by Tarr, Judith
In envy, maybe. This was no place for a male, even for a child of seven summers, even one with the almond eyes and the red-brown skin of the southlands. His owner, whoever she was, was kind, or fastidious; she had replaced the iron slave-collar with a necklet of copper.
The eunuch led Vadin past the child up a long stair. At its summit stood another guard, a monster, a great hairless slug of a creature. But the worst of it was not its size or its smoothness; it was white, as white as the woman the talespinner had told of, but its eyes were grey as iron. Vadin shuddered in his own, warm, dusk-and-velvet hide, and took great care in passing, as if the eunuch could infect him with that maggot-pallor.
His guide was smiling with an edge of malice. “What, my young lord, do you not approve of Kashi? He is rare and wonderful, a son of the uttermost west, where folk are the color of snow. My lady paid a great fortune for him.”
Vadin did not deign to respond. Bad enough that those bitter eyes had seen his revulsion; he would not give them more to mock at. Was he not the heir of Geitan? Was he not the throne prince’s envoy?
His haughtiness carried him almost to the end. The Lady Odiya sat in a chamber of broad windows, and those open to wind and sun; and after all the guards and the tales and the seclusion, she was not even wearing a veil. Her long hair was braided like a man’s, its raven sheen touched only lightly with silver, and her body was clad in a gown as plain as a servant’s, and she wore no jewel; and her beauty was as piercing as it had been in the Wood of the Goddess.
There was no softness in it, nothing gentle, nothing he had ever thought of as womanly, yet she was woman to the core of her. Woman as the goddess was woman, female incarnate, sister to the she-wolf and the tigress, daughter of moons and tides and darkness, relentless as the earth itself.
Pain startled Vadin out of his stupor, the edges of the box sharp as blades under his clenched fingers. A spell—she was casting a spell. He looked at her, and he made himself see an aging woman in a dark gown, her body thin under it, almost sexless. Her hair was dulled, her face carved to the bone by the bitter years. But she was still beautiful.
His body, trained, had brought him to one knee and bowed his head the precise degree due a royal concubine. His limbs felt even more ungainly than usual, his ribs more prominent, his beard more ragged. How dared he inflict his unlovely self upon this great queen?
Spells. The voice in his head sounded exactly like Mirain’s. Give her the box, Vadin.
He was doing it. He was saying the words which Mirain had given him to say. “The throne prince sends this gift, great lady; what you have lost, he has found and now returns to you.”
She took the box. Her face betrayed nothing. In that, it was like Mirain’s, or like the king’s. Royal.
“I am to see you open it, great lady,” Vadin said.
Her eyes lifted. He could not have moved if he had wished to. She took in every line of his face from brow to chin. She said, “You are . . . almost . . . beautiful. You will be fair indeed when your body grows into itself. If,” she said, “you live so long.”
“Open the box,” said Vadin. Or Mirain wielding Vadin’s tongue, or terror leaving no wits and almost no words. His mind saw a dark chamber far from help, a knife raised and glittering, a new guard at the door. A young one who could remember what it was to be a man.
The lady’s eyes released him so abruptly that he swayed. Her long fingers found the catch, raised the lid. She gazed down without surprise, but her calm had broken. That was rage which glittered beneath her brows, which bared her teeth. Two were missing, unlovely gaps, breaking the last of her spell.
With sudden violence she flung the box away. Its contents gleamed dully in her hand: the black dagger of Umijan’s priestess.
Vadin gaped at it. He had last seen it buried to the hilt in Ustaren’s heart.
“Tell your master,” said Odiya, and her voice was as harsh as that of a carrion bird, “tell your mighty prince that I have received his gift. I will keep it until the time comes for it to drink his blood. For my servants have been weak, but they will grow strong; and the goddess hungers.”
“I hear,” said Vadin’s throat and tongue and lips. “I am not afraid. Let the goddess lust after Sun-blood, but let her be warned. Its fire consumes all that comes of darkness.”
“But in the end, it is the fire which is consumed.”
