ASHHÂNULU'ZAGH- Marriage of the Warrior
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sincerest apologies for the lack of updates this month. July was a bit of a bust in a lot of ways. I let it go and decided to try and have a much more productive August with this story. The plot points are laid out ahead solidly on my end and so far it's fleshing out quite nicely. As always, your follows and feedback are much appreciated. It keeps me going in a huge way.
On a separate note, I took inspiration for Freyda's wedding dress from Sansa Stark's when she wed Ramsay (such a beautiful dress, such an awful wedding). I saw that dress two seasons ago and wanted it for Freyda, albeit with a happier ending :)
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"What'm I to do, Thorin?" Dwalin's lumbering frame sunk deeper into the boar-hide chair as he spoke.
"A marriage must happen, and soon, quite soon I think," Thorin declared, firmly. "You've acquired your home. There is very little else waiting in want for."
"Not more than a fortnight will there be a window of legitimacy, brother, should any come to question it," Balin warned. "Certainly it cannot be far progressed."
"Progressed? I don't know anything about how 'er belly will do its business," Dwalin lamented.
"Time will progress much faster the longer we sit here wringing our hands," Thorin admonished impatiently.
Balin stood abruptly. "I approve this home, brother, regardless of the circumstances. Methinks it best you send your herald to the bride's home as soon as can be, announce the marriage to be at hand. Tomorrow perhaps."
"But we have no contract yet," Dwalin reminded him, dejectedly.
"Yet," Balin waved a finger even more urgently. "It is early still. Will Freyda be abed by now?"
"I don't think." Dwalin answered.
"Go to your lady at once and fetch her then," Balin ordered. "Tell her what must be done and to make haste, discreetly if possible. It is rather late for you to be showing up at her door, betrothed or no. Thorin, summon Meisar. She ought to be a part of this. For morale. I have a feeling Freyda will need someone to lean on, someone... well, older than Gyda. We'll put Gyda to better use."
"Aye," Thorin and Dwalin agreed in tandem.
"I shall go wake Ori then," Balin relented miserably. "It is going to be a long night."
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"Thorin?" Meisar turned around toward the slowly-opening door, thinking it him it was so late. Instead the door was thrown the rest of the way open in alarm so ardent the hinges squealed. Freyda sailed in and threw herself on her knees at Meisar's feet.
"Forgive me, Meisar! Forgive me, I beg it of ye!" Freyda's large hands curled furtively around the center of Meisar's skirts, hunched like a beggar weeping for mercy at the feet of an unfeeling lord.
"Forgive? Freyda, what is it?" She took her elbows but they were stiff with fear; she shook Freyda and her head wobbled like a top.
"I've... I shoulda listened to ye! Of that concerning me honor. Now I've cursed it for sure!"
"Done what? Freyda!" Meisar shook her shoulders again but only croaking sounds came out of the iron-smith.
Her blue-green eyes looked up glassy with tears and fear. "There's a child in me! I am certain of it now," she confessed, her throat pulling in at the sides to show the sinews tense and trembling on their flanks.
Taking Freyda's shaking hands, Meisar found them cold with sweat. "A child? Is it a surety, truly, Freyda?"
A cold jab in the side of her stomach, invisible, took like a knife. Freyda shook her head, yielding to the fact.
"Dwalin... we, cannot hide it no more. Least not from you. Oh forgive me!"
"Get up off your knees, Freyda. There is nothing to beg for. Sit and tell me truly, are you certain? How do you know?" Meisar implored, diplomatically gentle, even as the unseen knife in her stomach plunged just a little bit deeper.
Freyda shook her hair over her flushed face. Strands caught to half dried tears on her cheeks. "Me chest hurts like it's been gnawed at and m'belly too, and I'm needing to make water every other step. Midwife tells me this is how ye know. First the 'afana leaves then the bosoms get sore and-"
"Midwife? Eda? Does Eda know? You'll need care surely."
"Nay!" Freyda snapped suddenly. "Haven't told her, won't tell her. Not yet. Only you."
"What of Dwalin?"
"Aye, he knows," Freyda exhaled. "He knows and... he has called me to draw up the contract now. Thorin will be there and he'll want ye there too. I had to tell ye now or... I dinna know when."
"Worry not, I will go with you." She threw on a green-and-gray extant robe that could pass for propriety in mixed company easily enough, over her plain kirtle.
Freyda blinked and the tears began to dry on the crests of her eyes, forming a light crust that she brushed away in time. "Will ye forgive me? I get feelin' I've done a great dishonor to the queen's household. I know ye would tell me to wait 'til there was a wedding and-"
"Freyda, there is nothing to forgive," Meisar assured her again, a knot in her stomach defying her. "You carry a dwarven child now, and Mahal knows they are few and precious, and you will be married soon anyhow. Without a second to waste."
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Thorin's receiving chamber buzzed into the evening, Griet and Bertha and Elsa holding back yawns as they tended on the gathered dwarves, providing coffee in tiny silver cups, drunk hot and dark. Ori sat at the desk with a parchment before him and a fresh quill.
Gloin and Emli debated numbers, counted coins, Emli providing her advice maternally on the good keeping of a dwarven wife while Gloin slouched in his seat and muttered under his breath about silvers and golds and how much for the care and minding of a dwarfling per year. Mentions of dwarflings elicited no response from either Freyda nor Dwalin in the face, but their hands wrung on their laps, impatient, giddy almost. They dared not even look at each other as Gloin offered suggestions for the cost of dwarflings and Emli's rebuke of them, followed by Gloin inevitably ceding to her numbers, far more generous than his own.
"Shouldn't ye let us have a say in matters like so?" Freyda questioned earnestly of the squabbling couple.
"Let a long-married woman who knows her numbers be your guide," Emli patted Freyda's hand as she yawned, squirming in her seat.
Gloin grinned sarcastically under his heavy copper beard at the bride-to-be. "I offer it not as insult but quite the opposite my lady, to say that you require less in keeping day to day than my own wife."
"So you insult me?" Emli squawked. "Freyda deserves as much in keeping as do I in any case. We'll discuss your imprudent tongue later, husband."
Dwalin counted his acquirement sum first, a handsome sum compactly stuffed into a leather pouch. "Shan't hoard the rewards from dealing with the dragon," he shrugged, giving Freyda a small grin.
