The Lady of Han-Gilen Read online

  “Give your thanks to the god. I’ll saddle the mare for you.”

  Ani left her there alone and shaking. When she rose, she was steady; the sick fear had faded. She could make the proper obeisance, and walk away with her chin up and her feet firm.

  Ani held the mare’s bridle. On impulse Elian embraced her. She was strong, calm and calming, but warm with a human warmth; she returned the clasp freely. Neither spoke.

  Elian mounted. She raised her hand in farewell, and rode out on the northward road.

  FIVE

  Sent out from Iban by daylight, Elian rode under the sun, one of many passers through the north of the Hundred Realms. By night she sheltered in wayside shrines or in farmholders’ byres, or, once and boldly, in an inn in Ebros.

  Darkness and rain and the rumor of highwaymen had driven her there, with some touch of wildness that tempted her to test her disguise in close company. None but Ani seemed to have divined the truth; to all she met, she was the youth she looked to be, with her cap pulled rakishly low over her eyes.

  There was a goodly crowd in the inn. A party of pilgrims journeying south to Han-Gilen; a merchant with his armed company coming back from Asanion; sundry folk from the town, high and low, some with painted, bare-breasted women.

  Elian kept to herself in a comer, nursing a mug of ale. In the steaming heat she had yielded at last to discomfort and taken off her cap.

  The coppery gleam of her hair, even in the dimness, drew not a few eyes; but there were men in the merchant’s party with manes scarcely less remarkable, tawny or straw-pale. The eyes slid away, intent on the drink or the women or the flow of speech about the common room.

  An-Sh’Endor. His name was everywhere. He was riding south, they said. He had taken Cuvien without a struggle, received the homage of its chieftains and held a festival for his army. Now he looked toward Ashan. But no, tribes to the west were rising; he would deal with them first, and turn then on Asanion.

  “Now there is one fine fighter,” said a man almost dark enough to be a northerner, a pilgrim’s robe straining across his massive chest. “Have you heard how he took the castle of Ordian? It was impregnable, everyone said. Food and water enough for two years’ siege, and no way up to it but under its gate, with the whole tribe defending it from above. So what does he do? Lines up his army just out of the gate’s reach, makes all the motions of settling in for a siege—and sends a company round the back up a road a mountain goat would shrink from, with himself in the lead. So here’s the tribe, laughing at the army and daring it to come closer, and shooting offal at a man in the king’s armor; then the joke turns on them. A round hundred bows aimed at them from behind, and a cocky young fellow telling them they’d better surrender before he feeds them to his army.”

  One of the merchant’s guards laughed, short and scornful. “Tribesmen’s tales,” he said in a thick western accent. “He has never met a proper army, nor faced Asanian steel.”

  “That lad is afraid of nothing,” the first man said. “He’ll go where no one else will go, and take his army with him.”

  “So?” someone asked. “Have you seen him?”

  “Seen him? I’ve fought with him. That was before I saw the light: he was a fosterling in Han-Gilen and I was one of the prince’s hired swords. Fourteen summers old, he was, and the prince knighted him in battle, with the whole army yelling his name.”

  The Asanian curled his lip. “If he ever knew the ways of civilized men, he has left them far behind him. He is a mountain bandit, and he will die one.”

  “Not so!” cried a new voice. It was a very young one, almost painfully sweet. Elian, seeking its source, found a thin dark boy in the grey robe of a sacred singer, with his harp at his back and his eyes burning in his narrow Ashani face. “Oh, not so! He is the holy one, the god-king. He comes to claim his inheritance.”

  “What inheritance?” demanded a bejeweled young fellow, a local lordling by his accent, which strove to be cultivated. “He had some claim to Ianon, or so they say: his mother was its king’s bastard. He murdered the king, by poison I hear, and killed the king’s son in an ambush.”

