The Lady of Han-Gilen Read online

  THREE

  Once Elian had begun, she did not look back. With Brightmoon on her right hand, she turned her face toward the north.

  She kept to the road, riding swiftly, trusting to the dark and to her mare’s sure feet. Lone riders were common enough in peaceful Han-Gilen: travelers, messengers, post-riders of the prince. Nor yet did she look for pursuit. Halenan would see to that.

  The first light of dawn found her in the wooded hills, looking down from afar upon her father’s city. The night flame burned low on the topmost tower of the temple of the Sun. She fancied that she could hear the dawn bells, and the high pure voices of the priestesses calling to the god.

  She swallowed hard. Suddenly the world was very wide and the road was very narrow, and there was only captivity at either end of it. East, west, south—any of them would take her, set her free.

  The mare fretted against a sudden tightening of the reins. Abruptly Elian wheeled her about, startling her into a canter.

  Northward, away from the Asanian. Northward to her oath’s fulfilment.

  oOo

  By sunrise the mare had slowed to a walk. Hill and wood lay between Elian’s eyes and the city; she drowsed in the saddle.

  The mare stumbled. Elian jolted into wakefulness. For an instant, memory failed her; she looked about wildly. The senel had halted in a glade, and finding no resistance, begun to graze.

  Elian slid to the ground. A high rock reared above her, with a stream leaping down the face of it and a pool at its foot.

  The mare stepped delicately into the water, ruffled it with her breath, and drank. After a moment Elian followed her. First she took off the mare’s bit and bridle, then the saddle; then she lay on her face by the pool, drinking deep.

  The mare nibbled her hair. She batted the dripping muzzle aside, and laughed as water ran down her neck.

  With sudden recklessness she plunged her head into the pool, rising in an icy spray. All thought of sleep had fled; hunger filled its place.

  Her saddle pouches were full, every one. She found wine, cheese, new bread and journey-bread, fruit and meat and a packet of honey sweets.

  At the last she laughed, but with a catch at the end of it. Who but Hal would have remembered that gluttonous passion of hers?

  “He knows me better than I know myself.”

  The mare, rolling in the ferns, took no notice of her. She ate sparingly and drank a little of the wine. The sun was warm on her damp head. She lay back in the sweet-scented grass and closed her eyes.

  The dream at first was sunlit, harmless. A woman walked in a garden under the sun. She wore the plain white robe of a priestess in the temple of Han-Gilen, her hair braided down her back, a torque gleaming golden at her throat. There was a flower in her hair, white upon raven.

  She turned, bending with rare grace to pluck a second blossom, and Elian saw her face. It was a striking, foreign face, eagle-keen and very dark, the face of a woman from the north. On her breast lay the golden disk of the High Priestess of Avaryan.

  A child ran down the path, a boy in shirt and breeches that sorely needed a washing, his hair a riot of unshorn curls. “Mother, come and see! Fleetfoot had her colt, and he’s all white, and his eyes are blue, and Herdmaster says he’s demon-gotten but Foster-father says nonsense. I say nonsense too. There’s no dark in him, only colt-thoughts. Herdmaster wants to give him to the temple. Come and see him!”

  The priestess laughed and smoothed his tangled hair. He was as dark as she, with the same striking face and the same great black eyes set level in it. “Come and claim him, you mean to say. Is it a white war-stallion you’re wanting, then?”

  “Not for me,” he said. “For you. For the best rider in the world.”

  “Flatterer.” Still laughing, she let him pull her to the garden’s gate.

  It flew open. Mother and son halted.

  A man flung himself at the priestess’ feet. In face, garb, and bearing he was a commoner, a farmholder of Han-Gilen with the earth of his steading on his feet.

  “Lady,” he gasped. “Lady, great sickness—my woman, my sons—all at once, out of blue heaven—”

  All laughter fled from the priestess’ face. She drew taut, as one who listens to a voice on the edge of hearing.

  Her face twisted, smoothed. Its calm, where a moment before it had been so mobile, was terrible to see.

  She looked down. “Do you command me, freeman?”

