Hall of the Mountain King (11 page)

“I learned my father’s lesson. A king must endure no threat
to his rule. Not even where he loves, if that love turns against him. The
throne is a dead thing, but its power is all-encompassing. It knows no human
tenderness. It suffers no compassion.

“And on that day of my mother’s death, with the screams of
her dying ringing in my brain, I swore that I would be king; because for me to
take the throne, my father must die. I know now that he was a hard man, cold
and often cruel, but he was not evil. He was merely king. Then and for a long
time after, I knew only that he had murdered my mother.”

Vadin choked back a yawn. He kept waiting for the blow to
fall. It was all very sad, and it explained a little of the king’s madness, but
Vadin could not see what it had to do with Mirain. Or with dragging Mirain’s
squire out of his warm blankets in the deeps of the night.

“Alas for me,” said the king, “I learned to hate my father;
I learned to cast aside mercy, to be most royally implacable. But I never
learned not to love. For the kingdom’s sake I took an Asanian queen. She would
hold back the Golden Empire; she would enrich us with her splendid dowry.
Herself I did not consider, save as a price to be paid: a pallid dwarfish
creature, bred like a beast to ornament a western palace. And when she came,
indeed she was small, as small as a maid of ten summers, but her heart was mighty;
and in the arts of the bedchamber she had no equal.

“They say this land was too harsh for her. Yet she was
learning to endure it, even perhaps to love it. She was growing strong; she was
beginning to accept our ways. And I killed her. I set my child in her, knowing
what I did, knowing what I must do, although she was too small by far to bear
an heir of Ianyn kings. She conceived, and for a little while I dared to hope.
The child was not large; she was bearing well, without pain. Yet when her time
came, all went awry. The child was twisted in the womb, fighting its birth.
Fighting with the strength of the mageborn, which taxed the full power of
priests and birthing-women and, in desperation, of the shamans whom even then I
had in mind to banish from my kingdom. They prevailed. My queen did not. She
lingered a little. She saw her daughter. She heard me give the little one the
name of heir. Then, content, she died.

“I mourned her. I still mourn her. But she had left my
Sanelin, who had all her mother’s valor and all her sweetness, but who was
strong with the strength of our people.

“Yes,” the king said, meeting Vadin’s eyes with a shock like
two blades clashing, “I loved my daughter too much. I loved her for herself,
and I loved her for her mother who was lost. But I did not love her blindly.
Nor was it merely the grieving lover who made his lady’s child his heir. I knew
what we had made together, my queen and I. In the body of a maidchild, slender
and Asanian-small, dwelt the soul of an emperor.”

“It was unfortunate,” Vadin ventured, “that she was a
woman.”

The king rose. For all his age and his height and the weight
of his bones, he moved like Mirain: like a panther springing. Vadin steeled
himself for the killing stroke.

It never came. “Aye and aye,” the king said heavily, “it was
unfortunate. More unfortunate still that I had no sons. She was my only child,
and she was pure gold; and the Sun took her. It was no choice of mine. From her
infancy she knew who must be her lord and her lover. He had made her for himself.
At last he took her from me. Rightly, after all; a daughter passes from her
lord father to her lord husband, and she was Avaryan’s bride. But she was also
Ianon’s heir.”

Sometimes one gambled. Vadin made a reckless cast. “The
Prince Moranden—”

The panther roused, snarling. It was laughter, harsh with
disuse, ragged with pain. “You love him, do you not? Many love him. He is
lordly; he is proud; he has his mother’s beauty. But she is goddess-wise. He is
not even clever.”

“Why do you hate him?” Vadin asked. “What has he done to
you?”

“He was born.” The king said it quietly, without rancor. “Of
all the errors of my life, the greatest was my taking captive the daughter of
Umijan. She was suckled on hate; she came to me in hate. But her beauty struck
me to the heart. I thought that I could tame her; I dreamed that she would
come, if not to love me, at least to esteem me as her consort. I was a fool.
The lynx does not lie down on the hunter’s hearth.”

“You should have killed her before she got her claws into
your son.”

“He was hers from the moment of his conception.”

