by Judith Tarr
Elian bowed low before it. There was no prayer in her. After a moment she turned from it.
Lesser altars stood in sheltered niches around the circle of pillars. Some were tombs of old princes. One held the body of the god’s chosen, his bride, the priestess Sanelin.
One, very small, very ancient, drew her to itself. No high lord or lady rested there; no gold adorned it, no carving lightened it. Even its stone had not the pure beauty of the high altar: plain grey granite, rough-hewn and set into the floor.
Its top was smoothed somewhat—that much one could see, and no more. For it was covered with darkness, cloth woven it seemed of the very shadows; yet that was no altar cloth but a hooded mantle. Beneath it lay a hollow in the stone, and water that never fouled or shrank away, but remained ever the same, clear and pure as water fresh-drawn from a spring. The Water of Seeing, veiled in the mantle of the Prophet of Han-Gilen.
It knew her. It called to her. Take my veil. Look at me. Master me. Prophet. Prophet of Han-Gilen.
She had schooled herself to resist it. But power would never be denied. Had it bent her mind even in her father’s palace, bidden her meet Ilarios here, to bring her to itself?
Look at me. You know not what course to choose. Look at me and see.
“I’ll choose him,” she whispered, “to escape from you.”
Look at me, it chanted. Master me.
“No!”
She spun on her heel. She had put on a gown, for reasons she could not have explained even to herself; its heavy skirts swirled about her ankles. In the same movement, her cropped hair brushed her cheeks.
Would she ever be aught but a contradiction?
A shadow stirred among the shadows. Lamplight glimmered on gold. She leaped forward; stopped short; advanced more sedately, unsmiling.
Ilarios took her hands and kissed them. He wore his black robe still, with a dark cloak flung over it. The hood lay on his shoulders, and his hair was free.
“My lord,” she said softly.
“My lady.” It was not a question. Yet a question throbbed in it, an eagerness harshly curbed, a fear he dared not admit. He would be a courtier if she asked it, speak of small things, circle gracefully round his heart’s desire.
She could not bear it. To play the courtier; to make her choice.
His hands were warm and strong and trembling deep within. His face was pale. His gaze was level and very bright.
“My lord.” She swallowed hard. “I— Forgive me. Oh, please forgive me.
She did not know what she meant. But the light drained from his eyes; his face lost its last glimmer of color.
And she cried, “I can’t be what you need me to be! I can’t be your empress or your wandering love. I can’t love you that way. It isn’t in me.”
“It is,” he said. His eyes were bitter. “But not for me.”
She tossed her head, in protest, in pain. “Please understand. I want to accept you. I long to. But I can’t. Han-Gilen holds me. My squire-oath binds me. I have to live out my fate here.”
“I understand,” he said. He was calm. Too calm. “You are of your realm as I am of mine. And when the war comes, as it must come, for this world cannot sustain two empires—better for us both that we not be tom between the two enemies.”
“There can still be an alliance. If—”
“There can be one. For a while. Perhaps for a long while: a year, a decade, a score of years. But in the end the conflict must come, and no union of ours may avert it. Empires take no account of lovers, even of lovers who are royal.”
“No,” she said. “No.”
He smiled. It was sweet still, and sad, but there was nothing of innocence in it. There never had been, save in her foolish fancy. He was a royal Asanian, son of a thousand years of emperors.
He said, “I can take you whether you give me yea or nay, whether it be wisdom or folly or plain blind insanity. Because you are my heart’s love. Because without you I do not think that I can live.”
He held her hands; she tensed to pull free, stilled. Shadows took shape: his guards in their eternal, unyielding black, cold-eyed, armed with Asanian steel. Her power could find no grip upon them.
“Yes,” Ilarios said softly, “my bred warriors, my Olenyai. They are armed against magecraft. They are sworn to die for me, as you are sworn to die for your bandit king.”
