Guy Kay - Tigana

Every three years then, at the beginning of each Year of Morian, on the first of the springtime Ember Days, the young men of Chiara would vie with each other in a dawn race up to the summit of Sangarios, there to pluck a blood-dark sprig of sonrai, the intoxicating berries of the mountain, under the watchful eye of the priests of Morian who had kept vigil on the peak all night long among the waking spirits of the dead. The first man down the mountain was anointed Lord of Sangarios until the next such run in three years' time.

In the old days, the very old days, the Lord of Sangarios would have been hunted down and slain on his mountain by the women six months later on the first of the Ember Days of fall.

Not anymore. Not for a long time. Now the young champion was likely to find himself in fierce demand as a lover by women seeking the blessing of his seed. A different sort of hunt, Dianora had said to Brandin once.

He hadn't laughed. He didn't find the ritual amusing. In fact, six years ago the King of Ygrath had elected to run the course himself, the morning before the actual race. He had done it again three years past. No small achievement, really, for a man of his years, considering how hard and how long the runners trained for this. Dianora didn't know what to find more whimsical: the fact that Brandin would do this thing, in such secrecy, or the ebullient masculine pride he'd felt both times he'd made it up to the summit of Sangarios and down again.

In the Audience Chamber Dianora asked the question she was clearly expected to ask: "What did you see, then?"

She did not know, for mortals seldom do know when they approach a threshold of the goddess, that the question would mark the turning of her days.

"Something unusual," Brandin repeated. "I had of course outstripped the guards running with me."

"Of course," she murmured, giving him a sidelong glance.

He grinned. "I was alone on the path part of the way up. The trees were still very thick on either side, mountain ash, mostly, some sejoias."

"How interesting," she said.

This time he quelled her with a look. Dianora bit her lip and schooled her expression dutifully.

"I looked over to my right," Brandin said, "and saw a large grey rock, almost like a platform at the edge of the trees. And sitting on the rock there was a creature. A woman, I would swear, and very nearly human."

"Very nearly?"

She wasn't teasing anymore. Within the actual archway of a portal of Morian we sometimes do know that a thing of importance is happening.

"That's what was unusual. She certainly wasn't entirely human. Not with green hair and such pale skin. Skin so white I swear I saw blue veins beneath, Dianora. And her eyes were unlike any I've ever seen. I thought she was a trick of light, the sun filtering through trees. But she didn't move, or change in any way, even when I stopped to look at her."

And now Dianora knew exactly where she was.

The ancient creatures of water and wood and cave went back in time as far as the Triad did almost, and from the description she knew what he had seen. She knew other things as well and was suddenly afraid.

"What did you do?" she asked, as casually as she could.

"I wasn't sure what to do. I spoke; she didn't answer. So I took a step towards her and as soon as I did she leaped down from the rock and backed away. She stopped among the trees. I held out my open palms, but she seemed to be startled by that, or offended, and a moment later she fled."

"Did you follow?"

"I was about to, but by then one of the guards had caught up to me."

"Did he see her?" she asked. Too quickly.

Brandin gave her a curious look. "I asked. He said no, though I think he would have answered that way, regardless. Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "It would have confirmed she was real," she lied.

Brandin shook his head. "She was real. This was no vision. In fact," he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "she reminded me of you."

"With… what was it? Green skin and blue hair?" she replied, letting her court instincts guide her now. Something large was happening here though. She labored to hide the turmoil she felt. "I thank you so much my gracious lord. I suppose if I talked to Scelto and Vencel we could achieve the skin color, and blue hair should be easy enough. If it excites you so dramatically…"

He smiled but did not laugh. "Green hair, not blue," he said, almost absently. "And she did, Dianora," he repeated, looking at her oddly. "She did remind me of you. I wonder why. Do you know anything about such creatures?"

"I do not," she said. "In Certando we have no tales of green-haired women in the mountains." She was lying. She was lying as well as she could, wide-eyed and direct. She could scarcely believe what she had just heard, what he had seen.

Brandin's good humor was still with him.

"What mountain tales do you have in Certando?" he queried, smiling expectantly.

"Stories of hairy things that walk on legs like tree stumps and eat goats and virgins in the night."

His smile broadened. "Are there any?"

"Goats, yes," she said with a straight face. "Fewer virgins. Hairy creatures with such specific appetites are not an incentive to chastity. Are you sending out a party to search for this creature?" A question so important she held her breath awaiting his reply.

"I think not," Brandin said. "I suspect such things are only seen when they want to be."

Which, she knew for a fact, was absolutely true.

"I haven't told anyone but you," he added unexpectedly.

There was no dissembling in the expression she felt come over her face at that. But over and above everything else there was something new inside her with these tidings. She badly needed to be alone to think. A vain hope. She wouldn't get that chance for a long time yet today; best to push his story as far back as she could, with all the other things she was always pushing to the edges of her mind.

"Thank you, my lord," she murmured, aware that they had been talking privately for some time. Aware, as ever, of how that would be construed.

"In the meantime," Brandin suddenly said, in a quite different tone, "you still have not yet asked me how I did on the run. Solores, I have to tell you, made it her first question."

Which carried them back to familiar ground.

"Very well," she said, feigning indifference. "Do tell me. Halfway? Three-quarters?"

A glint of royal indignation nickered in the grey eyes. "You are presumptuous sometimes," he said. "I indulge you too much. I went, if you please, all the way to the summit and came down again this morning with a cluster of sonrai berries. I will be extremely interested to see if any of tomorrow's runners are up and down as quickly."

"Well," she said quickly, unwisely, "they won't have sorcery to help them."

"Dianora, have done!"

And that tone she recognized and knew she'd gone too far. As always at such moments she had a dizzying sense of a pit gaping at her feet.

She knew what Brandin needed from her; she knew the reason he granted her license to be outrageous and impertinent. She had long understood why the wit and edge she brought to their exchanges were important to him. She was his counterbalance to Solores's soft, unquestioning, undemanding shelter. The two of them, in turn, balancing d'Eymon's ascetic exercise of politics and government.

And all three of them in orbit around the star that Brandin was. The voluntarily exiled sun, removed from the heavens it knew, from the lands and seas and people, bound to this alien peninsula by loss and grief and revenge decreed.

She knew all this. She knew the King very well. Her life depended on that. She did not often stray across the line that was always there, invisible but inviolate. When she did it was likely to be over something as apparently trivial as this. It was such a paradox for her how he could shrug off or laugh at or even invite her caustic commentary on court and colony, and yet bridle like a boy with affronted pride if she teased about his ability to run up and down a mountain in a morning.