Hall of the Mountain King Read online

  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.

  FOUR

  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. B
ut 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?”

  Slowly the proud head bowed, sniffed at the golden hand, blew upon it.

  Mirain drew closer still. Suddenly he was astride.

  The Mad One stood frozen, then reared, belling.

  The prince laughed. He was still laughing as the senel came down running, leaped the high fence, and hurtled through the stableyard. Men and animals scattered before them.

  “The Mad One!” a deep voice bellowed. “The Mad One is loose!”

  “Which one?” muttered Vadin. Sourly; but with a touch—a very reluctant touch—of admiration.

  oOo

  They met the king coming down from the hall, while behind them eddied a turbulent crowd. The Mad One came to a dancing halt; Mirain bowed to his grandsire. “I’ve found a friend, my lord,” he said.

  Vadin was as close as anyone dared to go: just out of reach of the stallion’s heels. He would almost rather have been closer still than face the king’s cold accusing eye. But that was fixed on Mirain, and on the senel who, untaught, bore his rider with ease and grace; whose mien had lost not a whit of either its pride or its wildness.

  The coldness warmed. The thin lips twitched just perceptibly. “A friend indeed, grandson, and a great lord of seneldi. But I fear you will have to look after him yourself. No man will come near him.”

  “No longer,” Mirain said, “if only none ventures to ride him. For after all, he is a king.”

  “After all,” the king agreed with a touch of irony, “he is.”

  “We go now into the Vale. Will you come with us, sire?”

  The king’s smile won free, startling as the sun at midnight, and more miraculous. “Certainly I shall. Hian, saddle my charger. I ride forth with the prince.”

  oOo

  From a tower of the castle Moranden saw them: the boy on the black stallion without bridle or saddle, and the old king on the red destrier, and a tangle of lords and servants and hangers-on. His knuckles greyed as he gripped the window ledge. “Priestess’ bastard,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

  “That is most unkind.”

  He whirled upon Ymin. “Unkind? Unkind? You have all you can ask for. All your prophecies fulfilled, new songs to sing, and a pretty lad to pleasure your eye. But I—I have had a kingdom snatched from my hands.”

  “You never had it,” she pointed out serenely, sitting cross-legged on his bed.

  “I did when that whelp bewitched my father.”

  “Your father never named you his heir.”

  “And who else would there have been?”

  She spread her hands. “Who knows? But Mirain has come. He is the god’s son, Moranden. Of that I am certain.”

  “So you’ve come to gloat over me.”

  “No. To make you see sense. That boy can tame the Mad One. What could he not do to you?”

  “No beggar’s by-blow can snare me with spells.”

  “Moranden,” she said with sudden, passionate urgency, “he is the one. The king foretold. Accept him. Yield to him.”

  He stood over her and seized her roughly, shaking her. “I yield to no one. Not to you, and not ever to a bastard boy.”

  “He is your sister’s son.”

  “My sister!” he spat. “Sanelin, Sanelin, always Sanelin. Look, Moranden, look at your sister, how proud, how queenly, how very, very holy. Come, lad, be strong; when your sister comes back, would you have her be ashamed of you? Ah, Sanelin, dear lady, where has she gone? So long, so far, and never a true word.” He spat again, as
if to rid his tongue of a foulness. “Who ever took any notice of me? I was only Moranden, the afterthought, begotten on a captive. She was the loved one. She was the heir. She—woman and half-breed and priestess that she was—she would have Ianon. And for me, nothing. No throne, no kingdom. Nothing at all.”

  “Except honor and lordship and all the wealth you could wish for.”

  “Nothing,” he repeated with vicious softness.

  Ymin was silent.

  He laughed, a hideous, strangled sound. “Then she died. I heard the news; I went away in secret and danced the fiercest joy-dance I knew; I dreamed of my kingdom. And now he comes, that puny child, claiming all she had. All. With such utter, absolute, unshakable certainty that he has the right—” Moranden broke off, flinging up his head. “Shall I bow to that interloper? Shall I endure what I have endured for all the years of my manhood? By all the gods and the powers below, I will not!”

  “You are a fool.” Ymin’s voice was soft, edged with contempt. “Your mother on the other hand, whose words you parrot so faithfully—she is mad. In Han-Ianon even we women cut our leading-strings when our breasts begin to bud. No doubt it is different in the Marches.” She broke free and rose. “I go to serve my prince. If you assail him, expect no mercy from me. He is my lord as you have never been, nor ever will be.”

  FIVE

  In Han-Gilen and the lands of the south ruled but one high god, the Lord of Light. But in the north the old ways held firm, the cult not of the One but of the Two, the Light coeval and coequal with his sister the Dark: Avaryan and Uveryen, Sun and Shadow, bound and battling for all eternity. Each had his priests and each his sacrifices. For Avaryan, the holy fire and the chants of praise; but for his sister, darkness and silence and the blood of chosen victims.