The Lady of Han-Gilen (39 page)

The blindness passed, eternally slow. The madness hovered.
Her eyes ached and burned; her throat was raw. She was cold, as cold as death.

Her mind was clear, her power bright and keen and deadly. To
its eyes she was a dark glass full of lightnings, and in its center a pearl of
white fire.

Mirain was glass only. Empty. Life without mind, without
thought, without will. The grass of the winter field shone more brightly than
he.

She made a shield of will, glass around burning glass.
Stretched it, rounded it, enfolding the emptied other. He who had blazed like a
sun in the world of living light—

No grieving. Grieving weakened the shield. She firmed her
will, pure guard, pure strength.

Joy woke unlooked for, a pure cold delight. She was young,
she was but half trained, but she was strong. Time would make her stronger
still, great mage and great queen, equal even to the Sunborn.

Time closed in about her, weighted with death. Her body laid
itself down beside the shell of Mirain. Her power slipped free, bright fish in
the sea of light. There below swirled the maelstrom, great whirling emptiness,
spinning down and down and down.

She hovered above it, holding herself still with her power.
Pausing, gathering.

Another came to hover beside her, brightness flecked with
coppery dark. She arched her supple body; she bared her teeth. This storm was
hers to ride.
Hers
. How dared he
trespass?

He darted; he twined himself about her. He gripped her fast,
and he had hands, a face, a human voice speaking in her human ears. “I go with
you. You need me.”

She struggled, but he had mastered this seeming; he was
himself, great tall Ianyn warlord, mage of Mirain’s making, oathbrother, soul-bound.

She seared him with hate. He shook it off. He smiled, damn
him to all the hells. “You need me,” he said again. “I need you. Mirain needs
us both.”

“He needs none but me!” She tore free. She wrought her
fish-shape; she poised once more and leaped.

Dark. Dark without sound, without scent, without touch. Void
without end, death without life, no light, no air, no strength. Only memory,
scattering in a soundless scream.

Remember.
Remember
.

Elian, Orsan’s daughter of Eleni’s bearing, Mirain’s bride:
Elian ilOrsan Kileni li’Mirain. Elian who was herself and of herself, free and
apart, her own. Longlimb, firehair, fire-tempered and all contrary. Elian.

She stood alone in a dim corridor. It was very plain, floor,
walls, ceiling: black stone without sheen, smoothed but unpolished. She wore a
long tunic like that which Mirain had worn in the shield-circle, dyed deep
green. Her hair poured free and heavy to her knees, a flood of molten copper.

She ventured forward. The passage sloped gently downward.
Sometimes it curved; sometimes a door opened on shadow.

She did not turn aside, could not. Some force of will,
whether her own or another’s, drew her onward.

A wall rose before her, with a door in it, opening to her
touch. The light beyond was somewhat less dim, like twilight on a day of rain.
Before her spread a wide rolling country under a lowering sky.

In sunlight it might have been fair: field and wood, hill
and green valley, rising into a wall of mountains. So must Ianon be, where
first Mirain was king.

Her body shifted and changed. She spread wide green wings. A
sudden wind caught and lifted them; she arrowed upward, pouring forth a liquid
stream of song.

The grey land fled beneath her. She outflew the wind; she
outflew her own song. The mountains loomed like the world’s wall.

Singing, she hurtled upon them. Clapped wings to her sides.
Soared over them, the bleak stony peaks all but clipping the feathers of her
fiery breast.

She swooped down on an endless slide of air into a green
bowl lit with dawn: a lake and an islet, a ruined hall, a pavement half of dawn
and half of night.

Bare human feet touched the grass. The green tunic settled
over them. In the circle lay a lone figure, black hair spreading on pale stone.

Slowly she approached him. As she set her foot on the
pavement, it blazed up with heatless fire.

Out of it swelled a shape. A woman all of night in a robe
woven of dawn, barring the way.

Elian stood still. The woman was beautiful, but it was not a
human beauty. It was too high and cold and terrible. The voice was as cold as
wind on ice, as bloodless-pure as the notes of a harp. “If you have wisdom,
come no closer.”

