Wedding

by Ann Herendeen

  Eleonora grimaced. “Please, Amalie,” she said, “try to keep your thoughts to yourself once in a while.” She didn’t like it, I saw, neither Dominic’s desire for the craggy old man who was neither gifted nor vir, nor the fact of my intimate knowledge.

  I tried not to grin at Eleonora’s disapproving face. It was better this way, when my feelings about Dominic were not as everyone thought they should be, when our love took its own path…

  “Listen to me,” Eleonora said, breaking into my thoughts. “I’m only going to say this once. I’ve seen others like you, couples with a communion so strong that nothing could keep them apart. All I know is, you and my brother are stuck with each other until the day you die. Tattooing his name on your arm and behaving as his wife will simply make it easier for him, and eventually for you, to come to terms with it. But whether you stay with him, or go to Eclipsia City, or back to that Brooklyn place you came from—you’ll never be free of him.”

  She held me in a sibyl’s communion that cannot be broken. Love him, Amalie, she said. Give my brother the peace he’s been searching for.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was two more weeks before Dominic returned. I was near the end of my fourth month and the child was beginning to show. If Dominic could spend so much wealth in secret, I decided, I could take a little, and I would tell him when he got back. I had Saskia, the head seamstress, make me two new wool dresses and some linen underwear out of the Aranyi stores. The clothes were bigger across my breasts, with full waists and skirts for the rest of my nine months. I was wearing one of the dresses when Dominic and Stefan rode through the gates.

  Dominic said nothing of substance, only kissed me and held me, and laid his hand on my belly to feel the bulge of the growing child.

  I pulled at his hand in impatience. “Well? Am I to be ’Gravina Aranyi or must I turn Christian to be married?”

  Dominic waited until we were inside, then handed me a package and told me to open it. After digging through layers of wadded cloth I found two arm bracelets of clear glass, with spheres of color inside, and thin metal filaments that twisted together in an intricate pattern.

  I picked up the smaller bracelet, surprised at the solid weight of it, turning it to examine the design. “Hold it this way,” Dominic said, demonstrating with the larger one. The filaments formed words, in that style of writing I was learning with Berend—script. Not just any words, but our names Herzog and Aranyi, repeated and intertwined, the same design inside both bracelets.

  “You don’t have to go through with it,” Dominic said after I had traced my finger over the words, all the way around, several times. “But no true craftsman will make just one of these.”

  I still didn’t understand.

  Dominic removed his tunic and shirt and slipped the bracelet over his right wrist, pushing it up past his elbow. “When we swear the oaths, we use our crypta to heat the glass until it melts away. The color is burned into our skin and the hot metal carves the words into our burned flesh.”

  Stefan’s laughter broke the spell of horror that left me unable to say a word, or even think. “That’s the ’Graven Rule,” he said.

  “How can you possibly—” I couldn’t say it. After what Dominic had been through with the Eris weapon, had only recently recovered from, for him to undergo another crippling burn was inconceivable.

  “Because it’s the exact opposite of that,” Dominic said. “That was a weapon, powered by hatred and anger.” He flexed his left arm, unmarked, healed and strong. “And by the power of your love, and Stefan’s and Naomi’s, I was healed, made whole again. But this is a burn of love, and it leaves a scar that can never be removed or erased, that will mark us as married, as husband and wife, as long as we live.”

  The bracelets were the reason for Dominic’s huge expenditure, the explanation for his long absence. They had been made to his specifications by a master craftsman, and could not have been obtained by barter, only with money.

  Dominic took my left hand in his right and held our arms out in front of us. “You see, in the traditional ’Graven Rite of Matrimony, we burn together, locked in absolute communion, speaking the oaths in unison.”

  I noticed that the bracelet would go on Dominic’s right arm, not the sword arm.

  “There’s no need to take foolish chances,” Dominic said, winking at Stefan. “No, we let the wife risk her left arm.”