When it came time for them to declare what was to be brought to the marriage besides their sums, they each searched for words gape-mouthed and awkward for a moment, unused to proclamations of the nature they were.
"I bring ye the love ye deserve, my soldier," Freyda declared finally.
For a moment, Dwalin seemed to blink back tears. But he balled his fists instead under the table, straightened his mouth.
"I bring ye the protection of my house and my ax. For the keeping of yer life, which..." Dwalin's voice contracted in his throat and went brittle, fists un-balling under the table. "...I value more than my own."
They all sat in patient silence as Ori drew his quill along both parchments, his handwriting fastidious and given to elegant flourishes at the end of each line. He had drawn crossed axes in the corners of each of the parchments as a symbol of their union.
"Have you a seal?" Balin inquired, when it was finished.
Dwalin searched for an answer, becoming sullen. Freyda reached to his neck, calming him, and removed from it her ax pendant.
"That will work," Balin concluded quickly. He pushed it into the wax at the same moment the first the hammers crowed and rang down in the depths of the mountain, signaling the morning shift was called. Above the mountain the sun would be rising and so would many of the dwarves.
"I must away!" Freyda said urgently. "Back to my home; if me da wakes and I am not there he'll surely be suspicious o' something."
"What does he need be suspicious of? It is only the contract," Gyda wondered aloud and earnestly.
Freyda jabbed her in the elbow hard and tugged her along out of the room. "He'll think we've gone to the Pits alone I reckon, and then we'll have Vigg and Lofar going everywhere with us until the day of the wedding!" she hissed a reminder.
On the other side of the door, Gyda trotting scared up ahead, Dwalin kissed her temple quickly in parting.
"Sup with us later, Dwalin, at my da's home," Freyda grinned over her shoulder. "In celebration."
Dwalin rubbed the back of his neck. "Will that be, er, wise?"
Tossing her braid, she was still smiling at him as the lanterns' light called her away. "There will be cookies."
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Ori fumbled the horn in his hand, the pouch of the acquiring sum and the rolled parchment of the marriage contract signed and sealed before the door. The number was the right one; he could hear voices within. Ori blew a thin breath into the horn, which came out thinner and higher and caused several passing dwarves to wince. Ori nodded a quiet shaking apology in their direction and knocked clumsily at the door.
When none came after it, he blew again at the horn. The second blare was worse, and when a stocky, battle-scarred blonde dwarf threw open the door in a hard rush he knew it.
"The bridegroom of Freyda sends me here to make the announcement of the wedding! Eight days hence from now!" He stumbled over every word, sucking in hard breath at the end of each sentence. The sight that greeted him at the bride's door was one of a dwarf without his shirt and bruised from shoulder to the base of his belly, the latter that wore fresh stitches. Even after the proclamation Onar was still grunting with a fire in the eyes and glaring.
"Give me that bloody horn!" he barked. Ori tossed it at his feet. Vigg, Vestri, Lofar and Hepti gathered in the doorway behind him as he trampled the instrument hard underfoot until it was flat as a sheet of tin. He kicked it back at Ori and began to laugh ferociously.
"I come as herald to Dwalin the groom to t-t-tell of the-"
"Well lads, what do we have here?" sneered Vestri. "Speak up, state your purpose!"
"Herald... to-to-to, Dwalin..."
"Ah, it's Dwalin's serving lad!" Lofar dismissed.
"King's scribe and small council-" Ori began to protest weakly.
"Look, the lad gets his hair trimmed in the kitchens. Cook puts a bowl on his head and shears about!" Onar teased, roughly ringing. "C'mere, lad. I'll show ye a proper method!" He took his knife out from his boot and licked it on the sharp side.
Ori jerked backward in alarm, which made the five dwarves only laugh harder. His legs wobbled and knocked at the knees.
"Playing with knives again," Freyda came out, scolding. "Da, ye have to stop that, or you'll spill yer guts."
"Put 'em back in once, I'll sure remember how," Onar snorted back at his daughter, surly and wrapped in her bed-robe with her hair a fine mess.
"Come in, Ori. Make yourself at home. It is so early, I never would have known!" Freyda invited, sweetly. She ran a quick survey over Hepti's vacated seat, shuddered and as swiftly shoved Lofar out of his and urged Ori to sit.
"The marriage contract, my lady. And your acquiring sum," Ori said, handing each to her with shaking hands. "I am sent on behalf on your betrothed, my lady, to gift you them."
"A present? From Dwalin?" Lofar inquired dimly. "Lemme see."
"Only a ritual of betrothal before the wedding day. It is for the bride's keeping," Freyda pressed the leather bag against her chest defensively, against Lofar's hovering over her. "And the contract."
"Contract? I'd like to see the contents if it won't bother you too much," Vigg half-demanded.
"You can barely read your own name," Vestri retorted dimly. It was answered with a swift punch to the throat that sent him tumbling backward over the chair, over Ori who made a sound like a frightened lamb as his plate of cranberry bread was knocked from his knee, the dish spun and launched. He grasped for the wildly spinning plate as if it were a slippery eel from the sea itself. Eventually it crashed to the floor and shattered.
"It would, Vigg. It's my own business, none o' yours. Now get the broom and clean up the mess ye made!"
"This clumsy bat dropped it!" Vigg hissed toward Ori, accusingly. Freyda hurled the broom at him with full force from across the room. The handle slapped him in the forehead and fell.
"Married eight days hence from now, Freyda? You didn't tell us at all," Hepti whined, brushing the crumbs from his beard and shirt to the floor where Vigg was sweeping and muttering under his breath.
"The contract was delayed by our own dallying," Freyda replied quickly. "Besides that, everything else is along in preparing. Further then, what is life without a few surprises?"
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When Dwalin came later Onar was waiting and long-drunk, partly to his relief. Perhaps it had been Freyda's ploy, but the other four were gathered as well, and if well-imbibed, still more sober. He smelled something sweet and heavy in the next room and inauspiciously tried to guide Onar toward the table as his father-in-law-that-would-be thumped him playfully in the chest again and again with a wobbling fist. Freyda and Gyda were already waiting on them with the food already put out and cooling. There were hollowed-out potatoes lightly fried in fat for dinner and lined in thick-cut bacon and hunks of cheese, a rump roast, four large flagons of ale, mead and the first of fall's apple ciders.
"Come now," Freyda crowed. "Shall we eat and celebrate?"
