Hall of the Mountain King (12 page)

“It can’t work,” Vadin repeated. “You can bedazzle people
when they’re near you, but when their eyes clear they turn straight back to
your uncle.”

Mirain fed the fire with deadwood from the thicket in which
they camped. The flames, leaping, made his face strange: sharpened the curve of
his nose, carved deep hollows beneath his cheekbones, glittered in his eyes.
“Bedazzle people, Vadin? How am I doing that?”

Impatience flung Vadin’s hand up and out, made him snap,
“Don’t play the innocent with me. You’re subverting my lord’s men under his very
nose. And he can see it as well as I can.”

“I am not—” Mirain rose abruptly. The Mad One snorted and
threw up his head; the prince gentled him, centering himself on it, shutting
Vadin out.

Vadin hammered at his gates. “Sure you aren’t. You talk to
them like a northerner born. Me you lisp at as sweetly and southernly as you
ever did. Who’s being played for a fool?”

Mirain’s back was obdurately silent. One ruby eye glowed
beyond and just above it, beneath a fire-honed blade of horn. Rami grazed
peacefully on the edge of the firelight, oblivious to two-legged troubles.

Not for the first time, Vadin cursed all mages and their
intransigence. How could a mere man beat sense into the likes of them?

Mirain spun. “Sense? What sense? You accuse me of
machinations I never meant. You fault me for trying my tongue in good Ianyn,
and again to easing it with you who know and occasionally forget to despise me.
What should I do, refuse to have anything to do with these men I have to fight
beside?”

“Pack up and ride straight back to Han-Ianon where you
belong.”

“Ah no,” said Mirain. “You won’t turn me back now. It was
too late for that when I faced Moranden in the market.”

“You two should be brothers. You hate each other too
absolutely to be anything less.”

“I don’t hate him.” Mirain said it as if he believed it.
Perhaps he did. Perhaps even Vadin did. “He lusts after what is mine. He’ll
never have it. Maybe one day I can teach him, if not to love me, at least to
accept the truth.”

“Are you really as arrogant as that, or are you simple? Men
like him don’t back down.”

“They can be persuaded to step sidewise.”

Vadin spat into the fire. “And the moons will dance the
sword-dance, and the sun will shine all night.”

To his great surprise, except that he was learning to be
amazed by nothing Mirain said or did, the prince dropped down beside him and
grinned. “Another wager, O doubter?”

“I won’t rob you this time, O madman.”

Mirain laughed. His teeth were very white. He lay with his
head pillowed on his saddle, wrapping his blanket about him, eyes bright upon
Vadin. “I won’t kill him. That’s too easy. I’ll win him instead. Of his own
free will, without magery.”

“What am I, then? Your practice stroke?”

“My friend.” Mirain was a shadow on shadow, even his eyes
briefly hooded. They flashed open, silencing the snap of protest. “I’ll do it,
Vadin.”

Vadin could understand how Mirain looked on Moranden. One
could not hate a man afflicted with insanity. One pitied him; one had a
hopeless compulsion to cure him.

They were both mad, these princes. They were going to die
for it. Then what would Ianon do for a king?

Mirain was asleep. He could do that: will himself into
oblivion between breath and breath, and leave the fretting to lesser mortals.

Vadin inched toward him. He did not move. Nor did the Mad
One, which was more to the point.

The squire peered down at him. The fire, dying, only
deepened the shadow of him, but his face was clear enough to memory.

A face one could not forget. Someone had said that—Ymin, the
king. It was in a song.

Mirain had laughed when he heard it. Aye, he said, he was
ugly enough to be remarkable.

He was stone blind and stark mad. With a sound between a
growl and a groan, Vadin rolled himself into his own blanket. The gods looked
after the afflicted, said all the priests. Let them do it, then, and give this
poor mortal peace.

oOo

Perhaps, after all, the gods did their duty. No one tried to
slip poison into Mirain’s field rations or a dagger into his back. Moranden
paid him no more heed than he paid any other trooper, and no less; and Vadin
heard no such words as he had heard in Han-Ianon’s market. The elder prince was
ruling himself and he was ruling his men.

On the third day the bright weather faded. The dawn was dim,
the sunrise scarlet and grey; by noon the rain fell in torrents. The company
wrapped their weapons in oiled leather and themselves in heavy hooded cloaks
and pressed on without pausing.

