Chương 257: 12.2

Jewel tried to maintain her composure while she stood in the absolutely astounding opulence of the Capital Palace's waiting hall. Paul held the tiny hand of Gem, his thumb gently massaging her palm in slow circles. Helping to soothe both of her bodies with the regular motions. She squeezed his finger back with her slender fingers in thanks. It would only be the three of them at the High King's Table. Jewel had no idea where Fizzbunches had gone.

Smithson was with Muriel seeing that the chambers set aside for the Viznove party were sufficient. Dariusz and his family had disappeared into the staggeringly vast expanse of hallways and floors almost immediately upon arriving in the courtyard of the palace. Led by a servant in finery fit for one of Jewel's more opulent vassals! The sheer wealth for even the dress of the Capital's staff made Jewel glad she mostly could do without such things as a Wyrm.

She had already seen what might very well have been the annual tithe to Viznove enter the high king's feasting hall in embroidery alone! Well over a dozen parties before them so far and many dressed well enough to shame the late Bathory herself. Lesser nobles, priests and guild representatives. The lowest or least honored taken in first as was familiar and proper. But their wealth had belittled those that yet remained to be called. It spoke of the sheer riches that filled the Realm.

For even its minor nobles to be so finely dressed. The vastness of the Capital still made Jewel want to reel under its immensity. Every building in Midtown, the wall fort and the Kaeketeh Keep could have comfortably fit within the 'grounds' of the palace. Said grounds being more than two thirds built upon stone arched bridges that hung over the widest incoming river of the many crossing waterways of Burning Depths Ford! And those bridges! A monument of stonework that each utterly dwarfed Jewel's Manor house.

If it had taken a good portion of the labor of Rochford over years to make such a small work (quarried in place) as her house? Just how many men and how many years had been spent on just the foundational bridges of the palace?! How many barges had carried these stones from distant lands?

And they were foreign stones, Jewel's every step told her the whispered tale, some recent and others long past of the different sky they had first felt when pulled free and apart from the mountains and cliffs they once rested in and under. Dozens of Quarries scattered across the world. Jewel had read of the scope of the The Realm of Cantor Reborn. She had done the sums and thought that meant she understood. But the palace alone dwarfed every estimation she had thought she comprehended.

And then there was the rest of the city! A multilayered thing of canals, bridges and aqueducts! Old cantor stoneworks aged as the original solar dynasty held aloft entire rivers (complete with trade barges and fishing boats!) overhead. In places they arched two or in one place even three rivers deep, stacked one over another! The stone arches solid pieces of some sorcerous working. Shaped and called forth in place by long gone wizards. But even now the word of their sorcery is still echoing.

The stones murmuring in their sleepy whisper of centuries passed. And even without the voice of the stones Jewel would guess a great age to these works. For around, under and between the solid wrought bedrock of mountain roots called to man made forms were other structures, airy villas and other stacked and packed houses which reeked of sweat and sleeping men. Bakeries and the grinding of millstones, the creaking wooden spinning of them coming from sluices cut off the sides of the 'raised rivers'.

The city was a tangled forest of stone and waterways. And everywhere were marvels! But most of all the Capital was full of people! Every street was packed with men, women and children. Rich nobles and poor commoners, peddlers and laborers in crafts Jewel could not even guess at. She was not even sure how many of them were in fact commoners so rich and embroidered were some of their clothing! And as in Kaeketeh where there were people there was noise. Noise and stink.

In the Palace all of that was distant and thankfully muted. But the trip there had been like wading through a mire of scent and noise. The voices in foreign tongues chanting together with the heave of exertion. Shouts of foremen from docks well over Jewel's head! Sometimes they even were heaving burdens from a boat above by ropes and wooden frames over and down too one docked below!

A bustle of bags, barrels, pots and even a few times Jewel could spot the despondent visage of a Mule dangling at least twenty feet over the street below! Jewel was thankful for the size of the Capital Palace and its wonderful enclosing stone walls. The friendly masonry was proud of her gratitude, perhaps firming up just that bit more in their mortar behind the white plaster of the room. Ready to hold up the high vaulted ceilings all around her for that much longer against their own weight.

Just for the simple thanks she offered that they helped smother the sound and smells of a city so enormous it escaped all reckoning. Kaeketeh stacked on top of itself twelve times over was no match to the population, goods or buildings in a narrow slice of Burning Depths Ford! Jewel turned to consider some of those who were waiting with her in the chambers. Ranked close to her own due honor as a Countess by the simple fact they were still here awaiting the crier to call them. A man perhaps a head taller than Paul.

