The Lady of Han-Gilen

by Judith Tarr

  Elian dragged her eyes and her mind from the vault of the sky. There was myth. Here was living legend.

  She stood on sere grass in a deep bowl rimmed by mountain walls. In its center glimmered a lake, a pool of ice under Greatmoon, and in the lake a dark curve of islet, a tall shape of shadow: a standing stone.

  Lord Garin led them round the lake. Its water lapped upon the shore, infinitely lonely, infinitely sad.

  Shadow rose on the far side. As Elian drew closer it grew clearer, taking shape in the moonlight. A building, it had been once; ruined now, no more than a ring of roofless pillars, some tall and straight, some half-fallen like broken teeth. Framed within them lay a pavement of stone.

  There waited the Exile. To the eye she was a darkness on darkness, one of three cloaked and hooded shapes. To the power she stood forth in utter and terrible clarity.

  As Mirain set his foot on the level stones, his power stirred and woke. A shimmer of pale light ran upward from sole to crown, and outward through the broken pavement.

  Elian’s gasp was loud in the silence. The stone seemed not stone at all, but sky in the waking dawn, silver flushing to rose and palest gold.

  Before the light reached the Exile, it stopped, sharp and clean as if cleft with a knife. That beyond seemed darker still for the brightness so close, a darkness as limitless as the void between stars.

  Mirain smiled in the strange light. “Dawnstone,” he said with a touch of wonder, a touch of delight. “My keep in Ianon is made of it. And this—would it perhaps be nightstone, that holds the night as dawnstone keeps the glow of morning? I have heard of it in old tales, but I have never seen it.”

  “It is nightstone,” the Exile answered him. “And this is a place older than legend, fane of a people whose works are all vanished from the earth: older than Han-Ianon, older than the Cavern of the God, older even than gods, though not those we serve. Can you perceive the power in these stones?”

  It throbbed in Elian’s brain, immense, slumbering, yet stirring uneasily in the presence of these small intruders.

  “A place of power,” said Mirain. “I have never come upon one so mighty.”

  “Nor shall you or any man, unless you come to the Heart of the World where lie the chains that bind the gods. There are no chains here. Only power. It will not aid us in our battle; it will seek to hinder, and even to destroy, if in disturbing it one of us lacks the strength to soothe it. Do you think still to challenge me, priestess’ child?”

  “How not?” He advanced a step. “Shall we begin?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mirain spoke freely, even eagerly, welcoming whatever must come. His enemy stood tall and let fall her cloak. Beneath it she was clad as was he, white hair falling long and free over the shoulders of a tunic as dark as his was pale.

  Her familiar was gone: fled, hidden, subsumed into her power. For she was strong. She had never pretended to weakness, but her strength now was greater than Elian remembered, filling her, mantling her in a shimmer of mingled darkness and light.

  The witnesses faded back, retreating from the pillared circle. Well before the shadows took them, Elian had forgotten their existence. She too retreated, but only to the joining of earth and stone.

  There lay the remnant of a column half-buried in earth and grass and the dead brittleness of a vine. She sank down on it, her toes almost touching the edge of the dawnstone.

  Its gleam caught at her eyes; its power sparked her own. In its pale depths she saw the circle shrunken to the breadth of her hand, and two figures upon it, one erect and triumphant, the other fallen utterly. The image shifted, blurred; now white hair spread across the stone, now raven-dark.

  She tore her eyes away. The greater circle opened wide before her, dawn and deepest night. Over it the moons wheeled. Brightmoon sank beneath the mountain wall; Greatmoon thinned and paled.

  The sky’s darkness greyed. Avaryan was coming.

  Power gathered. The air hummed and sang. Mage in white, mage in black, both spread their arms.

  Mirain’s voice rang on the first note of binding. The nameless one took up the second, a high eerie keening. The two notes quivered, distinct and dissonant; eased; softened, drawing together, meeting, merging into a terrible harmony.

  At once and as one they broke off. Slowly Mirain’s hands met, palm to palm. The Exile’s mirrored them.

