Hall of the Mountain King (13 page)

Ianon would rise up in arms if it knew he thought such a
thing. Mirain would laugh. He loved to look splendid and he knew when he did,
but he was convinced of his own ugliness.

Not that he was handsome, and he was anything but pretty.
But beautiful, maybe. An odd, striking, inescapable beauty.

Vadin’s hand stilled. He listened to the slow strong
breathing, contemplated the arm that had settled itself across his chest.

Suddenly he wanted to break free and bolt. Just as suddenly,
he wanted to clutch at Mirain and babble an endless stream of nonsense. Waking
him thereby and chancing his new-roused temper.

Vadin lay very still and very quiet and made himself
remember how to breathe. In, out. In, out. So. Out. In—

He had not lost his wager yet. That turned on friendship.
There was nothing in it about falling in love.

Damn him,
thought
Vadin, still counting breaths.
Damn him,
damn him, damn him.

Istan begged as Mirain had foretold, and Mirain was kind to
him, but firm. “I ride to battle; and I have a squire of the king’s own
choosing. Stay, grow strong, learn well all that your masters can teach. And
when your hair is braided, if you can and will, come to Han-Ianon and I will
welcome you.”

The boy’s great eyes swam with tears, but he held them back.
He looked less like a boy then, and not at all like a girl.

When Mirain rode away he was on the tower over the gate,
watching. Vadin knew he would not move until they were long out of sight.

Mirain had not forgotten him; that was not his way. But he
was focused ahead upon the loom of peaks that was the Marches, and the blue
coverlet, given him as a gift, was folded away among the baggage.

Vadin was calm, riding beside him. Waking had been agony,
not least for that he had lain immobile and sleepless for most of the night;
and it was Mirain’s rousing that had startled him into consciousness.

The prince disentangled himself with no sign of shame,
cross-grained as he always was on first waking but trying to train himself out
of it, and oblivious to the wave of heat that laid Vadin low. Vadin looked at him
and remembered, and considered hating himself, and froze in sudden horror.

Mirain of all people, mage and god’s son, walker in minds,
could never be deceived. Vadin could feign the most perfect indifference, or be
wise and conduct himself exactly as he always had, and Mirain would know. Would
see. And if he cared, Vadin knew he would die of it; but he did not, that would
be infinitely worse.

He had brought wine to Vadin still helpless under the
coverlet, and he was the same as always. The god did not flame out of his eyes;
they were clouded with sleep, but clearing, seeing nothing untoward.

Vadin gulped the warm sweet wine, and it steadied him.
Maybe, after all, he had nothing to fear. He did not have the kind of eyes that
swooned, and Mirain would not invade a mind that resisted; and Avaryan’s child
or no, he was at his worst in the morning. By the time Mirain’s wits were fully
gathered, Vadin had himself well in hand.

With the wind in his face, fresh and cold with unmelted
snows, he knew that he could master this. He was not like Istan. It was not
Mirain’s body he wanted; or not so much that he was weak with it. He would have
something else. Maybe something unheard of.

“Look!” cried Mirain, flinging up his arm. Great wings
boomed; an eagle dropped from the sky to settle like a falcon trained to
jesses: a white eagle of the mountains, the royal bird of Ianon, companion of
kings. Eye met eye, sun-fire to Sun-fire.

With a high fierce cry the eagle cast itself sunward. It
carried Mirain’s soul with it, the body riding empty, easy in the tall
war-saddle.

Vadin bent his stinging eyes on Rami’s ears. Gods and
demons, he was lost indeed; jealous of a bird. And all for a wanderwit sorcerer
who wanted to be a king. Who would probably die for wanting it.

His eyes brimmed and overflowed; he swore at the whip of the
wind.

oOo

The Marches came on slowly, in hills that swelled and rose
and broke into mountains; in a spreading bleakness, green overwhelmed by the
power of stone, trees stunted and twisted in the merciless wind.

Summer had gained no foothold here. Where green could go, it
was spring still, the snows but lately gone; the peaks were white with it,
daring the sun to conquer them.

But far away below was green and warmth and quiet, and as
they rose higher Vadin could see the walls of Ianon’s Vale across the rolling
land, though not either Towers or castle. The former looked away from him
toward the sunrise; the latter lay too well protected within its circling
mountains.

