The Lady of Han-Gilen (8 page)

White pain flung her back. Her cheek burned and throbbed.
Blood spattered her coat.

The cat sat erect, vigilant.

She bared her teeth.

It yawned. Its fangs were white needles.

She crouched, and would not think of pain. Surely those
claws had raked her to the bone. The bleeding would not stop, even for her
hands pressed to it, an awkward knot of leather and flesh.

She struggled to gather her power. It kept scattering,
eluding her grasp, mocking her with a spit of feline laughter.

Grimly she kept her temper. Rage would fell her. Despair
would cast her into her enemy’s hands.

She had it. Not all of it, but perhaps, by the god’s will,
enough. It writhed and fought as if it were no part of her at all but an alien
thing. She set upon it the full force of her will.

Her hands were free. The tent’s door was open, a guard
blank-eyed before it. She stepped toward him.

The cat yowled. She whirled. Claws raked her tender breast;
teeth snapped at her throat. She tore the thing away, flung it with all her
trained strength.

Silence. Stillness. She backed away. Nothing. She spun,
leaped past the motionless guard.

Her power was quiet in her center, obedient at last. She let
it lead her around the edge of the camp. No one saw her. No one would see her.
The forest waited beyond with its promise of safety.

oOo

It came without warning, springing out of the night, swift
and silent and terrible. Its claws stretched to seize her, to rend her. She
flung up all her shields.

The shadows rippled with cold cat-mirth. For she stood full
in the light of a watchfire, clear for any mortal eyes to see.

Someone shouted.

Left was night, and the green gleam of eyes. She darted
right, round the flames.

Voices cried out. Fire seared her face. With the strength of
desperation she dropped her mind-shield, thrusting all her power into the fire.

Her body sprang after it. Flames roared high, engulfing her.
The shadow-beast veered away.

In the instant of confusion, she reached from the very core
of her.

oOo

The fire vanished. Darkness swathed her, the darkness of
earthly night, with a shimmer of stars and a whisper of wind in leaves.

Later she would begin to shake. She had gone—otherwhere. But
where or how far, she could not tell, although the air tasted still of the
woodlands of Ashan.

Her power, unguided, had served her far better than she had
any right to expect. Or perhaps it was luck, or fate. Or the god.

Her knees buckled. Power, strength, she had none. All gone.
All spent. If men or sorcery found her now, she had no defense. “Avaryan,” she
breathed as if he could hear, or would. “Help—protect—”

The night opened its arms. She let it take her.

Light woke her first. She turned her head away from it,
waking pain. With a groan she burrowed into her bed.

And sneezed. Her bed was no bed at all, but deep leafmold;
her face was pillowed in it.

She levered herself up on her hands. Trees loomed all about
her, evergreens with but little growth between them. Their sharp fine needles
matted in her hair, pricked her skin. She worked her knees beneath her and
brushed at the clinging fragments.

At the sight of herself she made a small sound, part pain,
part disgust. She was filthy, spattered with blood, with her garments hanging
open like a harlot’s. Cheek and breast were raked with thin deep scratches,
bleeding no longer, but burning fiercely.

She managed with some fumbling to fasten her coat; enough
remained of buttons and lacings for that. She was ravenously hungry and parched
with thirst. And no water within sight or scent, nor enough of power left to
find any.

The sun slanted through branches almost full before her.
Left and perhaps north the ground sloped downward, broken with stones and
hollows.

Downward, her masters had taught her: water runs downward
always, and many a hillside boasts a stream at its foot.

She was safe, uncaught, unbound. She would not think of the
rest: that she was alone, afoot, and wounded, without water or food or weapon,
and sorely worn from her battle of power; and that she had no knowledge of this
place into which her waning witchery had cast her. For all she knew, she was
but returning the way she had come. It was enough now that she set one foot
before the other, and that if she stumbled she did not often fall.

Once she fell badly. The slope was steep; she rolled,
bruising herself on root and stone, stopped at last by the solid strength of a
tree. For a long while she could not move at all, nor even breathe.

Little by little she gathered herself together. Nothing had
broken. But ah, she hurt. She made herself stand, take one limping step, then
another.

