Hall of the Mountain King (10 page)

The elders sighed over their gaming in the sun, and the
eldest said, “It’s an ill day when there are two high princes and only one
throne to be had, and the elder’s not likely to step down for the upstart
younger, chosen heir or not. They’ve drawn their lines; and mark my words, they
won’t take long now to come to blows.”

“I hear they have already,” the youngest of them observed,
casting dice for his move in kings-and-cities. “I hear the young one came at
the elder with a catsclaw dagger and laid his face open, and called on magic to
heal it up again.”

“For regret?” an onlooker wondered.

“For contempt. And the elder prince has a scar to remind him
of the insult.”

“Foreigners,” muttered the eldest. “Both of them. Now if the
king had had the sense to take a wife at home—”

The onlooker leaned across the board. “I hear they’re
neither of them his kin. The young one’s an enchanter from the Nine Cities,
painted up like one of us and enspelled to look like the princess who’s dead;
the elder belongs to one of the Marcher rebels. I remember when the king
brought that woman here, and I remember how soon he got the whelp on her. Who’s
to say she wasn’t carrying it when he took her?”

Mirain pulled Vadin away, and none too soon. He himself
seemed no more than amused. “An enchanter,” he said. “From the Nine Cities.” He
laughed. “O that I were! What would I do to this poor kingdom, do you think?”

“Turn it into a land of the walking dead.”

Mirain sobered abruptly. “Don’t say such things!”

Vadin stared, startled at the change in him. His lips were
touched with grey, his eyes wide and wild.

Little by little he calmed. Very quietly he said, “Never
speak of what could be. Would you be heard and heeded?”

“Would you do what I said you would?”

“The goddess is my father’s sister. She would give all her
power to have me for her own, for that would wound him to the heart. And it
would be—not impossible—perhaps not even difficult. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . .
almost easy. To let her—to be—”

Vadin hauled Mirain up by the shoulders and shook him hard.
And when he could walk, after a fashion, saw him into a stall and plied him
with wine until the darkness began to fade.

He caught at the cup and drank deep enough to drown, and
came up gasping; but his eyes were clear. “My thanks,” he said at last.

Vadin lifted his hand, let it fall. One did one’s duty.

Mirain sighed and drained the wine. If he might have spoken
again, another voice forestalled him, a clear trained voice embarked upon a
tale.

“Indeed, sirs, it was a prodigy: a woman white as a bone,
with eyes the color of blood.” It was a talespinner in the motley rags of his
calling, with a cup in one hand and a girl on his knee. Fine dark wine and a
fine dark girl.

He paused to savor both. She giggled; he kissed her soundly
and drank deep. “Aye, white she was, which was a wonder and a horror. She
belonged to the goddess, people said. Her kinsmen kept her in a cage built like
a temple and fed her with sacrifices—taking the best portions for themselves,
of course. She would writhe and babble; they would call it prophecy, and
interpret it for whatever price the market would bear. Whole suns of gold,
even, when the local chieftains came to ask about their wars. They were always pleased,
because they were always promised victory.”

“And did they get it?”

The man turned to Mirain with no hint of surprise to find
him there. “Some did, prince. Some didn’t; but they never came back to gainsay
her. Till one fine day a young man came striding into the shrine. He gave her
his sacrifice: a bit of journey-bread and a handful of berries. Her keepers
would have whipped him out then, but they were curious to see what he would do.
Very little, in fact. He sat down in front of the cage, and the sibyl ate what
he had brought, untidily enough to be sure, with her unholy eyes upon him all
the while. He stared straight back; he even smiled.

“He was mad, the keepers decided. He looked like a poor
wayfarer, but they thought they glimpsed gold on him under the rags. Maybe,
after all, he was a prince in disguise. ‘Put your question,’ they commanded him
at length when he showed no sign of beginning.

“He paid them no heed at all. By then the sibyl had come to
the bars of her cage, reaching through it. Her hands were as thin and sharp-taloned
as a white eagle’s. She was filthy; she stank. Yet our young hero took her hand
and smiled and said, ‘I shall set you free.’

“Her kinsmen reached for their daggers. But they found that
they could not move. They were caged as securely as their prisoner, bound with
chains no eye could see.

“‘Only name my name,’ the stranger said, ‘and you shall be
free.’

