The Lady of Han-Gilen (6 page)

Her clothes lay as she remembered, her weapons beside them,
and close to her hand a covered bowl. In it lay bread, still faintly warm from
the baking, and a bit of hard yellow cheese.

She found that she was hungry. She ate; found a bucket
filled with clean water to wash in; dressed and combed her hair and pulled on
her cap, and ventured into the light. She felt better than she had since she
left Han-Gilen; and the day matched it, a clear day of early summer, warm and
bright and wild with birdsong.

The mare seemed to have sworn friendship with her odd
penmates, sharing with them a mound of fresh-cut grass. For her mistress she
had a glance and a flick of one ear, but no more.

She was clean and well brushed, her mane and the tassel of
her tail combed like silk. After a moment Elian left her, seeking the shrine.

Ani was there, sweeping the worn stone floor, brisk as any
goodwife in her house. Like the mare, she greeted Elian with a glance, but she
added, “Wait a bit for me.”

The temple was oddly peaceful even in the midst of its
cleaning. Elian sat on the altar step and watched the priestess, remembering
the great temple in Han-Gilen. This place could barely have encompassed one of
its lesser altars, let alone the high one with its armies of priests and
priestesses devoted entirely to its tending.

Someone had brought a garland of flowers to lay beside the
Sun-fire. It was fresh still, with a sweet scent: a lovers’ garland, seeking
the god’s favor for two who were soon to wed.

Elian set her teeth. Let them have each other. She had her
oath and her flight.

“Maybe I should become a priestess.”

She did not know that she had spoken aloud until Ani said,
“No. That, you were never made to be.”

“How can you know?” demanded Elian.

The woman set her broom tidily in its niche behind the
altar. “If the god had wanted you, he would have called you.”

“Maybe he has.”

Ani filled the nightlamp with oil from a jar and trimmed its
wick carefully, without haste. “Not to that, Lady of Han-Gilen.” Elian was
silent, struck dumb. “No; he has another task for you. Are you strong enough to
bear his burden?”

“I am not returning to my father. I am riding north. A geas
binds me. You cannot stop me.”

“Should I want to?” The priestess seemed honestly surprised.

“You are a witch.”

Ani considered that. “Maybe,” she conceded, “I am. When I
was a novice they said I might make a saint, if I didn’t go over to the
darkness first. I know I’m far from saintly, but I like to think I’ve evaded
the other as well. So too should you.” Her eyes changed. Though no less calm,
they were harder, sterner. “It lays its snares for you. Walk carefully, child.”

“I try to.” Elian made no effort to keep the sullenness out
of her voice.

“And well you might. There is more than the Sun’s son
waiting across your path.”

In spite of herself Elian shivered. “The—the goddess?”

The priestess brushed the altar with her fingertips, as if
to gain its protection. “Not she. Not yet. But one who serves her and grows
strong in her service. One who hates in love’s name, and calls envy obedience,
and binds her soul to an outworn law. Guard yourself against her.”

Against her will, Elian saw again what she had seen in the
glade by the pool: the exile who was of her own blood. But what danger could
dwell in the woman, outlaw that she was, without eyes to see?

“Much,” Ani said, “with the goddess beside her, and maybe
other, more earthly allies.”

“But who—”

“Asanion. Any prince in the Hundred Realms. The north.”

“Not Mirain. Mirain would never—”

“People aren’t likely to know that. And the goddess is
strong among the tribes.”

“No. He would never allow it. But Asanion—Asanion serves
itself. If it could conquer us all . . .”

Ziad-Ilarios’ face gleamed ivory-pale behind her eyes. She
had dealt his pride a crippling blow. If another alliance offered itself, a
means to defeat Mirain, even if by treachery, would he not take it? Or if not
he, then surely his father, the one they called the Spider Emperor, who spun
his webs to trap all not yet bound to his empire.

Her father’s peace was hard won through a long and bitter
war. Mirain had fought in it, been knighted in it, he and Halenan together.
Would he remember that? Or would his hordes roll over the Hundred Realms to
clash with those of Asanion, crushing the princedoms between them?

She covered her face with her hands. But that only
strengthened the vision. Han-Gilen’s banner, flameflower burning on shadow
green; Asanion’s imperial gold; and one both strange and familiar, scarlet
field, golden sun.

