The Lady of Han-Gilen (23 page)

“She needs greater healing than I can give,” the Red Prince
said. He had come to Elian’s side and taken her hand, calmly, as if nothing had
ever happened between them.

She let her cold fingers rest in his warm strong ones. She
felt dull, numbed, as if she had endured a long siege of weeping. Of course it
would happen so. It must.

Unless—

“Mirain,” she said. “He has the power. He can—”

Her brother looked at her. Simply looked, without either
pleading or condemnation.

Her eyes slid away. Anaki strained under the midwife’s
hands, twisting, crying out with effort and with agony. The lash of power from
within, untrained, uncontrolled, turned the cry to a shriek.

Elian’s own power reached without her willing it, in pure
instinct, clasping, bending,
thus
.

There were words in it. Ah no, child. Would you kill your
mother? Come with me. Come, so . . .

“Elian.” She stared at what Hal set in her hands. Dark red,
writhing feebly, and howling with all its strength.

Above it hovered its father’s broad white grin. “And Elian,”
he said in high glee. “What better name for your very image?”

“My very—” She drew her namesake close, and returned her
brother’s grin with one that wobbled before it steadied. “She is beautiful,
isn’t she?”

“Breathtakingly.” Halenan reclaimed his offspring, to lay
her in her mother’s arms. Anaki was grey-pale and weary, but she smiled.

Elian’s knees buckled. Hands caught her. Many. Her father’s;
her mother’s.

Mirain’s.

She blinked. “Where—how—”

“Rest first.”

She fought free, glaring at Mirain. “You knew! You plotted
this. You made me—”

“We did,” Mirain agreed. “Later, if you like, you may
continue in your cowardice. Today you will be civil. And that, madam, is a
command.”

His eyes flickered upon her. Half of it was laughter; half
of it was not.

She looked past him. She came of a proud family. They would
never plead, would never even hint at it. Yet the eyes upon her were warm,
offering, if only she would take. Only if she would take.

Her throat closed. She held out her hands. “Since,” she
choked out, “since my king commands . . . and since . . .”

They were there, all of them who could be, and Anaki in
spirit, enfolding her. In that circle where she most longed to be strong, she
broke and cried like a child.

From the screened gallery, one could look down into the
hall and not be seen oneself. Which was why that narrow balcony was called the
ladies’ bower, and the sentry post.

Elian supposed that she was a little of both. Although she
had returned to Mirain’s livery, a gown or two had found its way among the
coats and trousers in her clothing chest.

Her mother had not even looked askance at her. The joy of
reunion was still too fresh, and with it the fear of a new flight.

Not so long ago, she would have been glad to see her mother
taking pains to voice no censure, to accept her as she was. But now that she
had the upper hand, it did not matter.

Victories were always so. Savorless, even a little shameful.

She shook herself hard. That victory deserved no sweetness.
The best of it was the joy: that she had her family again; that her battle with
them had been no battle at all, only her own craven stubbornness.

Even now her father’s mind brushed hers; she felt the warmth
of his smile, although he seemed to be intent on the petitioner before his
throne. Her brother stood behind him. Mirain, though king and emperor, did not
interfere in this business of the ruling prince, but effaced himself among the
higher nobles.

Or tried. Not a man there but knew where he was, he who
without height or beauty or splendor of dress remained the Sunborn.

Elian peered down at the gathering. Today Ilarios meant to
win his wager; restraining power, she left the search to her eyes. Who would
have believed that there were so many fair-haired people in Han-Gilen? Or that
so many of them would choose to wear dark colors on this day of all days?

Some of them were women. Some were too tall, some too broad
or too narrow, most too dark of face: Gileni brown or bronze. One with a mane
of the true bright gold—but no, it was a woman, and she wore deep blue.

There, at last. Near the somber-clad scribes, almost among
them. That angle of the head was unmistakable.

Somehow he had disposed of his shadows, or they had
concealed themselves too perfectly even for her eyes’ finding. He wore a
scribe’s fusty gown, and he carried a writing case; his hair was pulled back
and knotted at the nape of his neck.

Without that golden frame, his face seemed rounder, younger.
Yet he still looked royal; imperial.

