The Lady of Han-Gilen

by Judith Tarr

  Prince Omian jerked forward. “Treachery!” he cried. “I know the songs. No prison can hold him. He will lull us with false bargains, go quietly to his chamber, and walk out in the night, to bring all his armies down upon us.”

  The nameless one smiled, undismayed. “Set yourself at ease, my lord. He knows as well as I that he cannot escape the bonds which I have set. Only through battle may he win free; and that, have no doubt, only into death.” She turned her voice and her face upon Mirain. “So let it be. The battle of true power, by the laws of the masters. We meet at dawn according to their dictates. Gird yourself well, King of Ianon.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Elian sat on the bed in the state chamber. Its splendor dripped with irony, as bitter a symbol as chains of gold. Even, she thought, without the knowledge that its first master had been hanged by his own son.

  Mirain was in the outer room, sharing a late meal with the guards. Whatever his intent toward his guests, Lord Garin was not minded to starve them. The food was plain but plentiful and, from the evident relish with which they consumed it, not ill to the taste.

  She had no appetite for it. They were all so calm, and Mirain calmest of all, passing round the ale and laughing at a jest.

  She too was calm, for the matter of that, but it was the quiet of numbness. Her body was leaden, unwieldy, strange to itself.

  She stretched out, pulling veil and fillet from her head, letting them fall to the floor. Of their own accord her hands went to her belly. The life there was a Brightmoon-cycle old this very night. Had she been without power, she would have begun to wonder if indeed she had conceived.

  Her fingers tensed. She wanted to rip it away, to cast off all of it, to be her own self again: Elian, Han-Gilen’s wild lady; Galan, esquire of the Sunborn. She wanted to cradle it, to brood over it like a great bird, to rend any who dared to threaten it.

  She lay on her face. Laughing, a strangled gasp, for when she began to swell she would not be able to lie so; choking on tears. And laughing again, because every tale of bearing women trumpeted their mad shifts of mood; but she had always been as wild as a weathercock.

  A light hand traced the path of her spine. She raised her head. Mirain sat on the bed’s edge, balancing cup and bowl. “Here,” he said, “eat.”

  Her stomach heaved, then settled abruptly as she turned about. There was meat in savory stew; warm bread dripping with honey; strong brown ale. All at once she was hungry.

  He watched her eat, smiling, approving.

  She brushed crumbs from her rumpled gown and drew up her knees, turning the heavy ale-cup in her hands. “Mirain,” she asked after a little, “are you afraid?”

  He studied his hands. The one that was like any man’s; the one that cast a golden light in his face. “Yes,” he answered her, “I am afraid. I’m terrified.”

  “But will you do it?”

  His eyes flashed up. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Would it matter if you did?”

  He followed the curve of her cheek with his fingertip, lightly but carefully, as if he needed to remember it. “If I fall, my enemy wins my empire; and I mean you to get it back again. Whatever becomes of me, our child will rule. It must.” She opened her mouth to speak; he silenced her. “The nameless one is very, very strong. I too have great power, but wizardry, unlike the body’s strength, grows with age. In the duties of kingship, in the forging of my empire, I have had little leisure for the training of my power. She has spent long years under the tutelage of masters, to one sole end: my destruction. I mean to defeat her, but it is very likely that I shall not.”

  “If you die,” she said calmly, “I’ll die, too.”

  He caught her hands in a sudden, fierce grip. The ale-cup, empty, flew wide. “You must not! What I said to you before you made me wed you, that if I fell the world was well rid of me—that was folly, and cruelty, too. That woman has all darkness behind her. She will take my empire and my people, only to rend them asunder. You must stand against her. You must do as she did: hide, gather your forces and raise our son, and perfect your power until you are strong enough to cast her down. Promise me, Elian. Swear that you will do it.”

  Her chin set. “Oh, no, my lord king. You can’t take the easy road and leave me to finish what you started. Either you win tomorrow, or your whole dynasty dies with you.”

