Hall of the Mountain King (25 page)

“Should I?”

“Beauty, wealth, and breeding—she has all of those. And a father
who can sway most of the eastern fiefdoms to his will.”

“He would be pleased to add the whole of Ianon.” Their
glances caught; his was bright and faintly mocking. “I pleaded extreme youth
and the need to establish myself in my kingdom—and promised to have a look at
the lady if I should happen to be in her vicinity.”

Ymin laughed. “Spoken like a true king!”

“Or like a southerner born.” He turned with his hand on the
Mad One’s withers. “The sun is rising. Shall we sing him up together?”

oOo

The sun was fierce in the Court of Judgment. Although the
high seat rested in the shade of a canopy, there was no escape from the heat;
even Vadin’s light kilt weighed on him. Yet Mirain sat apparently at his ease,
cheek resting on palm, cool and unruffled and thoroughly alert.

“A dry spring,” whined the man in front of him, “and a
burning summer. My herd has overgrazed its pasture; my crops are withering in
the heat. And now, sire—and now this young ingrate tells me he has bid for a
girl in the next village, and I must give him the groom-price, and not a
moment’s thought to spare for the hardship.”

The young ingrate was not so very young. Thirty, Vadin
judged, and looking older with hard work and poor feeding. He scowled at his
feet and knotted his heavy hands, drawing up his shoulders as if against a
blow. “’S my right,” he mumbled. “I waited. Every season I waited. ’S always
too soon, or the weather’s too bad, or the harvest’s due in. No more, she said.
Long enough is long enough. Bid for me like you’ve been promising to, or
somebody else will get there first.”

His father sputtered with fury.

“Are you the only son?” Mirain asked.

The young man looked up, a flash of sullen eyes that saw a
throne and a blur of gold upon it, no more. “No,” he said. “Sir. Got two
brothers, sir.”

“Older?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Married?”

Again the eyes, more sullen still. “No, sir. Too soon, the
weather’s too bad, the harvest’s due in . . .”

“So,” Mirain said in his most neutral tone, but Vadin saw
the glint in his eye. The son’s hands twisted fiercely. “Go. Take your bride.
Bid the groom-price, but see that your father adds to it another of equal
worth, to begin your marriage properly.” Mirain gestured to the scribe. “It is
written. It shall be done.”

There was no love in the young man’s stare, and scarcely any
gratitude. He bowed ungracefully, looked about for an exit, and departed,
pursued by his father’s howls of rage.

The next complainant had already begun. That was the king’s
justice: swift, thankless, and not to be opposed.

Mirain shifted minutely in his seat. Vadin gestured where
his eye could catch it, raising a cup of wine cooled with snow.

He took the goblet and drank, a sip only, sighing just
visibly. But his face was as calm as ever, intent. A perfect mask.

Vadin studied it and tried not to think of sleep. One of the
older councillors was snoring on his feet. The voices droned on. So many
matters of great moment to the people in the midst of them; so many tangled
details flung down at the king’s feet as if he and he alone could unravel them.

“My lord,” a scribe was saying in a bored monotone, “the
titles to the property in question—”

Vadin did not know what roused him. Maybe it was only a
precious whisper of breeze wandering lost in this sun-tortured place. Or maybe
it was instinct honed by a season of serving a mage. But he was full awake and
taut as a strung bow, his eyes sweeping the assembled faces.

None rang the alarm in his brain. Good solid Ianyn faces
with a sprinkling of foreigners: Asanian gold, southern brown, traders or
sightseers; and there was the scholar from Anshan-i-Ormal, a wizened
earth-colored creature with the merriest eyes Vadin had ever seen.

They were almost quiet now, watching Mirain in tireless
fascination. He was going to write a history, he had told Vadin only last night;
he had been looking all his life for a fit subject, and now he thought he had
found it in a young barbarian king.

Mirain liked him, because he had no talent for flattery. He
had a wicked tongue, which he tempered with laughter, and in his Ormalen custom
he called even the king by his given name.

Something caught Vadin’s eye beyond the turbaned head. A
movement almost too quick to follow. A glint of light on metal. A guard on the
wall, surely, saluting the king with his spear.

Spear.

Vadin lunged, hurling Mirain away from the throne.

