The Lady of Han-Gilen (31 page)

“Then a queen’s art—a woman’s, at least—must be to feel the
anguish for him. Especially if she’s cursed with the sight.”

They gave her no pity, and less compassion than she had
looked for. “Yes,” her mother said, “there is balance in all things. The king
dares; the queen bears. And stands ready to be his prop and his shield.”

“An ill one I make,” muttered Elian. “He still calls me
child
and
little sister
. And I am.”

“And you are not,” the prince said.

She took the lute from her mother’s lap, plucked a formless
tune. Her fingers were stiff, out of practice. “Everyone is so strong and so
sure, so certain that he has the right to work his will on the world. I was;
when I made Mirain take me in my good time, and not in his . . .
I was. I’ll never forget it. But I’m no longer—I don’t know—” Her voice was
breaking. She stopped, mended it. “Nothing will keep him here, short of the
god’s own bonds. Not when he knows the danger. It’s a madness in him. Part of
his pride. He’s been challenged; he can’t retreat. He won’t. Not even for me.”

Her fingers stumbled, steadied. She lowered her head over
the lute, aware of their eyes, concentrating very hard on the halting music.

No longer quite so halting. She was remembering her skill.

A touch like wind brushed her hair. Her father’s hand, her
mother’s kiss.

With a sudden, convulsive movement she flung the lute away.
Her face was tight, her throat sore. “I’m going to be strong. I’ll be his
strength when all of his is gone. And I’ll save him. I’ll give him life. He’ll
never die while I live to defend him.”

The days of the wedding had seen a break in the cold, a
melting of the snow, a baring of startlingly bright green. Here on winter’s
threshold, spring made a brief and precarious entry.

The air was soft even in the early morning, the sun rising
in mist, casting a silvered light on armor and spearpoints. A hundred of
Mirain’s best gathered in the paved square before the palace: the chosen of his
Chosen; picked men of the Green Company of Han-Gilen, honor guard of the
prince-heir and under his command; and the ten men and women of the Queen’s
Guard. They were a fine brave sight in the morning, raising a shout as their king
came forth with his foster brother and his queen.

Others of the army who stood by watched with envy. Those who
had not already returned to guard their own realms, or who would not be
returning in due time, would garrison Han-Gilen under the regency of the
prince. It was a proud duty, but none so proud as this, to ride with that small
striking-force into Ashan.

“Small,” Mirain had said, “for speed, and for a message. I
will ride swiftly, I will settle this quarrel, I will return. I will not
dignify it with the full strength of my empire.” To which he had added to the
Halenani alone, “If a hundred picked troops cannot end this treachery, twenty
thousand will not. And will cost me a kingdom’s wealth besides in stores and in
time.”

He seemed fresh and joyous now in scarlet and gold. His
Chosen laughed and whooped; one called out, “Aiee, Sunborn! Married life
becomes you.”

Elian swung into Ilhari’s saddle in a shimmer of armor, a
swirl of green cloak. “So it should,” she called back, “when it’s me he’s
married to.”

They roared at that, all of them, and Ilhari reared and
belled.

Yes
, thought Elian
fiercely, laugh.
Laugh at death, and
watch her shrivel!
She knew she was fey; it was blackly wonderful.

The Mad One whirled close to her. Mirain had something in
his hands. Copper-gold helmet, proud green plume, and circling it a golden
coronet. Her old bronze helmet he tossed away, setting the new and royal one on
her head, smiling his brilliant smile.

“Now we match,” he said. He kissed her, to loud and
prolonged applause, and spun his stallion away again, gathering the company.

oOo

They left the white city by the north road, as they had
come in; as Elian had gone—was it only half a year past? The road was mud and
melting snow, the air was luminous; the men sang as they rode. Elian’s women
sang the descant; one, burly and black-browed as many a man, had a voice like
shaken silver. Elian raised her own to match it, and Ilhari danced, weaving
through the ranks, out to the fore and the Mad One’s side.

The weather held. And held, through Iban, through Kurion,
through Sarios and Baian and Shaiar. Sun like spring, moons and stars in a
merciful sky.

