The Lady of Han-Gilen

by Judith Tarr

  Elian turned. She faced Lord Garin. Steel glittered a hair’s breadth from his throat, but no closer. “Where is your prince?” she asked him.

  The Wolf’s eye was steady and fearless and very much amused. “Dead,” he answered her, “majesty. It seemed fair enough, upon consideration. A life for a royal life.”

  She tilted her head, studying him. “Why?”

  “Because, your majesty, I am a loyal man.”

  “Loyal to nothing but his treachery!” Cuthan’s voice was raw with hate. “Through him was our king betrayed. Through him was our king destroyed. On his head be it. Murder. Murder of the Sunborn.”

  A deep snarl ran through the ranks, a snarl that turned to a howl. Elian ignored it, meeting the despair in Cuthan’s eyes. “But,” she said, “Mirain is not dead.”

  Hope made him beautiful again. He looked so young, so easily moved, like a child. Even in her numbness she found the ghost of a smile for him.

  He turned, stumbling, blinded with tears, but his voice was as splendid as it had ever been. Soft at first, full of wondering joy. “Did you hear?” Louder then, clear and free and glad, ringing in the morning. “Men of the Sun, did you hear? The king is not dead. He lives. An-Sh’Endor lives!”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mirain lived, he breathed; he seemed to sleep. But he did not wake.

  Elian sat by the bed in the chamber of Garin the elder. People came and went. They tried to be quiet, a sickroom stillness, muting the thud of booted feet, lowering battle-roughened voices.

  It mattered Little to her and less to Mirain whether they whispered or shouted. There were wounded to settle, prisoners to guard, watches to set; and it kept coming back to her. She was the queen. It was her place to rule.

  Sometimes her brother sat with her. More often it was Vadin. He was not like the rest; he was quiet, he did not intrude. She could forget that he was there.

  Halenan could not efface himself so perfectly. He was restless, like fire. He persisted in chattering.

  “I have his lordship under guard,” he said. He had been drinking ale, from the scent that came in with him; he lowered himself to the floor at her feet.

  It was not all weariness. He had taken a slight wound in the side, and it had begun to stiffen.

  She touched it with hand and healing; he sighed. “Ah, that’s better.” He swallowed a yawn. “Lord Garin is under guard, but free to go where he likes. The guard is mostly for his sake; the men don’t love him. Not in the least.”

  “Mirain rather likes him.” She laid her hand on the still brow. With the women of her Guard, she had bathed and tended him and combed out his many tangles. His braid lay tamed on his shoulder.

  Halenan leaned back against her knee and yawned outright. “I feel as if I haven’t slept for a Greatmoon-cycle, what with settling the men in that infernal cave and fretting over you in this infernal castle, and all that’s come after. You vanished from power’s sight, you know. One moment I looked and you were there, passing Garin’s gate. The next, you were gone. I went a little wild. More than a little.” Vadin looked at him, brows up. He grimaced. “Very much more than a little. Yonder savage had to knock me down and sit on me, or I’d have sent the whole troop against Garin, then and there. ‘Wait,’ he said, as if he weren’t twitching himself, and starting at shadows. ‘Give it time.’ I had to: he wouldn’t let me up, else.

  “We waited till sundown. Just barely. Then we divided our forces. Half we left to guard the cave and Lord Casien’s company, and to face any force that might come through the valley. They put on a brave show of numbers, with fires and tents and a wall of tethered seneldi. The rest of us went under the mountain.

  “We paused in a cavern only a little smaller than the outer hall, with a deep pool in it. Vadin’s people had penned their seneldi there, under guard. We gathered all but a few of the sentries and went on.

  “We went carefully, and slowly enough to madden me. But for all of that, we kept going astray, ending in a blind passage or a sudden chasm; or hearing the clatter of armed men, and scrambling for hiding places, and hearing the noises fade away among the tunnels.

  “An eon after we began, we saw a light. The rest ran for cover yet again, but I’d had my fill of prudence. I flattened myself into a fold of the wall and tried not to breathe. The light came toward us. It was moving fast, and it was quiet; I could just hear footsteps, booted but running very light. When it passed me, I pounced.” He rubbed his side. “I got this for my pains. He was a big lad, that one, and vicious as a cornered ul-cat. We rolled on the floor, snapping and snarling and doing our utmost to throttle one another.

