Hall of the Mountain King (5 page)

The king stirred at his left hand. “Enough,” he said, low
and harsh. “I will not have you coming to blows in my hall.”

Moranden lounged in his seat. “Blows, Father? I was only
exchanging courtesies with my sister’s son. If so he is. Ianon is a rich prize
for an ambitious wanderer.”

“I do not lie,” Mirain said in his proper tone at last. His
nostrils were pinched tight below the haughty arch of his nose.

“Enough!” rapped the king. Suddenly he smote his hands
together.

oOo

Although Ymin had sat among the court, she had not been
eating with them. She rose now with fluid grace and went to a low seat which
the servants had set before the dais. As she sat, one handed her an instrument,
a small harp of golden wood with strings of silver.

It was common enough that she should sing so in hall. But
this was a new song. It began softly as a hymn of praise to the rising sun.
Then, as the court quieted, caught by the melody, she changed to a stronger
mode, that half-chant which told the deeds of gods and heroes. A god tonight,
the high god, Avaryan whose face was the sun; and a priestess, royal born; and
the son who came forth from their loving, born at the rising of the daystar,
god’s child, prince, Lord of the Sun.

Mirain forsook even his feeble efforts to eat. His fists
clenched on the table in front of him; his face set, expressionless.

Silence was strange after the long singing. The king’s voice
broke it, concealing no longer his deep joy. “As Avaryan is my witness,” he
said, “it is so. Behold the prince, Mirain alAvaryan, son of my daughter, son
of the Sun. Behold the heir of Ianon!”

Hardly had the echoes died when a young lord leaped up:
Hagan, who would embrace any cause if only it were new enough to catch his
fancy. And this cause was the king’s own. “Mirain!” he cried. “Avaryan’s son,
heir of Ianon. Mirain!”

One by one, then all together, the court joined in his cry.
The hall rang with their homage.

Mirain rose to meet it, raising the fire of his hand,
loosing his sudden, fierce elation. The old king smiled. But Moranden scowled
blackly into his wine, as all his hopes vanished, shattered in that great wave
of sound.

Vadin opened his eyes at the stroke of the dawn bell.

For a moment he could not imagine where he was. It was too
quiet. None of the muted clamor of the squires’ barracks, growing not so muted
as the more vigorous pummeled the sluggards out of bed. Nor ever the warm nest
of his brothers in Geitan, with Kerin’s arm thrown over him, and Cuthan
burrowed into his side like an overgrown pup, and a hound or four doing service
for the blankets that the baby, Silan, had a way of stealing for himself.

Vadin was very much alone, cold where his blanket had
slipped, and surrounded by unfamiliar walls. Walls that glowed like clouds over
Brightmoon. He peered at them.

A figure barred them. Memory flooded. Mirain stared down at
him as he lay abed in his new room, a fold of the wall between the prince’s
bedchamber and the outer door. He scowled back.

His liege lord was dressed in kilt and short cloak, girded
with his southern sword, with no jewel but the torque he wore even to sleep.
Much as he had drunk, late as he had feasted, he seemed as fresh as if he had
slept from sunset to sunrise.

“Come,” he said, “up. Would you sleep the sun to his
nooning?”

Vadin sprang erect, scouring the sleep out of his eyes.
Mirain held up a kilt, the king’s scarlet livery. He snatched it. “You are not
to do that!”

Mirain let him wrap it and belt it, but when he looked up
again he saw a comb in the prince’s hand and a gleam in the prince’s eye. He
leaped; Mirain eluded him with animal ease, then startled him speechless by
setting the comb in his hand and saying, “Be quick, or I’ll keep no breakfast
for you.”

oOo

A squire did not eat with his lord, still less share a plate
and a cup. “The servants have a thing or two to learn,” Mirain observed as he
passed the latter.

“My lord, you are not to—”

The bright eyes flashed up. “Do you command me, Vadin of
Geitan?”

Vadin stiffened. “I am a squire. You,” he said, “are Throne
Prince of Ianon.”

“So.” Mirain’s head tilted. “Formality is easier, is it not?
A servant need have no feeling for the man he serves. Only for the title.”

“I am loyal to my lord. He need have no fear of treachery.”

“And no hope of binding you with friendship.”

Vadin swallowed past the stone in his throat. “Friendship
must be earned,” he said. “My lord.”