She stared at him. He was all new to her, his masks fallen, his gentleness no less for that it was not the simple whole of him.
Mirain laughed as he slew, and wept for the wounded after. Ziad-Ilarios would weep in the slaying, and weep after, but his hand would be none the less implacable for that. As he would seize her, compel her, bear her away to be his bride.
She was not afraid. She was fascinated. How strange they grew, these royal males, in the face of a woman’s intransigence. How wonderful to stand against them; how like the exhilaration of battle.
She almost laughed. She was hemmed in, and she was free. She could choose one, both, neither. She could run away. She could die. She could do anything at all.
She looked at her hands held lightly in his, and up, into his pale taut face. Was this love, this sweet wildness? She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to strike him. She wanted to pull him down in the very temple and have her will of him. She wanted to run far away, and cast aside all thought of him, and be as she had been before ever he came to beset her.
Her mind cried out to him. Yes! Yes, I will go. Damn my fates, damn my prophecies, damn my haughty king who will not, cannot speak.
He could not hear her. He was no mage; only a mortal man. He would be emperor as he was born to be. He would age as all his kindred did, swiftly, cruelly, his gold turned to grey, his beauty lost, his life burning to ash, as if flesh could not endure the fire of his spirit.
She could make him live. She could be his strength, her flame suffice for both. She could do it willingly, gladly, exultantly. If only her demon would yield up her tongue.
His finger traced her rigid cheek. His voice was infinitely tender, infinitely regretful. “I cannot do it. I cannot compel you. My grief; my fatal weakness. I love you far too much. You are a creature of the free air. In the Golden Palace you would wither and die. As must I. But I was born to it, and I have learned to accept it; even, a little, to overcome it. That much you have given me. For that alone may I thank the gods that I have known you.” He bowed low and low. “I depart at dawn. May your god keep you.”
She reached to catch him, to pull him back, to cry her protests. But he was gone. The night had taken him.
And she, utterly cold, utterly bereft, could not even weep.
EIGHTEEN
Elian wandered for a very long time, not caring where she went, not caring where the hours fled. The tears would not come.
More than once she stopped short. She could still turn back. She could still run to him. Hold him. Tell him that she had lied, she had lost her wits, she had but tested him.
Cruel, cruel testing. When had she ever been aught but cruel?
Vadin had had the right of it. She had made it all a game. Played at love, played at loss. Held a man’s heart as light as a pawn upon a board.
And she had dealt him a wound that might never heal.
She huddled in a cold and nameless corner, shivering, staring into the lightless dark. Now that she had lost him, she knew surely that she loved him.
Her tongue and her cowardice had played her false. Her grief had reft her of will to do what she could do. Go back. Go with him. Be his empress. Raise strong children, bright-haired, with golden eyes. Bring him joy in the heart of his high cold empire.
Her head rose. There was a window before her; it looked out on darkness. The deep dark before dawn.
She was on her feet. She was running, blindly but with burning purpose. A door fell back before her. Chambers opened, rich, hung with Asanian silks, scented with Asanian unguents.
Empty.
Everywhere, empty. His guards, his servants, his belon
gings, gone.
His presence darkened into bitter absence. But in the mound of cushions that had been his bed, something glittered. A topaz, filling her palm, rent from his coronet.
It had no look of a trifle flung down and forgotten. It held a memory of his eyes. They gazed into her own, level, golden, loving her.
Words drifted through her mind. “Alas, I am cursed with a constant nature. Where I take pleasure, there do I most prefer to love. And where I love, I love eternally.”
She lay on her face in the alien silks, the jewel clenched in her fist, its edges sharpening to pain.
She gripped it tighter. Waves of weeping rose within her, crested, poised and would not, could not fall. Higher, higher, higher. She gasped with the force of them.
Someone stood behind her. Had stood for a long while, waiting, watching. She dragged herself about.
Mirain looked at her and said nothing.
