by Tarr, Judith
Moranden leaped.
He took Mirain off guard. But not wholly. His assault drove the king back but not down.
And Mirain, having offered peace at the utmost extremity, having shown Moranden the forbearance of a very saint, now had no mercy left. He had fought with passion and even with anger, in a red heat of battle. Now he advanced in white-cold rage.
Moranden looked into the other’s eyes and saw his death waiting there, as Mirain’s waited in his own. He laughed at the paradox of it and made a hammer of his fist.
Mirain caught it, set his weight against it, swung all that massive body about. Unbalancing it; wrenching the captive arm up and back.
Moranden howled and flailed left-handed. Mirain rocked with the blows; his lip split and bled.
He tightened his grip. His jaw set beneath dirt and blood. He twisted.
The bone snapped.
Moranden bellowed like a bull. The force of his struggle flung Mirain’s light weight away. But his arm was still prisoner, his pain a white agony.
He hurled himself through it; his good hand clawed, raking breast and face, groping for eyes. He found the thick hair working free of its plait. With a snarl of triumph he wound his fingers into it.
Mirain let go the useless wrist. His face was a terrible thing, stretched out of all humanity by the grip on his hair, the bones thrusting fierce and sharp through the skin.
Suddenly he went limp. Moranden loosened his hold a fraction, shifting to peer into the slack face.
Two hands joined shot upward, smote his jaw with an audible crack. His head snapped back. His body arched.
Once more Mirain bestrode his chest. He struggled beneath as a fish struggles when hurled from water into the deadly air, and as vainly, and as mindlessly.
Mirain’s cheeks were wet with more than blood, his breath sobbing with more than pain. Again he raised the club of his knotted hands. With all his strength he brought it down, full between the eyes.
oOo
There was a long silence. Ages long.
Mirain stumbled up, away from the body that had stilled at last. His hands hung limp at his sides. His hair straggled about his face. He was crying like a child.
Vadin damned the circle, damned the Law of Battle. He crossed the line and reached for the trembling shoulders.
Mirain wheeled, poised to kill. But his strength was gone. He wavered; his hands dropped. Sanity dawned in his eyes.
“Vadin?” He could hardly speak. “Vadin, I—”
“It’s all right,” Vadin said, rough with the effort of keeping back his own tears. “It’s all right. You’re alive. You’ve won.”
Mirain’s head tossed from side to side. Vadin laid an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close, stroking away the dirt and blood and tears with a corner of the parti-colored cloak.
Mirain neither resisted nor acknowledged his squire’s ministrations. “I killed him. I didn’t—I wanted—I killed him. Vadin, I killed him!”
His voice was shrill. Vadin nerved himself, and hit him.
Mirain gasped. His head rose. He opened his eyes to the sky, to Avaryan clear and strong and unsullied in a field of cloudless blue.
“I killed him.” But now he said it calmly, with sane and seemly grief. “He must go to his pyre with all honor. So must they all. Even—even she. She was my bitter enemy; she slew my grandfather, she destroyed my beloved, she would have shattered my kingdom. But she was a great queen.”
Vadin could not speak. He was no godborn king. He had no power to forgive what was beyond forgiving.
Mirain’s head bowed, raised again. He straightened.
Vadin let him go. He faced his judges, standing erect and royal although the tears ran unchecked down his face. “Do your office,” he commanded.
They woke as from a trance. The herald turned toward the west with his rod uplifted, its tip of amber catching the bitter light. But Obri faced the east, and ivory glowed with his own springing joy, proclaiming Mirain’s victory.
They turned back to Mirain. Obri knelt and kissed his hand: homage as rare as it was heartfelt. Mirain found a smile for him, although it did not live long.
The herald stood stiff, fist clenched grey-knuckled on his rod. Half of his anger was fear, and an awe for which he despised himself. He forced words through his clenched teeth. “You have won. You must put me to death. It is the law. I knew of the weapon which my lady turned against you.”
Vadin could have struck the creature. Could he not see how utterly exhausted Mirain was? The king had spent all his strength; he had none left even for joy in his triumph. And he had so much yet to do. Ten thousand men wavered on the brink of battle, their commanders reeling still with the shock of Moranden’s defeat. Only that, and the herald’s stillness, held them back from a charge.
Mirain regarded the herald with eyes in which the god’s fire burned ashen low. “You and all your people are bound to me now until death or I shall free you. That is a penalty more fitting than swift death, and perhaps more terrible.”
For a long moment the herald did not stir. Then he bent down and down, even to the ground. His voice boomed forth as if from the earth itself. “Hail, Mirain, king in Ianon!”
Mirain’s own men echoed him, clashing spear on shield, shaking the sky with their jubilation.
The west was silent. Ominously silent.
Somewhere amid the ranks a great voice rang out. “Mirain!”
Another joined it. Another. Another. Five, ten, a hundred, a thousand. It rose like a wave and crested, and crashed down upon him. “Mirain! King in Ianon! Mirain!”
He moved away from his judges and his witness. The army of the west advanced with weapons reversed, chanting his name.