At the table, she heaped Dwalin's plate lovingly full and his ale, pouring herself a glass of cold mint tea from a fourth flagon, that Gyda quickly took back to their room.
"Very good," Dwalin rumbled through another bite. The roast was cooked to perfection, the potatoes even better. It made the polite passage of time before he could indulge in the plate of cookies easier to bear, at least.
"The contract is finally ready and signed and we shall marry soon. Dwalin was kind enough to bring a handsome sum in acquirement also," Freyda reached over and placed her hand on his. Vestri, Vigg, Hepti and Lofar watched her fingers weave lightly through his, first sharply then giving way to stubborn charm as the ales in their cups grew shallower. Vigg gave him a subtle half-grin.
"Handsome? Like Hepti here?" Lofar smirked.
"Far more," Dwalin quipped over his ale.
"Well, would we expect anything less?" Vigg questioned. "After all, Dwalin knows as well as any that a pithy sum is an insult to dwarrowdam and her family, even a lass as unassuming as this you're marrying."
"Aye, well, that's all the reason I've given to keep 'er so well, She's priceless though," Dwalin answered.
"That she is, lad. That she is," Onar acclaimed proudly.
"Alas, I think this belongs to ye rightfully, da," Freyda relayed sweetly. She pressed the leather pouch into Onar's palm.
"Darling daughter, ye need not," Onar started to protest.
"I owe it my father. For protecting me long enough to see me live and wed the One I love most in all this dastard world," she explained.
"Aye, I would be honored for ye to be in keeping of it too," Dwalin agreed quickly. His heel ground into the carpet under the table, until it frayed.
Onar sighed. "It is a thoughtful gift. But it is all wrong. It is I that wouldn't have lasted if not for your protection, daughter. She carried me, Dwalin, on her shoulders. She was just a girl..." He exhaled and pressed the pouch back at her. "Keep it. You'll need it. Both of ye. This wedding now is coming soon. Half a fortnight ye said?"
"Aye, and tomorrow begins seven days without each other until that," Freyda answered, cheerfully. If Onar let his a tear squeeze its way by, husky as his voice was rendered by emotion, it would wound his pride so. Freyda took his hands, knowing.
"Seven days it is. And the rest of my life ye will no longer be under my roof. I will miss ye, daughter. Won't ye stay those days here?"
"Traditionally I'm to spend that time with the women. Strictly I ought see no man during that time," Freyda fumbled a protest.
Onar casually sharpened his knife over the table with a bigger and sharper one. "The days before 'er wedding are the days a lass is most needin' her da's protection," Onar chided. "Haven't seen you come about much anymore, 'cept to sleep. I know ye are busy though. Very busy."
Onar's look seemed to make Freyda swoon on her feet as she gathered the dishes, unnerved.
"I miss ye a bit, Freyda. I won't have you under my roof much longer. I wonder if there's something on your mind that you don't tell me of," Onar inquired earnestly if with strange tenderness. "Anything, Freyda. I am yer da and will love ye always, no matter what."
"I know, da," Freyda's voice responded in a high squeak.
"Aye, Onar, I know, but the queen's chambers are better suited to makin' our preparations. It takes up more space than the five of you. Besides, what if Lofar spills an ale on me dress? Or the likes of any of you roughing around does damage," Gyda ran interference quickly, with her sweet smile. The pitcher in Freyda's hand buckled and she nearly dropped it shaking. Gyda snatched it out from under her and set it at the table, whisking her off toward the privy in panicked silence as she began to heave and twitch repressing the sound of the coming retch.
Onar slid into the seat she had vacated, oblivious, next to Dwalin. He pulled the plate of cookies back and had a slow nosh on one. Dwalin stopped chewing abruptly.
"Seven days, lad. A long time to be away. I remember the seven before I married. I remember the last night before the seven," Onar began to chuckle laconically.
"We remember too," Vestri hastened to add. "Like we could forget."
"If only we could forget," Hepti ribbed, his laugh becoming slow and pointed like Onar's.
"Onar, I..." He felt the tip of his mangled ear pitch in the direction of a low heaving sound from across the dwelling. "I remember my honor, and my betrothed's and-"
Onar drew back with a brow steepled. "I was speakin' o a certain brand of Dunland moonshine and what it did t'me insides that night. Barely made it to me wedding in one piece!"
"Insides and outs," Hepti reminded.
Dwalin made a thin sound, to Onar's roaring amusement. "Moonshine! Ha! Don't mess with it. Truth is though, there's nothing dishonorable in a hardy celebration or two before a wedding, so long as ye can stand on the day of. What'dj think I was talking about?"
"Dunno. I much prefer mead anyway," Dwalin muttered quietly.
"Darling?" Onar turned concernedly from the table to the dwarrowdams as they rushed from privy to bedroom together, Freyda's hand under her mouth.
"A chunk of roast down the wrong pipe," said Gyda, quickly. "None to worry."
In their bedroom, she shut the door behind her and Freyda, the resuming laughter from the table silencing with it. She poured her another glass from the tea flagon, Freyda drinking it quickly, her throat raw.
"Drink now. It is no worse than this morning," cooed Gyda. "A touch of stomach-roils? I hope it wasn't the mushrooms from last night."
"My dress! A dress, Gyda! What will I do for that?" Freyda plead to a wide-eyed Gyda, hoarsely. "I haven't even... what'll I do?!"
"Don't worry, not at all," Gyda ensured, holding her reassuring smile taut, keeping the shaking in her feet and not her hands that held Freyda's steady. "I've already been put up to that task. Ode to Balin. Mahal fortify me."
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"She says Balin's put her up to it, but how can he know anything about dressing? Not 'specially a bride," Freyda relayed nervously in the morning. "He isn't even married!"
"Balin's wisdom extends to places you would not imagine," Meisar tried to cajole her. She had been pacing since dawn about her chambers, the dwarrowdams summoned, rubbing sleep from their eyes all. "You may be surprised."
"I don't want to be surprised anymore," Freyda grumbled back. "Had enough surprises these days past."
"Of what kind?" Emli inquired over her monocle and diamonds. "I've heard no news of surprises."
"Oh!" Freyda summoned a hiccup, realizing. "Only Dwalin having little sense of how much a dwarrowdam needs in preparing for a wedding! But I suppose I've been nagging him at the contract long enough."
"A strange spontaneity for a soldier," Eda quipped. Freyda's mouth puckered as if ready to be sick when the door thundered open. Gyda burst in speechless with joy and babbling.
