The Lady of Han-Gilen (40 page)

The fear rose to a crescendo and shattered. She fell into
the void.

Eternity ticked off its ages.

oOo

Light.

She thought she was mad. No; she knew it.

There was light below. The merest glimmer. Like a candle,
pale gold, burning low. Like a star at the end of night, growing larger by
infinite degrees. Swelling. Blooming. Enfolding her.

With the suddenness of all endings, she struck the heart of
it.

Earth. Grass. She stood naked on it under a sky that was all
light. Someone gripped her hand. Vadin. But if she shifted her eyes, she was
he; they were one.

They looked down. Mirain looked up. Mirain at his ease,
open-eyed yet drowsy, smiling. He beckoned. “Come,” he said. “Rest. You look
worn to the bone.”

Elian was speechless. It was Vadin who snapped, “Of course
we are! A fine chase you’ve led us, down through all the levels of your mind,
looking for something resembling intelligence. I should have known we wouldn’t
find any.”

“Ah now,” said Mirain unruffled, “there’s no need to yell at
me. Won’t you sit down at least? It’s comfortable here.”

“Comfortable!”

Elian silenced Vadin with a finger on his lips. “It’s a
trap, brother,” she said, using the word with care; but Vadin was in no mood to
notice it. “That’s Mirain, but it’s not.”

The Ianyn’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “What are you
saying?”

“It’s Mirain, but Mirain in part only, walled in his own
cowardice. He’d keep us here in this comfort of his; before we knew it, we’d
all be comfortably dead.”

Vadin shook himself, and laughed almost freely. “I must be
turning foolish in my old age. Of course this is a trap. I’ve seen the other
side of death. It was even more comfortable than this; I hated to go back. But
he made me.

“You made me,” he said to Mirain, who yawned and stretched,
sensuous as a cat, and smiled indulgently at his vehemence. “You
made
me, damn you. It’s well past time I
repaid the debt.”

“Debt?” Mirain asked. “I owe you nothing. I have to linger
here for a while. There was something . . .” His brow creased
slightly, as if he sought a memory that eluded him. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a
pleasant place, don’t you think? It will do until the time is past. Whatever it
must pass for.”

Vadin drew himself up to his full height.

Once more Elian stilled him. She yearned to scream, to
strike, to run, to do anything but face this travesty of the Sunborn. “It is
not Mirain,” she told Vadin, and herself. “It is
not.
”

She freed her hand, aware that her mind wove still with
Vadin’s, an awareness as distinct as the warmth of flesh against flesh. She
knelt in the grass and clasped this vapid smiling Mirain-creature and held it
tightly. “Now,” she snapped over her shoulder, surging to her feet. “Out!”

Mirain roused. Began to fight. Serpent-supple,
serpent-strong. He was too much for her. He was too strong.

She clung. She mustered all her strength. She clutched at
Vadin’s power; she seized it; she became it. He and she, long powerful man-body,
arms hardened by a lifetime of wielding sword and lance and bow, power honed to
a bitter edge under the greatest of masters: under Prince Orsan; under Mirain
himself.

“Outward!” she cried. “To the light!”

The serpent flared into fire, flowed into water, scattered
into air. She flung her power about it, netted it, flasked it, globed it in
crystal.

It sprang into an edged blade. The crystal shattered; her
hands closed around shards and steel.

Pain mounted into agony. She thrust it down. She battled
toward the light.

The wall loomed. She cried in despair. No gate. No passage.
She must strike, fall, die.

“No.” Vadin’s voice, strong and quiet, though it shook a
little. He led her now, drawing her upward, and in her bleeding hands the thing
that had been Mirain. Writhing, snapping, steel-toothed creature, no shape to
it at all, only struggle. She clasped it to her breast.

They struck the wall. Faltered.

Slipped.

Mirain bolted; she caught him.

“Help,” gasped Vadin. “Help—”

She flung them all forward.

oOo

The darkness burst. Stars sang in pure cold voices. Men
wept; women laughed aloud. Grass whispered as it grew.

Elian opened her eyes. The world was a blur with a shadow in
the middle of it.

She blinked.

They smiled down at her. Vadin, his cheeks more hollow than
ever, his grin white enough to blind her. And Mirain.

Mirain.

She clutched at him. He was warm and solid and as naked as
he was born.

With a mighty effort she unclamped her fingers. They were
whole, unscarred, no mark of tooth or claw. “I dreamed,” she said. “I dreamed—”

“No dream.” She had forgotten how beautiful his voice was.
He kissed her brow, and then her lips.

She shifted as easily as breathing, and stared at her own
bewildered face. And again, from farther away, seeing herself and Mirain
together.