No one took the slightest notice of him.

A man approached him, a lord of the court. Knowing surely
who he was, speaking to him.

Ilarios bent his head in what he must have deemed to be
humility. The lord gestured, lordly-wise, and Asanion’s high prince sat
cross-legged at the end of the fine of scribes and began to write to the
nobleman’s dictation.

Was that a smile in the corner of his mouth?

oOo

When Ilarios left the hall, Elian was waiting for him. He
clutched his writing case to his breast and bowed, all servile; but when he
straightened he was laughing for sheer delight.

She laughed with him, and kissed him. There was no thought
in it. It was very sweet, and he was startled, which made it sweeter still.

He took her hand. “Lady,” he said breathlessly. “Oh, lady.”
But though he looked and sounded even younger than she, he remained Ilarios.
“There are better places than this to collect the rest of my wager.”

A lady passed with all her retinue. Seeing the scribe and
the squire together in the passage, she beckoned imperiously. “Here, penman! I
have need of you.”

Elian stiffened. Ilarios’ eyes danced. Oh, people were
blinder even than she had thought, if they reckoned him a meek commoner.

“Yes, madam,” he said. “At once, madam.”

Elian caught his sleeve, slowing his retreat. “When you
finish. The south tower.”

His smile was his only response.

oOo

He was slow in coming to the tower. But it was a pleasant
place, high up over the city, with her father’s library at the bottom of it.
Choosing a book at random, Elian mounted the long twisting stair.

The chamber at the top had been a schoolroom not so long
ago, and would be again when Halenan’s children were old enough to leave their
nurse for a tutor. The furnishings were ancient and battered and exceedingly
comfortable, laden with memories. The tallest chair had been hers, because she
was the smallest, and because it had the only cushioned seat, though the
cushion was stone-hard and full of lumps. Her behind, settling into it,
remembered each hill and valley.

She leaned on the heavy age-darkened table. Its top was much
hacked and hewn, inscribed with the names of bored pupils. Royal names, most of
them.
Halenan
was very common, carved
in numerous hands. Nine, Hal had always insisted, although their firstfather
could not possibly have learned his letters here, wild wanderer that he was,
with nothing to his name when he came to Han-Gilen but a sword and a gift of
wizardry. Hal had carved the ancient name again, making it ten, and ruined his
second-best dagger in doing it.

Her finger traced the letters, gliding from them across the
ridged wood to the bright gleam of a wonder. It looked like a sunburst
marvelously wrought of inlaid gold. But no goldsmith had set it there to gleam
incongruously amid the childish scrawls. Mirain had done it by no will of his
own, not long after his mother died, when power and temper roiled in him and
made his grief a deadly thing.

Pricked by some small slight—a sally from Halenan, or his
tutor’s reprimand—he had risen and braced himself, and his power had come
roaring and flaming. At the last instant he had mastered his rage; the power,
thwarted, too potent to be contained, had left this mark of its passing.

With a swift movement Elian left chair and table. High
narrow windows cleft the wall at intervals, letting in the cool sunlight.

She knelt beside the hooded hearth, where a fire was laid
neatly, as if there were daily need of it. Though flint and steel rested in
their niche, she gathered a spark of power, held it a moment until its fierce
heat began to sear her hand, and cast it on the wood. Flames leaped up,
red-gold like her hair, settling into their common red and yellow and burning
blue.

Warmth laved her face. She had forgotten her book on the
table; she let it be, resting her eyes on the dance of the fire. Shapes formed
in it, images, past and present and to come.

A corner of her mind struggled, protesting. The rest watched
calmly. Peace-visions, these, with no taint of fear. Anaki and her si-Elian,
small bright-downy head and smooth deep-brown one. Anaki was smiling a deep,
secret smile, and her plainness was beautiful. Prince Orsan and his princess,
their royal dignity laid aside, laughing together, and after a time moving
close, mirth forgotten, until body touched body. Ilhari with Hal’s grey
stallion in a green meadow, silver on fire-gold.

Elian flushed with more than the heat of the fire. Seeing,
this certainly was, but all her teaching had told her that the seer could shape
what she saw. Even unwitting.

