Hall of the Mountain King Page 7

  “Given your soul,” Mirain asked, “or got rid of me?”

  “Both.” Moranden rubbed his cheek as if the scar pained him. But he smiled a white wolf-smile. “O beloved of my father, if you were given the chance and an ample reward, would you go back where you came from?”

  “What sort of reward?”

  “Why, anything. Anything at all, short of the throne.”

  “Which you would take for yourself.”

  “Of course. I’ve waited long enough for it. Considerably longer than you, and at considerably closer quarters.”

  “My mother,” Mirain said softly, “was the king’s heir.”

  “Much it meant to her, that she never bothered to come and prove it. But she was half a foreigner herself. I’ve heard the tales of her mother, the yellow woman: the Asanian emperor, having got her on a slave, thought it a fine jest to toss her to an outsize barbarian. Who fancied he was getting a princess, and strutted with it. She proved a poor bargain. One daughter as undersized as herself: that was all she could give to her lord and master.”

  “But the daughter had a child, who if equally undersized, at least was comfortably male.”

  Moranden looked him up and down. “Are you?”

  “Shall I strip and let you see?”

  Moranden laughed. He was laughing too much and too freely.

  Yes, Vadin thought; there was a scent of wine on him, and something else, sharp, acrid. Hate? Fear?

  He laughed, and his eyes glittered beneath the lowered lids. “Yes, by the gods! Strip and show me.”

  Mirain’s own eyes were bitter-bright. With a swift movement he stripped off his kilt. “Well, sir?”

  Moranden took his time about it. He rose for it, walking completely around the motionless prince like a buyer in a slave market. When he faced Mirain again, he set his hands on his hips and his head to one side. “Maybe,” he said. One hand flashed out to Mirain’s cheek, catching on the soft young stubble. “You don’t try overly hard to prove it. Why do you make yourself like a eunuch? Are you someone’s fancy boy?”

  Mirain sat where Moranden had sat, lolling where Moranden had lolled, smiling through set teeth. “Even if I were so inclined, my vows would forbid it.”

  “Convenient, those vows of yours.”

  “They bind me. Until I come to the throne; then I’m free of them.”

  “No doubt you can hardly wait.”

  “I can wait as long as I must.”

  Again Moranden’s hand went to his face. He brought it down sharply and clasped it behind him, scowling down the proud arch of his nose. Abruptly he said, “I remember. What you did.”

  “Under compulsion.”

  “You did it.” Moranden’s shoulders flexed. They did not take well to humility, even such haughty humility as this. “I owe you for that. My life, maybe. I was close to the edge when you brought me back.”

  “In my father’s name. That should comfort you; for if the Dark One had your soul, you could not have answered that call.”

  “I owe you,” Moranden repeated. The words were coming hard, as if around bile. “I’ll give you this in return. Go now, and take what I offered you. Take all you can carry. You can conquer the world better from the Hundred Realms than you ever could from the wilds of the north.”

  “But Ianon is mine by blood-right and heir-right. What better place to begin?”

  “If we let you.”

  It was a lion’s growl. Mirain laughed at it. He looked feverish; his words came as if of their own accord, demon-words, light and mocking. “Let, say you? Let? When it took half a cask of wine to bring you here tonight?” He leaned back in his chair, foot swinging idly; but he cradled his hand as if it had been a wounded creature. “If your gratitude comes so hard, need I fear your enmity?”

  Moranden seemed to swell in the firelight. With no memory of movement, Vadin found himself beside his liege lord, sword drawn and on guard. Above its glitter he met Moranden’s eyes and found there a black and naked hate.

  “Child,” said the elder prince deep in his throat. “Kingling. I won’t offer again. Thanks or reward. Or anything else.”

  “That is well. You spare me the effort of refusal.”

  “You think yourself clever. Think on, little fool. But don’t expect me to lick your feet.”

  “That,” said Mirain, “I would not dream of.” He yawned. “It grows late, and no doubt you are weary. You may go to your bed.”

  Moranden stood speechless. Abruptly he spun away.

  oOo

  For a long while prince and squire stared at the empty air, the closed door. Moranden had shut it with softness more potent than any violence.

