Hall of the Mountain King (16 page)

Vadin barely heard. The words were only words, sound
obscuring the thoughts behind, and memory had smitten him with such force that
he nearly fell.

Men in Han-Ianon, Marcher born, and secret signs, and a
flicker of fingers wherever Mirain was. “The sign,” he said. “The sign they all
make where you can’t quite see. It’s a Great Sign. It’s the sign against a
prince of demons.”

“I know,” said Mirain calmly, releasing the hoof, smoothing
a tangle in the black mane.

“You know?” Vadin shook with the effort of shouting in a
whisper. “You know what it means? This is the goddess’ country. What she is in
Han-Gilen, and what the king would make her in Ianon, Avaryan is here. Enemy.
Adversary. Burning devil. And they know that you’re his son. Any man in Umijan
could cut you down and be counted a saint for doing it.”

“None has tried yet. None tried when we were all helpless.
And now Moranden is here, and his army comes from the Vale.”

“How do you know Moranden won’t egg the murderer on? He
goaded you into coming here. This may be his very own trap, all nicely baited.”

“Have you turned so completely against him?”

Bile stung Vadin’s throat. He choked it down. “No. No, I
haven’t. I only know what I would do if I were Moranden and this were my fief.
I’d challenge you and kill you, and see that the truth never found its way
eastward.”

“And yet,” Mirain said, “you forget. The army has learned to
wish me well.”

“That’s too easily unlearned.” Vadin gripped his arm,
pulling him about. “Let’s run for it. Now.”

Mirain looked from Vadin’s hand to his face, and raised a
cool brow. “Have you suddenly turned coward?”

“I don’t linger in closing traps.”

Slowly Mirain’s free hand raised in denial. “No, Vadin. I
know what my pride has brought me to, but I can’t flee now. The game is too
well begun. I have to play it out.”

“Even to your death?”

“Or Moranden’s.”

“Or both.” Vadin let him go. “Why am I arguing with you?
Ymin herself couldn’t talk sense into you; and that was before you even
started. Go ahead then. Kill yourself. You’ll be comfortably dead, and you
won’t have to face what comes after.”

That stung Mirain, but not enough. “If the god wills it, so
be it. But I’ll do all I can to forestall it. Can that content you?”

It would have to. Mirain would yield no further than that.

oOo

Baron Ustaren kept princely state in his hall. His knights
dined on white wood, his captains on copper; for himself and his highborn
guests there were plates and goblets of chased silver.

Here as elsewhere in the Marches, women did not eat with
their men; but maids served the high table, robed and modestly veiled, with
downcast eyes.

One or two, Vadin thought, might have been lovely. The one
who hovered about Mirain certainly was, if a soft dark eye and a lissome figure
were any guide; though she was taller than Vadin, and beside Mirain she was a
giantess. Unobtrusively Vadin tried to penetrate her veil, to see whether her
face matched her eyes.

Mirain watched her likewise with an intensity that came
close to insult.

Close, but not, it seemed, on the mark. Ustaren laid a heavy
hand on his shoulder and grinned. “My sister’s daughter,” he said, cocking his
head toward the girl. “Do you like her?”

Mirain shaped his words with visible care. “She is very
beautiful; she serves me well. She honors your house.”

“Would she honor yours, Prince of Ianon?”

She had frozen like a hunted doe. Her fear was palpable. Of
the baron; of Moranden, who watched and listened and said no word; of Mirain.
Of Mirain most of all, a fear mingled with fascination and a strange,
reluctant, piercing pity.

“I am young,” he said, “to think of such things.”

Ustaren laughed, a great bellow of mirth. “Too young for
that, prince? Your stature may be a child’s, but all the tales grant you a
man’s years. Do they lie after all?”

The hall, Vadin noticed abruptly, was very still. Neither
Tuan nor Jeran sat close by, nor any other of the men who had shown themselves
loyal to Mirain.

Indeed he could not find them at all. Every man whose face
Vadin knew was Moranden’s, watching Mirain steadily, with palpable hostility.

Old tactics, and effective. Separate the enemy from his
allies; surround him and conquer.

Mirain’s cup was full of strong sweet wine. He raised it and
drank, saluting Ustaren. “A man is a man, whatever his size.”

