Hall of the Mountain King (6 page)

Slowly the proud head bowed, sniffed at the golden hand,
blew upon it.

Mirain drew closer still. Suddenly he was astride.

The Mad One stood frozen, then reared, belling.

The prince laughed. He was still laughing as the senel came
down running, leaped the high fence, and hurtled through the stableyard. Men
and animals scattered before them.

“The Mad One!” a deep voice bellowed. “The Mad One is
loose!”

“Which one?” muttered Vadin. Sourly; but with a touch—a very
reluctant touch—of admiration.

oOo

They met the king coming down from the hall, while behind
them eddied a turbulent crowd. The Mad One came to a dancing halt; Mirain bowed
to his grandsire. “I’ve found a friend, my lord,” he said.

Vadin was as close as anyone dared to go: just out of reach
of the stallion’s heels. He would almost rather have been closer still than
face the king’s cold accusing eye. But that was fixed on Mirain, and on the
senel who, untaught, bore his rider with ease and grace; whose mien had lost
not a whit of either its pride or its wildness.

The coldness warmed. The thin lips twitched just
perceptibly. “A friend indeed, grandson, and a great lord of seneldi. But I
fear you will have to look after him yourself. No man will come near him.”

“No longer,” Mirain said, “if only none ventures to ride
him. For after all, he is a king.”

“After all,” the king agreed with a touch of irony, “he is.”

“We go now into the Vale. Will you come with us, sire?”

The king’s smile won free, startling as the sun at midnight,
and more miraculous. “Certainly I shall. Hian, saddle my charger. I ride forth
with the prince.”

oOo

From a tower of the castle Moranden saw them: the boy on the
black stallion without bridle or saddle, and the old king on the red destrier,
and a tangle of lords and servants and hangers-on. His knuckles greyed as he
gripped the window ledge. “Priestess’ bastard,” he gritted through clenched
teeth.

“That is most unkind.”

He whirled upon Ymin. “Unkind?
Unkind?
You have all you can ask for. All your prophecies
fulfilled, new songs to sing, and a pretty lad to pleasure your eye. But I—I
have had a kingdom snatched from my hands.”

“You never had it,” she pointed out serenely, sitting
cross-legged on his bed.

“I did when that whelp bewitched my father.”

“Your father never named you his heir.”

“And who else would there have been?”

She spread her hands. “Who knows? But Mirain has come. He is
the god’s son, Moranden. Of that I am certain.”

“So you’ve come to gloat over me.”

“No. To make you see sense. That boy can tame the Mad One.
What could he not do to you?”

“No beggar’s by-blow can snare me with spells.”

“Moranden,” she said with sudden, passionate urgency, “he is
the one. The king foretold. Accept him. Yield to him.”

He stood over her and seized her roughly, shaking her. “I yield to no one. Not to you, and not ever to a bastard
boy.”

“He is your sister’s son.”

“My sister!” he spat. “Sanelin, Sanelin, always Sanelin.
Look, Moranden, look at your sister, how proud, how queenly, how very, very
holy. Come, lad, be strong; when your sister comes back, would you have her be
ashamed of you? Ah, Sanelin, dear lady, where has she gone? So long, so far,
and never a true word.” He spat again, as if to rid his tongue of a foulness.
“Who ever took any notice of me? I was only Moranden, the afterthought, begotten
on a captive. She was the loved one. She was the heir. She—woman and half-breed
and priestess that she was—she would have Ianon. And for me, nothing. No
throne, no kingdom. Nothing at all.”

“Except honor and lordship and all the wealth you could wish
for.”

“Nothing,” he repeated with vicious softness.

Ymin was silent.

He laughed, a hideous, strangled sound. “Then she died. I
heard the news; I went away in secret and danced the fiercest joy-dance I knew;
I dreamed of my kingdom. And now he comes, that puny child, claiming all she
had. All. With such utter, absolute, unshakable certainty that he has the
right—” Moranden broke off, flinging up his head. “Shall I bow to that
interloper? Shall I endure what I have endured for all the years of my manhood?
By all the gods and the powers below, I will not!”

