Hall of the Mountain King

by Tarr, Judith

  “You should have thought of that before you got yourself born a royal heir.”

  “Sweet hindsight.” Mirain smiled at last, if somewhat thinly. “You’re good for me, I think. Like one of Ivrin Healer’s more potent doses.”

  “Gods! Am I that bad?”

  “Worse.” But Mirain’s mood had shifted, turning from the old black madness to something almost light. “Bitter I would say, but bracing. Will you be my witness tomorrow?”

  “Is it politic? Prince Mehtar—”

  “Damn Prince Mehtar,” Mirain said in a voice so mild it was alarming. He took Vadin’s hands, held them in a grip the other could not break. “If I live I’ll be strong enough to deal with him. If I die, it won’t matter. And,” he said, “I’d much rather have you under my eye than trying to creep behind.”

  Vadin’s ears were hot. “I wouldn’t—”

  “Now who’s telling lies?” Mirain let go Vadin’s hands. He moved closer yet, catching the squire in a sudden tight embrace. “Brother, I humble myself; I admit it. I need you. Will you be my witness?”

  Yes, thought Vadin, knowing Mirain would hear. A little stiffly, a little shyly, he closed the embrace. He did not know why he thought of Ledi. She was his woman. Mirain was—was—

  “Brother,” Mirain said. He drew back, smiling a little. “Shall I bring her to you?”

  Vadin did not doubt that Mirain could do it. But his hand rose in refusal. “Thank you, no. There’s no need to tire yourself working magic. I’ll be well enough for a little self-denial.”

  Mirain shrugged slightly, as if he would disagree, but he let Vadin go. “Good night, brother,” he said.

  “Good night,” answered Vadin. “Brother.”

  oOo

  Ymin sat on the ground outside of Mirain’s tent, a grey shadow on the edge of firelight. But Vadin, coming out under the sky, saw her as easily as she saw him.

  Their eyes met. His, she thought, were not the eyes of a boy, still less of a simple Ianyn warrior. She had to firm her will to face them.

  He bowed his head a very little. Acknowledgment, encouragement, a sudden white smile.

  She rose. Her heart, foolish creature, was beating hard. When she glanced back, the squire had taken her place and her post.

  Mirain lay on his bed, arms behind his head, eyes on the lamp above him. She dropped her robe and lay beside him, folded about him, head pillowed on his breast.

  His arms came down to circle her; he kissed the smooth parting of her hair. His pulse had quickened, but he was cool yet, unready. She lay quietly, saying nothing, thinking of little but peace.

  His voice came soft and deep yet very young. “Ladylove, do you know how alarmingly beautiful you are?”

  “Alarming, my dear lord?”

  “Terrifying. I’m an utter coward, my lady. Everything frightens me.”

  “Even battle?”

  “That most of all. I have no courage, only its seeming. An instinct, blind and quite mad, which drives me full upon whatever I fear most.”

  “I think,” she said, “that that is true courage. To know what horror one faces, and dread it, yet confront it with no appearance of flinching.”

  “Then is all bravery but cowardice turned upon itself?”

  “Even so.” She raised her head to look into his face. “I would not call you a coward, Mirain An-Sh’Endor.”

  “But I am!” He bit his lip. “I am,” he said again. “I am also a madman, a fool, and all the rest of it. I know it all too well. And I want to forget it. For a while. Until I have to remember.”

  “In Ianon,” she said, “in the old time before our people turned to the ways of the west and the soft south, when the king kept vigil before battle, there was a ritual. It gave strength to the king, and through him to his kingdom; often it brought him victory.”

  He sat motionless, his eyes wide, full of lamplight and her face. She continued softly, calmly. “After the sun had set, while his army kept the night watch, the king would sit in his tent, alone or perhaps with one other who was as close to him as a brother. There he would fight his secret battle against what fears he might have, for himself, for his people. But that battle is never wisely fought if fought too long. Near to its end, another would come, not only to fight beside him but to make him forget. This one was always a woman, neither maiden nor matron but one who by her vows and her will had chosen to set herself apart from the common lot of her sex, to be a thing far greater. The holy one, the king’s strength.”