"Look my lady! Look what I've found! She flung a luxuriant white wool outer gown with shortish sleeves and a fur mantle over the table for them to see.
"Where did you find it?" Emli asked.
"Old vault down below," Gyda reported gleefully. "Merchants and the seamstresses' guild were clearing it out to sell second-hand. I got in early and had the best of pickings."
Freyda, her face a healthy shade again, fingered the buttons running down the front with giddy satisfaction. The buttons were of carved bone, blanched and pointed outward at the lower tips to form the shapes of canine teeth. The fine wool was so soft it seemed to glow, ribs of it knit to form long lines running neck to the hem of the skirt, as precise as runes.
"Not fair at all!" whined Siv. "M'I to wait til next autumn now to marry?"
"See another autumn ye won't if ye don't cease," Freyda warned.
"Why the rush, Freyda?" Siv lipped sarcastically.
"I will see to it that you have a diamond tiara to wear on your wedding day if you swear you will not say another word," Meisar promised, exasperated.
"Set in mithril and it's a deal," Siv quipped back, grinning.
"Borrow Hegi's teeth for the day," Freyda retorted. "There's yer crown."
"Hush now, you two. Let's see this dress," Emli stepped authoritatively between them and made a pinched face at the garment. "Well, it'll have to do. Somehow, some way."
Against Emli's quiet distaste, Freyda was smiling though. "I think a very formidable dwarrowdam musta worn this dress once," Freyda sighed, pressing the fabric up against her face, taking a deep inhale of the garment. "I can still smell her perfume. 'Tis like pine and smoke. I think it quite perfect."
"Call Dagny at once! It shall not be a hard adjustment I don't think," gushed Gyda. "All we need is an undergown or some sleeves sewn underneath. A shimmering silk perhaps? I could find some."
"We shall make it yours, Freyda," Meisar assured at once. "It is your wedding, after all."
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The days that followed the dwarrowdams occupied the antechambers of their living quarters in constant busy succession sunup to sundown. Thorin stayed out of their way and rightfully so, he reckoned. Even Meisar at the end of the day was too harried to be much for company.
She had seemed calmer in the days before their own wedding, he thought. But there had been no baby. There was no...
Several days before his wedding there had been leisure and drink and merriment, in contrast to this. Dwalin had refused it flatly. He wore him down to a fete on the wedding morning, nothing terribly suspect in any case.
He came to the new home of his without a knock, which did not seem to perturb Dwalin much to his gratefulness, except that he whooshed around him at his unpacking and arranging the last of things, seeming much faster in the enclosed space than the chaos of a battlefield. This was his home now. Thorin looked around. The walls that had been starkly bare had tapestries on them now, long and narrow in muted colors, one with a boar motif, the second with a pair of axes and their personal runes. He had it made in a custom fashion, Mahal bless him, how he tries.
"I came to see how you were handling things, nadad. It is much work to prepare a home for marriage, and in such short time," Thorin offered. Around the rooms things were being set up well enough, he thought, at least for Dwalin. Thorin sat on the overstuffed lounger that had already been a gift from Balin. There were a number of rugs and fur blankets folded on the corner seat too, gifts from the 'Ri brothers. "I regret that we cannot share the traditional feast-days before the wedding though."
"One'll do I've decided, once this is done," Dwalin assured. "M'lucky we had our wedding beads made earlier, else they'd be trouble, no?" His tone was far too casual not to arouse Thorin's immediate suspicion of something quite different swirling through his head, more storm-like than this placid nonchalance.
"There is no suspicion yet, is there?" Dwalin implored, rubbing his neck.
"None I have heard. I came alone though because I brought something for you, Dwalin. It is not a large thing, but for the… circumstances, perhaps I thought it best," Thorin said. He held a wooden box out to Dwalin. "For your child," he explained as Dwalin sat to open it. "My father gave me one just like it when I was very young. It is a protective device."
"A very fine silver, this," Dwalin commented, examining the talisman.
"Perhaps you might place it upon his cradle when he is arrived," Thorin suggested. "But I am certain you will have a strong and hardy child, and will have no need of it. But my father once said to me that it was the most loving of any gift a dwarf could give to his own child, not great in momentary value, only a bit of superstitious luck. In the absence of mine, yours will do for now."
"We are always in need of a little extra luck," Dwalin assured, his hand heavy in patting Thorin's shoulder. His smile was bittersweet.
"A good sum shall be given to you for your first year of marriage as a greater gift. I have wrangled enough with Gloin and the treasury purse-strings to see it done. It is a gift, from me. From Meisar."
Dwalin embraced him hard enough he could hardly breathe. "When a son is born to ye, Thorin, I swear I will do the same by ye."
"Be careful about a promise like that, nadad. Until one is certain it can be kept."
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On the eve of the wedding snow was falling. It was only the end of October.
Thorin and Dwalin had decided to drink ales in the morning with the dwarves who would be part of the bridegroom's retinue- Onar and his squad, Balin, the rest of the small council. It gave the dwarrowdams their time and space. Freyda had been sick several times in the morning, before she bathed and dressed and declined nourishment to the rest of the dwarrowdams' chagrin.
Except Meisar's. Siv was onto something like a scenthound and had Redcoat's distrusting eye all through the morning chaos. And Gyda... Mahal the girl was innocent, too innocent for her own good. She had begun to speak in a way that made Meisar pinch her thumb and forefinger together, nervously, ready to issue her a sharp one that would send a message. Sometimes the shepherdess must strike the sheep before they stray, to be devoured by wolves.
By the afternoon and its dimming hours Gyda was too preoccupied with the swish of her dress to be much interested in Freyda's appetite or even her nerves, probably for the better. She hopped across the room with her ram's-horn slippers on the stone clopping like an excited goat and took hold of Freyda's hands.
"It is near time!" crowed Gyda. "The escorts ought be here soon."
"You'll hear them and mayhap smell 'em long before they arrive here," Freyda quipped. She fanned herself in the heat of the room. Meisar had the fire snuffed, hot mint tea poured, just in case.
"How true, how true!" Emli was squawking after them, her jewels rattling. "Griet, Bertha, help the queen to finish dressing!"
