Hall of the Mountain King

by Tarr, Judith

  SIXTEEN

  They built the pyre of Raban, king in Ianon, in the great court of his castle, and raised it high up to heaven: all of rare woods, well seasoned and steeped in oil, scented with the god’s own incense. At his feet they laid his best-loved hound to guard and guide his way into the god-country; his head lay on the flank of his red charger, his mount upon the road. He himself was clad in a plain hooded mantle to deceive the demons who might lie in wait for a king but not for a simple wayfarer, yet lest he be so mistaken before the gods’ gate, beneath the cloak he wore all the jeweled splendor of his kingship.

  Mirain stood alone before the pyre. His kilt was plain to starkness, belted with a strap of leather and dyed the dull ocher of mourning; he had neither bound nor braided his hair nor put on any jewel. Barefoot and bareheaded, with no kin to stand at his back, he looked far too frail for the burden the old king had left him.

  The rite of death was long, the sun seeming to hang motionless in a sky like hammered brass. More than one of Ianon’s gathered people gave way to Avaryan’s power, or retreated into what shade there was, or did as Vadin did: made their own shade with their ocher mantles.

  Yet Mirain, in the courtyard’s center, sought no relief and received none. His voice in the responses was as firm at the end as when he began.

  At last a priestess of Avaryan came forth with the vessel of the sacred fire. All bowed before it. Reverently she laid it on the altar which stood between Mirain and the pyre.

  An acolyte, following her, knelt in front of her with an unlit torch. She blessed it; he turned to Mirain.

  The young king did not move. The acolyte blinked and began to frown, not daring to prompt him but all too well aware of the waiting priestess.

  Slowly Mirain reached for the torch. His fingers closed on the wooden haft, raised it. The fire flickered in its basin; the pyre loomed above him.

  Kindle it, the watchers willed him. For the gods’ love, kindle the fire!

  Somewhere within the too-still body, strangeness stirred. Mirain flung the torch spinning up and up into the sun. His arms, freed, spread wide; his head fell back, his eyes opened wide to the sun’s fire.

  It flooded into him, filled him. Out of the towering flame that had been his mortal body, a single dart sprang forth. Straight into the heart of the pyre it flew, and the oiled wood roared into flame.

  The priests fled from that great eruption of light and heat. But Mirain stood full in front of it, oblivious to his peril. His body was his own again; he sang a hymn of grief and triumph mingled, sacred to the Sun.

  oOo

  The earth was dull and cold, a dark rain falling with the evening, quenching the fire. Mirain shivered, blinking, staring without comprehension at the charred and smoldering heap which had been his grandfather’s pyre.

  How often Vadin had spoken to him since his song faded, the squire himself did not know. Yet Vadin tried again, and it desperation he settled an arm around the damp chilled shoulders, tugging lightly. “Come,” he said, rough with cold.

  Mirain heard. He began to move. Swaying, staggering, but stubbornly afoot, he let his squire lead him away.

  Vadin took him not to the King’s chamber which was his now by right, but to his own familiar room. A fire was lit there, dispelling the rain’s chill; a bath waited, and dry clothes, and wine and bread to break the death-fast. He seemed hardly to see who ministered to him, although he let himself be tended, fed, cajoled into bed.

  When he lay wrapped in blankets, his eyes focused at last. He saw who bent over him. Vadin he regarded without surprise, but the other made him start, half rising.

  Ymin pushed him firmly back again and held him there. “What is this?” he demanded. “Why are you here?”

  She greeted his return to awareness with perfect calm. “Tonight at least,” she said, “you are entitled to your solitude. I am seeing that you get it.”

  Vadin grimaced. “It hasn’t been easy, either. And tomorrow it won’t be possible. The king can’t belong to himself; he belongs to Ianon.”

  Mirain tried again to rise from his bed; they allied to hold him down. He glared at them, struggling, but not with any great force. “I have to go to the hall. The feast—”

  “No one looks for you tonight,” Ymin said.

  “But—”

  “There is no need for the young king to drink the old one into the god-country. Not when the god’s own fire has set the dead man on his road.”

