver us!

 -- Old English Litany

DoctorM

Quote from: Jerusha on March 21, 2023, 02:03:13 PMLoved reading this from Aurelian's somewhat sardonic point of view!  Yet it seems too perfect - will the cracks grow greater and shatter this new world order?

I think you'll need to keep an eye on the cracks and where they're running. And on who'll try to make them spread....