A Fall of Princes Read online

  A FALL OF PRINCES

  Avaryan Rising, Volume III

  Judith Tarr

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  July 30, 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-269-3

  Copyright © 1988 Judith Tarr

  To

  The Yale Department of Medieval Studies

  The Orange Street Gang in all its permutations

  And, of course, all the Faithful

  But for whom, et cetera.

  PART ONE

  Asuchirel inZiad Uverias

  ONE

  The hounds had veered away westward. Their baying swelled and faded as the wind shifted; the huntsman’s horn sounded, faint and deadly.

  Hirel flattened himself in his nest of spicefern. His nose was full of the sharp potent scent. His body was on fire. His head was light with running and with terror and with the last of the cursed drug with which they had caught him.

  Caught him but not held him. And they were gone. Bless that wildbuck for bolting across his path. Bless his brothers’ folly for hunting him with half-trained pups.

  He crawled from the fernbrake, dragging a body that had turned rebel. Damned body. It was all over blood. Thorns. Fangs—one hound had caught him, the one set on guard by his prison.

  It was dead. He hurt. Some fool of a child was crying, softly and very near, but this was wild country, border country, and he was alone. It was growing dark.

  o0o

  The dark lowered and spread wide, shifted and changed, took away pain and brought it back edged with sickness.

  The sky was full of stars. Branches rimmed it; he had not seen them before. The air carried a tang of fire.

  Hirel blinked, frowned. And burst upward in a flood of memory, a torrent of panic terror.

  Those were not cords that bound him, but bandages wrapped firmly where he hurt most. But for them he was naked; even the rag of his underrobe was gone, all else left behind in the elegant cell in which he had learned what betrayal was.

  He dropped in an agony of modesty, coiling around his center, shaking forward the royal mane—but that was gone, his head scraped bare as a slave’s, worst of all shames even under sheltering arms.

  The fire snapped a branch in two. The shadow by it was silent. Hirel’s pride battered him until he raised his eyes.

  The shadow was a man. Barbarian, Hirel judged him at once and utterly. Even sitting on his heels he was tall, trousered like a southerner but bare above like a wild tribesman from the north, and that black- velvet skin was of the north, and that haughty eagle’s face, and the beard left free to grow. But he held to a strange fashion: beard and long braided hair were dyed as bright as the copper all his kind were so fond of. Or—

  Or he was born to it. His brows were the same, and his lashes; the fire caught glints of it on arms and breast and belly as he rose.

  He was very tall. For all that Hirel’s will could do, his body cowered, making itself as small as it might.

  The barbarian lifted something from the ground and approached. His braid had fallen over his shoulder. It ended below his waist. His throat was circled with gold, a torque as thick as two men’s fingers, and a white band bound his brows.

  Priest. Priest of the demon called Avaryan and worshipped as the Sun; initiate of the superstition that had overwhelmed the east of the world. He knelt by Hirel, his face like something carved in stone, and he dared. He touched Hirel.

  Hirel flung himself against those blasphemous hands, screaming he cared not what, striking, kicking, clawing with nails which his betrayers had not troubled to rob him of. All his fear and all his grief and all his outrage gathered and battled and hated this stranger who was not even of the empire. Who had found him and tended him and presumed to lay unhallowed hands on him.

  Who held him easily and let him flail, only evading the strokes of his nails.

  He stopped all at once. His breath ached in his throat; he felt cold and empty. The priest was cool, unruffled, breathing without strain.

  “Let me go,” Hirel said.

  The priest obeyed. He stooped, took up what he had held before Hirel sprang on him. It was a coat, clean but not fresh, tainted with the touch of a lowborn body. But it was a covering.

  Hirel let the barbarian clothe him in it. The man moved lightly, careful not to brush flesh with flesh. A quick learner, that one. But his grip was still a bitter memory.

  Hirel sat by the fire. He was coming to himself. “A hood,” he said. “Fetch one.”

  A bright brow went up. It was hard to tell in firelight, but perhaps the priest’s lips quirked. “Will a cap satisfy your highness?” The accent was appalling but the words comprehensible, the voice as dark as the face, rich and warm.

