Guardians of the West

"What an absolutely splendid fellow you married, Ce'Nedra," Ran Borune exclaimed, eyeing the cherries greedily. "Put those right here, my boy." He patted the bed at his side.

Ce'Nedra flashed her husband a grateful little smile, took the basket from him, and deposited it by her father's side. Almost absently she took one of the cherries and popped it into her mouth.

"Ce'Nedra! You stop eating my cherries!"

"Just checking to see if they're ripe, father."

" Any idiot can see that they're ripe," he said, clutching the basket possessively to his side. "If you want any, go get your own." He carefully selected one of the plump, glowing cherries and put it in his mouth. "Marvelous," he said, chewing happily.

"Don't spit the seeds on the floor like that, father," Ce'Nedra reproved him.

"It's my floor," he told her. "Mind your own business. Spitting the seeds is part of the fun." He ate several more cherries. "We won't discuss how you came by these, Garion," he said magnanimously. "Technically, it's a violation of Tolnedran law to practice sorcery anywhere in the Empire, but we'll let it pass -just this once."

"Thank you, Ran Borune," Garion said. "I appreciate that."

After he had eaten about half of the cherries, the Emperor smiled and sighed contentedly. "I feel better already," he said. "Ce'Vanne used to bring me fresh cherries in that same kind of basket."

"My mother," Ce'Nedra said to Garion.

Ran Borune's eyes clouded over. "I miss her," he said very quietly. "She was impossible to live with, but I miss her more every day."

"I scarcely remember her"' Ce'Nedra said wistfully.

"I remember her very well," her father said. "I'd give my whole Empire if I could see her face just one more time."

Ce'Nedra took his wasted hand in hers and looked imploringly at Garion. "Could you?" she asked, two great tears standing in her eyes.

"I'm not entirely sure," he replied in some perplexity. "I think I know how it's done, but I never met your mother, so I'd have to- " He broke off, still trying to work it out in his mind. "I'm sure Aunt Pol could do it, but- " He came to the bedside. "We can try." he said. He took Ce'Nedra's other hand and then Ran Borune's, linking the three of them together.

It was extremely difficult. Ran Borune's memory was clouded by age and his long illness, and Ce'Nedra's remembrance of her mother was so sketchy that it could hardly be said to exist at all. Garion concentrated, bending all his will upon it. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead as he struggled to gather all those fleeting memories into one single image.

The light coming in through the flimsy curtains at the window seemed to darken as if a cloud had passed over the sun, and there was a faint, far-off tinkling sound, as if of small, golden bells. The room was suddenly filled with a kind of woodland fragrance -a subtle smell of moss and leaves and green trees. The light faded a bit more, and the tinkling and the odor grew stronger.

And then there was a hazy, nebulous luminosity in the air at the foot of the dying Emperor's bed. The glow grew brighter, and she was there. Ce'Vanne had been a bit taller than her daughter, but Garion saw instantly why Ran Borune had always so doted on his only child. The hair was precisely the same deep auburn; the complexion was that same golden-tinged olive; and the eyes were of that exact same green. The face was willful, certainly, but the eyes were filled with love.

The figure came silently around the bed, reaching out briefly in passing to touch Ce'Nedra's face with lingering, phantom fingertips. Garion could suddenly see the source of that small bell sound. Ce'Nedra's mother wore the two golden acorn earrings of which her daughter was so fond, and the two tiny clappers inside them gave off that faint, musical tinkle whenever she moved her head. For no particular reason, Garion remembered that those same earrings lay on his wife's dressing table back at Riva.

Ce'Vanne reached out her hand to her husband. Ran Borune's face was filled with wonder, and his eyes with tears.

"Ce'Vanne," he said in a trembling whisper, struggling to raise himself from his pillow. He pulled his shaking hand free from Garion's grasp and reached out toward her. For a moment their hands seemed to touch, and then Ran Borune gave a long, quavering sigh, sank back on his pillows, and died.

Ce'Nedra sat for a long time holding her father's hand as the faint, woodland smell and the echo of the little golden bells slowly subsided from the room and the light from the window returned. Finally she placed the wasted hand gently back on the coverlet, rose, and looked around the room with an almost casual air. "It's going to have to be aired out, of course," she said absently. "Maybe some cut flowers to sweeten the air." she smoothed the coverlet at the side of the bed and gravely looked at her father's body. Then she turned. "Oh, Garion," she wailed, suddenly throwing herself into his arms.

Garion held her, smoothing her hair and feeling the shaking of her tiny body against him and looking all the while at the still, peaceful face of the Emperor of Tolnedra. It may have been some trick of the light, but it almost seemed that there was a smile on Ran Borune's lips.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The state funeral for Emperor Ran Borune XXIII of the Third Borune Dynasty took place a few days later in the Temple of Nedra, Lion God of the Empire. The temple was a huge marble building not far from the Imperial Palace. The altar was backed by a vast fan of pure, beaten gold, with the head of a lion in its center. Directly in front of the altar stood the simple marble bier of Ce'Nedra's father. The late Emperor lay in calm repose, covered from the neck down by a cloth of gold. The column-lined inner hall of the temple was filled to overflowing as the members of the great families vied with one another, not so much to pay their respects to Ran Borune, but rather to display the opulence of their clothing and the sheer weight of their personal adornment.Garion and Ce'Nedra, both dressed in deepest mourning, sat beside General Varana at the front of the vast hall as the eulogies were delivered. Tolnedran politics dictated that a representative of each of the major houses should speak upon this sad occasion. The speeches, Garion suspected, had been prepared long in advance. They were all quite flowery and tiresome, and each one seemed to be directed at the point that, although Ran Borune was gone, the Empire lived on.

Many of the speakers seemed quite smug about that.

When the eulogies had at last been completed, the white-robed High Priest of Nedra, a pudgy, sweating man with a grossly sensual mouth, arose and stepped to the front of the altar to add his own contribution. Drawing upon events in the life of Ran Borune, he delivered a lengthy homily on the advantages of having wealth and using it wisely. At first Garion was shocked by the High Priest's choice of subject matter, but the rapt faces of the throng in the temple told him that a sermon about money was very moving to a Tolnedran congregation and that the High Priest, by selecting such a topic, was able thereby to slip in any number of laudatory comments about Ce'Nedra's father.