  “Is that what people are saying?”

  “It happened,” Vadin said. After a moment he added, “Sire.”

  Mirain sat up, propping himself with shaking arms. “It happened,” he echoed. “You see how it’s left me. I’m hardly the god everyone must be thinking me.”

  “No; merely his son and our king.” Calmly, matter-of-factly, Ymin supported him. “If anyone has needed proof of either, you have given it. Magnificently.”

  He tensed, drawing in upon himself. “I can never help myself. Wherever I turn, whatever I do, the god is there, waiting. Sometimes he takes me and wields me like a sword; and when he lets me go I’m like a newborn child. Strengthless, witless, and all but useless.”

  “Even gods have their limits.”

  “In Han-Gilen,” he said, “they would call that a heresy.”

  “There are gods, and there is the High God. My doctrine is sound enough, my lord.”

  “In Ianon. Maybe.” He glanced beyond her at Vadin. “I’m not a god. I’m scarcely yet a king. I don’t know that I’ll ever be one.”

  “Tomorrow you will be,” Vadin said.

  “In name. What if my grandfather was deceived? He was a great king. He thought he had found another like him. He paid for it with his life. What if he died for nothing?”

  “He didn’t,” snapped Vadin with all the force he could muster, close as he was to tears. “And he knew it. Do you think Raban of Ianon would have let go the way he did if he wasn’t leaving his kingdom in good hands?” Between them, he and Ymin eased Mirain down. “There now. Rest. You’ve a long day ahead of you.”

  “A long life.” Mirain’s burst of strength had faded; he labored even to speak. “I was so certain. That I had the right; that I was strong enough. That I could be king. I was an utter fool.”

  They said nothing. But Ymin smiled and gestured slightly, a flicker of dissent. He turned his face away from them both.

  Vadin’s eyes had overflowed again. They kept doing that; he had stopped trying to master them. But he was not weeping now for the king. The old man had gone in glory. It was the young one who made him want to lie down and howl.

  A warm hand touched his arm. He met Ymin’s gaze. “He has the strength,” she said gently.

  “Of course he does!” Vadin flared at her. “But—damn it, it’s so soon!”

  “It is never the proper time for a king to die.” She sighed; her own eyes were suspiciously bright. “You too should rest, young lord. Have you even lain down since the Games?”

  Vadin could not remember, and he did not care. “I’m not tired. I don’t need to—”

  Before he knew it he was in his cubicle, his pallet spread, her hand on his belt loosening the clasp. He slapped her away. She laughed, light and sweet as a girl, and stripped him with consummate neatness. Even as he snatched at his kilt, she caught him off balance and tripped him into his bed. She was amazingly strong. “Sleep,” she commanded.

  “Or?”

  “Or I sit on you until you do.”

  It was not an idle threat, nor entirely an unpleasant one. For an older woman she had a fine figure. Thin, but fine.

  Her kiss was as chaste as his mother’s, a brush of lips on his brow. Her tone was utterly maternal. “Sleep, child. Dream well.”

  He growled, but he did not rise. With the last flicker of a smile she left him.

  oOo

  Vadin could have slept the moon-cycle through and hardly noticed it, but Mirain woke renewed from his brief night’s sleep. He even smiled, rarity of rarities,
until darkness touched him. Memory, perhaps, of the king’s death; of his own kingship.

  He rose and stretched and found his smile again, turning it on Vadin. It swelled into a grin; it swept away, left him cold and shaking. “Avaryan,” he said very low. “Oh, Father. I don’t think I can—”

  “Sire.”

  They both whipped about. A servant faced them: an elderly man of great dignity, dressed in the king’s—in Mirain’s—scarlet livery. If he was in any way perturbed to see his new lord reduced to a trembling child, he concealed it well. “Sire,” he said, “your bath awaits you.”

  oOo

  In the bedchamber Ianon’s king was served by men of years and standing among their kind; in hall and about his kingdom by pages and esquires, the sons of great houses; and in the bath, which was a high service and much honored, by the daughters of Ianon’s highest lords. Every one was a maiden, young and well-favored and clad practically, if none too sufficiently, in a wisp of white tunic.