“You are a fool.” Ymin’s voice was soft, edged with
contempt. “Your mother on the other hand, whose words you parrot so
faithfully—she is mad. In Han-Ianon even we women cut our leading-strings when
our breasts begin to bud. No doubt it is different in the Marches.” She broke
free and rose. “I go to serve my prince. If you assail him, expect no mercy
from me. He is my lord as you have never been, nor ever will be.”

In Han-Gilen and the lands of the south ruled but one high
god, the Lord of Light. But in the north the old ways held firm, the cult not
of the One but of the Two, the Light coeval and coequal with his sister the
Dark: Avaryan and Uveryen, Sun and Shadow, bound and battling for all eternity.
Each had his priests and each his sacrifices. For Avaryan, the holy fire and
the chants of praise; but for his sister, darkness and silence and the blood of
chosen victims.

Avaryan’s worship centered in his temples around his
gold-torqued priesthood. Uveryen suffered no walls or images. Her realm was the
realm of air and darkness, her priests chosen and consecrated in secret, masked
and cowled and eternally nameless. In her holy groves and in the deep places of
the earth they practiced her mysteries; nor ever did they suffer a stranger’s
presence.

Vadin crouched behind a stone, willing even his heart to be
silent. It was a long cruel way from the castle to the place of the goddess,
the wood upon the mountain spur where no axe had ever fallen. A long way, the last
and worst of it on foot with all the stealth of his hunter’s training, and
before him one who was a better hunter than he.

But Prince Moranden had not been looking for pursuit. He had
ridden out quietly with a hawk on his wrist, as if for a solitary hunt; none
but Vadin had seen him go, or dared to follow.

Whatever Moranden’s thoughts of the one who had supplanted
him, before men’s faces he smiled and did proper obeisance. And stayed away as
often as he might on one pretext or another. Hunting most often, or hawking, or
governing his domains, for he was Lord of the Western Marches.

Vadin had neither right nor duty to creep after him like a
spy or an assassin. But Mirain had gone where Vadin could not follow, into Avaryan’s
temple. It was a day of fasting for the Sun’s priests, the dark of Brightmoon,
when the god’s power grew weak before the might of the Dark; they would chant
and pray from sunrise to sunrise, bolstering their god’s strength with their
own.

Mirain, who had gone on his second day in the castle to
chant the sunset hymn, had found himself more welcome there than anywhere else
in Ianon, except perhaps in his grandfather’s presence; thereafter he had
sought the temple as often as he might. And he had made it clear that Vadin was
not to dog his heels there, even in the outer chambers which were open to any
who came.

Thus Vadin was at liberty, and by hell’s own contriving he
could take no joy in it. Mirain was already gone when he woke in the dawn; woke
from a nightmare that haunted him long past waking.

He rose, pulled on what garments came to hand, eyed with
utterly unwonted disfavor the breakfast that Mirain’s servants had left for
him. He abandoned it untouched, wandering he cared not where, until he found
himself in the stables, and saw Moranden saddling the black-barred dun.

Without thought for what he did, Vadin flung bridle and
saddle on Rami and sent her in pursuit. If he had been thinking, he might have
acknowledged some deep urge to accost this prince who had been kind to him. To
be kind in return, somehow. To explain a betrayal that, doubtless, Moranden had
never noticed among so many others.

Moranden had ridden easily but swiftly, without undue
stealth, almost straight to the wood. No one hunted there if he valued his life
and his soul, nor did anyone ride for pleasure beneath those dim trees.

The prince had not loosed his falcon, and he had not turned
back even from the guardians of the goddess’ grove, and black birds which
seemed to infest every branch. The air was full of their cries, the ground of
their foul droppings.

Vadin shuddered in his place of concealment. Whether
Moranden’s intrusion had obscured his own, or whether he had moved more
skillfully than he knew, the birds paid him no heed.

Yet the wood itself seemed to tremble in outrage. Outlander
that he was, bound by the king’s command to the son of the Sun, still he dared
to trespass in the domain of the Dark. The sky was black with thunder, casting
deep twilight under the trees, where one by one the goddess’ birds had settled
to their rest.

Moranden stood a short spearcast from him, near the edge of
a clearing. Open though it was, the darkness seemed no less there. The ground
was bare, without grass or flower, save in the center where lay a slab of
stone.

Rough, hewn by no man’s hands, it rose out of the barren
earth; a great mound of flowers lay upon it, deep red like heart’s blood. A
mockery, it may have been, of the blossoms which adorned Avaryan’s temple at
this season of his waxing power.

