The Lady of Han-Gilen (12 page)

The rest of her face was clear enough to see beneath the
veil, a delicate oval, a suggestion of perfect teeth. If she had a flaw, it was
her voice: high and, though she took pains to soften it, rather sharp.

Mirain seemed captivated, leaning close to hear her murmured
speech, smiling at a jest. He was splendid to see, clad in the full finery of a
Ianyn king, all white and gold; his skin gleamed against it like ebony.

Elian herself had braided the ropes of gold into his hair.
He had turned as she struggled to tame the unruly mass of it, and ruffled her
own newly subdued mane, and laughed at her flash of temper.

Her lips twisted wryly. Well; was that not what she had
wanted? She walked abroad as a man, and he regarded her as one; although she
shared his tent, he had never once touched her save as a brother or a friend,
nor looked at her as a man might look at a woman. Even when he had seen her
naked breast, he had seen only wounds that cried for healing.

The lady held his hands in hers, giggling on a high and
piercing note. The god’s mark fascinated her: the Sun of gold set in the flesh,
fused with it, part of it.

“You can touch it,” he said, warm and indulgent. “It won’t
hurt you.”

She giggled. “No. Oh, no! I couldn’t. That would be
sacrilege!” But she did not let go his hand.

Elian’s glance crossed Vadin’s. The Ianyn lord had evaded
the bonds of princely protocol by the simple expedient of commanding his
brother to take his name and his place, and putting on the garb and the bearing
of a guard, and setting himself to watch over Mirain.

Elian had learned, not easily, that it did no good to resent
him. He went where he would, did as he pleased, and answered only to his king.
Elian he treated with unfailing courtesy, which some might even have taken for
friendliness: the friendliness of a man toward his brother’s favorite hound.

He leaned against the wall, cool and easy, smiling a little.
“My lord is well entertained tonight,” he observed. “They make a handsome pair,
don’t you think?”

Elian kept her face quiet, but her eyes glittered. “How can
he endure her?”

“How does any man endure a beautiful woman?”

“She has a voice like a tortured cat.”

“She has a rich dowry.”

Elian drew a sharp breath.

“After all,” said Vadin, “he’s been king these seven years.
It’s time he got himself an heir.”

“Strong throne, strong succession.” Elian bit off the words.
“I know that. Who doesn’t? But this—”

“Can you offer a better candidate?”

Elian would not answer. Dared not.

Vadin did not press her. He was, inexplicably and
maddeningly, amused.

Yet he did not know. He could not.

Elian put on her best, boyish scowl. Vadin only grinned and
wandered off on some whim of his own.

oOo

Mirain came up very late from the feasting. Later than
Elian, who had left as soon as was proper, after the second passing of the
wine; but the women had retired before the first.

He greeted her with his quick smile. He had been drinking
deep: his eyes were bright and his breath wine-scented. Yet he was steady on
his feet.

As she rose from her pallet, he motioned her down again.
“No, be at ease; I can undress myself.”

She came nonetheless to catch his cloak and jewels as they
fell. He always turned his back on her to doff his kilt, more for her modesty’s
sake than for his own; in Ianon, Cuthan had told her, all the servants of his
bath were women, maiden daughters of noble houses.

She smiled in spite of herself as she unbound the intricate
plaits of his hair, remembering the tale, a young priest from Han-Gilen forced
for the first time to strip naked before a roomful of fine ladies. And knowing
full well the root of the custom: the strengthening of noble lines with the
blood royal, perhaps even the choosing of one favored lady to share the throne.

Mirain yawned and stretched, supple as a cat. “Hold still,”
Elian bade him, half annoyed, half preoccupied.

He obeyed docilely enough. She continued her patient
unraveling, letting each freed strand fall to his shoulders. He had battle
scars in plenty, but all were on his front; his back was smooth, unmarred.

Once, as by accident, she let her fingertips brush his skin.
It was soft like a child’s, but the muscles were steel-hard beneath.

He yawned again. “These Ashani,” he said. “They seem to
practice half their statecraft in a haze of wine.”

“They have a maxim: Wine to begin a thought, sleep and morning
light to end it. And another: Soften your opponent with wine, and mold him when
he wakes from it.”