She scented it before she heard it, an awareness far below
the conscious, a blind turning of the body toward its greatest need. Water, a
trickle over moss and stone, pausing in a pool little bigger than her hand.

She collapsed beside it, to drink until she could drink no
more. Every muscle cried then for rest, but she took off her garments one by
one, slowly, like a very old woman, and washed herself a hand’s breadth at a
time. Only when she was clean would she lie back with the sun’s warmth seeping
into her bones.

Food. That, she needed still, and sorely. But the sun lay
like a healer’s hand upon her skin. She let it lull her into a doze.

Wake! It was not a voice, not precisely. Wake and move.
Sleep after power—sleep is deadly. Wake!

Feebly she tried to close it out, to sink back into her
stupor. Yet her body stirred and rose and fumbled into its filthy coverings.
They were stiff; they itched and stank. Her clean skin shrank from them.

Food. Here, green, and a white root, crisp and succulent.
There in an open space, a tangle of brambles with fruit nestled within their
thorns. Beyond, a widening of the stream; a small silver fish, now leaping in
her hand, now cold and sweet on her tongue.

She gagged, but the fish had found her stomach, and she was
herself again, weak and still hungry but clear enough in mind. She found a
further handful of thornfruit, and a clump of greens, root and top. Time enough
later to fashion a snare for the meat she needed.

She drank from the stream and knelt for a time beside it,
laving her face. Her father had warned her often and often. All power had its
price. Used lightly, it asked no more of the body than any other exercise.
Expended to its limit, it drained the body’s strength, could even kill unless
its wielder moved to master it. And even with mastery one needed long sleep
after, and ample food and drink, and a day or more of rest. She had never gone
so far, but she had seen her father after some great feat of wizardry, building
or healing or calling of the wind, borne away like an invalid, bereft of all
strength.

But she had done so little. Unlocking; illusion; shielding;
swift travel from place to unknown place. Yet she had come as close to
dissolution as she ever cared to come.

It was still too soon to remember. She stood wavering. Only
a little farther. Then she would seek shelter and set her traps.

She began to walk beside the water. She felt hale enough but
very weary. A little farther—a little.

Where the stream, wider now, descended between steep banks
and bent out of sight, she stopped. Her knees folded beneath her. Shelter—her
snares—

A shadow crossed the sun. She regarded it without alarm. A
voice spoke above her, strange words, yet she ought to have known them.

The shadow cast a shape. A man in kilt and cloak of shadow
green, a very dark man, black indeed, with a proud arch of nose over a richly
braided beard.

Fear erupted within her, and beneath it despair. She was
caught again. There would be no second escape.

Another man appeared beside the other, dark likewise, and
taller, and perhaps younger; his face was clean-shaven. From where she lay they
seemed very giants. The newcomer stooped, reaching for her.

She fought. But her blows were feeble; the men laughed.

They were handsome men, with very white teeth, and rings of
copper in their ears and about their necks and on their arms. The taller one
said something; she thought it might have been, “Now, brave warrior, be still.
We’ll not be killing you right this moment.”

No. She would die slowly, at the Exile’s hands. She renewed
her struggle, striking with all the strength that was left her.

“Aiee!”
yelped the
man who held her arms. “He’s a regular wildcat. Tangled with one, too, from the
look of him.” Her elbow caught him in the ribs; he grunted. “Now then, you. No
more of that!”

It was less a blow than a cuff, but it half stunned her. She
sagged in his grip. He slung her over his shoulder and strode forth, with his
companion following.

Belatedly, and numbly, she realized that they had been
speaking the language of Ianon.

oOo

With no more transition than a thinning of trees and a
leveling of the hillside, the forest ended. Elian had come by then to herself,
but she rode quiescent on the broad shoulder, only lifting her head to see what
she might see.

She marked the opening of land and sky, and the changing of
the ground from leafmold to long grass and stones; and she heard and scented
and felt the camp on the field. Here were the voices of men and beasts; the
pungency of a cookfire; an ingathering of folk to inspect the arrivals, with
much curiosity and some amusement. “Hoi, Cuthan!” they called. “What luck in
the hunt?”

