The Lady of Han-Gilen (26 page)

“I miss him,” Elian said through gritted teeth. “I miss him
with every bone in my body. He filled so many emptinesses. He was friend,
brother, lover. He was all that a woman could wish for. And I let him go. For
what? For a man who won’t even begin to court me.”

Ilhari swiveled an ear at her. That came of two-legged
stupidity. If she had let one of them mount her, then it all would have been
settled. Her ache would be gone and so would they, painlessly.

Elian laughed with a catch at the end of it. “There are
plenty of men who are like that, and women, too; but neither of them is so
minded. Nor I.” She set down the brush. Even in the heaviness of her winter
coat, Ilhari shone like polished copper. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m made wrong.
Or maybe I’m mad. There’s a wild streak in our family, that goes with the
power. That one has it—the nameless one. She never settled on a man, either;
and the god rejected her for an outlander. No wonder she did what she did.”

She was a crawling on the skin. Ilhari twitched it off and
investigated her manger. A grain or two lingered there; she lipped them up.

“I can’t ever condone what she did. But I begin to
understand her. She’s still out there, you know. Hiding herself in shadows.
Watching and listening. Waiting for me to break and go to her.”

How could she watch? She was blind.

“Her power can see.”

Elian shivered. She had been a fool to say so much, even to
Ilhari. The Exile had not beset her dreams since she came to Han-Gilen: her
father’s doing. No power for ill could enter his princedom. And she had been
all tangled in her muddle of lovers.

But the Exile waited. Elian knew it beyond knowing. She
would wait until Elian came, or until she died; or perhaps she had the power to
wait beyond death, to ensnare her prey in bonds no living creature could break.

“Midwinter,” Elian said, too quickly and too loudly.
“Tomorrow is Midwinter. We’ll sing the dark away this year with more power than
we’ve ever had, with Mirain here to do the singing and dance the Dance. Do you
know he won’t be high priest? They’ve asked him three times, and the place has
been empty this year and more, and they won’t fill it, but no more will he. The
world’s throne is enough, he says. Let the temple choose someone more holy.”

Thrones and temples meant nothing to the mare. She
contemplated the heap of sweet hay that Elian spread for her, and began to
nibble it.

“He’ll take it in the end,” Elian went on, mostly to herself.
The Exile’s presence was all but banished; but not quite. “It will be that, or
leave the order without a leader. After all, they can’t take a mere mortal,
however wise and holy, with Avaryan’s own son building his city half a day’s
ride away.”

Cities were uncomfortable. So were stables. Open air was
better, and an open plain.

“It’s snowing.”

The mare nudged her aside and trotted to the stable door. It
swung open at a touch. Cold air swirled in, clothed in snow. Ilhari snorted at
it and plunged into it, dancing and tossing her head.

Elian trudged in her wake, feeling irredeemably earthbound.
The shouts of children rang in her ears. New though the storm was, they were
all out in it, urchin and lordling alike.

Nor were all of them so very small. She saw youths—men—in
the garb of Mirain’s army: southerners in particular, to whom a snowfall before
Midwinter was a rare and precious thing, but great tall Ianyn soldiers too,
fighting snow battles that began and ended in laughter.

White softness showered over her, blinding her. She gasped
and wheeled.

Mirain’s grin was as wide and wicked as a child’s. A bright-haired
boychild clung to his legs and crowed at her: Halenan’s eldest, Korhalion.

As she spluttered and glared, Mirain swung the child onto
his shoulders and filled his hands with snow.

“Throw it!” Korhalion cried. “Throw it!”

The last assault was melting into icy runnels down her back.
With a smothered cry, half of wrath, half of mirth, she wheeled and bolted.

She was as swift as a golden deer, darting through the great
court. But Mirain was a panther, ridden by a laughing demon.

Everyone was cheering, some in Mirain’s name, some in her
own. Shapes flew past her: faces, bodies, a bright gleam of eyes.

The cold and the race and the shouting came together like
strong wine, filling her with a sweet wild delight. She eeled round a man like
a tall pillar—Cuthan’s white grin atop it—and stopped short behind, and laughed
in Mirain’s startled face; and slid beneath his snatching hands. Snatching
herself, great glistening armfuls, and wheeling, and flinging them on him.