Her tongue had not yet had its fill of havoc. “He left me,” it cried. “He left me before I could go to him. I wanted him!”
Still, silence. Mirain was a shadow, a gleam of eyes, a glimmer of gold in his ear, at his throat. She hated him with sudden, passionate intensity.
“I don’t want you!” she spat at him.
He sat on a heap of cushions, tucking his feet under him, tilting his head. He had always done that when she gave herself up to her temper. Studying it. Contemplating refinements of his own rages. Even in that, Mirain did not take kindly to a rival.
She raised her will against the spell. He was not her elder brother. She was not his small exasperating sister.
No more could he ever be her lover. He had refused to help her choose, and her choosing had gone all awry, and for that she had lost Ilarios.
“I am not yours,” she said, soft and taut, “simply because I am not his. He has gone in despair, but I will follow him. You cannot stop me.”
“I will not try.”
“Then why are you here?”
His shoulder lifted. A shrug, northern-brief. But he was in trousers, his coat dark, plain, royal only in its quality.
She was going mad, that she could notice it now, when all her mind was a roil of dark and gold, grief and rage and prophecy. “You need me,” he said.
Arrogant; insufferable. “I need no one!”
“Not even your Asanian?”
“He needs me.” She choked, gasped, tossed her throbbing head.
Her hand hurt. She forced the fingers to open. The topaz glittered like gold and ice. “Let me go.”
“Am I stopping you?”
She staggered up, fell against him. He caught her. She stood rigid. “I wish I had never been born.”
“It might have spared us grief,” he said.
She snapped erect. That was not even Mirain’s art. That was her father’s.
“But,” he went on, “since you are here and all too much alive, you might consider that your choices are your own. You sent the high prince away. You, not I, not some nameless demon.”
She tore free. His face was as calm as ever it could be.
It was not even ugly. It was perfectly imperfect. Its cheek, unshaven, pricked her palm.
She recoiled. He had not moved. “I hate you,” she said.
His head bowed, came up again. Accepting. “If you ride swiftly,” he said, “you may catch him before the sun rises.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes darted. Her heart was beating like a bird’s: swift, shallow, frightening.
Mirain was like an image of himself. “Cruel,” her tongue whispered. “O cruel.”
He smiled.
Her knees gave way. She sank down shaking. He stood over her, and his smile had faded to a memory, a glimmer at the corner of his mouth.
She surged, pulled him down. He came without resistance; but his strength was potent in her hands, yielding of its free will, setting them face to glaring face.
He blinked once, calmly. “Time passes,” he pointed out.
She could not rise. She could hardly speak. The words that came were nothing of her own. “Do you love me?”
“That,” he said, “is not what matters. Do you love me?”
“I love Ilarios!” Her demon seized her throat again, closing it. She bit down on her fist, hard.
Mirain watched her. His chin had raised a degree. His eyes had hooded.
“No,” she said hoarsely. “Not you, too. I can’t bear it. I can’t lose you, too!”
“Do you love me?”
There, her demon said. There was Ilarios’ failing. He could not make himself be cruel to her. He was weak. Gentle. Compassionate. All fire and all sweetness, and a lover to the core of him.
Weak, the demon repeated. He had lost all his strength in words. He spoke of seizing her, binding her, bearing her away. He had not been strong enough to do it.
Mirain had let her go.
Because he knew what she would do. She belonged to him. She had always belonged to him.
And he to her.
She rocked from side to side. She did not want this. She did not want any of it. She wanted to go away, be free, be anyone but Elian of Han-Gilen.
“Do you love me?” Mirain, again. Pressing her. Driving her mad.
He seized her with bruising force. “Do you love me?”
“Not,” she gritted, “while you are doing your best to break my arms.”
He eased a fraction. Waited.
She looked at him. He did not look like a lover. He looked like a conqueror at the gates of a city. Waiting for it to surrender; or to defy him.
She gasped with the force of revelation. He was afraid. Mirain iVaryan, afraid.