  The man clutched her knees. “Lady, they say you are a healer. They say—”

  She raised her hand. He stiffened. For a moment he was different, a subtle difference, gone before it won a name.

  The priestess bowed her head. “Lead me,” she said.

  He leaped up. “Oh, lady! Thank all the gods I found you here with none to keep me from you. Come now, come quickly!”

  But her son held her back with all his young strength. She turned in his grip. For a moment she was herself, brows meeting, warning. “Mirain—”

  He held her more tightly, his eyes wide and wild. “Don’t go, Mother.”

  “Lady,” the man said. “For the gods’ sake.”

  She stood between them, her eyes steady upon her son. “I must go.”

  “No.” He strove to drag her back. “It’s dark. All dark.”

  Gently but firmly she freed herself. “You will stay here, Mirain. I am called; I cannot refuse. You will see me again. I promise you.” She held out her hand to the man. “Show me where I must go.”

  oOo

  For a long while after she was gone, Mirain stood frozen. Only his eyes could move, and they blazed.

  But the priestess summoned her bay stallion and a mount for the messenger, and rode from the temple. No one took undue notice of her leaving. The lady of the temple often rode out so to work her healing about the princedom, led or followed by a desperate wife or husband, kinsman or kinswoman, village priest or headman. Her miracles were famous, and justly so, gifts of the god who had taken her as his bride.

  At last her son broke free from the binding. Running with unwonted awkwardness, stumbling, seeing nothing and no one, he passed the door of the prince’s stable. The prince himself was there, that dark man with his bright hair, intent still on Fleetfoot’s foal. Mirain nearly fell against him; stared at him with eyes that saw him not at all; fumbled with the latch of a stall door.

  A black muzzle thrust through the opening; a body followed it, a wicked, dagger-horned, swift-heeled demon of a pony.

  The prince braved hooves and horns to catch Mirain’s shoulders. “Mirain!” The name took shape in more than voice. “Mirain, what haunts you?”

  Mirain stood very still. “Mother,” he said distinctly. “Treachery. She knows it. She rides to it. They will kill her.”

  Prince Orsan let him go. He mounted and clapped heels to the sleek sides. Even as he burst into the sunlight, a red stallion thundered after, likewise bridleless and saddleless; but his rider bore a drawn sword.

  oOo

  The farmer’s holding lay at a great distance from the city; so he told the priestess, disjointedly, driving his borrowed mount with brutal urgency. Her own stallion, better bred and more lightly ridden, kept a steady pace up from the level land into the hills. They followed the wide North Road; those who passed gave way swiftly before them. Some, knowing the priestess, bowed in her wake.

  The road lost itself in trees. The man slowed not at all. He rode well and skillfully for one who could not often have spared time or coin for the art. She let her stallion fall back a little, for the trees were thick, raising root and branch to catch the unwary.

  Her guide veered from the track up a steep narrow path treacherous with stones. His mount slid, stumbled, recovered; the priestess heard its laboring breath. “Wait!” she cried. “Will you slay your poor beast?”

  His only answer was to lash it with the reins, sending it plunging up the slope. There was light beyond; he vanished into it.

  Just short of the summit, the priestess checked her senel. Th
ere was fear in her eyes, here where none could see.

  None but the god, and Elian dreaming. The god would not speak. Elian could not.

  Need not. All this, long ago, the priestess had foreseen. She had chosen it. She must not turn back, now that it had come upon her. Her lips firmed; her eyes kindled. Lightly she touched heel to the bay’s side.

  The trees opened on a greensward, a stream and a pool, a loom of stone. By the pool her guide waited. She rode toward him.

  Something hissed. Her stallion reared, suddenly wild, stretched to his full height, and toppled, convulsed on the grass. A black arrow pierced his throat.

  The priestess had sprung free and fallen, rolling. Swift though she was, warrior-trained, her long robe hampered her; before she could rise fully, the weight of many bodies bore her down.

  After the first instinctive struggle, she lay still. Hard hands dragged her to her feet. Gauntleted hands; masks of woodland green and brown, with eyes glittering behind them.

