A Fall of Princes Read online

  “My slaves? My senel?”

  “Sent to bear you company in the Ninth Heaven.”

  Hirel stood still under the weight of his robes. He was dimly aware of the ambassador’s concern. Old fool, the High Court reckoned him, loyal enough and dimwitted enough to suffer exile of honor among the barbarians, blind enough not to perceive that, while he represented the soul of peaceful honesty to the mages of Keruvarion, his servants spied and intrigued and did what harm they might in the heart of the empire.

  He was much too direct in his speech to make a courtier, though what Hirel had seen of this court made him seem as subtle as any serpent in Kundri’j. And he had a glaring flaw: he dared permit himself to love his emperor and his high prince. Either of whom would calmly slay him if need demanded.

  As Hirel’s brothers had slain his servants, that they betray no perilous secrets. And his golden stallion, that they should not seem overeager to usurp the privileges of the high prince. Not that the creature was a great loss; for all his shimmering beauty he had been as placid as a plowbeast. The slaves were only slaves, hands that served and legs that ran. Though Hirel would miss the little singer, and the eunuch whose hands were so clever when he needed easing and had neither time nor inclination for a woman, and Sha’an who alone had ever been able to comb his hair properly and painlessly, and—

  They brought it home to him. The finality of it. The Son of the Lion was dead and burned and enrolled among the immortals, with ritual regret that he had not had time to become an ancestor. Ah well, folk would be saying, poor little thing, always sick and never very strong, though he was a pretty one to look at while he lasted. He did seem to have been getting over his youngling weaknesses, but blood and the gods would always tell. Between them they had carried him off.

  Hirel let his head fall back, and laughed long and loud and free. Still laughing, he flung off his damnable swaddlings and faced Varzun in the bare sufficiency of silken trousers.

  The old man looked ready to faint again, more at his prince’s nakedness than at the scars revealed upon it. Hirel’s mirth died. He rapped Varzun lightly with a finger, driving the poor man back to his knees.

  “Sit,” Hirel commanded him, “and ease your bones. And listen.”

  Varzun took the chair one of the servants brought, but he took little ease in it. Doubt was creeping back into his eyes. Hirel was not conducting himself as he ought; the old man’s scrutiny hardened, searching the altered face.

  “Yes,” Hirel said, “I am your prince, and I have changed. I wandered the roads for a Greatmoon-cycle and more, companioned only by a priest of Avaryan; I dwelt for a while among northern savages. And what brought me to it, that laid bare a new face of the world. I am not the child who rode trustingly into the claws of his dearest brothers.” His raised hand forestalled Varzun’s speech. “By now the couriers will be well on their way to Kundri’j with the news of my resurrection. I will follow them. Not at once and not as swiftly, but neither will I ride in imperial state. Have you a dozen of the warrior caste whom you may trust beyond death if need be?”

  “My prince, you know that all I have is yours.” The ambassador was not an utter fool; despite the blows it had suffered, his mind had begun to work again. “My Olenyai are not all as loyal to me as they pretend, but your dozen I can find. Must you venture abroad with so few?”

  “I require speed and secrecy. I shall ride as a lordling who comes to Kundri’j with his Olenyai, to claim his place in the Middle Court. My enemies will not learn the truth of my coming until I am upon them.”

  Varzun was becoming inured to shock. He did not protest the unseemliness of Hirel’s plotting, still less the madness of it. He said only, “Then you will be using the roads and the posthouses, and you will need a token of passage. But, my prince, the lands may not be—”

  “See to it,” said Hirel. “I must be in Kundri’j by Autumn Firstday.”

  Varzun had the sense to venture no further protests; he bowed in his seat.

  Hirel returned to the tall chair and vouchsafed his most charming smile. “Now, honored uncle, tell me all that has passed since I left Pri’nai.”

  o0o

  Hirel had expected to be summoned in his own turn and called to account for his machinations. He had not expected the messenger to be waiting when Varzun left.

  He eyed the eightfold robe that would have been proper, settled on coat and trousers, and followed the liveried squire, holding apprehension firmly at bay. He had no apologies to make and no secrets to keep. Even before Mirain An-Sh’Endor.

