Hall of the Mountain King

by Tarr, Judith

  “She has claws and teeth,” Adjan said, immovable. “What have you?”

  “Hands,” he answered, “and wits. Come, sir. You’re a famous fighter; I’ve heard you called the best master-at-arms in the north of the world. See if you can strike me.”

  The old soldier looked hard at him. He stood loose, easy, smiling. But a keen eye could detect the tension in him.

  Adjan was noted for his swift hand, whether or not it held a weapon. As the others drew back to the walls, he shifted slightly, almost invisibly; feinted right; lashed out with his left hand, too swift for the eye to follow.

  Mirain seemed not to have moved. But Adjan’s fist had struck only air.

  Adjan’s brows knit. He advanced a step or two. Mirain did not retreat. “Seriously now,” he said, “strike me.”

  This time Mirain’s movement was clearly visible, an effortless, sidewise bending. He laughed. “Seize me, Adjan. Surely you can do that. I’m in your arms already.”

  He was; he was not.

  Adjan lowered his hands. His face was a study; he composed it. “So. You’re uncatchable. What use is that in a duel, unless you can land a blow where it matters?”

  Mirain stepped back with the supple grace of a cat. “You’re angry. I’ve made you look like a fool. Attack me, Captain. Wrestle me down and teach me to listen to your wisdom.”

  There was nothing Adjan would have liked better. But he was wary, and well he might be. He had said it before when he faced Mirain at practice in front of the squires. In all his years of fighting and of training fighters, he had only once seen speed to equal Mirain’s: in Moranden when the prince came into his manhood. Three years, four, five—let the king get his growth and hone his skill, and he would be a warrior to make songs of.

  If he lived past the next sunrise.

  Adjan attacked. Mirain let him come, shifting a little, poising on the balls of his feet.

  Suddenly Adjan was in the air, whirling head over heels, sprawling amid the coverlets of Mirain’s bed. And Mirain was kneeling by him, holding his reeling head, saying in a tone of deep contrition, “Adjan! Your pardon, I beg you. I never meant to throw you so far.”

  Adjan shut his mouth with a snap. A sound burst out of him, a harsh bark of laughter. “Throw me, boy? Throw me? I weigh enough for two of you!”

  Mirain bit his lip. His eyes hovered between laughter and apology. “You do. And I used a good part of it against you. A little more and I could have killed you.”

  The arms master staggered to his feet. “Of course you could have. The more fool I. I should have known you’d have the western art.”

  “The gentle killing. Yes, I have it. I learned it of a master, by my mother’s will. She knew I’d grow to be like her: western stature, northern face. And people in the west, being so small beside the rest of mankind, have learned to turn their smallness to advantage. Since they can’t conquer by brute strength, they conquer by art. I’ve seen a child from Asanion, a maidchild mind you, younger and smaller than I, cast down a man nigh as big as Moranden, and kill him when he refused to yield.”

  “I’ve seen something like it. It’s enough to make me believe the stories that Asanians have interbred with devils.”

  “Precisely the tale they tell of me.” Mirain rose. “Now do you understand? With weapons I have no skill that Moranden cannot either equal or surpass. Without them I may be able to even the balance. He’s a big man; he relies on his strength. So too shall I.”

  “I still think you’re mad. If you would see sense, find another champion—” Adjan broke off. Abruptly and deeply he bowed, the full obeisance of a warrior to his king. “However it ends, my lord, it will be a battle to make songs of. There’s no power of mine that will keep you from it.”

  Mirain bowed his head. Suddenly he seemed immeasurably weary. “Please go,” he said. “All of you.”

  oOo

  They obeyed, none willingly. Ymin hung back, but found no yielding in him. Slowly she retreated, letting the tent flap fall behind her.

  But Vadin did not go. He made himself invisible, withdrawing into the darkest corner, thinking not-thoughts.

  It had its effect. Mirain did not glance at him; did not order him out.

