Hall of the Mountain King

by Tarr, Judith

  “It is given where it is due.” Mirain doffed his helmet, shaking his braid free from its protective coil about his head. His face was damp; his eyes glittered. He slid smoothly from the Mad One’s back and ran his hand down the sleek sweat-sheened neck; and turned more quickly than her eye could follow, and drew her head down, and kissed her.

  “My lord,” she protested, as she must. And when he glared: “Mirain, this is no fit place—”

  “I have decreed that it is.” But he stood a little apart, decorous, with glinting eyes. “Walk with me,” he said.

  They walked for a time in silence, he at the Mad One’s shoulder, she at a cool and proper distance. At length she asked, “Would you ride to war as you do now, without a saddle?”

  “That would be foolish even for a child king.”

  She glanced at him. “So bitter, my lord?”

  He brushed a fly from the Mad One’s ear, caressing the tender place beneath it. “In one thing,” he said, “Moranden’s man spoke the truth. The sheen has worn away. Ianon has the king it asked for, but now it has paused to think upon the asking.”

  “Wisely, for the most part. No one in town or castle seems to regret the choice.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but Ianon is much more than a single city, or even a single mountain-guarded vale.”

  “True, my dear lord. But have you heard none of the old songs? Time was when a king had to fight his way to the throne, and fight to sit in it, and leave as soon as he had taken it to put down a dozen risings. The day after your grandsire claimed his kingship, the whole of eastern Ianon rose against him, led by two of his own brothers.”

  “And I should hold my peace, should I not? Central Ianon is firmly sworn to me, and I have no more to fear than a rumbling in the Marches. With, of course, enough slighting rumors to set my teeth on edge; but no open threat, as yet, of cold iron.” He sighed. “I’ve waited so long to be king. Now I am, and the end is the merest beginning. I find myself wishing that I could live my life like a hero in a song, striding from peak to peak, paying no heed to the dull stretches between.”

  “Surely it would grow wearisome, always to be at the summit of one’s attainments.”

  “You think so?” he asked. “How much simpler it would be if I didn’t have to endure all this waiting, if I could pass from my enthronement straight to the heart of war and there find an end. Whether my enemy’s or my own.”

  “That will come soon enough,” she said levelly.

  “None too soon for me. My nerves are raw, and people are whispering. Do you know that I’m supposed to have been the Red Prince’s boy?”

  “Were you?”

  He stopped as if struck.

  She laid a hand on his arm. “My lord. Mirain. They are only words.”

  “So are your songs.”

  “Certainly. And I sing the truth. What are all the lies and foul tales to that?”

  “Moranden cursed us all.” He began to walk again along the wall that bordered the field. “I can think of a worse curse than his. That he actually gain what he longs for.”

  “To be king?”

  “It would be fitting. A throne, a title, a kingdom full of subjects all eager to serve him—those are only trappings. The truth is a wall and a cage and fetters of gold. My people are my jailers. They bind me; I can’t escape them. Courts and councils and the cares of a kingdom . . . even in my bed I’m not free of them.”

  “Am I so much a burden?”

  “You,” he cried with sudden force, “no!”

  “Ah,” she said sagely. “Prince Mehtar’s daughter.”

  He scowled; suddenly he laughed. “Just so. And Lord Anden’s niece. And Baron Ushin’s ward. Not to mention half my maidens of the bath. Young I may be, undersized and no beauty, certainly foreign born and arguably a bastard, but I have one asset that far outweighs the rest: Ianon’s throne.”

  “I thought I had taught you not to underrate yourself.”

  Mirain smiled his swift smile. “Prince Mehtar was quite blunt,” he said. “I’m no great marvel of manhood, or so he informed me, but I am royal. More than royal if my claims be true. House Mehtar would be quite pleased to ally itself with me. The girl, they tell me, is well worth the trouble.”

  “She is a beauty,” Ymin agreed. “They call her the Jewel of the Hills.” She paused, regarding him. “Will you consider the offer?”

  “Should I?”

  “Beauty, wealth, and breeding—she has all of those. And a father who can sway most of the eastern fiefdoms to his will.”