The world spun; fire pierced it, transfixed it. Winds roared
in Vadin’s ears. The fire was pain, and it pinned him. He could not move.

“The wall,” he tried to cry out. “Damn you, the wall!”

The whirling stopped; the world came closer. Mirain filled
it. Vadin hit him. “Get down, you fool. Get—”

Mirain’s hand descended like the night, vast and
inescapable. But his face looked strange and small. Except for the eyes. Such
brilliant, bitter, ice-cold rage—

“Are you going to kill me?” Vadin’s voice was faint, weak as
a child’s. It seemed very far away.

He was losing his body. And yet how odd; how clear it all
was. The court; the people in their shock or their outrage or their terror; the
armed men hunting an assassin and finding him dead on the parapet with his own
knife in his throat. And the king on his knees in front of his throne, gripping
the haft of a spear that pierced a sprawled ungainly body.

Poor creature, he was done for, speared just below the
heart, beginning to struggle with blind bodily panic. But he was brave; he was
not screaming.

“No good,” someone said. “The head’s barbed. Poisoned, too,
I’ll wager. Those are Marcher clan-marks on the haft; and they don’t take
chances.”

Someone else responded with doleful relish, “Poison or not,
they’ve won a life. That wound is mortal.”

Gods rest him, Vadin thought. Whoever he was.

Not that it mattered. He was going away, winged like a bird.
Court and castle shrank beneath him. There was Ianon dwindling swiftly, a green
jewel set in a ring of mountains, glimmering in the center of an orb like a
child’s ball, painted all in green and white and blue and brown.

Why, it was just like the world as it was painted over the
altar in Avaryan’s temple. He traced the lands, naming them as the priests had
taught him years ago in Geitan. From western Asanion to the isles of the east
that looked upon the open sea; from the great desert that bordered on the
southern principates, across the Hundred Realms to Ianon again, and its
mountains, and Death’s Fells beyond, and the wastes of ice—all lay under his
wondering eyes, perfect as a jewel on a lady’s finger.

And such a lady: deep-breasted Night herself in her robe of
stars. She smiled; she drew him to her; she kissed him with a mother’s
gentleness but with a lover’s warmth.

“Vadin.” The voice was vaguely familiar. It was a beautiful
voice for a man’s, both sweet and deep. But it sounded impatient, even angry.
“Vadin alVadin, for the love of Avaryan, listen to me!”

But it was so pleasant here. Dark and warm, and a beautiful
lady smiling, and maybe later there would be loving.

“Vadin!”

Yes, he was angry. What was his name? Vadin had done nothing
to earn his displeasure. Did he want the lady? There was enough of her for
both.

“I want no lady. Come, Vadin.”

Mirain. That was his name. It was very flattering that he
wanted Vadin and not so lovely a lady, but alas, Vadin was not in the mood.
Maybe later, if he should still be inclined . . .

“Vadin alVadin of Asan-Geitan, by Avaryan and Uveryen, by
life and death, by the Light and by the Dark that embraces it, I summon you
before me.”

The lady’s arms opened. Vadin was slipping away.

He clutched, desperate. She was gone. It was dark.

Wind howled, thin and bitter. It tore at him with teeth of
iron. The voice rang through it. “By the oath of fealty you have sworn me, by
the kingship I hold, come. Come or be forever lost.”

The voice was warm, laden with power. Vadin yearned toward
it. But the wind beat him back.

It was dark still, darker than dark, yet he could see with
more than eyes. He stood on a road in a country of night, and the road ran but
one way, and that was onward, away from that far sweet calling.

It swelled in strength and sweetness. It sang like a harp,
it throbbed like drums. All words had forsaken it; it was pure power.

The night quailed before it. The wind faltered.

Inch by tortured inch, Vadin dragged himself about. There
was no road behind. Only madness.

Madness and Mirain. Vadin stretched out his hands. He could
not reach—he could not—

He stretched impossibly, with every ounce of will and pride
and strength.

He touched.

Slipped.

Mirain’s fingers clawed. Vadin clutched. They held.

The darkness burst in a storm of fire.

Vadin gasped as the pain struck him, gasped again as it
vanished beneath a warmth like the sun. He had his body back again, and his
wits, and a faint blur of sight. He knew where he was: still in the Court of
Judgment, lying now on the dais in front of the throne, cradled in Mirain’s
arms.