“Or maybe,” said Ustaren, “he’s half a god. Tell me, did he
come to your mother as a man comes? Or as a spirit, or a shower of gold, or a
warm rain? How would a god take his bride?”

Mirain’s eyes glittered, but his voice was level. “That was,
and remains, between herself and the god.”

“However he came,” Ustaren said unruffled, “he left his mark
on you. Or so they say.”

Mirain’s fist clenched upon it. “He was so gracious as to
leave me proof of my parentage.”

“Are mere mortals permitted to look upon it?”

The tension in the hall had risen until it was all but
visible. Vadin’s brain throbbed with it. He struggled to speak.

“The mark!” a man cried. “Let us see the mark!”

Mirain rose suddenly, nearly oversetting his chair. One or
two men laughed, thinking he had drunk his fair share. He flung up his fist.
“Yes, my father marked me. Branded me for all to see. Here; look at it!”

Gold caught fire in his palm. Someone cried aloud.

Behind Vadin danger crouched. He tensed to leap. Too late.
Strong arms locked about him, dragging him back.

Where Mirain’s heart had been, a black blade clove the air.
The maidservant spun, eyes wide and fixed.

Moranden surged to his feet. Men of Umijan were all about
him. Two had Vadin, who fought with all the strength he had.

But Mirain was free. People in the hall had drawn back,
taking the tables with them. A wide space lay open around the central fire, and
there was order in the folk who rimmed it, the order of ritual. Men outside,
veiled women in a circle within, and in the center, Mirain with the baron’s
kinswoman.

She had cast aside her veil; she was even more lovely than
Vadin had suspected. And far more deadly. In each hand she held a dagger; one
was black and straight, one bronze-brown and curved. She moved slowly, fluidly,
as in a dance, closing in upon her prey.

Vadin bit a careless hand. Its owner struck him half
senseless but did not let him go. As he gathered to renew his struggle,
Moranden shouted with the roughness of rage, “No! I forbid this!”

It was Mirain who answered him, Mirain casting aside his
robe of honor, never losing a step in the dance of death. His voice was
frighteningly gentle. “Let be, kinsman. I’ll die and give you what you long
for, or I’ll live to face you on the field of honor. How can you fail?” He
flashed his white smile. “I don’t intend to.”

The black knife licked out. He danced away. The girl smiled.
“O valiant,” she said almost tenderly. “O brave boy, brought here to fight in
the war we made for you. It is a pity you must die. You are so young.”

“The black blade,” Moranden said harshly over the fading
echo of her words. “The black blade is poisoned. The other is for your heart
when she has you. After it has taken your manhood.”

“Gentle poison,” she said. “It makes its victim long to lie
down and love me. Will you come to it? You are the goddess’ own, so fair to
see.”

“So beloved of her enemy.” Mirain saluted Moranden, who
could not or would not aid him, but who had given him what honor demanded. He
matched the woman step for step, mirroring her, keeping a distance which she
could not close. She was no swifter than he, but she was no slower.

At first Vadin thought his ears tricked him. The hall was as
silent as any hall could be with half a thousand people in it, and a fire
blazing, and two mad creatures stalking one another around the hearth. But
under the silence and about it and through it wove a slow sweet music. Darkness
shot with gold. A voice at once deep and clear. Mirain had begun to sing.

The woman—no, she was a priestess, a votary of the goddess;
she could be no other—the priestess sprang, clawed with bronze and black iron.

The chant broke. Resumed. It was clearly audible now, but
the words were strange. They seemed to have no meaning, or a meaning beyond
mere human words.

A massive form lunged into the circle. Ustaren, still-faced,
still-eyed, enchanted.

Mirain was gone like a shadow. The priestess wheeled, her
daggers a blur in her hands. Black slashed foremost. The force of the baron’s
advance drove him full upon the poisoned blade.

Slowly, with no more sound than a sigh, he sank down. The
priestess laughed high and wild. “Blood! Blood for the goddess!”

Mirain was on her, cat-quick, cat-fluid. The black dagger
lodged deep in Ustaren’s body, stilling as the heart stilled. The bronze
flashed so close to Mirain’s cheek that surely it was shaved anew.

He laughed sharp and fierce. His golden hand closed upon the
woman’s wrist; she wailed in agony.

The knife fell, she after it. He let her fall. The dagger he
caught, wheeling about.

