Hall of the Mountain King (36 page)

Standing there on the height, with the rite weaving above
him and his mind struggling to weave itself into Mirain’s, Vadin gazed through
the other’s eyes across the dawn-dim hills. The enemy’s fires flickered,
growing pale as Avaryan drew nearer, but in the center near the tall scarlet
pavilion of the commander a torrent of flame roared up to heaven.

Men massed about it. Nearest to it a lone shape, encircled
by cowled figures, moved in what looked to be a strange wild dance. It was
terrible to see, black patched with scarlet, and its movements were jerky, a
parody of grace, like the dance of a cripple.

Vadin did not know it. Would not know it. Prayed with all
his soul that it was not what he feared.

Even as he watched, the flames leaped higher still. The
dancer whirled; music shrilled, high and maddening. The fire writhed like hands
clawing at the sky: hands of flame, blood red, wine red, the black-red of flesh
flayed from bone.

They reached. They enfolded the dancer. They drew it keening
into the fire’s heart.

Sun’s fire seared his face. Mirain’s face. The priest lowered
the vessel of the sacred fire and turned the king eastward toward the waxing
flame of Avaryan.

Mirain raised his hands to it. The words of the rite flowed
over him and through him, and mingled there, shaping into a single soul-deep
cry of welcome, of panic-pleading, and at the last, of acceptance.

“So be it,” sang the priest. And in Mirain’s heart, and in
Vadin’s caught willy-nilly within:
So be it.

oOo

By the Law of Battle the champion must ride alone to the
place of combat, accompanied only by his judge and his witness. They rode at
Mirain’s back, Obri’s brown robe and Vadin’s lordly finery hidden beneath
mantles of white and ocher. White for victory, ocher for death. In one hand
Obri bore the staff of his office: a plain wooden rod tipped at one end with
ivory, at the other with amber.

They did not speak. Obri had been as good as his word.
Mirain accepted the chronicler’s presence; he was not fretting over the absence
of his singer. All his mind fixed firmly on the battle before him.

The army had taken its ranks behind them, the foremost
marking the edge of the camp: near enough to see, too far to help. The space
between grew wider with each stride, the sky brighter, the enemy closer.

Moranden’s lines were free still of shadow or illusion, as
if the sorcery had failed or been abandoned. But his following was very large
for all that, the full strength of western Ianon and the Marches. If Mirain had
had a second army, he could have overrun their lands behind them.

If he won this battle, he would rule them all unchallenged.

A small company left the ranks, approaching Ilien from the
west. Vadin urged Rami forward between Mirain and the river, though what he
could do without even a dagger, he did not know. Die again for Mirain, he
supposed.

But he saw no weapons among the riders. The herald rode
first, mantled in white and ocher, carrying the judge’s wand. Directly behind
him came Moranden on his black-barred stallion, riding straight and proud,
cloaked as was Mirain in the scarlet of the king at war. And at Moranden’s back
rode his second witness, the Lady Odiya unmistakable even huddled and shrunken
behind a swathing of veils; and her ancient eunuch leading a laden senel.

Vadin and the herald reached the water together, but neither
ventured into it. “What is this?” Vadin called across the rush of Ilien. “Why
do so many come to the field of combat?”

“We come who must,” responded the herald, “and we bring your
king what he appears to have mislaid.”

The eunuch rode forward, dragging the reluctant packbeast
down the bank and across the stream. Vadin knew the shape of the black-wrapped
burden: long and narrow, stiff yet supple, with the shadow of death upon it.
But he was like a man in a dream. He could do nothing but what he did: give the
rider space to come up but none to approach Mirain, and wait for what
inevitably must come. Without word or glance the eunuch tossed the leadrein
into Vadin’s hand, turned, spurred back toward his mistress.

Very slowly Vadin slid from Rami’s saddle. He had not
planned for this. He had not been thinking at all since he woke. He knew only
that Mirain must not see. He had to fight. He could not be grieving for his
lover. Or raging for the loss of her.

For a wild instant Vadin knew that he must bolt, he and this
silent dead thing. Bolt far away and bury it deep, and Mirain would never know.

