A Fall of Princes Read online

  For the first time since he woke beside Sarevan’s fire, Hirel felt the world shrink to its wonted size. He was a well-grown stripling, tall for his age, like to overtop his father who was not reckoned a small man; and he could look this man in the eye without strain.

  “You cannot guess,” he said, “how blessed it is to stand straight and look into a face, and not into a breast or a belt or worse.”

  The rider smiled, and his smile was splendid; it made him look even younger, little more than a boy. “That is quite the most pleasant thing anyone has ever said about my size.”

  He had a marvel of a voice, deep yet clear. Like Sarevan’s. Incredibly like.

  Hirel was never an idiot twice running. And he had seen enough of magic to credit a stroke of sheerest, blindest luck. But he was all fuddled, and it did not come out properly. “This,” he said. “Is this the Mad One?”

  “Indeed,” said the rider in rags and gold, as the stallion suffered Hirel to stroke his neck. He was hardly warm, for all his dancing. He blew into Hirel’s hand, feigned to nip, rolled his wild eye when Hirel smiled.

  Hirel turned with a hand on the black mane. The man watched him, amused and, it seemed, intrigued. “You’ve just joined a rare fraternity, stranger: the chosen few who can lay hands on the battle charger of the Sunborn.”

  Hirel did not bow. If he did, he knew that he would fall; and a high prince did not perform the prostration. “We have brought your son to you, lord emperor. But no one will believe us, and we are turned away wherever we go, and I fear—”

  He never finished. The Lord of Keruvarion had vanished. Hirel was alone with the Mad One, who held him up. “But,” he said, “the Sunborn is old. Older than my father.”

  He unwound his fingers from the long mane. He had to follow the emperor. The Zhil’ari would not be likely to recognize their lord, ragged as he was. That would be a bitter turnabout; and Sarevan on the brink of death, if not past it.

  Hirel burst through the gate, stopped short. The Sunborn stood in the center of a circle.

  The Zhil’ari had fallen back with awe in their eyes. They knew their master, perhaps as beasts might, by instinct. Only Gazhin, burdened with Sarevan, had not moved from his seat on the fountain’s rim. His face was blank, blinded.

  The emperor looked down at the shape in Gazhin’s arms. He wore no expression at all. But he looked young no longer. He was grim, old; worn to the bone by the long hard years.

  He took up the lifeless body. With utmost gentleness he cradled it. He did not speak. Perhaps he could not. He turned in silence, and walked through the sudden throng as if it had been empty air, and was gone.

  SEVEN

  Hirel had won entry for all them into the inner palace, and they were accorded some semblance of honor. The poor savages from the Lakes of the Moon, bereft of a battle, were utterly at a loss. They shrank from the hampering walls and eyed the ceilings uneasily and jumped like deer when doors shut behind them. The smooth laconic servants terrified them as no armed warrior could; they huddled together, a draggled flock of sunbirds with wary darting eyes.

  They fastened on Hirel as the only familiar creature in an alien world. He saw them through a feeding, which he did not share, and through a bath, which was rather simpler. They were clean people, cleaner in strict truth than most Asanians.

  The ever-running stream of water, heated in furnaces, fascinated them; they played in it like children, forgetting at last to be afraid of the men who tried valiantly to serve them. Hirel, who had never seen them without their paint and their braids, was rather pleasantly surprised. They looked almost human with their faces bared under the water-sleeked beards.

  Then a man came at them with a razor. Offering, not compelling, but they bellowed like bulls. He retreated rapidly. Gazhin lunged after him, blind with outrage.

  Hirel shouted. His voice cracked hideously. Gazhin veered, shocked, beginning to come to himself. The servant escaped forgotten.

  Hirel dragged himself out of the water, in which he yearned to lie until it washed away all his troubles. He found the man who seemed to command the servants; who bowed respectfully enough, but not as to a prince. “Let them be,” Hirel said, “and quarter them with me. They belong to the Prince Sarevadin; if—when he is able, he will dispose of them as he sees fit.”

  The man bowed again. Hirel would approve of him, when this creeping exhaustion passed.