  He shook her hard. She laughed in his face. “Yes rage at me. The wilder the better. I warned you that your death was waiting; you rode straight for it. Vadin warned you of the trap; you threw yourself into the heart of it. Now you have to choose. You win and save all you fought for, or you lose it all. There are no half-wagers in this game.”

  His eyes blazed. “I command you.”

  “Do you?” She tossed her hair out of her eyes, lightly, almost gaily. “We women are different, you know. Even little fools like me, who try to forget, and play at being boys. Thrones and empires, great matters of state, the wars of men and gods—they don’t matter. I’d gladly die for you, and I probably will, if you’re so determined to get yourself killed. But I won’t fight your battles for you.”

  “I can fight my own damned battles!”

  With a quick deft twist she freed her hands, to take his burning face between them. “In that case,” she said, “you had better win this one.”

  His glare was sun-hot, sun-fierce. She met it steadily.

  With perfect, suspicious coolness he said, “This is deliberate. You’re provoking me, to make me fight harder.”

  “I am,” she agreed. “I’m also telling the truth. Your death is my death. If you want your heir to inherit your empire, you’ll have to live to see the birth.”

  “That is—”

  “Murder and suicide, all in one. Or your salvation; and the child’s, and mine, and your empire’s. Until,” she added after a moment, “the next time.”

  His hand flew up. She braced herself for the blow; with a convulsive movement he struck his own thigh. “Avaryan and Uveryen, woman! Won’t you let me get through this one first?”

  She smiled. “Get through it,” she advised him. “Win it. With luck, your army will come to stand behind you. I’ve bidden Cuthan take word to the army. He might elude both men and magery. And I think— I almost think—our enemy doesn’t know of Vadin. She knows only what she wishes to know. It’s part of her madness. It may save us yet.”

  Muscle by muscle, with skill he had labored long to learn, Mirain relaxed his body. His eyes smoldered still, but his face was quiet, his voice calm. “It may. I’m gambling on it.”

  “Good,” said Elian. Her hands left his face to travel downward, working into the hollows of his robe, finding its fastenings.

  “You,” he said roughly, “have the instincts of a harlot.”

  She laughed, half at his words, half at his garments, which came apart in a most interesting fashion. He snatched at them; she twitched them away. “I used to think I should become one. Shall I think of it again? I’ll be a wonder; men will come from the ends of the earth for a glimpse of my face. I’ll amass the wealth of empires, and pour it all away. All the world will fall at my feet.”

  “Not while I rule this half of it.”

  Her fingers found his most sensitive places and woke the pleasure there, while her eyes danced on his rigid face. “What will you do? Lock me in your harem? Chain me naked to a pillar? Flog me thrice a day to keep me docile?”

  “If you touch any other man—if you even look at him—”

  Her hands stilled. Her eyes narrowed. “Will you try to stop me?”

  He surged against her, bearing her down. She lay motionless under him, laughing silently, but with a flicker of warning. He disdained to heed it. “You are my wife. By law you are my chattel. I can keep you in any manner I please; I can cast you away. Your very life is mine to take.”

  “Would you dare?”

  His eyes were very dark. Deep within, a spark leaped. “Would you dare to test me?”

  “Yes.”

  He
laughed suddenly, glittering-fierce. “I could do worse than that. I could find another woman.”

  “Don’t—you—dare!”

  “Someone soft. Sweet. Obedient. Living only to please me. Dark, I think, like me. And her hair—”

  “I’ll kill her!”

  His laughter this time was warm, rich, and direly infectious. She fought it. She struggled; she glared.

  Her lips twitched, her eyes danced, her mirth burst forth. It swept her up, scattering her garments, twining her body with his.

  On the bright edge of passion, he paused. “Would you truly dare?”

  She set her lips on his and pulled him down.

  oOo

  He slept as a child sleeps, deeply and peacefully, all the knots of care and kingship smoothed away. That was part of his legend: that he never lay tossing before a battle. Often he had to be awakened lest he be late to the field.

  Gently Elian loosed his braid, combing it with careful fingers, smoothing the heavy mass of it on the coverlet. She never had given him his answer.

  As if he needed it. Born wanton she might be, but as a harlot she had this fatal flaw: all her desire turned upon one man. It had been so since she was too young even to know what desire was.

