The Lady of Han-Gilen (30 page)

Waves of denial bore her back. She struggled against them,
twisting, leaping, up and out.

His braids had unraveled, falling over his shoulder. There
in the hollow where bone met bone lay a deep and pitted scar, mark of a
northern dart.

It had been poisoned; he had almost died. She set her lips
to it.

“I know that I am mortal!” he cried.

Her hands slid between his hair and his skin, stroking,
kneading the knotted muscles. They hardened against her. He stared stonily
ahead, his nostrils pinched tight, his mouth a thin line.

“Is that what I’ve been looking like?” she asked, bemused.
“No wonder I made everyone so angry.”

He pulled free, leaving his kilt in her hands, and spun
away. But she saw enough to blush hotly, and to smile in spite of herself.
“You’re not all in agreement, are you?”

He opened the inner door. She let the garment fall and came
after him.

The bathing-room was warm, walls and floor both, from the
hypocaust beneath; water steamed in the deep gilded basin.

That too was custom. The viewing of the bride; the singing;
the disrobing and the bathing. Men and maids would try to keep the lovers apart
while taunting each with the other’s manifold beauties. Sometimes the
guardianship would fail and the marriage be consummated then and there.

Mirain halted on the far side of the basin and faced her
across it. “Yes,” he said, “I want you. But if you come to me, you must swear
that you will remain in Han-Gilen.”

“You know I won’t.”

“Then my body will school itself to wait. It’s most skilled
in that.”

“I’m not, and I won’t.” She stepped into the water, wading
through it, ready to leap if he moved. “I could swear your oath, take my three
days, and do as I please. But I’m honorable; I tell you the truth. Whether you
give me three nights or none, when you go to Ashan I go with you. I’m your
hope, Mirain. Your hope and your queen.”

Her voice quivered on the title. She cursed herself for it,
for the doubt it betrayed. That the certainty of her knowledge might be not of
the light but of the mocking dark.

Mirain stood motionless, face of a royal stranger, body of
an eager lover. But the eagerness was fading, yielding to his will.

She closed her eyes. The hope that had borne her up, the
power of prophecy that had moved within her, ebbed away, leaving behind an
utter weariness. She let her knees yield, her body sink into the warm scented
water.

Strong arms lifted her. She looked into Mirain’s face.
Seeking no yielding, she found none.

All damp and dripping as she was, he laid her in his bed.
His arms were gentle; his expression was cold, almost angry. “Woman,” he said,
low and rough, “you would tax the patience of a god.”

“I know.” It was a sigh. “You’ve always said it: I don’t
think. I just am. I love you, Mirain.”

“And I . . .”

He stroked the hair from her brow: tender hand, grim mouth.
“There’s never been anyone for me but you. Women—lovers— friends, some of them;
but only one of you. Though I never knew how very much I wanted you until I saw
you there in the wineseller’s stall, so obviously and exquisitely you that I
wondered how anyone could possibly take you for a boy. Do you know what it cost
me, then and after, to keep my distance?”

“No more than it costs you now. And that is remarkably
little.”

“No,” he said. “Oh, no. It costs the world.”

She clasped her arms about his neck. There was no
calculation in it. He was stone-stiff, stone-hard.

Her lips touched his. Cold, so cold, with no yielding in
them. She opened lips and mind, both at once, offering all she had to give.

Fire burst from him. Light and heat and sudden, fierce,
uncontrollable joy.

Elian opened her eyes. Morning light met them. She lay
warm, languid, every muscle loosed.

Warmth stirred against her, and memory flooded.

She was a maid no longer. She was a woman and a queen.

Dark eyes caught hers. “Regrets?” Mirain asked softly.

She touched his cheek, following the line of it down his jaw
to his neck to the plane of his chest. A slow smile rose and bloomed. But she
said, “Yes.”

His eyes stretched wide; she laughed.

“Yes, that it took me so long to know my own mind. And,” she
added with the beginnings of a blush, “your body.”

He laughed, deep and joyous, and rose above her. “Would you
know it better still, my lady?”

