Hall of the Mountain King (29 page)

Vadin shuddered. They were turning toward him. “Ho, king’s
man! Come and join our brotherhood.”

Others were doing it now, turning it into a high sacrifice,
a hundred victims laid upon an altar none could see. Drunk as they were, it
would be a miracle if the morning found no man dead with his throat slit.

Vadin stiffened against the hands that closed upon his arms.
“No,” he said. “Enough is enough. He knows my mind. I don’t need to—”

They laughed, but their eyes glittered. They were many and
they were strong; the ale was working in them, making them cruel. “Down with
you, my lad. You’ll be our captain. Aren’t you the one he wept for? Aren’t you
the one he loves?”

He fought. They laughed. He cursed them. They pulled him
down and sat on him. Kav had the knife again, newly honed, gleaming.

Vadin lay still. “Kav,” he said. “Don’t.”

His old friend looked at him out of an alien face. Kav had
not profited from his sacrifice; without the beautiful beard he was even less
lovely than before, a great brute of a man with a jaw like an outcropping of
granite.

He bent. He laid his blade against Vadin’s cheek, and it was
so cold that it burned. Vadin set his jaw against it.

With a bark of laughter Kav thrust the knife into his belt.
“Let him go,” he said. And kept saying it until they growled and obeyed.

Vadin got up stiffly, favoring a bruised knee. The squires
had drawn back. Now they knew what he had known since he sat down with them.

He was no longer one of them. They had chosen to be the
king’s men; he was Mirain’s utterly, against his will and to his very soul.

He dipped his head to Kav, even smiled a little, and walked
away. They did not try to hold him back.

oOo

The old woman at the curtain took Vadin’s coin, but she did
not move to let him pass. She peered at him as if he had been a stranger.
“Who’ll it be?”

He scowled. Of all nights for Kondyi to turn senile, of
course it had to be this one. “Who do you think? Ledi, of course.”

“Can’t have her.”

“What do you mean, I can’t have her? She promised me.
Tonight she’d save for me.”

“Can’t have her,” Kondyi repeated. “She went. Man came and
bought her. Paid a gold sun for her.”

Vadin could have howled aloud. He dragged the hag up by the
neck, shaking her till she squealed in fear. “Who?
Who?
By the gods, I’ll kill him!”

She would not tell him. Or could not. If she had been
feigning witlessness before, his rage drove her within a whisper of the truth;
she could only crouch and whimper and beg him to go away.

At last the tavernkeeper came, and he had his man with him,
and Vadin still had a few wits left. He spun away with a bitter curse and flung
himself into the night.

oOo

Mirain’s outer door was shut, his inner door barred. Happy
man. He had his woman; she loved him and she belonged to him, and no one could
buy her away from him.

Vadin stalked from the mute mocking barrier into the dark of
his own chamber, stripping off his finery as he went. He had put it on so
joyfully only a little while ago, thinking of Ledi, of how she would look long
at him and smile and declare him the handsomest of her lovers; and then they
would make a game of taking it all off.

He stumbled. A sharp word escaped him. He had forgotten the
baggage heaped by the door, awaiting the morning. He kicked it, and cursed
again as his knee cried protest. He was perilously close to tears.

Something rustled in the dark. He froze, hand dropping to
hilt, mind and body suddenly still. His sword hissed from its sheath.

A spark grew to a flame, settled into the lamp by his bed.
Ledi blinked at the spectacle of him in a glittering trail of ornaments, sword
in hand. She was as bare as she was born, except for a string of beads as blue
as heaven-flowers.

She rose and came to him and embraced him, sword and all.
“Poor love, were you looking for me? I tried to send you a message, but first
there wasn’t time, and then you were gone and they wouldn’t let me go after
you.”

He buried his face in the sweetness of her hair. “Kondyi,
damn her—Kondyi said you were sold.”

“I was.” He thrust free; she smiled, luminous with joy.
“Yes, Vadin. A man came, and he had gold; Kondyi and Hodan dickered but they
took it, though I fought and I damned them and I even cried. What say did I
have in it, after all? I was only a slave. Then,” she said, “then the man took
me away, and he was very kind, and he didn’t go far. Only to the castle. I was
beginning to be afraid. The man handed me over to a roomful of very disdainful
women; they all carried themselves like queens, though they said they were
servants. They made me wash all over, and they searched me for vermin and for
worse things, and I began to be angry.”

