by Judith Tarr
Very gently the princess said, “You can be his lover. All the rest will follow.”
It was even more shocking than that she should be here, alone, speaking freely and even knowing what soldiers thought: that she could say such a word to her maiden daughter. Lover. And with such tenderness.
Elian looked at her hands and at the bed. Both were empty. While she spoke, while her mind paid no heed, she had returned each possession to its place.
Save the jewel. It lay in her hand and glittered, and the light of it was cruel. She thrust it into her coat.
She could have wept. She could have screamed. She huddled on the bed, knees to chin, eyes burning dry, and said, “I can’t understand him. What if he only wants me for my face? And my dowry, and my father’s goodwill. He never acted like a lover. He hardly seemed to notice me. Was he so sure of me? Or is it that he didn’t care? He wasn’t even jealous of Ilarios.”
“Was he not?”
“No!” she snapped. With an effort she softened her voice. “Ilarios wanted me to go away with him. When I told Mirain, he wouldn’t decide for me. He didn’t try to make me stay.”
“He did not counsel you to leave.” The princess smiled. “Ah, child, if you saw nothing, still there were others who could see. He would watch you when you were together with the prince, watch you steadily and constantly. Or if you were gone, riding or walking, his mind would wander; he would snap for no reason. Ah, yes, he was jealous. Bitterly so.”
“Then why didn’t he—”
“He was too proud.”
Of course he was too proud. A man had to be humble, to woo a woman properly. “He can’t love me!” cried Elian.
Her mother laughed softly. “But, daughter, he always has.” She sobered, though only a little. “I can understand your fear. He is dear to us all, and he is most human, but he remains Avaryan’s son. And yet, being man as much as god, he is very easily hurt. Take care lest you wound him too deeply for any healing.”
“I would never—” Elian broke off. “Oh, Mother, why does it have to be me?”
“If I knew,” the princess answered, “I would be a goddess myself.” She slid from her chair to her knees, unwonted as all she had done in the past hour, and circled her daughter with her arms. “When I bore you, I knew the god intended great things for you. He has given you many and wondrous blessings. Now he asks for his payment. You are strong enough to give it. Believe me, child,” she said, measuring each word, “you are strong enough.”
NINETEEN
The night before Midwinter was the Dark of the Year. In old days it had been the great festival of the goddess; when Avaryan rose to full and sole power in Han-Gilen, her rites were forbidden, her festival diminished before the feast of Sunreturn. But the old ways lingered. At the Dark of the Year, all fires were extinguished. The temple was dark, the priests silent. Folk huddled together and shivered, and thought on death and dying and on the cold of the grave.
The palace nourished warmth in its old bones; but as the sunless day passed, the chill crept closer. With music and song forbidden and laughter quenched, the halls seemed darker still.
Elian passed a warm delicious time with Anaki, who as a new mother need not endure the fireless cold. Both guilt and duty drove her forth. The sky had begun to loose its burden of snow.
She left its grey weight for the icy air of the palace. Mirain was in the workroom with his clerks; they, needing lamps for their work, warmed their hands at the small flames.
They had no need of her; no more did he, although he smiled at her, a swift preoccupied smile. She went to polish his armor. It was a hideous task, but it warmed her blood wonderfully.
The gold-washed plates gleamed, splendid even in the gloom. As she rubbed at his helmet, pursing her lips over a dent which the smith had failed to smooth completely, soft darkness fell over her.
She struggled out of it. It was a cloak, a wonderful thing, deep green velvet lined with fur as fiery vivid as her hair, light and soft and warm as down, as beautiful to the touch as to the eye. Her fingers lost themselves in it; her breath caught in wonder.
“Hazia, ” she said. “This must be hazia. ”
Mirain sat at her feet, smiling. “Yes, it is.”
“But it’s as precious as rubies. More precious.”
He gestured assent. “The beast is little larger than a mouse, and elusive, and shy besides. It took, said the merchant, the better part of twenty years to gather enough for your cloak.” He tilted his head. “Do you like it?”