  “And his singer?”

  “That, too. Sometimes.”

  “Then it seems,” he said, “that I chose wisely on the night of my kingmaking. One woman for all I might desire.” His voice roughened. “But there’s no need tonight to invent titles and rituals. Only say it. Say it plainly. You think I need a woman.”

  “Do you not?” she asked unruffled, even though she knew it maddened him.

  Maddened, he struck to wound. “What makes you think it’s you I need? Maybe it’s time I chose one closer to my own size. One who is not old enough to be my mother.”

  She laughed on her inimitable, rippling scale, with no pain in it that she would let him perceive. “Perhaps it is time and perhaps it is wise, but I am here and I am quite comfortable; and you are much too fastidious to make do with a camp follower.”

  He gulped air and outrage. “How dare you—” It came as a half-shriek, so utterly disgraceful that it shattered all his anger. Laughter rose to fill the void: breathless, helpless laughter that loosened all his bones and left him hiccoughing in her arms.

  Her own laughter died with his, but a smile lingered; her eyes danced. “There truly was a ritual,” she said.

  “And I truly . . . seem to . . . need . . . Damn you, Ymin!”

  He was burning under her hands. Abruptly he pulled away, leaping to his feet. “Why do you keep coming back to me? What can you gain from it? Do you do it only because it is your office—your duty? Or . . . do you . . .”

  “You have beauty. It is not a common beauty; it is stronger, stranger. It sings in the blood. You have strength, the strength of youth that will ripen into splendid manhood. You have that indefinable air which is royal. And,” she said, taking both his hands and drawing them to her heart, “you have that which makes me love you.”

  He looked down at her. His face was cold, all at once, and very still.

  “I am not your life’s love,” she said. “I do not ask to be. But what I can give you, what I have always given you, on this night of all nights I do give.”

  Almost he wept. Almost he laughed. In this she had succeeded magnificently: he had forgotten all his black dread.

  Yet he had given her a trouble of her own, albeit one as sweet as it was painful. She kept her face serene, her smile undimmed, her thoughts bright and strong and fearless. She did not think of what they both knew. They might never lie together again.

  But he was too much the mage and too much the Sunborn. He saw; he knew. She had released his hands; he lifted one to stroke her cheek. “I would not give you grief,” he said very gently.

  “Then give me joy.”

  It flowered in him for all that he could do. Even without power she sensed it. Her arms enfolded him; she drew him down.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  With the sun’s sinking, the shadow about the enemy’s camp seemed to melt away. By full dark the sentries on the hilltops could discern a camp but little different from their own, an ordered pattern of watchfires gleaming in the night.

  The level between the camps was dark even for one with night-eyes, the stream whispering in its passage. Alidan crept down the bank with a hunter’s caution; she was clad in her own midnight skin, her hair braided and coiled tight around her head, a dagger bound to her thigh, hilt and sheath wrapped in black to hide the gleam of metal. So she had passed Mirain’s sentries, as softly as a wind in the grass.

  On Ilien’s edge she paused. Briefly she looked back. Mirain’s tent was invisible among the rest; he slept
within it, safe in his singer’s arms, his Geitani squire keeping watch without.

  She smiled, thinking of them, and sighed a little. She wished that she had been able to say farewell to the king at least; but he would have forbidden her, and this was a thing which she must do.

  Ilien sang before her. The enemy’s camp stretched beyond. Still she could detect no shadow but that of the night, no hint of vigilance other than the pacing of the guards.

  They moved easily in armor that glinted in the scattered firelight, some accoutered in the fashion of the Marches, some clad as knights of western Ianon. One, close to the stream, wore on his cloak the badge of the Lord Cassin.

  Alidan released her breath slowly and lowered herself into the water.

  It was bitter cold on her bare skin. She set her teeth and glided forward, shaping her movements to the rhythm of the stream over its stones. More than once she froze, crouching, but no eyes turned toward her.

  At last she lay on the western bank. The sentries paced oblivious. They had the air of men who kept watch out of duty, but who feared no assault.