Vadin let his sword slip into its scabbard, dropped blade
and belt atop his baggage, let Ledi draw him to the bed and settle herself in
his lap. She kissed his breast over his heart and sighed. “Of course I knew
what they took me for. A common whore.” Her hand on his lips silenced the
protest. “So I was, love, though I tried to be a clean one and I wouldn’t take
every man who asked for me. Now, the women said, I was to learn new ways. I’d
not been bought to ply my trade in the castle.”

She was silent for a while. At last Vadin could not bear it.
“What were you bought for?”

“They wouldn’t tell me,” she said. “Not for a long time.
They showed me things. How to dress; and they gave me fine clothes to learn in.
How to do my hair. How to use scents and paints. As if I didn’t know all of
that; but this was different. They were showing me how to be a lady. Or how to
serve one. A very high one, Vadin. Do you know the Princess Shirani?”

“Of course,” he said. “She’s one of the king’s maidens.”

“I know that. She loves him to distraction. Poor lady, her
father the Prince Kirlian is one of the rebels, and she lives for a glance from
the king, and she’s sure she’ll die for being a traitor’s daughter. I told her
not to be afraid. The king knows who’s true and who’s false.”

“But how did Shirani happen to buy you? A man I could
understand; you’re famous. But a maiden princess—”

Ledi laughed. “Of course she didn’t buy me. I’m a gift.
That’s what happened afterward, you see. A woman came and asked the princess if
I’d do, and she, sweet child, said I was perfect. The woman wasn’t amused. She
told me I was wanted elsewhere, and mind my manners. I wanted sorely to act the
way she was sure I would, perfectly vulgar, but I wouldn’t do that in front of
my lady. I put on my best new face and let the woman lead me out.”

She laughed again. “Oh, it was wonderful, and I was
terrified. She took me to a man, and the man took me to a boy, and the boy took
me to the king. And he stood up in front of a dozen lords, and he hugged me as
if I’d been his kin, and asked me if I was pleased with my new place. Then he
told me—Vadin, he told me I was free. I could serve the princess if I liked,
but if I’d rather go elsewhere I could, and he would give me whatever I needed.
‘I mean that,’ he said. ‘Whatever you need.’ So I said . . . I said I was
happy, if only he would let me see you. He said I could see you whenever I
wanted. Then he kissed me and sent me away.”

Vadin could not breathe. Mirain had bought her. She was
free. King’s freedom, that could raise a woman from slave to queen.

Not that Mirain had raised Ledi so high, but she could not
have borne it; and Vadin was no prince. Only a king’s servant, as she was
servant to a princess.

His silence troubled her. She raised her head from his
breast, and her face was still, braced for the worst. “You aren’t glad. You
have your women here. I was for your nights in the town, when you wanted a
fresh face and a paid love: someone you could leave when you liked and forget
when it suited you. I’ll go away if you ask, my lord. I won’t haunt you.”

He tightened his grip on her and glared down into her eyes.
They were wide, steady, steeled against tears. “Is that what you want? To go
away?”

“I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

“He bought you for me, you know,” Vadin said. “He knew I’d
never take a gift from him. So he set you free and put you in Shirani’s service
and left it to you to decide if you wanted me. Sly little bastard.”

“He is the king.”

A queen could have said it with no more coolness and no more
certainty. “He is that,” Vadin agreed. “He’s also a born conniver. And he
thinks the world of you.”

That cast her into confusion; Vadin kissed her. “Ledi love,
we’d best be careful, or he won’t just see us bedded; he’ll make sure we’re
wedded.”

“Oh, no. We can’t do that. You’re a lord and a champion and
a king’s friend. While I—”

“While you are a lady and a wisewoman and a king’s friend.
Don’t you see how he thinks? If I’d finally got together enough silver to buy
your liberty, you’d only be a freedwoman. Since he bought you, you’re of
whatever rank the king decrees. And of free women, only the highest born may
wait on a princess.”

“Why,” she said in wonder, “he is downright wicked.” Her own
smile was not a jot less. “Tell me, my lord. May a noblewoman disport herself
with a man not her husband?”