“Don’t be a fool!” The heat flooded to her face; she scowled. “You can’t buy me, Mirain.”
“May I not give you a Midwinter gift?”
“I have one already. My Guard.”
“And this is another,” he said. His finger stroked the fur lightly, almost absently. “I’m appallingly wealthy, you know. The tribes of the north are richer than you would ever believe; and their richest kings have paid me tribute, every one. After a while it begins to seem like sea-sand. Worthless with surfeit. Except to give away.”
“Don’t give it all away!” she cried, stung to practicality.
He laughed. “No fear of that, my lady. Even if I were so minded, my clerks would bring me to my senses. Armies have to be paid; and there’s my city.” His eyes grew bright as they always did when he spoke of that. “When the spring comes, we’ll begin the building. You’ll help us with it. There are things you’ll be wanting in the palace and in the city.”
“How can it matter what I want?” she asked. She was cold in her splendid cloak.
“You matter,” he said. And added very calmly, “I should like to be wedded after the snows pass. On your birth-feast, in the spring; or on mine if you would prefer, at High Summer. Or anywhere between.”
She hated him. She hated his cool assurance; she hated his steady regard. She hated her own heart, that had turned traitor and begun to beat hard, and her voice, that was weak, half strangled. “What if I won’t choose?”
He touched her hand, the merest brush of a fingertip, yet she felt it as a line of flame. “There’s time yet for deciding. And”—he followed the burning touch with a white-fire kiss—“for loving.”
She choked on bile. Treacherous, treacherous body. It sang with his nearness. It yearned to be nearer still.
He moved a little away, and her anger was swift, fierce, and utterly reasonless. His voice had lost its softness, turned crisp: his brother-voice, with a hint of the king. “Meanwhile, there is the winter. After tomorrow’s feast I’ll send the bulk of my allies home to rule their lands for me. The summer will see us on the march again.”
She shuddered.
He clasped her hand. No fire now, only warmth and strength. “Asanion, if not our ally, is not yet our enemy. For a time. That much Ziad-Ilarios won from me. But the east is rising. The Nine Cities encroach on the princedoms of the farthest south, at the desert’s edge. I hear of horrors committed and of armies strengthened. The Syndics are testing my flanks for weaknesses.”
The cold in her was sudden and soul-deep. “Sooner,” she said very low. “Cold. North.”
His grasp tightened. “The north is firm, and mine.”
“The north holds the dark.”
He frowned. “It’s Midwinter, sister-love. It chills us all.”
“No,” she said with swift heat. “I can feel it.”
She had touched his pride. “My realm is like my body to me. It lies at rest, deep in winter’s grip. Save only for the uneasiness in the south. And,” he added more slowly, “a little in the north. A very little. A raid or two. The tribes thrive on them; without them, all the young men would go mad and turn on one another.”
“Tribes? In the Hundred Realms?”
“It is not—”
oOo
It was Ashan. The messenger came in late and chilled to the bone, his mare all but foundered.
With wine in his belly and a warm robe about him, he told his tale. “Men of Asan-Eridan began it,” he said.
“A girl of theirs, a favorite of the lord’s favorite bastard, caught the eye of a visitor. He was a man of little enough account, but he had kin in Asan-Sheian. He accosted the girl and raped her; her man caught him at it, and quite legally and rightly, if somewhat precipitously, saw to it that the outlander would never enjoy another woman. The culprit, turned loose, made his way back to Sheian, where his kin by then were weary of winter and eager for a diversion.
“That would have been little enough, sire, and easily dealt with. But my lord Omian is marriage-kin to Sheian’s lady, and he was there when the wounded man returned. He bound his own men to Sheian’s cause.
“Now Eridan lies near Ebros’ border, and has close ties of alliance and kinship with a handful of its Ebran neighbors. Faced with Luian’s troops, Eridan’s lord called on his friends. And now we have the beginnings of a healthy war.”
