The Lady of Han-Gilen

by Judith Tarr

  Elian knew neither wisdom nor fear. She essayed a step. The woman did not move, but said, “You seek what is mine. He woke me; he wielded me. Now he pays. All that was his, I have taken. All that was power, I have made my own.”

  “But,” said Elian, “he woke you for my sake. Only give him back, just as he was, and you may have me in his stead.”

  “I do not bargain,” said the woman of night.

  Elian’s body drooped, but stiffened anew. “So, then. Give him to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is mine.”

  "He is mine now.”

  Elian stepped swiftly sidewise. The woman did not seem to move, but she was there, inescapable. With the courage of desperation, Elian flung herself upon her.

  She staggered and fell to the stones. She had met only air.

  Mirain lay lifeless. Elian gathered him up, holding him to her breast, rocking him.

  A shape loomed over her. A woman of dawn, clothed in night. Elian looked on her in neither surprise nor awe, only weariness.

  This beauty was high and terrible yet not cold, this voice achingly pure yet warm, like a deep-toned flute. And yet it was the same. They were the same, dawn and night: two faces of one power.

  Elian turned her mind away. It was temptation. In this place it could be her death, and through her Mirain’s. Her arms tightened around his body.

  “He is mine,” said the woman of dawn, “and he shall remain mine. Unless . . .”

  Elian’s breath caught with the agony of hope.

  “Unless,” said the woman of dawn, “you pay your own price.”

  “Anything!” cried Elian.

  “Slowly, child of earth. I do not bargain. This is the price which the gods set, and not I: the price of one man’s salvation. If you will pay it.”

  “Only name it and it is yours.”

  The woman of dawn regarded her in what might have been pity. “The name of it is very simple. Your self.”

  Elian blinked stupidly. “My—”

  “Your self. That which makes you Elian, alone of all the children of earth. That which makes you dream that you are free.”

  Her self. The very power that had snatched her from madness and flung aside Vadin’s strong aid and brought her to this place. Her strength; her obstinacy. Her reckless temper. Herself.

  Mirain lay in her arms. He had never been closer to beauty, or farther from it.

  She loved him. Her heart ached with it; ached to see him standing again before her, moving with grace which few men could match, warming her with his rare and brilliant smile.

  And yet. To pay so much. Had she not paid enough and more than enough?

  Other women had lost their loves and gone on. Other women had borne children, served regencies, held fiefs and kingdoms until the heirs could claim them. She could rule Mirain’s empire; she had the strength and the people’s love, and her father and her brother to stand behind her. Even Vadin would bow to her for her child’s sake.

  Or she could simply kill herself as she had threatened to do, and end her wavering.

  Save that life was sweet, and hers had barely begun. And love was the sweetest thing in it, not of the body only, but the wonder of being two who were one: separate, distinct, yet joined, like gold twined with copper in a fillet for a queen.

  If she paid this price, she would lose it all. And Mirain—what would it do to him to wake and find her as she was now?

  Or worse. Awake and aware, but no longer Elian. Meek and pliant, as the world believed a woman should be, with no thought or word that was her own.

  Maybe he would not mind. Maybe he would even prefer it.

  Maybe she would not know what she had done to herself.

  She trembled, shaking with sickness that was all of the soul. What virtues she had were warrior virtues: courage, high heart, and lethal honesty, and loyalty that could set all the rest at naught. She could be generous with possessions or with power; she had plenty of both. But that great virtue of the priests, which with bitter irony they called selflessness, of that she had none at all.

  “I’m a soldier,” she said. “A queen. I was never made to be a martyr.”

  The woman of dawn stood tall and silent above her.

  She bent her head over Mirain’s body. She could die. He could die. They both could die. The world would go on without them.

  Maybe it would be better so. Maybe the Exile had had the right of it, and evil was not only dark alone but light alone, and the world’s peace lay in the delicacy of their balance.

  His arm slipped from his side and fell, palm up. The Sun shone with none of its sometime brilliance, none of its god-born power. It seemed no more than a folly, a dandy’s fashion, an ornament set in the most improbable of places: awkward, impractical, and faintly absurd.