“Who can know what the true end will be?” Vadin bowed again, again with precision. “Good day, my lady Odiya.”
THIRTEEN
Moranden rode into Han-Ianon in the light of a blazing noon, with his men in their ranks behind him and his banners flying.
“Bold as brass,” someone said as they clattered through the market.
“Hush!” another warned her fiercely. “Ears can hear.”
“And so they should! Why, I’ve heard tell—”
Ymin edged her way through the press. She knew what the woman had heard. Everyone was hearing it.
“Tried to murder the heir, he did, or so they say.”
“When they’re not saying that he saved the prince’s life.”
“Saved it! Why, he lured the young lord away and tied him to an altar, and actually offered him up to the—”
“Be a good thing if he had. Mincing little foreigner. At least the other’s proper Ianyn.”
The singer pressed her lips together. That refrain would not die for all her singing and the king’s proclaiming and Mirain’s own great magic. With Moranden gone it had faded somewhat; now it would grow strong again, and the lines would draw themselves more firmly than ever. She shivered in the sun’s heat, and cursed that clarity of her mind which could come so close to prophecy.
A sudden tumult drowned out all but itself. Ymin, crushed in the crowd, saw Moranden’s company pause.
A second troop was riding down from the keep, no banner over it and no great order to it: a company of the king’s squires on holiday with hawks on wrists and hounds on leads. One of the hounds had escaped and was wreaking havoc among the stalls; two or three of the young hellions had spurred after it, baying like hounds on a scent.
Yet in the center of pandemonium was stillness, in the summer heat an island of cold. Mirain faced his mother’s brother, he and his Mad One motionless but for the glitter of eyes. Moranden’s weary charger fretted and stamped and fought to lower its horns.
A whoop and a yelp heralded the hound’s capture. It was loud in the spreading silence.
Ears strained; breathing quieted. The squires had drawn themselves into a line at Mirain’s back, and their eyes were bright and hard.
“Greetings, uncle.” Mirain’s voice was clear and cool and proud, distinct in the stillness. “How goes the war?”
Moranden grinned, a baring of white teeth. “Well, prince. Well indeed.” He leaned on his high pommel, the image of lordly ease. “Better by far than it was going when you left it.”
One or two of the squires, the lad from Geitan foremost, started forward. Mirain raised a hand; they stopped short. He smiled. “When I left,” he said, “there was no war at all. Only”—he hesitated, as if he did not wish to say the word—“only treachery. I am glad to see that you are free of it.”
Ymin’s breath caught. The eyes around her were avid.
Moranden bowed over his charger’s neck. “I have always been loyal to my rightful ruler.”
“I do not doubt it,” Mirain said.
The Mad One danced around Moranden’s dun, the point of a spear that clove a path through the company. Moranden’s men followed it with their eyes. With a bark of command the elder prince brought them about, spurring his stallion up the road to the castle.
A sigh ran through the crowd. Of relief, it might have been, that the rivals had not come to blows. Or, more likely, of disappointment.
oOo
There was little enough time for anyone to feel himself cheated. Moranden had returned a few scant days before the greater of Ianon’s two highest festivals, the feast of High Summe
r that was consecrated to Avaryan. And this one would be more splendid than any before it; for the central and holiest day of the festival was also Mirain’s birth-feast, his first in the castle and his sixteenth in the world. Every lord and chieftain in Ianon, and many a commoner, had come to look on the heir to the kingdom; most bore gifts, as rich as each could afford.
Mirain woke early on the day itself, the solstice day, first of the new year, well before dawn. Yet Vadin was up before him, and more remarkable still, the king. When his eyes opened they fell first upon his grandfather’s face, that bent over him, regarding him with a steady, patient stare.
He sat up, scowling slightly, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “My lord, what—”
“Gifts,” the king said. All his sternness melted; he loosed his rare and splendid smile. “Gifts for the Throne Prince of Ianon.”