  The pilgrim’s voice boomed from end to end of the crowded room. “Begging your pardon, young sir, but that’s a barefaced lie. The Sunborn’s mother was heir of Ianon in her own right, being the king’s daughter by his queen, who was an Asanian princess.” His eye lingered for a moment on the westerner. “The old king died, true enough, and maybe poison speeded it, but it wasn’t my lord who sweetened his wine. He had a son who really was a bastard, who had a hand in his killing, and who tried to claim the throne. The Sunborn fought the pretender man to man, barehanded. That was a fight to sing songs of! My lord is a great warrior and a great king, but he’s not what you’d call a big man; and he was still only half grown. His uncle was a giant even for a Ianyn, and the greatest champion in the north of the world. But they fought, and my lord won, full and fair.”

  “And the king came forth and took his throne, and the gods bowed down before him.” The singer’s eyes shone; his voice thrummed like the strings of his own harp.

  “If he is so divine a wonder,” inquired the Asanian, “why does he march armed across the north? He need but raise his hand to bring the world to his feet.” He yawned with feline delicacy. “The boy is mad. Power-mad. He will seize what he may seize, destroy what he may destroy, and set his foot upon the necks of kings. Until Asanion rises to crush him.”

  The singer, if dream-mad, was obstinate. “He brings Avaryan’s peace to the world. But men cling to their old darknesses. Them he must conquer by force of arms, since no other force do they understand. In the end they shall all be his. Even Asanion, with its thousand demons. Its emperor shall bow down to the Lord of the Sun.”

  “Moonshine,” drawled the westerner.

  The boy looked ready to do battle for his dreams. But the pilgrim laughed, quelling them both. “Me, I walk down the middle. Yon’s the best general this old world’s seen in a long age. If he chases after a god and a dream, what’s that to me? The fighting’s good, the loot’s better, and the man’s well worth the service.”

  There was a brief silence, the pause due a subject well interred. Thereafter the talk shredded and scattered, blurring in a haze of wine.

  Elian yawned and thought of bed. But a chance word froze her where she sat. “—the Exile.”

  She could not see who spoke, but it was a new voice, and close. “Yes, Kiyali, the Exile: that’s what they’re calling her. Half the bandits on the roads are holding up travelers in her name.”

  “And the other half swear by the Sunborn,” put in another man. “If you ask me, they’re one and the same, and that’s nobody at all, just a good way to shake gold out of locked purses. You know what they do in outland villages? Name a name, Outcast or Sunborn, and tell the folk to pay up and the local bandits will protect them.”

  “Or flatten them if they refuse. But the Sunborn exists. Maybe the other does too. I’ve heard tell she’s a great sorceress; she rules in the woods, no one knows where, and she’s as rich as an emperor. She lives on blood and fear, and she sleeps on gold.”

  The second man laughed. “What is she, then? A dragon?”

  “A woman. That’s monster enough, all the gods know. My youngest wife, now—”

  They spoke no more of exiles or of Sunborn kings, although Elian strained all her senses to hear them. At last she rose. She was weary and her mood had darkened; the sour ale sat ill beneath her breastbone. She made her way through the crowd, seeking the stair to the sleeping room and a night of formless dreams.

  oOo

  Beyond Ebros the land turned wild, towns and villages growing fewer, hill and forest rising toward the northern mountains. The rumors here were dark, tales of marauders on the roads, villages sacked and burned, forces moving under captains who swore allegiance to no lord, but perhaps to a young barbarian king. There was even a wild tale that Mirain had sworn alliance with the reivers of the roads to open the way before hi
m into the Hundred Realms.

  Elian began to meet with people fleeing south like birds before a storm. Pilgrims, most called themselves, or travelers, but none faced northward. Those who went north went for need, and they went armed.

  She rode with care, but none molested her. Outlaws sought fat merchants in their caravans, where the booty might be well worth the battle; lone riders, armed and well mounted, they let be.

  Perhaps her long safety lulled her into folly; perhaps she thought too much on her journey’s end, which was close now, close enough to sense with the barest flicker of power. She even fancied that she had found Mirain: a rioting golden fire, center and focus of his army.

  Herself focused upon it, she rode down from the hills into a wooded valley. The sun was setting behind a veil of cloud; the wind promised rain before dawn. She was weary and hungry, beginning to think of a camp and a fire and a haunch of the wildbuck that she had shot in the morning.

  On the edge of thought, she took note of the silence in these woods that should have been alive with birds and beasts. The only sound was the soft thud of hooves on the track, the creak of leather, the jingle of the bit. Even the wind had stilled with the sun’s sinking.

