The Diamond tddts-9
Page 7
And the hammer fell.
Some say it was not the paladin's golden hammer but a crack of lightning sent by Tyr himself that leapt down through the chapel to strike the glass-covered coffin. But such folk were often enough wrong about daily weather predictions to call into question their grasp of divine thunderstorms.
Others said Khelben the Blackstaff worked an enchantment so powerful that it not only left the Lord Mage drained for three days but gave Halaster in Undermountain a splitting headache and temporarily enhanced the power and endurance of another smaller though no less mythically proportioned hammer in the possession of one Old Mage of Shadowdale.
Those with honest eyes, more interested in one man's simple passion than all the Tyr-storms and spells on Toril, say that the hammer blow was borne home by nothing more than Piergeiron's love for Shaleen.
A crack like thunder… a burst of glass… and as the shining fragments flew skyward, Piergeiron lifted his lady free.
Glass showered down.
A great cheer fountained up.
Even Miltiades was elated. He would later describe the event as nothing less than a divine epiphany.
Piergeiron swung his lady around into an embrace. "Shaleen! You're alive!" He clutched her tightly, driving the new breath from her lungs. "I went down into death to find you. I dreamed of you entrapped in a great diamond, and here you are!"
"Here I am," she replied, wondering and solemn. There was a moment of distance, of silent abstraction, and then the wide, lopsided grin of old spread itself across her face.
Piergeiron buried that grin with a kiss, and the best and brightest of all high Waterdeep were reduced to hooting adolescents shouting out encouragements.
The dirge-musicians struck up a lively reel, and in moments all the room was dancing. The cries, shouts, and laughter made a greater din than the midnight battle that had started this whole crazed affair of diamonds and death and the Utter East. Flailing arms and tossing up gowns, the dancers spilled out into the halls of the palace, and from there into the streets.
With a spell that made his voice thunder, Khelben stopped the music. "Hold! What is this unseemly hurly-burly? Jigs? Reels? Dancing in the chapel? Kissing and cavorting? These are not seemly things for so reverent and auspicious a ceremony!"
"What ceremony?" shouted back Lasker Nesher sourly. He was perhaps the only Waterdhavian not cavorting. "This is the third time you've thrown a funeral, and each time the body gets up and dances. There's no ceremony! I'm never coming to a funeral here again!"
"There's no funeral ceremony," Khelben replied, "but if those two keep kissing that way, there'd better be a wedding!"
This time it was an elated Piergeiron himself who answered, "What're you squawking about, Old Crow? This is my wife!"
"Oh, no, she's not!" the mage thundered so definitively that a chill and cries of dismay ran through the crowd. "I was at your wedding to Shaleen. In my clear recollection, your vows involved the words 'Until death do us part.'"
"Yes," Piergeiron confirmed slowly, realization dawning.
Khelben shook his beard like a lion shaking out its mane. "Well, I don't know a couple around here who's been more dead than you two!"
"A wedding!" Noph shouted suddenly, and the cry carried through the crowd.
"Yes!" Khelben cried. "This began with two attempts at wedding Eidola-may she rest in peace-and ended with three tries at burying Shaleen. We can't have the funerals outnumber the weddings! So to your seats, everyone! You two lovebirds: to me!"
The roar of the crowd redoubled as nobles and guildsmen clambered across benches, musicians tuned instruments like madmen, and the priest of Ao shredded his eulogy, hurled it into the air, and paced in a tight circle, trying to recall what he could of the wedding rite.
Through all this tumult, Piergeiron reached Khelben at the back of the chapel. "Well, Lord Mage, you were such an observant witness the last time I married Shaleen, I must ask you to be best man this time!"
Khelben's gray-grizzled beard didn't quite hide his rare but rueful smile. "Thanks, but nay. I want to keep my hands free. This is one ceremony I don't want interrupted." He put a hand on the Open Lord's shoulder and pointed at a particular member of the crowd. "Besides, there's a better candidate-"
"Better than the Lord Mage of Waterdeep?"
"Here's a young man who single-handedly foiled an assassination attempt at your last wedding, rounded up the conspirators, bravely fought bloodforge warriors and fiends and his own fears, revealed Eidola for what she was, rescued Miltiades and his fellows numerous times, and has in this month done nothing but tirelessly fight for the people of Waterdeep. He's even taught me a few things about heroism. In fact, I think so highly of Noph Nesher that I suggest he join us as a Lord of Waterdeep."
Piergeiron smiled. "Noph Nesher? That man there? That tanned, brawny scrapper-the one rising just now to give his seat to yon fat lady? Wasn't he just a boy locked away in my dungeon during the last wedding? He seems a completely new man."
Khelben nodded. "So do you, friend. So do you."
Postlude
Lord and Lady
How has this happened?
In one evening, I've been transformed from that inward-shrinking worm back into Piergeiron Paladinson, Open Lord of Waterdeep. The will of dust has changed. All of me sings. All that was once sundered has come together.
Ah, well, I should've expected transformations. I chose to orbit a changeable star. Shaleen. It is so good to hear your breath, to feel your warmth beside me.
Awake again? Heigh ho, girl, but when you rise from the dead, you rise!
Oh, to sleep… But that's not the point of honeymoons, is it?
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