Hall of the Mountain King (3 page)

First they had to find one; then he insisted on shaving his
face as smooth as a woman’s. Vadin’s own twitched as he watched. The servants
were appalled, and the eldest of them ventured to remonstrate, but Mirain would
hear none of it.

“It’s hot,” he said in his mincing accent. “It’s unlovely.
It itches.” He grinned at their shocked faces, shocking them even further, and
sat to the repast which they had spread for him.

Perched on a chair that had been carved to Ianyn measure,
devouring honeycakes and laughing still at the servants’ outraged propriety, he
looked even younger than he was. He did not look like the son of the Sun.

He finished the last drippingly sweet cake, licked his
fingers, and sighed. “I haven’t eaten so well since I left Han-Gilen.”

The eldest servant bowed a degree. Mirain bowed half a
degree in return, but lightly, smiling. “I commend your service, sirs.”

It was a dismissal. They obeyed it, all but Vadin. He kept
his post by the door and said nothing, and won his reward: Mirain let him be.

As soon as the men had gone, Mirain’s face stilled. He no
longer had the likeness of a child. Slowly he turned about, his right hand
clenching and unclenching, his brows drawing together until he was the very
likeness of the king his grandsire.

His nose wrinkled very slightly. Vadin could guess why.
Although the rooms to which the king’s men had brought him were rich, clean and
well swept, they breathed an air of long disuse. No feet but servants’ feet had
trod that splendid carpet out of Asanion in time out of mind; no one had leaned
upon the window frame as now he leaned, looking down into a sheltered garden or
up over the luminous battlements to the mountains of Ianon.

He turned his hand palm up upon the casement. Flecks of
blinding gold played over his face, over the walls and ceiling, into Vadin’s
eyes.

They vanished as his fingers closed; he turned his eyes to
the sun that had begotten them. “So, my lord,” he said to it, “you led me here.
Drove me, rather. What now? The king grieves, but he begins to rejoice, seeing
in me the rebirth of his daughter. Shall I heed my fates and prophecies and his
own command, and stay and be his death? Or shall I take flight while yet there
is time? For you see, my lord, I think that I could love him.”

Perhaps he gained an answer. If so it did not comfort him.
He drew a long breath that caught sharply upon a wordless sound. A cry, a gasp
of bitter laughter.

“Oh aye, I could have refused. Han-Gilen would have kept me.
I was no foreigner there for all my foreign face, eagle’s shadow that it was
amid all the red and brown and gold; I was the prince’s fosterling, the
priestess’ child, the holy one, venerated and protected. Protected!” That was
certainly laughter, and certainly bitter. “They were protecting me to death. At
least if I die here, I die of my own folly and naught else.”

He turned from the sun. His eyes were full of it, but it had
no power to blind them.

As they caught Vadin he started, as if he had forgotten the
squire’s presence. Probably, Vadin thought, he had hardly been aware of it at
all, no more than he was aware of the floor under his feet.

Unless, of course, it rose and tripped him. His scrutiny was
both leisurely and thorough, taking in the squire as if he had been a bullock
at market. Noting with due interest the narrow beaky face with its uncertain young
beard; the long awkward body in the king’s livery; the spear grounded beside
one foot, gripped with force enough to grey the prominent knuckles.

Mirain’s eyes glinted. In scorn, Vadin knew.
His
body was hardly awkward at all, and
he acted as if he knew it. He had a way of tilting his head that was both
arrogant and seeming friendly, and a lift of the brows that a courtesan should
have studied, it was so perfectly disarming. “My name is Mirain,” he said, “as
you’ve heard. What may I call you?”

Dismissed
, Vadin
wanted to snap. But training held. “Vadin, my lord. Vadin alVadin of
Asan-Geitan.”

Mirain leaned against the casement. “Geitan? That’s in
Imehen, is it not? Your father must be alVadin too; my mother told me that
Geitan’s lord is always Vadin, just as Ianon’s king is always Raban like my
grandfather, or Mirain.”

Like this interloper. Vadin drew himself up the last
possible fraction. “It is so, my lord.”

“My mother also taught me to speak Ianyn. Not remarkably
well, I fear; I’ve been too long in the south. Will you be my teacher, Vadin?
I’m a disgrace as I am, with a face like mine and a Gileni princeling lisping
out of it.”