  But, having summoned Hirel, the Sunborn kept him waiting for a bitter while. He was comfortable enough, it was true: the antechamber was rich, furnished with cushions and carpets in the western manner, and a servant brought wine and sweets and even a book or two, none of which Hirel was minded to touch. He sat, arranging himself with care, and simmered slowly.

  He had reached a fine pitch of temper when the squire called him into the emperor’s presence. But he was cool to look at, composed, imperial.

  The Lord An-Sh’Endor was not even attired for audience, much less set aloft in the Hall of the Throne. He had been standing for a sculptor; the man was there still, measuring living body and half-hewn marble image with cord and calipers.

  The statue wore the beginnings of state robes. The emperor wore only his torque and his kingship.

  He had no more shame than his son, and no less beauty of form. Over the sculptor’s head he addressed a man in full court dress, who seemed unperturbed by the disparity. “By now even they should know what they’ve brought upon themselves. I am not betrayed twice.”

  “And their messenger, sire?” the courtier inquired.

  “Give him his fee and let him go.” The man bowed; his lord shifted at the sculptor’s command. “One wing of cavalry should suffice. Mardian’s, I think. He’s not as close as some, but he’s been idle lately. A short campaign should distract his men from the local beer and himself from the local matrons. Write up the order; bring it to me before the sunset bell.”

  The man bowed again and departed. The sculptor finished his measuring and departed likewise. At last the emperor deigned to notice who stood by the door. “High prince! I pray your pardon. As soon as I’d sent for you, half the empire decided to descend upon me.”

  Hirel bowed acknowledgement.

  A servant brought garments for his emperor: shirt and trousers, heeled boots and richly embroidered coat, the casual dress of a lord of the Hundred Realms. “I do turn and turn about,” the Sunborn said to Hirel easily, as to a friend. “Now a Ianyn in kilt and cloak, now a trousered southerner. It keeps folk in mind that I belong to no one realm but to all together.” He beckoned. “Come, walk with me.”

  He did not speak as one who expected to be refused. As Hirel moved to obey, he considered his own wisdom in discarding Asanian robes for eastern trousers. The Varyani emperor had the long panther-stride of his northern kin, that Hirel had to stretch to match.

  o0o

  They did not go far. Only to that great hall in which Hirel had expected to be received. It was even plainer than the rest of the palace, austere in truth: a long pillared expanse, its floor of white stone unadorned, its walls bare of carving or tapestry. At its farthest limit stood a dais of nine deep steps, and a broad chair that seemed carved of a single immense moonstone, its back rising and blooming into the rayed sun of Avaryan.

  Solid gold, the legends said. Its rays ran from wall to wall and leaped toward the lofty vault of the ceiling. Surely any man who sat beneath that mighty flame of gold would seem a dwarf, an ant, a mote in the eye of his god.

  From the hall’s end, the throne seemed to glow in the gloom. An illusion: the hall was shadowed, lit only by the sun through louvers in the roof, and the gold cast its reflection on the translucent stone of the chair.

  As the Sunborn drew closer, it grew brighter. Hirel’s eyes narrowed with the beginnings of discomfort. Brightmoon itself attained no such splendor, even at the f
ull.

  The emperor did not choose to mount the dais. He stood on its lowest step and eyed the shining throne, his right hand clenching and unclenching at his side. His face was still, young and old at once, ageless as the face of the god.

  “Do you know,” he said quietly, “when I sit there, I come as close to freedom from pain as I may ever come, save only in arms of my empress. But only for a little while. If I linger, if I begin to grow proud, if I consider all the uses of this power I bear, the pain swells until it casts me on the edge of darkness.”

  Hirel did not speak. The Sunborn faced him, eyes glittering. “Often as I sit there, I consider my power. I consider life and death, and thrones and empires. More than once I have sought a way around our long dilemma. Your father has daughters, all well born and many beautiful and some legitimate. I have a son. Our empires united, war averted, peace purchased for us all. Who can find fault with such a course?”