The spear was gone. He could not see the wound, and he did
not want to. He knew that he was dying. He had died already, and Mirain’s power
had called him back. But it was not strong enough. It could not hold him.

“No,” Mirain said fiercely. His cheeks were wet. Weeping in
front of his people—fool of a foreigner, did he know what he was doing? “I
know. I know to the last breath. I’ll hold you. I’ll heal you. I won’t let you
die for me.”

As the old king had. And Mirain did not easily suffer
defeat. Vadin looked at the vivid furious eyes and thought of reason and of
sanity, but Mirain had never fallen prey to either.

The warmth that had been pain was rising into heat. Sun’s
fire. Sun’s child.

It was something to be loved by a mage of that rank, a
master of power whose father was a god. Maybe after all he could face death.
Maybe, with the god behind him, he could win.

“Help me,” Mirain’s face turned to the sun, his eyes open to
it, unblinded, unseeing. “Father, help me!”

He did not bargain, Vadin noticed. He simply pleaded, in a
tone very close to command.

It was very quiet. People stood all about, staring, mute.
Some had drawn close. White robes or kilts, golden torques. One or two in grey
and silver.

Ymin’s eyes were fixed on Mirain, almost blazing. She was
giving him what power she had, prodigal of the cost. Blessed madwoman.

The heat mounted. It was like agony, but it was exquisitely
pleasant, like a scalding bath after the Great Race. Healing anguish, flooding
his body, setting his bones afire.

He felt it focus at his center. He felt the outraged flesh
begin to knit, the great ragged wound to close from its depths to its topmost
reaches. He saw the fire of power working in him, and he knew it, and he knew
what it did, wise with the wisdom of the one who healed him, endowed with more
than mortal sight.

Mirain drew a long shuddering breath. His face was drawn as
it had been on the road to Umijan, but his eyes were clear and quiet, and he
smiled. Without a sound he crumpled.

Vadin caught him before he struck the stone, moving without
thought, without pain.

Mirain was still conscious; he raised his hand to touch the
deep scar beneath Vadin’s breast. “I healed you,” he whispered. “I promised.”

Vadin rose. Mirain was a light weight and an indomitable
will, giving his people a flash of golden hand before the darkness took him.

Gently Vadin carried him down the steps through the murmurs
of awe, the bodies crowding back to give him room, the eyes lowered and the
heads bowed as before a god.

When this was over, Vadin was going to be amused. Whoever
the assassin had been, whoever had sent him—whether Moranden or that unnatural
mother of his—he had not only failed to fell his target. He had shown Ianon
what in truth it had accepted as its king.

Avaryan’s temple would be full by evening, nor would it be
Avaryan alone to whom the folk addressed their prayers. Mirain’s legend would
be all the stronger hereafter.

oOo

Vadin had expected people to look on Mirain with greater
reverence now that he had shown them what power was in him. But the squire had
not reckoned on the consequences to himself. He was a wonder and a strangeness,
a man brought back from the dead.

Even his friends walked shy of him, even Kav who had been
known to doubt the gods. When he walked in the town, folk tried to touch him,
to coax a blessing from him, or made signs of awe and would not look him in the
face.

Ledi was the crowning blow. She who had shared her bed with
him, called him by his love-name, faced him as an equal and slapped him when he
got above himself—when he came into the alehouse she did not come running to
wait on him, and when he called for her she bowed low and called him
lord
, and when he tried to embrace her
she fled. And everyone in the drab familiar room was silent, staring, knowing
who he was. The Reborn. The king’s miracle.

He was on his feet. He had meant to go after Ledi, to beat
her into her senses if need be. He turned slowly, with all the dignity he could
muster, and began to walk. Swifter and swifter through the whispering streets
in the hiss of the rain, running through the castle gate, winding among the
courts and passages, coming up short in Mirain’s chamber.

The king was there, alone for once, prowling like a caged
panther. He had been in council with Ianon’s elders; he was dressed for it
still in a dazzle of gold and royal white, though his mantle lay on the floor
where he had flung it. When Vadin halted, panting and almost sobbing, Mirain
whipped about in a blind flare of temper.