  I wanted to cry but was too proud to break down in front of Stefan. “I can’t, Dominic. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Amalie. I didn’t expect you to.” Dominic put his arms around me, holding me against his naked chest, as pleased us both. “I know how frightening it must seem to you, not brought up in our customs.”

  Without forewarning the words came out. “I have money, Dominic. Credits, enough for a dowry. I’m not coming empty-handed to this marriage. You don’t have to feel that you’re taking a charity bride or that you’ve bought me—”

  Dominic reeled back from the flood of emotion that accompanied the strange words. When the sense of it hit him, the expression of contempt that came over his face was terrifying. Just for a second, he looked at me as if I were that hated Terran woman he had claimed did not exist. His anger when I had charged him with mistreating Stefan had not frightened me, because I had seen in his thoughts that he admitted the truth of my accusation. Now, the only thought in his mind was disgust.

  But only for a moment. His face softened as soon as he saw how he had scared me. “Amalie, beloved,” he said, “don’t you know by now that our marriage is not like other marriages? Ours is based on love, not on property and family. You need no money to become ’Gravina Aranyi. Your gift and our communion, these are your dowry. They are yours and can never be taken from you, but you have brought them to me in love, given them to me freely at my need, haven’t you?”

  “It’s just that everything—my clothes, the buildings and the land—belongs to you.” I tried to keep the whine out of my voice. “And now I’m becoming your property too. Everybody’s telling me what a good master you are, but I don’t want a master for a husband, and I’m afraid of becoming another possession. Kept indoors, surrounded by guards and wearing a burqa to go outside, and now branded with your name—”

  “Women from the mountain realms don’t wear burqas. Everybody knows they’re as bold as the men.” Dominic tried again to comfort me with humor, looking to Stefan for support. We were alone in the room; Stefan, increasingly adept at anticipating Dominic’s reactions, had slipped silently out the door at my mention of credits.

  “I am the one who will be branded,” Dominic said into the silence.

  It struck me at last. Herzog. He had had my Terran family name fused into the bracelet, would wear that name, that his mouth had rejected sometimes, as Terran and unspeakable, burned onto his body for the rest of his life, and beyond, even after death. He had ordered the bracelets designed in the ’Graven style, the wife’s name joined with her husband’s in the new couple’s compound name, and he had accepted my name, as he had accepted me. He had not, after all, warped me into the lie he had asked for, neither had he denied my reality. He had simply taken me as I am into his life, and expected I would adjust, as I would, as I had and would continue to do, until I became ’Gravina Aranyi in every way.

  As I almost was. For all its foreignness, Aranyi was the only place that had ever felt like home to me. I would become ’Gravina Aranyi in time, would learn to live in a way that made both Dominic and me comfortable. And few people would remember that I had once been Amelia Herzog of New York.

  But ’Graven Assembly had known, I reminded myself, and they had countenanced our marriage, or Dominic would not now be showing me these beautifully-crafted instruments of torture.

  I thought with gratitude of what Dominic must have had to go through. “Was it difficult to get ’Graven Assembly’s approval for the marriage?”

  “Only at first,” Dominic said. “I told them if I could not convince them with words
, I would convince them with this.” He touched the hilt of his sword.

  “Is that allowed?” I asked. “Dueling in assembly?”

  “How else do you think we reach agreement on the difficult questions?” He was serious.

  Months of worry, for nothing. “If I had a sword,” I said, “I would kill you myself.”

  Dominic took a step back from me, entered my mind quickly and saw what was wrong. “Oh, Amalie. It was not that simple. The duel is a last resort, when debate fails or reaches an impasse. And there are few in ’Graven Assembly who would dare fight me, which means the result would always be open to question. I want our marriage to have the full support of all the ’Graven.”