With the ease of a dream they shimmered and melted,
revealing faces. Hal and her father side by side, more alike than she had ever
thought they could be, and Ziad-Ilarios with an old man who held a mask of gold
before his face, and the exile with her terrible blind eyes. But the sun
remained and seemed to blaze up like Avaryan itself, surrounding her,
overwhelming her, bringing blessed blindness.

Ani’s voice was strong and quiet in her ear. “Go where you
will to go. The god will guide you.”

Away from it all.
Away
.

She lowered her hands. They were shaking; she made them be
still. Ani looked down at her without either awe or pity. “I . . .
I will go,” she said. “For your welcome, for your help—”

“Give your thanks to the god. I’ll saddle the mare for you.”

Ani left her there alone and shaking. When she rose, she was
steady; the sick fear had faded. She could make the proper obeisance, and walk
away with her chin up and her feet firm.

Ani held the mare’s bridle. On impulse Elian embraced her.
She was strong, calm and calming, but warm with a human warmth; she returned
the clasp freely. Neither spoke.

Elian mounted. She raised her hand in farewell, and rode out
on the northward road.

Sent out from Iban by daylight, Elian rode under the sun,
one of many passers through the north of the Hundred Realms. By night she
sheltered in wayside shrines or in farmholders’ byres, or, once and boldly, in
an inn in Ebros.

Darkness and rain and the rumor of highwaymen had driven her
there, with some touch of wildness that tempted her to test her disguise in
close company. None but Ani seemed to have divined the truth; to all she met,
she was the youth she looked to be, with her cap pulled rakishly low over her
eyes.

There was a goodly crowd in the inn. A party of pilgrims
journeying south to Han-Gilen; a merchant with his armed company coming back
from Asanion; sundry folk from the town, high and low, some with painted,
bare-breasted women.

Elian kept to herself in a comer, nursing a mug of ale. In
the steaming heat she had yielded at last to discomfort and taken off her cap.

The coppery gleam of her hair, even in the dimness, drew not
a few eyes; but there were men in the merchant’s party with manes scarcely less
remarkable, tawny or straw-pale. The eyes slid away, intent on the drink or the
women or the flow of speech about the common room.

An-Sh’Endor
. His
name was everywhere. He was riding south, they said. He had taken Cuvien
without a struggle, received the homage of its chieftains and held a festival
for his army. Now he looked toward Ashan. But no, tribes to the west were
rising; he would deal with them first, and turn then on Asanion.

“Now there is one fine fighter,” said a man almost dark
enough to be a northerner, a pilgrim’s robe straining across his massive chest.
“Have you heard how he took the castle of Ordian? It was impregnable, everyone
said. Food and water enough for two years’ siege, and no way up to it but under
its gate, with the whole tribe defending it from above. So what does he do?
Lines up his army just out of the gate’s reach, makes all the motions of
settling in for a siege—and sends a company round the back up a road a mountain
goat would shrink from, with himself in the lead. So here’s the tribe, laughing
at the army and daring it to come closer, and shooting offal at a man in the
king’s armor; then the joke turns on them. A round hundred bows aimed at them
from behind, and a cocky young fellow telling them they’d better surrender
before he feeds them to his army.”

One of the merchant’s guards laughed, short and scornful.
“Tribesmen’s tales,” he said in a thick western accent. “He has never met a
proper army, nor faced Asanian steel.”

“That lad is afraid of nothing,” the first man said. “He’ll
go where no one else will go, and take his army with him.”

“So?” someone asked. “Have you seen him?”

“Seen him? I’ve fought with him. That was before I saw the
light: he was a fosterling in Han-Gilen and I was one of the prince’s hired
swords. Fourteen summers old, he was, and the prince knighted him in battle,
with the whole army yelling his name.”

The Asanian curled his lip. “If he ever knew the ways of
civilized men, he has left them far behind him. He is a mountain bandit, and he
will die one.”

“Not so!” cried a new voice. It was a very young one, almost
painfully sweet. Elian, seeking its source, found a thin dark boy in the grey
robe of a sacred singer, with his harp at his back and his eyes burning in his
narrow Ashani face. “Oh, not so! He is the holy one, the god-king. He comes to
claim his inheritance.”