  Her guide had dismounted. Now that his part was ended, he carried himself not at all like a farmholder; his lip curled as he looked at her, and he swaggered, a broad dun-clad figure among the band of forest folk.

  She met his stare and smiled faintly. His eyes held but a moment before they slid away. “If one of your folk has need of healing,” she said, “I will tend him freely, without betrayal.”

  “Without betrayal, say you?” This was a new voice. It raised a ripple among the reivers: a clear, cold, contemptuous voice with an accent that could only be heard in the very highest houses of Han-Gilen.

  Its owner advanced through the circle of armed men to stand beside the pool. A body once slender had grown gaunt with time and suffering; hair once red-gold was ashen grey, strained back from a face which even yet was beautiful, like an image cast in bronze. The eyes in it were lovely still, though terrible, black and burning cold.

  The priestess regarded her in neither surprise nor fear. “My lady,” she said, giving high birth its due, “you are well within the borders of Han-Gilen. It is death for you to walk here.”

  “Death?” The woman laughed with no hint of mirth. “What is death to the dead?” She moved closer, a tall sexless figure in mottled green, and gazed down from immeasurable heights, too high even for hatred. “Dead indeed, dead and rotted, with a curse upon my grave; for I dared the unthinkable. High priestess of Avaryan in Han-Gilen, face to face with a wandering initiate from the north, I accepted her into my temple. She swore by all the holy things, by the god’s own hand she swore that she had kept her vows. To serve the god with all her being; to Journey as he bade her, seven years of wandering, cleaving to his laws; to know no man.

  “Aye, she served him well indeed in whatever task we set her, even servants’ work, slaves’ work, though she boasted that she was the daughter of a king. There were some who thought she might become a saint.

  “But saints do not grow big with child. Nor do even common priestesses, unless they hunger after death: the sun-death, chained atop the tower of the temple, with an altar of iron beneath them and Avaryan’s crystal above.

  “I was slow to see. I was high lady of the temple, and she did her service in the kitchens; and a priestess’ robe can hide much. But not the belly of a woman within a Brightmoon-waning of her time, as she bends over a washtub scouring a cauldron. And every priestess in the kitchens moving to conceal her, conspiring against their lady, defying the law of their order.

  “I dared observe it. I held the trial. No answer did it gain me, no defense save one, that the miscreant had broken no vows. Her guilt was as clear as her body’s shape, stripped now to its shift that strained to cover her. I condemned her. I commanded what by law I must command. ‘I have broken no vows,’ she said to me, unshakable.

  “And who should come upon us but the Prince of Han-Gilen? He defied me, son of my brother though he was, lay votary of the order, bound to obedience within the walls of my temple. His men-at-arms loosed the prisoner, and my priests stood aside with sheathed swords, for she had bewitched them also. I cursed them all. In the law’s name I snatched a sword to do execution. And they seized me, my own priests, and my kinsman held me to trial. I had dared to lay hands upon the god’s chosen bride, and through her his true-begotten son, heir of Avaryan and emperor that would be. My law had no defense for me; the prince had what he called mercy. Forbearing to put me to death, instead he stripped me of my torque and my office, unbound and cut away my braid, and cast me into exile. And all the while his woman watched me with his bastard in her belly.”

  The words were like hammer blows, weighted with long years of bitterness. The priestess bore them in silence. When the exile fell silent at last, the younger woman spoke. “You chose your punishment. You could have kept your office and accepted the truth; or you could have stepped aside in honor, setting me in your place and retiring to the cloister.”

  “Honor, say you?” The exile’s contempt was absolute. “You, who would found an empire on a lie?”

  “On the god’s own truth.”

  The exile’s face was a mask. “You have found the truth here, O betrayer of your vows. All Han-Gilen lies under your spell. But I have escaped it. I have wielded my freedom in its guise of banishment, to gather such men as will not succumb to sorcery, to restore the shattered law. It remains. It waits to take you.”

  The priestess smiled. “Not the law; the god. Can you not hear how he calls me?”

  “The god has turned his face from you.”