She sparked at his touch; but she held him back, palms flat on
his breast. “Are you sorry, Mirain? You could have had any woman in the world.
There are many more beautiful, and some more witty, and a few of higher birth;
and any one of them would be more sweetly submissive than I.”

“How excruciatingly dull,” he said.

“Am I interesting?” she asked, all wide eyes and
astonishment.

He leaped. Her laughter broke into a gasp, half of
startlement, half of piercing pleasure.

oOo

When it was past, Mirain was very quiet. Not sad; but his
high delight had faded, his mind withdrawn into some realm of its own.

She, seeking, met a wall. Not a high one nor very strong,
but she respected it, turning her will to the suppression of a sudden and
utterly ridiculous jealousy.

oOo

Her head rested on his breast; his arms circled her, one
hand tangled in her hair. Its fire fascinated him. “And fire even . . .
there,” he had marveled in the night, laughing at her fierce blush and taking
her by storm.

A memory flitted past. Ziad-Ilarios in the temple, all gold
and all lost. She clung to Mirain with sudden fierceness, startling him out of
his reverie. “I won’t let them kill you!” she cried. “I won’t!”

“Nor shall they,” he said with royal confidence. He sat up,
drawing her with him, and smiled as he smoothed her hair out of her face. “Now,
ladylove. How shall we receive the waking party?”

oOo

It found them most decently clad, he in a white kilt and
she robed in green, playing at kings-and-cities beside the glowing brazier.

Even the most uproarious young lord stood still before their
calm. But the women smiled, the maids in admiration mingled with envy, the
wedded ladies with approval; and the eldest folded back the bed’s coverlet.
There was the maiden-chain, and the marriage-stain.

With a roar of delight the young men fell upon the lovers.
Two, the youngest, bore garlands of winter green; with these they crowned both,
while others brought forth cloaks of fur to wrap them, and lifted them up,
singing the morning song.

For that was the wedding of a great lady in the southlands:
three evenings and three nights alone with her lord, but three mornings of
festival. On the first, they must be carried in procession through the keep,
and break their fast with their closest kin; on the second, all the palace
would see them and feast with them; and on the third, they would be borne
through the city and presented in the temple, and brought forth to bestow their
blessing and their largesse upon their people.

Elian clung to every moment. Even in the depths of his mind
Mirain betrayed no impatience, but she knew: the fourth morning would begin the
ride to Ashan. With a word or two, to Adjan the commander of his armies in
Vadin’s absence, to Halenan the general of the southern legions, he had seen to
it that all would be ready. And having so settled his fate, he laid it aside, becoming
wholly the young lover.

She tried. But she was a woman and a seer. She could not
make herself forget.

oOo

The third day fled like the dove before the hawk. She had
dreaded the ordeal in the temple, the long ritual so close to the Altar of
Seeing. But the altar was silent, the water unclouded by visions; and soon she
was spun away from it. The blessing, which she barely heard even as she uttered
it; the feasting, of which she partook almost nothing, so that the old dames
and the young bucks exchanged wicked, knowing looks; and she was alone again,
the doors bolted, and Mirain sinking to the bed with a sigh.

She perched beside him, stiff in her jeweled skirts, and
regarded him without speaking. His quick hand found the lacing of her bodice;
it came free all at once and somewhat to his surprise. His hand closed over her
bared breast.

She shivered convulsively. He found the fastenings of her
skirts and loosed them one by one, letting them fall where they would, and
wrapped her in a furred robe.

Even that could not take away the chill. He drew her close
and held her.

“I know,” she said through chattering teeth. “I know what it
is. It’s seeing. It’s—knowing, and trying not to know. Mirain, I hoped this
would be the saving of you. I prayed it would be. But—I don’t—know. It’s so
cold.”

“And dark.”

She clutched at him. “You know. You know, too!”

“Yes.” His lips brushed her hair; his fingers kneaded the
knotted muscles of her back. “We have enemies who would rob us of all hope. And
now there are two of us for them to strike.”

“Three,” she whispered.

His arms tightened until she gasped. But, “Three,” he said
steadily. “We may be deadly weak. Or—as the god is my father—we may be stronger
than ever we were alone. The dark would never let us see that. But we can believe
it. We must.”

