The Farewell Ceremony

Sir Euric had explained his purpose for showing up in Yuji’s place as the representative for the vanguard at the meeting with the escort party just before the farewell ceremony started. It had been due to their being unable to find Yuji before the meetings commencement. Sir Euric having been ordered to do a scouting mission for the margrave and having just come to make his report he was ordered to fill the post. Once in the meeting he had been unable to stand against Lord Dain’s wishes, Lord Dain having made it clear that life would be made difficult if he intended to proceed with Yuji’s plan to subvert him. He offered humbly to abdicate his position, but Yuji refused, not fully convinced that Sir Euric was, in fact, the mole in their operations.

That settled Yuji took his position among the Margrave’s family with a visage of gravity. Fortunately, his emotions were misinterpreted as taking the coming event with solemnity. Besides dealing with the problems that had arisen with the vanguard Yuji hadn’t spoken since leaving his room. Mirk observed him with concern though he made no attempt to dissuade him from his mood.

The ceremony began with a great palanquin, carried by honored members of nobility within the margrave’s fortress, being brought to the abode of the Centauri Seren. Flowers were thrown across the path between the opening of her palace and the palanquin until the bridge and grass were no longer visible. A gong rang out and she was brought out in the gown Yuji had seen her in that morning, a veil and diadem perched on her swath of silver thread hair. Her bare feet tread the path created by the thousands of petals that had been scattered, threads of pearls and precious stones danced against her pale dorsum.

Music played, it was the same drums and trumpets as before though orchestrated differently, including an accompaniment of an elven chorus. The sound was less vague and grounded, more ethereal, transcendent. Yuji listened and watched, removed, alienated in every way.

The Centauri Seren once in the ornate palanquin, behind the shadowing veils, was lifted and carried through the wide palace halls. All the nobility residing within the fortress followed behind the escort party in their best clothes. They went round and round in circles through the halls symbolically representing her journey to the capital, after circulating for an exhausting twenty-nine times they cut the thirtieth revolution short entering the great hall.

Ten elves were already dancing in a spherical pattern, their bodies tracing a wide area around the center of the room, gray layered clothing flaring and convulsing with their liquid movements. As the palanquin entered, they parted making way for the Centauri Seren to be placed within its center. As the music continued and people crowded inside, it changed and shifted.

The elvish dancing grew from somber to animated. White rose petals and buds rained from the ceiling, falling with vaporous flecks of gold. The bodies of the elves became obscured with images of the lunar phases, as they moved the phases went round and round the palanquin their forms losing visibility.

“I can’t understand what they’re singing.” Yuji muttered to Mirk, his head swimming with the magic pulsating throughout the room.

It’s giving me a headache.

“That is because they are speaking in their own tongue. It is believed that elvish is one of the ancient leagues and has a great power for manipulation and magic wielding.”

The light around the palanquin became almost too intense to look at. The music almost hysterical now. The crowd was forced to shield their eyes as the final keys were played. When at last it ended the elvish dancers fell to their knees facing the Centauri Seren, a sea of applause spilled from the crowd.

There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.

“Mirk, if this is put on for all the people to participate in why use a language they can’t understand and not include any of the dancers housed in the margrave’s castle? What’s the point of so much magic being used?”

“Ceremony can be a tool to hide many things. As I said when they first arrive, elves are not trustworthy.”

The elves appeared again before leaving breaking their ring going away from the center of the room, the light they had created seemed concentrated in the heart of the palanquin, Lady Menodora shining like a trapped star. Tables were brought in and lavishly spread with food, elves from the escort party and nobility cluttered the chairs. Lady Menodora looked imprisoned in the center of it all, no one going to her save a single servant provided to facilitate her personal needs.

Yuji chose to leave his seat open unable to stand it any longer. His own misery was crushing and seeing her made into the centerpiece of the room on displayed was more then he could bear. On the battlements of the great fortress, he watched the average person scurrying around. They were celebrating the coming departure of the Centauri Seren as much as the nobility inside. Stalls had been set up. There was dancing and music playing. It seemed he was one of the few truly miserable in this world that day.

