3430 of the Fifth Age
Mordurel, Easterland Region
Silverhall Castle
Raenys Silverstag
Raenys giggled behind the hand that covered her mouth as three lordlings conversed with her and took turns complimenting her beauty. One of them apologized that he had to excuse himself and touched his gentle lips to her hand. A sweet tingle ran up her arm when his lips carefully caressed her hand. The ginger haired son of a baron disappeared behind a tall bush of roses. She remembered that her brother Rhaemon had often joked in their childhood that you couldn’t trust gingers. Her little sister Alyssana’s sweet laugh came to her mind as well. The old jape made her smile wider. Simultaneously one of the other two lordlings had said something and happily took credit for her amusement.
Not far away from them walked Sir Randyll Appermont of the Kingsguard, his gilded longsword in its scabbard.
They came across a field used for practice with sword, lance and other weapons of men. The castles master-at-arms taught swordplay to sons of lords. Two of the lordlings sparred with wooden practice swords. They were barely ten years old and too young for proper steel. One of the practicing knights was Sir Hectarion Rhodayne, a young Kingsguard close to thirty.
One of the two lordlings with her proclaimed her the beauty of the realm and then the other claimed the right was his and challenged the first. It was a jape of course, one for her amusement.
“Permission to duel this crow for your honor, your highness,” the first said, bowing to her.
“Don’t let me stop you,” she said with the intended amusement.
They unsheathed their steel and preformed a mock duel for her. She smiled and applauded enthusiastically. For several minutes she watched with great enjoyment, then one of them prevailed. She then left the young men to their own devices when she desired to see how her dragon puppies and little Alys were. She had spent time with her in the morning. She found Icefyre and Moonfyre sleeping after a good meal. As they slept in the sun she felt a craving for honey cake and grabbed a servant that passed by.
“Go to the kitchen and have honey cake and cider prepared and sent to the rose garden.”
“As you say, your majesty.”
She held her baby girl for a while as she slept. The maid informed her that she had just fallen asleep after hours of screaming. With a final kiss she put the baby girl back and sat down in the sun in the smaller rose garden. It was where her dragon pups slept and it was a good place for her second favorite sport, people watching. Guards, servants and men and women of the court passed as she rested. A fat deacon with a silver necklace with a big white jewel passed. He panted heavily as he stumbled along behind the court deacon Caesar Jagon and a third man. It was easy to see that he was no deacon in the Faith’s rank. While he carried himself like a pious man he was dressed in a simple black cowl robe with a snow white scarf, a worn umber leather belt and that was it, besides his simplistic shoes of leather and fur. He was a common priest or bishop at best and a humble one at that.
A servant brought her a honey cake and cut up a piece for her. Raenys dug in with satisfaction as she chowed. A second servant poured cider into an elven goblet of pure glass. He sniveled and apologized if it bothered her.
She spotted Rohanna and one of the handsome Whitetree triplets. They passed on the other side of the twenty meter long rose garden. In the center was a statue of a knight running through a demon with his blade. For the life of her she couldn’t remember the context of the statue. Was it depicting some noble hero in a Wildmen-demonic invasion? Or it was some knight that wandered into a cave and slew a demon? Maybe it was just an ancient member of her house, since it had been there for generations. Mayhaps it could be the fabled Sir Rhobar the Wanderer from the epic saga of the Ten Knights.
A stressed gardener passed and a man berating his squire a few paces behind. The man dressed like a Reikland with the goatee many of Reiklands nobles thought was so grand came walking with a fatter man. His crimson, cobalt and snow colored puffy doublet and the silver sigil on his belt made it clear he was from the gentry or perhaps even a noble family. The fatter man had the name of Aeston Stonemill, a tribune in Culhaven and man of the gentry. When she saw the Reiklander pointedly nodding in her direction she wondered what they could possibly speak about that concerned her, or rather why did they speak about her? Who was the man? Clearly a new arrival at court since she hadn’t seen him before. He wasn’t a representative of the count of Reikland since he had a helmless knight following him. A representative of the count had Reikguards with him.
They passed out of mind when they passed out of sight.
She heard a man-at-arms speaking with the master of hounds, “I swear I do not understand women. At all!”
The dusky skinned woman laughed merrily. Raenys couldn’t remember her foreign name, too hard to pronounce. She had come from far the far away and exotic Free Cities and served as her family’s master of hounds. She wore a pale green simple tunic and grey cuffed trousers with dirty knees and her dusky arms revealed her impressive muscles. Raenys had never seen a woman with muscles like that. she’d seen plenty of men with far larger muscles for a woman she thought it was very impressive and intriguing. The woman had a small nose, heart-shaped face with freckles and umber hair.
With her stomach full and the cider bottle half empty Raenys left the little rose garden and as she did she took note of the Reiklander she had seen before. This time he spoke with a Reiklander lordling that attended court. Their conversation seemed quite heated and made her curious. Alas they walked in another direction so she had no chance to overhear them.
ns 15.158.61.42da2