“Did you try to change it? You never let him forget who was
your favorite. You made it obvious who would have the throne. Sanelin, or no
one. It’s a wonder he didn’t slit your throat as soon as he knew how.”

“He tried. Several times. I forgave him. I love him. I will
not give my throne to him.”

“What if Mirain had never come?”

“I knew that he would. Not only was it foretold. Not only
had the god promised me in dreams that the great one would come. I knew that my
daughter would be no more willing than I to let her heritage fall into the
hands of Odiya of Umijan.”

Vadin marveled that he was here, sitting while the king
stood, talking to him as if he were—why, as if he were Mirain. “I don’t
understand. I’ve known men who were never properly weaned. Prince Moranden is
nothing like them. He’s strong. He’s Ianon’s champion. He has no equal on the
field, and few enough off it.”

“There is more to the world than the wielding of a sword.”
The king turned his hands, much calloused with it, and half smiled. “Moranden
is his mother’s creature. When she commands, he obeys. Where she hates, he
detests. She is the shape and he the shadow. Were he king on the throne of
Ianon, she would rule. She rules already wherever he is lord.”

“But—” Vadin began. He stopped. What use? The king knew what
he knew. No Imeheni yokel could teach him otherwise.

If there was anything to teach him. Vadin shifted
uncomfortably. Moranden was no monster. He had been kind to a lad from the outlands
who was no threat to his power. He could be charming if it suited his purposes.
But he was honorable even when it did not serve him. He was a mortal man; of
course he was flawed. Even Mirain was far from perfect.

The servants fought to wait on Mirain. Moranden’s name met
with a shrug, a sigh, an acceptance of one’s duty. Sometimes, they conceded, it
was pleasant to serve him. Sometimes it was perilous. He was a lord. What could
one expect?

He was not cruel. He was no more capricious than any other
prince. Mirain was infinitely less predictable.

Mirain was Mirain. Even Vadin could not envision him as
anything but what he was; nor was it conceivable that he would let anyone
command him, let alone do his ruling for him.

Moranden—yes, Moranden was a bit of a weathercock. Everyone
knew it. A man could win his favor, not with copper, nothing so venal, but his
friends were often the ones who flattered him most cleverly. He had no patience
with the drudgeries of kingship: councils, audiences, endless and innumerable
ceremonies. He had sunk low in the market, when he accused Mirain of shirking
those duties and let people think that he himself had been laboring long hours
over them. Probably he had been dicing with his lordlings until the king called
him to defend the Marches.

Vadin snorted softly to himself. Next he would be
exonerating Mirain for idling in the market while the kingdom went to war.
Mirain had not been idling, after all. Not exactly. He had been acquainting
himself with his people.

“If Moranden is Odiya’s puppet,” Vadin said at last, “why
did you give him a princedom?”

“I gave his mother a princedom, for a price. She would not
set her son on me; I would leave them free to govern as they chose. Within the
limits of the law.”

“Which you had made.”

“Just so,” said the king.

Vadin sat back. “What are you telling me, my lord? What am I
supposed to do?”

“Keep them from killing one another.”

“Keep—” Vadin laughed. His voice came within a hair of
cracking. “My lord, I don’t know what Adjan told you about me, but I’m only
human. I can’t come between the thunder and the lightning.”

The king seized him as if he had been a weanling pup,
dragging him to his feet, shaking him until his eyes blurred. “You will do it.
You will stand between them. You will not let them die at one another’s hands.”

“This time.”

The king wound his fingers in Vadin’s braids, wrenching his
head back. “Never while I live. Swear it, Vadin alVadin.”

“I can’t,” Vadin gasped. “Moranden—maybe—but Mirain—”

The king’s grip tightened to agony. He was mad. Stark mad.

“My lord, I—”

The old man let him go. He fell to all fours. His head
throbbed; he choked on bile. Trembling, hating himself for it, he peered up.

The king knelt beside him. Not madness, he saw with bitter
clarity. Love. The king gave tears to them; both of them. His voice was thick,
but it yielded nothing. Even his pleading was proud. “You must try. You are all
I have. The only one whom both are fond of. The only one whom I can trust.”

It was too much. Mirain, and the king too. Vadin crouched
and shook.

The king touched him. He started like a deer.