Revenge had a taste like wild honey. She danced about him,
taunting, showering him with snow.

He lunged. Korhalion’s weight overbalanced him; he slipped and
fell, bearing her down in a tangle of limbs, full into a drift of snow.

He lay winded, trying to laugh. Elian, whose fierce twist
had brought her down between child and king, set Korhalion on his feet and
brushed the snow from his face.

His tongue quested after it; his eyes danced on her. “Do it
again?” he begged.

Mirain struggled up and cuffed him lightly. “Not quite yet,
imp. Every racer needs a brief rest between courses.”

Korhalion’s face fell, but brightened again in an instant.
“So then, I don’t need you. I’ve got my new pony. Lia, did you see him? Mirain
gave him to me. He’s black, just like the Mad One.”

“His grandsire was my first pony,” Mirain added. “Do you
remember him?”

“I should,” said Elian. “I inherited him.”

Mirain’s hair was full of snow, his brows and his thick
lashes starred with it. Swallowing new and perilous mirth, she brushed it away.

He laughed unabashed and reached to serve her likewise. His
hand was light and deft and fire-warm.

Korhalion danced between them, sparking with impatience.
“Come and see!”

oOo

The pony occupied a stall in the corner of Halenan’s
stable. It was black indeed, clean-limbed as a stag beneath its heavy coat,
with a mad green eye and a swift slash of horns.

“He’s Demon’s get,” Elian said with assurance as the black
head snaked over the stall door, lips rolled back, teeth gleaming. Deftly she
evaded the snap of them to seize the woolly ear. “Nurse must be appalled.”

“Nurse doesn’t know about him yet,” said Korhalion.
“Mirain’s going to teach me to ride. He said you’d help. He says you can ride
anything he can. Can you, Lia?”

“Yes,” she answered swiftly, with a glance at Mirain. He was
all innocence, feeding a bit of fruit to Anaki’s placid gelding. “I can do
better than he can. Demon never bucked
me
off.”

“I calmed him down before I passed him on to you,” Mirain
said.

“Calmed him? Passed him on? He was as wild as he ever was
when I got away from Nurse and the grooms and put a saddle on him. But I taught
him to mind me. He was like the Mad One. All bluster.” She smiled at Mirain,
sweetly. “As they say: Like master, like mount.”

He laughed aloud. “As they also say: Was never a woman born
but yearned to rule her man. And all his chattels.”

“
Her
man?” She
tossed her head. Her heart was leaping strangely. “Not quite yet, brother.”

“Perhaps not, little sister. And,” added Mirain, “perhaps
so.” He cocked an eye at Korhalion. “Shall we give her her gift now? Or make
her wait for it?”

“Now!” cried Korhalion.

They were bursting with a great secret, the man as much as
the child. But neither would be his own betrayer. Elian let herself be led
unresisting, with Korhalion tugging eagerly at her hand.

In the quiet of her mind, she tested Mirain’s mood. Strong
though his shields always were, more than eagerness crept through: a thrumming
tension, strong almost as fear.

They left Halenan’s house, passing through the snow-clad
streets to the palace. In the wing that Mirain had taken was a wide roofed
court.

He had filled the chambers around it with his own picked
men. Already they called themselves the Chosen of An-Sh’Endor, the Company of
the Sun. The open space served them as gathering hall and training ground, full
always with men and voices and the clash of weapons.

On this day of snow it was unwontedly quiet. The men of the
company stood around the edges, drawn up in loose ranks, armed as for
inspection.

In the center by the winter-dry fountain, ten waited alone.
Their cloaks were somber green; they bore no device.

One was Cuthan, head up, wearing torque of greened bronze.
Five were women. Tall or short, plump or reed-slender, every one looked strong
and capable, and held herself like one trained to arms.

The scarlet company saluted their king with a ringing clash
of spear on shield. But those in green stood erect and still.

Elian turned on Mirain. “I never knew there were warrior
women in your army.”

“I have a few,” he answered her, and smiled. “The whole
company would have been of women, but I reckoned without my men. They protested
vehemently; they came close to rioting. You see their ringleader yonder: the
one I’ve punished with the captain’s torque. For him I had to give way, and
settle it with a mixed company, half of each. For both of us I cry your pardon
that there are only ten to greet you; we’ve not had time to raise the full
hundred.”

