The Lady of Han-Gilen (9 page)

Cuthan shifted. Shamelessly she followed his thoughts. He
was commander here, but he was young, and a better judge of land than of men.
An obvious spy, a grown man prowling where he ought not to be, that was easy
enough to judge. But this lordly youth, pretty as a girl, found fainting by the
waterside: was he truly what he seemed to be, or was he indeed a servant of the
enemy?

“The king,” said Elian. “He can judge.”

“He can,” Cuthan said slowly. “Maybe he’d better. But first
we’ll see to those scratches. They look nasty.”

“They should. The witch’s familiar gave them to me.” Elian
held out her hands. “Take me now. The sooner I see the king, the better.”

“Not with your face like that,” said Cuthan, stubborn. “Even
if I could allow it, the king would have my hide.”

She sighed and submitted. He himself cleaned her cheek and
salved it with numbroot, clicking his tongue the while, mourning her poor
marred beauty.

His hands were light and skilled. Elian found herself
smiling at him, crookedly, numbed as she was.

“Bind him,” snapped the Asanian, who had never taken his
eyes from them. “Or should I? You’re half in love with him already.”

Cuthan seemed unoffended. “No need of that. I’m taking him
where he wants to go.”

“And if he knifes you in the back?”

“I’ll chance it.”

Beneath Cuthan’s lightness lay steel. The Asanian subsided
with the swiftness of wisdom.

oOo

Elian was honored with trust. She had a senel to herself,
no cord to bind her and no leadrein to bind her mount, and Cuthan’s
guardianship was light to invisibility. He rode beside her or ahead of her,
sometimes silent, more often singing. His voice was very pleasant to hear.

In one of his silences she asked him, “Is it common for a
captain of scouts to proclaim his presence to the whole realm?”

“If the realm is his king’s own,” answered Cuthan, “yes.”

Elian’s breath shortened. She had kept herself from
thinking. That she was almost there. In front of Mirain. Telling him why she
had come.

I told you that I would.

I keep my promises.

I want to fight for you.

Or most shameful, and closest to the truth: There was a man,
I was as much as commanded to marry him, I could have done it in all gladness,
and for the sheer terror of it I ran away.

As far as she could, as far into her childhood as she might.
Running to Mirain as she had then, to be held and rocked and maybe chided a
little, maybe more than a little, but always granted his indulgence.

Truth. It burned. I promised. My first promise. I would
marry you, or I would marry no one at all.

And
no one
could
so easily, so appallingly easily, have become
someone
, a face carved in ivory, lamplight in golden eyes.

She fixed her stare on Cuthan, for distraction, for
exorcism. He was singing again. She made herself think of nothing but his song.

oOo

In spite of all the tales, the army of the Sunborn was no
barbarian horde. Each nation and tribe and mercenary company had its place in
the encampment, even to the camp followers: merchants and artisans, women and
boys, singers and dancers and talespinners. It was like a city set on the moor,
a city with order and discipline under the rule of a strong king.

Elian almost turned at the edge of it and bolted southward.
It was not good sense that held her. Far from it. Good sense would have kept
her in Han-Gilen and wedded her to the Asanian prince.

Pride brought her into the camp, and temper steadied her
within. The king would not oblige her by waiting docilely in his tent. Everyone
knew where he was, and everyone named a different place. Cuthan seemed content,
even pleased, to play the hunter; and why not? He was a captain of scouts.

“Is this common?” Elian demanded after the fourth guide had
led them to a space full of men and arms and seneldi but empty of the king.

Cuthan had the effrontery to laugh. “He’s not easy to keep
up with, is my lord.” He said it lightly, but the respect behind it came close
to worship. “Come now. I know where he may be.”

This city, like any other, had its market: wide and varied
enough to rouse even Elian’s respect. She found herself loitering by a stall
spilling over with gaudy silks, stretched into a trot to catch Cuthan.

She had matched his grin before she thought. She flushed;
her grin twisted into a scowl. He laughed and led her deeper into the maze of
tents and stalls and booths.