  “A cap will do,” Hirel answered him, choosing to be gracious.

  Covered at last, Hirel could sit straight and eat what the priest gave him. Coarse food and common, bread and cheese and fruit, with nothing to wash it down but water from a flask, but Hirel’s hunger was far beyond criticism. They had fed him in prison, but then they had purged him; he ached with emptiness.

  The priest watched him. He was used to that, but the past days had left scars that throbbed under those calm dark eyes. Bold eyes in truth, not lowering before his own, touched with something very like amusement.

  They refused to be stared down. Hirel’s own slid aside first, and he told himself that he was weary of this foolishness. “What are you called?” he demanded.

  “Sarevan.” Why was the barbarian so damnably amused? “And you?”

  Hirel’s head came up in the overlarge cap; he drew himself erect in despite of his griping belly. “Asuchirel inZiad Uverias, High Prince of Asanion and heir to the Golden Throne.” He said it with perfect hauteur, and yet he was painfully aware, all at once, of his smallness beside this long lanky outlander, and the lightness of his unbroken voice, and the immensity of the world around their little clearing with its flicker of fire.

  The priest shifted minutely, drawing Hirel’s eyes. Both of his brows were up now, but not with surprise, and certainly not with awe. “So then, Asuchirel inZiad Uverias, High Prince of Asanion, what brings you to this backward province?”

  “You should not be here,” Hirel shot back. “Your kind are not welcome in the empire.”

  “Not,” said Sarevan, “in this empire. You are somewhat across the border. Did you not know?”

  Hirel began to tremble. No wonder the hounds had turned away. And he—he had told this man his name, in this man’s own country, where the son of the Emperor of Asanion was a hostage beyond price.

  “Kill me now,” he said. “Kill me quickly. My brothers will reward you, if you have the courage to approach them. Kill me and have done.”

  “I think not,” the barbarian said.

  Hirel bolted.

  A long arm shot out. Once more a lowborn hand closed about him. It was very strong.

  Hirel sank his teeth into it. A swift blow jarred him loose and all but stunned him.

  “You,” said Sarevan, “are a lion’s cub indeed. Sit down, cubling, and calm your fears. I’m not minded to kill you, and I don’t fancy holding you for ransom.”

  Hirel spat at him.

  Sarevan laughed, light and free and beautifully deep. But he did not let Hirel go.

  “You defile me,” gritted Hirel. “Your hands are a profanation.”

  “Truly?” Sarevan considered the one that imprisoned Hirel’s wrist. “I know it’s not obvious, but I’m quite clean.”

  “I am the high prince!”

  “So you are.” No, there was no awe in that cursed face. “And it seems that your brothers would contest your title. Fine fierce children they must be.”

  “They,” said Hi
rel icily, “are the bastards of my father’s youth. I am his legitimate son. I was lured into the marches on a pretext of good hunting and fine singing and perhaps a new concubine.”

  The black eyes widened slightly; Hirel disdained to take notice. “And I was to speak with a weapons master in Pri’nai and a philosopher in Karghaz, and show the easterners my face. But my brothers—”

  He faltered. This was pain. It must not be. It should be anger. “My dearest and most loyal brothers had found themselves a better game. They drugged my wine at the welcoming feast in Pri’nai, corrupted my taster and so captured me. I escaped. I took a senel, but it fell in the rough country and broke its neck. I ran. I did not know that I had run so far.”

  “Yes.” Sarevan released him at last. “You are under your father’s rule no longer. The Sunborn is emperor here.”

  “That bandit. What is he to me?”

  Hirel stopped. So one always said in Asanion. But this was not the Golden Empire.

  The Sun-priest showed no sign of anger. He only said, “Have a care whom you mock here, cubling.”

  “I will do as I please,” said Hirel haughtily.

  “Was it doing as you please that brought you to the west of Karmanlios in such unroyal state?” Sarevan did not wait for an answer. “Come, cubling. The night is speeding, and you should sleep.”