  “He would be pleased to add the whole of Ianon.” Their glances caught; his was bright and faintly mocking. “I pleaded extreme youth and the need to establish myself in my kingdom—and promised to have a look at the lady if I should happen to be in her vicinity.”

  Ymin laughed. “Spoken like a true king!”

  “Or like a southerner born.” He turned with his hand on the Mad One’s withers. “The sun is rising. Shall we sing him up together?”

  oOo

  The sun was fierce in the Court of Judgment. Although the high seat rested in the shade of a canopy, there was no escape from the heat; even Vadin’s light kilt weighed on him. Yet Mirain sat apparently at his ease, cheek resting on palm, cool and unruffled and thoroughly alert.

  “A dry spring,” whined the man in front of him, “and a burning summer. My herd has overgrazed its pasture; my crops are withering in the heat. And now, sire—and now this young ingrate tells me he has bid for a girl in the next village, and I must give him the groom-price, and not a moment’s thought to spare for the hardship.”

  The young ingrate was not so very young. Thirty, Vadin judged, and looking older with hard work and poor feeding. He scowled at his feet and knotted his heavy hands, drawing up his shoulders as if against a blow. “’S my right,” he mumbled. “I waited. Every season I waited. ’S always too soon, or the weather’s too bad, or the harvest’s due in. No more, she said. Long enough is long enough. Bid for me like you’ve been promising to, or somebody else will get there first.”

  His father sputtered with fury.

  “Are you the only son?” Mirain asked.

  The young man looked up, a flash of sullen eyes that saw a throne and a blur of gold upon it, no more. “No,” he said. “Sir. Got two brothers, sir.”

  “Older?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Married?”

  Again the eyes, more sullen still. “No, sir. Too soon, the weather’s too bad, the harvest’s due in . . .”

  “So,” Mirain said in his most neutral tone, but Vadin saw the glint in his eye. The son’s hands twisted fiercely. “Go. Take your bride. Bid the groom-price, but see that your father adds to it another of equal worth, to begin your marriage properly.” Mirain gestured to the scribe. “It is written. It shall be done.”

  There was no love in the young man’s stare, and scarcely any gratitude. He bowed ungracefully, looked about for an exit, and departed, pursued by his father’s howls of rage.

  The next complainant had already begun. That was the king’s justice: swift, thankless, and not to be opposed.

  Mirain shifted minutely in his seat. Vadin gestured where his eye could catch it, raising a cup of wine cooled with snow.

  He took the goblet and drank, a sip only, sighing just visibly. But his face was as calm as ever, intent. A perfect mask.

  Vadin studied it and tried not to think of sleep. One of the older councillors was snoring on his feet. The voices droned on. So many matters of great moment to the people in the midst of them; so many tangled details flung down at the king’s feet as if he and he alone could unravel them.

  “My lord,” a scribe was saying in a bored monotone, “the titles to the property in question—”

  Vadin did not know what roused him. Maybe it was only a precious whisper of breeze wandering lost in this sun-tortured place. Or maybe it was instinct honed by a season of serving a mage. But he was full awake and taut as a strung bow, his eyes sweep
ing the assembled faces.

  None rang the alarm in his brain. Good solid Ianyn faces with a sprinkling of foreigners: Asanian gold, southern brown, traders or sightseers; and there was the scholar from Anshan-i-Ormal, a wizened earth-colored creature with the merriest eyes Vadin had ever seen.

  They were almost quiet now, watching Mirain in tireless fascination. He was going to write a history, he had told Vadin only last night; he had been looking all his life for a fit subject, and now he thought he had found it in a young barbarian king.

  Mirain liked him, because he had no talent for flattery. He had a wicked tongue, which he tempered with laughter, and in his Ormalen custom he called even the king by his given name.

  Something caught Vadin’s eye beyond the turbaned head. A movement almost too quick to follow. A glint of light on metal. A guard on the wall, surely, saluting the king with his spear.

  Spear.

  Vadin lunged, hurling Mirain away from the throne.

  The world spun; fire pierced it, transfixed it. Winds roared in Vadin’s ears. The fire was pain, and it pinned him. He could not move.