  The tent seemed larger for the people who had left it, lit by a single lamp, warm and quiet in the heart of the night. The squires had taken the bath with them; Mirain sat where it had been, on carpets flattened by the weight of water and basin, and set himself to a task they had not come to: loosing and combing his hair. It was even less straight above the root of his braid than below; cut short, it would have sprung into a riot of curls.

  A shield hung from the central pole, polished to mirror sheen. He met his reflected stare.

  Vadin, invisible, unable to help himself, slipped inch by inch into Mirain’s mind, following his thoughts as if he had spoken them aloud.

  Quiet thoughts, a little wry, like the tilt of his head as he contemplated his face. Westerners had smooth oval faces and sleek rounded bodies and hair that curled with abandon; they were light-skinned, gold and sometimes ivory, and often their hair was straw-pale.

  Mirain had inherited none of that but the curling of his hair. He was all dark, indubitably of Ianon: high cheekbones, arched nose, proud thin-lipped mouth. “Imagine the alternative,” he said aloud. “Western face, northern body. The strength to stand against Moranden as warrior to armed warrior, without art or trickery.” He sighed. “And I would still be a boy half grown, with size and skill yet to gain.”

  He tied his hair back with a bit of cord and clasped his knees. There was the heart of it. Moranden was strong and skilled and implacable in his enmity; and he had strong sorcery behind him. What was to prevent his mother and her goddess from giving him art to equal Mirain’s?

  “Father,” he whispered. “Father, I am afraid.”

  When he was very young, sometimes he had wept because his hand burned him so terribly, and because he had no father he could touch or run to or cry on. There was his mother, who was all the mother a child could wish for, and Prince Orsan whom he called foster father, and the princess; and Halenan, and later Elian, brother and sister in love if not in blood. But for father he had only pain, and the distant fire of the sun, and the rites in the temple.

  When he was older, he taught himself not to weep. But he faced his mother and demanded of her, “How can it be true? I know how children are made; Hal told me. How can my father be a spirit of fire?”

  “He is a god,” she had answered. “For a god, all things are possible.”

  He set his chin, stubborn. “It takes a man, Mother. He comes to a woman, and he—”

  She laughed and laid a finger on his lips, silencing him. “I know how it is done. But a god is not like a man. He has no need to be. He can simply will a thing, and it is so.”

  Mirain scowled. “That’s horrible. To give you all the pain and trouble of bearing me, without any pleasure at all.”

  “Oh,” she said, a breath of wonder and delight, “oh, no. There was pleasure. More than pleasure. Ecstasy. He was there, all about me; and I was his love, his bride, his chosen one. I knew the very moment you began in me, a joy so sweet that I wept. Oh, no, Mirain. How could I wish for the feeble pleasures of the flesh when I have known a god?”

  “I don’t know him,” Mirain said sullenly, setting his will against the strength of her joy.

  She gathered him up, great lad that he was, seven summers old and already making his mark among the boys in training for war. “Of course you know him. This very morning I saw him in you and you in him, riding your pony down by the river.”

  “That was no god. That was—was—” Words failed him. “I was happy, that’s all.”

  “That was your father. Light and joy and a bright strong presence. Did you not feel as if the world loved you, and you loved it in return? As if there were someone with you, taking joy in your joy, bearing you up when you faltered?”

  “I’d rather have someone I can see.”
r />   “You have me. You have Prince Orsan, and Hal, and—”

  “I don’t want them. I want a father.”

  She laughed. She was full of laughter, was the Priestess of Han-Gilen. Some people frowned at her, thinking that the god’s own bride should be grave and austere and visibly saintly; but Sanelin was a creature of light.

  And he, being her child, found to his dismay that he could not be sullen in front of her. Already the laughter was bubbling up in him. How absurd to cry for a father, when of course he had one already, more than anyone else had, present always in him and with him. And when he needed a physical presence he had no less than the Prince of Han-Gilen, that tall man with his stern face and his merry eyes and his hair like the sun’s own fire.

  Sanelin was dead, Prince Orsan long leagues away. But the god was there when Mirain looked for him, in the core of his own soul: a presence too intimate to bear either name or face. Nor did he offer comfort in words. It went far deeper than that.

