Ceremony · Book 10 · Necromancer
The Briga's Day celebration where Prince Tavard and Princess Armandra visited Sevendor and the Seven Gods walked into the canopy. Fallawen and Ryff's wedding was performed at the celebration; Trygg the All-Mother personally blessed Armandra's infant Prince Heir against childhood illness; the Tera Alon programme was publicly legitimated; and Sevendor became the only place in living memory where a confirmed multi-divine visitation occurred. Tavard pledged to fund a Sevendor temple to commemorate the day.
Briga's Day at Sevendor was the most consequential single religious event of the saga: the day the Seven Gods physically walked into a humani wedding ceremony in front of the assembled Castali royal family, the senior magelords, the Karshak masons, the Tera Alon contingent under Lord Aeratas, the Alshari delegation, and several thousand of the watching Sevendori commons.
The day's primary scheduled event was the wedding of Lady Fallawen and Sir Ryff — the first humani-Alka Alon marriage of the modern era and the political signal Minalan had been planning for years. Prince Tavard and Princess Armandra had been brought to Sevendor for the occasion, with their infant Prince Heir in tow.
The wedding ceremony, held in a temporary mage-wrought wooden chapel on a snowstone base in the inner bailey, was already running long with elaborate Alka Alon hymns interleaved with humani temple-rites when an unexpected delegation joined. Brother Hotfoot — Briga's priest-emissary — led the Seven Gods physically into the canopy.
Princess Armandra, devout to Trygg the All-Mother, was the All-Mother's direct interlocutor. Trygg blessed the infant Prince Heir personally, in front of the entire wedding, against childhood illness until he came of age:
Daughter, I cannot assure that he will be king -- ask Luin, if you ever chance to meet my son. My sphere can only tell you that unless fate intervenes he will be well and whole, and that he has my blessing and protection against illness until he becomes a man. There is no higher aspiration for a mother to hold.
— Trygg, to Princess Armandra at the wedding
The Seven Gods had political business with the wedding party at large — the snowstone event had been Briga's first direct intervention; Briga's Day at Sevendor was the rest of the pantheon formally recognising the new arrangement. The celebration is referenced in subsequent volumes as The Day Seven Gods Came to Sevendor.
Prince Tavard, who would later style himself the most pious prince of his generation, was visibly moved by the visitation and pledged on the spot to fund the construction of a chapel, shrine, or temple at Sevendor in commemoration. The promise was honoured at Sevendor's expense.
For Armandra personally, the visitation transformed her religious life. Her devotion to Trygg, already strong, became the central feature of her court life thereafter; her later refusal to allow harm to come to her own daughter (in the Preceptor child-swap kingmove) traced directly to her unwavering Trygg-faith from this day forward. For the Tera Alon programme, the visitation was the divine-legitimation badge Aeratas had needed: the conservatives in the Alka Alon Council could no longer credibly call the transgenic enchantment perversion while the Seven Gods had sponsored a Tera Alon-humani wedding under their personal supervision.
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