  She raised her eyes from it and set her chin. “I’ll pay,” she said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The woman of dawn bowed her high head. Great pride was in that gesture, yet it was a gesture of respect.

  Elian’s sudden selflessness, though soul-deep, had no patience in it. “Well. Why do you wait? Take my mind away from me.”

  “That,” said the woman, “was not the price. Nor can I take what you give. You must give it of your own accord.”

  “But I don’t know how!”

  That, perhaps, was a smile. The woman of dawn raised her hand. “Look yonder.”

  Elian looked, thinking to see the woman of night, or some greater wonder still. Seeing—

  “You.”

  Vadin said nothing. He was the same here as ever, tall, tired, detested, inevitable.

  “Of course it would be you. How did you get here?”

  “I was always here.”

  “You were not!” she cried, stung. “I was one with Mirain. You were never there. Never!”

  “You didn’t want to see me.”

  The blood flooded to her cheeks.

  But she had no cheeks here. No blood. No flesh at all. This was a vision of her mind, a shape she had given to the workings of her power. She was a naked will in the void that had been Mirain’s mind, set against the power that dwelt in the mountain.

  Vadin trespassed, invading where he had no need and no purpose, betraying at last his jealousy of her who had taken his place in his oathbrother’s soul. She willed him away.

  He stood unmoving and unmoved. If anything, he was more solid than ever. “Don’t be more of a fool than you can help. Mirain is trapped, that much at least you have the wits to see. If you want to set him free, you have to give up your stubbornness; banish this illusion; plunge into his mind and find him, and lead him back to the light.”

  At last, and terribly, she understood. When she was very young, she had learned: every mind descended through many levels. The greater one’s power, the deeper one could go. But even the mightiest of the mages, the master enchanters, the great wizards of the songs, had never dared to plunge to the bottom.

  Beyond a certain level—Sigan’s Wall, her father had called it—there was no returning. One was trapped in the black deeps below all consciousness, beneath even dreams. One’s self, indeed, was lost.

  And the one gate, the only gate . . .

  There was no escaping him. Not through hate or contempt or simple refusal to acknowledge his existence. He made it worse; his eyes asked her pardon, but they would not forsake their pride by begging for it. That he was here, deeper even than she had ever gone. That she could not pass save through him and with him. That she must do worse than sacrifice her self for her lover’s sake; she must sacrifice it to him whom she could not even like, much less love.

  She rounded on the woman of dawn. “Is there no other way?”

  Night flickered over the luminous face. The deep eyes were cold. “None,” said the power.

  She looked at Mirain, so still upon the stone. She looked at Vadin, whose gaze likewise had settled upon the Sunborn. He knelt; he touched the lifeless brow, and smoothed the hair away from it, as
if Mirain had been one of his children.

  Hatred roared through her, flaming. It passed, and left her empty. He wept, that haughty lord of warriors. But he would not plead with her intransigence.

  He was the gate, but she was the key. Without him she could not pass. Without her he could not open the way.

  His eyes lifted, brimming. Her own were burning dry. “He told me,” she said. “Mirain told me—if any man so much as touched me—”

  “When did you ever do as you were told?”

  She lurched forward a step. Her hands wanted to strike him; to stroke him. Invader, interloper; she hated him. Sharer in Mirain’s soul, brother, kinsman; she—almost she could force herself to—if he were Hal—if it were necessary—

  She touched him. Mirain breathed between them, but slowly, slowly, cooling into death.

  Her breath caught, sharp with pain. “For him,” she said. “Only for him.”

  Vadin rose. Before he could reach for her, she had seized him. Body to body. Mind to mind. Weaving, interweaving, warp, woof, the flash of the shuttle between. He was bright; he was strong.

  He was Mirain, but he was not. Kinsman. Brother. He shaped himself for her: a strong hand clasping hers, a strong will bolstering her own. Even—even a touch of joy, the delight of a master who has met his master in power.