“You’re not staying!” Vadin bit his tongue, too late. Adjan
would see him flogged for this, even if the foreigner did not.

The foreigner did not even flinch. He took off the band of
his Journey and turned it in his hands, and sighed faintly. “Maybe I should
not. I’m an outlander here; my Journey is hardly a year old. But,” he said, and
his eyes flashed up, catching Vadin unawares, “there is still the geas that my
mother laid upon me. To tell her father of her glory and her death; to comfort
him as best I could. Those I have done. But then she commanded me to take her
place, the place her vows and her fate had compelled her to abandon, for which
she bore and trained me.”

“She placed great trust in blood and in fate,” a new voice
said.

Its owner came forward in the silence. A woman, tall and
very slender, robed all in grey with silver at her throat, the garb of a sacred
singer. Her face was as beautiful as her voice, and as cool, and as unreadable.

“So she did,” said Mirain as coolly as she. “Was she not a
seer?”

“Some would say that she was mad.”

“As mad as her father, no doubt. As mad as I.”

The woman stood before him. She was tall for a woman, even a
woman of Ianon; his head came just to her chin. “My lord gave you her rooms.
His own son has never had so much.”

“You know who I am.” It was not a question.

“By now most of the castle knows it. The servants have ears
and tongues, and you have her face.”

“But she was beautiful. Not even charity could call me
that.”

“All her beauty was in her eyes and in the way she moved. No
carved or painted likeness could ever capture it.”

“Nor any in flesh.” He shook off the complaint with its air
of long use, and regarded her, loosing a rare and splendid smile. “You would be
Ymin.”

Strong though she was, she was still a woman, and that smile
held a mighty magic. Her eyes warmed; her face softened a very little. “She
told you of me?”

“Often and often. How could she forget her foster sister?
She hoped you would win your torque. The loveliest woman and the sweetest
singer in Ianon, she said you would be. She was a true prophet.”

Almost Ymin smiled. “Your own torque, my young lord, could
as easily be silver as gold. Was it our blunt-spoken Sanelin who taught you
such courtesy?”

“She taught me to speak the truth.”

“Then the sweetness must be the legacy of Han-Gilen, which
we singers call the Land of Honey.”

“Sweet speech is certainly an art much valued there, although
they value honor more. The worst of all sins, say they, is the Lie, and they
raise their children to abhor it.”

“Wise people. Strength is greatest here, of the body most
often, of the will but little less. There is no place in the north for the gentle
man or for the weakling.”

“Hard as the stones of the north, they say in Han-Gilen.”

Mirain turned back to the window. Ymin set herself beside
him. He did not glance at her. “Why did you depart?” she asked him.

“It was time and past time, though my lord prince would have
had me wait longer, till I had my growth and an army to ride with me. But the
god has no care for manhood, or for the lack of it. I left in secret; I walked
in secret until I had passed the borders of Han-Gilen. It was a very long way to
go afoot, with winter coming and a long cruel war but lately ended.” His voice
changed, took on a hint of pride. “I fought in it; well, my lord said. I was
his squire, with his son, the Prince-Heir Halenan. He made us both knights and
armed us alike. I was sorry to leave them. And the princess, Halenan’s sister .
. . she helped me to slip away.”

“Was she very beautiful?”

He stared at her, briefly speechless. “Elian? She was all of
eight years old.”

Ymin’s laughter was sudden and heart-deep, a ripple of pure
notes.

He frowned; unwillingly his lips twitched. “Maybe,” he
admitted, “someday she will be lovely. When I saw her last, she was dressed
like a boy in ancient tattered breeches and a shirt of mine—much too large for
her—and her hair never would stay in its braids. Still, that was splendid, like
her father’s and her brother’s and no one else’s in the world: red as fire. She
was trying to look like a bold bad conspirator, but her eyes were all bleared
with crying, and her nose was red, and she could hardly say a word.”

He sighed. “She was a living terror. When we rode off to
war, we found her among our baggage. ‘If Mirain can go,’ she said, ‘why can’t
I?’ She was six years old. Her father gave her a royal tongue-lashing and sent
her home in disgrace. But he gave his steward orders to have her taught
weaponry. She had won, in her way, and she knew it.”