“It’s not widely approved, but it’s done.”

“I’m not widely approved, either. And I don’t intend to be.
That’s fair warning, Vadin.”

“Very fair.” His eye was on her body, and half his mind with
it. She pushed him down. He smiled; she played with the beard he had so nearly
lost. “I suppose,” he said, “I’ll have to beggar myself to keep your favor.”

“Maybe,” she said, fitting her body to his. “Maybe not. I
was not a good whore. I picked more favorites for love than for money, and many
nights I wouldn’t work at all.”

“But when you did,” he said, “ah!” His gasp drew itself out,
catching as she did something exquisitely wanton. “Witch.”

“Lovely boy,” said she who was all of a season older than
he. He bared his teeth; she laughed and wove another spell to tangle him in.

oOo

“Mirain!”

It kept them all warm in the chill of the dawn: the army
drawing up on the Vale in an endless tangle of men and beasts and wagons and
chariots; the people come to watch them go, women and children and old men,
servants and caretakers and the elders who would ward the kingdom at Mirain’s
back. “Mirain!” they cried, now in snatches, now all together. And as chaos
became an army, a new shout went up, rolling like a drumbeat. “An-Sh’Endor!
An-Sh’Endor!”

From within the walls it was like the roaring of the sea.
Vadin, dragged cold and surly from his warm bed, took a last unwarranted tug at
Rami’s girth.

Her look of reproach made him feel like a monster. He
mounted as gently as he could and looked about.

Foolish; Ledi had not come to see him off. She had a
princess to wait on, and she hated farewells. She would not even admit that he
might not come back. But she had dressed him and armed him and braided his hair
for war, and she had given him something to remember her by: a kiss ages long
and far too short. His lips were still burning with it.

Grimly he turned his mind from her before he bolted back
into her arms. The Mad One was being a fine hellion, taunting Adjan’s sternly
bitted charger with his own bridleless freedom. He had already kicked a groom
for presuming to come after him with a halter.

At long last Mirain appeared, coming bright and exalted from
solitary prayer in the temple. He was all scarlet and gold, aflame in the
rising dawn; at the sight of him a shout went up among his escort and among the
few townsfolk who had lingered inside the walls, dim echo of the crowds and
clamor without.

He flashed them a grin, striding swiftly to his waiting
senel, catching himself in front of his squires. A poor hangdog few they
looked, much the worse for their night’s debauch, with every face scraped naked
for the world to see. Vadin had heard the end of Adjan’s peroration on their
folly, and it had been scathing.

But under Mirain’s eye they straightened. Their chins came
up. Their eyes lifted and firmed and began to shine. When he saluted them, with
a touch of irony it was true, but with more than a touch of respect, they
looked as if they would burst with love and pride.

Mirain moved again in a flare of scarlet, springing into the
Mad One’s saddle. The gate rolled open; the morning wind cried through it, made
potent with the roaring of the crowd.

He rode down into it, and Vadin raised his new banner, Sun
of gold on a blood-red field. The shouting rose to a fever pitch.

Where the ground leveled from the steep slope of the
castle’s rock, Mirain wheeled the Mad One on his haunches and swept out his
sword, whirling it about his head. Along the column sparks leaped: swords and
spears flung up in answer. A horn rang. With a clatter of hooves and a rumbling
of wagons and chariots, the army began to move.

oOo

“Now he is in his element,” Ymin said. She rode in the van
with Vadin and Alidan and the scholar from Anshan, with her harp on her back
and no weapon at her side. Her eyes were on Mirain, who was riding now far back
among the footsoldiers. He had hung his helmet from his saddlebow; as she
watched, his teeth flashed white in laughter at some jest.

"He’s a born leader,” said Vadin. “Whether he’s a
general, too, we’ve yet to see.”

“He will be.” Alidan shifted in the saddle. Her stallion
champed his bit; she let him dance a little until he settled again into his
long-legged walk. “He can be anything he chooses to be.”

“Remember,” said Obri the chronicler, “he had his training
in Han- Gilen. Soft the Hundred Realms may be in the reckoning of the north,
but they breed famous commanders. A southern general, I’ve always thought, and
an army from the north: the two together would be invincible.”