The Void of Muirwood (Covenant of Muirwood Book 3) (17 page)

“Please close your eyes,” he instructed those assembled. She sensed him raising his hand in the maston sign.

“Marciana Soliven, by Idumea’s hand, I Gift you on this, your coronation day. I Gift you with the wisdom to rule and lead this mighty people, to defend your realm against its enemies. I Gift you with patience and understanding, so that you may judge not after the manner of men, but in accordance with the will of the Medium. I grant you a feeling of peace on this day and with . . .”

His voice dropped off. Maia felt a prickle of unease. A strange darkness settled on her soul as he started to speak again, his voice choked with emotion. “Maia . . . I Gift you with . . . hope. When the storm comes. When night shrouds this land and your heart. When you are at the brink of utter despair, I Gift you with hope that will see you through.” He forced the words through his teeth, his turbulent feelings clearly roiling beneath the surface. “Even the darkest night will give way to the dawn. Remember this, Maia. Remember this, our queen. Make it thus so.”

The words he spoke sent a pall over those assembled. He lowered his arm from the maston sign, and Maia opened her eyes and looked up at his face. Tears coursed down his cheeks as he stared down at her with deep sympathy, and she shuddered at what it meant. What had he seen as he had performed the Gifting? It was clearly a premonition of something horrible.

Aldermaston Wyrich extended his hand to help her rise. As she came to her feet, the choir from Assinica began to sing.

It was a sound unlike anything she had ever heard before.

The voices were strong, skilled, and perfectly blended. It was not a song with words, just a series of chords and strains. There were no instruments to accompany them, but their voices replicated the sounds of a full orchestra, some low and throbbing, some high and piercing. It was soft, lilting, and the force of it grew and grew, swelling like a rainstorm of sound that washed across the courtyard of the abbey, ascending over the walls and into the streets. Maia could hear the sounds of the little ones, the children, among the others, and it stung her eyes with tears.

The choir’s music built and then ebbed and then built again to a crescendo more powerful and affecting than anything she’d ever heard. With the sound came the Medium. It was as if the singers had ensnared it with a spell, their voices a supplication that could not be denied. Maia stared at them in wonder and awe, experiencing a flood of unexpected emotions. The gathered crowd was mesmerized too, she could tell. The choir’s song had stilled the enormous city as if it were a child too wonder-struck to breathe. The feeling of the Medium permeated the throng, spreading to every soul who could hear the singing.

Maia glanced back at the Aldermaston, who beamed with pride and approval at those who were singing the coronation anthem. She stared at him in disbelief, understanding anew the importance of these people they had saved from destruction. She could not imagine what would have happened if the Victus had gotten to them first, silencing their music, art, poetry, and craft forever.

The choir finished singing, the end of their performance leaving pricks of gooseflesh down Maia’s arms. The Aldermaston smiled at the choir. There was no clapping or cheering. Praise would only have defiled such purity of music.

Aldermaston Wyrich gestured for her to kneel again. She did and lifted her face to him.

“Will you, Lady Maia, pledge to defend your subjects, maintain peace, and administer justice throughout the realm?” He smiled at her again, but now there was solemnity in his expression.

“Yes,” she answered boldly.

“Will you promise to the people of Comoros, your realms and dominions, to keep the just and licit laws and liberties of this realm and your dominion?”

“Yes,” she said. Now was the time. She shuddered with anxiety, but the dread in her heart had vanished.

Once she had risen from the pillow, the Aldermaston escorted her to the canopy held by four men who were part of her Privy Council—the mayor, the Earl of Caspur, Dodd, and Richard Syon. Suzenne waited behind them to help her disrobe.

She trembled with cold as Suzenne helped strip away her gown, leaving her in her chaen and chemise. She saw the men’s eyes widen as they took in the sight of the kystrel’s taint rising from beneath her bodice. Even Dodd’s mouth firmed into a small frown. Maia breathed deeply and then knelt once again before the Aldermaston.