  As her palms touched, the circle blazed up, white light and black fire, then dimmed again. But a shimmer lingered, a wall of power, and within it nothingness.

  Not until one of them fell might that wall fall; nor could any open it, man or mage, god or demon. They were alone, utterly.

  Elian reeled on her cold perch. She was alone, sundered, torn.

  She had eyes. And power, though forbidden to pass the barrier, could see all within.

  At first there was little to see. They stood motionless, facing one another.

  Though nothing with mind or power could pierce the wall, a thin wind slipped through the emptiness. It stirred their long tunics; made witchlocks of the Exile’s hair; blew Mirain’s mane into his face. He shook back the heavy mass, to little effect; shrugged; let it be.

  The Exile raised her hands. A tendril of darkness uncoiled, reaching, groping for the light.

  Sparks leaped. The darkness whipped back.

  Mirain stood unmoved. His face was lost in the tangles of his hair. The wind, strengthening, danced about him. Playful fingers caught his tunic, tossing it away from his body, whipping it round and round, binding, tightening.

  His swift hands caught and gathered the wildness of his mane, twisted it back from his calm face, knotted it behind him.

  The wind fled. His tunic fell loosely to his feet. The knot, which should never have held, kept its place unaltered.

  Elian’s stiff lips bent in the beginnings of a smile. The first round, it seemed, had gone to Mirain.

  He was in no haste to press his advantage. He forsook his rigid stillness, wandering a little in his half of the circle, setting down his feet with feline delicacy. Round, sidewise, back, step and step and step, with a cat’s precision, a dancer’s grace.

  With each step a glimmer of light grew in the nightstone, a tangled skein of pale fire circling the Exile’s feet, weaving among them, drawing together, closing.

  Her clawed fingers swept down, rending the web.

  He laughed and whirled like a devil-dancer, lithe dark body in a circle of pale leather. The web, torn, spun up the Exile’s lank form, knee-high, hip-high, breast-high.

  She tossed her head. He spun faster, faster, faster.

  The web shredded and tattered. A blur of black hummed within a blur of white.

  With a vicious, whip-sharp crack, he stopped. His eyes flamed. His hair was free again, witch-wild, his garment a tatter. His breath came hard. And yet he smiled.

  The web had melted into the night. His enemy inclined her head very slightly.

  “You have the beginnings of art,” she conceded. “Will you play further? Or shall we do battle at last?”

  Mirain fought with light and fire and with his supple voice. The nameless one opposed him with darkness visible, in a wall of living silence. Against his spear of levin-fire she raised a shield of night; against his weaving of subtle melody, a stillness that swallowed all sound. The rising dawn illumined his half of the circle, but in the other, deep night reigned.

  At first Elian did not credit her eyes. Mirain’s half of the circle was smaller. No—he had moved; her eyes were weary; the growing daylight deceived her, dulling the shimmer of the dawnstone.

  He stood as he had stood since the battle began in earnest, and the line of darkness crept toward him. His body swayed; his voice sang three lines of an ancient cantrip. The advance halted.

  Elian’s hands knotted; her breath caught. The darkness in the circle was a handspan less. Mirain’s face glistened damply; his eyes were squeezed shut, his body rigid. All his strength bent upon the holding of that line.

  Slowly, inexo
rably, the darkness advanced. He trembled visibly with the effort of resistance. His enemy was as still as a standing stone, without expression save for the thin grey line of her lips.

  The mark of her power approached his feet. Step by step he retreated. Step by step the dawnstone dulled and blackened.

  The line began to bend. Before and beside him, to the full stretch of his arms, the light lingered. But night held the rest.

  His back touched a pillar. Beyond it he could not go; the shield walled him in. All about him, save only where he stood, was darkness.

  Slowly he sank to one knee, bowed as if beneath a mighty burden. The light beneath him had lost all its brilliance, flickering greyly, pallid as winter fog.

  His enemy came toward him without haste and stood over him, blind eyes bent upon him. She had him, and she knew it.

  His breath rattled in his throat. Her hand rose, swept sidewise, cast him helpless to the ground.

