A Fall of Princes Read online

  Hirel came. He did not accept the hand. He did not blush that he was naked, or that he must dry himself, shivering until his teeth rattled, and dress under the bold stare. Ulan he would not acknowledge at all. The cat was a traitor, precisely like the rest.

  The Zhil’ari circled warily. The northerner flashed them a blindingly brilliant smile and addressed them in their own tongue. They listened; their eyes widened, their jaws fell; they flung themselves at his feet, kissed them fervently, and bolted.

  Hirel stood alone, abandoned, and blue with cold, too bitter even to be angry. The tall man’s smile shone in vain on his despair; the warm deep voice was but a grating in his ears. “I told them that they could look in on their seneldi and claim their own weapons, and if they would be so kind, the owners of those they carried would like them back again; and when they were done with all of that, the captain of the high prince’s guard would speak with them.”

  “That is not all you told them.”

  “Maybe not.” Since Hirel was not inclined to move, the northerner sat cross-legged on the grass.

  A kilt, Hirel reflected coldly, was a profoundly immodest garment. The barbarian did not care. Although he was nothing royal, he could not be, he was quite as supercilious as Sarevan.

  He raised a knee and clasped it. He was much scarred and not the least ashamed of it, and yet he was good to look on as all these northerners were, with his carven features and his lean long-muscled body and his own, peculiar, gangling grace.

  “I thank you for that,” he said.

  “You are a mage,” Hirel said flatly.

  One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “After a fashion. I wasn’t born to it; I’m no good at all with spells. I’ve grown into a trick or two, no more.”

  “You know who I am.”

  “It’s obvious enough. I’ve met your father; and you’re his image. I bring you my emperor’s apologies. At first he didn’t know you, and then he had Sarevan to think of.”

  Hirel snatched at what mattered. “Sarevan—is he—”

  “He lives.”

  “He lives,” Hirel repeated. He could not even name the force that dimmed his eyes, that set his heart to beating in a swift painful rhythm. “And his—his—”

  “His father is recovering. And his mother. It was a hard battle. For a while—for a very long while I thought we’d lost them all.”

  Hirel regarded the face gone grim with memory, and knew what the mage was not saying. “You were with them.”

  “We all were, in power if not in body. Even Prince Orsan, all the way from Han-Gilen, and that redheaded tribe of his, and every priest in the city. That’s how dire it was, and how much we owe you for keeping the young idiot alive for as long as you did.”

  “I am sure that it delights you to owe such a debt to a yellow barbarian.”

  The northerner’s eyes glinted. “We can survive it. What’s driving us wild is that you insist on camping here when there’s a suite of honor waiting for you. Be kind; take it.”

  “First I must see Sarevan.”

  “Of course. He’s been asking for you.” The man rose, making no attempt to suppress his mirth at Hirel’s expression, and beckoned. “Come.”

  o0o

  They had moved the prince, taken him to his own rooms in a high tower of the palace. Hirel entered the topmost chamber slowly, telling himself that he was only cautious. It was a pleasant place, all light and air, with more in it of taste than of opulence.

  The bed was almost demeaningly small, hardly more than a cot set in an alcove. No hordes of attendants fluttered about it, only one quiet person in a torque, who made herself one with the shadows as Hirel crossed the tiled floor. Ulan reached the bed in a bound, all but overwhelming the figure in it, who laughed breathlessly and clasped him close.

  This was not Sarevan. This was a boy, gaunt to transparency, with such a light shining out of him as the poets spoke of, that shone in saints or in the dying. His braid lay on his white-clad shoulder and snaked along his side, and the shaft of sunlight on it turned it to red-gold fire, but he had no beard. Even bone-thin as he was, his face was very young and very fine, and almost as pretty as a girl’s.

  Then he saw Hirel, and his eyes were Sarevan’s, bright, arrogant, and thoroughly insouciant. Likewise the voice he raised in greeting, though it was as thin as his body. “Cubling! What took you so long?”

  “Inefficiency,” Hirel’s guide answered for him. “Don’t overdo it, children. I’ll come back when your time’s up.”

  Sarevan watched him go, smiling with deep affection. “You should be honored, cubling. The Lord of the Northern Realms doesn’t often stoop to run errands.”