They camped in comfort as often as they lodged with the
highborn, finding the former to be wiser. A lord, faced with An-Sh’Endor himself,
would flutter and scurry; assured that the army would take care of itself,
still he would insist that the king and the queen accept his full hospitality.

And inevitably, once morning came, he would beg the high
ones to linger for the merest moment, an hour only; there was a case, a
judgment, a quarrel which only the Sunborn’s wisdom could resolve. And there
would go a morning, a noon, a full day of marching time without a furlong’s
advance toward Ashan; and another night to endure his lordship’s entertainment.
By then the cream of the local talent would have gathered, and all the gentry
who could crowd themselves into the hall, for a feast that would leave the
countryside to face a lean and hungry winter.

The camps were best. A tent no bigger than a trooper’s, with
a cot in it and a stool and one small chest for two; field rations and
firelight, and music better than anything in hall.

This was Mirain’s element. Even as a boy he had fretted
within walls; the man, who had learned to be a king, still took to the march
and the camp like a hawk to the air. Elian had not even known how cramped he
was until she saw him free.

At first she dreaded the nights and the dreams they would
bring. But the power, having wielded her, lay now at rest; and the Exile seemed
to have given up the battle, or else to have drawn back beyond the edge of
perception.

For whole days Elian even forgot to what she rode. The
forgetting turned the long advance into a wedding journey.

As for the nights . . .

“So it’s true,” she said in the midst of one, fitting her
body to Mirain’s on the narrow bed, “the best lovers are . . .
small men.”

“
Small?”
It came
from the depths of his chest.

“Well, middling,” she conceded wickedly, twining her legs
with his. “How nicely we fit. If you were as big as Cuthan, or even Hal, we’d
never get both of us into this bed.”

“Have you been proving it?”

Her laughter lost itself in his hair.

Deftly, and with no effort at all, he tossed her out of bed.
She grunted in surprise, and a little in pain. Even carpeted, the ground was
hard.

He stood over her with fists on hips, brows knit over the
arch of his nose. Her mirth flooded through the tent. “Oh, you are a fine
figure of a man!”

“A small man.”

“A very well endowed, just tall enough, perfect, wonderful—”

“Don’t strain your ingenuity,” he said dryly.

She hooked his ankles and overset him, perching on his
chest. “— splendid, beautiful, royal husband,” she finished triumphantly.

He raised a brow. After a moment the other went up to join
it. He weighed her breast in his hand. “They’re growing,” he said. “You’re
growing all over.”

She looked down at herself in real dismay. “I am not!” she
cried. “I won’t even start to show for—I wouldn’t even know, if I weren’t—”

His eyes mocked her. She pulled his hair until he yelped; and
they rolled on the carpets in battle that was all love.

The tent wall brought them up short. Elian tossed back her
hair, breathing hard. “The whole camp can hear us,” she said.

“And who began it?” He ran his fingers down her side. “In
Ianon the kingdom lives by the manhood of its king. I caused my people no end
of worry, so few lovers as I took, and so seldom. And not a single bastard to
prove my strength.”

“I should hope not!”

He laughed softly. “Lady, you have fire enough for three.
For you, for me, and for him.” His hand rested on her belly. It was as flat and
firm as ever, the life within waxing invisibly yet surely. “When he grows big
enough to see, he’ll have to have a name.”

“What if he’s a she?”

“Is he?”

Elian looked at his hand, suddenly finding it fascinating.
And a little, a very little, frightening: as any miracle can frighten, for its
simple strangeness. She shook herself. “It’s . . . he. Maybe. Or
she. Does it matter?”

“It’s ours. Our firstborn. My heir.”

“Even if it’s a daughter?”

He hesitated only a fraction. “Even then.”

Her joy leaped, startling a grin out of him. She laughed and
kissed the comer of his mouth. “It will be dark like you.”

“And red-haired like you.”

“With your Ianyn nose.”

“Ah, poor child. And your Halenani height, and your beauty,
and a Sun in his hand. Or hers.”

“Imagine,” she said softly. “We made this, you and I. Son or
daughter, it will be a child even the god can be proud of.”

“It will be.” Mirain kissed the place where his hand had
been lying. “Truly and certainly, it will be.”

oOo

On the Marches of Ebros at last the weather broke, and
with a vengeance. They waded into Ashan through torrents of icy rain, in a wind
that howled straight out of the north.