“It is the price you pay,” the king said, “for your
quality.”

Little by little Vadin stilled. He drew himself up. Half his
braids were down, the rest working loose. He shook them out of his eyes and
looked at the king. “My lord, I will do all I can, even if it kills me.”

“It may kill us all.” The king raised him, holding him with
only a shadow of strength. “Go. Defend your lord. From himself, if need be.”

oOo

The cold light of dawn found Mirain’s temper calmed but his
will unshaken. Vadin looked at him and did not know whether to rage or to
despair. “By the gods,” he muttered under his breath, “if the king breaks his
heart for that lunatic’s sake, I’ll—I’ll—”

Rami shifted under him, troubled. He bit back the hot swift
tears and glared at the madman. Mirain bore no mark of his royalty, went armed
like all the rest with sword and spear and shield, light plain armor and plain
tunic beneath it and plain helmet on his head. And yet he was impossible to
mistake, riding his wild black demon without bit or bridle, laughing as the
beast lashed out at a soldier’s gelding.

A tall figure approached him on foot. The Mad One stood
suddenly still, ears pricked, eyes gleaming ember-bright in the torchlight.

Mirain bowed in the saddle. “Good morning, Grandfather.”

“You will go,” the king said. It was not a question. A
little of the old, cold madness had returned to his face. “Fight well for me,
young Mirain. But not so well that you die of it.”

“I do not intend to die,” said Mirain. He leaned out of his
saddle and kissed the king’s brow. “Look for me when Brightmoon waxes again.”

“And every day until then.”

Abruptly the king turned away from him to confront Moranden.
The elder prince, intent on the mustering of his troops, had not yet mounted; a
groom held the bridle of his charger. He met his father’s stare with one as
level, and as cold, and as unreadable.

“Come back to me,” the king said. “Both of you. Alive and
whole.”

Moranden said no word, but bowed and sprang astride.

The gates swung back; a horn sounded, fierce and high. With
a shout the company leaped forth.

oOo

They passed the Towers of the Dawn in the full morning,
riding steadily from the Vale to the height of the pass, winding down the steep
ways into the outer fiefdoms of Ianon. The long riding lulled Vadin into a sort
of peace. The king had been fiercely alive when they left him, and Mirain was
far from dead, and Vadin knew certainly that at least a tithe of the men about
him were the king’s own.

This might even prove to be no more than it seemed: a
quelling of rebellion, a first testing of Ianon’s heir in battle. Moranden was
an honorable man; he would not do a murder that was certain to kill his father.

Vadin would let grief come when it came. Meanwhile he tried
to be wise; he opened himself to the clean bright air and the company of men around
him and the strong beast-body beneath him. Green Arkhan unfurled beneath Rami’s
feet; Avaryan wheeled to his zenith and sank westward behind the mountain
walls.

Mirain was an exemplary soldier. He kept his place in the
line beside Vadin, just ahead of the squires with the remounts; he held his Mad
One to a quiet pace with no outbursts of stallion temper; when the company was
silent he was silent, and when they sang he always seemed to know the songs.

His accent, Vadin began to notice, had changed. His Ianyn
was as good as Vadin’s own, if not better: he had no Imeheni burr but the lilt
of a lord of Han-Ianon, clear and melodious yet pitched to carry through field
or hall. And he was working the magic of his presence. The men near him had
fallen under his spell; Vadin watched it spread.

They were not falling at his feet. Not yet. But they were
warming to him. They were forgetting to hate him; as for shunning him, that battle
was long lost.

Moranden knew it. He did not show it, but Vadin could sense
a growing darkness in him. A set to his shoulders; a sharpening of the dun
stallion’s temper.

oOo

“It can’t work, you know.”

They were camped on the borders of Medras, sacrificing
comfort in a lord’s hall for the sake of speed and sobriety. Fine clear night
that it was, Mirain had elected to bivouac with his mount, with a small fire
and a warm blanket and the Mad One for wall and guard.

The stallion admitted Vadin on sufferance, as much for
Rami’s sake as for Mirain’s; he had taken an interest in the mare, chaste
enough for it was not her season, and she was not inclined to discourage him.
But no one else ventured near, or appeared to wish to.