  “Until Vadin swooped over us and thrust a torch in our faces. We kept up the fight for a bit, for the fighting’s sake, but in the end we stopped and burst out laughing. It was that or howl. I’d been getting the worst of it; Cuthan picked me up and dusted me off and was most apologetic.

  “Never mind that,” said Vadin. “What news from Garin?”

  “Cuthan sobered all at once. It was bad, I’d known it already; I hadn’t known how bad. He’d been lost as we were, and he’d had a guide, a rat of Garin’s whom he’d caught and tamed at sword’s point. They’d managed to pass the first windings of the maze, which were full of armed men: we’d been hearing them as they mustered, through a trick of the tunnels. We were fortunate they hadn’t heard us; or maybe they’d taken us for more of their own.

  “Cuthan’s rat was killed in a pitfall that nearly took Cuthan with it; he went on by instinct and what power he had. It was enough to take him to us. It just barely sufficed to lead us all on the right path, armies be damned.

  “That was a wild march,” said Halenan. “The way was steep in places, and it was infernally dark. I prayed to every god I knew, and to Avaryan over them all, that the sorceress wasn’t looking for a blaze of power under the earth; because Vadin and I had left off trusting our mortal senses. It was a labyrinth we were racing through, with no way out but the castle, and no time to spare, and precious little light; and enemies all around us.” He shuddered. “Avaryan grant I never see such a devil’s lair again!

  “We met the first of the enemy somewhat closer to the castle than to the cave. They weren’t looking for us. We took them by surprise, but they were no fools. No tyros, either. If Lord Garin hasn’t tried a little reiving in his father’s line, then he has a liking for drilling his troops in mazes.

  “He certainly keeps his loot there—and the loot of the past dozen generations with it. If we can haul even half of it out of here, every man of us will be as rich as a lord.”

  “You always were greedy,” said Elian.

  He snarled in mock warning; she ruffled his hair and tried to smile.

  “Ah well,” he said, smiling back, “we weren’t paying much attention to the treasure trove while we were in it. We were too busy trying to get out. I was desperate; I could feel morning coming, and I knew when the duel began. I think I lost what little wits I had left. I know Vadin did. We left most of the company to mop up behind us and flamed our way through, clear to the castle.

  “Your guards were ready and willing and at least as wild as we were. We had hell’s own time to find the way up to the mountain, and a castleful of people in our way, but they weren’t quarreling with power. Much.

  “We found the door and the tunnel, and we found the open air. And there you were at battle’s end. I thought”—he faltered, which was utterly unlike him—“I thought Mirain was dead.”

  “He . . . almost . . . was.”

  Halenan caught her hands. “Lia. Little sister. It’s over now.”

  She looked at him. She was calm; it was he who was shaking. “It’s not, really,” she said.

  His head tossed from side to side. His grip was painfully tight. “It’s only exhaustion, and power stretched as far as it will go. He’ll sleep the sun around and wake up ravenous and growling, like a cave bear in the spring.”

  “He’ll sleep.” Her glance strayed to the bed. “I caused
it, you know. The end. She almost had him, but she let him go too soon. She broke the law and the shield and all honor, and turned to me, and tried to make me fight with her. Maybe her mind was breaking. Maybe she thought Mirain was too weak to trouble with; or too strong to stand against alone. Maybe—maybe she knew what she was doing. To him, to me, and to herself. He had power left; she could not but have known it. Enough to wake what slept in the stone, and to aim it when it woke. It carried him with it. It drained him dry, and dropped him when it was done.”

  She freed her hands from her brother’s, to take Mirain’s slack one. “If he wakes—if he even wants to wake—he’ll have nothing left. No power, and very little consciousness. You know how it is when the body uses itself up . . . it dies. Or its life is only a shadow of what it was before.”

  “No,” said Halenan.

  “She said he was a danger,” Elian said. “To the whole world. She showed me what he would do to it. She wanted me to stop him. Because I could. And maybe I did. By listening. By coming so close to betraying him.”