He left his seat to kneel before Mirain. “We would not trouble you, Sunborn. But my lord is old and his heir is not minded to make peace, and of the rest of the sons, most have arrayed themselves with the younger lord to rouse war against Ebros. Before the end, Ashan may well turn upon Ashan, and fight as fiercely within as without.” The man clasped his hands in formal pleading. “Majesty, if this small fragment of your great empire is of any worth to you, we beg you, aid us in our trouble.”
Mirain looked down at the messenger. Elian knew that look: dark, level, and utterly unreadable. She had seen high lords flinch before it.
This man was no lord, of blood or of spirit. He crouched on the floor, shielding his head with his hands. But he had the strength to cry, “Sunborn! By your father’s name, give us your aid.”
The words rang in silence. In the heart of it a note sang, faint yet clear: the chiming of a bell. Mirain raised his head to it. “Avaryan sets,” he said. “The temple waits for me.”
The envoy clutched his knees: great daring and great desperation. “Sire!”
“After the rite,” said Mirain, “you will have my answer.” He seemed to do nothing, but he was free and striding through the hall, the messenger kneeling still, gripping air.
oOo
Though crowded with the folk of the city, Avaryan’s temple held within it a black and ancient cold. The high ones felt it in their places near the altar, prince and princess seated side by side, their son and their daughter standing close behind them. Although no fire lightened the darkness, a glow clung to them, a faint red-golden shimmer: the mage-light, that was always strongest in the heart of Han-Gilen. It shone even through Elian’s cloak.
She barely heeded it. The cold within her had deepened to burning. Her mind was brittle, clear and bright and fragile as ice. The thoughts of the gathered people rang upon it.
Stronger than they was the call of the darkened altar, the mantle and the water of prophecy. All her will scarcely sufficed to hold her in her place.
It is time, sang the water. Time and time and time. Come, seer. Come and rule me.
Her jaw set, aching-hard. There was no one to cling to, even if she could. Orsan and his lady were just out of her reach. Hal supported Anaki, who would come to this ritual, even though she came in a chair. Mated, all of them, and centered on one another.
Light flared blinding-bright in the gloom. A child’s voice, high and piercingly pure, rent the murmuring silence.
Every priest and priestess in Han-Gilen walked in that endless procession, a stream of white robes, golden torques, fine-honed voices. Before them trod the novices in saffron gold, bearing tall candles. Behind them came a great light.
The Halenani shone with power. But this was Avaryan’s own child in Avaryan’s greatest temple: robe and torque like all the rest, voice as pure as a sacred singer’s, yet all of it but a veil over light. Elian’s eyes blurred and flinched before its brilliance.
If he will not be called high priest now, her cold self said, then the name is nothing. He is only what he is. The god’s son, greatest of the priests of the Sun.
He mounted to the high altar and bowed as a flame will bow in a high wind. She never heard what words he sang, nor saw the movements of his dance, the dance of the binding of the goddess.
The darkness’ binding loosed other powers, Elian’s own far from the least of them. With no memory of movement, she stood no longer beside her brother but shivered in deep shadow. Perilously close, close enough to touch, lay the Altar of Seeing.
No mind but hers focused on it, no eyes turned toward it. She was as much alone there as if the temple had been empty.
Her hand stretched out. The mantle was thick and startlingly soft, pouring over her hand like water. Black water, glistening in its hollow in the stone, stirring and shimmering. She should fight—fight—
Come, it whispered. Rule. Be strong and see.
Strength lay in surrender. Strength was to open wide the mind, to let the water pour into it with its burden of dreams and nightmares and true sight, to master the visions; to gather, and shape, and rule.
Rule. Her brain was a dazzle of images. Her eyes saw, her mind knew where she stood: by the altar of prophecy, with the black mantle cast over Mirain’s gift of green velvet and hazia.
She was no longer cold. The temple flared with the Sun’s fire: while she bound her visions, Mirain had kindled the light of Sunreturn.
Priests and Sunborn sang the great antiphon, deep voices shot with the silver brilliance of the novices and the priestesses. The god came forth, they sang, and clove to his bride. And the darkness was cast down, and the light rose up: sun in triumph, conqueror unconquered, king forever. . . .