Sharply, almost angrily, she banished the senel-shapes. The
flames were flames, no more. No visions. No longings.

And what do you long
for?
Her inner voice was mocking. The fire rose and shaped itself. Once,
and once again. Dark, gold. Emperor and emperor to be.

True child of the Halenani, she. Beset with maiden moods,
she settled only on the very highest. The one she could have if she but said
the word. The other . . .

The other vanished. Ilarios knelt by the fire, still in his
scribe’s gown. His face was as white as bleached bone; his eyes were the
burning sulfur-yellow of a cat’s.

With tight-controlled savagery he ripped the bindings from
his hair. It poured down his back, tumbled into his face.

Her teeth unclamped from her lip. She tasted blood. “My
lord,” she said. “Has someone offended you?” And when he did not answer: “Your
wager is well won. Too well, maybe. If anyone has spoken ill to you, you should
forgive him. He cannot have known—”

He flung back his hair. For all his leashed fury, his voice
was mild. Alarmingly so. “No one has slighted me. Though to be a scribe and not
the high prince . . . it is interesting. One sees so much. And
one is never noticed. Until—” His breath came ragged. “Until one is forced to
reveal oneself.”

She waited.

He contemplated his fists clenched on his thighs. His
breathing quieted, but the tension did not leave him. “We have had an embassy.
So many, there have been, since the Sunborn came to Han-Gilen. This one was
small, plain, and to the point. And from my father.” He looked up, a flash of
burning gold. “With all due respect to his divine majesty, the Lord An-Sh’Endor
has followers in plenty. He does not need the heir of Asanion.”

“When?” She could barely speak; even the single word took
all her strength.

His smile was bitter. “Oh, I need not take flight at once.
That would be unseemly. I am given three days to order my affairs.”

“And if you do not go?”

“I am to be reminded that, although I have no legitimate
brothers, I have fifteen who are sons of concubines. All grown, ambitious, and
eager to serve my royal father.”

She sat still. After a long moment she said, “You knew this
would come.”

“I knew it.” He unclenched his fists, first the right, then
the left. “There are my half-brothers. There are also my full sisters. Four of
them. Two, yet unwed, are priestesses of various of the thousand rapacious
gods. Two are wed to princes. Ambitious princes. One is rich, but not
fabulously so; the other reckons himself poor. And Asanion’s throne is wrought
of pure gold.”

Her hand went out. Living gold stirred under it; then warm
flesh.

Panther-swift, panther-strong, he seized her. “Lady,” he
said. “Elian. Come with me.”

Never in her life had she been so close to a man. Body to
body. Heart to thudding heart.

Her hands were crushed between. She worked them free, linked
them behind his neck.

“Come with me,” he said again.

He was fire-warm, trembling, but his anger had left him. She
looked into his eyes, sun-gold now, both burning and tender.

“By all the gods, by your own bright Avaryan: Elian, Lady of
Han-Gilen, I love you. I have always loved you. Come with me and be my bride.”

Her teeth set. Her body burned; there was an ache between
her thighs. Every line of him was distinct against her.

“I will make you my empress,” he said. “Or if you will not
have that, if a throne of gold seems too high and cold for you, then I will
abandon it.” He laughed, brief and wild. “You yearn for freedom; so too do I.
Let us disguise ourselves and flee, north or east or south, or even west where
my face is a common thing; and we can make our way as we can, and live as we
please, and love as the simple folk love, for no fate or pride or dynasty, but
only for ourselves.” His arms tightened. “Oh, lady! Will you? Will you love
me?”

His passion was like wind and fire; his beauty pierced her
heart. And yet the cold comer of her mind observed,
How young he looks!

He was nineteen. But the cool, controlled high prince had
seemed a man grown. As old as Mirain, as Halenan, as—as her father.

He was no more than a boy.

A lovely, fiery, desperate boy. Her voice would not obey her
and speak. Her body would not be silent.

This kiss was ages long and burning sweet.

At last they parted. Elian blinked, startled. Her eyes were
brimming; her cheeks were wet. “I—” she began, and foundered, and began again.
“I love you. But not—I am not worth a throne.”