Aldermaston Wyrich turned to the four men, his expression grave. “We allow you knowledge of this,” he said softly, “so that there be no deceit in the realm. The marks of corruption you see on her body were not chosen willingly; they were offenses done against her. She passed her maston oaths at Muirwood on Whitsunday. She
is
a queen-maston,
not
a hetaera.”

As he spoke, the force of the Medium jolted through the group, as palpable as it had been during the choir’s performance. Maia saw those holding the staves start to tremble, as if the meager weight of it were suddenly too heavy to bear. Tears trickled down Caspur’s cheeks. With a look of astonishment, the mayor flushed and turned away his gaze. Dodd continued to look at her for a moment, his expression changing to wonderment, and then shifted his gaze to Suzenne, as if to ask if she already knew. Suzenne nodded and smiled knowingly.

Richard Syon, who had long known the truth, gave Maia a look of tenderness and encouragement that warmed her heart and emboldened her. He was the one who had helped her the most. He had sustained her, taught her the ways of the Medium, and enlightened her with wisdom and the tomes of the ages. She respected him as a father.

Aldermaston Wyrich took out a small delicate vial topped with a jeweled stopper, which he unsealed. “The Chrism oil,” he said. Then he dipped his smallest finger into the vial and anointed her forehead, temples, shoulders, and breastbone with the pungent-smelling oil.

The wetness and warmth of the oil felt strange against Maia’s skin, yet it did not burn or hurt. It did not mark her as something counter to the Medium. “This coronation ritual has existed for centuries,” the Aldermaston explained. He spoke louder, his voice carrying past the curtain for the crowd to hear. “This oil is pressed from fruit in a certain garden in Idumea. The Garden of Semani. Called the Chrism oil, it is used to anoint Aldermastons. And in this case, a queen. I bestow upon you the rights and stewardship of the kingdom of Comoros as sovereign ruler. May you keep and preserve your oaths as you defend this people.”

“Amen,” uttered the four men holding the canopy. As she looked at each of the men holding the canopy, she saw nothing but respect and loyalty. She felt their support and was silently grateful.

Suzenne then opened a wardrobe chest and removed the queen’s regalia, a gown befitting Maia’s rank, though one that was less adorned than the ones Lady Deorwynn had favored. She quickly helped her dress, covering her from the sight of the men who now knew her secret. With the binding sigil removed, they would be free to speak of it with others. She silently hoped that they would not, that the power of the Medium they had felt would be enough to silence their tongues.

Once she was dressed in the ceremonial gown, they lowered the covering and revealed her to the rest of those assembled in the courtyard. The Aldermaston then summoned the implements of her authority—the sword of state, which he girded around her waist as if she had been a king, the scepter of power, and the Cruciger orb. Then in front of everyone assembled, the Aldermaston put the coronation ring on her finger—marrying her to the kingdom—and the crown on her head, giving her full authority over it. This finalized the ceremony.

As she felt the metal of the crown weigh down her hair and press against her temples, the choir of Assinica started to sing again, and this time their anthem was more festive and celebratory. Their song signaled to the crowds that the coronation was over, and the cheer that began outside the walls shook the very platform on which Maia stood. People on rooftops visible over the abbey walls waved hats and screamed her name. There were so many people in the street, on porches and verandas and roofs, it was almost a riot. She would have to pass through them to get back to the palace, and the very notion of doing so was daunting.

The choir continued to sing as the procession began to return to the castle, leaving in the same order that it had entered. The sea of onlookers strained against the wall of pikemen who had formed to prevent the people from converging on the street.

“Are you relieved it is almost over?” Suzenne whispered from behind her.

“Over?” Maia asked, straining with a smile and twirling the scepter as she waited for their turn to walk. “My troubles are just beginning.”