“They had proclaimed themselves the mouthpieces of prophecy;
yet not one could utter a word. But the madwoman, the idiot, the wordless
seeress, bowed as low as the stranger would let her, and said clearly, ‘Avaryan.
Your name is Avaryan.’”

The talespinner paused. The silence had spread from the
wineseller’s stall to the street without. His hearers waited, hardly breathing.
He struck his hands together with a sound like a thunderclap. “And behold! Fire
fell from heaven and shattered the cage, and smote to the ground all that false
and venal priesthood; and their victim stood forth free and sane. But she wept.
For the stranger who was the god—the stranger had vanished away.”

The stall erupted into applause; a shower of coins fell into
the girl’s cupped hands. Mirain added his own, a silver solidus of Han-Gilen.

For every patron the girl had a kiss or a curtsey, but he
won the talespinner’s own low bow. “My tale was pleasing to my prince?”

“It was well told,” said Mirain, “though I pity the poor
sibyl. Does she live yet?”

“Ah, my lord, that is another story.”

Mirain smiled. “And you, of course, will tell it if we beg
you.”

“If my prince commands,” said the talespinner.

“Well?” Mirain asked of the others. “Shall I?”

“Aye!” they called back.

Mirain turned to the talespinner. “Tell on then, with this
bit of copper to sweeten your labor.”

“Well now, that’s bliss, to have time to spare for market
tales.”

Vadin had seen him come. Mirain must have sensed it; he
turned slowly, with perfect calm. Moranden stood directly behind him. He smiled
with a very slight edge. “What, uncle! Back already from the hunt?”

If that struck the mark, Moranden showed no sign of it. “No
hunting for me today. But then, you wouldn’t know, would you? Our troubles
haven’t yet come into the talespinners’ repertoires.”

People were watching and listening, distracted from the tale
by the prospect of a royal quarrel. But Moranden blocked the only clear path of
escape.

“There’s more to be had in the market than old legends,”
Mirain said. “Is it true, uncle, that the mountain folk have been raiding on
the Western Marches?”

“A tribe or three,” replied Moranden.

“And others have taken advantage of the opportunity, have
they not? Have settled the tribes to be sure, but finding themselves armed and
armored, have declared themselves free of their lord. A dire thing, that, and
worse yet when the lord is royal and my uncle. Surely people lie when they
accuse you of over-harshness.”

Moranden’s eyes narrowed and began to glitter. The scar was
livid beneath them; his face twisted a little as if he knew pain. But wrath was
stronger, tempered with hate. “Not all of us can rule under the sun of loving
kindness, or take our ease among the rabble. Some must fight to keep that
rabble in hand.”

“As you will be doing, my lord?”

“As I must do. I leave at dawn to settle your borders,
Throne Prince of Ianon. Do I merit your highness’ blessing?”

Mirain was silent, tight-lipped. Moranden smiled. “Remember,
my prince, as you sleep safe within these walls. No enemy has ever walked here,
or so they say; nor shall he while I live to defend you.”

Mirain’s head came up. “You need not trouble yourself to
protect me.”

“Indeed?” Moranden looked down at him, measuring him with
unveiled scorn. “Then who will?”

“I guard myself,” gritted Mirain. “I am no ill warrior.”

“You are not,” his uncle conceded. “Certainly you hold your
own among the younger lads.”

Vadin should have moved then. He should have moved long
since. But even breath was frozen out of him, or enspelled into stillness. He
could only stand and watch, and know what this mad master of his would say.
Said with great care, with the precision of icy rage. “I am a knight of
Han-Gilen and a man in any reckoning; and I fight my own battles. Look for me
at dawn, mine uncle. I ride at your right hand.”

oOo

“You are insane.”

They had all said it, Vadin loudest and longest and to no
effect at all. Ymin said it now, facing Mirain without fear although he rode
still on a red tide of wrath. “You are quite mad. Moranden is a danger to you
even in the castle under the king’s protection. If you ride to war with him, he
will have what he longs for.”

“I can protect myself.”

“Can you?” She thrust back her sleeves, gripping her
forearms until the long nails, hardened from years of plucking the strings of
her harp, seemed to pierce through flesh and muscle into bone. But her voice
betrayed only impatience with his folly. “You are behaving like a spoiled
child. And well he knows it. He sought you for just this purpose, to set you
precisely where he wants you: in his hands, and too wild with rage and rivalry
to care what befalls you.”

