The duke walked, agitated, back and forth in front of the high table where King Myrl sat. His glorious and beautifully prepared feast almost entirely ignored as he watched the man gesticulate madly as he walked and ranted loudly at the crowd assembled for the celebratory feast.
Just as earlier, Myrl could somehow feel what every person in the feast hall was feeling. Everyone save for Lord Ashe. It was a worrying phenomena.
An hour ago Myrl had begun to realize the Ring of State he now wore, the ring that Raoh had placed on his hand at the beginning of the coronation, was the cause. While he hadn’t had time to Delve the ring to find the enchantment, Myrl’s finger bones had begun to lightly buzz and burn everytime someone nearby was angry or annoyed.
When he had been in the midst of the ceremony, once he had gotten it moving again after the nonsense with Feesin and his sons, Myrl had had a moment on the throne, wearing this ring, and this crown, where he thought, briefly, that his head might explode in a flash of pain as it played over and through his head. At the time, he had marked it up to the various stresses he had been under.
But then the High Priest, Arne Raoh, had laid his hands on the crown, and said a final blessing, and all of the pain had fled. Washed away with a word in High Rhiadan, and a gesture from the solid, blocky, calloused hands of the priest. Like the popping of a soap bubble, the pain vanished.
“...and THEN, my good Lords and Laaaadies…” Duke Ceirian was drawing out the word “Ladies'' as if to make it salacious. To his shame, Myrl had lost the thread of the story the man was telling.
In point of fact, Myrl had long since lost track of what the man was actually saying, but remained impressed by the vehemence with which the man was willing to defend his position. As sure as a grovelhog is slower than a gull, this man is loud, prickly, and not getting to the heart of the matter anytime soon. Myrl thought. Why in the name of the Spirit of Irony, if there is such a being, is it always the prickly ones who can never get to the point?
The crown sat awkwardly on his head. Its weight was becoming both burdensome and untenable. Myrl was going to enjoy taking it off all too much once he was back in his chambers.
The beautifully crafted abomination of steel, gold, silver, and gems fit the dimensions of his head. It fit him quite well. Some might even say it was perfectly suited to his brow. Much of the last week had seen two of the Holy Smiths working out of the Temple under HIgh Priest Raoh making sure the Crown of State would fit him perfectly.
But it was so heavy.
it was something he knew he would have to get used to wearing.
He knew the smaller crown, what some called the “Daily Crown,” would wear better on his head than the current monstrosity, but just hours past his coronation, Myrl knew that THIS crown, his hereditary crown, was the one that the High Lords and Ladies of his court would expect him to wear. Both at State occasions like this one, and for the Monthly High Court sessions he would have to hold to address the needs of his citizens and the various official petitioners. Oh…joy…
This was a very small part of the “obligation” the monarchy had to its people. He couldn’t wear his comfortable clothing anymore. At least, he suspected, not in public. He had to, he knew. be The King from this moment forward, for the rest of his life.
The rest of his life.
All of it.
And now… as he kept a smile that said “Mildly interested” on his face, and his eyes dutifully followed the baltering duke who continued in the telling a (humorous?) story to those assembled, Myrl suddenly wondered what his Father thought on the night of his own coronation.
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King Myol had ascended to the Throne when he was almost 30 years old, and was already once widowed and had been about to take the woman who would be Myrl’s mother as his second wife.
Myrl could feel the dual strain of his eyes wanting to tear up, and widen in shock at the view he suddenly had of the rest of his life spooling out before him like the nets cast by the local fishermen who worked from atop the Teeth of Jibiril Bay. Now Myrl truly smiled, he liked this analogy.
He wasn’t standing before a void. He was situated before the entire ocean, and he needed to cast his nets carefully to gain those precious hauls from the dark waters that would ensure both he and his kingdom thrived on what he could catch.
His smile was approaching smug, he knew. Ashe would chide him for it. He would also needle at Myrl to discover why his mood had shifted so readily. And now Myrl wondered why his ring would show him everyone’s mood but that of Lord Ashe.
Was it because Ashe was constantly setting wards upon himself, as he had taught Myrl to do? Myrl wondered at this.
Down the high table from where Myrl sat, the High Priest, and his entire retinue, burst into laughter at whatever Duke Ceirian had just shouted out, throwing his arms out in a gesture that begged his captive audience to just the size of …something? Looking to the opposite end of his table from the priest, he saw the Duchesses Yggrel and Kalenia smiled, and even laughed a little at the performing duke’s antics. Yggrel’s son was drowsing heavily beside her. Kalenia’s son, Vorner, was nowhere to be seen, his cup full, but his plates empty, and gleamingly clean.
That mouse never misses a morsel. With that thought, Myrl had to stop himself from singing the tavern song he had learned from the soldiers in Jibiril.
From his seat at a table near the center of the hall, Admiral Galler Kleinhoff bellowed with laughter at the story. With a deeper voice than his small, tidy frame would bely, the man guffawed with gusto equally at Ceirian’s words as at his antics. Even Galler’s large crewmen, all wearing uniforms of Kleinhoff’s fleet that picked the much larger, and very human, men out as high ranking officers. They were all enjoying the food, the wine, and the spectacle.
Myrl allowed both a chuckle and a broader smile to cross his face. Ceirian’s bald pate, glowing with the sweat of his endeavors, flickered with reflected light from the thousands of candles that worked with hundreds of mirrors around the feast hall to illuminate the festivities. The man was working hard to entertain the new king, his guests, and the High Court assembled tonight.
With a flourish worthy of a professional tumbler. the duke spun as he shouted “Annnnnnd THAT was how the DONKEY learned to FLY!”
And then once his spin brought him back to facing the king where he sat at the high table, he fell backwards into the waiting arms of two of his own retinue from the Duchy of Toodvelt. With that final phrase, Myrl realized the man had just spent most of an hour turning a children’s fable into an incredibly cynical and raunchy performance. Myrl, noticed through the ring that the majority of the feast-goers were suppressing laughter, and some few were curious about how their young King had received the show.
Myrl stood, began clapping, and allowed himself to laugh at the duke’s offering of entertainment.
Instantly, Myrl could feel, as well as hear the happiness and laughter bubbling up from the crowd. On an impulse, he reached into the small chest attached to his chair beneath the view of most of those in attendance, and pulled from it a small gold ring.
At Ashe’s prompting, Myrl had commissioned a selection of gold and silver rings to give out as largess. It had been a common enough practice for special occasions in the kingdom under his parents, and his father’s parents, and so on back in time.
His uncle and Aunt had stopped the practice, choosing other methods to reward those who pleased them.
Holding the ring up, Myrl noticed it had a cockatrice engraved into its broad face. Myrl laughed even louder now, and tossed the ring to the duke where he was still being held supine by his retainers. “My good Duke of Toodvelt, I cannot give you a ring with a flying donkey on it, but please take this in its place. And thank you for that …LOVELY… tale!” here he thought adding a note of sarcasm might fit the occasion.
Ceirian’s hand whipped out, and caught the jewelry as it spun through the air towards him.
Myrl didn’t know if it had been what he had said to the duke or the catch, but the assembled diners erupted in cheers and laughter.
He could feel them through the ring he now wore. He could feel them all.
“I can do this.” he whispered to himself as he laughed in the shared abandon of this moment along with his Kingdom. “I can cast my nets, and haul in the bounty my people need.”