“Better than I looked for,” her bearer called back.

In the center of the gathering he halted and set Elian down.
Tall though she was for a Gileni woman, as tall as many men, he stood head and
shoulders above her. Yet she faced him bristling, eyes snapping, hands fisted
at her sides.

He grinned. “See,” he said, “a wildcat.”

There were not, after all, so very many people about. A
dozen, maybe. Despite their amusement, they had watchful eyes; their fire was
well shielded, with little scent and no smoke, their seneldi tethered near the
trees. Binding each cloak or glinting on the collar of each coat was a brooch
of gold in the shape of a rayed sun.

Although no one held her, she was surrounded. Several of the
men held bows, loose in their hands but strung, with arrows ready to fit to the
string.

“Well, little redhead,” said the man called Cuthan, “suppose
you tell us who you are.”

“You are Mirain’s men,” she said. Few of them were
northerners. She marked trousered southerners, red and brown, and one Asanian
clad incongruously in northern finery. “Where is he, then? Is he close by? For
if he is, he trespasses. This land belongs to Ashan’s prince.”

“Does it now?” Cuthan gestured, no more than a flicker of
the eyes. The scouts began with seeming casualness to disperse, but several
stayed close by. He laid a hand on Elian’s shoulder, guiding her toward the
fire, seating her there.

His knife glittered as he drew it. She tensed. He barely
glanced at her, cutting a collop from the haunch that roasted over the flames,
bringing it to her.

He did not lend her the knife to cut it. She held it
gingerly, for it was searing hot, and nibbled with care.

Cuthan waited, patient. When the meat was gone, he held out
a cup. She sniffed it. Water. Gratefully she drank.

A second man sat on his heels beside Cuthan: the Asanian. In
that company he seemed almost a dwarf, a smooth sleek ageless man with bitter
eyes. They took in Elian with neither favor nor trust. “Gileni,” he said in
thickly accented Ianyn. “Born liar.”

“Maybe not,” said Cuthan.

“Maybe so,” the Asanian said. “Test it. He spoke clearly
enough. This is Ashan; its prince is no more a fool than our king. He would
have engaged spies.”

“Redheaded Gileni spies?”

“Why not? Red mane, witch-power, they say in the south.”

Cuthan frowned. “I’ll question him. That’s fair enough. But
I’m not sure—”

“If I were spying,” said Elian, “you would never have caught
me. I was looking for your army. I want to fight for your king.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Elian bit her tongue. Cuthan was amused, but not entirely.
She met his eyes. “Your . . . friend sees this much of the
truth. I am from Han-Gilen. I heard of the Sunborn. I wanted to be free. I
wanted to fight. I thought that if I joined with him I would have both. I ran
away from home.”

Cuthan’s grin came back. He believed that.

She found an answering grin. “My mother would never have let
me go. At night I ran away.”

“You came alone? Unarmed? Afoot?”

“Alone, yes. The rest I—I lost. Back yonder. Have you heard
of the woman called the Exile?”

The men within hearing tensed. Cuthan leaned forward. The
Asanian’s look was almost a look of triumph.

Her fist clenched at her belt where her sword had hung. “She
camps a day’s journey south, maybe more. She has men with her. They caught me
and killed my mare and took all I had.”

The Asanian’s full lip curled. “They let you go.”

She bared her teeth at him. “No. Not the likes of me. Red
mane, witch-power. She knows that as well as you. But not well enough.”

“No one escapes from that demon incarnate.”

“One does if she happens to turn her mind elsewhere. She is
not, yet, omniscient.”

“Southern lies.”

“Plain truth.” Elian faced Cuthan. “Take me to the king and
let him judge.”

The Asanian leaped to his feet. “The Exile is Gileni. Red
Gileni, witch and sorceress. What better weapon against my lord than one of her
kin? Young and innocent to look at, but shaped for murder, as she murdered the
god’s bride.”

“She is traitor and outcast, abhorred by all her kin.” Elian
flung back her tangled hair. “Your king will know. Take me to him.”