They rode more cautiously now in a net of scouts and spies,
feeling out this country that had risen against its lord. Yet they did not
creep about like thieves. Moranden would have it known that he was in the
Marches, but never precisely where. He would ride openly through a village, a
cluster of huts beneath a crag; wind swiftly along hidden paths to a hold far
distant; and take his rest there for a day, a night, or perhaps but an hour.

“Confusion,” Mirain said to Vadin. “It makes the rebels
uneasy. They’re not as powerful here as they’d like to be; and the waverers are
being reminded, often by their lord’s own presence, that they swore oaths of
fealty unto death.”

A pretty chieftain remembered, and tried to appease both
sides. He housed and feasted a ringleader, arrested him in his bed and sent
word of the capture to the Prince Moranden. Moranden came, smiled, saw the
rebel executed. And as the executioner brought him the head gaping and
bleeding, raised his hand. His men seized the chieftain; the executioner, under
Moranden’s cold eye, did his duty yet again.

Vadin was no stranger to summary justice. He had grown up
with it. But it was Mirain, raised in the gentle south, who watched
unflinching, and Vadin who needed his head held afterward while he was
thoroughly and shamefully sick.

“I can kill,” he gasped. “I can kill in battle. I know I
can. But I can’t—can’t ever—Gods, his eyes when they took him. His
eyes
. ”

Mirain did not insult him with either pity or sympathy. “He
knew what he risked, but he refused to believe it. Traitors never do.”

They had the garderobe to themselves, for a little while.
Vadin turned in the doorway, his back to the curtain of leather that opened on
the stair. “Would you have done what your uncle did?”

Mirain took time to relieve himself. It was dim, the cresset
flickering above his bent head, but Vadin saw the thinning of his lips. At last
he said, “I don’t know. I . . . don’t know.” He straightened his kilt. “I’ve
never been betrayed.”

Yet.
The word,
unspoken, hung in the heavy air.

oOo

Moranden had made his point. His vassals sent him numerous
protestations of loyalty. But the leaders, the begetters of the uprising, knew
that they could expect no mercy. Gathering what forces they could, they fled in
search of safety.

“Umijan,” said the chief of Moranden’s scouts, who had foundered
a senel to reach his lord on the road between Shuan and Kerath. Vadin heard;
Mirain, driven perhaps by prescience, had worked his way to the head of the
line, and the elder prince’s guards had made no effort to stop him.

“Yes,” the scout repeated between gasps, accepting
Moranden’s own flask, drinking deep. “They hid a man in Kerath, nigh dead with
fever, but not nigh enough. He babbled before he died. Umijan will shelter the
rebels if they get there soon enough, and if they swear the proper oaths.”

Moranden’s face was rigid. Umijan was the heart of the
Marches, its lord his close kinsman. Half-brother, whispered some who whispered
also that he was no son of Raban the king. Save only for the giant-builded keep
of Han-Ianon, it was the strongest holding in the kingdom, nor had it ever been
taken.

Once barricaded within, the fugitives could hold fast for as
long as they chose. Or as Baron Ustaren chose, and he would not yield lightly;
for he came of a long line of rebels against any lordship but their own.

“What if we come there first?” Mirain’s voice brought them
all about; at least one blade bared against him. He stared it down. “What if we
come to Umijan before them?” he repeated. “What will Ustaren do then?”

“Impossible,” rasped the captain nearest Moranden. “If they
passed Kerath a full day and more ago, riding as fast as they should have been,
they’ll be inside the walls by tomorrow’s sunset. We’ll never catch them, let
alone pass them.”

“If we do,” Mirain persisted, “will the lord hold to his
treason? Or is he only playing a game he was bred to play? A race: to the
winner his aid, to the loser his enmity.”

The scout grinned. “That’s it, my prince; there you have it.
The Great Game, and he’s a master of it, is my lord of Umijan. But the lead’s
too great. We can’t close it in the time we have.”

Moranden’s charger fretted, ears flat, eye rolling at the
Mad One. The elder prince forestalled a lunge, staining the foam with blood
beneath the bit, but his mind was not on it.