  Uneasiness grew, rousing her from her half-dream. She looked back. Already the trees had closed in upon the path. She could see no more than a few lengths behind, a few lengths ahead.

  She was not, yet, afraid. The road was clear enough even in the gloom. Mirain’s army was no more than two days distant, perhaps less, camped on the fells beyond the border of Ashan.

  Her mare snorted and shied. She gentled the beast and halted, stroking the bright mane, every sense alert. There was no sound at all.

  Softly Elian slid from the saddle. The mare stood braced, head high, eyes and nostrils wide. At the passing of weight from her back, she shuddered once and was still.

  Something rustled in the undergrowth. A small beast—a bird.

  Another. The wood was coming alive.

  Somewhere a bird called. Elian eased her sword from its scabbard.

  An insect buzzed. The mare bucked and reared. Blood stained her haunches. A second arrow sang between her ears.

  Elian wheeled. “Cowards! Cravens! Come out and fight like men!”

  They came at her call, more than she could count, figures swathed in green and brown, with masked faces and strung bows.

  The mare whirled into attack. Blades flashed through the sharp slashing hooves; she fell kicking.

  Elian hardly saw. She had her back to a tree, sword and dagger a bright blur before her.

  A shadow fell from above: a net, trapping her, drawing tighter as she struggled. Steel pricked, her own sword, more deadly now to her than to her enemies. She loosed her grip on it; it fell through the net. Hard hands tore the dagger from her fingers.

  Two of her captors heaved her to their shoulders. As they began to walk, she saw her mare rigid in death, and faceless men stripping the body of its trappings.

  There was no room in her for grief. Only for rage.

  Twilight turned to darkness. It began to rain, a light drizzle, warm and not unpleasant. One of her bearers cursed it in a tongue she knew, a dialect of northern Sarios.

  “Go out, she says, lay an ambush, she says, take what comes, she says. So what comes? One futtering boy on a futtering mare, and now this futtering rain, and not enough futtering loot to keep a mouse happy.”

  “Shut your flapping mouth,” snarled the man behind him, “or she’ll nail it shut.”

  Elian shivered, and not with the rain. She. Only one woman that she knew of commanded outlaws, masked men in woodland colors. After all the warnings and all the foreseeings and all of Elian’s own fears, the Exile had taken her.

  The men mounted a slope with much hard breathing and not a few curses. From the height of it Elian looked down into a wide clearing. Fires flickered there in spite of the rain; men moved around them.

  Most had shed their masks. She glimpsed a face or two: Ebran, Gileni, a dark hawk-nosed northerner.

  Her captors bore her through them all in silence full of eyes, to the central and greatest fire. A shelter rose behind it, made of stripped boughs and overlaid with oiled leather. The leather was dark, perhaps black, perhaps deep blue or violet, the standard set in the ground before it dark likewise, without device.

  Elian tumbled to the ground, rolled about without mercy as her bearers freed her from the net. Dizzy, all but stunned, she let them haul her to her feet. A hand struck between her shoulders, thrusting her into the shelter.

  After the bright firelight, this was nearly total darkness, the only light the ember-glow of a lamp. Slowly Elian’s eyes cleared. She discerned the dim shapes of furnishings, few as they were, and simple to starkness. And in the lone chair, a woman.

  She was alone. She seemed oblivious. Thin and frail, her hair white, pulled back from her face and knotted at her nape. Her eyes were lowered as if to contemplate the creature nestled in her lap. It was of cat-kind, silken-furred, purring as she stroked it.

  The purring stilled. The cat’s eyes opened. Elian shivered. They were white as silver, pupils slitted even in the dimness, fixing her with intensity that spoke of no dim beast-mind. It knew her; and it laughed, knowing that she knew.

  “So,” her tongue said for her. “You turned to the Mageguild.”

  The Exile raised her head. She had aged little since she slew the god’s bride; her beauty had deepened, the ravages of bitterness smoothed, fined, transmuted. As if she had yielded. As if she had come through cruel battle to acceptance of her suffering. “I am mageborn,” she said. Her accent was Elian’s own.