Dressed in something that Jewel could almost say was the finery fit for one of the nobility in Viznove. But he had none of the colors of her vassals or their families. Neither did he have any sigils which she was Familiar with from the neighboring counties of the Ridgetails. He stood alone but had spared Jewel a single glance before dismissing her. Such confident seeming disregard to a wyrm spoke of character. His fear was welling up in the sweat under his clothes of course, but he did not show it on his face.

A clear sign of bravery. The others had considerably weaker mettle. Their fear was open on their faces and when they thought Jewel was not looking (Gem was) they gave her furtive glances. Two of them had the look of local Barons to the Valley of man. That is to say they wore a ransom that would beggar Rochford in embroidered coats, gowns and furs. Which was an understandable custom. Sunlit the valley might be but shallow was the air between land and sky. The nights were harsh indeed.

Three others had clothing and colors Jewel could not place at all. But when they spoke among themselves? It was the strangest thing Jewel had ever experienced in her life. Her mother's words, but on the lips and tongues of strangers. A disquieting phantom of memory. It was not exactly the same, but the sounds cut and aborted just as Jewel had long grown familiar. Who were they? She lowered her head down to her husband and whispered softly.

Keeping her tone quiet to avoid disturbing any of her fellow guests for the welcoming feast.

"Paul, do you recognize the tongue they speak? Or their heraldry and colors?" Her husband turned from Jewel to look at the man and the woman. Considering carefully.

"I am uncertain, They could be from the lands of the freemen? Or the north folk, I'm not well versed in the tongues spoken east of the heartlands of the Realm. Maybe their Saszon? Or from the tinhills?" Before Jewel could decide if she wanted to try asking the strangers from where they came the crier for the High King called out.

"His Royal Highness Mathias of House Stein, High King of the Realm of Cantor Reborn, Welcomes Æthelred the Second of House Gewisse and family to his table!" Jewel squinted with Gem's eyes to avoid being too obvious in her judgment. The strange foreign yet familiar speaking people certainly did not look like they were wearing anywhere near the finery fit for a visiting king. For all their strangeness the garb seemed honestly worse then what Paul was wearing and he was a Baron Consort!

A brief revealing of the golden light of candles and roaring fires filled the entry hallway before again being snuffed out behind closed doors. Next came the gaggle of Barons which Jewel had already deemed unimportant despite their position with her. There had been a dozen others just like them ahead of her and she thought it likely this was purely a show of favor for their low ranking. But Jewel did not have long to look after them as they also passed the great doors of the High King's feasting halls.

Only a moment past the doors closing entirely and hiding the scant view of brightly lit feasting tables the crier was calling welcome to the next actually interesting figure in the party and Jewel got to learn just who the strange man was.

"Lord Vladimer the Third of House Basarab, Prince in exile of the Vlach Lands!" A name and a place then, but Jewel was unsure of the exact providence there of. It Sounded like a Ridgetail name to Jewel. But she honestly could not say she recalled it amongst any of her peers. But there was an intensity to Paul's face that suggested he recognized it. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

But again before they could even begin to consider speaking, she was called.

"Lady Jewel of House Rochford, Countess and Shining Wyrm of Viznove and her family!" The doors parted before Jewel and as custom and propriety dictated they strode into the space, Paul, Gem and Jewel herself. Gem's dress was a fine thing, made well fitting and embroidered and dyed in the colors of both her families. Striking black and red with silver thread to stand in for the Rochford sky. Loose enough in the sleeves, waist and skirts to let her walk, stand, bend or run as she was wont.

It aided in the easy and practiced grace that Jewel had always seen her mother enter a hall. Gem now had a face held in a match with Jewel's own. Soft lipped but neither smiling foolishly nor scowling insultingly. An easy and carefully formed benevolence for all whose eyes fell upon her. She entered through double doors that were easily tall enough for her to comfortably enter and wide enough as they opened to barely need her wings to fold.

The room beyond was a warm gold, orange and pale yellow in the veritable forest of candles and lanterns which gave it illumination. Making of the vast open expanse of hard black stone tiles like a clearing in a grove of trees. But instead of leaves their black iron branches held aloft flames and pure white candle wax. What she had thought were fires instead just incredibly dense clusters of burning wicks and white wax.