And did she love him?
From her mother’s womb. But as a woman loves a man . . .
She studied him, carefully, thoroughly. And calmly. She had gone so far in her madness; she could be calm, she could think, she could ponder all her choices.
Ilarios was riding, fleeing the sunrise, setting the long leagues between himself and the woman he could never have. He had always known it. He had never thought to have her. But because he was Ilarios, he had done all that he might to win her.
He had lost her. She was of Han-Gilen; she would never be of Asanion. But in this much he had won. He had taught her that her fate was not fixed, that she could love another man than Mirain. That she could be free, if so she chose.
If so she chose.
She raised her chin to match Mirain’s. “I give you leave,” she said in High Gileni, “to sue for my hand.”
His breath hissed. She could not tell if it was anger, or relief, or plain astonishment.
“You may court me,” she said. “I do not promise to accept you.”
He swallowed. Gaining courage? Restraining rage? Struggling not to laugh? “And what,” he asked, “if I manage to discourage any other who should presume to seek your hand?”
“I can live unwed,” she said, “my lord. The prospect does not frighten me.”
His head tilted. “No; I can see that it does not.” He rose and bowed, king to her queen. “I shall court you, my lady, by your gracious leave.”
She inclined her head. And spoiled it all by bursting into laughter, until the laughter dissolved into tears, and Mirain was holding her, rocking her, being for this last helpless moment her elder brother.
She could not even hate him for it. He had taken all her hate, and shown her that it was only the other face of love.
“But not of a lover!” she cried, rebellious. “Only of a brother.”
He said nothing. His silence was denial enough.
oOo
“It shouldn’t matter so much,” Elian said to Ilhari. “I have my family back again, with Mirain and Sieli added to it. I have you. I have the whole of Han-Gilen, if it comes to that.”
The mare shifted slightly under the brush. Her neck itched. Ah, there. She leaned into the rubbing.
“I miss him,” Elian said through gritted teeth. “I miss him with every bone i
n my body. He filled so many emptinesses. He was friend, brother, lover. He was all that a woman could wish for. And I let him go. For what? For a man who won’t even begin to court me.”
Ilhari swiveled an ear at her. That came of two-legged stupidity. If she had let one of them mount her, then it all would have been settled. Her ache would be gone and so would they, painlessly.
Elian laughed with a catch at the end of it. “There are plenty of men who are like that, and women, too; but neither of them is so minded. Nor I.” She set down the brush. Even in the heaviness of her winter coat, Ilhari shone like polished copper. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m made wrong. Or maybe I’m mad. There’s a wild streak in our family, that goes with the power. That one has it—the nameless one. She never settled on a man, either; and the god rejected her for an outlander. No wonder she did what she did.”
She was a crawling on the skin. Ilhari twitched it off and investigated her manger. A grain or two lingered there; she lipped them up.
“I can’t ever condone what she did. But I begin to understand her. She’s still out there, you know. Hiding herself in shadows. Watching and listening. Waiting for me to break and go to her.”
How could she watch? She was blind.
“Her power can see.”
Elian shivered. She had been a fool to say so much, even to Ilhari. The Exile had not beset her dreams since she came to Han-Gilen: her father’s doing. No power for ill could enter his princedom. And she had been all tangled in her muddle of lovers.
But the Exile waited. Elian knew it beyond knowing. She would wait until Elian came, or until she died; or perhaps she had the power to wait beyond death, to ensnare her prey in bonds no living creature could break.
“Midwinter,” Elian said, too quickly and too loudly. “Tomorrow is Midwinter. We’ll sing the dark away this year with more power than we’ve ever had, with Mirain here to do the singing and dance the Dance. Do you know he won’t be high priest? They’ve asked him three times, and the place has been empty this year and more, and they won’t fill it, but no more will he. The world’s throne is enough, he says. Let the temple choose someone more holy.”