Elian knew neither wisdom nor fear. She essayed a step. The
woman did not move, but said, “You seek what is mine. He woke me; he wielded
me. Now he pays. All that was his, I have taken. All that was power, I have
made my own.”

“But,” said Elian, “he woke you for my sake. Only give him
back, just as he was, and you may have me in his stead.”

“I do not bargain,” said the woman of night.

Elian’s body drooped, but stiffened anew. “So, then. Give
him to me.”

“Why?”

“Because he is mine.”

"He is mine now.”

Elian stepped swiftly sidewise. The woman did not seem to
move, but she was there, inescapable. With the courage of desperation, Elian
flung herself upon her.

She staggered and fell to the stones. She had met only air.

Mirain lay lifeless. Elian gathered him up, holding him to
her breast, rocking him.

A shape loomed over her. A woman of dawn, clothed in night.
Elian looked on her in neither surprise nor awe, only weariness.

This beauty was high and terrible yet not cold, this voice
achingly pure yet warm, like a deep-toned flute. And yet it was the same. They
were the same, dawn and night: two faces of one power.

Elian turned her mind away. It was temptation. In this place
it could be her death, and through her Mirain’s. Her arms tightened around his
body.

“He is mine,” said the woman of dawn, “and he shall remain
mine. Unless . . .”

Elian’s breath caught with the agony of hope.

“Unless,” said the woman of dawn, “you pay your own price.”

“Anything!” cried Elian.

“Slowly, child of earth. I do not bargain. This is the price
which the gods set, and not I: the price of one man’s salvation. If you will
pay it.”

“Only name it and it is yours.”

The woman of dawn regarded her in what might have been pity.
“The name of it is very simple. Your self.”

Elian blinked stupidly. “My—”

“Your self. That which makes you Elian, alone of all the
children of earth. That which makes you dream that you are free.”

Her self. The very power that had snatched her from madness
and flung aside Vadin’s strong aid and brought her to this place. Her strength;
her obstinacy. Her reckless temper. Herself.

Mirain lay in her arms. He had never been closer to beauty,
or farther from it.

She loved him. Her heart ached with it; ached to see him
standing again before her, moving with grace which few men could match, warming
her with his rare and brilliant smile.

And yet. To pay so much. Had she not paid enough and more
than enough?

Other women had lost their loves and gone on. Other women
had borne children, served regencies, held fiefs and kingdoms until the heirs
could claim them. She could rule Mirain’s empire; she had the strength and the
people’s love, and her father and her brother to stand behind her. Even Vadin
would bow to her for her child’s sake.

Or she could simply kill herself as she had threatened to
do, and end her wavering.

Save that life was sweet, and hers had barely begun. And
love was the sweetest thing in it, not of the body only, but the wonder of
being two who were one: separate, distinct, yet joined, like gold twined with
copper in a fillet for a queen.

If she paid this price, she would lose it all. And
Mirain—what would it do to him to wake and find her as she was now?

Or worse. Awake and aware, but no longer Elian. Meek and
pliant, as the world believed a woman should be, with no thought or word that
was her own.

Maybe he would not mind. Maybe he would even prefer it.

Maybe she would not know what she had done to herself.

She trembled, shaking with sickness that was all of the
soul. What virtues she had were warrior virtues: courage, high heart, and
lethal honesty, and loyalty that could set all the rest at naught. She could be
generous with possessions or with power; she had plenty of both. But that great
virtue of the priests, which with bitter irony they called selflessness, of
that she had none at all.

“I’m a soldier,” she said. “A queen. I was never made to be
a martyr.”

The woman of dawn stood tall and silent above her.

She bent her head over Mirain’s body. She could die. He
could die. They both could die. The world would go on without them.

Maybe it would be better so. Maybe the Exile had had the
right of it, and evil was not only dark alone but light alone, and the world’s
peace lay in the delicacy of their balance.

His arm slipped from his side and fell, palm up. The Sun
shone with none of its sometime brilliance, none of its god-born power. It
seemed no more than a folly, a dandy’s fashion, an ornament set in the most
improbable of places: awkward, impractical, and faintly absurd.

