Christopher Stasheff - Warlock's Last Ride

THE CONCERT MASTER WAVED HIS BOW TO TIE up the last note, and the orchestra fell silent. Then the organ began its murmur, stumbling now and then, causing Rod to bite his lip.

Gwen placed her hand over his. "Patience, husband. The musician had other matters arising in his life than practicing these pieces you brought him."

"Considering he'd never seen anything remotely like Bach before, I suppose he's not doing a bad job," Rod admitted.

They stood at the back of the cathedral in Runnymede, waiting for their entrances.

"Think instead upon how well our sons look."

Rod looked up at the three tall young men standing at the side of the sanctuary, his sons and their lifelong friend the crown prince, resplendent in cloth-of-gold doublets and gleaming white hose. It had been difficult prying Gregory out of his usual monk's robe for the occasion, but Gwen had prevailed. At the thought, the scene blurred, and he saw Gregory as he had been before he fell in love with Allouette and went on a crash course of bodybuilding: thin and pale, seeming almost anemic.

Then the three young men came back into focus, and Rod marveled how much the lad looked like his muscular brother, though Gregory was still brown-haired and Geoffrey golden.

As his brother Magnus had been when he was small

Gwen's hand touched his arm, rested there in reassurance. "I would he were here, too, husband, healed and beside thembut we must settle for three rings, not four."

Rod covered her hand with his own, still marveling at how clearly she could read his mindeven without using her telepathic powers. "Just so he's healed some day, dearand this certainly is reason enough to set my heart singing."

Nonetheless, the old anger awoke and burnedanger at Finister, the woman who had not merely broken Magnus's heart with her ferociously powerful psi powers, but mangled it, then done so again and again in different guises. As always, though, he schooled himself to forgive, for her malice had been the result of systematic brainwashing and emotional abuse by her foster parentsagents of the futurian enemies of the royal family who sought to forge Finister into a weapon to be used against the Crown and its main support, the Gallowglass family, and had succeeded far too wellbut Cordelia and Geoffrey had been proof against her plots, and Gregory, though he had fallen in love with her, had still managed to defend himself against her. Gwen, seeing his despair and knowing how deeply her execution would scar him, had examined the woman's mind in depth, seen the sweet child buried under all the machinations, found the kernel of goodness that could be nourished into health, and in a marathon, exhausting night of telepathic psychotherapy, had healed her well enough to let her see the world as it really was, to cast off the false personality her tormentors had grafted onto her and, at last, discovered the name given her as a babyAllouette.

Gregory knew it would be a life's work helping her to develop her own true personality, but had already made great stridesso great that she had finally been willing to wed him publicly, even side by side with his brother and sister, instead of being forever content with the quiet, almost furtive, ceremony performed by a monk in a tiny village.

Trying to put the thought aside as unworthy, Rod looked around at the assemblage gathered in the cathedral, what he could see of it from the rear. The nobility of Gramarye filled the pewswith one very notable absence. Sadness tugged at him.

Gwen noticed. "What sorrow?"

"That the whole family isn't here," Rod said. "Alain's uncle and cousin should be watching him marry."

"Aye, but an attainted traitor cannot come nigh the Crown." The thought was the one shadow on a glorious day.

Rod saw, and was sorry he'd brought up the issue. "Maybe the kids will be able to make peace even if their parents can't, dear."

Gwen smiled at the thought, then turned all her attention toward the central doorway of the cathedral, waiting for the brides.

Guards lined the central doorway and the path to it, as much to keep the common folk from blocking the way as to protect the brides. The commoners clustered at the other two doorways, eager for a sight of their future king and queen. Shafts of colored light filled the air above them, a shifting array of colors from the stained glass windows along the sides of the nave and the great rose window above the choir loft. The noblemen and their wives seemed to vie with one another for the glory and extravagance of their costumes, shifting restlessly now and then, hungry for a sight of the brides.

So was Rod.

Anxiously, he scanned the three young men waiting eagerly and apprehensively at the stairs to the altar, then turned to look back into the recesses of the foyer. "We shouldn't have left the girls to dress themselves!"

"They have three maids apiece to help them, husband," Gwen said sternly. "We brought them here, after all. We can allow them some measure of independence." Nonetheless, she was tense enough herselfpoised, no doubt, to dash to answer a daughter's call, to resolve last-minute misgivings.

Then the organ broke from Bach and stilled. The orchestra began again, a joyous but stately promenade, as the queen herself stepped down the aisle escorted by her younger son, Prince Diarmid. She was spectacular in embroidered silk, but wore only a few gems, her notion of not outdoing the brides. She paced the length of the aisle in stately fashion, stepped into the larger of the two carved and gilded chairs by the altar, and sat as her son went on to stand beside his childhood friend Gregoryinteresting that he was best man for his friend instead of his brother, who had to make do with the young Duke of Savoy.

It should have been Magnus ...

Rod threw off the thought and turned to watch as the bridesmaids came down the aisle like a train of spring flowers, all members of Quicksilver's former outlaw bandand needed, for Quicksilver, Cordelia, and Allouette would all have served as each others' maids of honor, if they hadn't been marrying at the same ceremony.

Then came the ring bearer, proud of his place at seven years old and carrying the satin cushion as though it were the crown itself; after him came five girls of the same age, strewing rose petals. As they came to the head of the aisle, their mothers steered them toward the altar.

Then ten trumpeters brought their long straight horns to their lips, and the fanfare flared out over the crowd. As its strains died, the organ pealed out the opening notes of the "Wedding March." and there they came, a trio of veiled young women in shimmering white, Cordelia in the center and a little ahead. Rod knew her by the way she walked, the way she held herself, by the hundred and one little signs he and Gwen had learned over the years of rearing her. Behind and to her right, Quicksilver marched with head held high, almost defiantly. To the left, Allouette matched her pace, but with a diffident, hesitant stride, seeming almost to question by her very carriage whether she deserved to be there.

Rod erased that doubt from his own mind as he fell in beside his daughter, beaming down at her, then over her head at Gwen as she took Cornelia's other arm. They exchanged a brief glance that made the rest of the world seem to go away for a moment. Then, resolutely, Gwen turned to pace the aisle with her daughter.

Rod lifted his head as the "Wedding March" filled the cathedral, albeit with a few small errors that he was sure only he noticed. With avid eagerness, the nobility turned for a glimpse of their future queen.

In stately procession, the three young women paced down the aisle, bouquets clutched tightly in their hands, Quicksilver flanked by her mother and little sister, now almost as tall as she; each seemed awed and awkward despite her finery, shooting anxious glances at the grand people about them, for they were, after all, only a squire's wife and daughter, and unused to such pomp and ceremony.