  “The wall,” he tried to cry out. “Damn you, the wall!”

  The whirling stopped; the world came closer. Mirain filled it. Vadin hit him. “Get down, you fool. Get—”

  Mirain’s hand descended like the night, vast and inescapable. But his face looked strange and small. Except for the eyes. Such brilliant, bitter, ice-cold rage—

  “Are you going to kill me?” Vadin’s voice was faint, weak as a child’s. It seemed very far away.

  He was losing his body. And yet how odd; how clear it all was. The court; the people in their shock or their outrage or their terror; the armed men hunting an assassin and finding him dead on the parapet with his own knife in his throat. And the king on his knees in front of his throne, gripping the haft of a spear that pierced a sprawled ungainly body.

  Poor creature, he was done for, speared just below the heart, beginning to struggle with blind bodily panic. But he was brave; he was not screaming.

  “No good,” someone said. “The head’s barbed. Poisoned, too, I’ll wager. Those are Marcher clan-marks on the haft; and they don’t take chances.”

  Someone else responded with doleful relish, “Poison or not, they’ve won a life. That wound is mortal.”

  Gods rest him, Vadin thought. Whoever he was.

  Not that it mattered. He was going away, winged like a bird. Court and castle shrank beneath him. There was Ianon dwindling swiftly, a green jewel set in a ring of mountains, glimmering in the center of an orb like a child’s ball, painted all in green and white and blue and brown.

  Why, it was just like the world as it was painted over the altar in Avaryan’s temple. He traced the lands, naming them as the priests had taught him years ago in Geitan. From western Asanion to the isles of the east that looked upon the open sea; from the great desert that bordered on the southern principates, across the Hundred Realms to Ianon again, and its mountains, and Death’s Fells beyond, and the wastes of ice—all lay under his wondering eyes, perfect as a jewel on a lady’s finger.

  And such a lady: deep-breasted Night herself in her robe of stars. She smiled; she drew him to her; she kissed him with a mother’s gentleness but with a lover’s warmth.

  “Vadin.” The voice was vaguely familiar. It was a beautiful voice for a man’s, both sweet and deep. But it sounded impatient, even angry. “Vadin alVadin, for the love of Avaryan, listen to me!”

  But it was so pleasant here. Dark and warm, and a beautiful lady smiling, and maybe later there would be loving.

  “Vadin!”

  Yes, he was angry. What was his name? Vadin had done nothing to earn his displeasure. Did he want the lady? There was enough of her for both.

  “I want no lady. Come, Vadin.”

  Mirain. That was his name. It was very flattering that he wanted Vadin and not so lovely a lady, but alas, Vadin was not in the mood. Maybe later, if he should still be inclined . . .

  “Vadin alVadin of Asan-Geitan, by Avaryan and Uveryen, by life and death, by the Light and by the Dark that embraces it, I summon you before me.”

  The lady’s arms opened. Vadin was slipping away.

  He clutched, desperate. She was gone. It was dark.

  Wind howled, thin and bitter. It tore at him with teeth of iron. The voice rang through it. “By the oath of fealty you have sworn me, by the kingship I hold, come. Come or be forever lost.”

  The voice was warm, laden with power. Vadin yearned toward it. But the wind beat him back.

  It was dark still, darker than dark, yet he could see with more than eyes. He stood on a road in a country of night, and the road ran but one way, and that was onward, away from that far sweet calling.

  It swelled in strength and sweetness. It sang like a harp, it throbbed like drums. All words had forsaken it; it was pure power.

  The night quailed before it. The wind faltered.

  Inch by tortured inch, Vadin dragged himself about. There was no road behind. Only madness.

  Madness and Mirain. Vadin stretched out his hands. He could not reach—he could not—

  He stretched impossibly, with every ounce of will and pride and strength.

  He touched.

  Slipped.

  Mirain’s fingers clawed. Vadin clutched. They held.

  The darkness burst in a storm of fire.

  Vadin gasped as the pain struck him, gasped again as it vanished beneath a warmth like the sun. He had his body back again, and his wits, and a faint blur of sight. He knew where he was: still in the Court of Judgment, lying now on the dais in front of the throne, cradled in Mirain’s arms.