Gifts indeed. Vadin brought them one by one, an honor he had fought for; he fought less successfully to keep the grin from his face. Full panoply, made to Mirain’s measure but with room for him to grow in: armor wrought as only smiths in Asanion could make it, light and strong and washed with gold, the breastplate graven with the rayed sun of his father; a tunic of well-padded leather to wear beneath, its skirt cut for ease and comfort and strengthened with gilded bronze; and a helmet of bright and burnished gold graven with flame-patterns and surmounted with a scarlet plume. And with these, baldric and scabbard likewise of scarlet and gold, and a sword of precious Asanian steel, its blade keen enough to draw blood from the air; and a cloak of scarlet clasped with gold, and a round Sun-shield, and a spear, and a saddle of scarlet leather inlaid with gold.
Mirain stroked the soft tooled leather and looked up at the king. Vadin had never seen him so close to speechlessness. “My lord,” he said. “Grandfather. This gift is beyond price.”
“Should the Sun’s son defend his realm in less?” The king beckoned to the one servant Vadin had not managed to dispose of. “But that is for the time to come. This I give you for your festival.”
It was a robe of honor, a royal robe of cloth of gold. The servant dressed Mirain in it, braided his hair with gold, weighted him with the treasure of the mountain kings. Mirain stood erect under it, meeting the old man’s smile with one of his own.
“A fine prince you make,” the king said.
“Cloth of gold,” Mirain answered, “and a coronet. And,” he added with a wicked glint, “a fine air of arrogance.”
The king laughed aloud, so rare a thing that even Mirain stared astonished. He held out his hand. “Come, young king. Sing the sun into the sky for me.”
oOo
Mirain sang the sunrise rite from the altar of Han-Ianon, chief among the priests, shining with more than gold and new sunlight. Vadin was there for once, with everyone else who could crowd into the temple, and he gasped with the rest of them when Avaryan, rising, struck the crystal upon the temple’s summit and cast a spear of white fire upon the altar.
That was not magic but art, a wonder of the yearly festival, familiar as the dancing fires at harvest time. But Mirain stood before the shining altar, and he raised his hand, and Avaryan himself came down to fill it.
For a searing instant Vadin knew that he would be blind. Then he realized that he could see. He stood in the heart of the sun, in a world of pure light, and for all its blazing brilliance it lay cool and clean upon him. It was singing, chanting in a voice he knew, in words he had heard every High Summer since he was old enough to stand in the temple.
He blinked; the brilliance faded, or melded itself into the world. Mirain went on with the rite in a cloud of priests and incense. The moment of the god’s coming might never have been.
Maybe it never had. No one else remembered it. Kav stared at him when he asked, following the crowd to the hall and the morning feast there; Olvan laughed and said something about sorcerers’ apprentices.
At first Vadin could not get close enough to Mirain to ask, and when he pushed and cursed his way to his proper place behind the prince’s chair, Mirain had taken it into his head to leave the lords to their glory and break his fast among the common folk in the market. The king smiled and let him go, and many of the high ones went with him. Vadin’s question lost itself in the tumult.
oOo
In the third hour of the morning, all but the most determined feasters streamed down from castle and city to the fields about it, gathering for the Summer Games: games of strength and skill, war-games and peace-games, footraces and mounted races and contests between lords in their war chariots.
This day was Mirain’s, and he sat as ruler of the games, even the king set beside but slightly below him.
He had stopped when he saw how it was to be, had looked as if he would protest, but the king met his eye and held it. Slowly he took the seat ordained for him. Slowly his frown lightened. When Vadin left to take his place among the squires, Mirain’s unease seemed to have melted, to have turned all to joy.
The lord of the games could not compete in them. But the Lord of the Western Marches set himself to take every lordly prize. He heaped his winnings like the spoils of war, drawing the younger knights to him with the fascination of his victories.
“My lord is magnificent today.”
Mirain looked down from the high seat, favoring Ymin with a slow smile. “But,” he said, “he has to take his prizes from my hands.”