  Vadin went in with Mirain. He did not know that it was allowed, but no one told him it was forbidden, or tried to stop him.

  He had fancied himself a man of the world. He was certainly no virgin. But he stopped short two paces past the door, ears afire, and could not move another step.

  They did not even see him. They were waiting for Mirain. Modestly, with the dignity of their breeding, but their eyes were bright, their glances quick and eager. God or half-god or mortal man, he was young and well shaped and not at all ill to look on. After the aged Raban he must have been a delight.

  Mirain too had stopped as if struck, but he was made of sterner stuff; he managed to drive himself forward. He even mustered something like nonchalance, though his back was stiff.

  His head turned, scanning downcast faces, pausing once or twice. One of the maidens had a marvelous tumble of curls. One had eyes like a doe’s, melting upon him. And one was even smaller than himself, as delicate as a flower, with eyes as soft as sleep.

  She had Asanian blood: she was honey golden, with a hint of rose that deepened under his stare. But she smiled shyly.

  Mirain must have smiled back; her face lit like a lamp. Lightly then, with royal grace, Mirain gave himself into their hands.

  When he was scoured clean, they did not dress him. There was nothing to dress him in. They shaved him; they combed his free hair and tamed it as much as they might; they anointed him with sweet oils, touching his brow, his lips, his heart and his hands, his genitals, his feet. Then they bowed one by one from least to greatest, and the greatest was the golden princess, and she kissed his torque and his golden palm.

  oOo

  The throne of Ianon stood no longer in the hall. Strong men had taken it in the night, brought it down through the Chain of Courts to the Court of the Gate, and there set it on a high dais before the people. Spearmen in scarlet kept free a long aisle from the gate to the throne; lords and princes stood about it, surrounded by the king’s own knights in all their panoply.

  Between the royal bath and the outer court lay only empty halls. Mirain must pass them naked and alone, abandoned even by his squire.

  Who barely had time to bolt by side ways into the sun and the crowds and the place kept for him beside the high seat.

  Yet it seemed a long wait, those slow moments under Avaryan. Vadin’s breath eased; he settled himself into some semblance of calm, and tried not to think of assassins’ knives and ambushes and one lone unarmed unclad not-quite-king.

  The clamor of gathered people stilled slowly. All eyes turned with his own toward the gate. It was open, empty.

  A bell rang, far and sweet. Many glanced toward the sound of it.

  When they glanced back, he stood under the arch of the gate. Only a shadow from this distance, a shape that said man in the breadth of its shoulders and the narrowness of its hips.

  Then it began to move, and it became Mirain. No one else had quite that panther-stride, or that straightness of the shoulders, or that tilt of the head. Or ever that way of cutting the world to his measure.

  He walked Ianyn-tall among them, a man grown, wise beyond any count of years, and royally proud; yet he was also a youth just out of boyhood, alone and afraid, without even a rag to cover him. They could see everything in the pitiless light: the long seamed scar in his side where a boar had tusked him long ago and almost killed him; the thin grey lines of sword-scars and the pitted hollow where an arrow had taken him in battle; the raw new flesh on buttocks and thighs, mark of his wild ride to Umijan. They could see that he was mortal and that he was imperfect, smaller than any man of them, not remarkably fair of face; but he was male, whole and strong, without mark or blemish save what branded him a man and a warrior. No woman in disguise, no eunuch living a lie, no soft coward laying claim to the throne of fighting kings.

  Pacing slowly, face set and stern, eyes fixed on the throne, he drew near to the dais.

  The circle of knights closed. Before them stood the eldest priestess of Avaryan in Ianon, ancient yet vigorous, robed all in sun-gold. As Mirain approached, she spread her arms wide to bar his way.

  He halted; she raised her thin old voice, that was strong still, and penetrating. “Who approaches Ianon’s throne?”

  Mirain paused an eyeblink, as if he could not trust his voice. But when it came it was clear, steady, blessedly deep, the voice of a man who had never known doubt. “I,” it said. “Ianon’s king.”

  “King, say you? By what right?”