Someone moved past him, someone in royal scarlet, small
enough to slip under his arm, swift enough to elude his snatching hand. Mirain
reached for the bindings.

Vadin tried again and desperately to pull him back. He was
as immovable as a stone, his face set in stone. The cords gave way all at once,
tumbling their contents into Mirain’s arms.

She had not died easily, or prettily, or swiftly. Vadin
knew. He had seen her die, driven into the goddess’ fire. It had left only
enough of her body that one could tell her sex, and one could tell that she had
suffered before she died, beaten and flayed and perhaps worse still.

But neither fire nor torturers had touched her face, save
only her eyes. Beneath that twofold ruin her features were serene, free of
either horror or pain.

“How she must have maddened them,” Mirain said, “dying in
peace in spite of them.” His voice was mad, because it was so perfectly sane.
Calm. Unmoved.

He lowered her with all gentleness, drawing the black
wrappings over her, as if she could wake and know pain. His hand lingered on
her cheek.

Vadin could not read his face; his mind was a fortress.
Vadin’s strongest assault could not break down its gate.

The herald’s voice rang over the water. “So do we recompense
all spies and assassins. Think well upon it, O king who would send a woman to
slay his enemy. You see that she failed. You shall not escape this duel of
honor.”

Mirain stooped as if he had not heard, and kissed Ymin on
the lips. He said nothing to her that anyone could hear.

He straightened, turned. Although he spoke softly, they
heard him as if he had shouted every word. “You were not wise to do this, my
lady Odiya. For even if I could forgive you the murder of my singer, you have
shown Ianon once more what you would do to it and its people. Ianon may endure
your son hereafter, but you have lost all claim to its mercy.”

She answered him with deadly quiet. Wounded though her body
was, her voice was strong. “You are not the prophet your mother purported to
be, nor the king you like to pretend. You are not even a lover. So much she
confessed while still she had tongue to speak.”

Mirain raised his head. He laughed, and it was terrible to
hear, for even as he mocked her, he wept. “You are a poor liar, O servant of
the Lie. I see your shame; I taste your thwarted wrath. She would not break.
She died as she had lived, strong and valiant.” His voice deepened. It had
beauty still, but all its velvet had worn away. Iron lay beneath: iron and adamant.
“I swear to you and to all the gods, she will have her vengeance.”

Odiya would not be cowed. There was death between them; it
bore witness to her power. It laid bare the truth: that he could not protect
even where he loved.

She met his mockery with bitter mockery. “Will you come to
battle now, Mirain who had no father? Dare you?”

“I dare, O queen of vipers. And when I have done with your
puppet, look well to yourself.”

He turned the fire of his hand toward Obri. The chronicler
urged his grey mare shying past the pool of black and scarlet, cloak and blood,
into the swift bright water, halting in the center.

“Here is the midpoint between our forces.” He spoke evenly,
with more strength than anyone might have believed possible, small and withered
as he was. “But since no custom dictates that the champions engage in the midst
of a river, and since the choice of ground rests with the challenger, let him
choose where he will fight.”

“My lord,” answered the herald, “bids you engage upon the
western bank.”

“So shall we do,” said Obri, riding forward.

Together with the herald in a barbed amity of duty, Obri
dismounted and marked with his rod upon the ground the half of a circle: twenty
paces from edge to edge, joined at its twin extremities to the half-circle of
the other.

When the battleground was made they left it. Moranden
prepared to dismount; the herald took his bridle. Vadin stood at the Mad One’s
head.

Mirain sprang down lightly. His head did not even come to
Vadin’s shoulder. The squire’s eyes pricked with tears; he blinked them away.

By the gods’ fortune Mirain had not seen. Eyes and mind bent
on the fastening of his cloak.

Firmly, almost roughly, Vadin set his hands aside and loosed
the clasp. Mirain smiled a very little. Vadin flung the cloak over the stallion’s
saddle; Mirain unwrapped his kilt, setting it atop the sweep of scarlet,
running a hand down the Mad One’s neck.