The coronation was celebrated with an enormous feast at the palace that evening, though Maia felt disgruntled by the mood of revelry in the hall, by the freely flowing spirits. But she had harkened to the lord mayor’s counsel not to change the tradition. Doing so would have risked offending the nobles
and
the common people, who expected to celebrate such occasions. The audience hall had been turned into an enormous banquet—after removing the benches, the palace servants had brought in tables and arranged them in a giant square. Now Maia sat on a raised dais with her councillors. Her seat, by tradition, was higher than all the rest. She had eaten sparingly, still nervous about the first official day of her reign. Part of her poor mood had to do with her father. She could not stop thinking about how he had managed to convince himself that the authority invested in him by an Aldermaston could be superseded by royal decree. It was unthinkable. The solemn occasion had touched her deeply, and she felt the marks of the Chrism oil almost as if they were a palpable burden laid on her by Aldermaston Wyrich. How could her father have deceived himself and bucked the traditions of the realm so completely? Another qualm she felt about the celebration was that this display of wantonness, greed, drunkenness, and celebration did not seem to acknowledge the true state of the kingdom. They were on the verge of being attacked by the Naestors and their limitless cargo of bloodthirsty warriors, who hoped not just to steal their treasures, but to put every one of their victims to death.

She stared at the throng around her, at all of the courtiers imbibing and eating, feeling anxious for the demonstrations of wealth, wine, and feasting to end. The people, she had heard, were carousing in the streets. They had ripped down every decoration to keep as souvenirs and had already filled the gutters with debris and muck. Maia had told Richard that she wanted the streets swept again that night so they would be clean in the morning.

“My lady, a word?” came a voice at her ear, and she turned to find the mayor, Justin, standing nearby with a wine goblet.

“Was is it?” she asked him, her brow crinkling under her brooding thoughts.

“You do not look as if you are enjoying this celebration.”

She shook her head. “I am not. The people appear to have forgotten the danger we face.”

He frowned. “No . . . they celebrate, which does not happen often enough. I wondered if you had considered what to do with the Rundalen estate?”

“Please, Justin,” she said, waving him off. “I said I would make all such decisions in the presence of the Privy Council after taking some time for deliberation. This is not the place.”

“Very well. I beg your pardon.” He sauntered off, stopping to bid a servant to fill his cup. She frowned after him, missing Collier so much it hurt.

“What did the lord mayor want?” Suzenne asked, approaching Maia from behind. It was an immediate comfort to have her close.

“What they all seem to want right now,” Maia replied with disappointment. “Money and power. It will not be easy to change the temperament my father instilled at court. All this celebration is making me ill. Can they not appreciate that danger and doom are almost upon us?”

Suzenne rested her hand on Maia’s arm. “You have seen the armada, Maia. They have not.”

Maia watched a married man flirting with a younger woman. The sight sickened her. “Where is Jayn?” she asked.

“Over there,” Suzenne responded. “Talking to Joanna. Jayn is grateful for you, you know. If things had gone differently, she would be sitting in your chair right now. She dreaded it.”

Maia suppressed a smirk. “I would almost welcome a reprieve. I am glad she is staying on as a lady-in-waiting. She must be very overwhelmed by all the sudden changes. I am sure we all are.”

There was a commotion at the entrance to the great hall, and a rider appeared, bringing his stallion into the assemblage. He wore the royal colors, and Maia recognized him as Captain Carew, her champion. This was part of the ritual as well. The crowd of feasters stopped talking as the horse clomped in, snorting roughly at the mess and crowd. The tables were lined around in a giant square, leaving an opening in the middle. Carew’s steed trotted to the center. He wore ceremonial armor, gauntlets, and had a sword belted to his waist.

“Who dares to affirm that this lady is not the rightful queen of this kingdom? Who dares it?” His voice bellowed out to those assembled in mock sincerity. Maia saw he was a good actor. He looked both menacing and handsome as he stared into the crowd. “Who challenges her right to rule Comoros? Come forward and I will show you the truth! Come forward and meet your doom! Who here challenges her right to rule?” He flung down one of his gauntlets, which clattered in the middle of the hall.