  “My father has considered the same expedient. For all I know he considers it still, but not with any great hope of fulfillment. Your empire is too young and too vigorous and too close to its god. The union would be all Keruvarion, and Asanion would fall as completely as to any war.”

  “Would that be so terrible?”

  Hirel looked at the Emperor of the East. Remembered the tales. Upstart, fatherless, ruthless warrior and inexorable conqueror, blind, fanatic, driven by his god. His son had been born while he conquered the Nine Cities, born on the battlefield in the midst of hell’s own storm; had grown to boyhood in the camps of the army as it spread north and east and south and slowly, with many pauses, west.

  He had only known peace as his son began to grow from boy into youth, when the empires settled into the uneasy half-amity of warriors who, finding themselves equally matched, see no profit in endless, fruitless struggle. But they maneuvered; they tested. They wielded spies and insurgents and mages, bandits and border lords, even hunters and herders who set no great store by the borders of empires.

  The warlord of Keruvarion was warlord still even in the garb of a southern princeling, lean and hard and honed to a razor’s edge. And Hirel had seen his people. Outside of Endros the common folk might have become complacent with peace. Within it, lords and commons alike had a look for which only now did Hirel find a name. The look of the falcon: bright, fierce, and poised for the kill.

  “The god would have it so,” said their lord, not entirely without regret. “Asanion is ancient and it is still strong, but its strength in great part overlies corruption. It has forgotten its gods. Its people embrace mere cowering superstition. Its great ones cleave to the cold follies of logic, or to nothing at all save their own pleasure. In the name of their gods, or of their pleasure, or of this new sophistry which they call science, they practice horrors. Life, say they, is nothing; light is illusion; darkness waits and beckons and proffers the delights of despair.”

  Yes, Hirel thought. A fanatic. He sounded like a madman in the bazaar. Woe, woe unto the Golden Empire! A worm has nested in its heart. Soon shall it wither and crumble away.

  Madmen had been crying thus for a thousand years. Some had raised armies; some had even claimed descent from gods. But they were gone, and Asanion remained. She had swallowed them. So would she swallow even this greatest of the bandit kings.

  The Sunborn laughed. His mirth seemed genuine, if not unalloyed. He ran lightly up the dais and turned.

  The throne was a blaze behind him, yet he outblazed it. He shone; he flamed; he towered against the image of his father.

  He sat, and he was a dark slight man of no great height or handsomeness. Yet try though it would, Hirel’s eye could not force itself to see aught else. The throne on which he sat, the Sun that rose behind him, seemed but a setting for his royalty.

  Hirel raised his chin and set his mind against his eyes’ seduction. This man had greatness, yes, he granted that. Power in many senses, and presence, and a mingling of art and instinct that put a Kundri’ji courtesan to shame.

  How easy to yield, to bow down, to worship the godborn king. Let his armies roll over languid world-weary Asanion, scour it, cleanse it, make it anew in the image of Avaryan. A kingdom of light, where slaves were free and free folk lived in peace and plenty, and lords ruled in wisdom and in justice, and all gods were one god, and that god had sent his own son to sit above them all.

  “No,” said Hirel. “War is war, even if it be holy war. And conquest is conquest. You stretched your hand toward that to which you have no right.”

  “I have the right which my father gives me.”

  “We have the right of our ancient sovereignty. When you were young and bold, you wounded us deeply; you eroded our southern borders, and seized half our northern provinces. Where we were weakest, you struck deepest, until my father’s father, worn with war and with the cruel years, sued for peace. Why did you grant it?”

  The Sunborn answered willingly, as one who indulges a child’s attempts to be wise. “I too was weary, and my army longed to see its homelands again, and my empire had need of a lord who was not always riding to war. The old emperor’s death, the masking of Ziad-Ilarios, lengthened the peace and made it stronger. As it strengthened my empire.”

  “And now the peace is breaking. I hear much of what my father does to threaten Keruvarion. I hear nothing of why he does it. Your armies gathered and moving. Your spies spreading disaffection even into Kundri’j itself. The revolts fomented in your name among our slaves. Your taking of yet another northern satrapy.”