  “By right of the king who is dead, may the gods rest his soul, who chose me to be his successor; and by that of my mother, who was his daughter and who once was heir of Ianon. In the gods’ name, reverend priestess, and in the name of Avaryan my father, let me pass.”

  “So I would,” she said, “but that power remains with the lords and the people of Ianon. It is they who must grant you leave, not I.”

  Mirain lifted his hands, turning slowly. “My lords. My people. Will you have me for your king?”

  They let him turn full circle. When he faced the throne again, the high ones knelt. Behind and about him the people loosed their voices in the single word: “Aye!”

  The priestess bowed low and stepped aside. The circle opened, letting pass a small company of squires.

  Vadin led them, trying for dignity, hoping for grace. He knelt with only the merest hint of wobble and signaled to the rest.

  Mirain stood still for a wonder, suffering them to adorn him like the image of a god. Kilt of white leather cured to the softness of velvet, and broad belt of gold set with plates of amber, and heavy golden pectoral, and rings and armlets and earrings all of the sun-metal, and ropes of golden beads worked into the intricacy of the royal braids—Vadin’s task, that last, and he kept his curses to himself, only thanking the gods for once that Mirain had no beard to battle with. Even as he bound off the last rebellious plait, the others weighted Mirain’s shoulders with the great cloak of leather dyed scarlet and lined with priceless fur, white, but each hair tipped with a golden glint.

  Last of all Vadin bound white sandals on Mirain’s feet, the thongs edged with gold. He looked up, still on one knee, to find Mirain’s eyes upon him.

  They were warm, almost laughing, but distant too, with the light of the god waiting to fill them. Without thinking, Vadin caught the hand that was closer to his face and kissed the flaming palm.

  That was not part of the rite, but his words were. “Lord king, your throne is waiting. Will it please you to take it?”

  The way was clear to it now. Mirain’s eyes lifted, and the god came, turning him all royal.

  Slowly, in swelling tumult, he mounted the dais and turned to face his people. Their shouting rose to a crescendo. They cried his name, proclaiming him lord, king, Sunborn, god-begotten.

  Again he raised his hands. The roaring died. The people waited, willing him to take his throne.

  In the almost-silence, a horn brayed. Hooves clattered on stone.

  Mounted men burst through the open gate. People scattered bef
ore them, crying out in anger and in pain. The seneldi, war-trained, attacked with horns and teeth and sharpened hooves; the riders broadened Mirain’s erstwhile path with the flats of their swords.

  The cries rose to shrieks. A chariot plunged through the riders: a scythed war-car, and in it a glittering figure, a warrior in full armor.

  The charioteer brought his team to a foaming halt at the foot of the dais. Even the knights of Ianon dared not venture against the deadly blades.

  He laughed at them, hollow and booming within his helmet. “Cowards and children! Indeed you have the king you deserve. There he stands, exulting in his power, who murdered the king before him. Poisoned, was he not, your majesty? And quickly too, once he had disposed of your only rival.”

  A rumble ran through the crowd, a name they had forbidden themselves to speak. Moranden. Moranden. “Moranden!”

  Mirain’s voice lashed them into silence. “It is not he!” He addressed the armored man more quietly, but still with the crack of command. “Take off your helmet.”

  He obeyed willingly enough. He was a big man, and young, and a Marcher by his accent. He looked at Mirain with well-cultivated contempt. “I have a message for you, boy.”

  Mirain waited.

  The warrior scowled but could not hold his gaze. “I come to you from Ianon’s true king, who although he has been cast out unjustly, nevertheless bows to the will of the king who is gone. He bids me say to you: ‘Not all in Ianon have been led astray by your sorceries. Those who know the truth will come to me; many indeed have come already and bowed before me. Acknowledge your lies, priestess’ bastard, and surrender now while yet you may hope to find mercy.’”

  “If my uncle accepts his exile, which was perpetual,” Mirain said with no hint of anger, “how may he hope to hold Ianon’s throne? How does he even dare to claim it?”

  “He is the true king. When all Ianon bids him, he shall return.”

  “And if all Ianon does not?”