Musicians plucked instruments Jewel found familiar and foreign and they added a delicate undercurrent to the mostly quiet murmuring of conversation. The height of the feasting hall was however the most impressive thing about the room. Jewel had long grown accustomed to every indoor space's highest point being one she could reach up and touch if desired. But here she would have had to leap to brush it. The ceiling of the High King's feasting hall was a vast thing.

It arced overhead so high that most of the curving expanse was lost in shadows despite the candlelight being almost as bright as noon day sun! But even so shaded it was not invisible. No it glittered like a woven tapestry of the night sky. Shining with hints of silver in the forms of the zodiac. Each of the seventeen animals was illustrated in glittering threads of gold and beads of shining silver. The Serpent, The Lion, The Storm, The Twins!

They were all there, although some of the features embellished were strange compared to those Jewel had seen in her books. The twins were some kind of dog for one instead of the more familiar rabbits. From the glittering illustration the roof itself was shaped as all one curved piece and it was joined and supported by seventeen wide columns of solid stone which slumbered where they stood.

Each securely rooted even deeper into more solid foundations that went arcing out beneath and from there all the way to the very bedrock of the earth. Jewel had felt this elsewhere the entire palace was not made all in one piece of uncut stone. Most of it was not. The walls and the stone arch of the doors she had just walked through were cut and shaped and placed between these columns. As were the walls set up to the ceiling.

So too the balconies to either side where the musicians played and some kind of scented herbs were tended. But the High King Mathias' dining hall's main supports were all one single thing. Moreso the Dome and the wide bridge it extended from were all wrought together by sorcery many long centuries past. A part of a singular span of solid rock which crossed the river below.

Jewel had to shake her head and turn her attention back down from the disquieting sensation of actually being dwarfed by a single room after so long. The arrangement of the tables and seating was different from how Jewel had seen before, either at home or staying as guests. Instead of having two long lines and one head, or some similar arrangement which extended them lengthwise the High King of the Realm was elevated with his wife and queen on one side of a partial ring of a table.

The hoop of it was laden in fine silver dishes and framed by high backed chairs. The half ring of seated guests had a gap wide enough for Jewel to pass with her wings held tightly against her back, although not enough room to contain all of her without some rather severe coiling. At the king's beckoning Jewel, Paul and Gem approached. The eyes of the other nobility and important personages of the Realm following them. They stopped in the open space of the horse shoe shaped table. Surrounded on three sides.

The nobility of the Realm appraised her. Thurzó was a welcome familiar face, although he was affecting a similar masked benevolence as Jewel. The High King had seen to arrange the empty space without a chair for Jewel on the Count of Arva's right. Only one place from the High King himself. The chairs for Gem and Paul were several places further down the line, next to the Lord Vladimer, in his Ridgetail seeming finery. Æthelred and his party were next after the strange prince. It was a very esteemed place.

Jewel dipped her head, not so low as to suggest she had fully accepted Mathias as her liege. But enough to be a courteous guest to a king. Just as all of her prospective vassals had before her. Then spoke the words as was proper for her place as guest in his house.

"High King Mathias of House Stein, I thank you for this welcome to your home and table. As we have shared a meal in my family's home I look forward to sharing one in yours." Jewel watched the crowd openly from the low vantage of Gem. It was harder than doing so from the height of her long wyrmish neck. But also far less overt. A child of Gem's stature was mostly ignored by adults. Or when her curious eye was noticed, even encouraged with smiles, rebuffed by blank stares or mocked by momentary sneers.

Mathias beamed up at Jewel from his throne.

"And you are welcome at my table Jewel of House Rochford, Countess and Shining Wyrm of Viznove. Come join us and let us feast in welcome camaraderie tonight!" The only standout to her smaller self's scrutiny was the delighted wave of some older woman with gray hair and so many pearls hanging from her neck it looked like her entire front was a shimmering rainbow white of the beads.

More interesting however was Jewel neither saw nor smelled surprise from her capacity for eloquent speech from anyone in that wide hoop of a table except the few foreigners. House Gewisse and their foreign yet familiar muttering were the most overtly wary of her. But in a bizarre way the court of the Capital of Cantor Reborn seemed far more comfortable with Jewel than any other table of strangers Jewel had ever met. Some still stank of their view of her. But they kept it to themselves.