  “Mageborn,” said Elian, “and Guild-trained. I know that robe. But why do you require a familiar? Did Mirain take more from you than your eyes?”

  “He gave more than he took,” the Exile said with something very like serenity.

  Elian looked about. Her fear had faded not at all: she was stiff with it. But scorn was a potent weapon. She wielded it with reckless extravagance. “What have you gained? I see a bandit queen with a demon in her lap. She is blind; she is old; she has no name and no country. To her kin she is as if she had never been. Even her Guild—why are you here? Did they too grow weary of your arrogance, and drive you out of the Nine Cities?”

  “I cannot fault you,” the Exile said without anger. “You are too young to have known the truth of it.”

  “I know all I need to know.”

  The Exile smiled. She was not gentle—she could not be that. But she could indulge a child’s innocence. “Do you, O Lady of Han-Gilen? You dream that you ride in fulfillment of an oath. Yet what was that oath? What was it truly? Was it to fight beside the priestess’ son? Or was it to be his queen?”

  Elian bit her tongue, hard. The Exile wanted her to cry out, to deny the twisted truth. Yes, she had sworn that she would marry none but Mirain. But not at the last. Only when she was very young, hardly more than an infant. Never when she knew what vow she was taking.

  “Wise,” said the Exile. “Most wise. Perhaps after all you knew. In Asanion they mate brother and sister. In Han-Gilen they shrink from it.”

  Still Elian held her tongue. It was a bitter battle, and it was no victory. The Exile knew what she struggled not to say. Knew everything; and toyed with her, for amusement, before the headiness of the kill.

  “No,” the woman said. “It need not be so. We are kin, you and I. As you are now, so was I once: the beauty and the high heart, and the reckless bravery. For them I fell. Had I held back, waited, seemed to submit to my brother’s son and his northern paramour, I would have spared myself much suffering. I could have slain not only the mother but the monster she bore.”

  “Mirain is no—”

  Elian bit off the rest. The Exile forbore to smile. “He is attractive enough, they tell me. In body. It is the spirit I speak of. I am not the seer that you will be, kinswoman, but a little of the gift is mine. I have seen what he would make of the world. No greater danger has
ever beset it.”

  “He will save it. He will bring it to the worship of Avaryan.”

  “He will cast it into the Sun’s fires.” The Exile rose. Her familiar wove about her feet, tail high, gaze never shifting from Elian’s face. The woman held up her hands, not pleading, not precisely. Her blind eyes seemed to look deep into Elian’s own, with such a shimmer on them as lies in the pearlbeast’s heart.

  This, Mirain had made. This, he had done, scarcely knowing what he did.

  “He is not evil,” the Exile said. “I grant him that. Perhaps truly he believes his mother’s lies. But he is deadly dangerous. Mageborn as he is, bred to be king, with the soul of a conqueror, he cannot do aught but what he does. Nor in turn can I. He threatens the chains that bind the world. So I saw before ever he was born.”

  “You saw a threat to your own power.”

  “That also,” the Exile admitted without shame, “and for my sin I fell. Now I am given grace to redeem myself. I live, and I am strong. I have conquered hate. I have learned to serve justice alone.”

  “And in the name of justice you command the reivers of the roads.”

  “It is necessary.”

  “Of course,” said Elian with a curl of her lip. “How else can you buy traitors, unless you steal the wherewithal?”

  “I do as I must.”

  Elian stilled. That was madness, that calm fixity. It turned on her. It seized her.

  “Kinswoman,” the Exile said. “I have waited for you. I have prayed that you would see what for so long I have seen. If my men have handled you ill, I cry your pardon. They are men; they do not know subtlety. Come now, sit, be at ease. Grant your sufferance at least to my words.”

  Elian would not obey her. Could not. Must not. Not though that face spoke ever more to her of her own; though that voice entreated her ears with the accents of her own kin.

  “You weave me about in lies,” she said tightly. “You think to seduce me. You know how strong Mirain will be, if he has me to stand beside him and fight for him and be his prophet. You dream that I can sway your enemies, even my father. Especially my father. But much though he loves me, he loves his realm more. He would never destroy it for my sake.”