She wore no more than he. How wanton; how lovely to the eyes
of this body. The eyes under the bright brows were Mirain’s, laughing, raising
a hand to run it down the strangeness in which she dwelt.

She inhaled sharply, and the breath completed itself in her
own lungs. Vadin was Vadin, Mirain his unmistakable self. No languor, no
madness.

“This,” she said, “could be confusing.”

Mirain laughed. Vadin drew back. At last she saw his proud
eyes lowered, and that part of her which was he, knew that he blushed. Why, she
thought, he had no more sense than she when it came to considering
consequences. Now that it was far too late for any remedy, he was beginning to
regret what he had made her do.

“What I did for myself.” She took his hand, though he tried
to escape; she kissed it. “I was a fool, brother. But not for letting this
happen. For letting it take so long.” Her lips twitched. “Hal is going to be
hideously jealous.”

Vadin’s eyes went a little wild. “You wouldn’t!”

“No,” Mirain said. “It’s enough that we aren’t three
anymore; or two. Four in one would be unwieldy. Although,” he added, “I can’t
bring myself to be sorry that you two did what you did.”

Elian’s thoughts wound through the twinned bright skein of
theirs. Hers, Mirain’s, Vadin’s, all mingled. It was beautiful.

One skein unraveled. “But I’m still me, ” she protested.

“And I am I, and he is he, but we are one.” Through the
splendor of his gladness, Mirain let slip a note of gravity. “It is very
unorthodox.”

“It’s heretical.” But Vadin was quieter now, more like the
haughty prince whom Elian had thought she knew.

He grimaced. “Though I fancy that’s not the word most people
will like to use. ‘Immoral’ will sound much more apt to the rumormongers. Not,”
he said, “that I intend to go so far. Some things are best kept in the inner
room where they belong.”

He sounded almost prim; Elian laughed and kissed his hand
again.

Mirain’s eyes glinted, but not with anger, and not ever with
jealousy. Her free hand caught his and brought it to her cheek; her eyes
flicked from his long-loved face to the one that she was learning only now to
love. She smiled at them both.

Yet her brows had drawn together. “The powers in the circle,
all the teachings I’ve ever known . . . they said that if I did
this, I’d lose everything. But all I’ve lost is my stupidity. I’ve gained a
whole world.”

“I think,” said Mirain, “that none of the masters knew what
would happen. None has ever tried this; none has dared. Only you.” His hand
curved about her cheek, caressing it. “You gave all you had to give. While I . . .”

“I haven’t given anything.”

“You’ll never be free of me again.”

She glared at him. “When was I ever free of you?” Sudden
laughter shook her. “The day I was born, I decided that you belonged to me. And
I to you, although I’d never have admitted it.”

“And Ziad-Ilarios?”

“Shall I reckon up all your lovers, O priest of the Sun?”
She sat up so abruptly that her head spun. “Look at me, Mirain.”

He could do very little else. Rumpled, blear-eyed, and torn
between a grin and a snarl, she was the most beautiful creature in the world.

“Except for Ledi,” Vadin said, mischievous.

Her grin won the battle. Beauty she could not judge. But she
knew her own fortune. Warrior, mage, and queen; she was all three. Yet greater
than those . . .

They waited.

“And greater than those,” she said, “I am the sister of
Vadin alVadin who came back from the dead. And I am the lover of Mirain who is
An-Sh’Endor, who has but to lift his hand to bring the world to his feet.”

She paused. Vadin was smiling his white smile. But Mirain
waited still.

His head had come up, his eyes caught fire. Oh, he was
vain—as vain as a sunbird, and as beautiful, and as kingly proud.

“But not and never,” she added wickedly as she pulled him
down, “the Lady of Han-Gilen.”

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The Lady of Han-Gilen

Avaryan Rising: Volume II

Judith Tarr

Book View Café Edition
June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-268-6
Copyright © 1987 Judith Tarr

First published: Tor, 1987

Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

v20130611vnm

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Judith Tarr
holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for
The Isle of Glass
and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.

Novels

Ars Magica

Alamut

The Dagger and the Cross

Living in Threes

Lord of the Two Lands

A Wind in Cairo

His Majesty’s Elephant

Series

Avaryan Rising

The Hall of the Mountain King

The Lady of Han-Gilen

A Fall of Princes (July 2013)

The Hound and the Falcon

The Isle of Glass

The Golden Horn

The Hounds of God

Nonfiction

Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right

BVC Anthologies

Beyond Grimm

Breaking Waves

Brewing Fine Fiction

Ways to Trash Your
Writing Career

Dragon Lords and Warrior
Women

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy II

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