  In the end, Dominic had got his agreement, without resorting to swordplay. ’Graven Assembly was more accepting than either of us had imagined. They had seen me, not so long ago. They knew I had the gift of crypta, and the third eyelids that allowed me to use it. My pregnancy only helped my case, as the possibility of future gifted children was the best amends Dominic could offer for such a break from tradition. He had not had to fight anyone. What was much worse for him, he had had to endure endless taunts about his breaking the rule himself that he had so zealously enforced for others. But he had borne it all like a soldier.

  “They will forget,” I said, as he had suggested my Terran origins would be forgotten. I took my dagger from its sheath and held the prism in the handle up to the light, thinking of how Dominic would teasingly call me a sibyl, and how much I had wanted to become one. My gift had made my life on Terra insupportable, and had not done much better for me at La Sapienza. Yet, in the end, it had given me what was worth much more than anything it had taken. It had given me a husband and a child, a home and a family. It had given me a place in the world. “They will look at me, and they will see ’Gravina Aranyi, and they will wonder what there was to debate,” I said, confident that I spoke the truth.

  The dagger in my hand and the light bending through the prism brought it all back: our night in the travelers’ hut, and our first real night of love, festival night. We had taken something evil and dangerous, something potentially fatal, and rendered it harmless, not by denying it, but by using it, changing it to suit us. If not for my gift, Dominic could really dominate me. He could overpower me, rape me, make me beg. He could keep me a prisoner, here and in Eclipsia City, make me wear a burqa, force me to be deferential, bear his children, be an obedient wife. If I were not gifted, as I had known from our first meeting, I would have run from him, although it would not have been necessary, as he would not have been in pursuit.

  My gift, our communion, changed everything. When we were together, mind to mind, there was no imbalance between us, only a feeling of rightness and completion, which I had known from my first moments in Eclipsia City. If the subsequent months had shown me an unsettling reality behind my first idyllic imaginings, the communion we shared had taught me, in the end, that I could trust my instincts.

  Between me and Dominic there was not, could not be, coercion. I liked our way of making love because it heightened my pleasure, because I was doing it by choice, and because it excited him. We had fallen into it simply by doing what we both wanted. My work in the house, light as it was, had started in the same way. I was doing what I was supposed to do as ’Gravina Aranyi, but it was not for that reason I had chosen it. It was because I enjoyed it, felt connected through it to the life of Dominic’s realm. It even gave me a sense of, the gods forgive me for using such a word, fulfillment.

  And I would stay indoors if he asked me to, make certain never to be alone with a man, even Stefan, accept the escort of the tallest guards Dominic could find—because I didn’t have to. I wanted to. As I had assured Edwige Ertegun, I wanted to.

  Dominic laughed at my thoughts. “I will require nothing from you that you do not want to give. You are my wife, my second self, not an indentured servant.”

  I picked up the smaller bracelet again and held it next to my left arm. With or without a scar from a painful ordeal, I was tied to Dominic by our love, and by our communion of crypta. A brand would not make me love him more, or less. But my scar would show the world I was his wife, as his would show he had a wife. In this world, to proclaim such facts was to make them real. For Dominic, the words carved into our flesh would be the visible proof that we had created a family where before there had been only a ’Graven lord and an unknown woman. A woman who was not quite Terran, but not yet Eclipsian.

  Six days later, on Crescent Day, the day of two eclipses, Dominic and I stood at the top of the Aranyi Fortress, in the turret of the highest watchtower. We wore the ’Graven wedding clothes, his shirt and my gown each with only one sleeve, leaving one arm bare, his right, my left, each with its bracelet encircling the arm halfway between elbow and shoulder. Stefan was at Dominic’s other side, Eleonora at mine. As the first shadow bit into the early morning sun, we drew our daggers, holding the prism in the handle to the light, bending it first into our eyes, then into the glass.

  The pain tore the breath from my body. It was as if a monstrous animal with rows of jagged teeth gnawed at my arm, biting deep into the flesh, to the bone. I swayed on my feet, and Eleonora gripped my right arm, her hand around my waist holding me up.

  Beloved, Dominic’s mind was in mine. I am here.