Early summer though it was, the rain was northern rain,
mountain bred; it chilled to the bone. Men grumbled under their breaths, laying
wagers on whether the prince would command them to harden themselves yet
further by camping in the storm.

Mirain took up one such. “He won’t,” he said. “We’ll lodge
warm and dry tonight.”

He won a silver-hafted dagger. For as the grey light dimmed
to dark, Moranden led his company up a long twisting track to a castle.

It was smaller even than Asan-Geitan, and poorer, but it had
a roof to keep out the rain. The men cheered as its gate creaked open to admit
them.

oOo

Mirain would have been content to lodge in the guardroom
with the rest. But as he moved toward the comer Vadin had claimed for him,
Moranden’s voice brought them both about. “Lord prince!”

Moranden was easy, affable, even smiling. The lord of the
castle, a thin elderly man, looked ready to faint.

As Vadin made his way behind Mirain through the crowding of
men, he strangled laughter. The poor man was terrified enough to be playing
host to the greatest lord in Ianon; now that lord presented him with the throne
prince himself.

Who looked like a child, drenched and shivering; who raised
his head and stood suddenly towering, full of the god; who spoke to the baron
in his own rough patois and won his soul.

Vadin trailed the three of them in a sort of stupor. Much of
it was wet and misery; some was fascination. He had never seen Mirain’s magic
worked so near, or to such devastating effect.

Except that it was not magic, not exactly; not a thing of
spells and cantrips. It was his whole self. His face, his bearing, his
presence. His infallible knowledge of what to say, and when, and how. And his
incomparable eyes.

They had the best the lord could offer, Moranden the room
given over to guests, Mirain the lord’s own chamber. The lord’s own slaves
built up the fire in the hearth, which smoked, but which was warm; even the
squire had a warm robe, almost clean, and a cup of wine heated to scalding, and
the slaves would not let him wait on his lord.

He was a lord himself here. They were pitiably inept, but
less so with him than with Mirain, who awed them into immobility. Until the
prince loosed a smile and a word; then they fell over one another to please
him.

Warm and dry and with the wine rising from his stomach to
his brain, Vadin woke somewhat from his bemusement. After Han-Ianon this castle
was shabby and unkempt and not remarkably clean, but it had an air of comfort;
it felt like home. The slaves were ill-washed but well enough fed; the wine was
good; the coverlet of the bed was beautiful.

He remarked on the last, and Mirain smiled. “Your lady’s
weaving?” he asked the man who tended the fire, persuading it by degrees to
smoke upward and not outward.

The slave bowed too low and too often, but he answered
clearly enough. “Oh, yes, my lord, the Lady Gitani did it. It’s poor stuff, I
fear, as you great ones reckon it, but it’s warm; the wool came from our own
flocks.”

“It’s not poor at all; it’s splendid. Look, Vadin, how pure
a blue, like the sky in winter. Where ever did the lady find the dyes?”

“You must speak to her, great lord,” the slave said, bowing.
“She can tell you. It’s a woman’s art, my lord, but you a prince—she can tell
you.” He bowed yet again and took flight.

Mirain stood stroking the coverlet, smiling a little still,
with the familiar wry twist. “How differently they look on a prince. When I was
only a priest, I lodged in the stable or, if the family were pious, with the
servants; no one ever stammered when I spoke to him. But I was Mirain then as I
am now. Why should it matter?”

“You didn’t have power then. You couldn’t order one of them
put to death and be obeyed.”

Mirain turned his eyes on Vadin. “Is that what makes a
prince? The power to kill without penalty?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“No,” Mirain said. “It has to be more than that.”

“Not if you’re a scullion in a hill fort.”

The prince folded himself onto the splendid weaving, brows
knit, chin on fist. Without the slaves to interfere, Vadin busied himself with
their belongings, spreading wet garments to dry, inspecting the arms and armor
in their wrappings.

When he looked up again Mirain said, “I will be more than an
exalted executioner. I will teach folk to see what a king can be. A guide, a
guard. A protector of the weak against the strong.”

Vadin rolled his eyes heavenward and squinted at Mirain’s
sword. The blade was beginning to dull. He reached for the whetstone.

“You scoff,” Mirain said more in sorrow than in anger. “Is
that all you know? Fear and force, and all power to the strongest?”