  She caught Mirain’s hand, anchoring herself to it. It was warm, but no strength lingered in it. His life flickered low and slow.

  Halenan lurched to his feet, all long limbs and coppery hair, awkward as he had not been since he was a boy. But it was a man who flung down his sheathed sword and swore in a soft deadly voice, the most terrible oaths he knew.

  His grief woke something in her. Something she had striven to suppress. Awareness; understanding. Feeling.

  She could not feel. She dared not. She had to be strong; to smile; to be queen. They needed her, these men, these few women, this empire. And this stranger within her, who drifted quiescent, invisible, all but imperceptible, yet mighty in what it would become.

  Oh, clever Mirain, even at the end of all he was. He sat on death’s threshold but advanced no farther, nor retreated, binding her to her own flesh, to the child he had begotten and the empire he had won.

  Rage she could allow; could welcome. She regarded the still and lifeless face, the lips curved in the shadow of a smile. He thought he had won. He thought he could trick her, bind her, leave her to bear his burdens.

  Better the harem. There at least the chains were visible, the guards stood before the bolted gates.

  Her brother was gone, fled. Poor Hal. He loved Mirain almost as much as she.

  He could go and weep, and hammer down a wall or two, and whip the castle into order. He was not saddled with an empire and its heir.

  She looked up. Eyes rested on her, dark as Mirain’s, deep and quiet. They did not condescend to judge her.

  She spoke with great care. “Only once,” she said, “has Mirain ever argued me down. That was when he ran after his fate into Ianon, and I knew well enough that mine was in Han-Gilen. He doesn’t even have that defense now.”

  Vadin sat back in his chair. It was a little small for him; he looked extraordinarily long and lean and angular.

  He was thinner than she remembered; he seemed older. Amid the copper braided into his beard, she glimpsed a thread of silver.

  He could not have had an easy time of it, abandoning his lordship and his lady and his people on a moment’s notice, in the jaws of winter, at the command of a haughty girlchild; with Mirain’s death to face if he failed, or even if he did not.

  He mustered a smile, though it fled swiftly. “You’ve looked after Mirain rather thoroughly, haven’t you? I didn’t say you had to marry him.”

  “If you had, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  He actually laughed. But again, not for long. Mirain weighted them both like a stone, breathing just visibly, alive and no more.

  Elian spoke to him, not caring that Vadin heard. “Ziad-Ilarios loves me still. He’ll be emperor in his time, and he’ll wed as his duty commands. He’ll grow and change, and the change will be bitter, a chilling and a darkening. All his gold will turn to grey.

  “But I can go to him. I can tell him I love him. He will believe me, because he longs to, and it will be true. He won’t grow old in bitterness. I won’t let him. I can do that, Mirain. I can even make him accept your child, for my sake. Your empire won’t last, but I’ll see to it that your seed rules in Asanion. And I’ll have a man, not a corpse, to share my bed.”

  No consciousness stirred behind the mask of his face; no power glimmered about it.

  “Your empire is dead already. Father will try to keep it alive; Vadin will want to, and Hal. I could, maybe, if I would. Except that I’ll be in Asanion and not wanting any rivals. It’s rather a pity. There was so much we were going to do. Your city, that would be the most beautiful in the world. Your throne in it, and your tower atop Endros, built with songs and with power. Your priesthood—now you’ll never be browbeaten into taking the high seat, and priestesses will go on in their useless fidelity to the god, and the order will fade and crumble, all its promises and all its prophecies come to nothing. I’ll never have my company, not only my Guard but a whole fighting force of women, the Queen’s Own, that was going to set a few more of us free. You’ll never break the slave trade out of Asanion; we’ll never climb Mount Avaryan or look on the sea. The Exile will have won after all. We’ll never prove that her vision of fire and death was a lie. All because you’re too cowardly feeble to face the world again.”

  Her eyes bled tears. She dashed them away, but they would not stop for that. “Damn you! If you don’t come to, I’ll kill myself!”

  He was far beyond either hearing or heeding.