Or was Avaryan’s altar the mockery?

Again Vadin shivered. This was no place and no worship of
his. Northern born, he feared the goddess and accorded her due respect, but he
had never been able to love her. Love before Uveryen was a weakness. She fed on
fear and on the bitterness of hate.

Moranden stood as if frozen, his falcon motionless on his
wrist, his stallion tethered at the wood’s edge far from swift escape. Vadin
could not see his face. His shoulders were braced, the muscles taut between
them; his free hand was a fist.

The dim air stirred and thickened. Vadin swallowed a cry.
Where had been only emptiness stood a half circle of figures.

Black robes, black cowls, no face, no hand, no glimpse of
brightness. Nor did they speak, these priests of the goddess. Or priestesses?
There was no way to tell.

One glided forward. Moranden trembled, a sudden spasm, but
held his ground. Perhaps he could not do otherwise.

Wings clapped. The falcon erupted from his hand, jesses
broken. Blackness swept over it. A single feather fell, wintry gold, spiraling to
Moranden’s feet.

The birds of the goddess withdrew. Neither blood nor bone
remained of the hawk, not even the bells upon its jesses.

“A pleasant morsel.”

The voice was harsh and toneless. Vadin, glancing startled
at the robed figure, saw on its shoulder a black bird. Its beak opened. “A
sufficient sacrifice,” it said, “for the moment. What do you look for in
return?”

Moranden’s hand was raised as if the falcon perched even yet
upon it. Very slowly he lowered it. “What—” His speech was thick; he shook his
head hard and lifted it, drawing a long breath. “I look for nothing. I came as
I was summoned. Is there to be no rite? Have I lost my best falcon for
nothing?”

“There will be a rite.”

A mortal voice, this one, and not born within the circle.
One stood beyond it, beyond the altar itself, robed as the rest. But her cowl
was cast back from a face neither young nor gentle, beautiful and terrible as
the flowers on the stone.

“There will be a rite,” she repeated, coming forward, “and
you shall be the Young God once more. But only once. Hereafter we will have
done with pretense, and with the blood of mere mute beasts.”

The black bird left its perch to settle on her shoulder. She
smoothed its feathers with a finger, crooning to it.

Moranden stood taut, but it was a different tautness, with
less of fear, less of awe, and more of impatience. “Pretense? What do you mean,
pretense? That is the rite: the dance, the coupling. The sacrifice.”

“The sacrifice,” she said, “yes.”

His breath hissed between his teeth. “You don’t—” Her hand
raised infinitesimally, sketching a flick of assent. “That is forbidden.”

“By whom?” She stood full before him now, the bird
motionless, eyes glittering. “By whom, Moranden? By the priests of burning
Avaryan, and by the king who is their puppet. He gave his daughter to the Sun,
who by long custom should have gone to the Dark. But in the end the goddess had
her blood.”

“Then the goddess should be content.”

“Gods are never content.”

Moranden’s back was stiff. “So then. Once more I act the
Young God; but it will be no act. I would have preferred that you had warned me.”

Surely this woman was the Lady Odiya, and she was more
terribly splendid even than rumor made her. She seemed torn between rage and
bitter laughter. “You are a fine figure of a man, my child, and much to the
Lady’s taste. But you are also a fool. Once more, I have said, you act the
god’s part. Then do you abdicate in another’s favor. Another will undergo the
full and ancient rite.”

“And die in it,” Moranden said harshly. “I don’t like it,
Mother. Time was when every ninth year a young man died for the good of the
tribe; and maybe the tribe was the better for it. Myself, I doubt it. Waste is
waste, even in the gods’ name.”

“Fool,” said the Lady Odiya.

Once again the black bird shifted. Its talons gripped
Moranden’s shoulder. Its beak clacked beside his ear as he stood frozen, robbed
of breath and arrogance alike.

“Sacrifice is never wasted. Not when it can purchase the
goddess’ favor.”

“It is murder.”

“Murder,” echoed the bird, mocking him. “Man,” it said,
“would you be king?”

“I would be king,” Moranden answered; and that was not the
least courageous thing he had ever done, to speak in a steady voice with such a
horror on his shoulder. “But what does that have to do with—”