  And she turned her back on him. She faced outward.

  The circle wavered, stretching. About Elian’s feet wove a small furred cat-creature, singing a yowling song. The Exile’s power yearned toward it.

  Elian snatched it up. It came as if it were pleased to come, warm and solid, supple. It nestled in the hollow of her shoulder.

  She, tensed to leap back, to cast up her shields, to sunder witch and familiar, could move no muscle of her body. Her scarred cheek throbbed. The beast ended its song and began to purr.

  “Yes,” said the Exile. “She knows you, my swift one, my dancer in the grasses. We are kin; we are sisters in power.”

  A shudder racked Elian: deep, pulsing, black-red denial. With terror in it. Because she set her will to refuse the truth.

  The Exile gestured behind her, not in scorn, not without respect. “He was strong, as befit his heritage. But he had not the strength that I have. He will have no part of the dark; he who is born of the burning noon denies the night with all that is in him. Look now. See. Know what he would make of the world.”

  Sunlight. Green places. Water falling, and white cities rising, and fields rich with the harvest.

  Sunlight. No night. No relief of the cool dark, no light of stars. Green withered, blackened, burned. Water shrank into dust. White walls cast back the light in blinding splendor, in carrion stench. White bone lay bare beneath fire-ravaged flesh; the land itself was stripped, seared, destroyed by the merciless light.

  Armies rode through the shattered country. As they rode, they sang a hymn to the Sun; and cursed the dark; and saw only beauty in that desolation.

  Faintly within it, something moved: a human figure, gaunt, scorched, staggering with hands held out in supplication. The army fell upon it.

  It shrieked once, suddenly cut off. The army passed. The dust was dark, dampened with blood; but in a moment the sun had drunk the last of its wetness.

  “No,” said Elian. A shaft of agony pierced her center. She clutched it, doubling. “No.”

  “Indeed,” said the Exile, “no. He has seen the light and the white city. He has not seen its price.”

  “Not our child. Not—”

  “Your child?” The woman was astonished. “We do not take the lives of the unborn. That is for the gods alone; or for men who fancy themselves better than gods. Your king’s price is for the world’s paying. The price of fire, and of the balance’s breaking.”

  The pain was passing, draggingly slow. Elian drew herself up. The familiar had not even shifted its grip. It had solidity but no weight; strength, but very little bulk to house it.

  She could not force her hands to tear it away. They flattened over her belly. “You will not have our child. I will die before I surrender him.”

  “Or her,” said the Exile. “Or can you not endure the prospect of a daughter?”

  “I can endure either, if only it lives to be born.”

  “Can you?” The woman approached the circle’s edge. “You may gather your power to stand against me. You are strong enough; you can will yourself to be blind enough. Or you may stand with me. You bear in your womb both weapon and healing: seal of the balance, seal of the Sun’s dominion. What your brother and lover has been, this seed of his shall be a thousandfold.”

  Elian reeled. Needle-claws brought her snapping erect. The cat mewed softly. Warning. Imparting strength.

  It was evil. Evil.

  It was a cat. Small, swift, quick-tempered, centered on itself. When it chose, as it chose, it could bestow its affection. It did not regret its marring of her face; it did not begrudge her battering of its body. It was power, and its purpose was simply to be.

  “And,” said her kinswoman, “to bolster waning power, of body or of mind.”

  Elian’s eyes squeezed shut against the vision. It blazed within, unconquerable.

  Traps within traps within traps. Danger and daring and a spice of treachery, to lure Mirain. Mirain, to lure his lifelong shadow.

  Mirain was to die. She was to suffer it, or to accomplish it. To be seduced. To give her soul to neither light nor dark, but to this thing called balance, that was no god she had ever known.

  Mirain was the greater mage, perhaps. She was the greater power. Because of what she was, mage’s daughter, royal seed, child of night and fire; and woman, and bearer of a child.

  This child. Sunborn, mageborn, ruler of the world.

  If it lived. Her eyes opened, blinded with vision; met blind eyes that could see beyond sight.

  The Exile loved her, because she was blood kin; hated her, envied her, but loved her. And would take her life without the slightest qualm, if she chose awry.

