#80 - Didara's Welcome Song At a Distance

Ahrimaz’s sight went grey around the edges and he swayed, but his hand on Didara’s side and Jagunjagun’s staff and trunk behind him helped him stay upright.  Then Rutaçyen was at his side and had him companionably by the elbow as the procession stepped into the Great Hall.  It wasn’t galleries for fawning courtiers, he reminded himself.  The galleries were filled with representatives from all over Inné.

And they weren’t just voted in.  They also had to pass the rigorous government tests. In the Empire there were just the clerk’s tests that would let only the most intelligent, the most competent, into the House of Gold.  No doubt here they had to be the most empathetic and sympathetic as well.  These people.  They were so far from his own.  But they weren’t.  All at the same time.

Joyandfierceness trembled through his hand, the future baby elephant, just beginning to speak on the lowest frequencies.  Though baby talk, high and sweet. His knees weakened and he felt choked as he realized what the jeweled construction in the centre of Didara’s skeleton in the Empire’s Hall… very near here in fact… was.  It wasn’t her heart, as he’d thought. 

He wrenched his thoughts back to here. Here the Hall was open and empty, space for everyone in government to crowd around in a disorganized mob.  There was no order, no precedence, everyone jostled up with everyone else.

Ahrimaz pressed his hand against his mouth, trying to keep his gorge and his fear down.  All around him, thank the Gods for Rutaçyen keeping people off and Didara on the other side.  They all wanted to touch her.  Of course he understood that but touch him?  He swallowed, swallowed again as Didara raised one foot, trumpeted loudly enough to blast everyone to silence and stillness.

She opened her mouth and sang her formal welcome, the subsonics rumbling through the crowd and a whole wave of people just suddenly sat down, hands pressed against the floor.  She hesitated a moment as she realized how many people could hear her without Ologbon’s translation.

“People of Inné, thank you for your tropical welcome. I am Didara, a Dreamer of the Queen…”

Ologbon, sitting on Jagunjagun’s neck raised his scepter high and his voice translating was a high counterpoint to Didara’s, her formal phrases rolling around the hall, making people sway with it.

Jagunjagun said, quietly in Ahrimaz’s ear, “oh wonderful you people can hear her and she has so many theories to sing!  I’ll have to go home without her in a year or two!”

“What she won’t be finished by then? Are you being sarcastic?”

“What is he saying?” Rutaçyen asked.  “I can just barely hear him, but he's speaking in Innéan!”

“He’s being a little brother,” Ahrimaz answered.  Part of him wanted to laugh at how silly the young elephant was being, part of him was still nauseated and overwhelmed, part of him was sitting frozen and one part just screamed endlessly.  There is one part of me that is always screaming.  No wonder I’m tired.

“Jagunjagun, I placed Didara's staff into my brother's hand. am here, my brother has Didara’s attention and he can stand and listen for hours.  I need… I can’t…”

“Go, my friend.  You stepped the threshold with us.  Iti-igi Ahrimmmmmaz… go rest.”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You’ve gotten very good at Innéan.”

He nodded, making it look like he was counterpointing something Didara had just sung.  “I know.  You’ve helped.  Go rest, iti.”

Ahrimaz was so close to tearing his way through the crowd with his bare hands and teeth, he barely nodded and found that Rutaçyen had somehow opened a narrow way through the mob.  He was still being touched but he found that she led him to a narrow doorway under a gallery and suddenly there was silence, except for the elephants deepest rumbles.  He leaned against the solid door, nearly faint with relief.

“Back to bed with you.  You don’t do well in crowds,” Rutaçyen said quietly.  “Ah.  Here they are." The dogs came cavorting down the hall.  "Sure and Teh can bring you back to your room.  You don’t need to go outside again.”

“I should stay. I shouldn’t run. This is an important meeting.”  I’m whining.

“And you don’t want to ruin their welcome song by vomiting at their feet, or killing some commoner who touched you wrong, now, do you?”

“No.”

“To bed with you.”

“Yes, mama,” he said, smiling to make it a joke.  It was like a knife in his gut as he said it.

She pretended to swat him.  “When you’ve rested, come to the salle.  You need a work-out.”