“Someone approaches. It is the envoy. He brings with him two glasses of golden wine.”

Yuji didn’t turn to confirm what Mirk had said, finding this imposition rather anticlimactic.

“I hope I am not intruding on you, my lord.” The envoy smiled with hidden meaning offering Yuji a fluted glass.

He took it without taking a drink saying nothing in response to his greeting.

“I had wished to speak with you during the banquet, but you left before I could address you. And as we are leaving tomorrow and there are still preparations to attend to after the banquet, I thought it best to locate you myself.”

“It is always conniving with them.” Mirk’s aura flashed, fir giving an irritable twitch. “Elves are cloying creatures. They seek to rule humans through their lusts and various misdirection. This one is no different and from the way he behaves he has brought it into the level of child’s play. He far underestimates you.”

The compliment lightened a bit of Yuji’s gloom.

“What you have to say must be very important if you’ve come all this way yourself and didn’t just send a servant to get me or relay a message.”

“You are perceptive indeed my lord.”

The emissary’s pleasantries grated on Yuji’s nerves. He didn’t want to be near the man, he didn’t trust him or like him and he was far too out of temper to put up with much.

“I would hate for you to miss the banquet your excellency. I am sure your presence is already missed, so if there is something you just must discuss with me, please don’t hesitate.”

“Well, this may appear an out of place question, I hope you will take no offense to my asking it, but your relationship with the Centauri Seren. I hear it has changed within the last few months. That you and she appear to be on friendly terms, and that she speaks intimately with you.”

The elf looked into the wine that matched his molten eyes, that controlled, calculating expression directing itself at Yuji when it seemed he had found what he was looking for within.

So that’s what’s it is.

“Do you have intentions behind your cultivation of a relationship with my lady?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.” Yuji set the glass he had been given on the battlement untouched.

“It is important to her ladyship’s final cultivation that she is not sullied but be presented in her virginal capacity to complete the ceremony within the capital.”

Yuji almost wanted to laugh. “I don’t know what impression you’ve gotten from me or what her servants have told you, but I have only ever been respectful to her.”

“I understand, but it is very important that her ladyship arrives in the capital in her current state, so it is important to make sure that those accompanying her will not compromise her in any way.”

“The audacity of such a creature making accusations of this nature.” Mirk’s fur twitched all the more.

After discovering that the netsuke held no more aid in getting him home Yuji had lost the will to go to the capital, the act had seemed utterly pointless for him. He didn’t care about glory or honor. What he wanted was the life he would never get again. He hadn’t truly realized that even when he had allowed himself to live this life that his original one would be so completely out of reach. He had done everything with the hope that it would lead him home. That hope now dashed he wasn’t sure how he was alive anymore. How he took a step. How he continued to play such an exhausting, never ending game. He had even considered asking to be removed from the party.

But during the ceremony Yuji had been haunted by a horrible feeling. The song and dance leaving a digging pit in his gut. The echo of Lady Menodora’s sadness, the image of her tears, and the arrogance and self-interest of everyone involved in her care drew a hot poker of guilt against his conscience.

“I could spend hours assuring you of my noble intentions toward my lady, but you would have to believe what I said for them to mean anything.”

Mirk’s aura flashed vibrantly in his periphery, the creature was excited by the way he spoke, as if he saw the life it stirred in him and was at once ready to follow him to whatever end that spark might take him.

“Of course, your word of honor is a most valid expression of your fidelity to the mission. You need only state it clearly.” The envoy tried to appear indulgent, lacking authenticity in his expression.

“If what I have already said to you is not enough to assure you then nothing will be.”

“If you agree to keep your distance from her ladyship throughout the journey that will be more than enough.” His excellency was not hiding his intentions anymore, his distaste for Yuji’s response evident.

“I take no shame in my current actions your excellency.”

“So you insist on attending her in her journey?”

“She has asked me to go and so I will go. Now, if you’ll excuse me your excellency, I have other business to attend to.” Without a word Yuji walked away leaving the emissary standing alone on the ramparts, his glass in his hand.

A cold breeze passed by. Drazhan stepped forward to where Yuji had left his glass and with a long finger pushed it from the ledge.