  A small smile touched her mouth. Now that she was an ancient crone, she was lost completely.

  Such a man to be lost for: an utter lunatic who fancied himself the son of a god. His golden hand lay between her breasts, half curled about one, burning even as he slept: a pain he had never known the lack of.

  He insisted that she eased it. Maybe; maybe he needed to think so.

  Those two, the pain and its lessening in her presence, helped to set a limit on his pride. He could not exult inordinately in his lineage when it tormented him lifelong with a living fire.

  Nor could he wield his power in a tyrant’s peace, not with a sun blazing in his sensitive palm. Sword or scepter he could grip, but only if he wielded them with care. And for what easing the god would grant, he must rely on a snippet of a child-woman, a maddening tangle of love and resistance and red-headed temper.

  Except that the love seemed to have swallowed the resistance. The temper, unfortunately, showed no signs of abating. She could still wish that she had never heard of Mirain An-Sh’Endor, while her heart threatened to burst and her body to melt with love of him.

  She traced the whorl of his ear, pausing where it was pierced for a ring, an infinitesimal interruption in the curve of it. He murmured something and smiled, and tried to burrow into her side. She buried her face in his thick curling hair.

  Avaryan, she said in her mind, shaping each word in red-golden fire, if truly you came to this man’s mother, if you played any part at all in his begetting, listen to me. He needs you now, and he needs you tomorrow. Stand with him. Make him strong. Help me to make him live.

  There was no answer. No voice; no sudden light.

  And yet, having prayed, she felt the better for it. Perhaps even, after all, she might sleep; and no dreams would beset her.

  oOo

  After all her wakefulness, it was Elian who woke late in a tangle of bedclothes. She struggled out of them to find herself alone, the chamber empty.

  For a moment her heart stopped. No. Oh, no. He could not have.

  Voices brought her to her feet. Snatching what was nearest—Mirain’s riding cloak, voluminous and almost dry—she opened the door.

  They were all in the guardroom, all but Cuthan who was gone, all fully clad, most looking as if they had not slept. A grey pallor sat on their faces; their eyes were sunken, their mouths set tight.

  Elian did not need to ask. The army had not come. They must face this alone. Win alone, or die alone.

  The king stood among them. He had bathed; he was fresh-shaven; he wore a kilt and nothing else, and his hair, drying, seemed thicker and more unruly than ever. As a guardswoman struggled with its tangles, he directed one of his own men in the unrolling of an oblong bundle.

  Deftly Elian took Igani’s place. The bundle, she saw, was a length of leather as pale as fine ivory, tanned to the softness of silk. In the center of it someone had cut a hole.

  Her hands faltered. “So,” she said as steadily as she could, “you’ll do it the old way.”

  His thought caressed her although his body held still. “The oldest way of all. The shield-circle; the ordered combat.”

  The first order of which was that the combatants bear about them no binding. No knot or fastening, no seam, no woven garment, only the long tunic of leather, unbelted and unsewn, its sides open to the wind. There could be no aids to enchantment hidden in one’s clothing, no spells braided into one’s hair. The victory must come through the purity of power.

  Elian laughed shakily. “If that’s so, my love, you’d better crop your head as close as a desert rover’s, or you’ll be called down for all your tangles.”

  “I’ll chance it,” he said, light and unconcerned. “’Varyan! I’m hungry. I’ve been wallowing in luxury too long; I’ve lost the knack of fasting.”

  “Think about all you’ll feast on when it’s over.” Igani lifted the long strange garment. Mirain shed his kilt, pausing a moment, drawing a deep breath. She slipped the length of leather over his head.

  It settled smoothly, its paleness catching the dark sheen of his skin, its weight falling straight before and behind. For a moment Elian could not breathe. He was going to fight. He was going to die.

  She remembered her mother’s words, the voice low and sweet in her mind. A prophecy can be its own fulfillment. It need not be. It must not be.

  They were too somber, all of them; subdued, afraid. Even Mirain. Someone had brought the torque of his priesthood from beside his bed; he held it for a stretching moment, grey-knuckled, eyes too wide and too fixed.