Its heart was not its center. A stall with a reek of wine
about it; a clamor of men and the odd shriek of a woman’s laughter; someone
singing, the clatter of a drum, the sudden sweetness of a flute.

The faces were all northern faces, like a gathering of black
eagles. Elian saw more gold on one man than a whole band of women would flaunt
in Han-Gilen. And beneath it, more bare skin than she had ever seen in one
place.

One of the women wore nothing but ornaments. Her nipples
were gilded. Elian blushed and looked away.

At, it chanced, one of the more bedizened of the men. He was
tall and he was handsome even among these tall handsome people, beautiful
indeed, so that Elian’s eye caught and lingered. He lounged on the bench like
some long-limbed hunting cat, awkwardness transmuted into grace, and although
he wore the full, barbaric, copper-clashing finery of his people, he wore it as
easily as he wore his skin; one could not envision him without it.

He met her gaze with no expression that she could read, not
staring as others did at her bright hair and her torn face, simply returning
look for look. He was young, perhaps. Under the beard and the baubles it was
hard to tell. His skin was smooth, his face unlined; but his eyes were ancient.
Or newborn.

He was not a mage. He was not born to magic, nor trained to
it. Yet there was power in him, on him, part of him. He would wield it as he
breathed, because he could do no other. Elian had never seen anything like him.

She looked away from him. Clamor burst upon her.

Only he had eyes for her. Everyone else was fixed on someone
whom she could not see, a shadow in shadow, with a voice that came suddenly
clear. A black-velvet voice, sweet as the honey of the southlands, saying words
that mattered too little for remembrance.

A question. The answer was shrill beside it, and harsh,
thick with outland consonants.

Elian’s feet took her out of the sunlight. New eyes found
her, widened. She took no notice.

The dark sweet voice rippled into laughter. Its bearer rose
out of the tall man’s shadow, leaning on the glittering shoulder, glittering
himself, white teeth flashing in the face she knew best of any in the world.

He had always called it ugly. It had never sunk to prettiness;
it was too irregular to be handsome. All Ianon was in that bladed curve of
nose, in those cheekbones carved fierce and high, in those brows set level over
the deep eyes.

Why, she thought. He had hardly changed at all.

But ah, he had.

He was neither the dwarf nor the giant of his legend. He
stood a little taller than she, middling for a man in Han-Gilen. His hair
submitted no more tamely than ever to its priestly braid; his body was slender
still, a swordsman’s body or a dancer’s, graceful even at rest.

The difference was not in his eyes. God’s eyes; no one had
ever found it easy to meet them. Nor was it his face. All northern faces were
made for arrogance. Nor was it even that he had forsaken the good plain clothes
of the south for the gaudy near-nakedness of the north, so that the torque of
his father’s priesthood seemed lost amid the extravagance of copper and gold.

No; the change ran deeper than that. She had bidden farewell
to a boy, her brother. This was a man and a king.

He drained his cup, still leaning lightly on his companion.
Their eyes met for an instant as he lowered the cup; a spark leaped in the
meeting.

It was nothing as feeble as passion, nothing as shallow as
love. As one’s self would meet one’s self; as brother to soul’s brother.

Elian knew then who the tall man must be. Vadin alVadin,
Lord of Asan-Geitan in the kingdom of Ianon. He, next to Mirain himself, was
the heart of the legend that was An-Sh’Endor.

Commanded by the old King of Ianon to serve an upstart,
southern-born prince, he had obeyed with utmost reluctance. Reluctantly he had
seen the prince raised to king, and continued as squire and unwilling
confidant; and he had died for his master, taking the assassin’s spear that had
been meant for Mirain.

But Mirain had brought him back, and he had discovered that
his reluctance was lost, and that he loved his outland king. They had sworn the
oath of brothers-in-blood; and more, people said, but that, no one had ever
proved.

No one needed to prove it. To the eyes of power they were like
the halves of a single shining creature.

Elian did not understand why her heart constricted. It was
not fear of the visible and palpable power that dwelt in the man. She was mageborn
herself, and stronger than he would ever be. And if they were sworn brothers,
if somewhere among the long campaigns they had been lovers, what could it
matter to her?

It could matter. He stood where she had sworn to stand. He
had what she had come to take.