The prince rose slowly. He had no excess of inches to make
him awkward. His body fit itself; he moved with the grace and economy of an
Ishandri dancer. A little tight now, like his face, like his voice. “I would
explore my grandsire’s castle. May the throne prince take that liberty?”

“The throne prince may do as he pleases.”

Mirain’s brows went up. With no more warning than that, he
strode to the door. Vadin had to scramble for cloak and sword and dagger, and
don them at a run.

oOo

At this hour only squires and servants were awake. The high
ones liked their sleep after a hard night’s feasting, and the king never left
his rooms until the last bell before sunrise, when he mounted to the
battlements. Save that this morning he had no need to stand watch; Vadin
wondered if he would, by sheer force of custom.

Han-Ianon’s fortress was large and intricate, a labyrinth of
courts and passages, halls and chambers and gardens and outbuildings, towers
and dungeons, barracks and kitchens and the eunuch-guarded stronghold of the
women. Only the last eluded Mirain’s scrutiny, and that, Vadin suspected, only
for the moment.

Mirain approached the guard, a creature less epicene than
most of Odiya’s monsters, who might almost have been a man but for the
too-smooth face; but the prince did not either speak or attempt to pass. He
simply looked at the eunuch, who retreated with infinite slowness until he
could retreat no more, for the door was at his back. The prince’s face wore no
expression at all.

Still without a word, Mirain turned on his heel. Afar atop
the tower of the priests, a single piercing voice hymned the sunrise.

oOo

Mirain descended through the Chain of Courts to the outer
ward and the stables of the castle. There at last the tension began to leave
him.

He brightened as he wandered down the long lines of stalls,
among the grooms whose high calling left no time for gaping at princes, past
broodmares and colts in training, hunters and racing mares and chariot teams,
and, set apart, the great fierce battle stallions each in his armored stall.

Here and there he paused. He had a good eye for senel-flesh,
Vadin granted him that. He ignored the haughty spotted mare for the drab little
dun stalled beside her, making much of that least prepossessing and most swift
of all the king’s mares. He stood his ground when Prince Moranden’s stallion
menaced him with sharpened horns, and the tall striped dun retreated in confusion.
He persuaded the whitehorn bay to take a tidbit from his hand.

As he turned from the bay to Vadin, he was close to smiling.
“Show me yours,” he said.

Vadin had not known how disarmed he was, and how easily,
until he found himself standing in the lesser aisle among the squires’ mounts.
His own grey Rami lazed hipshot midway down the line. Her rump was only a
little less bony than his own; but the tassel of her tail was full and silken,
and her legs were long and fine, and her neck was serpent-supple as it curved
about, the long ears pricked, the silver eyes mild. Vadin melted under that
limpid regard.

“She is beautiful,” Mirain said.

Vadin congealed into temper. “Her ears are too long. She’s
ribby. She toes out behind.”

“But her gaits are silk and her heart is gold.” Mirain was
beside her, and she was suffering him to touch her. Even her head. Even her
quivering ears. She blew gently into the foreigner’s shoulder; and Vadin knew
his heart would burst with jealousy.

“She is mine!” he almost shouted. “I raised her from a foal.
No one else has ever sat on her back. Last year she won the Great Race in
Imehen, from Anhei to Morajan between sunrise and noon, and straight into the
melee after, where all the boys vied to become men. She never faltered. Never
once. Even against horned stallions.”

Mirain’s hand had found one of the scars, the worst one,
that furrowed her neck from poll to shoulder. “And what was the price of that?”
he asked.

“She tore out the beast’s throat.” Vadin shivered,
remembering: the blood, and the stallion’s dying scream, and gentle Rami wilder
with war than with pain. She had carried him to the victory, and he had hardly
noticed. He had been too desperate with fear for her.

“Ianon’s seneldi are famous even in the Hundred Realms,”
Mirain said, “for their beauty and their strength, and their great valor.”

“I’ve seen southern stock.” Vadin did not dignify them with
a sneer. “A trader from Poros used to haunt Geitan. Every year he’d come. Every
year he’d pay emeralds for our culls. Geldings, and now and then a stallion the
gelders hadn’t got to. One year he tried to steal a mare. After that we made
sure he didn’t come back.”