  And still so much to do. He did not know where Sarevan was. No one would tell him. He did not even know if the emperor had come in time: if Sarevan lived, or if he was dead.

  With tradespeech and plain force, Hirel persuaded his unwelcome entourage to remain in the rooms they had been given. A small suite in Hirel’s estimation, appropriate for a very minor nobleman, but endurable.

  The garments given him matched his lodgings, and those would not do at all; he returned to his travelworn Zhil’ari finery and put on a fair sampling of Zhiani’s golden gifts. When he left, the tribesmen were restoring one another’s paint, and exploring the rooms with affected nonchalance, and taking liberal advantage of the wine that the servants had brought them.

  o0o

  Sarevan would have said that the god guided Hirel. Hirel called it luck, the second such stroke since he came to Endros. He chose a passage at random, and it led him through a court and along a wall and up a stair.

  One or two servants passed him, preoccupied. There were no guards. It seemed a servants’ way, narrow, unadorned, and leading past occasional unassuming doors. The one at the end led to a more public corridor, broad, high, and hung with tapestries which Hirel’s wavering eyes did not try to examine.

  There were doors, but only one was guarded, and that by two who were high and most haughty, liveried in scarlet and gold. For an astounded instant Hirel thought that the shorter of the two was Sarevan. But this was more boy still than man; his bright hair made his skin seem doubly dark, but it was shades fairer than Sarevan’s, like old bronze, and his features were blunter though still very fine, the nose straight, the long mouth apt to laughter. But at the moment it was set hard, the dark eyes glittering with unshed tears.

  It was he who leveled his spear on Hirel and spoke the challenge. “Who trespasses in the domains of the emperor?”

  Hirel eyed the spearpoint that hovered a handspan from his throat. It was exceedingly sharp, though not as sharp as the voice of its bearer.

  He glanced at the second guard, an enormously tall and long-limbed creature who was, for all of that, quite definitely a woman. She reminded him inevitably and a little painfully of Zhiani, even to the look in her eye, the frank appreciation of an attractive young male.

  She was not as beautiful as Zhiani. Too lean, too firm of feature. Yet as his hope of escape, she was lovely beyond compare.

  He addressed her carefully, in the Gileni the other had used. “I would look on the high prince. I mean him no harm.”

  The spear touched his throat. “Sure you don’t,” growled the Gileni princeling. “They’re getting bold, these cockerels, sending their spies into the Sunborn’s own bedchamber.”

  Hirel swallowed. Metal pricked. He retreated a hair’s width. “I was one of those who brought Prince Sarevadin here. We have been companions. I would see him.”

  “So would all the rest of the world.” The woman spoke without gentleness, but also without hostility. “Apologies, stranger, but no one passes. Emperor’s orders.”

  “I would pass. I must see him. I must tell him—”

  The Gileni cut him off. “No one will be telling him anything for a long time. Maybe never. Thanks to your kind, Yellow-eyes.”

  He wept openly, without shame, his words spat out in a fire of hate. But the spear had wavered. Hirel slid inside it.

  Firm hands caught him, thrust him back, left him where he had stood before, in utter ignominy. “Don’t try that again,” the Ianyn woman warned him, not without amusement. “You’re the westerner he came with, I’ll credit that, but no one sees him now. The emperor
is working a great magic over him. No one can pass the wards until the working is done.”

  “He lives,” said Hirel. He did not know what he should be thinking. He knew that he should not be as glad as this.

  “He may live,” the woman said. “He may die. He walks in the shadows; he may not want to come back. Or he may not be able to.”

  Hirel’s heart contracted. “He must not do that. I do not wish it.”

  They stared at him. The Gileni’s scorn was a lash across his skin. He was past caring for it: or for reason or logic or princely policy, or anything but his own will.

  “I do not wish it,” he said again.

  “Are you a mage, then?” the Gileni mocked him. “Can you master even the Sunborn with your power?”

  Hirel looked at him, but did not see him. The Eye of Power burned at his belt, burned and sang. “I am high prince. I am his equal. He will not die while I have will to hold him.”