“You loved, it seems,” she said, “and were well loved.”

“I have been fortunate.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Her face had changed,
grown cool again. “My lord, what will you do here?”

His hands rested on the casement, the fingers tightening
until the knuckles greyed. “I will remain. When the time comes I will be king.
The king who drives back the shadows, the son of the Sun.”

“Your will is firm for one so young.”

“My will has nothing to do with what must be.” His tone was
faintly bitter, faintly weary.

“The gods’ love,” she said slowly, “is a torment of fire.”

“And a curse on all one cares for. Hold to your coldness
against me, singer, if you would be wise.”

She laid her hand on his arm. Her eyes were clear again and
steady upon him, as steady as her voice. “My lord, do you know truly what you
are doing? Can you? Your mother raised you and trained you and commanded you to
be what her fate had forbidden her to be, high ruler in Ianon. But the place
for which she shaped you is twenty years gone.”

“It is known even in far Han-Gilen that the King of Ianon
has no chosen successor. That he awaits the return of his daughter.”

“Is it also known that he keeps his vigil all but alone?”
She spoke more rapidly, less calmly. “Kingdoms can rise and fall in a score of
years. Babes then unborn have since borne children of their own. None of whom
has any memory of a priestess who set forth on her Journey and never came back.

“But they do know, they do remember those who remained here.
Your mother had a brother, my lord. He was a child when she left. Now he is a
man and a prince, and his father has never let him forget that he is not judged
worthy of the name of heir; that he is bastard seed, acknowledged, endured,
even loved, but never equal to the one who is gone. Whereas to the people, who
have no care for the passions of kings except as they breed war or peace, he is
their sole and rightful prince. He has dwelt among them all his life; he is one
of their own, and he is strong and fair, and he wields his lordship well
enough. They love him.”

“And I,” said Mirain, “am a foreigner and an interloper, an
upstart, a presumptuous stranger.”

Vadin’s thoughts to a word; the squire knew a stab of
superstitious dread. And another of annoyance. All of it should be obvious to
the merest child, which Mirain most certainly was not.

He seemed undismayed by it. He was not stupid, Vadin was
certain; very probably he was mad. It was in his blood.

He prowled the room, not precisely as if he were restless;
it seemed to help him think.

He was doing it again, that witch’s trick of his, filling
the wide space, towering over the two who watched him. When he halted and
turned, he shrank a little. “Suppose I leave quietly, singer. Have you
considered what that might do to the king? It could very easily kill him.”

“It will kill him to have you here.”

“One way or another.” Mirain’s head tilted. “You could be
speaking for my enemies.”

“If so,” she said unruffled, “they have moved upon you with
supernatural speed.”

“It has happened to me before.”

“Were you ever a child, my lord?”

He stood back on his heels, eyes wide and ingenuous. “Why,
lady, what am I now but a babe scarce weaned?”

She dropped her mask and laughed aloud.

It was not all mockery. Much of it was honest merriment.
When it passed, her eyes danced still; she said, “You are a match for me, I
think. You may even be a match for the whole of Ianon.” She sobered fully.
“When you are king, my lord, and more than king, will you let me make songs for
you?”

“If I forbade it, would that prevent you?”

Ymin looked down, then up, a swift bright glance. “No, my
lord.”

He laughed half in pain. “You see what kingship I can claim,
when not even a singer will obey me.”

“When it comes to singing,” she said, “I obey only the god.”

“And your own will.”

“That most certainly.” She stepped away from the window.
“The god calls me now to sing his office. Will you come?”

Mirain paused, a breath only. Then: “No. Not . . . quite
yet.”

She bowed her head slightly. “Then may he prosper you. Good
day, my lord.”

oOo

When she was gone, Mirain sent Vadin away. None too soon for
the squire’s peace of mind. He was soul-glad to be back among his own,
comfortable, sane and human kind, driving his body until it was all one
mindless ache.

He drove himself so far that when Adjan called him out of
the baths, he could only think that he had earned a reprimand somewhere on the
practice field. That was terror enough, but he had survived the old soldier’s
discipline before. It was only pain; it passed, and everyone forgot it.