She had managed her under-skirts and bum-roll on her own easily enough, requiring Bertha's strong hand to lace her stomacher alone, and the clasps of her gown in the back. Needing assistance to dress was still of a strange quality still, even now. At last, she wore her raven crown with a long veil of blue spider's-silk that hung far down her back. Her gown was of little embellish save for the high-necked partlet of gold lattice-work. Teardrops of diamonds hung from her ears and a matching teardrop-diamond bottommost on was too upon a necklace of onyx-and-gold, softening the severity of the crown.
"I am ready," Freyda declared, and stood, turning like a little doll on a pedestal in her gown and mantle. In contrast, and to Meisar's edge of guilt in her rich if austere attire, Freyda in her wedding gown looked a country lass, in good wool and silvery samite sleeves that buttoned at the wrist (Gyda's own work), and a snowy-white mantle of hare-fur that didn't quite match either, fastened at the neck in a bronze-and-emerald brooch. Her hair was loose in gentle waves down her back, brushed to shining perfection, each of the tiny beads in her beard carefully shined.
"A beautiful autumn bride you are," Meisar assured her, setting at last the white bridal crown on her head. "It is already snowing though."
"So early in the year," Freyda remarked, turning her face side to side in the mirror.
"Well my dress is right for winter anyway, doncha think?" She stood and turned around again. "It is beautiful, this."
"You look like a warrior's bride," Gyda sighed.
"Aye, that I am, and proud."
"You are most lovely, Freyda. Dwalin's knees will buckle at the sight of you, I think," Meisar reassured.
"Coulda never imagined being attended on by a king and queen at me wedding vows," she shook her head, blushing. "One'd think ye would need be royalty for that."
"You are marrying the king's most loyal friend. It is as good," Meisar reminded. "You are as good to me."
In the halls that sounded far beyond the borders of their royal wing, there was a clashing and fuss and the sound of a pipe being played off-key.
"It appears your escort has come. Let us walk you the staircase," Meisar summoned the dwarrowdams to follow, silently hoping the restless bride would reach the upper terrace in one piece.
They were all dressed in their best tunics, trousers without knee patches, hair oiled, braided, beards adorned. Lofar wore a new doublet with bells on the hems that made him look like a jester.
Donning a new pair of leather gloves, Vigg stationed himself behind to carry her train. On official business, he could always be counted upon for a certain level of seriousness. The other three were already drunk, but standing, able to walk in a straight line at least. They all ducked their wobbling bows to Meisar at the head of the stair with her ladies flanking her, officiously, if nothing else.
"M'queen!" they all warbled in unison and it was good enough for her.
"Safe journey then," Meisar concluded, sending Freyda on her way. In one piece, except that she is not one piece anymore.
.
Vigg carried her train in dutiful silence except to hassle Vestri, galloping along to his side, giddily. "Make way ye buggers! Got a bride to bring up to 'er wedding!" the latter hooted. But there were no buggers to be found for most of the walk. The night-owls and lantern-lighters of the city doffed their caps and babbled words of admiration amongst themselves for the passing bride.
"Don't worry Freyda. They won't give you no trouble," Vestri vowed.
"I dinna know we were expecting any," Freyda replied sarcastically.
"Never hurts to expect some," Vigg said, gathering her train in one hand and brandishing his knife.
"Well don't go looking for it," Freyda groused behind him.
Lofar, Vestri and Hepti holstered their weapons at their belts and took out instruments instead- Hepti on a bagpipe and Lofar at the flute, Vestri banging a small drum in uneven thumps already. Hepti blew into the pipe and it shrieked demonically, drawing the cringes and irritated stares of the dwarves at their midnight ale-and-snack carts up and down the long hall.
"Make way! Bride coming through!" Lofar bellowed into the mostly-empty path ahead. "Hail to the bride!" He belched and the scent of mead and stomach contents wafted back. Freyda put her veil to her nose and grumbled.
"Mahal preserve me," she implored, as Lofar's flute trebled and wailed high again. She knew the song by the warbling first note anyway; a dwarven shanty about merchants running precious cargo through orc territory, asking Mahal for safe deliverance.
Hepti's hip bumped his aggressively aside as the flute rattled on ear-splitting for several more seconds, sending the flute pointedly down his throat and firing out again like a Blacklock spear. The flute fell down over the walkway, into the dark, and they never heard it hit the ground. He slapped Hepti once and then three times in seething over the loss but Hepti was too well padded to notice, and kept beating the drum.
Deliverance indeed thought Freyda. Deliverance indeed. For the most precious of cargo.
.
"Am I late?" Dwalin huffed, echoing from the bottom of the stairs where king and queen awaited him for escort.
"You are in perfect time, actually," Thorin answered, embracing him joyfully when he ascended. Dark and elegant he was in his kingly robes for the occasion, his crown and mithril belt. Dwalin's cloak was new and fine green suede with a sable collar.
"The escorts should have gotten her to the terrace by now," Meisar said, joining Thorin.
"Should have? Ye see the likes of 'em?" Dwalin snorted. His nerves showed, the way he wrung his hands. "Well, we'll see."
"We are as close as family can be," avowed Thorin. "You know it is my honor. You walked this same path with me, to my own wedding. Look how far we have come." Beside each other they were princes ready for presentation, as regal as Thror himself in his heyday, though Dwalin donned the same clothing he had at Thorin's wedding, save for the cloak.
"Let us go then," Dwalin urged, fidgeting.
"Shall we proceed, my queen?" Thorin offered his arm to Meisar.
"Aye, and make haste," she replied, holding the crook of his elbow. They followed at a pace or two behind Dwalin, who was soon joined in the procession by Balin, carrying the chalice and mead. "I think after the fuss of this day they will each be quite happy. When the child comes, it will be more so then too."
"We will all be glad of it," he smiled. "We will have many things to come that we will be glad for, that I promise. I swear it. Meisar."
"How can you know the future enough to swear that?" she murmured enough paces behind Dwalin for him not to hear.
Bringing her hand up, Thorin kissed it, his lips already cold from the wind coming off the terrace to the floor far below. "I know that I am a king, and you are my queen. It is all I am certain of, until we are stone again, that you are my queen, and I love you more than life itself."
Leaning, she kissed his bare hand in return. "And you are my king. Until the mountains wear to earth, and there is naught a star in the sky."
.
Under the falling snow, Meisar joined the dwarrowdams around Freyda, seated and veiled. The guests had all come and gathered close around the stone archway, Onar proud in his green doublet that was as close a shade to Dwalin's as could be had without matching outright. Dwalin was shivering in his own clothing already, as they led him to Freyda for the unveiling, once he and Balin had offered their gifts to Onar and the escorting party in gratitude.
