It was extremely difficult. Ran Borune’s memory was clouded by age and his long illness, and Ce’Nedra’s remembrance of her mother was so sketchy that it could hardly be said to exist at all. Garion concentrated, bending all his will upon it. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead as he struggled to gather all those fleeting memories into one single image.
The light coming in through the flimsy curtains at the window seemed to darken as if a cloud had passed over the sun, and there was a faint, far-off tinkling sound, as if of small, golden bells. The room was suddenly filled with a kind of woodland fragrance -a subtle smell of moss and leaves and green trees. The light faded a bit more, and the tinkling and the odor grew stronger.
And then there was a hazy, nebulous luminosity in the air at the foot of the dying Emperor’s bed. The glow grew brighter, and she was there. Ce’Vanne had been a bit taller than her daughter, but Garion saw instantly why Ran Borune had always so doted on his only child. The hair was precisely the same deep auburn; the complexion was that same golden-tinged olive; and the eyes were of that exact same green. The face was willful, certainly, but the eyes were filled with love.
The figure came silently around the bed, reaching out briefly in passing to touch Ce’Nedra’s face with lingering, phantom fingertips. Garion could suddenly see the source of that small bell sound. Ce’Nedra’s mother wore the two golden acorn earrings of which her daughter was so fond, and the two tiny clappers inside them gave off that faint, musical tinkle whenever she moved her head. For no particular reason, Garion remembered that those same earrings lay on his wife’s dressing table back at Riva.
Ce’Vanne reached out her hand to her husband. Ran Borune’s face was filled with wonder, and his eyes with tears.
“Ce’Vanne,” he said in a trembling whisper, struggling to raise himself from his pillow. He pulled his shaking hand free from Garion’s grasp and reached out toward her. For a moment their hands seemed to touch, and then Ran Borune gave a long, quavering sigh, sank back on his pillows, and died.
Ce’Nedra sat for a long time holding her father’s hand as the faint, woodland smell and the echo of the little golden bells slowly subsided from the room and the light from the window returned. Finally she placed the wasted hand gently back on the coverlet, rose, and looked around the room with an almost casual air. “It’s going to have to be aired out, of course,” she said absently. “Maybe some cut flowers to sweeten the air.” she smoothed the coverlet at the side of the bed and gravely looked at her father’s body. Then she turned. “Oh, Garion,” she wailed, suddenly throwing herself into his arms.
Garion held her, smoothing her hair and feeling the shaking of her tiny body against him and looking all the while at the still, peaceful face of the Emperor of Tolnedra. It may have been some trick of the light, but it almost seemed that there was a smile on Ran Borune’s lips.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The state funeral for Emperor Ran Borune XXIII of the Third Borune Dynasty took place a few days later in the Temple of Nedra, Lion God of the Empire. The temple was a huge marble building not far from the Imperial Palace. The altar was backed by a vast fan of pure, beaten gold, with the head of a lion in its center. Directly in front of the altar stood the simple marble bier of Ce’Nedra’s father. The late Emperor lay in calm repose, covered from the neck down by a cloth of gold. The column-lined inner hall of the temple was filled to overflowing as the members of the great families vied with one another, not so much to pay their respects to Ran Borune, but rather to display the opulence of their clothing and the sheer weight of their personal adornment.
Garion and Ce’Nedra, both dressed in deepest mourning, sat beside General Varana at the front of the vast hall as the eulogies were delivered. Tolnedran politics dictated that a representative of each of the major houses should speak upon this sad occasion. The speeches, Garion suspected, had been prepared long in advance. They were all quite flowery and tiresome, and each one seemed to be directed at the point that, although Ran Borune was gone, the Empire lived on.
Many of the speakers seemed quite smug about that.
When the eulogies had at last been completed, the white-robed High Priest of Nedra, a pudgy, sweating man with a grossly sensual mouth, arose and stepped to the front of the altar to add his own contribution. Drawing upon events in the life of Ran Borune, he delivered a lengthy homily on the advantages of having wealth and using it wisely. At first Garion was shocked by the High Priest’s choice of subject matter, but the rapt faces of the throng in the temple told him that a sermon about money was very moving to a Tolnedran congregation and that the High Priest, by selecting such a topic, was able thereby to slip in any number of laudatory comments about Ce’Nedra’s father.
Once all the tedious speeches were completed, the little Emperor was laid to rest beside his wife under a marble slab in the Borune section of the catacombs beneath the temple.
The so-called mourners then returned to the main temple hall to express their condolences to the bereaved family.
Ce’Nedra bore up well, though she was very pale. On one occasion she swayed slightly, and Garion, without thinking, reached out to support her.
“Don’t touch me!” she whispered sharply under her breath, raising her chin sharply.
“What?” Garion was startled.
“We cannot show any sign of weakness in the presence of our enemies. I willnot break down for the entertainment of the Honeths or the Horbites or the Vordues. My father would rise from his grave in disgust if I did.”
The nobles of all the great houses continued to file past to offer their extensive and obviously counterfeit sympathy to the sable-gowned little Rivan Queen. Garion found their half-concealed smirks contemptible and their barbed jibes disgusting. His face grew more stern and disapproving as the moments passed. His threatening presence soon dampened the enjoyment of the Grand Dukes and their ladies and sycophants. The Tolnedrans were genuinely afraid of this tall, mysterious Alorn monarch who had come out of nowhere to assume Riva’s throne and to shake the very earth with his footsteps. Even as they approached Ce’Nedra to deliver their poisonous observations, his cold, grim face made them falter, and many carefully prepared impertinences went unsaid.
At last, disgusted so much that even his Sendarian good manners deserted him, he placed his hand firmly on his wife’s elbow. “We will leave now”‘ he said to her in a voice which could be clearly heard by everyone in the vast temple. “The air in this place has turned a trifle rancid.”
Ce’Nedra cast him one startled glance, then lifted her chin in her most regal and imperious manner, laid her hand lightly on his arm, and walked with him toward the huge bronze doors. The silence was vast as they moved with stately pace through the throng, and a wide path opened for them.
“That was very nicely done, dear,” Ce’Nedra complimented him warmly as they rode in the gold-inlaid imperial carriage back toward the palace.
“It seemed appropriate,” he replied. “I’d reached the point where I either had to say something rather pointed or turn the whole lot of them into toads.”
“My, what an enchanting thought,” she exclaimed. “We could go back, if you want.”
When Varana arrived back at the palace an hour or so later, he was positively gloating. “Belgarion,” he said with a broad grin, “you’re a splendid young fellow, do you know that? With that one word you mortally offended virtually the entire nobility of northern Tolnedra.”
“Which word was that?”
“Rancid.”
“I’m sorry about that one.”
“Don’t be. It perfectly describes them.”
“It is a bit coarse, though.”
“Not under the circumstances. Itdid manage to make you any number of lifelong enemies, however.”
“That’s all I need,” Garion replied sourly. “Give me just a few more years, and I’ll have enemies in all parts of the world.”
” A king isn’t really doing his job if he doesn’t make enemies, Belgarion. Any jackass can go through life without offending people.”
“Thanks.”
There had been some uncertainty about which course Varana would follow once Ran Borune was gone. His ‘adoption’, by the late Emperor had clearly been a ruse with very little in the way of legality to back it up. The candidates for the throne, blinded by their own lust for the Imperial Crown, had convinced themselves that he would merely serve as a kind of caretaker until the question of the succession had been settled in the usual fashion.