She raised her eyes from it and set her chin. “I’ll pay,”
she said.

The woman of dawn bowed her high head. Great pride was in
that gesture, yet it was a gesture of respect.

Elian’s sudden selflessness, though soul-deep, had no
patience in it. “Well. Why do you wait? Take my mind away from me.”

“That,” said the woman, “was not the price. Nor can I take
what you give. You must give it of your own accord.”

“But I don’t know how!”

That, perhaps, was a smile. The woman of dawn raised her
hand. “Look yonder.”

Elian looked, thinking to see the woman of night, or some
greater wonder still. Seeing—

“You.”

Vadin said nothing. He was the same here as ever, tall,
tired, detested, inevitable.

“Of course it would be you. How did you get here?”

“I was always here.”

“You were
not
!”
she cried, stung. “I was one with Mirain. You were never there. Never!”

“You didn’t want to see me.”

The blood flooded to her cheeks.

But she had no cheeks here. No blood. No flesh at all. This
was a vision of her mind, a shape she had given to the workings of her power.
She was a naked will in the void that had been Mirain’s mind, set against the
power that dwelt in the mountain.

Vadin trespassed, invading where he had no need and no
purpose, betraying at last his jealousy of her who had taken his place in his
oathbrother’s soul. She willed him away.

He stood unmoving and unmoved. If anything, he was more
solid than ever. “Don’t be more of a fool than you can help. Mirain is trapped,
that much at least you have the wits to see. If you want to set him free, you
have to give up your stubbornness; banish this illusion; plunge into his mind
and find him, and lead him back to the light.”

At last, and terribly, she understood. When she was very
young, she had learned: every mind descended through many levels. The greater
one’s power, the deeper one could go. But even the mightiest of the mages, the
master enchanters, the great wizards of the songs, had never dared to plunge to
the bottom.

Beyond a certain level—Sigan’s Wall, her father had called
it—there was no returning. One was trapped in the black deeps below all
consciousness, beneath even dreams. One’s self, indeed, was lost.

And the one gate, the only gate . . .

There was no escaping him. Not through hate or contempt or
simple refusal to acknowledge his existence. He made it worse; his eyes asked
her pardon, but they would not forsake their pride by begging for it. That he
was here, deeper even than she had ever gone. That she could not pass save
through him and with him. That she must do worse than sacrifice her self for
her lover’s sake; she must sacrifice it to him whom she could not even like,
much less love.

She rounded on the woman of dawn. “Is there no other way?”

Night flickered over the luminous face. The deep eyes were
cold. “None,” said the power.

She looked at Mirain, so still upon the stone. She looked at
Vadin, whose gaze likewise had settled upon the Sunborn. He knelt; he touched
the lifeless brow, and smoothed the hair away from it, as if Mirain had been
one of his children.

Hatred roared through her, flaming. It passed, and left her
empty. He wept, that haughty lord of warriors. But he would not plead with her
intransigence.

He was the gate, but she was the key. Without him she could
not pass. Without her he could not open the way.

His eyes lifted, brimming. Her own were burning dry. “He
told me,” she said. “Mirain told me—if any man so much as touched me—”

“When did you ever do as you were told?”

She lurched forward a step. Her hands wanted to strike him;
to stroke him. Invader, interloper; she hated him. Sharer in Mirain’s soul,
brother, kinsman; she—almost she could force herself to—if he were Hal—if it
were necessary—

She touched him. Mirain breathed between them, but slowly,
slowly, cooling into death.

Her breath caught, sharp with pain. “For him,” she said.
“Only for him.”

Vadin rose. Before he could reach for her, she had seized
him. Body to body. Mind to mind. Weaving, interweaving, warp, woof, the flash
of the shuttle between. He was bright; he was strong.

He was Mirain, but he was not. Kinsman. Brother. He shaped
himself for her: a strong hand clasping hers, a strong will bolstering her own.
Even—even a touch of joy, the delight of a master who has met his master in
power.

With joy then, and with Vadin both her armor and her gate,
she faced Sigan’s high Wall. Which in truth was not a wall at all, but a
growing awareness, a swelling of fear.
Back,
turn back, or be forever lost
.