King forever, a single voice echoed him. With a shock she knew her own, though higher and purer and fiercer than she had ever known it could be.
The ranks of priests wavered. The people turned, staring. Their eyes smote her.
The voice ran on of its own accord, like a bell that, once struck, continues to sound, untouched by any hand: “King forever or king never, son of the Sun! Look; even as you stand here binding the dark with chains of light and song, it moves against you. And you sing, and you dance the Dance, and you ponder this small trouble in the north. You are restless with winter—you will go yourself to settle it, to cow your rebellious people with your own mighty presence. Ill pondered and ill chosen, Sunborn. North waits the full power of ancient Night. North lies your death.”
Mirain stood unmoving behind the high altar. His light had faded to a shimmer, barely perceptible in the splendor of the full-lit temple.
He wore no mark of rank, only the vestments of a priest in the rite, white without adornment, and his torque. His face blurred through the flocking visions: Mirain the boy atop Endros; Mirain the youth on his throne in Ianon; Mirain but little older, locked in deadly combat with a giant of the north; Mirain come to manhood, riding to claim his empire.
Mirain lying on cold stone, eyes open to the sky, all light fled from them; and over him a shape of shadow, mantled in night. It stretched forth a long gaunt hand, and bent, and reft his heart from his breast.
“Send another,” Elian said quite calmly, quite clearly. “Send one who will be strong at need, ruthless at need, and tarry here. Then indeed shall you be king forever, you and all the heirs of your body. All the worlds shall bow before you.”
It was strange how clear her mind was. She could see through Mirain as through a glass; the others, the lesser ones, were like bright water babbling unheeded on the edge of perception.
He was still, clear-eyed and completely unafraid. “How may I send another,” he asked, “if I dare not send myself?”
“It is not a matter of daring or of cowardice. It is a matter of the world that hereafter shall be. You are the sword of Avaryan against the dark. If you are broken before the time appointed, what hope then has any child of the light?”
“You are the seer,” he said. “See for your king. Is my death inescapable?”
“If you go not into the north, you may escape it.”
“And if I go? Is all hope lost?”
&nb
sp; She shivered. But the sight knew neither mercy nor human fear. It spoke through her, cold and distinct. “Your death waits in Ashan. Yet on one thread of time’s tapestry—one thread only, of all the myriads— there is hope. Hope for your life. What that life shall be, whether prisoned in deep dungeons or hounded into exile or even—pray the god it be so—set again upon your throne, I cannot see. A shadow lies upon my sight.”
“But I will live.”
“You may. If you pursue that one course of the many, make the one proper choice, speak the word and make the gesture and face the danger as the seeing demands. But the word and the gesture I cannot see.”
“No. You would not. My enemy is strong enough to darken even prophecy. Yet hope cannot be hidden.” His voice rang out, clear and strong. “I will venture it. I will go forth and crush this serpent in the grass of my kingdom, and my father will defend me. No mortal can conquer me.”
“But a goddess may,” said Elian.
No one heard her. They were all crying his name. And he—he chose not to listen. He even smiled; and he turned back to the rite, singing more splendidly than ever, with the power of the god in his voice and in his eyes.
TWENTY
“Will you go?”
Mirain was clad for the feasting in full Ianyn splendor, but Elian wore still the gown and the cloak she had had in the temple, with the prophet’s mantle cast haphazardly over them. No one had touched her or spoken to her. She was a figure of awe now, the seer of Han-Gilen.
She hardly heeded it, or the servants who moved around Mirain, settling his broad collar of gold, braiding gold and pearls into his hair, painting the sunburst of his father between his brows.
“Will you go?” she demanded again.
He left his servants to approach her. He was not like the rest; he dared to slip black mantle and green from her shoulders, to touch the lacings of her dark plain gown. “I will go,” he said.
He beckoned. One of his dressers came forward with a cascade of gold and white, the robe of a princess, a queen.