But his eyes lifted, fixing beyond it where Ianon’s mountains marched against the sky. Shadow lay coiled among them. He raised his golden hand. “Someday,” he said, “I will chain you.”
The Mad One burst free at last from the bonds of his will and plunged into the circle. Herald and squire and scholar parted before him.
A hair’s breadth from Mirain’s body, the flying hooves settled into stillness. The horned head bent, nostrils flaring at the scent of blood and battle.
Softly Obri laid the scarlet cloak about Mirain’s shoulders; Vadin set the torque around his throat.
The Mad One knelt. Mirain settled in the saddle; smoothly the senel rose.
East and west and all about them, the armies came together, clashed, and mingled. One army, one kingdom. And above them all one banner: the Sun-standard of Ianon’s king.
Mirain bowed under the weight of them all: grief and joy and kingship, and triumph wrested from black defeat.
But somewhere in the depths of his soul, he found a seed of strength. His eyes kindled. He drew himself erect, squared his shoulders, flung back his hair.
The armies roared his name. He rode forth from the circle to claim his own.
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Copyright & Credits
The Hall of the Mountain King
Avaryan Rising: Book One
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Edition May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-260-0
Copyright © 1986 Judith Tarr
First published: Bluejay Books, 1988
Cover illustration by Arenacreative, www.dreamstime.com
Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Production team: Proofreader: Julianne Lee, Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
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About the Author
Judith Tarr is the author of numerous novels and short stories including the World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novel, Lord of the Two Lands. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.
About Book View Café
Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to
readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.
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Living in Threes
Sample Chapter
Judith Tarr
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Book View Café Edition
November 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61138-208-2
Copyright © 2012 Judith Tarr
For the real Meredith
who has waited very long and patiently for her book to come out in the world
Acknowledgments
This book could not have existed without the help of many friends and colleagues.
My agents, Russell Galen and Ann Behar, believed in it enough to let it go—and to encourage me to publish it through Book View Café.
But before that could happen, this happened: a successful Kickstarter, a round 256 backers, and the wherewithal to transform a manuscript into a book.
Thanks to the backers who have made it possible for Living in Threes to make its way out into the world:
Cora Anderson, Richard Kirka, Marty Grabien, Gwyndyn Alexander, Kari Sperring, Kathleen G. Seal, Alan Hamilton, Robin Taylor, Marci Ellingwood, Carole Nowicke, Ingrid Emilsson, Lisa Clark, Kit Kerr, Meredith Tarr, Woj, Katja Kasri, Hugh Agnew, Marianne Reddin Aldrich, Val Kondrich, Nancy Kaminski, Kathleen Hanrahan, Robin Marwick, RJ Nicolo, Molly Kalafut, Elizabeth Bennefeld, Michael Gaudet, K. Case, Linda Antonsson, Frauke Moebius, Jenny Graver, Noriko Shoji, Deborah Sumner, C. Joshua Villines, Mary Ellen Garland, Lauri M. Weaver, Christy Marx, Shauna Roberts, Catie Murphy, Ruth Stuart, Adrianne Middleton, Paula Mikkelsen, Paul “Princejvstin” Weimer, Pat Knuth, Mary Kay Kare, Peter Aronson, Rebecca Stefoff, Joseph Hoopman, Di, Valerie Nozick, M. Menzies, Nancy Pimentel, Dawn Marie Pares, Leah, Beth, SAMK, Anne Walker, April Steenburgh, Margaret C. Thomson, Ashley with the Morgans, M.L.K. Ondercin, Jaakko Kangasharju, Mary Spila, Poppy Arakelian, Sarah Patrick, Helen Wright, Paula Meengs, HY Tesler, Patricia Burroughs, Nancy Barber, Maryanne Stroud, Amanda Weinstein, K. Kisner, Pat Hayes, Kate Elliott, Phil Freund, Ceffyl, Solveig, Regina A. Tarr (hi, Mom!), Marti Wulfow Garner, Kerry Stubbs, Amy Sheldon, Mary Caelsto, Pat Cadigan, Christine Swendseid, Heidi Berthiaume, Sue Wolven, Donna P., Melinda Goodin from Australia, Kate Kirby, Cameron Harris, Ron Chance, Alison Farrin.
You are amazing. Thank you all.
Chapter 1
That was the absolute best and the absolute worst summer of my life, the summer I turned sixteen.
Sixteen is a weird year. Make it sixteen with your dad off finding himself again—not that he’d been around much even before the divorce—and your mom in remission from ovarian cancer, and you can pretty much figure you’re being dumped on from somewhere.
What I didn’t figure, and couldn’t ever have figured, was how bad it was going to get—and how completely impossible both the bad and the good part would be.
Magic. It’s dead, they say. Or never existed.
They aren’t looking in the places I fell into, or finding it where I found it, that wonderful and terrible summer.
I had plans with the usual suspects: Cat and Rick and Kristen. They had their licenses already, got them before school let out. I was thisclose to mine, with the September birthday and being the class baby.