  I sensed Stefan bracing Dominic as Eleonora braced me, until I went deep into communion, where there was nothing but me and Dominic, and then not even two of us, only the one being. My love, I said, I am here.

  My voice was steady, my pronunciation true as I spoke the ancient, obscure words, promising lifelong fidelity. So had my feet performed the unfamiliar dance steps of festival night, with rhythm and grace. I tender to you my property, my body and my– It was a strange word, but appropriate for the gifted, like “being” or “essence.” My soul. I give you myself, in its entirety. I will keep faith, until death do us part. Husband and wife, we spoke the same words.

  As the last sliver of darkness passed from the face of the sun, Dominic and I addressed each other as “my lady wife,” and “my lord husband.” Locked in communion, our skin seared by molten glass, we looked into the other’s silver eyelids, seeing only ourselves, while Eleonora and Stefan cut the fired metal from our flesh.

  And as the raw, cauterized wounds began their first scabbing over, I said goodbye to a lonely Terran woman, welcoming ’Gravina Aranyi who had taken her place.

  Stefan and Eleonora helped us down the steep stairs to the rooms below, where the household, led by Ranulf and Magali, Berend and Katrina, showered us with seeds, symbols of fertility. We were passed along from kitchen maid to stable boy, from cook to laundress, from cobbler to guard, everyone wishing us long life and good health, and many children, until we reached our bedroom where Naomi awaited us.

  The witch’s hands were gentle as she bathed our branded flesh in cold water and wrapped our arms in bandages steeped in analgesic. By the time of the second eclipse we would be slept out, our burns beginning the accelerated healing of communion.

  Tonight, we would celebrate our marriage in the traditional way, with a feast and a consummation, in our bed, in our home.

  BIRTH: Book Four of Eclipsis

  Can’t wait to find out what happens next? Here’s a preview of Birth, Book Four in the Eclipsis series of Lady Amalie’s memoirs:

  If only we could have stayed home. It’s the city that did it, I tell myself, a ridiculous lie from a city girl. But things went wrong from the start in Eclipsia City—and earlier, before we got there, as soon as we decided to go. The communion that had seemed stronger than the two of us combined weakened with each new conflict, until it unraveled like a cut rope, shaking us off into miserable freedom, even Stefan. Now, five months into our marriage, and back at Aranyi, Dominic and I must work to reestablish the connection. What had once flourished on its own, without any attention from us, now requires care. And so I have given Dominic a gift, arranged an opportunity for him, to show him that I have kept faith
as his wife, that I know his mind.

  ***

  Dominic and Lord Roger Zichmni ride through the deep snow. The horses walk carefully, putting each hoof down only after testing the frozen crust. The men ride single-file, Dominic’s hunter leading the way over familiar turf. They reach the hay barn in the time it would take to ride leisurely to the edge of the forest and back in summer.

  “Perhaps we should rest the horses,” Dominic says.

  “Perhaps,” Roger says, guessing Dominic’s thoughts. “I could use a rest myself.” He dismounts and pushes through the drifts into the deserted barn, Dominic following.

  I sit in the easy chair in my room, the book Dominic has given me, his own peace offering, lying untouched on the table. My hand rests on my pregnant belly, sliding over the wool of my dress that prickles like the hay. Hoping for Dominic’s success, a sign of our reconciliation.

  “She’s very gifted, your lady,” Roger says.

  Does he know it, I wonder, that I’m there in mind, with my husband?

  Yes, Amalie, Dominic answers. He knows. As I start to withdraw, No, stay, he murmurs, holding me in the communion. It’s always better when my lady wife shares it with me. His arm is around Roger’s shoulders; his mouth swoops for the kiss, and I gasp with the unexpected pleasure as Roger, also taken off guard, responds to the man who has fascinated and frightened him for so long.

  ***

  Even though he suspected it earlier, Roger is shocked when the communion reveals my presence in Dominic’s consciousness. “Your lady wife! You would force her to participate in your filthy—”