Hall of the Mountain King

by Tarr, Judith

  Vadin’s forehead ached. He realized that he was scowling. And who was he to disapprove? He had had a fling or two himself, though he much preferred to bed a woman.

  Mirain smiled at the boy. What was his name? Ithan, Istan, something of the sort. It was one of Mirain’s courtesan-smiles, not quite warm enough to burn.

  The boy swayed toward him. Caught himself, drew back in charming confusion. His glance crossed Vadin’s; he flinched visibly and all but fled.

  Amid all the sighing and swooning, Vadin could still observe that Mirain left the hall sober and without incident, and moreover without lingering overmuch. Maybe he had grown as heartily sick of young love as Vadin had.

  oOo

  He slept at once and deeply, as always. Vadin, sharing the overlarge bed, lay awake as always. Not thinking of much; aware of the warm body near him, wishing it were Ledi’s. One or two of the slaves had cast him glances; maybe, if he could slip out . . .

  Mirain turned in his sleep. He came to Vadin as a pup to its dam, burrowed into the long bony body, sighed once and was still.

  Vadin’s sigh was much deeper. Mirain did not feel anything like a woman, except for his skin. And his hair; it put Ithan’s—Istan’s—to shame.

  He had shaken it out of its braid; by morning it would be a hideous tangle. Without thinking, Vadin smoothed the mass of it. And kept smoothing it, stroking, keeping his hand light lest he wake Mirain. It was soothing, like petting a favorite hound.

  Ianon would rise up in arms if it knew he thought such a thing. Mirain would laugh. He loved to look splendid and he knew when he did, but he was convinced of his own ugliness.

  Not that he was handsome, and he was anything but pretty. But beautiful, maybe. An odd, striking, inescapable beauty.

  Vadin’s hand stilled. He listened to the slow strong breathing, contemplated the arm that had settled itself across his chest.

  Suddenly he wanted to break free and bolt. Just as suddenly, he wanted to clutch at Mirain and babble an endless stream of nonsense. Waking him thereby and chancing his new-roused temper.

  Vadin lay very still and very quiet and made himself remember how to breathe. In, out. In, out. So. Out. In—

  He had not lost his wager yet. That turned on friendship. There was nothing in it about falling in love.

  Damn him, thought Vadin, still counting breaths. Damn him, damn him, damn him.

  NINE

  Istan begged as Mirain had foretold, and Mirain was kind to him, but firm. “I ride to battle; and I have a squire of the king’s own choosing. Stay, grow strong, learn well all that your masters can teach. And when your hair is braided, if you can and will, come to Han-Ianon and I will welcome you.”

  The boy’s great eyes swam with tears, but he held them back. He looked less like a boy then, and not at all like a girl.

  When Mirain rode away he was on the tower over the gate, watching. Vadin knew he would not move until they were long out of sight.

  Mirain had not forgotten him; that was not his way. But he was focused ahead upon the loom of peaks that was the Marches, and the blue coverlet, given him as a gift, was folded away among the baggage.

  Vadin was calm, riding beside him. Waking had been agony, not least for that he had lain immobile and sleepless for most of the night; and it was Mirain’s rousing that had startled him into consciousness.

  The prince disentangled himself with no sign of shame, cross-grained as he always was on first waking but trying to train himself out of it, and oblivious to the wave of heat that laid Vadin low. Vadin looked at him and remembered, and considered hating himself, and froze in sudden horror.

  Mirain of all people, mage and god’s son, walker in minds, could never be deceived. Vadin could feign the most perfect indifference, or be wise and conduct himself exactly as he always had, and Mirain would know. Would see. And if he cared, Vadin knew he would die of it; but he did not, that would be infinitely worse.

  He had brought wine to Vadin still helpless under the coverlet, and he was the same as always. The god did not flame out of his eyes; they were clouded with sleep, but clearing, seeing nothing untoward.

  Vadin gulped the warm sweet wine, and it steadied him. Maybe, after all, he had nothing to fear. He did not have the kind of eyes that swooned, and Mirain would not invade a mind that resisted; and Avaryan’s child or no, he was at his worst in the morning. By the time Mirain’s wits were fully gathered, Vadin had himself well in hand.