The fire roared to the roof and collapsed into embers. He
walked over it. Through it.

The circle broke, shrinking from the terror of his eyes.
They swept the greying faces. The god filled them, flamed in them, consumed
them.

“You fools,” he said with terrible softness. “You brave,
blind, treacherous fools.”

“Hell-spawn!” howled one bolder, or madder, than the rest.
It might have been a woman. It might have been a man shrill with fear.

Mirain did not answer. He faced his mother’s brother and
said, “I will remember that you spoke for me. Do you remember that I brought
about the death of the chief of your rebels, the raiser of the Marches, the
master of the tribes. He would have trapped us both, me to my death, you to be
his puppet in the king’s hall. I leave you his holding and his people.”

He hurled the dagger to the floor at Moranden’s feet. It
clattered in the silence. “Do with them as you will, my lord of the Western
Marches. My father calls me elsewhere.”

Since Mirain left, the king had taken to the battlements
again, gazing not southward now but westward. Ymin was with him through much of
his vigil, still and silent, her eyes as often upon him as upon the horizon.

He was old, she thought. He had always been old; yet he had
been strong, like an ancient tree. Now he was brittle and like to break. When
the wind blew chill from the mountains, he shivered, huddling in his cloak;
when the sun beat down, he bowed under it.

On the fourth day of Brightmoon’s waning, the twentieth
since Mirain’s leaving, the sun rose beyond a heavy curtain of cloud. A thin
grey rain darkened the castle; yet the king kept his watch. Even Ymin had
striven in vain to dissuade him.

He stood unheeding under the canopy his servants had erected
for him, with the rain in his face and the wind in his hair. Now and then a shiver
would rack his body, despite a rich cloak of embroidered leather lined with
fleece.

Those who came and went on the kingdom’s business—for the
king ruled as firmly from his battlements as from his throne—looked at one
another and made signs which they thought he could not see. Surely, and at long
last, he had fallen into his dotage.

He did not deign to notice them. Ymin suffered them, for
having failed to entice him from his post she held her peace. Sometimes she
sang to herself, old songs and new ones, rain-songs and hymns to the Sun.

Suddenly she faltered. He had stiffened and stepped forward
into the full force of the wind.

The Vale of Ianon was hidden in a thin mist. Shapes moved
within it, now all but invisible, now clear to see: farmfolk on errands that
could not wait for a clear sky, a traveler or two trudging toward warmth and
dry feet. Once there had been a post-rider, and once a lady’s carriage.

This was a mounted company, drab in the rain. There were
four of them. No banner floated over them; whatever badges they bore lay hidden
under dark cloaks. Their mounts moved swiftly enough, but the beasts’ necks
were low with weariness.

The foremost was glistening black in the rain, and it alone
seemed to run easily. It wore no bridle.

The king had already reached the stair to the gate.

The riders clattered under the carven arch. One by one,
wearily, they dismounted to give reverence to the king.

He ignored them. Mirain was slowest to leave his senel’s
back, yet he seemed less worn than the rest. He even smiled a little as he came
to his grandfather’s embrace, standing back when the king would let him and
saying, “Why, you are as wet as I! Grandfather, have you been waiting for me?”

“Yes.” The king held him at arm’s length. “Where is
Moranden?”

Mirain’s face did not change. “Behind me. He had matters to
settle.”

“Such as the war?”

“The war is over.” Mirain shivered and sneezed.
“Grandfather, by your leave, may I dismiss my escort?”

If the king recognized the evasion, he saw the truth in it.
“You also. I shall speak with you when you are dry and rested.”

oOo

There was a fire on the hearth in the king’s chamber and
spiced wine warming over it, and in front of it the king, with Ymin on the
stool beside him.

Mirain sat by them without a word, accepting the cup the
singer handed him. He had bathed; his hair was clean and loose and beginning to
dry, and he had on a long soft robe. His face in firelight was still, almost a
mask, his mouth set in a grimmer line than perhaps he knew of.

The king stirred. “Tell me,” he said simply.

For a long moment Mirain was silent, staring down at his
untouched wine. At length he said, “The war is over. Not that it was much of
one, in the end. It was all a trick. Ustaren of Umijan played a large part in
it. He is dead. I am here. Moranden will follow when he has settled his fief.”