A few glares directed at the king when neither Jewel's nor Mathias and his closest seated subjects were looking made Jewel think that probably the restrained ire for her person was actually for the King.

"Now be seated my most honored guests." That definitely caused a bristling to those who had gone before Jewel but she didn't see why. Obviously the High King had already acknowledged he held her in greatest esteem for having her wait to be seated last. She nodded to the High King again, Both with her larger and smaller self as did Paul. Then each of them made their way to their places at the table. The High King Raised his hands.

"Now my Guests, tonight we have some true wonders to enjoy this evening. Some of which have come to us all the way from the Blessed Solar Lands and the Pantheon of Old Cantor itself!" Jewel turned to one of the side doors where the finely dressed staff were pulling the doors apart to reveal a cloth covered form. And then Jewel felt something in the world lurch queasily as the shape was slowly rolled into the room.

The grinding of the stone cylinders and the faintest creaking of such nearly cracking under their burden drew some of her senses. But the strain of the stones bearing the object's weight was mostly drowned out by Jewel's disorientation. It was deeply disquieting, almost like the stone beneath her was sliding ever so slightly and slipping away beneath her.

Whatever the sensation was though it ended when the object was halted in its motion (under great strain of the servants guiding it) in full view of all the seated guests. Visible but yet cloaked by a near black dyed cloth. It was just over ten feet across and eight tall. It had taken the muscle of twenty men to move and stop it. Each of which was now heavy in sweat according to Jewel and Gem's nose. The wyrm shifted uneasily, what had that been? There were no hints of faux flame or sorcery.

No one at the table had reacted to anything happening at all. Jewel held back the desire to flare her wings. Even if the dining hall actually had the room for it. Gem had not felt anything strange either. There was something ominous that had just happened from the unknown object covered in black cloth. The vaguely familiar man spoke and his voice scratched at a memory.

"Esteemed guests of the High Court of Cantor Reborn! I Peter Bulchava present to you this treasure wrought by the greatest mysteries in crafted artifice! A work of divine blessing, sorcerous arcana and mortal artistry! Truly the singular and greatest achievement and wonder of this age!" And then with a sign from the High King and a flourishing bow by the oddly familiar man in shining finery at the side of the strange black rectangle- The drapery was thrown aside.

And there before the entire dining hall and all its guests was an idyllic garden under a shining starlit sky. Not a tapestry, not an image. Jewel leaned her long neck to the side and confirmed that the clothing had not obscured some strange trickery or somehow blotted out the distinct feeling of faux fire. But no such artifice was present. It was like a section of the dining hall ten feet by eight had been cut into an open sky garden, with a glittering pool of water and a few trees.

It however was not against a wall. It was by Jewel's judgment not even framed or backed by much more than two of Gem's hands in the width of wooden timbres! But to every one of Jewel's senses, not only did it look like the strange exterior garden under open sky was somehow simply sitting there in the middle of a definitely interior feasting hall? But she could feel the world of it going out into its own expanse of open air. However there was something unsettling and eerie about it.

The strange garden and all its trees, shrubbery, water, stone, rock and shrub. Every single thing in that strange expanse that was visible to her. And felt beyond what could be seen? The silver haired man with finery so rich bowed to the guests and then took a few steps into the garden. Jewel stared, she could feel the dining room behind the garden's frame. The man was not standing in that space. No he was within the frame.

Somehow a space outside had been framed and backed by wooden timbres, He continued to wander around then walked back out and bowed to one of the lowest esteemed guests on one end of the table. Asking to borrow an empty clear glass goblet from them. Then returned to the garden 'outside' and scooped a serving from the little pool of water. Carrying it back out into the feasting hall for all to see before he took a long draft from it and exhaled theatrically.

Offering the glass back to the guest who bemusedly took his own sip before widening his eyes and downing the entire glass. There was delicate applause. But shocking to Jewel very little other interest. As if this was some simple act of sorcery. All around her were muttered meaningless and insincere praise. Jewel however could only stare at the glass, at the two men that downed the water and relished it. The water that yet clung to the glass, that still stirred and moved in their bodies now and wet their lips.

That water and everything from that garden held in its frame scraped at Jewel's senses. Everything from that strange place but the air itself was incredibly young. By the sunrises and sunsets it had felt she was certain it could not have been more than three years old! Genuinely youthful in a way Jewel had never ever felt from the world before. Jewel was so absorbed in staring at the impossibility before her she missed them bringing forth the first course of the meal!