  Deeper still went the fear. “Father, I could die tomorrow. I probably will. This is an enemy I am ill-equipped to face.”

  Should he be afraid of death? It was but a passage; and after it, joy unspeakable.

  “But to die now with my destiny all unfulfilled—to know that by my death I leave my kingdom open to the servants of our Enemy—how can I endure it?”

  Ah, then it was not death he feared. He feared that he would not live to hold back the goddess. He had a fine sense of his own worth.

  “And who set it in me?”

  To make him strong. Not to make him arrogant.

  “It makes no difference, then. If Moranden kills me, the throne is safe; his mother will not rule through him with her wizards and her priests, turning all Ianon to the worship of the goddess.”

  It would make a difference. Perhaps, once Moranden had his throne, he could hold against his mother; perhaps he would prove too feeble for her purposes. Or perhaps, and most likely, what Mirain foresaw would come to pass.

  “Perhaps is an alarming word for a god to use.”

  A god might choose to think as a man, for his own ends. As he might choose to lend aid where aid was needed, if it were sought in the proper fashion.

  “Father! You will be with me?”

  The god was always with his son.

  “You comfort me,” said Mirain with a touch of irony.

  But not completely.

  “Of course not. I know what this battle is to you. Another stroke against your sister.” Mirain tossed back his heavy mane, quivering with sudden, passionate anger. “But why? Why? You are a god. She is a goddess. Fight your own battles in your own realm. Let us be!”

  The god’s presence seemed to smile, a smile full of sadness; his thought took shape clearly as words in a voice soft and deep, like and yet unlike his son’s. Again I tell you, again I bid you remember: When we shaped your world, we swore a truce. War between us would destroy all we made together. Rather than chance that, we bound ourselves to this, that all our battles henceforth be waged through the creatures we had made.

  Mirain’s lip curled. “Ah, Father, you are cruel. Say it clearly. Say that you toy with us as a cat toys with its prey.”

  No. We do not.

  “If you do not, what of the other? It is annihilation she craves. Why should she not break the truce and conquer?”

  She does not crave annihilation. No more than do I. She would destroy what is pleasing to me and cloak the world in the night she made, and rule it, sole queen and sole goddess.

  “And you?”

  I would have balance. Light and dark divided, each in its proper place.

  “With you as sole king and sole god.”

  You say it. Not I.

  “Yes,” Mirain said bitterly. “It is always I who say it. I love you, I cannot help it. But, Father, I am mortal and I am young, and I do not have your wisdom to see always what I must do.”

  Win your battle. The rest will follow in its own time.

  “Win my battle,” Mirain repeated. “Win it.” He flung himself on his bed. “Oh, dear god, I am afraid!”

  The lamp flickered; a thin cold wind skittered about the tent and fled. Vadin found himself standing over Mirain, and he could not stop shaking, and he could not name what shook him, whether it was terror of the god who burned and blazed in him, or terror of the king who huddled and trembled on the cot. A god without face or living voice, a king with the semblance of a frightened boy.

  Paradoxes. Vadin was a simple man, a mountain warrior. He was not made for this.

  He had walked through death into the living light. He was marked with Mirain’s power, that came from the god.

  He lowered himself to one knee. Mirain’s trembling had eased; he had drawn into a knot, almost pitifully small. Very lightly Vadin touched his shoulder.

  “Get out,” he said. His voice was still and cold.

  Vadin did not move. The moment stretched, counted in slow breaths. Mirain drew tighter still.

  Without warning he burst outward and upward, hurling Vadin onto his back. “Get out, damn you. Get out!”

  Vadin found his wind where it had fled, blinked away the sparks of shock and mild pain. “Why?” he asked reasonably.

  Mirain hauled him up. The king was stronger than he had any right to be, and fully as dangerous as a startled leopard; but Vadin could not remember to be afraid, even when the strong small hands shook him like a bundle of straw. He kept his body limp and his teeth together, and waited for the storm to pass.

  Mirain let him go. He swayed, steadied. “Why should I get out?” he asked again. “Because I saw you acting human for once?”

