The bearers halted outside the closed doors of the ceremonial hall while two maidens dedicated to the service of Chochocan pinned coloured veils to Mara’s headdress. Into her hands they pressed a wreath wound of ribbons, shatra feathers, and thyza reed, to signify the interdependence of spirit and flesh, of earth and sky, and the sacred union of husband and wife. Mara held the circlet lightly, afraid her damp palms might mar the silk ribbons. The brown-and-white-barred plumes of the shatra betrayed her trembling as four elegantly garbed maidens closed around her litter. They were all daughters of Acoma allies, friends Mara had known in girlhood. While their fathers might keep their distance politically, for this one day they were again her dear friends. Their warm smiles as the nuptial procession formed could not ease Mara’s apprehension. She might enter the great hall as the Ruling Lady of the Acoma, but she would leave as the wife of Buntokapi, a woman like all other women who were not heirs, an adornment to further the honour and comfort of her Lord. After a short ceremony before the natami in the sacred glade, she would own no rank, except through the grace of her husband.
Keyoke and Papewaio grasped the wooden door rings and pulled, and silently the painted panels slid wide. A gong sounded. Musicians played reed pipes and flutes, and her bearers started forward. Mara blinked, fighting tears. She held her head high beneath her veils as she was carried before the eyes of the greatest dignitaries and families in the Empire. The ceremony which would join her fate to that of Buntokapi of the Anasati was now beyond the power of any man to prevent.
Through the coloured veils the assembled guests appeared as shadows to Mara. The wood walls and floors smelled of fresh wax and resins, blending with the fragrance of flowers as the slaves bore her up the stairs of a fringed dais built in two layers. They set her litter down upon the lower level and withdrew, leaving her at the feet of the High Priest of Chochocan and three acolytes, while her maiden attendants seated themselves on cushions beside the stair. Dizzied by the heat and the nearly overpowering smoke from the priest’s censer, Mara fought to catch her breath. Though she could not see beyond the priests’ dais, she knew that by tradition Buntokapi had entered the hall simultaneously from the opposite side, on a litter adorned with paper decorations that symbolized arms and armour. By now he sat level with her on the priests’ right hand. His robes would be as rich and elaborate as her own and his face hidden by the massive plumed mask fashioned expressly for weddings by some long-distant Anasati forebear.
The High Priest raised his arms, palms turned towards the sky, and intoned the opening lines. ‘In the beginning, there was nothing but power in the minds of the gods. In the beginning, they formed with their powers darkness and light, fire and air, land and sea, and lastly man and woman. In the beginning, the separate bodies of man and woman re-created the unity of the gods’ thought from which they were created, and so were children begotten between them, to glorify the power of the gods. This day, as in the beginning, we are gathered to affirm the unity of the gods’ will, through the earthly bodies of this young man and woman.’
The priest lowered his hands. A gong chimed, and boy chanters sang a phrase describing the dark and the light of creation. Then, with the squeak of sandals and the rustle of silk, brocades, beads, and jewelled feathers, the assembled guests rose to their feet.
The priest resumed his incantation, and Mara fought the urge to reach beneath her veils and scratch her nose. The pomp and the formality of the ceremony made her recall an incident from her early girlhood, when she and Lano had come home from a state wedding similar to the one she sat through now. As children, they had played bride and groom, Mara seated on the sun-baked boards of a thyza wagon, her hair decked out in akasi flowers. Lano had worn a marriage mask of mud-baked clay and feathers, and the ‘priest’ had been an aged slave the children had badgered into wearing a blanket for the occasion. Sadly Mara tightened her fingers; the ceremonial wreath in her hands was real this time, not a child’s imitation braided of grasses and vines. Were Lanokota alive to be here, he would have teased and toasted her Tiappiness. But Mara knew that inwardly he would have been weeping.
The priest intoned another passage, and the gong rang. The guests reseated themselves upon cushions, while the acolyte on the dais lit incense candles. Heavy scent filled the hall as the High Priest recited the virtues of the First Wife. As he finished each – chastity, obedience, mannerliness, cleanliness, and fecundity – Mara bowed and touched her forehead to the floor. And as she straightened, a purple-robed acolyte with dyed feet and hands removed one of her veils, white for chastity, blue for obedience, rose for mannerliness, until only a thin green veil for Acoma honour remained.
The gauzy fabric still itched, but at least Mara could see her surroundings. The Anasati sat to the groom’s side of the dais, just as the Acoma retinue sat behind Mara’s. Before the dais the guests were arrayed by rank. Brightest shone the white and gold raiment of the Warlord, who sat closest to the ceremony, his wife beside him in scarlet brocade sewn with turquoise plumes. In the midst of the riot of colours worn by the guests, two figures in stark black robes stood forth like nightwings resting in a flower garden. Two Great Ones from the Assembly of Magicians had accompanied Almecho to the wedding of his old friend’s son.