The thirteen dwarves of the reconquering quest and their families gathered, Dori throwing off his cloak to bundle a shivering Ori in another layer under the quickening snowfall, Nori puckering his lips at Siv to Meisar's sharp silent rebuke. Bombur's children and grandchildren huddled around them in their winter clothes, sticking their tongues out to catch the errant flakes.
Before the dwarrowdams gathered round her, Meisar took a step away toward Balin, greeting him with a kiss on his cheek. Balin bent down and kissed her hand with a grin.
"My queen, do you bring for my brother Dwalin his bride?"
"I do. But the bridegroom must make certain and unveil this dwarrowdam first, and declare her the One before these witnesses. Dwalin," she stepped aside and let Dwalin kneel on the pillow before Freyda, and take her veil by its hems to lift it from her face.
"Aye, it is," he bent and kissed each of her hands spontaneously in turn and lovingly so.
Beneath the arch and under Onar's watchful eye and quavering hands holding the wedding rituals on parchment before him, they stood opposite each other and held hands. Onar set the parchment down and hoisted up his hammer.
At the benediction and offering of the challenges from Onar with the hammer held high, the dwarves swore protection of the newlyweds in the their union in one voice. Keep them from harm and keep them from sorrow.
Presenting the marriage beads in their formal green velvet boxes were Anbur and Yrsa, following the reading of the contract aloud for the witnesses. The way Bira nudged Bombur over his shoulder, each regarding Freyda in a shared cheeky silence, seemed to betray some secret knowledge. Fourteen children later, Meisar imagined, perhaps they did. Freyda's skin was ivory with a glow that was neither the quickening of the wind on the mountain nor a maiden's nerve. It came from within and as the bead was presented to her to make Dwalin's marriage plait, it radiated, a warm joy. She had given him a cheeky caress with her forefinger across the apple of his cheek as she found a suitable strand in his great wiry beard to make the braid, selected carefully and smoothed it out close to this face, eyes squinted in plaiting, and so careful, her fingers considering each pass and thread, lest she pull it too hard and he wince. No, he had been hurt enough, scarred and biffed and broken enough. None knew better than her, not even Thorin.
It was a wife's privilege, sometimes a wife's burden, but a wife's love alone could soothe it, and he would know it soon enough.
In symmetry to his courtship braid, she clasped his wedding bead into the tip and stood back. Onar read from the seven blessings and had them repeat, Dwalin circling Freyda seven times, their chant of the blessings humming in unison.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha sullu khama akrâzu Sulladad.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha kâmin, abbad ra hanâd
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha îbin ra ritîh ni kurdû id-abad.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha khazâd ra barraf haded.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' gashara khazâd atrâb d'amzur îbin ra ritîh ni kurdû id-abad.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' mahgayada dûmmâ tur naddanhu.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' mahgayada mayasthûn ra mayasthûna.
Dwalin and Freyda said the words and Meisar held Thorin's hand close in hers. Freyda's glow was subtle and perhaps a language spoken only by the female sex. A precious light, it radiated from within, nervous as she must have been. Fortunately, it seemed her father's eyes were too clouded with shine consumption or tears or struggling over his reading to notice.
But Dwalin did. He let his eyes go free to graze her midsection every moment or so, alight. Dwalin's eyes had always been particularly severe in any case, and their warmth was queer to see. The fire in his eyes when he looked at her Meisar sighed to herself in close watch. A forge so hot as to please any smith, even the Great Smith. Lo, look what He has forged for them. Her eyes trailed to Freyda's midsection and the way that the bulky wool of the over-dress covered her there almost too obviously.
"I protect ye always, as the Seven Fathers did for seven tribes, seven brides," proclaimed Dwalin, at the end of the seven circles. "Will ye accept the protection of my house?"
"Seven Fathers who woke beside their Ones, strangers in the dark, and yet they knew it was to be," Freyda recited. "I join yer home freely and accept its protection, as my fore-mothers did."
Seven circles made, they stood face to face again, married under the falling snow where Thorin and Meisar had exchanged their own vows. The mead was poured except that it was not mead at all but a tingling concoction of honey and mint. The cup was emptied and placed back upon the stone. Tiny droplets of snow gathered swiftly on its rim and browned upon the sheen of liquid still left.
"Well, kiss then," Onar grunted, to the laughter of the gathered dwarves. His proud grin regarded Dwalin glassy-eyed, enough to be the least bit comforting.
He raised her chin across from him on bent thumb and forefinger, drew her close to kiss her lips lightly. They tingled in the aftermath and the cheering of the guests.
"Well then, it is snowing harder and I expect it will come down harder still, and it is very cold. Shall we sup then, and celebrate this joyous occasion?" Balin chuckled. The guests murmured an enthusiastic agreement to that.
In Tania's Hall the fire in the hearth kindled bright and roared up and down the chimneys with the heady winds coming above. Meat and mead were shared around the great table and a dais was raised for the bride and groom, the king and queen not even sitting so high that evening.
Freyda, in wool and shimmering samite, was more beautiful than she had ever been. Meisar and Thorin had already seen to the steward's handsome reward in filling her glass with none but cold mint tea.
"Handling this marriage business so far, are ye, son-by-law?" Onar inquired cheekily, chipped teeth gleefully grinning over the ale flagon he was drinking straight from, wandering up and down the dais with joy.
"Handling it well, Onar, and very happily so," Dwalin assured. Freyda's thumb rubbed at the web between his and his forefinger, contentedly.
"Ye need not worry for Dwalin, da. A warrior's house is a good place to be even in good times," she laughed.
"She'll handle you well enough, lad," Onar chuckled deeply. "And I… I, Dwalin, plan to be well-informed should ye utter a cross word toward her, or dishonor her in any way. And then I'll be the one handlin' ye, lad."
He drifted away against Dwalin's sudden fidgeting as the dwarrowdams closed in around Freyda. The queen made the official announcement to the gathered dwarves of her retirement, bawdy jests going up before she could finish. Some other time she might have silenced them and made a further adieu, but Freyda seemed eager to depart the hall.
Once Dwalin had ceremonially, stiffly in his manner, kissed her hand and then her cheek before their guests, the dwarrowdams escorted her back to their new home, giggling and trotting all the way just as they had done when Meisar was married.
