Vanador Double Wedding

The Vanador Double Wedding was the great social occasion that closed out the Spellmonger saga at Vanador. Two of Minalan's former apprentices — Sir Tyndal and Sir Rondal — wed two extraordinarily different women on the same day in a shared ceremony at the heart of the Magelaw, in front of an attendance list that amounted to the political, magical, and cultural inventory of everything the Spellmonger and his circle had built over twenty years.

The two brides

Gatina anna Furituris — the Kitten of Night, daughter of Lord Hance and Lady Minnureal Furtius, shadowmage of an ancient line of cat-burglar-mages and white-haired with violet eyes. She had spent her courtship of Rondal demonstrating her devotion through increasingly complex acts of loyalty: organising the Restoration of Enultramar to remove the Brotherhood of the Rat as an obstacle to their wedding, infiltrating Darkfaller as a captive to spy on Mycin Amana, recovering stolen artefacts on his behalf. Rondal eventually realised that the only way to keep Gatina out of further desperate proofs of devotion was to actually marry her.

The Kitten of Night was a white-haired, violet-eyed mistress of shadow who had made it her life's mission to wed stalwart Rondal. I have no idea why. Ishi moves in mysterious and often inexplicable ways.

— Minalan, on the match

Lady Tandine of Anferny — a shieldmaiden of a minor and half-forgotten Wilderlord house, raised in the desolation of Anferny within the jevolar of Anghysbel, ignorant of magic but deeply trained in feats of arms more typically reserved for male nobility. Tyndal had escaped a hundred dalliances and infatuations with lesser maidens to surrender his heart to her on extremely short acquaintance during the Anghysbel expedition. Tandine's noble line, although obscure, was Wilderlands-pure; her education in arms and her unfamiliarity with magic gave the marriage a strange political balance.

A proud, strong shieldmaiden of the Wilderlords -- of a minor and half-forgotten house -- my first apprentice had been captivated with her beauty and character and charmed by her inherent nobility on short acquaintance.

— Minalan, on Tandine

The decision to combine

The two grooms were brothers in arms in everything but blood. They had been apprenticed together as boys in Sevendor, fought together at Boval, at Timberwatch, at Gavard, at Olum Seheri, at every major engagement in between. They had fought, more than once, with each other; they had also saved each other's lives. Holding two separate weddings would have required half the political world of the kingdom to travel twice. The boys agreed (with much chivalric foot-shuffling and male reluctance to discuss feelings) that a shared ceremony was the simpler and more honourable choice.

Both brides agreed. Gatina, who had spent her career working in shadow, considered a shared spotlight preferable to a solo one. Tandine, who knew none of the kingdom's political circles and felt overwhelmed by the prospect, found the doubling reassuring: she would not be the only bride looking dazed in front of three thousand strangers.

The brides' attire

Each bride was dressed by her own people:

• Gatina wore a complex Cottonlord gown in Furtius house colours, accented with the family's shadowmage-clan emblems and an inheritance jewel of pre-Conquest workmanship. She moved through the crowd with the calm sublimity of a thief who has finally completed the longest plan of her life.
• Tandine wore the traditional Wilderlands-cut wool dress over a white linen underdress, simple and embroidered by her female relatives as a testament to her noble house and abandoned home. Her head was bare except for a single silver fillet to denote her station as a Wilderlord. She wore little cosmetics; Pentandra supplied magical glamours to ensure she appeared a radiant beauty to all who saw her, regardless of her own anxiety. By all accounts she looked dazed throughout, as if she had blundered into an affair whose greatness she had little appreciation of until that moment.

The attendance

The list was the closest thing to a state visit the Magelaw had ever hosted:

• Minalan and Alya hosting, with their three children present.
• Duke Anguin and Duchess Rardine with the senior Alshari court.
• Prince Tavard in attendance, freshly humbled after the post-Darkfaller political fallout.
• Pentandra and Baron Arborn with their triplets.
• The Magelaw's senior magelords: Terleman, Azar, Astyral, Mavone, Sandoval, Carmella.
• Sire Cei the Dragonslayer with Lady Estret and their household.
• Lady Dara the Hawkmaiden and her Sky Riders, providing aerial honour-guard over the festivities.
• The Estasi Order in chapter, with their full chapter-house from Timberwatch and the new chapter-house from Falas.
• The Tera Alon contingent under Lord Aeratas, with Lady Fallawen and Sir Ryff.
• The Karshak Alon under Master Guri, who had built much of Vanador.
• The Kilnusk Alon Dwarves and the Lakeside Tal Alon, settling into temporary quarters in the city specifically to attend.
• A large Kasari caravan from Osbury bringing rustic gifts.
• House Furtius in full strength: Lord Hance, Lady Minnureal, Atopol, and the extended shadowmage clan.
• Tandine's family from Anferny — a small group of Wilderlords looking out of place in their austere northern dress, accompanied by a delegation from Anghysbel.
• Half the Magelaw's working population, on the day of the festival.

The ceremony

Two ceremonies were celebrated under one open-air canopy on the great square of Vanador, with both Tryggite priestesses (the All-Mother's clergy from Holy Hill abbey at Sevendor, transferred temporarily for the occasion) and Furtius clan ritualists presiding jointly. The shadowmage rituals of House Furtius were observed for Gatina; the conventional Wilderlands wedding-rites were observed for Tandine; both couples exchanged vows in front of the same priestesses at the same canopy. The two grooms stood as each other's witnesses.

Both marriages were consummated in spirit by the priestesses' joint blessing and registered as legally separate but socially shared in the temple records of Vanador and the Magelaw chancery.

The reception, and what followed

The reception was an all-day Magical Fair in miniature, with magical entertainments competing for attention from the great square out into the side streets. The Sky Riders performed an aerial display. The Karshak put on a stonesinging exhibition. The Tal Alon ran the food and brewing booths. The Tera Alon performed the slow Alka Alon dances they had brought from Anthatiel. The kingdom's leading minstrels and jongleurs played late.

The marriages produced two distinct subsequent careers:

• Sir Rondal and Lady Gatina: posted to the Alshari court at Falas, where Rondal served as a senior magelord-knight and Gatina took up an intelligence portfolio under Princess Rardine's direction. Their household became the operational hub of Alshari shadowmage operations against the Brotherhood of the Rat remnants and the Nemovorti in Caramas.
• Sir Tyndal and Lady Tandine: posted to the Magelaw, where Tyndal became one of Vanador's senior warmagi and Tandine learned magic for the first time from her own husband and from Pentandra. Her late-bloom Talent, quickened in part by proximity to Vanador's post-Snowstone-Event field, surprised everyone, including herself.

The wedding was the last great occasion at which the entire surviving cast of the Spellmonger's war assembled in one place. Minalan spent the evening drinking watered wine, watching his old apprentices dance with their wives, and, in Pentandra's description, looking genuinely content for one of the few times in his career.