  To his own amazement, Hirel lay down as and where he was told, wrapped in a blanket with only his arm for a pillow. The ground was brutally hard, the blanket thin and rough, the air growing cold with the fickleness of spring. Hirel lay and cursed this insolent oaf he had fallen afoul of, and beat all of his clamoring pains into submission, and slid into sleep as into deep water.

  o0o

  “Well, cubling, what shall we do with you?”

  Hirel could barely move, and he had no wish to. He had not known how sorely he was hurt, in how many places. But Sarevan had waked him indecently early, droning hymns as if the sun could not rise of itself but must be coaxed and caterwauled over the horizon, washing noisily and immodestly afterward in the stream that skirted the edge of the clearing, and squatting naked to revive the fire.

  With the newborn sun on him he looked as if he had bathed in dust of copper. Even the down of his flanks had that improbable, metallic sheen.

  He stood over Hirel, shameless as an animal. “What shall we do with you?” he repeated.

  Hirel averted his eyes from that proud and careless body, and tried not to think of his own that was still so much a child’s. “You may leave me. I do not require your service.”

  “No?” The creature sat cross-legged, shaking his hair out of its sodden braid, attacking it with a comb he had produced from somewhere. He kept his eyes on Hirel. “What will you do, High Prince of Asanion? Walk back to your brothers? Stay here and live on berries and water? Seek out the nearest village? Which, I bid you consider, is a day’s hard walk through wood and field, and where people are somewhat less accommodating than I. Even if they would credit your claim to your title, they have no reason to love your kind. Golden demonspawn they call you, and yellow-eyed tyrants, and scourges of free folk. At the very least they would stone you. More likely they would take you prisoner and see that you died as slowly as ever your enemies could wish.”

  “They would not dare.”

  “Cubling.” It was a velvet purr. “You are but the child of a thousand years of emperors. He who rules here is the son of a very god. And he can be seen unmasked even on his throne, and any peasant’s child may touch him if she chooses, and he is not defiled. On the contrary. He is the more holy for that his people love him.”

  “He is an upstart adventurer with a mouthful of lies.”

  Sarevan laughed, not warmly this time, but clear and cold. His long fingers began the weaving of his braid, flying in and out through the fiery mane. “Cubling, you set a low price on your life. How will you be losing it, then? Back in Asanion or ahead in Keruvarion?”

  Hirel's defiance flared and died. Hells take the man, he had a clear eye. One very young prince alone and naked and shaven like a slave—if he could win back to Kundri’j Asan he might have hope, if his father would have him, if the court did not laugh him to his death.

  But it was a long way to the Golden City, and his brothers stood between. Vuad and Sayel whom he had trusted, whom he had allowed himself to admire and even to love. To whom, after all, he had been no more than he was to anyone: an obstacle before his father’s throne.

  If it had been Aranos . . .

  Aranos would not have failed so far of his vigilance as to let Hirel escape. If Aranos joined in this clever coil of a plot, Aranos who by birth was eldest and by breeding highest save only for Hirel, every road and path and molerun would be watched and guarded. Hirel would never come to his city. And this time he would die.

  He would not. He was high prince. He would be emperor.

  But first he had to escape this domain of the man called An-Sh’Endor, Son of the Morning, lord of the eastern world in the name of his false god. Whose priest sat close enough to touch, tying off the end of his braid and stretching like a great indolent cat.

  He rose in one flowing movement and went without haste to don shirt and trousers and boots, belting on a dagger and a sword. He looked as if he knew how to use them.

  Hirel frowned. He did not like what he was thinking. He must return to Kundri’j. He could not return alone. But to ask—to trust—

  Did he have a choice?

  Sarevan bound his brows with the long white band. Initiate, it meant. A priest new to his torque, sent out upon the seven years’ Journey that made him a full master of his order. Four disks of gold glittered on the band: four years done, three yet to wander before he could rest.

  “Priest,” Hirel said abruptly, “I choose. You will escort me to Kundri’j Asan. I will see that no one harms you; I will reward you when I come to the palace.”