“What inheritance?” demanded a bejeweled young fellow, a
local lordling by his accent, which strove to be cultivated. “He had some claim
to Ianon, or so they say: his mother was its king’s bastard. He murdered the
king, by poison I hear, and killed the king’s son in an ambush.”

The pilgrim’s voice boomed from end to end of the crowded
room. “Begging your pardon, young sir, but that’s a barefaced lie. The Sunborn’s
mother was heir of Ianon in her own right, being the king’s daughter by his
queen, who was an Asanian princess.” His eye lingered for a moment on the
westerner. “The old king died, true enough, and maybe poison speeded it, but it
wasn’t my lord who sweetened his wine. He had a son who really was a bastard,
who had a hand in his killing, and who tried to claim the throne. The Sunborn
fought the pretender man to man, barehanded. That was a fight to sing songs of!
My lord is a great warrior and a great king, but he’s not what you’d call a big
man; and he was still only half grown. His uncle was a giant even for a Ianyn,
and the greatest champion in the north of the world. But they fought, and my
lord won, full and fair.”

“And the king came forth and took his throne, and the gods
bowed down before him.” The singer’s eyes shone; his voice thrummed like the
strings of his own harp.

“If he is so divine a wonder,” inquired the Asanian, “why
does he march armed across the north? He need but raise his hand to bring the
world to his feet.” He yawned with feline delicacy. “The boy is mad. Power-mad.
He will seize what he may seize, destroy what he may destroy, and set his foot
upon the necks of kings. Until Asanion rises to crush him.”

The singer, if dream-mad, was obstinate. “He brings
Avaryan’s peace to the world. But men cling to their old darknesses. Them he
must conquer by force of arms, since no other force do they understand. In the
end they shall all be his. Even Asanion, with its thousand demons. Its emperor
shall bow down to the Lord of the Sun.”

“Moonshine,” drawled the westerner.

The boy looked ready to do battle for his dreams. But the
pilgrim laughed, quelling them both. “Me, I walk down the middle. Yon’s the
best general this old world’s seen in a long age. If he chases after a god and
a dream, what’s that to me? The fighting’s good, the loot’s better, and the
man’s well worth the service.”

There was a brief silence, the pause due a subject well
interred. Thereafter the talk shredded and scattered, blurring in a haze of
wine.

Elian yawned and thought of bed. But a chance word froze her
where she sat. “—the Exile.”

She could not see who spoke, but it was a new voice, and
close. “Yes, Kiyali, the Exile: that’s what they’re calling her. Half the
bandits on the roads are holding up travelers in her name.”

“And the other half swear by the Sunborn,” put in another
man. “If you ask me, they’re one and the same, and that’s nobody at all, just a
good way to shake gold out of locked purses. You know what they do in outland
villages? Name a name, Outcast or Sunborn, and tell the folk to pay up and the
local bandits will protect them.”

“Or flatten them if they refuse. But the Sunborn exists.
Maybe the other does too. I’ve heard tell she’s a great sorceress; she rules in
the woods, no one knows where, and she’s as rich as an emperor. She lives on
blood and fear, and she sleeps on gold.”

The second man laughed. “What is she, then? A dragon?”

“A woman. That’s monster enough, all the gods know. My
youngest wife, now—”

They spoke no more of exiles or of Sunborn kings, although
Elian strained all her senses to hear them. At last she rose. She was weary and
her mood had darkened; the sour ale sat ill beneath her breastbone. She made
her way through the crowd, seeking the stair to the sleeping room and a night
of formless dreams.

oOo

Beyond Ebros the land turned wild, towns and villages
growing fewer, hill and forest rising toward the northern mountains. The rumors
here were dark, tales of marauders on the roads, villages sacked and burned,
forces moving under captains who swore allegiance to no lord, but perhaps to a
young barbarian king. There was even a wild tale that Mirain had sworn alliance
with the reivers of the roads to open the way before him into the Hundred
Realms.

Elian began to meet with people fleeing south like birds
before a storm. Pilgrims, most called themselves, or travelers, but none faced
northward. Those who went north went for need, and they went armed.