The Game Beyond by Scott Melissa

Author:Scott, Melissa [Scott, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1984-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Oriana’s funeral was held two days before the coronation, over two standard weeks after her death. The stasis-held body had lain for that time in the Cathedral, generally ignored by nobility and commoners; it would have lain there for as long as it had taken for a definite heir to appear. The ceremony was widely broadcast—by tradition and Convention only majores attended—and the rites were observed. All over the Imperium, the nobility wore mourning white, and Domi banners were lowered. In the Palace and across the Straits in Government Center, all work stopped for eight hours, the formal holiday welcomed without much regard for its cause.

In the darkened Cathedral, the walls still opaqued in mourning, Keira knelt in the chief mourner’s place, closest to the glowing bier. The icy glare of the stasis field was the only light in the long nave; the priests moved like ghosts at the altar, even their droning chant distorted by the field. Within the enclosure of the light, Oriana’s broad features seemed unchanged, pale and angry even in death. Keira, the memory of the marriage contract he had signed the day before still heavy in him, could not take his eyes from her. She would have killed him, had she suspected such a move. Had she lived, he would neither have dared nor wished to make such an alliance.

The priests moved close again, surrounding the bier and momentarily dimming the cold light. Smoke billowed from their censers, casting new and shifting shadows across the front of the nave. The stuff dissipated quickly enough, but even so, Keira caught a choking breath of the thick, cloying incense. He smothered his cough, heard other muted noises among the majores behind him. The sound was drowned quickly by renewed chanting. Keira, with the others, made the proper responses, speaking the words that ended the ceremony. The priests formed into a final escort, two by two, censers still smoking, and the chief celebrants touched the controls that lifted the bier and sent it floating solemnly in the wake of the procession of lesser priests. The Guardsmen that lined the aisle, their formal armor mourning silver rather than the gold of celebration, snapped to attention. Keira rose, folding his hands into the wide sleeves of his coat, and took his place directly behind the bier. He was close enough to feel the faint tingling chill that radiated from the field. Doran and another of the senior Guards took their places flanking him, and the procession moved slowly to the door, the other majores joining it one by one.

The first priests reached the end of the nave, and the massive doors rolled back with a low rumbling. The midday sun struck in, cruelly bright, erasing the cooler light of the stasis field. Keira winced, blinded; he stumbled slightly on the low threshold and the jarring seemed to shake free his Talent. The funeral was not merely Oriana’s, a still voice whispered as his sight cleared, and he saw the path of the cortege neatly marked across the immaculate lawns of the Palace.

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