  Hirel stared at the closing door. “The Lord of the Northern Realms?”

  “Vadin alVadin himself, Baron Geitan, sworn brother to the Sunborn, whom men call the Reborn, and the Chosen of Avaryan, and the Regent of Ianon and the kingdoms of the north.” Sarevan’s eyes danced. “What, cubling! Is that awe I see in your face? Can there actually be a hero alive whom your loftiness will condescend to worship?”

  Hirel schooled his traitor face to stillness. “He is famous. Notorious, in truth. When nurses need a name with which to subdue their charges, and the Sunborn’s has lost it potency, they invoke the horror of Vadin Uthanyas, Vadin who will not die.”

  Sarevan grinned. “Vadin Uthanyas! What a ring that has. I’ll have to call him that when I want to watch him lose his temper. He loses his temper wonderfully. Thunder and lightning, and the sound of kingdoms falling.” He raised himself, struggling, his grin turning to a glare when Hirel laid hands on him.

  He was frighteningly frail. Hirel propped him with cushions and stood over him, hands on hips.

  His glare wavered. “Damn it, infant—”

  “Thunder and lightning, and kingdoms falling.” Hirel frowned. “You look appalling. What did you do to your face?”

  Sarevan’s hand went to it. His right hand, moving easily, and under the robe no bulk of bandages. “I’ve lost flesh, that’s all. It will come back.”

  “Not that, idiot. Your beard.”

  Sarevan laughed so hard that Hirel thought he would break. When at last he had his breath back, he said, “I bade it a fond farewell. I’m not entirely uncivilized, you know. Only when I’m Journeying, and hot water is hard to come by, and time’s not for wasting with a razor and a scrap of mirror. Besides,” he added, “it made you so happy; such highly visible evidence of my barbarity.”

  Hirel’s teeth set; but he smiled, honey-sweet. “You look,” he said, “somewhat younger than you claim to be. And very . . . comely. I think we are a closer match than you would like.”

  The bright brows met. Hirel laughed at them.

  “Insolent whelp,” Sarevan muttered.

  Hirel sat on the bed and refused to be insulted.

  Sarevan sighed. “I suppose you expect me to be indulgent, now that I owe you my life.”

  “I did nothing but accept my captivity and see that you were brought where you had promised to put an end to it. I do expect you to drop this game of yours and call me by my name.”

  “How cumbersome. Asuchirel inZiad Uverias, what an arrogant creature you are. Is there truly a rod of steel in that spine of yours, Asuchirel inZiad Uverias? Ah, Asuchirel inZiad Uverias, how prettily you glare at me.”

  “Priest,” Hirel said with icy precision, “you know full well that I can be called Hirel.”

  “But that’s merely Old Asanian for Son of the Lion. Lion’s Cub. Cubling.”

  “At least it is Old Asanian.” Hirel folded his arms. “Yield. Or I call you mongrel forever after.”

  “How dare you—” Sarevan stopped. Scowled. Laughed suddenly. “Cub— Hirel Uverias, you are growing into a formidable young man. How long has your voice been breaking?”

  Hirel flushed scarlet, and cursed the wit that could spin a new victory out of a clear defeat. “It is not—”

  It did, appallingly. His mouth snapped shut.

  Sareva
n lay back, highly amused. “Avaryan help me, I think I’ve been growing you up. Small wonder I’ve got so feeble. It’s a task for giants.”

  “That, having seen the Zhil’ari, I would hardly call you.” Hirel’s voice held its range, for a mercy. “I am tiring you. Can you rest, now that you know your prisoner is secure?”

  The lightness left the worn brilliant face. “Does it gall you so much?”

  Hirel considered the question with some care. At length he answered it. “I am not an utter fool; I understand your reasons. But yes, it galls me. How can it not?”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “No.” Hirel stood. “Rest. I will come back later. See that your guardhounds are so instructed.”

  No doubt Sarevan saw through it. That Hirel left because he could not bear to know the truth: that Sarevan was not yet claimed fully for the world of the living. He could still let go. He could still die.

  o0o

  The tall lord admitted it. He had died indeed with an assassin’s spear in his heart, and he had come back at the Sunborn’s call, when Mirain An-Sh’Endor was a youth barely set up his throne and Vadin his reluctant squire.

