The Lady of Han-Gilen (5 page)

Elian sat up, shaking. The vision fled; yet in its place
grew one that made her cry out. The face of the slayer, terrible in its beauty,
like a skull of bronze and silver. Its eyes were human no longer, great blind
demon-eyes, pale as flawed pearls. Even in their blindness they hunted, seeking
the one who had destroyed them.

“No,” Elian whispered. She hardly knew what she denied. The
hate, yes; the threat to Mirain, and through him to Han-Gilen and its prince.
And perhaps most of all, the dream itself.

Such dreams were from the god, his gift to the princes of
Han-Gilen, shaped for the protection of the realm. But she had forsaken it. She
could not be its prophet.

Her mouth was dust-dry. She knelt to drink from the pool,
and recoiled with a gasp. Visions seethed in the clear water. Powers,
prophecies; fates and fortunes and the deeds of kings. They drew her, eye and
soul, down and down into depths unfathomable save by the trueborn seer. So
much—so much—

Through the spell’s glamour pierced a dart of rage. Gods and
demons—how dared they torment her?

She bent, and with her eyes tightly shut, drank long and
deeply. Almost she had expected the water to taste of blood and iron, but it
was pure and icy cold; it quenched her terrible thirst.

Cautiously she opened her eyes. No visions beset them. There
was only the glint of sun on water, and through its ripples the pattern of
stones on the bottom of the pool.

She sat on her heels. The sun was high in a clear sky, the
air warm and richly scented. Her mare grazed calmly, pausing as Elian watched,
nipping a fly on her flank. Whatever power of light or darkness had led her to
this hidden meadow, it had left her unperturbed.

A small portion of Elian’s mind gibbered at her to mount,
ride, escape. But cold sanity held her still. Even at this distance from the
city, any Gileni peasant would know both mare and rider for royal, and any
pursuit would mark them. They were well hidden here where no one ever came;
when darkness fell, they could ride.

Elian prowled the glade. Its beauty now seemed a mockery,
its shelter a trap. Like Han-Gilen itself, enclosed and beset; like herself.

She made herself sit down, crouching on the grass well away
from the pool. The sun crawled across the sky. “I cannot go back,” she said
over and over. “Let Father see visions, or Hal. I cannot go back!”

The water laughed at her. Prophet, it said. Prince’s
prophet. You have the gift. You cannot refuse it.

“I can!” She scrambled to her feet, fumbling for bridle and
saddle.

Han-Gilen has had no prophet since the priestess died. Her
mantle lies upon the Altar of Seeing over the living water. Go back. Forsake
this child’s folly. Take what is yours.

The mare skittered away from Elian’s hands, eyeing the
bridle in mock alarm. It was an old game, but Elian had no patience to spare
for it. She snapped a thought like the lash of a whip. The mare stopped as if
struck.

So too must you. The soft voice was a water-voice no longer.
Deep, quiet, hauntingly familiar.
You
play at duty. Yet what is it but flight from the path ordained for you?

Elian slipped the bridle over the mare’s ears, smoothing the
long forelock. Her hands were trembling, but her smile mocked them all. “It is
not,” she said. “It is anything but that.”

Is it?

She knew that voice. Oh, yes, she knew it. She hated it.

Hated? Or loved?

She flung pad and saddle over the mare’s back, and after
them the bags of her belongings, and last of all herself.

Elian.

The voice crept through all her barriers, throbbing to the
heart of her.

Elian.

She struck at it. “
You
sent the vision.
You
tried to trap me. But I won’t be held. Not by a lie.”

It is no lie, and well you know it. The god has stretched
out his hand to you and laid you open to me.

Hands reached for her. She kicked her senel into a jolting
trot. The shadows were black under the trees, the sky blood-red beyond the
branches.

Elian, come. Come back. Behind her eyelids a figure stood,
tall, dark, crowned with fire. Daughter, it is madness, this that you do. Come
back to us.

“To my oath’s betrayal.”

To those who love you.

“I cannot.”

His thought had borne a hint of sorrow and a promise of
forgiveness. Now it hardened.