"Which will he grasp you with and which will he keep you with?" Gyda whispered under her hand as she took out the key to the door. Eda shushed her.
"Both I hope," Freyda trilled, innocently. "A warrior ought be very dexterous."
"Pray he don't treat with you too roughly," Siv followed more cynically. "Or you'll be grasping a pillow and keepin' a block of ice at hand."
"Like dough," Eda insisted. "That's how he need knead you. Very carefully, none to vigorous, or you'll split apart you will."
Freyda crossed the threshold to the bedroom and kicked off her shoes next to the bed. "Knead me? I'm not bread!" she protested toward the dwarrowdams who were considering the room carefully. A blanket of raccoon fur was thrown over the bed and the pillows were also fur-lined and plump. "He knows perfectly well how to treat me."
By then she had slipped easily from her wedding attire and donned a long embroidered ivory tunic as a night-shift and a fur robe, a jeweled bronze crescent as heavy as a yoke worn on her neck. Her most prized of jewelry, as was tradition.
As they helped with the candles and sconces Eda took a seat next to the bride. "No, you are not bread, lass. But rest assured something will be rising and I will make sure he knows it's not to be put in the oven too soon."
Freyda looked green and waved her off. "Oh bugger. An old healer has no business counseling a man on his marital duties."
"Waited on enough dwarrowdams the morning after to know," Eda shot back. Meisar patted her shoulder, not quite chiding. But Freyda sat with a patient maidenly virtue to her countenance as Emli took a seat beside Eda and rambled on about the dangers of axes that struck too hard and too quickly in tight mine shafts. Eda was counseling morning-after salves when Freyda began to fan herself with her hand, swollen with sudden unsteady heat. Meisar shooed them from the fur-covered bed and urged Freyda up to sit at her dressing-table (closer to the pail lest...)
"She needs no more frazzling now, Eda, Emli. Perhaps we should all go," recommended Meisar calmly. The candles were all lit and Freyda was squirming. Her grateful glance was a yes to that.
.
The dwarrowdams were leaving with Meisar bringing up their rear when Freyda turned and made a pithing sound like a pup's whine. "Wait, Meisar, stay a moment."
Meisar waved the others on in spite of their curious glances, closed the door to them and calmly took up the fine horsehair brush on the table and began to smooth Freyda's golden hair, as she plucked the shiny beads from her beard and laid them out.
"I suppose it is not such an ill that it has already been consummated. You should take this night and rest yourselves. You need it, Dwalin needs it, and your babe," she counseled quietly.
Freyda's hand went up and clutched hers over her shoulder. "I wanted to thank ye, for everything. Yer kindness in making this wedding, and yer... discretion. I thought ye would be angry with me."
"Why would you make that assumption?" Meisar asked a little dismally. It was not anger, no, not anger. Hot like anger but not for her.
"Because I know what ye feel. I have a child in me and you... you... should also."
"Mahal's will is working its way through us, Freyda. If it is right, I will," Meisar answered stiffly.
"Mahal's will? Yavanna's fruits? Which is it? Who do ye pray up to? Aye but it is magic though, doncha think?" "Makin' a baby. How it grows and…" Freyda's hand stopped guiltily on her stomach and she drew a sharp breath. "I'm sorry."
"You have no reason to be sorry, Freyda. Mahal has given you this gift for a reason."
"It should be yer gift, if it canna be mine also. Maybe... ye will soon, and it was meant. So our children could be the same age," Freyda said hopefully.
Meisar's eyes filled with tears. "I would like that," she said hollowly. "I would like that, Freyda." She clasped her hands and sat on her haunches before her chair. The tears in her eyes she blinked away but they were glassy with wetness already. "All I have ever wanted all my life is a baby, my own child. And now with Thorin... with Thorin. I have never wanted anything so much in all my life."
Freyda leaned down and hugged her tight. "Would have never guessed, Meisar the Shepherdess. I should have seen how lonely ye were, then... should have guessed how deep yer heart was, truly."
"But not now. There is nothing to ever forgive between us, Freyda. Do not forget that."
Freyda put her crooked front teeth over her lips the way she did. "D'you know anything about carrying a babe, just from... seeing? Ye see beasts in the wild have 'em I'm sure. I dinna have much reference myself."
She had seen many a pregnant woman in the villages of men, their ankles swollen in poor shoes. They wore the same roughspun dresses, let out at the sides to accommodate bellies that grew year to year with alarming regularity, small children with dirty faces always rambling at their feet. She had even seen an elf, great with child, on a silver garron, part of a caravan that took the road to Rivendell. The she-elf was pale as moonlight, cradling the swell of her belly, a sphere as reverently treated and protected as the palantirs themselves it seemed. There was nothing useful any more than that, which she could impart to Freyda on pregnancy.
"In humans they tend to waddle toward the end. That is all I know," Meisar japed.
"Then we dwarves are kenning for it worse there," Freyda chuckled back nervously.
"There is no worse, only good," Meisar answered gently.
"Ye will have yer own. We'll fight for it if we must. We are warriors, Meisar. We are stubborn in giving up and I won't, if you don't," Freyda pleaded.
"Take care of this little one in you," Meisar said, folding her hand over Freyda's on her stomach. "I'll be fine."
.
"Now stop right there," pecked Eda, stationing herself before the door. Dwalin grumbled impatiently. "You treat her as if you are holding a kitten, you will. Is that understood?"
"Understood," Dwalin replied.
"I have known many a dwarf to underestimate their strength sorely until they've gotten with a dwarrowdam at first. Then you males learn the hard way how rough you can be. So I'm telling you now, brute," reiterated Eda sharply.
Meisar slipped out the door and took a quick look at Eda and Dwalin and Dwalin's impervious face, his ale-and-smoke smell that reminded her so startlingly of Thorin on the night of their wedding.
"Gentle, like a kitten. She's got the strength of a man but she is still a woman. No games of knocks. I'll have hoped you have evolved since."
"I am certain Freyda will communicate anything Dwalin needs to hear, well enough, Eda," she reassured, nudging Eda by the shoulder.
"Thank you, m'queen," Dwalin murmured. "For everything."
"Obliged and glad," she said quickly. "Come my ladies. I think we should leave them now."
Eda shook her finger back at him in departing.
"Does sure look like he's in a mood," Siv quipped.
"Poor maid, she'll be sore for weeks," Virta worried as they made their way back up to the wedding feast.