“They do the same in Ianon. But not so blatantly. Once he
had the company down to the serious drinkers, Prince Luian launched his attack.
He would become my true and loyal liege man, faithful servant of the god’s son,
if only I would grant a small favor in return.”

“Of course. How small?”

“Minuscule. The merest trifle. It seems that he can’t agree
with the Prince of Ebros as to the lordship of a certain valley. The Prince of
Ebros has garrisoned it very recently with his own troops. Will I lend my army
to restore the vale to its rightful master?”

“Will you?”

“I’ve been considering it. There’s been a great deal of
tumult over this bit of green with a river running through it: embassies and
counterembassies, threats and counterthreats. I’ve a mind to see if I can
uncover the rights of the matter.”

His hair was free. She coiled its golden bindings in their
box; when she turned back, Mirain was upright in the bed, the coverlet drawn
up, wielding a comb with no patience at all.

Deftly she won the comb and began to repair the damage.
“Ebros and Ashan have never been fond of one another. If you march on this
valley, even if you only intend to determine its possession, Ebros’ prince will
say you’ve come to start a war.”

“In that event, I’ll make sure I come out the victor.”

“You want Ebros, don’t you? However you get it.”

He looked up. He was still, quiet. But the mask had gone up
between his heart and the world. “Will you stop me?”

She considered it with no little care. He watched her. She
scowled at him. “You’re playing with me again. Pretending that what I say can
matter.”

“But,” he said, “it can.”

Her scowl blackened. “Because I’m myself, or because I have
a father who can raise the south against you?”

“Or,” he continued for her, “because the High Prince of
Asanion wants you for his harem?”

Her heart stilled. Her throat locked, all but strangling her
voice. “I— I never—how did you—”

“Spies,” he answered. He was not laughing. She could not
read him at all. “They have an ill name, these royal Asanians. They are trained
from the cradle in the arts of the bedchamber; they keep women like cattle;
they worship all gods and none. They have three great arts: love and sophistry
and treachery. And their greatest pride lies in the weaving of all three.”

“Ilarios is not like that at all.” The silence was abrupt,
and somehow frightening. Elian filled it with a rush of words. “He asked for me
in all honor. He promised to make me his empress.”

“And you came to me.”

“I came because I promised.”

Mirain said nothing for a long count of breaths. When he
spoke, he spoke softly, as if Ilarios had never been. “I will have Ebros. If I
must take it by force, so be it. But I will rule it in peace.” He shifted, body
and mind; he lightened, turned wry. “A subtle man, my host. He sweetens his
conditions with purest honey: the offer of his granddaughter’s hand.”

Elian’s hand stopped. “Did you accept it?”

He laughed. “I have a policy,” he said. “When a man offers
to make a marriage for me, I thank him kindly. I promise to consider the
matter. And I make no further mention of it.”

“And if he insists?”

“I speak of something else.”

She was silent, combing the wild mane into smoothness. Many
a woman might have envied it, waist-long, thick and curling as it was. At
length she said, “A king should marry for the sake of his dynasty.”

Her lip curled a little as she said it. Wise words. Her
mother had said very nearly the same thing, in very nearly the same tone.

Mirain could not see her face; he said calmly, “So a king
should. So shall I.”

“When you’ve found a woman fit to be your queen?”

“I have found her.”

Elian’s eyes dimmed as if she had been struck a blow. But
she was royal; she had learned discipline, seldom though she chose to exercise
it. “How wise of you,” she said lightly, “to let your allies believe that they
are free to bind you with their kinswomen. What is she like, this lady of
yours?”

“Very beautiful. Very witty. Rather wild, if the truth be
told; but I have a weakness for wild things.”

“Well dowered, I suppose.”

“Very. She is a princess.”

“Of course.” Elian was done, but she toyed with his hair,
lingering, like a woman who frets with an aching tooth, testing again and again
the intensity of the pain. “Her kinsmen must be very pleased.”

“Her kin know nothing of it. I’ve not yet offered for her.
She’s shy, you see, and elusive, and wary as a young lynx. She is no man’s to
give, nor ever mine to compel. She must come to me of her own will, however slowly,
however long the coming.”