  She gathered herself muscle by muscle. Silently but swiftly she ran up the slope. A guard paused, peering; she halted. He resumed his pacing.

  The fires flickered before her; the sentries passed behind. She moved with somewhat less care, but cautious still, keeping to the shadows, edging toward the pavilion that stood in the center of the camp. A standard fluttered before it: Moranden’s sign of the wolf’s head, wearing now a crown.

  oOo

  Lamplight blazed within, catching in the eyes of the two who confronted one another. Moranden stood as if drawn taut by a hidden hand. His mother sat enthroned on a carven chair, clad with her perennial simplicity, starker still beside the prince’s splendor. But her face was calm and unwearied, and his was worn to the bone as with a long and hopeless struggle.

  “I let you play, child,” she said, “I let your men call you king, while they shun me and call me witch and worse. I will let you finish your game of kings and warriors with yonder upstart. But I do not intend to give him the smallest chance of victory.”

  “How can he win? He’s half my size. I can take him apart while he’s still struggling to get close.”

  “The Sunchild is a fool, but he is not entirely mad. He sees some advantage in the mode of battle he has chosen. Very likely that advantage will partake of sorcery.”

  “I’ll see that he swears to use none, and you can see that he holds to the oath. But no more. None of your poisons and none of your spells. I’ll kill him in fair fight.”

  “No,” she said, flat and final. “You will know when I—”

  He bent over her. So grim was his face that even she knew a moment’s apprehension. He spoke very softly, very distinctly, with every vestige of his hoarded strength. “Woman, I have had enough. You thought you had my eyes well clouded, but I know what this army has been doing to my country. My country, woman. Ravaging it. Destroying it. Taking your revenge on an enemy cycles dead, who never did more to you than put down your viper of a father and set you as high as any traitor’s spawn could be set. And love you, in his way. That was the unforgivable sin. He never condescended to hate you.”

  She struck him. Her long nails left weals above his beard; he made no move to touch them, although one begot a thin stream of blood. It seemed to spring from no new wound but from the old scar beneath his eye, remembrance of another battle in this same endless war.

  “Yes,” he said, “when words fail, you always strike; and the truth drives you mad.”

  “Truth!” She laughed. “What do you know of truth? You whose claim to kingship is a lie. You were never a king’s son, Moranden.”

  He drew back a step. The bile was thick in his throat, gnawing at his words. “That is vicious slander. He was my father. He acknowledged me.”

  She smiled, sure now that she had won, as she always had. “That was the bargain I struck. He could have me if he would give his name to my child. He was weak and I was very beautiful. He did as I bade him.”

  “Lies,” gritted Moranden. “Or if they are the truth . . .” His teeth bared in a dire grin. “You’ve made a mistake, mother whore. By your testimony I have no legal claim to the throne of Ianon. I’ll give it up; I’ll go now, abandon this travesty of a war, and find my fortune somewhere far and safe. I’ll no longer be your puppet.”

  He was stronger than she had thought, and saner. She saw it; and she said, “Certainly that must prove your parentage. Sanity does not run in the royal line.”

  “Neither does murder, which is unfortunate for me. My father should have strangled you the day he met you.”

  “No father of yours.”

  “He was all the father you ever let me have!” Moranden drew himself up, gathering both temper and courage. “I will fight my battle in my own way. The honorable way. If you make the slightest move toward my enemy, I will kill you with my own hands.” His voice lashed her with sudden force. “Now get out!”

  She rose, but she did not flee. “When he has his knee upon your throat, remember what you have said to me.”

  “When I cast him down and set my foot on him, take care, mother mine, that I don’t throw you to his dogs. And the kingdom after it—the kingdom to which you tell me I have no right.”

  “You have the right of the king’s acknowledged son.” She drew her veil over her head above the glitter of her eyes. “I will rule Ianon with you or in spite of you. Perhaps after all it is time this land knew a ruling queen.”

  “You still need me to dispose of the ruling king.”