  With the wind in his face, fresh and cold with unmelted snows, he knew that he could master this. He was not like Istan. It was not Mirain’s body he wanted; or not so much that he was weak with it. He would have something else. Maybe something unheard of.

  “Look!” cried Mirain, flinging up his arm. Great wings boomed; an eagle dropped from the sky to settle like a falcon trained to jesses: a white eagle of the mountains, the royal bird of Ianon, companion of kings. Eye met eye, sun-fire to Sun-fire.

  With a high fierce cry the eagle cast itself sunward. It carried Mirain’s soul with it, the body riding empty, easy in the tall war-saddle.

  Vadin bent his stinging eyes on Rami’s ears. Gods and demons, he was lost indeed; jealous of a bird. And all for a wanderwit sorcerer who wanted to be a king. Who would probably die for wanting it.

  His eyes brimmed and overflowed; he swore at the whip of the wind.

  oOo

  The Marches came on slowly, in hills that swelled and rose and broke into mountains; in a spreading bleakness, green overwhelmed by the power of stone, trees stunted and twisted in the merciless wind.

  Summer had gained no foothold here. Where green could go, it was spring still, the snows but lately gone; the peaks were white with it, daring the sun to conquer them.

  But far away below was green and warmth and quiet, and as they rose higher Vadin could see the walls of Ianon’s Vale across the rolling land, though not either Towers or castle. The former looked away from him toward the sunrise; the latter lay too well protected within its circling mountains.

  They rode more cautiously now in a net of scouts and spies, feeling out this country that had risen against its lord. Yet they did not creep about like thieves. Moranden would have it known that he was in the Marches, but never precisely where. He would ride openly through a village, a cluster of huts beneath a crag; wind swiftly along hidden paths to a hold far distant; and take his rest there for a day, a night, or perhaps but an hour.

  “Confusion,” Mirain said to Vadin. “It makes the rebels uneasy. They’re not as powerful here as they’d like to be; and the waverers are being reminded, often by their lord’s own presence, that they swore oaths of fealty unto death.”

  A pretty chieftain remembered, and tried to appease both sides. He housed and feasted a ringleader, arrested him in his bed and sent word of the capture to the Prince Moranden. Moranden came, smiled, saw the rebel executed. And as the executioner brought him the head gaping and bleeding, raised his hand. His men seized the chieftain; the executioner, under Moranden’s cold eye, did his duty yet again.

  Vadin was no stranger to summary justice. He had grown up with it. But it was Mirain, raised in the gentle south, who watched unflinching, and Vadin who needed his head held afterward while he was thoroughly and shamefully sick.

  “I can kill,” he gasped. “I can kill in battle. I know I can. But I can’t—can’t ever—Gods, his eyes when they took him. His eyes. ”

  Mirain did not insult him with either pity or sympathy. “He knew what he risked, but he refused to believe it. Traitors never do.”

  They had the garderobe to themselves, for a little while. Vadin turned in the doorway, his back to the curtain of leather that opened on the stair. “Would you have done what your uncle did?”

  Mirain took time to relieve himself. It was dim, the cresset flickering above his bent head, but Vadin saw the thinning of his lips. At last he said, “I don’t know. I . . . don’t know.” He straightened his kilt. “I’ve never been betrayed.”

  Yet. Th
e word, unspoken, hung in the heavy air.

  oOo

  Moranden had made his point. His vassals sent him numerous protestations of loyalty. But the leaders, the begetters of the uprising, knew that they could expect no mercy. Gathering what forces they could, they fled in search of safety.

  “Umijan,” said the chief of Moranden’s scouts, who had foundered a senel to reach his lord on the road between Shuan and Kerath. Vadin heard; Mirain, driven perhaps by prescience, had worked his way to the head of the line, and the elder prince’s guards had made no effort to stop him.

  “Yes,” the scout repeated between gasps, accepting Moranden’s own flask, drinking deep. “They hid a man in Kerath, nigh dead with fever, but not nigh enough. He babbled before he died. Umijan will shelter the rebels if they get there soon enough, and if they swear the proper oaths.”