“A thousand would vie for the honor, my lady,” Cuthan said,
clear and proud. His eye was steady, laughing a little, but grave, too. It
seemed that he had forgiven her for lacking the sense to come out of the rain.

She looked at him and at his command. It was a careful
scrutiny, missing no small detail: the excellence of their arms and armor, the
pride in their faces.

One of the women was as lovely as a flower of bronze.
Another must surely have been born of the red earth of Han-Gilen, a broad, sturdy,
strong-handed peasant woman. She had a level eye and a touch of a smile, as if
to mock all this display.

Last of all, Elian looked at the giver of the gift. Very
quietly, very carefully, she said, “My lord forgets. I am not to be pensioned
off. If he will dismiss me, then let him do so outright, without pretense.”

Equally quietly he responded, “It is not a dismissal.”

“Shall a squire boast her own Guard? And one of them a high
nobleman?”

“A squire, no. But a queen well may.”

It did not strike her all at once. Her tongue spoke of its
own accord. “I am no queen. I am but a princess.”

“A queen is one who weds a king,” he said as patiently as to
a child.

“But the only king here is—” At last, mind and mouth met.
Her limbs went cold. Her voice went high and wild. “You
can’t!
”

“Why not?” he asked reasonably.

How could he be reasonable? He had trapped her. No word at
all but what she had beaten out of him, and suddenly this, in front of his
whole household. Where she could not refuse. When she could not accept.

He reached. If he had not been Mirain, she might have said
that he moved with diffidence. But he was Mirain, and his eyes were steady,
black-brilliant. “You are my queen,” he said.

Her hands rested cold and limp in his burning-strong ones.
Her mind was a hundredfold. It laughed, or wept, or howled in rage, or gibbered
in stark terror.

How dared he trap her? How dared he be so sure of her? She
was no man’s possession. She was herself.

She did not want him.

She did.

She did not.

She did.

“My lady.” He spoke to mind and ears alike, a murmur as soft
as sleep. “My queen. My heart’s love.”

She struggled in blind panic. It was not that he had said
it. It was not that he had said it here, for his army to hear. The worst of it,
the very worst, was her own inner singing.

It mattered nothing that he was king and emperor, that the
god’s blood flamed in his veins, that he had chosen her of all living women,
that he had half the world to lay at her feet. It mattered only that he was
himself. Mirain.

She had lost Ilarios for her tongue’s slowness, and he was
gone. Mirain would go nowhere until he had made her his own. As if she had no
choice but that; as if she could have none.

Fate. Prophecy. Inevitability.

She tore her hands from his. “My thanks to my lord king,”
she said with venomous softness, “but I am not the stuff of which queens are
made.”

He said nothing, made no move. She remembered with a stab of
pain how he had looked when she spoke of loving Ilarios. Precisely the same.
Cold and still and royal, offering nothing, taking nothing.

Her teeth bared. “This company I will take, because it is a
free gift, theirs as much as yours. I think I can command a force of ten in my
king’s service. The rest”—she swallowed round bile—“O son of the Sun, do you
keep for your proper empress.”

“There can be none but you.”

Had they been alone, she would have struck him. She bit down
on her fist until her tongue tasted the iron sweetness of blood. “Oh, you men!
Why do you always fix upon the worst?”

“That,” he asked gently, “always being you?”

“Yes, damn you! You hound me, you haunt me. You moon after
my so-called beauty, make allowances for my notorious wildness, and calculate
my lineage and my dowry down to the last half-cousin and quarter-star. Can’t
you understand that I want none of you?
None
!”

His tension had turned to amusement. He even had the gall to
smile. Worse—he dared to say nothing of all he might have said, of the true and
of the cruel and of what was both together.

It was the smile of a great king or of a carven god: calm,
assured, and infinitely wise. And giving not a hair’s breadth to her will.

She did the worst thing, the craven thing, the thing she
always did. She ran away from him.

oOo

She did not run far. That great impulse which had sent her
northward had long since faded. But she gathered her belongings on the bed she
still kept near Mirain’s own: an untidy heap, surprisingly high. And there was
her armor, and her trophies. She would need a servant to help her with it all.