“As your Highness wishes,” Garion replied, sinking back down onto his throne. He was perspiring heavily.
The princess curtsied again with a mischievous little twinkle in her eyes, then turned and left the Hall with her legionnaires drawn up in close order about her.
As the great doors boomed shut behind her, an angry buzz ran through the crowd. The word “outrageous” seemed to be the most frequently repeated.
“This is unheard of, your Majesty,” Brand protested.
“Not entirely,” Garion replied defensively. “The throne of Arendia is held jointly by King Korodullin and Queen Mayaserana.” He looked to Mandorallen, gleaming in his armor, with a mute appeal in his eyes.
“His Majesty speaks truly, my Lord Brand,” Mandorallen declared. “I assure thee that our kingdom suffers not from the lack of singularity upon the throne.”
“That’s Arendia,” Brand objected. “This is Riva. The situations are entirely different. No Alorn kingdom has ever been ruled by a woman.”
“It might not hurt to examine the possible advantages of the situation,” King Rhodar suggested. “My own queen, for example, plays a somewhat more significant role in Drasnian affairs than custom strictly allows.”
With great difficulty Brand regained at least some of his composure. “May I withdraw, your Majesty?” he asked, his face still livid.
“If you wish,” Garion answered quietly. It wasn’t going well. Brand’s conservatism was the one stumbling block he hadn’t considered.
“It’s an interesting notion, dear,” Aunt Pol said quietly to him, “but don’t you think it might have been better to consult with someone before you made it a public declaration?”
“Won’t it help to cement relations with the Tolnedrans?”
“Quite possibly,” she admitted. “I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea, Garion; I just think it might have been better to warn a few people first. What are you laughing at?” she demanded of Belgarath, who was leaning against the throne convulsed with mirth.
“The Bear-cult’s going to have collective apoplexy,” he chortled.
Her eyes widened slightly. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’d forgotten about them.”
“They aren’t going to like it very much, are they?” Garion concluded. “Particularly since Ce’Nedra’s a Tolnedran.”
“I think you can count on them to go up in flames,” the old sorcerer replied, still laughing.
In the days that followed, the usually bleak halls of the Citadel were filled with color as official visitors and representatives teemed through them, chatting, gossiping, and conducting business in out-of the-way corners. The rich and varied gifts they had brought to celebrate the occasion filled several tables lining one of the walls in the great throne room. Garion, however, was unable to visit or to examine the gifts. He spent his days in a room with his advisers and with the Tolnedran ambassador and his staff as the details of the official betrothal document were hammered out.
Valgon had seized on Garion’s break with tradition and was trying to wring the last measure of advantage from it, while Brand was desperately trying to add clauses and stipulations to circumscribe Ce’Nedra’s authority rigidly. As the two haggled back and forth, Garion found himself more and more frequently staring out the window. The sky over Riva was an intense blue, and puffy white clouds ran before the wind. The bleak crags of the island were touched with the first green blush of spring. Faintly, carried by the wind, the high, clear voice of a shepherdess singing to her flock wafted through the open window. There was a pure, unschooled quality to her voice, and she sang with no hint of self consciousness as if there were not a human ear within a hundred leagues. Garion sighed as the last notes of her song died away and then returned his attention to the tedious negotiations.
His attention, however, was divided in those early days of spring. Since he was unable to pursue the search for the man with the torn cloak himself, he was forced to rely on Lelldorin to press the investigation. Lelldorin was not always entirely reliable, and the search for the would-be assassin seemed to fire the enthusiastic young Asturian’s imagination. He crept about the Citadel with dark, sidelong glances, and reported his lack of findings in conspiratorial whispers. Turning things over to Lelldorin might have been a mistake, but there had been no real choice in the matter. Any of Garion’s other friends would have immediately raised a general outcry, and the entire affair would have been irrevocably out in the open. Garion did not want that. He was not prepared to make any decisions about the assassin until he found out who had thrown the knife and why. Too many other things could have been involved. Only Lelldorin could be relied upon for absolute secrecy, even though there was some danger in turning him loose in the Citadel with a license to track someone down. Lelldorin had a way of turning simple things into catastrophes, and Garion worried almost as much about that as he did about the possibility of another knife hurtling out of the shadows toward his unprotected back.
Among the visitors present for the betrothal ceremonies was Ce’Nedra’s cousin Xera, who was present as the personal representative of Queen Xantha. Though shy at first, the Dryad soon lost her reserve – particularly when she found herself the center of the attention of a cluster of smitten young noblemen.
The gift of Queen Xantha to the royal couple was, Garion thought, somewhat peculiar. Wrapped in plain leaves, Xera presented them with two sprouted acorns. Ce’Nedra, however, seemed delighted. She insisted upon planting the two seeds immediately and rushed down to the small private garden adjoining the royal apartments.
“It’s very nice, I suppose,” Garion commented dubiously as he stood watching his princess on her knees in the damp loam of the garden, busily preparing the earth to receive Queen Xantha’s gift.
Ce’Nedra looked at him sharply. “I don’t believe your Majesty understands the significance of the gift,” she said in that hatefully formal tone she had assumed with him.
“Stop that,” Garion told her crossly. “I still have a name, after all and I’m almost positive you haven’t forgotten it.”
“If your Majesty insists,” she replied loftily.
“My Majesty does. What’s so significant about a couple of nuts?”
She looked at him almost pityingly. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Not if you won’t take the trouble to explain it to me.”
“Very well.” She sounded irntatingly superior. “The one acorn is from my very own tree. The other is from Queen Xantha’s.”
“So?”
“See how impossibly dense he is,” the princess said to her cousin.
“He’s not a Dryad, Ce’Nedra,” Xera replied calmly.
“Obviously.”
Xera turned to Garion. “The acorns are not really from my mother,” she explained. “They’re gifts from the trees themselves.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?” Garion demanded of Ce’Nedra.
She sniffed and returned to her digging.
“While they’re still just young shoots, Ce’Nedra will bind them together,” Xera went on. “The shoots will intertwine as they grow, embracing each other and forming a single tree. It’s the Dryad symbol for marriage. The two will become one – just as you and Ce’Nedra will.”
“That remains to be seen,” Ce’Nedra sniffed, trowelling busily in the dirt.
Garion sighed. “I hope the trees are patient.”
“Trees are very patient, Garion,” Xera replied. She made a little gesture that Ce’Nedra could not see, and Garion followed her to the other end of the garden.
“She does love you, you know,” Xera told him quietly. “She won’t admit it, of course, but she loves you. I know her well enough to see that.”
“Why’s she acting the way she is, then?”
“She doesn’t like being forced into things, that’s all.”
“I’m not the one who’s forcing her. Why take it out on me?”
“Whom else can she take it out on?”
Garion hadn’t thought of that. He left the garden quietly. Xera’s words gave him some hope that one of his problems, at least, might eventually be resolved. Ce’Nedra would pout and storm for a while, and then – after she had made him suffer enough – she would relent. Perhaps it might speed things along if he suffered a bit more obviously.
The other problems had not changed significantly. He was still going to have to lead an army against Kal Torak; Belgarath had still given no sign that his power was intact; and someone in the Citadel was still, so far as Garion knew, sharpening another knife for him. He sighed and went back to his own rooms where he could worry in private.
Somewhat later he received word that Aunt Pol wanted to see him in her private apartment. He went immediately and found her seated by the fire, sewing as usual. Belgarath, dressed in his shabby old clothes, sat in one of the deep, comfortable chairs on the other side of the fire with his feet up and a tankard in his hand.
“You wanted to see me, Aunt Pol?” Garion inquired as he entered.