  “Have I no right to my solitude?”

  Vadin drew a breath. His ribs ached, from the sortie, from Mirain’s violence. He considered the vivid furious face. “Do you really want to be alone?”

  “I—” It was a rarity indeed: Mirain at a loss for words. “You were in my mind.”

  “Wasn’t I?” And whose fault was it that Vadin could be?

  Mirain heard all of it, spoken and unspoken. “You had no right,” he said.

  “Not even the right of a friend?”

  The silence sang on a high strange note. Vadin had spoken without thought, through the fading brilliance of the god. Mirain had heard at first only through the crackle of his anger.

  As the crackle died, his eyes widened; Vadin felt his own do the same. His heart began to hammer. His fists clenched into pain.

  Mirain spoke softly, with great care. “Say it again, Vadin. Say it yourself, without my father to drive you.”

  Vadin’s throat closed. He thought of cursing the god and all his madness. He said, “A friend. A friend, may your own father damn you, and if you’re half the mage you claim to be you’ll know I lost my wager cycles ago. And doesn’t a friend have a right to stay where he’s needed? Especially,” he added grimly, “when it’s a god who’s possessed him to do it.”

  “I need no one.”

  Haughty words and most unwise, and a staring lie. Vadin did not dignify them with his notice. “Friend,” he said. And more awkwardly: “Brother. I don’t think less of you because you’re afraid. Only fools and infants, and maybe gods, have never known fear.”

  “Gods—gods can be afraid.” Mirain pricked his temper anew, reared up his pride and made a weapon of it. “Do you think you can do anything to help me? You who cannot even shape the letters of your name?”

  Vadin burst out laughing. Mirain in the depths of terror was still worthy of all respect, because his fear was the valiant fear of a strong man and a mage. But that he, so wise, should insult Vadin for what any Ianyn lord was more proud of than not . . .

  “What, my lord, have I had it all wrong? Are you going to duel with pens and tablets? It’s true I can’t write a word, but I can sharpen your pen for you; shall I fletch it too and show you how to make a dart of it?”

  Mirain’s chin came up. In spite of his reckless mood Vadin knew a moment’s chill, a flicker of
doubt lest he had gone too far. “You mock me,” the king said, still and cold again.

  “Listen to me,” said Vadin in a flare of temper. “You have to go out there tomorrow and fight all alone, and no one’s holding out much hope for you, and maybe you’ll die; and you’re so scared you can hardly see, but you’ll do it because you have to. Because you can’t do anything else. And you’d rather be eaten by demons than let anyone guess how close your bowels are to turning to water.”

  “They aren’t,” snapped Mirain. “They already have.”

  Vadin paused for a heartbeat. He was not sure he dared to smile. “So of course you wanted to be alone with your shame. You can’t have the world finding out that you’re a man and not the hero of a song.” He struck his hands together. “Idiot! How do you think you’ll be by morning if you spend the night brooding and shaking and hating yourself for being afraid? Do you want to lose this fight?”

  “Vadin,” Mirain said with elaborate patience, “Vadin my reluctant brother, I know as well as anyone what chance I have against Ianon’s great champion. I also know how much brooding is good for me; and I have arts that will assure my rest. If,” he added acidly, “you will let me practice them.”

  “You’re playing with the truth again.” Vadin eluded a blow without much force behind it, and seized Mirain. The king stiffened, but he did not struggle. “You’ve got my soul, Mirain. It’s yours to do whatever you like with. Even to throw away, if that’s your pleasure.”

  “That would be a dire waste.” At half an arm’s length Mirain had to tilt his head well back to see Vadin’s face. The king did not smile, nor did his expression soften, but his eyes were clearer and steadier than they had been in a long while. “You called me by my name.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord.”

  “Sure you are.” Vadin’s own way of speaking, his very tone. A thin line grew between Mirain’s brows, counter to the vanishingly faint upcurve of his lips. “You’ll not ‘my lord’ me in private again, sir. It’s bad enough that I have to suffer it from everyone else.”