Even in armor, even in oiled leather, the riders were wet to
the skin. Their mounts plodded with heads down, ears plastered back. The Mad
One was vicious in misery; not even Ilhari dared to come within reach of his
heels.

Where the rain turned to sleet, the hills turned to
mountains: the steep cruel ridges of Ashan. There the northerners might have
burst into song, for this was a shadow of their own country; but even they
trudged and cursed, forced afoot by the icy paths.

The southerners were long since emptied of oaths. Elian,
struggling up and down the line, heard little more than harsh breathing, and
the clatter and slide of hooves on ice, and the wailing of the wind.

Wrapped in the leather coat of a trooper, with a scarf wound
around her head, she was blessedly anonymous; men who would never accept aid
from a woman, and least of all from their queen, availed themselves willingly
enough of her steadying hand. Some, young Gileni dandies, suffered cruelly in
their handsome boots, narrow and high of heel as those were, and never meant
for walking, let alone scrambling over mountain passes in the sleet.

Mirain’s tribesmen sneered at them, making no secret of
their scorn. “Fancy-boy have hurtings in his little feet?” they sang in mincing
voices. “Oh, be careful, sweetling; don’t tear your pretty trousers.” One, with
the aid of liberal swallows from his belt flask, mocked the Gileni’s painful
gait with much swaying of his hips and a comical display of not quite losing
his balance.

Elian’s temper flared. She sprang; and as he laughed,
thinking her one of the sufferers, she kicked his feet from under him. He
toppled like a tree.

She set her foot on his throat, with the merest hint of
pressure. “One more move,” she said, her voice hoarse with damp, “only one
more, and I’ll pitch you into the next valley.”

He gasped and gaped. With a snort of disgust she hauled him
up. “Here. You dance so lightly over these mountains; lend the rest of us a
hand.”

Ilhari appeared out of the storm to snap wicked teeth in his
face. It went slack; he dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to Elian’s
sodden boot. A moment later, with conspicuous enthusiasm if with little grace,
he offered his shoulder to a stumbling Gileni.

A shout rang out ahead. Elian clawed the ice from her eyelids
and strained to see.

The mare nudged her. The way was not too hard for the Mad
One’s daughter, whatever the foolish two-legs might think.

Elian peeled away the saddle’s covering and swung astride.
Ilhari strode forth, sure-footed as a cat, and proud with it. Even half-frozen
as she was, Elian managed to smile.

The vanguard had halted above, just below the summit of the
pass. But its numbers had doubled; beside the dripping Sun-banner flapped one
of water-darkened yellow, its staff wound with the grey streamers of a
messenger.

Mirain was on the ground under a canopy of leather, a tent
upheld by a handful of his Chosen. Halenan shared the shelter with him, and a
stranger, a man of middle years with a cough that woke Elian’s anger. What
right had anyone, even a prince, to send a man so ill on an errand so grueling,
in such a storm?

His glance caught her as she slid between the king and the
prince, but he did not break off his speech. It was hoarse and painful yet
clear enough. “Yes, sire, my lord prince has left Han-Ashan, hoping by his living
presence to restrain the combatants. He left word that, should you deign to
come to his aid, I should ride to meet you, and direct you to him.”

“Where is he now?” asked Halenan.

“He rode first to sojourn with his kin in Asan-Sheian,
though I fear that by this time his son will have led the young bloods to
attack Eridan. I am bidden to conduct you to Sheian, and thence, if my lord is
gone, to Eridan.”

The prince’s glance met Elian’s.
He’s telling the truth
, she said in her mind.
Or the truth as he’s been allowed to see it
. She addressed the messenger
herself, a little sharply. “How far is Sheian from here?”

She watched his courteous efforts to place her, muffled as
she was, her voice gone sexless with the cold. But, though dizzy with fever, he
was no fool. He could guess who would be here between these two men, and speaking
as freely as they. “Two days’ ride in good weather,” he answered her, “my lady.
Longer in this; but there is a castle in the valley yonder, and its lord is
loyal to my prince. He begs you to accept his hospitality.”