  The spear was gone. He could not see the wound, and he did not want to. He knew that he was dying. He had died already, and Mirain’s power had called him back. But it was not strong enough. It could not hold him.

  “No,” Mirain said fiercely. His cheeks were wet. Weeping in front of his people—fool of a foreigner, did he know what he was doing? “I know. I know to the last breath. I’ll hold you. I’ll heal you. I won’t let you die for me.”

  As the old king had. And Mirain did not easily suffer defeat. Vadin looked at the vivid furious eyes and thought of reason and of sanity, but Mirain had never fallen prey to either.

  The warmth that had been pain was rising into heat. Sun’s fire. Sun’s child.

  It was something to be loved by a mage of that rank, a master of power whose father was a god. Maybe after all he could face death. Maybe, with the god behind him, he could win.

  “Help me,” Mirain’s face turned to the sun, his eyes open to it, unblinded, unseeing. “Father, help me!”

  He did not bargain, Vadin noticed. He simply pleaded, in a tone very close to command.

  It was very quiet. People stood all about, staring, mute. Some had drawn close. White robes or kilts, golden torques. One or two in grey and silver.

  Ymin’s eyes were fixed on Mirain, almost blazing. She was giving him what power she had, prodigal of the cost. Blessed madwoman.

  The heat mounted. It was like agony, but it was exquisitely pleasant, like a scalding bath after the Great Race. Healing anguish, flooding his body, setting his bones afire.

  He felt it focus at his center. He felt the outraged flesh begin to knit, the great ragged wound to close from its depths to its topmost reaches. He saw the fire of power working in him, and he knew it, and he knew what it did, wise with the wisdom of the one who healed him, endowed with more than mortal sight.

  Mirain drew a long shuddering breath. His face was drawn as it had been on the road to Umijan, but his eyes were clear and quiet, and he smiled. Without a sound he crumpled.

  Vadin caught him before he struck the stone, moving without thought, without pain.

  Mirain was still conscious; he raised his hand to touch the deep scar beneath Vadin’s breast. “I healed you,” he whispered. “I promised.”

  Vadin rose. Mirain was a light weight and an indomitable will, givi
ng his people a flash of golden hand before the darkness took him.

  Gently Vadin carried him down the steps through the murmurs of awe, the bodies crowding back to give him room, the eyes lowered and the heads bowed as before a god.

  When this was over, Vadin was going to be amused. Whoever the assassin had been, whoever had sent him—whether Moranden or that unnatural mother of his—he had not only failed to fell his target. He had shown Ianon what in truth it had accepted as its king.

  Avaryan’s temple would be full by evening, nor would it be Avaryan alone to whom the folk addressed their prayers. Mirain’s legend would be all the stronger hereafter.

  oOo

  Vadin had expected people to look on Mirain with greater reverence now that he had shown them what power was in him. But the squire had not reckoned on the consequences to himself. He was a wonder and a strangeness, a man brought back from the dead.

  Even his friends walked shy of him, even Kav who had been known to doubt the gods. When he walked in the town, folk tried to touch him, to coax a blessing from him, or made signs of awe and would not look him in the face.

  Ledi was the crowning blow. She who had shared her bed with him, called him by his love-name, faced him as an equal and slapped him when he got above himself—when he came into the alehouse she did not come running to wait on him, and when he called for her she bowed low and called him lord, and when he tried to embrace her she fled. And everyone in the drab familiar room was silent, staring, knowing who he was. The Reborn. The king’s miracle.

  He was on his feet. He had meant to go after Ledi, to beat her into her senses if need be. He turned slowly, with all the dignity he could muster, and began to walk. Swifter and swifter through the whispering streets in the hiss of the rain, running through the castle gate, winding among the courts and passages, coming up short in Mirain’s chamber.

  The king was there, alone for once, prowling like a caged panther. He had been in council with Ianon’s elders; he was dressed for it still in a dazzle of gold and royal white, though his mantle lay on the floor where he had flung it. When Vadin halted, panting and almost sobbing, Mirain whipped about in a blind flare of temper.