  “That was a general grown overbold with power. He has been punished.”

  “Aye,” said Hirel, “with the governorship of your new province.”

  “No.” The Sunborn spoke with an edge of iron. “He was executed. The province we kept. It was no use to you save to feed your slave markets.”

  “It was ours.”

  “Was,” said Mirain An-Sh’Endor. “So too were the Hundred Realms, half a thousand years ago. Now both are mine, and both are glad of me.”

  “Of course. They dare not confess otherwise.”

  “I would know.”

  Hirel looked up at him and thought of being afraid. “Why did you summon me? To subvert me? To forbid me to depart?”

  “Neither.” The emperor rose from his throne and came down. Hirel faced him steadily. The Sunborn smiled with no suggestion of strain. “I owe you a debt as deep as any man has ever owed another. I would pay it as I may, though in the end we must be enemies. What aid I can give you in your riding through my lands, I will give; I lay no restrictions upon you, and demand no conditions. I do not even ask that you dine with us before you go. Unless, of course, you wish it.”

  “You have no tasters here,” Hirel said. “Your magic is enough, people say. Poison turns to honey in the cup.” He paused. Suddenly he smiled. “I have a fondness for honeyed wine. I will dine with you.”

  The Sunborn laughed. “Honeyed wine it shall be, and fine company, and for yet a while, honest friendship. Whatever may come after.”

  PART TWO

  Sarevadin Halenan Kurelian Miranion iVaryan

  TEN

  Sarevan had never reckoned himself a seer. That burden was his mother’s, and in lesser measure his father’s. They could raise the power at will and at need, and sometimes it would yield to their mastery.

  He had no such gift. He had one dream only; but that dream was true. It shifted and changed, but its import was always the same.

  It began in peace. A green country, sunlit, quiet. Yet slowly he saw the lie beneath the serenity. The green withered. The earth shriveled, and the sun slew it, beautiful, benevolent, relentless. No cloud dared veil its face.

  See, it sang, how fair am I, how splendid, how merciful. No night shall come to torment my people. No cold shall wither my lands. It sang; and endless day destroyed them, and heat unceasing seared them to the root.

  It haunted him, that dream. From the time he first became a man, it had beset him. It had come perilously close to driving him mad. />
  Time and teaching had given him, if not mastery, at least endurance. It had not blunted the edge of the vision.

  What was veiled came ever clearer. What began as simple nightmare swelled into the full fire of prophecy.

  The sun took on his father’s face. The land became his own Keruvarion. He saw its cities ravaged, its people slain, its dominion given over to the carrion crow. And his father sat above it and smiled, and stretched out his hand.

  Westward the sun sank; westward was peace, however flawed, and a man in a golden mask, aging and mortal and indomitable.

  It was madness, that twisting of the world’s truth. It was maddening. To look for peace to raddled harlot Asanion with its thousand lying gods; to find destruction in the hands of the Sunborn.

  Even on death’s marches Sarevan had seen it. Had broken and bolted from it, and fled, and found his father’s face; and recoiled in mindless horror.

  It was not Mirain who had won the battle for his life, nor Vadin whose name and love he bore, nor even Elian who was soul of both their souls. Han-Gilen’s Red Prince had brought him back, and taught him anew to bear the pain of his foreseeing.

  And before Prince Orsan, another. A face beyond memory; a voice he could not name, though he struggled, waging war against forgetfulness. That will without name or face had turned him to the light, and sent him forth into Mirain’s hands.

  He did not remember all of it. He had fought. He had lashed his father with hatred. He had called him liar and murderer and worse. He had wielded the full force of his seeing; and he had fallen. Mirain was stronger.

  “It will not be so,” the Sunborn said with the force of a vow. “I will not let it be so. I bring peace and plenty, and the victory of light over the ancient darkness.”

  And Asanion?

  “Asanion will see the truth I bear. She is not blind but blinded. I will give her the clarity of my vision.”

  It was truth, that promise. Sarevan yearned toward it; and yearning, yielded, and plunged at last into healing sleep.