  Perhaps they spoke again. He did not heed them. He turned away from them, the red Gileni who hated him, the black Ianyn who laughed at him.

  Barbarians. This alien country, these alien faces, they crowded on him. They bore him down.

  o0o

  He found a door without guards, that opened on an empty room that opened on light and greenness.

  A shadow glided from amid the green. Even Ulan languished in exile from his prince. He did not precisely come to Hirel for comfort, but when Hirel’s knees, weakening, cast him on the carpet, Ulan was there to cling to.

  Hirel buried his face in the musky fur. He would not be sick again. He would not.

  He wept instead. Because he was alone, and forsaken, and betrayed. Because his only anchor to this unlovely world was dying or dead, in a welter of magic.

  Ulan was patient. He did not upbraid Hirel, or remind him with elaborate tact that a high prince did not cry. A high prince did nothing but bear the deadly burden of his robes, standing like a carven image for an empire to worship, enduring until he should be set on the Golden Throne in the mantle of gold, with his face forever hidden behind the golden mask.

  That was the dream, the nightmare that had haunted Hirel since he was a young child. In it the world was all gold, harsh, yellow, heavier than lead; and he was borne on it, shrouded in it, chained with it, and above him loomed a mask of gold.

  It lowered slowly, infinitely slowly. It was the precise shape of his face, but it opened nowhere, blind, nostrilless, its mouth but a sculpted curve. Twist, struggle, cry out though he would, he could not escape it.

  Sometimes it came close enough to rob him of sight and breath and voice. But always he woke before it touched his skin. If ever it came so far, he knew surely, he would wake and it would truly lie upon him. His face forever after would be not his own but the beautiful inhuman mask of the emperor.

  Hirel lay coiled with the ul-cat, his tears drying slowly on face and fur. He had not had the dream since he fled from Pri’nai. That much he owed to the kindness of his brothers.

  Softly Ulan began to purr. Hirel let it lull him into a sleep blessedly free of dreams.

  o0o

  When Hirel woke, miraculously hungry, all nine Zhil’ari were there in their paint and their finery. Whatever this room was, they seemed to have laid claim to it and its garden.

  There were servants about, distraught, but none braved Ulan’s claws to eject the invaders. Hirel sent one for food and drink.

  The garden had a pool of some size, which one or two of the Zhil’ari were playing in. Hirel bathed lightly, considered, sent another of the hovering servants for garments proper to a gentleman. Those that came were adequate, cut of good plain cloth in the southern fashion; they fit well enough.

  Ulan growled. A voice babbled. The growl rose to a roar.

  Hirel, emerging from the garden, found that the cat had cornered a stranger. Save that he had a strong tinge of Asanian gold in his plump cheeks, he was the image of the creature who had barred them from the emperor.

  “Please,” the man said faintly. “Please, sir . . .”

  Hirel laid a hand on Ulan’s head. The ul-cat subsided to a crouch, but his lips wrinkled still, baring his formidable fangs.

  Hirel looked his victim up and down. “You have a purpose here?”

  The man gathered himself together with an effort that shook his body. “Sir, you cannot— This is one of the empress’ private chambers. It is not suited for . . . guests.”

  Hirel looked about. “True. It needs a bed or two. And a canopy would not be amiss, should it rain when we would bathe.”

  The servant bridled at Hirel’s princely hauteur, all fear forgotten. “You are trespassing in the personal quarters of her imperial majesty. If you do not leave of your own accord, I shall see to it that you are escorted out.”

  “I think not,” said Hirel coolly. “The beds. Fetch them. And wine. The canopy can wait if it must, but cleansing foam and cloths cannot.”

  A poor servant, this one, to have risen so high. He lost his temper much too easily, and with it his lordly accent. “This is not a barbarian pigsty!”

  “Unless,” Hirel mused, “you can provide me with a suite of rooms close by the Prince Sarevadin. Very close. And with service appropriate to my station.”

  “You’ll get service. Direct to the slave-chain that let you loose.”

  “You are no good to me, I see. Go away, I tire of you.”