  Moranden’s face was rigid. Umijan was the heart of the Marches, its lord his close kinsman. Half-brother, whispered some who whispered also that he was no son of Raban the king. Save only for the giant-builded keep of Han-Ianon, it was the strongest holding in the kingdom, nor had it ever been taken.

  Once barricaded within, the fugitives could hold fast for as long as they chose. Or as Baron Ustaren chose, and he would not yield lightly; for he came of a long line of rebels against any lordship but their own.

  “What if we come there first?” Mirain’s voice brought them all about; at least one blade bared against him. He stared it down. “What if we come to Umijan before them?” he repeated. “What will Ustaren do then?”

  “Impossible,” rasped the captain nearest Moranden. “If they passed Kerath a full day and more ago, riding as fast as they should have been, they’ll be inside the walls by tomorrow’s sunset. We’ll never catch them, let alone pass them.”

  “If we do,” Mirain persisted, “will the lord hold to his treason? Or is he only playing a game he was bred to play? A race: to the winner his aid, to the loser his enmity.”

  The scout grinned. “That’s it, my prince; there you have it. The Great Game, and he’s a master of it, is my lord of Umijan. But the lead’s too great. We can’t close it in the time we have.”

  Moranden’s charger fretted, ears flat, eye rolling at the Mad One. The elder prince forestalled a lunge, staining the foam with blood beneath the bit, but his mind was not on it.

  His eyes lay on Mirain. Vadin could not read them. They hated, yes, always, but not to blindness; they measured the mount and the rider, and narrowed. “Well, sister-son,” he said, and that was a great concession before the army, “since your lordship chooses not to keep the place you were assigned to, tell us what you know that we’re still ignorant of.”

  “I know nothing, lord commander,” Mirain said without perceptible mockery, “but I don’t believe we’ve lost the race. Give me ten men on the swiftest seneldi we have; provision us with what we can consume in the saddle; and I’ll greet the traitors in your name from Umijan’s gate.”

  “Why you? Why risk the throne prince on a venture that could kill him?”

  “Because,” Mirain answered, “the Mad One is the swiftest senel in Ianon, and he will suffer no rider but myself. He can win the race if no other can.”

  They watched, all the men who were close enough, and passed the tale in a murmur through the ranks. Mirain was challenging Moranden, whose commands hitherto he had not questioned; and Moranden was all too well aware of it. But there was no enmity in the challenge, on either side. Not this time, not with a common enemy before them.

  “If I send you,” said Moranden, “and you fall afoul of the enemy, or fail to convince Ustaren that you’re a king and not a pawn in this game of his, I’ll have more than Umijan raised against me.”

  “No. By my father I swear it. This venture is on my head alone. If you give me leave, my lord commander.”

  “And if I don’t, my lord soldier?”

  “I submit to your will. And,” said Mirain, “we lose Umijan.”

  The dun stallion lowered its horns, snorting in outrage. Moranden’s fist hammered it into submission.

  Suddenly he laughed, a deep free sound untainted with bitterness. “You have gall, boy. You may even have a chance. Pick your men, if you haven’t already; Rakan, see to their provisioning.”

  Vadin did not ask to go. He assumed it. Rami could outrun anything on feet, perhaps even the Mad One himself. When he went to fill his saddlebags with journey-bread and presscakes and a double ration of water, Rakan the quartermaster gave him hardly a glance. He was part of Mirain, like the Mad One.

  He added all unnecessary burdens to the pile at Rakan’s feet, even to shield and armor, even to his helmet, so light would they have to travel; but he kept sword and dagger, for no nobleman would go abroad without them. He regretted the sacrifice of his armor, although he would get it back when the army came to Umijan. Kilt and cloak were poor protection against edged bronze.

  But they were not riding to a fight; they were riding to win a Marcher lord to Moranden’s side in the game.

  Mirain chose his men quickly enough to prove his uncle right. He chose well, Vadin judged and Moranden conceded. They were all young, but seasoned and strong; lightly built, most of them, long and light like Vadin or small and light like Mirain, and superbly mounted. They gathered ahead of the company, their seneldi fretting with eagerness, while Mirain faced Moranden once more and said, “Wish us well, my lord.”