  “No. Nor has he abandoned you, greatly though you fear it, greatly enough to turn all against him and bow at the feet of his dark sister. When first I came to you, when you saw me and hated me for the love you knew he bore me, how terribly I pitied you; for you had no knowledge at all of his love for you. Rank you had, and power, but where you looked for him you could not find him. You despaired; yet you had but sought him where he was not. He waited still, calling to your deaf ears, waiting for your eyes to turn to him. Even now he cries to you. Will you not listen? Will you not see?”

  There were tears in the priestess’ eyes, tears of compassion. The exile’s hands came up to her face; she thrust them down. Her voice lashed out. “Silence her!”

  Blades flashed. The priestess smiled. If she knew pain, it could not touch the heart of her joy.

  Hooves rang on stone. A deep voice cried out: “Sanelin!” A lighter one rose above it, close to a shriek: “Mother!” Black pony and red charger plunged into the glade.

  The priestess lay where her captors had flung her, on her back by the water. Bright blood stained the grass.

  Men howled, trampled under sharpened hooves, cloven by the prince’s sword. She neither heard nor saw. Above her loomed her enemy.

  The exile’s hand rose high, with a dagger glittering in it; yet even as the blade poised to fall, the woman looked up. Hooves struck at her, both dainty and deadly; a narrow wicked head tossed, slashing sidewise with its horns.

  She writhed away, around, beneath. Her knife flashed upward past the pony, toward its rider.

  Sanelin cried out. Mirain flung up his hand. Lightnings leaped from it.

  The knife found flesh. But its force was feeble. Its wielder cried aloud and reeled, clawing at her eyes, and fled.

  The pony stood still, snorting. Mirain wavered half stunned, his hand dangling, burning. The fire flickered in it, burning low now, a golden ember.

  Sanelin could not draw his gaze, could not speak. A massive fist smote him to the ground.

  The silence was absolute. No living enemy stood in the glade. The man who had struck Mirain had turned and found himself alone and undefended, with the black pony rearing over him; he bolted without a sound.

  Here and there on the grass huddled shapes clad in mottled green. A red stallion stood over one in green as dark as evening, with a bloodied sword clutched in the lifeless hand. The senel nuzzled the bright tumble of hair, snorting at the scent of blood upon it.

  Sanelin’s legs would not yield to her
will. Slowly, with many pauses, she dragged herself toward her son. He had fallen in a heap, his hand outflung, a long shallow cut stretching red from elbow to wrist.

  The palm flamed as if it cupped molten gold. She fell beside it and pressed her lips to it. It was searing hot, molten indeed, brand and sigil of the god, with which he had marked his son.

  And with which he had struck down the exile. Her anguish shuddered in the earth.

  oOo

  Elian shuddered with it, and gasped. Wind whispered through the grass. The red senel had dropped its head to graze; no proud stallion horns crowned its brow, no sorely wounded prince lay at its feet.

  No slain men, no boy and no pony, and no dying priestess. Elian was alone and awake in the place where the holy one had died; where her father had come close to death, and lived only through Mirain, who coming to his senses had given the prince what healing the god vouchsafed, and brought him back to the city.

  That was Elian’s earliest clear memory: the prince bloodied and unconscious on the stallion, and the boy riding behind him to steady him, and the pony following like a hound. And bound to the pony’s back with strips of mottled green, the body of Avaryan’s bride.

  Elian sat up, shaking. The vision fled; yet in its place grew one that made her cry out. The face of the slayer, terrible in its beauty, like a skull of bronze and silver. Its eyes were human no longer, great blind demon-eyes, pale as flawed pearls. Even in their blindness they hunted, seeking the one who had destroyed them.

  “No,” Elian whispered. She hardly knew what she denied. The hate, yes; the threat to Mirain, and through him to Han-Gilen and its prince. And perhaps most of all, the dream itself.

  Such dreams were from the god, his gift to the princes of Han-Gilen, shaped for the protection of the realm. But she had forsaken it. She could not be its prophet.

  Her mouth was dust-dry. She knelt to drink from the pool, and recoiled with a gasp. Visions seethed in the clear water. Powers, prophecies; fates and fortunes and the deeds of kings. They drew her, eye and soul, down and down into depths unfathomable save by the trueborn seer. So much—so much—