Moranden waited within the circle, arms folded. But Mirain
paused. He caught Obri in a swift embrace, startling the scholar for once into
speechlessness. And he reached for Vadin before the squire could escape, pulled
his head down with effortless strength, and kissed him on the lips. The king’s
touch was like the lightning, swift and potent and burning-fierce.

Vadin drew a sharp and hurting breath. “Mirain,” he said.
“Mirain, try to hold on to your temper. You know what happens when you lose
it.”

“Be at ease, brother,” Mirain said, light and calm: a royal
calm. “I will mourn her when it is time to mourn. But now I have a battle to
fight.” He smiled his sudden smile, with a touch of wryness, a touch of
something very like comfort. “May the god keep you,” he said to them both.

He stepped into the circle. The herald stood in its center
with rod uplifted. Obri raised his own rod and strode forward.

“Hold!”

Obri stopped.

Odiya would not enter the circle, but she stood at the
witness’ post on the western edge, leaning on her eunuch’s shoulder. “One
matter,” she said, clear and cold, “is not yet settled. Yonder stands no simple
warrior but a priest of demon Avaryan, mage-trained by masters. Shall he be
left free to wield his power against one who cannot match it?”

“I will not,” Mirain said with equal clarity, equal
coldness.

“Swear,” she commanded.

He raised his branded hand. For all her pride and power, she
flinched.

A small grim smile touched his mouth. He took off his torque
and laid the golden weight of it in Vadin’s unwilling hands, standing a little
straighter for its passing, saying levelly, “I swear by the hand of my father,
whose image I bear, whose torque I lay aside in token of my oath: This battle
shall be a battle of bodies alone, without magecraft or deceit. Swear now in
your turn, priestess of the goddess, mage-trained by masters. Swear as I have
sworn.”

“What need?” she countered haughtily. “It is not I whom you
must fight.”

“Swear.” Moranden’s voice, his face implacable. “Swear, my
lady mother, or leave this field. Bound and gagged and sealed with my enemy’s
sorceries.”

“Has he such strength?”
Have
you?
her eyes demanded.

But she yielded with all appearance of submission. She swore
the solemn oath, lowering herself to the earth that was the breast of the
goddess. “And may she cast me into her nethermost hell if I break this oath
which I have sworn.”

Before her servant had helped her to her feet, they had
forgotten her. The judges stood back to back, each facing the other’s champion,
waiting.

With infinite slowness Avaryan climbed above the eastern
margin of the world. At last he poised on the hills, his great disk swollen,
the color of blood. As one, the rods swept down.

The judges withdrew from the center of the circle to its
edge; the champions advanced from edge to center.

From both armies a shout went up. That of the west held a
note of triumph; that of the east, of defiance. For Moranden stood as tall as
the mountains of his birth, massive yet graceful, with a glitter of gold in his
hair and in the braids of his beard. Mirain beside him was no larger than a
child, slight and smooth-skinned, with weight and inches yet to gain; and he
would never equal his enemy in either. And he had sacrificed his one advantage:
the sword and armor of his power. He had not even his torque to defend his
throat.

Vadin had slid from the verge of tears to the verge of
howling aloud. There was Mirain staring at his adversary like a small cornered
animal, but managing the shadow of a smile. There was Moranden staring back and
forbearing to sneer.

And yet how alike they were; how damnably alike, two kinsmen
matched in their pride, bristling and baring their teeth and granting one
another no quarter. And for what? A word and a name and a piece of carven wood.

They were slow to move, as if this battle must be one of
eyes alone. But after a while that stretched long and long, Mirain said,
“Greetings again at last, my uncle.”

Moranden looked him up and down as he had on the first day
of Mirain’s coming. If he knew any regret, he did not betray it. “Are you ready
to die, boy?”

Mirain shrugged slightly. “I’m not afraid of it.” His head
tilted. “And you?”

“I’m not the one who’ll fall here. Won’t you reconsider,
child? Take what I offered you once. Go back to your southlands and leave me
what is mine.”

“Bargains?” asked Mirian, amused. “Well then, let me cast my
own counters into the cup. Recant and surrender your army. Swear fealty to me
as your king. And when the time comes, if you prove yourself worthy, you will
be king after all. King in Ianon as you always longed to be, subject only to me
as emperor.”