  Sarevan’s head tilted. His eyes glinted. “You do? I shall? You will?”

  Hirel clapped his hands. “Fetch my breakfast. I will bathe after.”

  “No,” said the barbarian quite calmly, quite without fear. “I do not fetch. I am not a servant. There is bread in my scrip, and you may have the last of the cheese. As for the other, I have in mind to go westward for a little distance, and I suppose I can suffer your company.”

  Hirel could not breathe for outrage. Never—never in all his life—

  “Be quick, cubling, or I leave you behind.”

  Hirel ate, though he choked. Bathed himself with his own cold and shaking hands, aware through every instant of the back turned ostentatiously toward him. Pulled on the outsize coat and the ill-fitting cap, and found a cord with the scrip, which perforce did duty as a belt.

  Almost before it was tied, the scrip was slung from an insolent shoulder, the priest striding long-legged out of the clearing. Hirel raged, but he pressed after.

  o0o

  It was not easy. Hirel’s feet were bare and that was royal, but they had never trodden anywhere but on paths smoothed before them. He had done them no good in his running, and this land, though gentler than the stones and thorns of his flight, was not the polished paving of his palace. And he was wounded with thorn and fang, and still faintly ill from poison and purging, and Sarevan set a pace his shorter legs had to struggle to match.

  He set his teeth and saved his bitter words and kept his eye on the swing of the coppery plait. Sometimes he fell. He said nothing. His hands stung with new scratches. His knee ached.

  He struck something that yielded and turned and loosed an exclamation. The hands were on him again.

  He spared only a little of his mind for temper, even when they gathered him up. A prince could be carried. If he permitted it. And this barbarian was strong and his stride was smooth, lulling Hirel into a stupor.

  o0o

  Hirel started awake. He was on the ground and he was bare again, and Sarevan had begun to unwrap his bandages. Hirel did not want to see what was under them.
r />   “Clean,” said Sarevan, “and healing well. But watch the knee, cubling. You cut it the last time you fell.”

  “And whose fault was that?”

  “Yours,” came the swift answer. “Next time you need rest, say so. You can’t awe me with your hardihood. You have none. And you’ll get none if you kill yourself trying to match me.”

  Hirel thought of hating him. But hate was for equals. Not for blackfaced redmaned barbarians.

  “Up,” said this one, having rebound the bandages and restored tunic and cap. “You can walk a bit; your muscles will stiffen else.”

  Hirel walked. Sarevan let him set the pace.

  Now and then he was allowed a sip of water. They ate barely enough to blunt the edge of hunger. That must suffice, said the son of stone; they might not reach the town he was aiming for before the sun set.

  Hirel’s fault, that was clear enough. While Hirel struggled and gritted his teeth and was ignored, Sarevan sauntered easily in his boots and his honed strength, unwounded, unpampered, inured to rough living. And why should he not be? He was lowborn.

  o0o

  “I’m a most egregious mongrel,” he said as they paused at the top of a grueling slope; he was not even breathing hard, although he had carried Hirel on his back up the last few lengths, chattering as he went, easy as if he trod a palace floor. “I have Ianyn blood as you can well see, and my mother comes from Han-Gilen, and there’s a strong strain of Asanian on both sides. And . . . other things.”

  Hirel did not ask what they were. Gutter rat surely, and a slave or two, and just enough mountain tribesman to give him arrogance far above his station.

  He was up already, prowling as if restless, nosing among the brambles that hedged the hill. In a little while he came back with a handful of springberries, rich and ripe and wondrous sweet.

  To Hirel’s surprise and well-concealed relief, having eaten his share of fruit and given Hirel the water flask, Sarevan showed no sign of going on. He paced as if he waited for something or someone; he turned his face to the sun he worshipped, and sang to it.

  Now that Hirel was not trying to sleep, the priest’s voice was pleasant to hear. More than pleasant. In fact, rather remarkable. In Asanion he would have been allowed to sing before the Middle Court; with training he might have won entry to the High Court itself.