“What else is there?”

“Peace. Fearlessness. Law that rules every man, from the
lowest to the highest.”

“What odd dreams you have, my lord. Are they a southern
sickness?”

“Now you’re laughing at me.” Mirain sighed deeply. “I know.
If a king hopes to rule, he has to rule by force or he’ll be struck from his
throne. But if the force could be tempered with mercy—if he could teach another
way, a gentler way, to those who were able to learn; if he could keep to his
resolve and not surrender to the seductions of power—imagine it, Vadin. Imagine
what he could do.”

“He wouldn’t last long in Ianon, my lord. We’re howling
barbarians here.”

Mirain snorted. “You’re no more a barbarian than the Prince
of Han- Gilen.”

“Not likely,” said Vadin. “You won’t catch me dead in
trousers.”

“Prince Orsan would shudder at the thought of a kilt. How
ghastly to ride in. How utterly immodest.”

“He must be as soft as a woman.”

“No more than I.”

Vadin eyed Mirain askance. “Have you been walking a shade
gingerly for the past day or two?” He dodged the headrest from the bed, flung
with alarming force. “What were you saying about mercy, my lord?”

“I had mercy. I took care to miss.”

“See?” said Vadin. “Superior force. That’s what makes you
the prince and me the squire.”

“Dear heaven, a philosopher. One of the new logicians, yet.
I’ll teach you to read, and you’ll be a great master in the Nine Cities.”

“Gods forbid,” said Vadin with feeling.

oOo

Vadin dined in hall, seated perforce with the princes while
the lesser folk took their ease below. At least he was allowed to set himself
beside Mirain; no one had the wits or the courage to forbid him.

He kept a wary eye on Moranden and a warier one on his own
wild charge, who was enrapturing the lord’s family as utterly as he had their
kinsman. The women in particular were falling in love with him, although one
doe-eyed youth—the youngest son, Vadin supposed—was long lost already. He
waited on Mirain with something approaching grace, melting at a word or a
glance, trembling if chance or duty brought him close enough to touch.

“Pretty,” Vadin observed when the boy had retreated to fill
the wine jar.

Mirain lifted a brow. “He’s going to beg me to take him when
I go. Shall I?”

“Why not? He looks as if he might be trainable.”

The brow lifted another degree, but Mirain turned to answer
a question, and did not turn back again.

Left to himself, Vadin watched the boy out of the corner of
his eye. His amusement was going sour. Mirain did not mean it, of course. He
already had more servants than he could bear.

But the lad was extraordinarily pretty. Beautiful, in truth.
Slender, graceful, with those great liquid eyes; his beard was only a sheen of
down on his soft skin, and although his hair had grown long from the shaven
head of childhood, he had not yet confined it in the braids of a man. Wrapped
in soft wool and hung with jewels, he would make an exquisite girl. He was
acting like one, swooning over Mirain.

Vadin’s forehead ached. He realized that he was scowling.
And who was he to disapprove? He had had a fling or two himself, though he much
preferred to bed a woman.

Mirain smiled at the boy. What was his name? Ithan, Istan,
something of the sort. It was one of Mirain’s courtesan-smiles, not quite warm
enough to burn.

The boy swayed toward him. Caught himself, drew back in
charming confusion. His glance crossed Vadin’s; he flinched visibly and all but
fled.

Amid all the sighing and swooning, Vadin could still observe
that Mirain left the hall sober and without incident, and moreover without
lingering overmuch. Maybe he had grown as heartily sick of young love as Vadin
had.

oOo

He slept at once and deeply, as always. Vadin, sharing the
overlarge bed, lay awake as always. Not thinking of much; aware of the warm
body near him, wishing it were Ledi’s. One or two of the slaves had cast him
glances; maybe, if he could slip out . . .

Mirain turned in his sleep. He came to Vadin as a pup to its
dam, burrowed into the long bony body, sighed once and was still.

Vadin’s sigh was much deeper. Mirain did not feel anything
like a woman, except for his skin. And his hair; it put Ithan’s—Istan’s—to
shame.

He had shaken it out of its braid; by morning it would be a
hideous tangle. Without thinking, Vadin smoothed the mass of it. And kept
smoothing it, stroking, keeping his hand light lest he wake Mirain. It was
soothing, like petting a favorite hound.