  Mirain raised his burning hand, turned it, clenched it: defying him, denying him, rejecting him utterly. “He cannot touch me. He has not the power. For he is a mortal man, and I am the king who will be. I . . . will . . . be king.”

  SEVEN

  “There slinks the foreigner’s dog.”

  Vadin had been offending no one. He was free for the first time since Moranden’s wounding, standing in the market contemplating a bit of frippery and the girl to whom he would give it, with Kav’s comfortable bulk and still more comfortable silence for companions. It was Kav who kept him from lunging blindly toward the voice, who wrapped a broad hand around his narrow arm and simply stood, firm as the earth beneath their feet.

  The voice was young and lordly and pitched to madden, sneering just behind Vadin’s right ear. “Ah, look! He buys bangles and beads for his dainty master. How do they serve one another, do you think? Does the boy become a man when the lamps are out?”

  “Let me go!” Vadin snarled at his captor.

  Kav did not shift his grip. The clear eyes in the heavy sullen face flicked once toward the voice, and then away.

  Again it pricked, with laughter in it. “They go well together, longshanks and shortshanks, cowards of a feather. Did you hear what his highness will do when the throne comes to him? He’ll dress all the lords in trousers, command them to shave their beards, and make them swear to serve him as slaves serve their masters.”

  Kav moved steadily and inexorably away from the voice and toward the wineshop. One or two squires were there already and well in their cups.

  Vadin fought; he could as easily have fought the castle wall. His hand fell to his dagger.

  “Don’t,” Kav said in his deep growl of a voice.

  Vadin cursed him. He grunted, which was his way of laughing. They were under the awning; he set Vadin firmly on the bench between Olvan and Ayan and thrust a cup into the clenching fist.

  Vadin gulped the sour ale, crying through it, “He spoke treason! He said—he said I—”

  “Words,” said Kav.

  “Words breed blows, damn you!”

  “Did he say anything you haven’t thought yourself?”

  “I don’t say it.” Vadin stopped, straightened. All three were looking at him. His mouth tasted of sickness. He lashed out. “Yes. Stare. You worship the ground he walks on. You’d kiss his foot if he asked.”

  “Except that he wouldn’t,” Ayan said, refilling Vadin’s cup, “and that’s why we worship him. Doesn’t he take weapons practice with the rest of us? And didn’t he insist on it, and dare the king’s displeasure? And he a knight in Han-Gilen and ten times as good as most of us will ever be.”

  “Five times,” Vadin judged sourly. “You know what people say about that. He won’t take on anyone who’ll come close to him; he knows he’ll lose. So he makes fools of us, and witches us into loving him for it.”

  Olvan snorted. “Jealous nonsense. He learns from Adjan, who’s the best teacher in Ianon. He teaches us when we insist. He likes us.”

  “Gods don’t learn or like. They rule.”

  “Prince Mirain is only half a god,” Ayan pointed out. But his tongue caressed the name, and he sighed; then he frowned. “We know that. We know him. But it’s true, people are saying things, and not in whispers any more, either. I was on watch las
t night; I broke up a fight, and people on both sides were howling that they were loyal to the true prince. They were breaking heads over it.”

  “Who won?” Kav inquired.

  “No one,” said Vadin before Ayan could speak. “No one at all.”

  His cup was empty again. He could not remember draining it. He poured another, and another.

  He was going to have someone’s neck. He was not certain whose. But lovely Ledi was there to divert him, even without the bauble he had meant to buy her. And another cup of ale, and a song or two, and a warm tangle in Ledi’s bed, all four and she, and when he was done he would remember rage.

  “Because,” he said once or a dozen times, “no one—no one—calls Vadin alVadin a coward.”

  oOo

  With the sun’s coming, Ledi left the tangle to sort itself: Olvan and Ayan coiled around one another, and Kav solid and sufficient unto himself, and Vadin hunting blindly for the soft woman-body. He found something, and its skin was velvet, but steel-hard beneath; and it was much too narrow and supple to be Ledi.