“My mother said a Ianyn lord could forgive the murder of his
firstborn son, if properly persuaded. But never the theft of a senel.”

“Firstborn sons are much less rare than good seneldi.”

“True enough,” said Mirain. Vadin could not tell if he was
jesting. He bade Rami a courteous farewell, left the stall, looked about.

The aisle led into waxing morning, the stableyard and a
paddock or two, and the training rings. One or two colts were out, but Mirain
did not tarry to watch them. He had heard what the squires called the morning
hymn: the belling of a stallion and the hammering of hooves on wood and stone,
and piercing through it at intervals, a shrill scream of seneldi rage.

Mirain advanced unerringly to the source: in a corner of the
wall a high fence, and within that a small stone hut.

Its windows were barred. Triple bolts warded the door,
trembling under the ceaseless crashing blows.

“The Mad One,” Vadin said before Mirain could ask. “The
stable used to belong to the king stallion when he came up from the fields to
cover the king’s own mares. But the old herd-lord died in the spring, and
there’ll not be another till the last of this year’s foals is born. Meanwhile
the Mad One has a prison to himself. He’s the king’s own, bred from the best of
the herds, and my lord had high hopes for him: he’s as fast as a mare, but he
has a stallion’s strength, and his horns are an ell long already. But he’s
proved to be a rogue. He killed a stablehand before they locked him up. If he’s
not tamed by High Summer, he’ll be given to the goddess.”

“Sacrificed.” Mirain’s voice was thick with revulsion. The
Sun’s priests did not worship their god with blood.

He leaned on the gate. Within the prison the Mad One
shrilled his wrath.

Before Vadin could move, the prince was over the fence,
running toward the hut.

Vadin flung himself in pursuit. And struck a wall he could
not see. It held fast against him, rage though he would, and left him powerless
to do more than watch.

Mirain had shot the threefold bolts. As the door burst open,
he sprang aside.

The Mad One hurtled out, foaming, tossing his splendid mane.
He was more than beautiful. He was breathtaking: an emperor of seneldi, long
and slender of leg, deep of chest, with the arched neck and the lean
small-muzzled head of the Ianyn breed. His horns were straight and keen as twin
swords; his hooves were honed obsidian, his coat a black fire.

His great flaw was Mirain’s own. He was not tall for one of
his kind. But he was tall enough, and he was wonderful to see. Wonderful and
deadly.

He halted a scant handspan from the fence and wheeled
snorting. His eye rolled, red as blood, red as madness. It fixed on the one who
stood by the open door.

His lean ears flattened. His head lowered, horns armed for
battle. He charged.

One moment Mirain stood full in his path. The next, the
prince was gone, the senel eluding the wall with speed more of cat than of
herd- creature.

Mirain’s laughter was sharp and wild. The Mad One spun
toward it.

The prince advanced slowly, with no sign of fear. He was
smiling; grinning, daring the stallion to touch him.

The horns missed him by a hair’s breadth. The sharp cloven
hooves slashed only air.

The Mad One stood still. His nostrils flared, scarlet as his
eyes. He tossed his head and stamped, as if to demand,
How dare you be unafraid of me?

“How dare I indeed?” Mirain shot back. “You are no madder
than I, and far less royal. For you are the son of the dawn wind, but I am the
son of the Sun.”

Black lightning struck where he stood.

He was not there. He stood with hand on hip, breathing
easily, unshaken. “Do you threaten me, sir? Are you so bold? Come now, be
sensible. You may have been stolen away from your old kingdom, but that was
only to set you in a greater one. Would you not be my king of stallions?”

A stamp; a snort; a feint.

Mirain did not move, save that his head came up. “
I
should come to
you
with a hundred mares behind me? Does an emperor bear tribute to
a vassal king?” He stepped forward well within reach of hoof and horn. The Mad
One had only to rear and strike, to cut him down. “I should not trouble myself
with you. There are seneldi in the barns yonder who would give their souls to
bear me on their backs. But you are a king. Royalty, even in exile, demands its
share of respect.”

The Mad One surveyed him in something close to bafflement.
He touched the velvet muzzle. The stallion quivered, but neither nipped nor
pulled away. His hand traveled upward to the roots of the horns, resting
lightly on the whorl of hair between them. “Well, my lord? Shall we be kings
together?”