  With joy then, and with Vadin both her armor and her gate, she faced Sigan’s high Wall. Which in truth was not a wall at all, but a growing awareness, a swelling of fear. Back, turn back, or be forever lost.

  The fear rose to a crescendo and shattered. She fell into the void.

  Eternity ticked off its ages.

  oOo

  Light.

  She thought she was mad. No; she knew it.

  There was light below. The merest glimmer. Like a candle, pale gold, burning low. Like a star at the end of night, growing larger by infinite degrees. Swelling. Blooming. Enfolding her.

  With the suddenness of all endings, she struck the heart of it.

  Earth. Grass. She stood naked on it under a sky that was all light. Someone gripped her hand. Vadin. But if she shifted her eyes, she was he; they were one.

  They looked down. Mirain looked up. Mirain at his ease, open-eyed yet drowsy, smiling. He beckoned. “Come,” he said. “Rest. You look worn to the bone.”

  Elian was speechless. It was Vadin who snapped, “Of course we are! A fine chase you’ve led us, down through all the levels of your mind, looking for something resembling intelligence. I should have known we wouldn’t find any.”

  “Ah now,” said Mirain unruffled, “there’s no need to yell at me. Won’t you sit down at least? It’s comfortable here.”

  “Comfortable!”

  Elian silenced Vadin with a finger on his lips. “It’s a trap, brother,” she said, using the word with care; but Vadin was in no mood to notice it. “That’s Mirain, but it’s not.”

  The Ianyn’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s Mirain, but Mirain in part only, walled in his own cowardice. He’d keep us here in this comfort of his; before we knew it, we’d all be comfortably dead.”

  Vadin shook himself, and laughed almost freely. “I must be turning foolish in my old age. Of course this is a trap. I’ve seen the other side of death. It was even more comfortable than this; I hated to go back. But he made me.

  “You made me,” he said to Mirain, who yawned and stretched, sensuous as a cat, and smiled indulgently at his vehemence. “You made me, damn you. It’s well past time I repaid the debt.”

  “Debt?” Mirain asked. “I owe you nothing. I have to linger here for a while. There was something . . .” His brow creased slightly, as if he sought a memory that eluded him. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a pleasant place, don’t you think? It will do until the time is past. Whatever it must pass for.”

  Vadin drew himself up to his full height.

  Once more Elian stilled him. She yearned to scream, to strike, to run, to do anything but face this travesty of the Sunborn. “It is not Mirain,” she told Vadin, and herself. “It is not.”

  She freed her hand, aware that her mind wove still with Vadin’s, an awareness as distinct as the warmth of flesh against flesh. She knelt in the grass and clasped this vapid smiling Mirain-creature and held it tightly. “Now,” she snapped over her shoulder, surging to her feet. “Out!”

  Mirain roused. Began to fight. Serpent-supple, serpent-strong. He was too much for her. He was too strong.

  She clung. She mustered all her strength. She clutched at Vadin’s power; she seized it; she became it. He and she, long powerful man-body, arms hardened by a lifetime of wielding sword and lance and bow, power honed to a bitter edge under the greatest of masters: under Prince Orsan; under Mirain himself.

  “Outward!” she cried. “To the light!”

  The serpent flared into fire, flowed into water, scattered into air. She flung her power about it, netted it, flasked it, globed it in crystal.

  It sprang into an edged blade. The crystal shattered; her hands closed around shards and steel.

  Pain mounted into agony. She thrust it down. She battled toward the light.

  The wall loomed. She cried in despair. No gate. No passage. She must strike, fall, die.

  “No.” Vadin’s voice, strong and quiet, though it shook a little. He led her now, drawing her upward, and in her bleeding hands the thing that had been Mirain. Writhing, snapping, steel-toothed creature, no shape to it at all, only struggle. She clasped it to her breast.

  They struck the wall. Faltered.

  Slipped.

  Mirain bolted; she caught him.

  “Help,” gasped Vadin. “Help—”

  She flung them all forward.

  oOo

  The darkness burst. Stars sang in pure cold voices. Men wept; women laughed aloud. Grass whispered as it grew.