  His eyes dragged themselves open. He had his arm crooked lovingly around Mirain’s waist; the prince regarded him with wry amusement.

  He recoiled.

  The wryness deepened. Vadin opened his mouth; Mirain’s hand covered it. His other, golden, beckoned.

  Out in the courtyard, with the sun beating down on his tortured skull, Vadin let it free. “What in the thrice nine hells are you doing here?”

  Mirain’s glance was pointed. Vadin fumbled into kilt and belt and cloak, and plunged his head into the vat of rainwater beside the gate. He came up a little clearer of mind, if in no less pain. “I thought I had the whole night to myself.”

  “You did.” Mirain tilted his head. “Your Ledi is a woman of great wit and wisdom.”

  Vadin fought down his rising temper. “My lord,” he said with great care, “I would thank you not to—”

  “I’m not mocking her. She served me new bread and honey, and she talked with me. She wasn’t afraid of me.”

  “And why should she be?”

  Mirain looked at him. Down at him. With all the pride of a crowned king and all the puissance of a god.

  Then he was Mirain again, shoulder-high to Vadin, saying, “I see. I’m small, and therefore harmless. Who in Ianon can say differently?”

  “All the king’s squires, and one of your own, and a certain prince.” Vadin shook himself before he turned into a poet. “Why are you here? Is something wrong?”

  Mirain shrugged. He was looking very young and very guileless and therefore, to Vadin’s mind, very suspicious. “I missed your presence.”

  “You had Pathan. Pathan the prince, who’s heir to two fiefs and a princedom, and who’s fought his way to captain of squires, and who’ll make knight this High Summer. More than that; he’ll be Younger Champion, and in a year or two he’ll give the elder good reason to fear for his title. He should have been your squire from the first. He’s worthy of you.”

  “Do you think that, Vadin?”

  Vadin was not to be trapped, even by his own runaway tongue. “The king should think so. You’re the light of his fading eyes.”

  “Pathan is pleasant enough,” Mirain said. “Handsome. Brilliant. Not remarkably larger than I, and undisturbed by it. He plays a wicked game of kings-and-cities.”

  Vadin, who was none of those things, smote his hands together. “So! Ask your grandfather for him. He’d be hugely honored.”

  “Unfortunately,” Mirain went on undeterred, “he bores me to tears. All that relentless perfection. And such utterly unshakable loyalty to his king’s chosen heir. When he woke me—impeccably attired at the ungodly hour a Sun-priest has to wake, and awaiting on me with flawless effacement—it was all I could do not to scream. I did order him out. I think I was acceptably polite.”

  Vadin could see it. Pathan, the epitome of the squire, the vision toward which Adjan struggled ceaselessly to drive all the rest, waking Mirain with the exact courteous touch, bathing and dressing and serving him without the slightest slip of mind or body, and being dismissed with Mirain’s inimitable, acid, southern-bred politeness. After, no doubt, a strong dose of that prince’s resistance to any service which he preferred to perform himself.

  Vadin’s lips kept twitching. He bit them; they escaped. The laughter burst out of him all at once.

  Mirain’s grin was utterly wicked. Vadin fought for a scowl, managed only a dying gasp. “You—Pathan—you’re as mad as I am.”

  “One could say I have deplorable taste. In seneldi, in causes, and in friends.”

  The last word drove Vadin back into himself. “I’m your servant. My lord.”

  The black eyes narrowed a fraction. The proud head bowed once, conceding nothing. “Ledi will feed you. Then I require your service.”

  Which was to trail behind him through every square and alley of the town in the market-day crowd, testing the currents of speech and, no doubt, of mind; tarrying to overhear a round of gossip, to down a cup of wine, to watch a sword-dancer. Like any proper wizard, Mirain could make himself invisible when he chose. Else surely people would not have been so free with their scandalmongering, and they had much to say of the two princes, the new and the old.

  “I’m for the man I know,” said a buyer at the senel fair. “And what do we know about this Mirain? He comes all unlooked for, he wears a torque and a braid like a Sun-priest, he claims to be the gods know what. He could be out to slaughter us all.”