His eyes lay on Mirain. Vadin could not read them. They
hated, yes, always, but not to blindness; they measured the mount and the
rider, and narrowed. “Well, sister-son,” he said, and that was a great
concession before the army, “since your lordship chooses not to keep the place
you were assigned to, tell us what you know that we’re still ignorant of.”

“I know nothing, lord commander,” Mirain said without
perceptible mockery, “but I don’t believe we’ve lost the race. Give me ten men
on the swiftest seneldi we have; provision us with what we can consume in the
saddle; and I’ll greet the traitors in your name from Umijan’s gate.”

“Why you? Why risk the throne prince on a venture that could
kill him?”

“Because,” Mirain answered, “the Mad One is the swiftest
senel in Ianon, and he will suffer no rider but myself. He can win the race if
no other can.”

They watched, all the men who were close enough, and passed
the tale in a murmur through the ranks. Mirain was challenging Moranden, whose
commands hitherto he had not questioned; and Moranden was all too well aware of
it. But there was no enmity in the challenge, on either side. Not this time,
not with a common enemy before them.

“If I send you,” said Moranden, “and you fall afoul of the
enemy, or fail to convince Ustaren that you’re a king and not a pawn in this
game of his, I’ll have more than Umijan raised against me.”

“No. By my father I swear it. This venture is on my head
alone. If you give me leave, my lord commander.”

“And if I don’t, my lord soldier?”

“I submit to your will. And,” said Mirain, “we lose Umijan.”

The dun stallion lowered its horns, snorting in outrage.
Moranden’s fist hammered it into submission.

Suddenly he laughed, a deep free sound untainted with
bitterness. “You have gall, boy. You may even have a chance. Pick your men, if
you haven’t already; Rakan, see to their provisioning.”

Vadin did not ask to go. He assumed it. Rami could outrun
anything on feet, perhaps even the Mad One himself. When he went to fill his
saddlebags with journey-bread and presscakes and a double ration of water,
Rakan the quartermaster gave him hardly a glance. He was part of Mirain, like
the Mad One.

He added all unnecessary burdens to the pile at Rakan’s
feet, even to shield and armor, even to his helmet, so light would they have to
travel; but he kept sword and dagger, for no nobleman would go abroad without
them. He regretted the sacrifice of his armor, although he would get it back
when the army came to Umijan. Kilt and cloak were poor protection against edged
bronze.

But they were not riding to a fight; they were riding to win
a Marcher lord to Moranden’s side in the game.

Mirain chose his men quickly enough to prove his uncle
right. He chose well, Vadin judged and Moranden conceded. They were all young,
but seasoned and strong; lightly built, most of them, long and light like Vadin
or small and light like Mirain, and superbly mounted. They gathered ahead of
the company, their seneldi fretting with eagerness, while Mirain faced Moranden
once more and said, “Wish us well, my lord.”

Moranden bowed his head. His eyes held Mirain’s for a long
moment. He did not smile, nor did he frown. Only Vadin was close enough to hear
what he said. “For the king, priestess’ bastard. For the kingdom one of us will
rule. Ride hard and ride straight, and may the gods bring you there before the
enemy.”

Mirain smiled. “I’ll see you in Umijan, my uncle.”

The Mad One wheeled on his haunches, belling. With a flash
of his golden hand, Mirain flung them all into a gallop.

oOo

Afterward, when Vadin tried to remember that wild ride, he
could call up most clearly the blur of wind and thunder, and Rami’s mane
whipping his hands, her long ears now flat with speed, now pricked as the
riders slowed to breathe and eat and, far too briefly, to rest. They kept to
the rhythm of the Great Race, grueling but not quite killing if senel and rider
both were of the best.

Rami was; Vadin was determined to be. She strode forth
tirelessly, matching the Mad One pace for pace, even showing him her heels when
once he faltered. A stone had caught him in a moment of carelessness; he surged
up beside her on the narrow track, aimed a nip at her shoulder for her
presumption.

She scorned to notice him. Behind his flattened ears shone
Mirain’s sudden grin. Vadin bared his own teeth in reply, less grin than
grimace.

They lost a man on the ridge called the Blade, sliding down
its sheer side into a long level valley. His tall roan mare, taking the descent
too suddenly, overbalanced; scrambled; hung suspended, and somersaulted
screaming into air.