  She snatched it from him and grinned her whitest, fiercest grin. “Yes, Sunborn, put it on. Show them who your master is.”

  “I am not—” He shut his mouth with a snap. “Put it on me, then.”

  Slowly she did as he bade. It was pure gold, soft and leaden heavy. Yet he wore it always, putting it off only to sleep, and sometimes not even then; had worn it so since he was a very young man.

  Even more than Asanion’s golden mask or the coronet of a prince in the Hundred Realms, it marked his kingship. The splendor, and the crushing burden.

  And my service to the god. He kissed her hands. Every priest of Avaryan bears this same burden. No lighter and no heavier.

  “Except that they are plain servants of Avaryan, and you are the king.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  She looked at him. He was smiling faintly. Strong again, sure again, whatever terrors stirred in the hidden heart of him. “You make me strong,” he said softly.

  They were nearly of a height. They could stand eye to eye with a palm’s width between them, bend forward in the same instant, touch.

  She clung with sudden desperate strength, yet no stronger than he, as if he could crush her body into his own, make it a part of him. They said nothing with mind or voice. There was too much to say, and too little.

  Elian drew back. Conscious of herself again; aware with a rush of heat that she had lost her covering.

  No one stared; no one ventured it. With what dignity she could muster, she gathered up the fallen cloak and retreated to the bath.

  oOo

  It was the Lord of Garin who came for the king. And only the king. Elian, scoured clean, dressed again in coat and trousers and boots, was briefly speechless.

  The Wolf spoke to Mirain quietly, reasonably. “You are to come alone, sire. I swear on my honor that there shall be no treachery.”

  Elian’s voice broke free, lashing him. “That is not the law! Each combatant is allowed one witness.”

  He looked her up and down without haste and without judgment. “So it shall be. I am to attend him.”

  “You!”

  Mirain stepped between them. “The law also allows a choice of witnesses. I cho
ose the Lady Elian. And,” he added, “the Lord Garin.”

  The lord paused. Clearly he had not been so instructed. But he smiled and bowed. “As your majesty wishes. Will it please you to follow me?”

  Mirain walked lightly beside the Lord of Garin. If it wrenched at him to leave his escort behind, he did not show it.

  They watched him go with eyes like wounds, open and bleeding. Elian tried to meet them, to heal them a little, to smile and breathe forth confidence. She doubted they even saw her.

  oOo

  In the dark before dawn the castle was very still, grimmer and greyer than ever, and bone-cold. Elian shivered in her riding gear. Mirain, barefoot and nearly naked, might have been swathed in furs. But he was never cold; he had the Sun’s fire in his veins.

  Lord Garin led them through a maze of passages. Down out of the tower, through the keep, up and round by twisting torchlit ways.

  Even where the torches failed, he did not falter. Perhaps, like the Halenani or like the wolf of his name, he could see in the dark.

  Mirain’s hand found Elian’s. His grasp was light, fire-warm, and perfectly steady. She could feel the strength in it, quiescent now, awaiting its time.

  The passage narrowed and spiraled upward. Elian fell behind Mirain, but his hand kept its grip.

  Even for her eyes the way was dark, Mirain’s tunic a pale blur ahead. The air was cold in her face like the touch of the dead, and dank, heavy with age and darkness.

  Mirain stopped so abruptly that she collided with him. Metal grated harshly on stone. Hinges protested. A gate swung open with rusted slowness.

  Dawn was still unbroken, the night at its deepest. Yet Elian blinked, half blinded. All the clouds of storm had blown away. Silver Brightmoon, just past the full, hung low in the west. The great half-orb of Greatmoon rode high above, trailing pallid fire; about it flamed the stars in all their myriads.

  Old tales gave Greatmoon to the powers of the dark and Brightmoon to those of the light, calling the huge blue-pale moon the Throne of Uveryen, its god her lover; and singing of the love of the silver goddess for her lord the sun. Some people of late had begun a new naming, and called the brighter moon Sanelin, and set the priestess there, sharing the heavens with the father of her son.