"Really? She didn't seem too flabbergasted. I think Dwalin might know what he's doing after all," Siv remarked slyly.
It had already been done, Meisar thought with some amusement. He had known Freyda somewhere in the vast halls of Erebor, an inglenook or an empty hall on a long night perhaps. Next to her Siv was smirking.
"If Eda tends on her in the morning it'll be because she's green in the face and not red down in her intimates. Am I wrong, Meisar?"
"One word," Meisar warned, taking her hard by the arm when the dwarrowdams had fled ahead toward the sound of the drums. Siv gasped at the bite of her fingers into her flesh beneath the silk. "One word Siv and I'll pass you to the rubbish collectors in Dale. You'll toil with them until you drop."
"Pass me to Bard's men will you?" Siv sassed, trying to wrest from her grip but it was harsher than she remembered. "I'm not that kind of girl."
"Your mouth is going to get you in trouble someday, Siv," Meisar frowned at her irritably.
Siv's face went glum against her doleful eyes and subtle twisting of her mouth. "It's not easy, is it?" she muttered.
"Nothing is," Meisar replied defensively. "But we are each of us warriors. We make our way. We make our own luck if we can."
.
"Ye found yer way," Freyda grinned at him from across the room. "I was growing scared ye would not come."
"No reason to be afraid. All I wanted is to come to ye now."
Freyda leaned over the foot of the bed on her knees, staring across at Dwalin intently. He shed his cloak and his fine sur-coat and decided the chest of drawers was too far across the room. He piled each over the foot of the bed and sat on the side, unlacing his boots. Freyda's presence behind him was warm and fragrant at once, and stealthily quiet. She rubbed his shoulders.
"I am happy to be with ye now, Dwalin," she murmured against the back of his neck where it met the upper part of his back. Her breath ran hot down his tunic. He put that off in turn, and the green-drab upper layer to his smallclothes with it.
"Are ye happy to be have a proper bed at last?" Freyda ribbed. Her hair fell loose and lightly curled down to her elbows in front.
"Happier to be sharing it a wedded sort," Dwalin laid back on the fur-covered bed and stretched languidly.
"I'll not sprawl, I promise," Freyda chuckled. She drew a finger lightly in the groove of a scar on his chest.
"What shall we do tonight? I'm afraid to do anything that'll hurt the... our bairn," Dwalin cautioned.
"Suppose we've already done what folk are usually doin' at first after the wedding," Freyda said sheepishly. Non-withstanding all previous explorations chaste and on the edge of being the least so (and finally, not at all), it needn't saying, but in that moment of tender zeal for each other, it seemed but a minuscule obstacle. She was still Freyda, pretty as a gem and as sturdy as any of them.
Carefully, she removed the jeweled crescent that hung around her neck and set it aside.
"Still, there is..." she began, trailing off in thought or with some verve. The way her eyes looked, it might have been the latter, coupled with a distinctly female timidity. With a sigh, she lifted her embroidered shift off and doffed it quietly to the side of the bed, still on her knees, naked, and sitting back on her heels.
There were more candles now so that he could see her. It had been dark, dark and fumbling and with only that distinctive heat to guide them when they had gone about it and forged the child on one of those long nights in a longer-abandoned hall. The dwarvish strength and breadth of her body was familiar but it was different. Feminine. With parts he lacked and some that she in turn did.
His dark eyes drew down to her stomach and he sighed, running a finger across its equatorial breadth. "Oh lass… is our bairn in there?"
"A wee pebble of a bairn," she laughed. "But a bairn. A very fair one I am to be guessing. Fair and strong. Like his father."
He touched her stomach above the golden-haired mound again. "So will ye… will it… grow here?"
"Aye," Freyda laughed. "Like a mixing bowl put up on me belly curve side out it'll be lookin' like soon. I think."
"Come here, lass," he all but ordered, huskily, his arms out to take her over him, her thighs straddled atop the furs that covered him to the waist. "I would like to have a look at ye in good light."
Around the podge of stomach there were white raised wounds, on her belly and on her thigh and across the jut of her left hip so deep the white scarring was from rounds of stitching too.
"Who did this to you?" he muttered, a dark demand.
"Orc. Shouldn't have been so far south," she grumbled. "Da's very stubborn sometimes. The pay was good and we were hungry."
"I'll find this filth and slay it and I'll bring you the heads of all who dared swing a blade toward ye," Dwalin hissed, sitting up suddenly, reinforcing Freyda's legs around his hips by digging fingers ardently against her thighs and closing them tight around his waist.
"We'll decorate the hearth with 'em then. Won't the guests be very fond of that?" she clapped her hands in amusement and folding her arms under her chest, lay over him with her legs warmly encapsulating his. "Mayhap we shall bring those heads someday to hang above our child's cradle, and remind him of how fortunate his mother and da were to have lived and made him," Freyda chuckled in the ebbing light. "Oh aye, if only I were so cruel."
Sighing against the oncoming rush of animalistic need, he drew off to her side. He rested his hand on the curve of her hip.
"None for cruelty now, lass. Mayhap there shall be peace now," Dwalin dared to hope out loud. He kissed her goodnight on her brow-bone.
She blew out the candles to leave the room in a state of quiet dark, returning to slip beneath the covers beside him, happily.
"Tired?" she asked, nudging him. He was already gone, his answer a snore. She gazed affectionately through the pitch dark to the sleeping lump would would lie beside her always now.
"Aye, we'll both be soon enough."
.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha sullu khama akrâzu Sulladad- (Blessed are you Mahal who has created everything for the glory of Eru.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha kâmin, abbad ra hanâd- Blessed are you Mahal who fashioned the earth, the mountains and the hills.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha îbin ra ritîh ni kurdû id-abad- Blessed are you Mahal who fashioned the gems and metals in the heart of the mountain.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' muha khazâd ra barraf haded -Blessed are you Mahal who fashioned the dwarves and the seven houses.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' gashara khazâd atrâb d'amzur îbin ra ritîh ni kurdû id-abad- Blessed are you Mahal who taught the dwarves the skill to work the gems and metals in the heart of the mountain.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' mahgayada dûmmâ tur naddanhu- Blessed are you Mahal who gladdens our Halls through his children.
Mamahdûn Mahal ku' mahgayada mayasthûn ra mayasthûna- Blessed are you Mahal who gladdens groom and bride.