He rounded upon her. “He has challenged me openly. If I
refuse him, I have no right or power to claim kingship.”

“If you refuse him, you prove that you are man enough, and
king enough, to ignore an insult.”

His face was closed, his will implacable. “I ride at dawn.”

She reached for him. “Mirain,” she said, not quite pleading.
“If not for your own sake, for your grandsire’s. Forsake this folly.”

“No.” He eluded her hands, and left them there in his
chamber, the singer alone and hopeless, Vadin forgotten by the wall. The door
thudded shut behind him.

Vadin shivered, struggling to stay awake. It was an unholy
hour to be out of bed: the black watch of the night when men most often died,
and demons walked, and Uveryen defied her bright brother to overcome her power.

He was ghastly cold, sitting in the king’s antechamber,
waiting on the royal pleasure. With the sublime illogic of the half-asleep, he
did not fear for life or limb. He fretted over his baggage. Should he have
packed one more warm cloak? Or one less? Had he forgotten something vital?
Mirain’s armor—was it—

“My lord will see you now.”

The quiet words brought him lurching to his feet. They
tangled. He sorted them with vicious patience, under the servant’s cool eye. In
some semblance of good order, he entered the lion’s den.

The king was as the king always was, broad awake, fully
clad, and somehow not quite human. Like a man in armor, warded against the
world; but this one’s armor was his own flesh and bone.

Vadin, bowing at his feet, wondered if he had always been
like that. An iron king, ruling with an iron will, loving nothing that lived.

Except Mirain. Vadin rose at the king’s command, roused at
last, beginning to be afraid. Princes did not often pay for their insanities.
Their servants often did, bitterly.

The king stood close enough to touch. Vadin swallowed. Part
of him was surprised. He did not have to look up by much. Two fingers’ breadth.
Three.

He had never been so close before. He could see a scar on
the king’s cheek, a knife scar it must have been, thin and all but invisible,
running into the braided beard.

There were few lines on the king’s face. It was all pared
clean, skin stretched taut over haughty bones. Mirain’s bones.

But not Mirain’s eyes. These were hooded, deep but not
bottomless, studying Vadin as he studied the king.

No god flamed in them. No madness, either. But of magecraft,
something. A flicker, low yet steady, strong enough to see a man’s soul, too
weak to walk in his mind.

“Sit,” the king said.

Vadin obeyed without thinking. The chair was the king’s own,
high and ornate. The king would not let him find another. His tired body made
the best of its cushions; his mind waited, alert for escape.

The king revived the dying fire, squatting on his haunches,
tending the fragile new flames with great care. Vadin counted scars on the bare
and corded back. Every man had scars; they were his pride, the badge of his
manhood. The king had a royal throng of them.

The old man’s voice seemed to come out of the fire, his
words born in Vadin’s own thoughts. “I fought many battles. To gain the eye of
the king my father. To earn the name of prince. To become prince-heir, and to
become king, and to hold my kingship. By the god’s mercy, I had no need to
wrest it from my father. A seneldi stallion killed him for me: a stallion and
his own arrogance, that would suffer no creature to be greater than he. Of that
beast’s line I bred the Mad One. It was revenge, of a sort. The sons of the
regicide would serve the sons of the king. The stallion himself I took and
tamed and rode into every battle, until he died under me. Shot, I think. I do
not remember. There have been so many. It has been so long.”

He sounded ineffably old, ineffably weary. Vadin said
nothing. It seemed to be his curse that kings confided in him. Or else and more
likely, he was not going to live long enough for his knowledge to matter.

The king sat on his heels with ease that belied both voice
and words. “It perturbs you, does it not? To know that I was young once. That I
was born and not cast up armed and crowned from the earth; that I was a child
and a youth and a young man. And yet I was all of them. I even had a mother.
She died while I was still among the women. She had enemies; they said she had
lovers. ‘And why not?’ she cried when they came for her. ‘One night a year my
lord and master grants me of his charity. All the rest belong to his wives and
his concubines. He casts his seed where he pleases. Am I not a queen? May I not
do the same?’ She paid the price of her presumption. My father made me watch as
they flayed her alive and bathed her in salt and hanged her from the
battlements. I was royal. I must know how kings disposed of their betrayers. I
was not seven summers old.