The Lady of Han-Gilen Read Online Free

met her mirrored glare. Either she
would accept this prince and ride off with him to Asanion, splendid in the
robes of an empress-to-be. Or—
    Or.
    Mirain.
    Her throat ached with the effort of keeping back a cry. It
had all been so simple, all her life mapped and ordained. A childhood of
training and strengthening; and when she became a woman, she would ride to take
her place at Mirain’s right hand. Her suitors had been a nuisance, but easy enough
to dispose of: not one was her equal. Not one could make her forget her oath.
    Until this one. It was not only a fair face and a sweet
voice. It was the whole of him. He was perfection. He was made to be her lover.
    “No,” she gritted to the air. “No. I must not. I have
sworn.”
    You have sworn. Do you intend ever to fulfill it? Behold,
here you stand, a legend in your own right, acknowledged a master of the arts
of princes: why have you never gone as you vowed to go?
    “It was not time.”
    It was no vow. You will never go. It would be folly, and
well you know it. Better far to take this man who offers himself so freely, and
to submit as every woman must submit to the bonds of her body.
    “No,” she said. It was a whisper, lest she scream it. Not
that Ilarios would bind her. That he could, so easily; and that her word had
bound her long ago.
    If she lingered, she was forsworn, surely and irrevocably.
If she left, she lost Ilarios. And for what? A child’s dream. A man who by now
had become a stranger.
    Her eyes darted about. At her familiar chamber; at her gown
flung on the floor; at her mirror. At her reflection in its shift of fine
linen, boy-slim but for the high small breasts.
    Her hair was a wild tangle, bright as fire. She gathered it
in her hands, pulling it back from her face. Her features were fine but strong,
like Halenan’s when he was a boy.
    Prettiness, never. But beauty all too certainly. And wit.
And royal pride. She cursed them all.
    Prince Ilarios would remain for all of Brightmoon’s cycle. A
scant hour with him had all but overcome her. A month . . .
    Her dagger lay on the table, strange among the bottles of
scent and paint, the little coffers of jewels, the brushes and combs and
ointments. A man’s dagger, deadly sharp, Hal’s gift for her birth-feast.
Freeing one hand from her hair, she drew the blade.
    For the honor of her oath.
    The bright bronze flashed toward her throat, and veered. One
deft stroke, two, three. Her hair pooled like flame about her feet. A stranger
stood in it, a boy with a wild bright mane hacked off above his shoulders.
    A boy with a definite curve of breast.
    She bound it tight and flat and hid it beneath her leather
riding tunic. Breeched and booted, with sword and dagger at her belt and a
hunter’s cap over her hair, she was the image of her brother in his youth, even
to the fierce white grin and the hint of a swagger.
    She swallowed sudden, wild laughter. If her mother knew what
she did now, woman grown or no, she would win a royal whipping.
    oOo
    Han-Gilen’s palace was large, ancient, and labyrinthine.
When she was very young, she had managed with her brothers to find passages no
one else knew of.
    One such opened behind an arras in her own chamber. She had
used it once before, for it led almost directly to the postern gate, and near
it a long-forgotten bolthole: when Mirain eluded the prince’s guardianship to
vanish into the north.
    Now she followed him, lightless as he had been then, cold
and shaking as she had been when she crept in his wake. In places the way was
narrow, so that she had to crawl sidewise; elsewhere the ceiling dipped low,
driving her to hands and knees.
    Dust choked her; small live things fled her advance. More
than once she paused. She could not do this. It was too early. It was too late.
    She must. She said it aloud, startling the echoes into
flight. “I must. ”
    Her shorn hair brushed her cheek. She tossed it back, set
her jaw, and went on.
    oOo
    With Asanion’s prince in the city,