  “Prince Moranden is a hard man,” opined a coppersmith’s wife as she sat on her doorstep spinning wool into thread. “He looks fine and fair; he has a smile or a word for everyone; but he has a cold eye. I saw it happen when I was a girl in Shaios. Sweet as honey, Lord Keian was, till the day his father died; and people said afterward that maybe the old man had had help on his way. And when the heir came to the high seat, he went stark bitter. Killed all his kin, even to the women and babes, and taxed us till we starved, and went to war against Suveien. And won, thank the gods, but he died winning, and his lady ruled us well till the little lord Tien was old enough to take his place.”

  The elders sighed over their gaming in the sun, and the eldest said, “It’s an ill day when there are two high princes and only one throne to be had, and the elder’s not likely to step down for the upstart younger, chosen heir or not. They’ve drawn their lines; and mark my words, they won’t take long now to come to blows.”

  “I hear they have already,” the youngest of them observed, casting dice for his move in kings-and-cities. “I hear the young one came at the elder with a catsclaw dagger and laid his face open, and called on magic to heal it up again.”

  “For regret?” an onlooker wondered.

  “For contempt. And the elder prince has a scar to remind him of the insult.”

  “Foreigners,” muttered the eldest. “Both of them. Now if the king had had the sense to take a wife at home—”

  The onlooker leaned across the board. “I hear they’re neither of them his kin. The young one’s an enchanter from the Nine Cities, painted up like one of us and enspelled to look like the princess who’s dead; the elder belongs to one of the Marcher rebels. I remember when the king brought that woman here, and I remember how soon he got the whelp on her. Who’s to say she wasn’t carrying it when he took her?”

  Mirain pulled Vadin away, and none too soon. He himself seemed no more than amused. “An enchanter,” he said. “From the Nine Cities.” He laughed. “O that I were! What would I do to this poor kingdom, do you think?”

  “Turn it into a land of the walking dead.”

  Mirain sobered abruptly. “Don’t say such things!”

  Vadin stared, startled at the change in him. His lips were touched with grey, his eyes wide and wild.

  Little by little he calmed. Very quietly he said, “Never speak of what could be. Would you be heard and heeded?”

  “Would you do what I said you would?”

  “The goddess is my
father’s sister. She would give all her power to have me for her own, for that would wound him to the heart. And it would be—not impossible—perhaps not even difficult. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . almost easy. To let her—to be—”

  Vadin hauled Mirain up by the shoulders and shook him hard. And when he could walk, after a fashion, saw him into a stall and plied him with wine until the darkness began to fade.

  He caught at the cup and drank deep enough to drown, and came up gasping; but his eyes were clear. “My thanks,” he said at last.

  Vadin lifted his hand, let it fall. One did one’s duty.

  Mirain sighed and drained the wine. If he might have spoken again, another voice forestalled him, a clear trained voice embarked upon a tale.

  “Indeed, sirs, it was a prodigy: a woman white as a bone, with eyes the color of blood.” It was a talespinner in the motley rags of his calling, with a cup in one hand and a girl on his knee. Fine dark wine and a fine dark girl.

  He paused to savor both. She giggled; he kissed her soundly and drank deep. “Aye, white she was, which was a wonder and a horror. She belonged to the goddess, people said. Her kinsmen kept her in a cage built like a temple and fed her with sacrifices—taking the best portions for themselves, of course. She would writhe and babble; they would call it prophecy, and interpret it for whatever price the market would bear. Whole suns of gold, even, when the local chieftains came to ask about their wars. They were always pleased, because they were always promised victory.”

  “And did they get it?”

  The man turned to Mirain with no hint of surprise to find him there. “Some did, prince. Some didn’t; but they never came back to gainsay her. Till one fine day a young man came striding into the shrine. He gave her his sacrifice: a bit of journey-bread and a handful of berries. Her keepers would have whipped him out then, but they were curious to see what he would do. Very little, in fact. He sat down in front of the cage, and the sibyl ate what he had brought, untidily enough to be sure, with her unholy eyes upon him all the while. He stared straight back; he even smiled.