The Lady of Han-Gilen (42 page)

The king bared his teeth, more snarl than smile. “No man
should grieve so for a daughter when such a son has grown to grace his hall. So
men say. They do not know him as I know him.” His fists clenched, hard and
knotted, thin as an eagle’s claws. “Boy! Know you aught of my daughter?”

The young priest had listened without expression. He reached
now into his scrip and brought forth a glitter of metal, a torque of gold
twisted with mountain copper.

The king reeled. Strong young hands caught him, helped him
to a seat on the parapet. Dimly he saw the face close above his own, calm and
still; but the eyes were dark with old sorrow.

“Dead,” he said. “She is dead.” He took the torque in hands
that could not still their trembling. “How long?”

“Five winters since.”

Anger kindled. “And you waited until now?”

The boy’s chin came up; his nostrils flared. “I would have
come, my lord. But there was war, and I was forbidden, and no one else could be
spared. Do not fault me for what I could not help.”

There had been a time when a boy, or even a man grown, would
have been whipped for such insolence. But the king swallowed his wrath lest it
destroy his grief. “What was she to you?”

The boy met his gaze squarely. “She was my mother.”

He had gone beyond shock, beyond even surprise. For that
tale too had come to him, that she had borne a son. And for a priestess wedded
to the god to conceive a child by any mortal man, the penalty was death. Death
for herself, for her lover, and for their progeny.

“No,” said this young stranger whose face in its every line
spoken poignantly of her. “She never died for me.”

“Then how?”

The boy closed his eyes upon a grief as stark and as
terrible as the king’s own; his voice came soft, as if he did not trust it.
“Sanelin Amalin was a very great lady. She came to Han-Gilen at the end of its
war upon the Nine Cities, when all its people mourned the death of the prince’s
prophet, who had also been his beloved brother. She stood up in the midst of
the funeral rites and foretold the fate of the princedom, and the Red Prince
accepted her as his seer. Soon thereafter, for her great sanctity, she was
taken into the temple in Han-Gilen. Within a year she was its high priestess.
There was no one more holy or more deeply venerated. Yet there were those who
hated her for that very sanctity, among them she who had been high priestess
before Sanelin’s coming, a proud woman and a hard one, who had treated the
stranger cruelly and been deposed for it. In the dark of the moons, five
winters past, this woman and certain of her followers lured the lady from the
temple with a tale of sickness only she could heal. I think . . . I know she
saw the truth. Yet she went. I followed her with the prince hard upon my heels.
We were just too late. They threw me down and stunned me and wounded my lord
most cruelly, struck my mother to the heart, and fled.”

His breath shuddered as he drew it in. “Her last words were
of you. She wished you to know of her glory, of her death. She said, ‘My father
would have had me be both queen and priestess. Yet I have been more than
either. He will grieve, but I think he will understand.’”

The wind sighed upon the stones. Vadin shifted in a creaking
of leather and bronze. In the world below, children shouted and a stallion
screamed and a tuneless voice bawled a snatch of a drinking song.

Very quietly the king said, “You tell a noble tale, stranger
who calls himself my kin. Yet, though I may be mad, I am not yet a dotard. How
came a high priestess to bear a son? Did she then lay aside her vows? Did she
wed the Red Prince of Han-Gilen?”

“She broke no vows, nor was she ever aught but Avaryan’s
bride.”

“You speak in riddles, stranger.”

“I speak the truth, my lord grandsire.”

The king’s eyes glittered. “You are proud for one who by his
words is no man’s son.”

“Both of which,” said the other, “I am.”

The king rose. He was very tall even for one of his people;
he towered over the boy, who nevertheless betrayed no hint of fear.

That too had been Sanelin, small as her western mother had
been small, yet utterly indomitable. “You are the very image of her. How then?”
His hand gripped the boy’s shoulder with cruel strength.
“How?”

“She was the Bride of the Sun.”

So bright, those eyes were, so bright and so terrible. The
king threw up all his shields against them. “That is a title. A symbol. The
gods do not walk in the world as once they did. They do not lie with the
daughters of men. Not even with the holy ones, their own priestesses. Not in these
days.”

The boy said nothing, only raised his hands. The left had
bled where the nails had driven into flesh. The right could not. Gold flamed
there, the disk of the Sun with its manifold rays, filling the hollow of his
palm.

The king slitted his eyes against the brightness. A deep and
holy terror had risen to engulf him. But he was strong and he was king; he
reckoned his lineage back to the sons of the lesser gods.

“He came,” said this child of the great one, “while she kept
vigil in the Temple of Han-Gilen where is his most sacred image. He came, and
he loved her. Of that union I was conceived; for it she suffered and came in
time to glory. You could say that she died of it, by the envy of those who
reckoned themselves holy but could not endure true sanctity.”

“And you? Why did they let you live?”

“My father defended me.”

“Yet he let her die.”

“He took her to himself. She was glad, my lord. If you could
have seen—dying, she shone, and she laughed with purest delight. She had her
lover at last, wholly and forever.” He shone himself in speaking of it, a
radiance touched only lightly now with sorrow.

The king could not partake of it. Nor, for long, could the
stranger. He let his hands fall, veiling the brilliance of the god’s sign.

Without it he seemed no more than any other traveler, ragged
and footsore, armored with pride that was half defiance. It kept his chin up
and his eyes level, but his fists were clenched at his sides. “My lord,” he
said, “I make no claim upon you. If you bid me go, I will go.”

“And if I bid you stay?”

The dark eyes kindled. Sanelin’s eyes, set with the sun’s
fire. “If you bid me stay, I will stay, for that is the path which the god has
marked for me.”

“Not the god alone,” said the king. He raised a hand as if
to touch the boy’s shoulder, but the gesture ended before it was well begun.
“Go now. Bathe; you need it sorely. Eat. Rest. My squire will see that you have
all you desire. I shall speak with you again.” And as they moved to obey: “How
are you called, grandchild?”

“Mirain, my lord.”

“Mirain.” The king tested it upon his tongue. “Mirain. She
named you well.” He drew himself erect. “What keeps you? Go!”

____________________

We hope you have enjoyed this free sample chapter of
The Hall of the Mountain King

www.bookviewcafe.com