  “There is no choice,” gritted Elian. “There is only the light and the dark. I was born in the light. I cannot embrace its enemy.”

  The Exile’s hand shaped potent denial: a sign in the air, red-gold, gleaming in the waxing morning. “They are not enemies. They are one. Stand with me, sister. Defend them against their sundering.”

  She pleaded: she who was as proud as Elian had ever been. She begged. She all but wept for the world that would lie beneath the hammer of the Sun. The wars, the souls cast down into death, the blood poured out in rivers in Avaryan’s name. And in Mirain’s.

  Elian’s heart clenched with love of him. And yet . . . and yet . . .

  Follow your heart, they bade her. Listen to your power. They know. They see what cannot but be.

  Almost she laughed. She had writhed in agony over a pair of lovers, each perfect of his kind. She had not known what agony was.

  The cat settled in her arms. She rubbed its soft ears. It purred.

  It lay against the spark of her child. Defending. Strengthening.

  All her understandings swayed and unbalanced and fell. Good, evil. Dark, light. Friend, enemy. Hate, love, peace, wrath—all one, all mingled, all lost in a mad tangle of changes.

  She could not endure it. She would lose her poor wits; she would die. She could—not—

  The Exile raised her hand. Offering. Beckoning.

  Elian’s hand moved of its own will. The cat sang its joy.

  White fire reared up above the shadow that was the Exile, and swooped down. The world shattered in an explosion of light.

  It was very quiet.

  Elian swayed in emptiness. She was still afoot; she could not understand why. Nor, for a long while, could she understand why she should not be.

  The cat was gone. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole of it.

  Abruptly and violently her stomach overturned itself. She crouched, gasping and retching; and some of it was hysteria, laughter well past the border of madness, for long shafts of sunlight dazzled her streaming eyes. Morning sun. Avaryan had found his way at last into the mountain’s crown.

  Sick, half blind, she crawled in a ragged circle. Her hand jarred against an obstacle. A hand, long and bone-thin; an arm; the charred ruin of a face.

  The eyes had escaped, blind now within as without, opened wide upon nothingness. There was no horror in them, and no surprise at all. Only peace, an
d something very like triumph.

  Elian’s breath caught. This was the shape of her vision: white hair spread on pale stone.

  And black beside it. Mirain lay where the last great surge of his power had cast him, limbs asprawl, golden hand flung up beside his face. His eyes were closed, seemly; no mark of burning stained him.

  His tunic had fallen awry. Carefully she smoothed it, covering his nakedness. Her hand shrank a little, briefly, from touching him: as if he could loose his fire upon her. Sun’s fire.

  He had made her choice for her. Or she had, as she always did, in tarrying until it made itself.

  She looked at him. She saw a man whom she loved, whom she would gladly die for. She saw . . .

  Her mind’s eye closed. Her choice was made. She would not seek to unmake it. His truth, the Exile’s truth—here and now, it made no difference. All that mattered was Mirain.

  oOo

  “Sweet merciful gods.”

  Elian looked up. She had heard nothing, seen nothing. Yet it surprised her not at all to hear her brother’s voice, to see him there with the Lord Vadin beside him, armored and helmeted and bearing each a sword. The blades, she noticed, had seen use.

  Men thronged at their backs. She saw Lord Garin between two grim women of her own Guard, and Prince Omian grey-faced and staggering, and a flock of men of both Ianon and the Hundred Realms. Cuthan stood in front of them all with his smooth braids fallen in a tangle and blood on his cheek, and a red blade dripping on the grass.

  Elian rose slowly. “You took your time,” she said. And cursed her tongue.

  He stared at her, mute, his eyes dark with misery. She tried to comfort him, but no words would come. She could only touch him.

  His arm was rigid, but he did not pull away. He had stopped seeing her.

  Halenan had sunk to his knees beside Mirain. Somewhere in the ranks, someone cried aloud.

  Ashan’s heir shouted and struggled and suddenly broke free. A dozen swords flashed up. Blood sprayed wide.