  She seized him, shaking him. His head rolled slackly. His eyelids never flickered. She sobbed, half in fury, half in burning, tearing grief, clutching him, rocking him, blind and mad.

  The blindness passed, eternally slow. The madness hovered. Her eyes ached and burned; her throat was raw. She was cold, as cold as death.

  Her mind was clear, her power bright and keen and deadly. To its eyes she was a dark glass full of lightnings, and in its center a pearl of white fire.

  Mirain was glass only. Empty. Life without mind, without thought, without will. The grass of the winter field shone more brightly than he.

  She made a shield of will, glass around burning glass. Stretched it, rounded it, enfolding the emptied other. He who had blazed like a sun in the world of living light—

  No grieving. Grieving weakened the shield. She firmed her will, pure guard, pure strength.

  Joy woke unlooked for, a pure cold delight. She was young, she was but half trained, but she was strong. Time would make her stronger still, great mage and great queen, equal even to the Sunborn.

  Time closed in about her, weighted with death. Her body laid itself down beside the shell of Mirain. Her power slipped free, bright fish in the sea of light. There below swirled the maelstrom, great whirling emptiness, spinning down and down and down.

  She hovered above it, holding herself still with her power. Pausing, gathering.

  Another came to hover beside her, brightness flecked with coppery dark. She arched her supple body; she bared her teeth. This storm was hers to ride. Hers. How dared he trespass?

  He darted; he twined himself about her. He gripped her fast, and he had hands, a face, a human voice speaking in her human ears. “I go with you. You need me.”

  She struggled, but he had mastered this seeming; he was himself, great tall Ianyn warlord, mage of Mirain’s making, oathbrother, soul-bound.

  She seared him with hate. He shook it off. He smiled, damn him to all the hells. “You need me,” he said again. “I need you. Mirain needs us both.”

  “He needs none but me!” She tore free. She wrought her fish-shape; she poised once more and leaped.

  Dark. Dark without sound, without scent, without touch. Void without end, death without life, no light, no air, no strength. Only memory, scattering in a soundless scream.

  Remember. Remember.

  Elian, Orsan’s daughter of Eleni’s bearing, Mirain’s bride: Elian ilOrsan Kileni li’Mirain. Elian who was herself and of herself, free and apart, her ow
n. Longlimb, firehair, fire-tempered and all contrary. Elian.

  She stood alone in a dim corridor. It was very plain, floor, walls, ceiling: black stone without sheen, smoothed but unpolished. She wore a long tunic like that which Mirain had worn in the shield-circle, dyed deep green. Her hair poured free and heavy to her knees, a flood of molten copper.

  She ventured forward. The passage sloped gently downward. Sometimes it curved; sometimes a door opened on shadow.

  She did not turn aside, could not. Some force of will, whether her own or another’s, drew her onward.

  A wall rose before her, with a door in it, opening to her touch. The light beyond was somewhat less dim, like twilight on a day of rain. Before her spread a wide rolling country under a lowering sky.

  In sunlight it might have been fair: field and wood, hill and green valley, rising into a wall of mountains. So must Ianon be, where first Mirain was king.

  Her body shifted and changed. She spread wide green wings. A sudden wind caught and lifted them; she arrowed upward, pouring forth a liquid stream of song.

  The grey land fled beneath her. She outflew the wind; she outflew her own song. The mountains loomed like the world’s wall.

  Singing, she hurtled upon them. Clapped wings to her sides. Soared over them, the bleak stony peaks all but clipping the feathers of her fiery breast.

  She swooped down on an endless slide of air into a green bowl lit with dawn: a lake and an islet, a ruined hall, a pavement half of dawn and half of night.

  Bare human feet touched the grass. The green tunic settled over them. In the circle lay a lone figure, black hair spreading on pale stone.

  Slowly she approached him. As she set her foot on the pavement, it blazed up with heatless fire.

  Out of it swelled a shape. A woman all of night in a robe woven of dawn, barring the way.

  Elian stood still. The woman was beautiful, but it was not a human beauty. It was too high and cold and terrible. The voice was as cold as wind on ice, as bloodless-pure as the notes of a harp. “If you have wisdom, come no closer.”