Whatever her mother might say, Prince Orsan of Han-Gilen was
far from besotted with his daughter. He had raised her as she wished, as a boy,
not only in the freedom but in the punishments, meted out to her precisely as
to her brothers.
Elian
. She trembled in the saddle, but urged her mare
onward.
This is no child’s game. Will you come back, or must I compel you?

Walls closed in upon her mind. There was but one escape, and
her father filled it. Even yet, his eyes held more sorrow than wrath. He held
out his hands.
Daughter. Come home.

With a soft wordless cry she backed away. Her body rode at
breakneck pace through a darkening wood. But in her mind she huddled within a
fortress made of defiance, and her father towered over her, clothed in the
red-golden fire of his magery. He was far stronger than she.

You are of Han-Gilen, blood and bone. This venture is a
bitter mockery of both your lineage and your power. So might a child do, or a
coward. Not the Lady of Han-Gilen.

“No.” There was no force in the word. Yet somewhere deep
within her, a spark kindled. “No. I have sworn an oath. I will keep it, or die
in the trying.”

You will come home.

His will was as strong as a chain, its links of tempered
steel, drawing her to him. In a madness of resistance she clung to the
stronghold of her mind. Earth; three walls of will; her father. But above her
the open sky. She hurled herself into it.

The mare shied. Elian clutched blindly at the saddle. Her
body ached; her fingers could barely unclench from the pommel to take up the
reins, to guide her mount.

She could not see. For an instant she wavered on the edge of
panic; but her eyes, straining, found the shadowy shapes of trees, and through
the woven branches a twilit sky.

The mare had settled into a running walk, smooth and swift
as water. The footing was good, soft leafmold on the level surface of a road.
Without guidance, the mare had found the northward way through the wood.

Elian tensed to quicken the senel’s pace, but did not
complete the movement. Her father knew surely where she was and where she went.
The forest should have been alive with searchers, the realm with pursuit. But
none followed her. Han-Gilen was quiescent about her.

As if, she thought when at last she took time to think, as
if, after all, her father was minded to let her go.

She had a brief, striking vision: a hawk, freed to hunt for
its master or to escape his will. And far beneath it in its flight, her father,
watching, waiting for it to return to his hand.

Anger blurred the image and scattered it. He was so certain;
so splendidly, utterly confident that in the end she would yield.

“I’ll die first!” she cried.

The northern border of Han-Gilen was called the Rampart of
the North, its pass the Eye of the Realm. There the hills rose to lofty ridge
and fell sheer, down and down to the rolling green levels of Iban.

Because Iban’s lord was tributary and kinsman to the Prince
of Han-Gilen, the fortress that guarded the Eye was lightly manned, watchful
but not suspicious even of one who rode alone by night. Although Elian’s neck
prickled and her heart thudded, certain that her father had laid his trap here
where she had no escape, no challenge rang from the gate; no armed company
barred her way. She was free to go or to stay.

In the high center of the Eye, she halted the mare.
Han-Gilen lay behind her. Iban was a shadow ahead, moonlit and starlit, deep in
its midnight sleep.

Above her loomed the tower, dark and silent. If she called
out, named herself, demanded lodging, she would have it, and in the morning an
armed escort to bring her to her father.

Her back stiffened. Had she come so far, to turn back now?
With high head and set face, she sent her mare down into Iban.

oOo

When Elian was young, she had learned by rote the names of
all the Hundred Realms. Some were tiny, little more than a walled town and its
fields; some were kingdom-wide. Most owed friendship or tribute to the Red
Prince of Han-Gilen.

As she rode across sleeping Iban, she called to mind the
realms between Han-Gilen and the wild north. Green Iban; Kurion with its
singing forests; Sarios where ruled her mother’s father; Baian, Emari; Halion
and Irion whose princes were always blood brothers; Ebros and Poros and stony
Ashan. And beyond the fortress walls of Ashan, the wild lands and the wilder
tribes that called Mirain king.

So close to mighty Han-Gilen and so far still from the
outlands, her father’s peace held firm. But there was a strangeness in the air.
Mirain An-Sh’Endor: men dreaded the rumor of him with his barbarian hordes. Had
not imperial Asanion itself begun to arm against him?

No, she thought, pausing before dawn to lever a stone from
her mare’s hoof. It was not all fear. Some of it was anticipation, some even
joy at the coming of the Sun-king.

