Chapter 16: The Dowager Empress
Days passed, and the nerves of people in the monastery began fraying like a well-worn rope. The perennial problem with the Festival of First Snow was that the weather didn’t always cooperate with the celebrants.
Some flexibility had been built into the Festival of First Snow over the centuries. There were certain rituals that had to be performed early, before the snows actually came. There were certain rituals that had to be performed late, after the first snows had begun. The great majority of the rituals, however, could be performed at either time, and many could be dispensed with altogether if the snows came too early and too heavy, thus paying tacit homage to the power and unpredictability of nature.
Each day a new court ceremony was held. There was t