“I want to.” Her voice was stronger; she was a little
warmer. A very little. “I will. If only—” She pulled back to see his face. “You
can’t make me stay behind.”

His brows knit. “Distance is nothing to power. You can aid
me just as well from here. Better, maybe, with no hardships of travel to—”

She cut him off with a flare of anger. “Don’t be an idiot!
By your own logic, I can be killed as easily here as in Ashan. More easily,
what with fretting for you and pacing in a cage.”

“The child—”

“The child is the merest spark of life, but it won’t go out
for a little riding in the wind. On the contrary. We’ll both thrive on it.”

He laid a light hand on her belly. “You see why I wanted to
wait for you. Now I’ll be doubly afraid.”

“And doubly dangerous to anyone you meet,” she countered
swiftly. “We’ll make you strong, the little one and I. We’ll make you conquer.
Because if you won’t, my dearest lord, we’ll do it ourselves.”

Suddenly he laughed. “Why, you’ve already done it! You
believe now. You’re warm again.”

She was, to burning. She bore him back and down, and pinned
him there. “Do you love me?” she demanded of him.

“Desperately. Madly. Eternally.”

For all his lightness, his mind bore not a grain of mockery.
She searched it, piercing deep through all his open barriers, knowing that he
saw likewise into her own soul.

No one else had ever gone down so far. It was like
nakedness—worse than nakedness, for her body had nothing to hide. Even its
womanhood; had he not possessed all of it already?

Gently, and in the same moment, they withdrew. Mirain
brushed her lips with his fingertip. “Lady,” he said, “you are as wondrous fair
within as without.”

“And you,” she said, “are splendid. Within, and without.”

For once he did not try to deny her.

oOo

Lamplight illumined serenity: the Prince of Han-Gilen
stretched out on a low couch, half in a dream. His princess sat beside him with
a lute, playing softly, singing in her low sweet voice. His hand moved idly
among the freed masses of her hair.

Elian hesitated in the curtained doorway. She had looked on
this scene, or on scenes like it, more often than she could remember. It was a
fact of the world’s existence, like the rising of Avaryan or the running of
Suvien, certain, immutable: that she was the child of two who were lovers. She
knew how rare it was, and how very precious.

But her own new joy made her the more keenly aware of it, an
awareness close to pain. She had this, and oh, it was sweet. Would she have it
when the child within her was grown? Would it even live to be born?

The prince stirred. The song ended; he turned his head a little,
smiling, holding out his hand.

She came to it as a drowning man to a lifeline. There in the
warmth between the two of them, for a little while she rested.

They did not press her with speech. Her mother returned to
the lute, a melody like spring rain, note by limpid note.

Elian stared at her father’s fingers that held her own. A
mage’s fingers, a warrior’s, long and fine but very strong. A thin scar ran
across the knuckles, mark of one of his first battles.

Their family lived long and aged late. But he was no longer
young. Odd uncomfortable thought to have when he was so strong and so sure in
his power: no grey in the fire of his hair, no weakening of the long lean body,
and his daughter newly wedded to the man whom he had made an emperor. He alone,
by the working of his will upon the princes of the Hundred Realms.

Mortality preyed on her mind. It saw Mirain as she had left
him, asleep and smiling, looking hardly more than a boy. He was young by any
reckoning; and before the moons waned again, he could be dead.

She did not even know why her eyes blurred, until her father
brushed a tear from her cheek. “I love him so much,” she said. “And I’m close—so
close—to losing him.”

The lutestrings stilled. “Sometimes,” the princess said, “a
prophecy is its own fulfillment.”

“Which it need not be.” The prince drew his daughter close.
“Elian, if you despair, all that you fear may come to pass. But if you are
strong—we are not gods, daughter. But we can oppose fate. Sometimes we can even
defeat it.”

Elian blinked the tears away, scowling. “I know that. You
taught it to me in the cradle. It’s only . . . he knows it too.
Too well. He doesn’t even care that he might die!”

“That is why he is what he is. The art of kings and of gods:
to venture all on a glimmer of hope, and waste no strength in anguish.”