It was going to be our summer on wheels, when it wasn’t on horseback or out on the beaches. We had it all mapped out.
Then Mom dropped the bomb.
I came home from the barn early that day, the day after the last day of school. Rick had the car, but his dad wanted it back by noon. So we’d hit the trails at sunup, then done our stalls and hay and water in a hurry with him already revving up the SUV.
When I got home, wringing wet and filthy and so smelly even I could tell I’d been around a manure pile, Mom was sitting out by the pool.
That wasn’t where she usually was on a Thursday morning. She still had her work clothes on, but she’d tossed off the stodgy black pumps and splashed her feet in the water.
Her hair had all grown back since the chemo. It was short and curly, and still a little strange, but I liked it. I thought it made her look younger and prettier.
She turned and smiled at me. She looked tired, part of me said, but the rest of me told that part to shut up. “Good ride?” she asked.
“Good one,” I answered. “Bonnie only threw in a couple of Airs. And that was because Rick was riding Stupid, and she was living up to her name. Bonnie had to put her in her place.”
Mom laughed.
As long as I was out there, I figured I’d do the sensible thing. I dropped my shirt and riding tights and got down to the bathing suit any sane person wears under clothes in Florida summer, and dived into the pool.
The water felt absolutely wonderful. Mom watched me do a couple of laps.
Finally I gave in. I swam up beside her and folded my arms on the tiles and floated there, and said, “All right. Tell me.”
She was still smiling. It must be something really good, to bring her out of court and all the way home.
“I’ve been talking to Aunt Jessie,” she said. “She’s staying in Egypt this summer, instead of coming back home to Massachusetts.”
I knew that. I talked to Aunt Jessie, too. She Skyped in at least once a week. Checking on me, and on Mom through me.
But Mom was in story mode. I kept quiet and let her go on.
“She’s really excited,” Mom said. “She’s made some discoveries that she thinks are very important, and with everything that’s been going on over there, she hasn’t been at all sure she can keep getting the permits. She actually got a grant, which is just about unheard of these days.”
“She must be over the moon,” I said.
“Oh, she is.” Mom paused. “It’s a big grant. Big enough for a whole team.”
“Including you?”
That came out of the way Mom was smiling—excited, as if she had a secret and she couldn’t wait to share. She’d been dreaming about Egypt for years, following all of Aunt Jessie’s adventures and reading and studying and talking about maybe someday, if she had time, if she could get away, if—
There were always reasons not to go. First she had to make partner in the law firm. Then she got asked to be a judge in the county court, and that needed her to be always on. Always perfect. And then there was the cancer.
So maybe she figured it was now or never. I could see that. Even get behind it. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
Mom away for the whole summer? Was she really ready to leave me for that long? I didn’t have my license yet. How was I going to—
All that zipped through my head between the time I asked my question and the time Mom answered, “Including you.”
That stopped me cold.
Mom grinned at my expression. “You really thought it was me? I wish, but there are a couple of big cases coming on trial, and I might be called to the bench for another one, and—”
“You said you were going to take it easy this summer,” I said. “We both were. What would I do in Egypt?”
“Learn,” said Mom. “Explore. Be part of something big.”
“Florida is big enough for me,” I said. “What about Bonnie? And the trip to Disney World? And turtle watch? Turtle watch is important. The college needs us to count those eggs. That’s big, too. It’s real. It’s now. Not fifty million years ago.”
“Four thousand, give or take,” said Mom, “and Disney World will keep. So will the turtles.”<
br />
“Bonnie won’t. Bonnie needs me. She just got bred. We don’t even know if she’s pregnant yet.”
“We will tomorrow,” Mom said. “You’ve got a week till you leave. It’s all taken care of. Visas, everything. Aunt Jessie’s been working on it for months. It’s her birthday present to you.”
She’d never said a word to me. Not even a hint.
“I hate surprises,” I said. “I hate her.”
“Hate me,” Mom said. “It was my idea.”
“It’s your dream. Mine is to spend the summer with my friends and my horse. Not baking in a desert on the other side of the world. There are terrorists over there. Revolutionaries. Things get blown up. People get blown up.”
“You will not get blown up,” Mom said.
I pulled myself out of the water. “I’m not going,” I said.
Mom didn’t say anything. I grabbed a towel off the pile on the picnic table and rubbed myself dry, hard enough to make my skin sting, and marched off into the house.
For once in the history of the universe, none of the usual suspects was answering their phone. I barricaded myself in my room and went laptop surfing instead.
I surfed for horse stuff and beach stuff and turtle stuff. Nothing whatsoever to do with Egypt. Who cared about sand and terrorists and old dead mummies? The only sand I wanted was right underneath me in Florida.
When my phone whinnied at me, I almost didn’t bother to answer it. After all, nobody could be bothered to answer me.
But the whinny was Cat, and she had an excuse. She’d been driving her kid brothers home from soccer.
Crisis? she texted.
Big time. But with the phone in my hand and the screen staring at me, I couldn’t manage to fit it all into 160 characters. Tell u tonight, I said. Still on for ice-cream run?