  Vadin’s wound had been one of the body, with nothing sorcerous in it. This was different. Sarevan had come as far as Keruvarion’s magic could bring him. The rest lay with time and the god.

  Hirel lingered for a time in the chambers to which the lord had led him. They were fully in keeping with his royalty. They closed in upon him.

  He fled. He sought his mare, found her more nondescript than ever among the seneldi of the high lords of Keruvarion, knew that she had few equals for spirit or for swiftness. He was not comforted, even though he rode her a little, to her great and queenly pleasure. He left her, to wander the palace.

  It was all open to him now. People stared and murmured as he went past. Rumor gave him a hundred names, a hundred tales. A few were accurate, or close to it.

  He found the Zhil’ari; they were content with their barracks, though not with the order that they restrict their paint to a pathetic sigil between their brows. It was indecent, all that bare skin flaunted to the world.

  Hirel commiserated, and throttled his impulse to laughter, and wandered on. He felt like a shadow, a thing half real, visible yet intangible.

  The sun sank. Hirel climbed the long stair to the prince’s door, and the strangers on guard did not try to challenge him. Sarevan was asleep with his arm around Ulan’s neck.

  Hirel sat by him in silence as the shadows lengthened. Faintly, through the open windows he heard chanting. Avaryan’s priests were singing their god to his rest.

  The priest on deathwatch left; another took his place, settling on the edge of Hirel’s awareness.

  From where he sat he could see the sky flame with sunset and fade slowly. A star kindled. Behind Hirel the watcher lit a lamp, a flicker in the twilight.

  Hirel straightened. He was stiff with long sitting. He rose and stretched each muscle as he had learned to, with grace and precision. Making a dance of it, his tutor used to say.

  The old man was dead now. He spoke too freely to someone powerful, and one morning there was a new and much younger man waiting to instruct his imperial highness in the proper pursuits of princes.

  Hirel turned. The new watcher was a woman, and patently akin to the redheaded princes of Han-Gilen.

  She did not appear to share her young kinsman’s hatred of Hirel. Her eyes admired his figure, and certainly his unconscious display of it.

  She was not a priestess, he noticed; she wore no torque, nor any ornament at all. Her gown was green, and very simple, like a servant’s. Her bright hair coiled at the nape of her neck. She was well past that first bloom which the poets judged to be the perfection of a woman’s beauty, but well shy of raddled age; her features were too strong for perfection, in truth would not have looked amiss on a boy, and her figure in the gown, though far from boyish, was somewhat scant of breast and hip.

  She was, in truth, too old and too thin, and she was far from pretty. She was the most beautiful woman Hirel had ever seen.

  He blinked. She did not vanish. Her eyes had the southern tilt, but they were more round than almond-narrow, long and dark in the honey-gold face—Asanian blood there, no doubt of it. There were shadows under them.

  Her cheek was scarred, thin parallel furrows, ivory on gold. The marring only made her more beautiful.

  She rose. She was somewhat taller than Hirel. She bent over the sleeper, smoothing his hair with ineffable tenderness.

  Hirel’s heart, ever a fool, throbbed with jealousy. Oh, yes, his brain mocked it. Begrudge a woman’s love for her son. Fall instantly, hopelessly, and eternally in love with the Empress of Keruvarion.

  Why not? His father had done it before him. And been sent packing with courtesy but with great dispatch, because she preferred a fatherless upstart to the heir of the Golden Throne.

  It was as well, Ziad-Ilarios had said once. The royal line had clung to its purity against a millennium of alien wives and concubines, had fought an often desperate battle to stern the sullying tide. Ziad-Ilarios had gone home alone to Kundri’j, wedded the sister whom the High Court had allotted as his mate, and begotten an heir of unimpeachable legitimacy. No wild redheaded savage to cast shame on the dynasty.

  Hirel shivered. One word from this woman’s mouth, and he would never have been. Nor Sarevan. Nor this hour in Endros, full of lamplight and darkness.

  She stood erect. A pin slipped free; her hair tumbled down her back.

  She snatched, and muttered something utterly unqueenly. Her glance crossed Hirel’s, bright with temper.