  Hirel loosed Ulan. With a joyous leap, the cat drove the fool from the room.

  o0o

  Having tried servants of varying ranks, they resorted to guards, who could not pass a door filled with Ulan and who dared not empty it with bronze.

  Idiots; they never considered a raid through the garden, for what good that would do, with the Zhil’ari prowling there, armed to the teeth.

  Hirel did not ask where the weapons had come from. Savages had ways, and theft was not a sin they knew the name of.

  The guards withdrew. Of the services Hirel had required, only the wine came, and food later, when he demanded it again and peremptorily.

  The Zhil’ari were sparing with the largesse. A game was no pleasure if one were too far gone in meat and wine to play.

  Hirel was no longer hungry. He drank a little, for the taste, and played with a fruit. He wandered restlessly, returned to the pool, prowled the room.

  No word came from the corridor’s end. No sound, no scent of wizardry.

  The guards changed twice. Their faces were somber. They never opened the door, that he could see, nor did anyone pass them. They might have been warding an empty room.

  o0o

  Night loomed and fell. Hirel slept fitfully. A dream found him. He fought it, but it was strong. It seized him and pulled him down.

  He walked in a dim country, under cold stars. A shadow walked beside him. They were comfortable, walking, two shadow princes in the shadowlands. Even here, Sarevan’s mane was as bright as a beacon.

  Something in Hirel was trying to brand it a nightmare: the dim strange hills, the icy stars, the air that was like no air of living earth. But Sarevan was there, and he was as he always was, striding lightly, wrapped in one of his silences.

  Once or twice he glanced at Hirel and smiled. It was a warm smile, with a touch of wickedness. We belong together, it said, you and I: high prince and high prince.

  Hirel bowed his head, accepting. In this place, one did not deny truth.

  The air was full of thunder. Hirel became aware of it by slow degrees. It was strangely like voices calling in chorus. Naming a name. Sarevadin. Sarevadin!

  Sarevan barely paused in his striding. Hirel looked back. Far away on the edge of sight, light glimmered.

  He frowned. “They are calling you,” he said.

  His voice fell soft in the dimness. Sarevan glanced aside, shrugged minutely. It was no matter of his.

  “But,” said Hirel, “it is. Come, listen. They are calling you to the light.”

  The darkness beckoned, sweet and deep.

  Hirel caught
at Sarevan’s body. It strained away from him; he tightened the circle of his arms. Sarevan twisted about within them, tensed for battle, but pausing, snared by surprise.

  “Listen,” Hirel said. “For me.”

  “And what,” asked Sarevan. “are you?”

  “The other half of you,” Hirel answered him.

  Sarevan’s brows met. Not, Hirel thought, in resistance. As if Hirel had given him something to ponder.

  “Listen,” Hirel bade him. “Listen.”

  o0o

  Hirel snapped erect. It was deep night, but not the night of the shadowlands. The air of the empress’ garden was cool and sweet; only the snoring of his companions broke the silence.

  He lay down again in Ulan’s warmth and tried to still his trembling. The dream was gone. Nor was there any doubt in him that it had been a dream; but it haunted him.

  Morning dawned cool despite the brilliance of the rising sun; the water of the pool was cold. Hirel plunged into it, to wash the night away, to force his mind into wakefulness.

  He was there when the servants brought food and drink that the Zhil’ari fell upon with delight. He was still there when the tall man came.

  Another of these damnable giants, Hirel thought as he looked up and up at the figure on the pool’s rim. Not a young one, this; his beard was white, his hair iron grey. But he stood as a young man stands, light and alert, and he fixed Hirel with a singularly disconcerting stare. As if he could see through the other’s eyes into the thoughts behind, and what he saw made him want to laugh and rage in equal measure.

  Ulan sat by him. Leaning against him. Purring thunderously.

  “So,” he said in Gileni with a lilt that spoke of Ianon, “you’re the invader who’s setting the palace on its ear. I don’t suppose you’ve thought to ask for what you want?”

  Hirel was abashed, and despised himself for it; it made his words rough and haughty. “I asked. I was not given. Therefore I took.”

  “You demanded the impossible. You took what your temper could encompass.” The northerner held out a hand. “Come out of the water, princeling.”