  Elian opened her eyes. The world was a blur with a shadow in the middle of it.

  She blinked.

  They smiled down at her. Vadin, his cheeks more hollow than ever, his grin white enough to blind her. And Mirain.

  Mirain.

  She clutched at him. He was warm and solid and as naked as he was born.

  With a mighty effort she unclamped her fingers. They were whole, unscarred, no mark of tooth or claw. “I dreamed,” she said. “I dreamed—”

  “No dream.” She had forgotten how beautiful his voice was. He kissed her brow, and then her lips.

  She shifted as easily as breathing, and stared at her own bewildered face. And again, from farther away, seeing herself and Mirain together.

  She wore no more than he. How wanton; how lovely to the eyes of this body. The eyes under the bright brows were Mirain’s, laughing, raising a hand to run it down the strangeness in which she dwelt.

  She inhaled sharply, and the breath completed itself in her own lungs. Vadin was Vadin, Mirain his unmistakable self. No languor, no madness.

  “This,” she said, “could be confusing.”

  Mirain laughed. Vadin drew back. At last she saw his proud eyes lowered, and that part of her which was he, knew that he blushed. Why, she thought, he had no more sense than she when it came to considering consequences. Now that it was far too late for any remedy, he was beginning to regret what he had made her do.

  “What I did for myself.” She took his hand, though he tried to escape; she kissed it. “I was a fool, brother. But not for letting this happen. For letting it take so long.” Her lips twitched. “Hal is going to be hideously jealous.”

  Vadin’s eyes went a little wild. “You wouldn’t!”

  “No,” Mirain said. “It’s enough that we aren’t three anymore; or two. Four in one would be unwieldy. Although,” he added, “I can’t bring myself to be sorry that you two did what you did.”

  Elian’s thoughts wound through the twinned bright skein of theirs. Hers, Mirain’s, Vadin’s, all mingled. It was beautiful.

  One skein unraveled. “But I’m still me, ” she proteste
d.

  “And I am I, and he is he, but we are one.” Through the splendor of his gladness, Mirain let slip a note of gravity. “It is very unorthodox.”

  “It’s heretical.” But Vadin was quieter now, more like the haughty prince whom Elian had thought she knew.

  He grimaced. “Though I fancy that’s not the word most people will like to use. ‘Immoral’ will sound much more apt to the rumormongers. Not,” he said, “that I intend to go so far. Some things are best kept in the inner room where they belong.”

  He sounded almost prim; Elian laughed and kissed his hand again.

  Mirain’s eyes glinted, but not with anger, and not ever with jealousy. Her free hand caught his and brought it to her cheek; her eyes flicked from his long-loved face to the one that she was learning only now to love. She smiled at them both.

  Yet her brows had drawn together. “The powers in the circle, all the teachings I’ve ever known . . . they said that if I did this, I’d lose everything. But all I’ve lost is my stupidity. I’ve gained a whole world.”

  “I think,” said Mirain, “that none of the masters knew what would happen. None has ever tried this; none has dared. Only you.” His hand curved about her cheek, caressing it. “You gave all you had to give. While I . . .”

  “I haven’t given anything.”

  “You’ll never be free of me again.”

  She glared at him. “When was I ever free of you?” Sudden laughter shook her. “The day I was born, I decided that you belonged to me. And I to you, although I’d never have admitted it.”

  “And Ziad-Ilarios?”

  “Shall I reckon up all your lovers, O priest of the Sun?” She sat up so abruptly that her head spun. “Look at me, Mirain.”

  He could do very little else. Rumpled, blear-eyed, and torn between a grin and a snarl, she was the most beautiful creature in the world.

  “Except for Ledi,” Vadin said, mischievous.

  Her grin won the battle. Beauty she could not judge. But she knew her own fortune. Warrior, mage, and queen; she was all three. Yet greater than those . . .

  They waited.

  “And greater than those,” she said, “I am the sister of Vadin alVadin who came back from the dead. And I am the lover of Mirain who is An-Sh’Endor, who has but to lift his hand to bring the world to his feet.”