  Moranden bowed his head. His eyes held Mirain’s for a long moment. He did not smile, nor did he frown. Only Vadin was close enough to hear what he said. “For the king, priestess’ bastard. For the kingdom one of us will rule. Ride hard and ride straight, and may the gods bring you there before the enemy.”

  Mirain smiled. “I’ll see you in Umijan, my uncle.”

  The Mad One wheeled on his haunches, belling. With a flash of his golden hand, Mirain flung them all into a gallop.

  oOo

  Afterward, when Vadin tried to remember that wild ride, he could call up most clearly the blur of wind and thunder, and Rami’s mane whipping his hands, her long ears now flat with speed, now pricked as the riders slowed to breathe and eat and, far too briefly, to rest. They kept to the rhythm of the Great Race, grueling but not quite killing if senel and rider both were of the best.

  Rami was; Vadin was determined to be. She strode forth tirelessly, matching the Mad One pace for pace, even showing him her heels when once he faltered. A stone had caught him in a moment of carelessness; he surged up beside her on the narrow track, aimed a nip at her shoulder for her presumption.

  She scorned to notice him. Behind his flattened ears shone Mirain’s sudden grin. Vadin bared his own teeth in reply, less grin than grimace.

  They lost a man on the ridge called the Blade, sliding down its sheer side into a long level valley. His tall roan mare, taking the descent too suddenly, overbalanced; scrambled; hung suspended, and somersaulted screaming into air.

  The snap of her neck breaking was abrupt and hideous, but more hideous yet was the stillness of her rider. The three men behind could not stop, could only swerve and pray; of those ahead, one nearly died himself as his mount shied away from the plummeting bodies.

  The last man slid to a halt on grass, trembling, the senel gasping, the soldier cursing in a steady drone. Mirain’s voice cut across both. “The gods have taken their tribute. The army will tend the bodies when it passes. On now, for the love of Ianon. On!”

  They lost the second man on a road of stones and scree. The spotted gelding stumbled and fell and came up lame; although his young rider wept on his neck, they left both to limp on as best they could. Avaryan was sinking and the country worsening, and they had lost their first bright edge of speed. And two gone already, with the night before them and the worst still far away.

  But at last it seemed that the gods of this cruel country were sated. The company settled into a steady, ground-devouring pace, close but not crowding, shifting as one or another dropped back to rest a little. Only the Mad One
never relinquished his place; he ran before them all, untiring, with only the merest sheen of sweat to brighten his flanks.

  Avaryan set in a torrent of fire. The stars bloomed one by one. Brightmoon would rise late and half full; Greatmoon climbed the sky at their backs, huge and ghostly pale.

  The Mad One ran as one with the shadows, but Mirain kept about him a last shimmer of sunset. It crowned him, faint yet clear; it glowed in the scarlet of his cloak.

  “Sunborn,” someone said, far back behind Vadin. “Avaryan-lord. An-Sh’Endor.” He had a fine voice; he made a chant of it, though no one else could spare breath for aught but living. Vadin found it echoing in his brain, set to the beat of Rami’s hooves. It was strong; there was power in it, the magic of true names. It bound them all to the one who led them, who found the way for them through the crowding dark. Sunborn, Avaryan-lord, An-Sh’Endor.

  Just before the first glimmer of dawn, Mirain bade them halt. He had found a stream among the stones, and a patch or two of winter-blasted grass. They cooled their gasping mounts, watered and fed them, rubbed them down and dropped, falling into a sleep like death.

  Vadin fought it. He had to see—he had to be sure—Mirain—

  oOo

  He opened his eyes on sunlight. They were strewn over the slope like the aftermath of battle, save only that no carrion birds had come to torment them. Those were circling, hopeful but not yet bold.

  Mirain stood near him, face turned toward the sun as if he drank its sustenance. Vadin remembered part of his dream that might have been real: a dark sweet voice singing Avaryan into the sky.

  The prince turned, smiling slightly. Although Vadin knew beyond questioning that he had not slept, no weariness scarred him.

  His smile widened a fraction. “Priesthood,” he said. “It thrives on long vigils.” He bent, set something near Vadin’s hand. “Eat. Drink. It’s growing late.”