fierce, bright pleasure:
"Look!" he cries, pointing. "Here he comes!"
From the south, winding out of the mountains and the hills of the highlands along a road that has not been used in hundreds of years there comes a caravan, many-colored, stretching back a long way. There is music playing beside it and ahead, with men and women riding and on foot, donkeys and horses laden with goods, at least fifty banners flapping in the wind. And now the tunes drift up to the three of them, bright and gay, and all the colors are flashing in the morning light as Marius, King of Quileia comes riding down from the mountain pass to the wedding of his friend.
He is to spend the night in the Sanctuary where he will be formally welcomed by the High Priest of Eanna, whom he will remember as the man who brought a fourteen-year-old boy to him over the mountains long ago. There are barges waiting in Avalle to take them down the river to Tigana in the morning.
But the right of first greeting is Baerd''s, in Alessan''s name, and he has asked the two of them to ride here with him.