“That’s not wise. What if someone takes her while you are
away on your wars?”

“I think I need have no fear of that.”

Slowly, carefully, Elian set the comb aside. “You are
fortunate.”

He lay back. His smile was a cat’s, drowsy, sated, with the
merest hint of irony. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

She turned her back on him and sought her pallet.

“Good night,” he called softly.

“Good night, my lord,” she said.

Elian flexed her shoulders. Her new panoply fit like a
skin of bronze and gold, but its weight was strange, both lighter and stronger
than the Gileni armor she was used to.

Under her, Ilhari shifted. Strangeness? Maybe. Or maybe it
was simple fear. She for one would be greatly pleased when her first battle lay
behind her.

Ilhari’s logic was as usual impeccable. Elian smoothed the
battle-streamers woven into the mare’s mane, green on red-gold.

Mirain, she noticed, was just completing the same gesture.
The Mad One’s streamers were scarlet, the color of blood.

He seemed unconcerned, even lighthearted, sitting at ease in
the saddle, gazing down a long gentle slope at the enemy. His army massed
behind him, swelled now with Ashani troops. The field beneath it had been
golden with grain, but the grain was trampled, its gold dimmed. The earth had
sprouted another crop altogether, a harvest of flesh and steel.

Elian watched him consider it calmly, without haste. His
forces were disposed on the ground he had chosen, a shoulder of Ashan’s
mountains that dwindled here to a low rolling hill, with wide lands behind and
his camp settled in them.

More than a garrison faced him. The whole army of Ebros had
mustered to drive back the northerners; had refused all his embassies and his
offers of just and bloodless judgment; had forsaken the high-walled town whose
folk tilled these fields and come forth to open combat.

They had the town and its steep hill at their backs, but
their own emplacements lay perforce below Mirain’s; if they charged, it must be
uphill against a rain of arrows. Yet they were strong, and they had a wing of
that most terrible of weapons, the scythed battle-car. Even their own men kept
well away from those deadly whirling wheels.

Their commander rode up and down before them in a lesser
chariot, yet splendid, flashing gold and crimson. Matched mares drew it, their
coats bright gold, their manes flowing like white water. He himself shone in
golden armor, with a coronet on his high helmet.

“Indrion of Ebros,” said Prince Luian’s heir from his
chariot beside Mirain, with a century of bitter feuding in his voice and in the
glitter of his eyes. “Now we shall settle with that cattle thief.”

It was an ill word, Elian thought, for that splendid royal
vision. Mirain paid its speaker no heed. The enemy had begun to fret before the
massed stillness of his army. Yet that stillness was his own, the immobility of
the lion before it springs.

The Ebran line could bear it no longer. With a roar it
surged forward.

Still Mirain did not move.

Elian’s heart thudded. The Ebrans were close, perilously
close. She could pick out single men from among the mass: a mounted knight, a
light-armed charioteer, a footsoldier in worn leather with a patch in his
breeks.

She saw the patch clearly. It was ill-sewn, as if he had
done it himself, and of a lighter leather than the rest, incongruously new and
clean.

A hand touched her. She started and stiffened. Mirain’s hand
left her, but his eyes held. No man’s eyes, those, but the eyes of a god:
bright, cold, alien. “Remember,” he said, soft but very clear. “No heroics. You
cling to me like a burr; you look after my weapons; you leave the rest to my
army.”

She opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to protest. But he
had turned from her, and his household was watching.

Some smiled. The younger ones in particular; they thought they
understood. “Cheer up, lad,” said the one closest. “You’ll get your chance.”

“Aye and aye!” agreed another. “Here’s luck, and glory
enough for everybody.” He grinned and clapped her on the shoulder, rocking her
in the saddle. She grinned back through clenched teeth.

Ebros reached the hill’s foot. Bows sang. Arrows arced
upward. One fell spent at the Mad One’s feet.

For a long moment Mirain regarded it. Elian longed to shriek
at him, to beat him into motion.

His sword swept from its scabbard. With a fierce stallion-scream,
the Mad One charged.