  “No,” she said, “I need you not at all. But I too am weak. I suffer your folly because you are the child of my body. Because,” she said with such raw outrage that he could not help but believe her, “because I love you.”

  oOo

  Alidan crouched in deepest shadow a palm’s width from the tent wall, hardly breathing. But her dizziness came not only from the shortness of her breath, nor even from the terror of discovery.

  She had stopped thinking of revenge. There was only necessity; but what was that? The traitor prince would destroy Mirain’s body. The sorceress would strike at his soul. And there would be no time to smite them both.

  Which?

  In the dark behind her eyes, she saw her son fall. And she saw Moranden’s face in the moment after Shian died.

  It was stiff, stunned. She heard words through the roaring in her ears. “Have we fallen to the murder of children? Guards! Take that man!”

  A king did as he must. Even the murder of children. And Ilien’s course was one long bleak road of the dead.

  And he had cried out against it.

  But he would kill Mirain.

  But the woman would steal the king’s will, ensorcel his soul.

  If she could.

  If Moranden could—

  Alidan crept through darkness. One hand closed around the hilt of the long thin dagger which she had meant for Moranden’s heart. To save Mirain; to save his empire that would be.

  Light flared. Alidan flattened herself into shadow. A tall dark shape held up the tent flap. Light from within struck fire in the silver at her throat.

  Alidan’s brain reeled. Betrayal upon betrayal. Treason upon treason. Hatred—

  oOo

  The flap fell. Ymin stood in the tent, facing mother and son.

  They were astonished. She was cool, as if she had nothing to fear. “I give you greeting,” she said.

  They did not speak. Perhaps they could not. She smiled and sat on a cushioned stool, arranging her robe with care, folding her hands in her lap.

  Moranden broke the silence abruptly. “How did you get here? What do you want with us?”

  “I walked,” she answered. “Perhaps I sang a word or two. I wish to speak with you.”

  “Why? Can’t he keep you satisfied?”

  She smiled, rich with remembrance. “He is the king in all respects.”

  “So. You’re making the best o
f it.”

  “I am more than content.” She considered him. “You do not look well, my lord.”

  “War is hard on a man.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And rebellion is cruel, is it not? One must destroy so much that one yearns to preserve.”

  He stiffened at the blow. His eyes flicked to his mother, hating, pleading.

  She watched without a word. Her startlement had given way to something less easily read; but it was not dismay. Not at all. Almost she might have been smiling.

  She looked like Ymin. Serene, superior, secure in the certainty that the world was hers to shape as she willed.

  Ymin met her gaze. “You know that if your son fails, you have no hope.”

  “My son will not fail.”

  “That is no child whom he faces. It is the son of a god. He is stronger by far than he seems; he is the fated king.”

  “My son shall be king in Ianon.”

  “So he may be,” said Ymin. She turned back to Moranden. “So you can be. Do you think that Mirain will linger here? This is only his beginning. And when he rides to take his full inheritance, Ianon will need a man to rule her. What better man than his own kinsman?”

  “His dear kinsman.” Moranden bared his teeth. “I’m no sage and I’m no god’s get, but I’m not an utter idiot. I know how much love I can expect from Mirain the priestess’ bastard. He’d see me dead before he’d let me near his throne.”

  “Would he? You have begun all amiss, I grant you, but he has grown since he took the kingship. He can forgive you, if you will allow him. He can give you all you ever longed for.”

  Moranden’s face contorted with sudden passion. He flung his hand toward his mother. “Even her head on a pike?”

  “Even that,” said Ymin steadily.

  Odiya laughed, free and startlingly sweet. “Why, this is better than a troupe of mountebanks! Singer, have you lost your wits? Or is it merely the madness of desperation? Your lover has no hope in combat, you know as well as we. But you will not buy his life with empty promises.”

  “They are not empty,” Ymin said.

  Odiya merely smiled.

  Ymin rose. She raised her chin; she pitched her voice to throb in Moranden’s heart. “You are no fool, my lord; no woman’s plaything. And yet your mother rules you. Without you she is nothing. Without her you are a man of strength and wisdom. Cast off your shackles. See the truth. Know that you can be king, if only you have patience.”