Mirain was laughing again, refusing a new cup of wine. “No,
no, I’ve had my fill already, and I’ve a pack of lords clamoring for their
king. What will they say if I reel in like a drunken soldier?”

“You?” someone called out. “Drunken? Never!”

“Ah,” he said, wicked. “I’ll tell you a secret, Bredan: I
can’t hold my wine at all. I slip it to my brother.”

They roared at that, but they let him go. He seemed not to
see the hands that reached as he passed, touching him as by accident, or
falling short; loving him.

Elian knew the precise instant when he saw her. He checked,
the merest hesitation. His face betrayed nothing. He passed her without a
glance, striding into the sunlight.

Someone touched her. She wheeled, hand to hilt. Cuthan
beckoned. And when she did not move, he set his hand on her shoulder, light but
inescapable.

oOo

Beyond the wine stall was a space like an alleyway, a
joining of blank walls, deserted. Mirain stood there alone.

In the glare of the Sun his father, he was no one she knew.
God’s son, conqueror, Ianyn king. His eyes were level upon her, and cold, and
still.

His hand rose, gestured. Sun-gold blinded her.

Cuthan was gone. Where he had been was the coldness of
absence, and curiosity rigidly restrained, and a flicker of fear for her,
melting like a mist in the sun.

She stood mute, with her chin at its most defiant angle. Let
this stranger cast her out. Let him even kill her. She had gone too far to
care.

Mirain’s head tilted. His lips quirked, the old
not-quite-smile. “Well?” he asked her. The Gileni word. In a tone she knew so
well that the hearing of it was like pain.

“Well?” she countered, angry at nothing and everything. “Now
you can dispose of me. Majesty.”

“So I might,” he agreed. Damn him. He folded his arms,
looked her up and down. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

She clenched her jaw before it could drop. “How in the
hells—”

He seemed not to have heard. “You took your time about it. I
was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten. You were very young when you swore
on my hand that you would follow me to Ianon.”

“I thought
you
had
forgotten,” she said. “With so much to think of—a world to conquer—”

His hand silenced her. She stood, awkward, on the edge
between anger and flight. His eyes had stilled again.

He held out his hands.

She stared at them.

He smiled. His eyes were dancing.

She leaped, laughing, and spun with him in a long,
breathless, delighted embrace.

At length and as one they stepped apart. Again Mirain looked
at her, and now he was not cold at all. “You’ve grown,” he said.

“So have you.”

“The whole half of a handspan,” he said a little wryly. He
ran a lock of her hair between his fingers. “Redder than ever. And your
temper?”

“Worse than ever.”

“Impossible.” She bared her teeth at him; he grinned,
looking for a moment no older than she.

“How is Foster-father? And Hal? And—”

“All well and all prospering. Hal has two strapping sons,
and another child coming: a daughter, he says. He takes his dynastic duties
seriously.”

Her tone must have betrayed something. His glance sharpened.
“And you? You look a little the worse for wear. Were you beset upon the road?”

“I was beset,” she answered steadily, and as calmly as she
could. “I ran afoul of your old enemy.”

He frowned slightly. Of course he would have forgotten; it
had been so long ago. “The one who lost her name and her eyes for denying you.
My kinswoman, whom my father drove out. She caught me, but I escaped her. She
hates you, Mirain.”

“So,” Mirain said softly, as if to himself. “It begins.” He
looked up, sudden enough to make her gasp. “And you have cast in your lot with
me. Your father might forgive me for allowing it. Would your mother?”

Elian swallowed hard. Her mind was empty. It made her words
as light as she could have wished them to be. “Mother is preeminently
practical. Better you, she’ll judge, than some of the alternatives. At least
you’ll see that my virtue remains intact.”

“Will I?”

Her face was hot. She tried to laugh. “You had better, if
you want to be forgiven.”

He bent to pluck a sprig of heather, sweet and startling in
this trampled place. “Then I must try, mustn’t I?” He turned the blossom in his
fingers. “My regents in Ianon are waiting for you. Both are great ladies, and
Alidan bears arms. You’d like one another, I think.”