  His lips quirked. He bit them.

  Hers were tight, but they wobbled. It burst forth all at once, as laughter must, even in the midst of grief.

  “You look,” she gasped, “you look exactly like your father.”

  “So I am told.”

  Her laughter died. He was sorry: she had a wonderful laugh, rich and full-bodied, like Sovrani wine. “He could do that, too. One look, and all my crotchets would collapse.” She paused. “Is he well?”

  “He was when I left him.”

  “I’ve always regretted that we were what we were. That we had to make choices.”

  Hirel was silent. She smiled quickly. “You are very welcome in Endros.”

  He bowed. She touched him, a feather-brush of her hand across his cheek. It felt not at all like lèse-majesté.

  “Yes,” she said, “you are his image. He was the fairest of men, and the gentlest, and one of the strongest.”

  Hirel laughed a little. “I fear I fall far short of him.”

  “Ah, but he was older. Those shoulders, look, they’ve inches coming. And you’ll be taller than he was.” Mischief sparkled in her glance. “Come back to me in a hand of years, and I’ll gladly run away with you.”

  “Need we wait?” asked Hirel. He took her hand and kissed it. “Come now, be my love, and let the empires fend for themselves.”

  “Why,” she said in wonder, “you almost mean it.”

  “It must be in the blood.” He sighed. “They breed us for beauty, for color, and for such size as we can attain; and, it seems, for conceiving mad passions for redheaded royalty.”

  “No,” said Sarevan behind him, “that’s not madness, that’s taste.”

  They turned. Sarevan was wide awake. Perhaps he looked a little better; perhaps it was only the warmth of his smile.

  “Good evening, Mother,” he said. “Good evening, O lion of the west. Would either of you be inclined to succor a starving man?”

  When Sarevan ate, Hirel discovered that he could share it; and that it would stay quietly in its place. As if his stomach knew what his brain had not yet comprehended.

  The crisis was past. Sarevan was mending. He would live and be strong.

  EIGHT

  Hirel was no stranger to temples. Asanion’s high prince was high priest of a dozen gods, each with his shrine and his worship and his priesthood, ea
ch with his festivals which royalty must adorn. If Avaryan’s temple in Endros had been set among the others Hirel knew, it would have been but middling large, and though extraordinarily well attended by both priests and people, not remarkably rich.

  Folk in Asanion would have looked on it with disfavor, muttering that the god’s own son could spare so little of his fabled wealth to adorn the holy place. Here it was of a piece with the rest, simplicity shaped into high art. All that simple pillared hall of gold-veined stone looked toward its center: the altar, and above it an orb of gold suspended in the air, its heart an everlasting fire. Nothing held it up. Nothing at all.

  Hirel had come here out of curiosity, and because a novice had brought a summons worded properly and courteously. He stopped to stare at the altar and the orb, and to wonder how anyone could have wrought such a prodigy.

  “Magic,” said the novice as if he had spoken. “It’s nothing in particular, though it makes ignorant people afraid. A few of the novices stole it once and played ball with it. They say it was Prince Sarevan who scored a goal with it, full in the prioress’ fishpond, and he not even a novice yet, though he was bound for Han-Gilen’s temple that High Summer. But he was mageborn; he didn’t need the spells the others had to sing to keep the Orb in the air.”

  “Are you all mages here?” Hirel asked a little sourly.

  The child skipped, tossing her long unruly hair. “Most of us. We’re New Order here, under the Sunborn; we’re priest-mages, white enchanters.”

  “You, too?”

  “I will be,” she said from the promontory of her nine summers. Or did she have so many? “I was chosen. The empress says I’m mageborn; she says I’ll know it when I’m a woman, and I’m lucky, because by then I’ll be old enough to use my power properly.”

  “Unlike her son.”

  “Ah well, what can he do? He’s not only mageborn, he’s godborn; it’s a fire in him. That’s why he did his novitiate in Han-Gilen. They’re Old Order there, no mages, but the Red Prince is the wisest mage in the world. He taught the Sunborn, and he took the Sunborn’s son in hand, and tamed him nicely, everybody says.” She stopped short. Her eyes filled with tears. “Is it true what they’re saying? Is he like to die?”