She settled at his feet, which was the singer’s privilege. On the field Moranden waited with a dozen princes and barons, the ragged line of chariots shifting as the teams fretted. His own beasts were quiet under his strong hand: matched mares, striped gold and umber. Their manes were clipped into stiff crests; their hooves were sharpened and pointed with bronze.
Light and whippy though the racing chariot was, Moranden stood in it with easy grace. Like the rest he wore only a loinguard and a broad studded belt; the muscles rippled across his chest and shoulders. A garland of scarlet flowers lay upon them, a lady’s favor.
“He is splendid to see,” Mirain observed without perceptible envy.
“My lord is magnanimous today.”
Mirain met her bright mirthful gaze and laughed. “My lady is full of compliments.”
“The air is bursting with them. All Ianon is in love with you, for this day at least. Does that please you?”
Mirain drew a deep, joyous breath. “It sings in me.” He spread his arms, which, by more than chance, was the signal for the race to begin.
The seneldi sprang forward. The crowd roared. Mirain laughed.
oOo
He was smiling still when Moranden brought his foaming team round before the dais and leaped, running along the yoke-tree, springing lightly to the ground. His body gleamed with sweat; his nostrils flared; his eyes glittered.
Mirain rose with the prize, a harness of gold. Before Moranden could ascend the dais, he came down. Younger prince faced elder, Mirain on the second step, Moranden on the grass.
“Well won again, kinsman,” Mirain said. “You do our house great honor.”
“That is its due.” Moranden accepted the gold trappings with a deep bow. “After all, sister-son, I’m its only defender on this field.”
“Every king should have such a champion.”
“Is that a southern custom?” Moranden asked. “In the north, every king is his own champion.”
Mirain’s eyes narrowed, but he laughed. “Why, uncle! You have almost a southern wit.” He bowed, a king’s bow, catching the sun’s fire in all his ornaments. “May you win often again for the honor of the mountain kings.”
He returned to his throne, Moranden to his chariot. Ymin, watching them, sighed a very little.
The king marked her. Leaning toward her, he said very low, “Come, child. Stallions will fight and men will strike sparks from one another, and strong men the more strongly.”
“These,” she said, “are altogether too strong for my heart’s ease.”
“Strong, and young. Age will calm them.”
“If
either suffers the other to live so long.” She shook herself and smiled at the king. Hope was so rare in him, and so precious. “Ah, sire,” she said almost lightly, “I seem determined to cast a shadow on your sun.”
He gestured negation. “You cannot. For see, my son is the greatest of the victors, and my heir”—his voice softened—“my heir is the greatest of my princes. And Ianon knows it and him.”
“So,” she added too softly even for him to hear, “do both my lords. Both equally, and both all too well.”
oOo
Vadin was no Moranden, but he was holding his own. He won the mounted race; he took a good second at swordplay among the young men. Then he won again twice, footrace and spearcast, and as he came for the latter prize he met Mirain’s broad grin and realized with a shock that he had done it: he had put himself in the running for Younger Champion. So had Pathan the prince and quiet methodical Kav and a haughty lordling from Suveien.
He thought briefly, ignobly, of running away to hide. Then Mirain said, “Win it for me, Vadin.”
Vadin glared. “No tricks, Sunborn.”
“No tricks,” Mirain conceded, but his eyes danced. Vadin left him with a bow and a glance of deep distrust.
oOo
The Younger Champion won his crown in mounted combat, full armed, with unblunted weapons. It was the same deadly rite as that which made a man, but easier, Vadin thought as his friends saw to his arming. He did not have to fight these battles after running the Great Race.
Rami was fresh and eager, and his mood was rising to match hers. He knew he was good; he had been reckoned one of the best in Imehen. “We’ll see if I’m one of the best in Ianon,” he said to the mare. She rolled a molten eye and snorted, scenting battle.
Lightly he vaulted onto her back. Hands passed up his weapons. Sword on its baldric, dagger at his belt, two throwing spears, the round shield with its Geitani blazon.
The heralds were singing out his name. He was matched with the Suveieni. He touched heel to Rami’s side; she danced forward, head up.