No hiding place offered itself to her with the dawn, only
the open fields and a village clustered around an ancient shrine. Elian might
have pressed on past, but the mare, unused to steady traveling, was stumbling
with weariness. And no temple, however small, would deny a traveler shelter,
whoever that traveler might be.

This shrine was small indeed, made of stone but shaped like
the villagers’ huts, round and peak-roofed with a door-curtain of leather. Its
altar stood where the hearth should be, with the Sun’s fire on it in a battered
bowl, and a clutter of holy things.

Behind the shrine stood the priest-house, a simple wattle
hut with a pen for an odd assortment of animals: a lame woolbeast, a white hind,
a one-eyed hound. The woolbeast blatted at mare and rider, the hound yawned,
the hind watched from a far corner with eyes like blood rubies.

Elian dismounted stiffly. The village seemed asleep or
deserted, but she felt the pressure of eyes upon her. Her hand went
unconsciously to her head, to the cap that hid her hair, drawing it down over
the bright sweep of her brows.

Someone moved within the hut. Tired though she was, the
senel lifted her head, ears pricked.

This village had a priestess, a woman in late middle years,
square and solid, red-brown as the earth her fathers had sprung from. Her robe
was shabby but clean, her torque of red gold dimmed with age, as if it had
passed through many hands, over many years, to this latest bearer. Over her
shoulders she bore a yoke and a pair of buckets.

She regarded Elian with a calm unquestioning stare. “Your
senel may share the pen,” she said, “but you will have to cut her fodder
yourself.”

For an instant Elian stood stiff, outraged. That was
servants’ work. And she—

She was a rankless vagabond, by her own free choice. She
made herself bow her head and say the proper words. “For the hospitality of
your house, my thanks.”

The priestess bowed in return, as courteous as any lady in
hall. “The house is open to you. Take what you will and be welcome.”

oOo

First Elian saw to the mare. There was grass not far away,
and her knife was sharp; she cut an ample armful. As she brought it back to the
pen, she found she had companions: a handful of children, some too young for
breeches, others almost old enough to be men or women. There were one or two in
the enclosure itself, coaxing the mare with bits of grass.

At Elian’s coming they scattered, but not far, less afraid
of her in her strange splendid gear than fascinated by her mount. One was even
bold enough to speak to her. The priestess’ dialect had been thick but clear
enough, but this was like an alien tongue.

“He asks, ‘Is this a real battle charger?’”

Elian started. The priestess stepped past her to dip water
into the beasts’ trough, saying to the children in her deep soft voice, “Yes,
it is a war-mare, and a fine one too; and isn’t that your father calling you to
the fields?”

The children fled, with many glances over their shoulders.
The priestess laid down her yoke and straightened. “Very fine indeed,” she
repeated, “and worn to a rag, from the look of her. Will you rest in the temple
or in my house?”

“Wherever you like,” Elian answered her, suddenly weary
beyond telling.

“In my house, then,” said the woman. “Come.”

oOo

This sleep was deep, untouched by visions. Elian woke from
it to firelit darkness and a scent of herbs and a deep sense of peace. Slowly
she realized that she lay on a hard pallet; that there was a blanket over her;
and that she wore only her shirt beneath it.

She sat up in alarm. The firelight fell on metal and cloth:
her clothing, her weapons, all together, all laid neatly at the foot of her
bed. Beyond them knelt the priestess, tending a pot that simmered over the
hearth.

She looked up calmly. “Good evening,” she said.

Elian clutched the blanket to her breast. “Why did you—how
dared you—”

The priestess’ gaze silenced her. “My name is Ani. Yours I
need not know unless you choose. Here, eat.”

Elian took the fragrant bowl but did not move to eat,
although her stomach knotted with sudden fierce hunger. “My name is Elian,” she
said almost defiantly.

Ani gestured assent. Her mind was dark and impenetrable,
like deep water. “Eat,” she repeated. And when Elian had obeyed: “Sleep.”

Power, Elian thought, even as she sank back. This is power.
A witch . . . I must . . .

oOo

“. . . go.” Elian’s own voice startled her. The hut was
deserted, the fire quenched. Sunlight slanted through the open door-curtain.