A Fall of Princes Read online

  “As cleanly as the armies of the Sun took our province of Anjiv?” Hirel advanced a step. “As cleanly as that, Sun-prince? They slew all the men of fighting age. They put the women to the sword, but not before they had had their fill of rape. They made the children watch, and told them that that was the fate ordained for all worshippers of demons; and the menchildren they put to death, but the maids they took as slaves. But no,” said Hirel, “I cry your pardon. There are no slaves in Keruvarion. Only bondservants and battle captives.”

  “They are your brothers!”

  “The worse for them, that they would destroy their lord and their blood kin.”

  Sarevan turned his back on Hirel. “That’s not justice. That’s spite.”

  He walked away. Hirel did not call him back.

  o0o

  Sarevan did not know where he was striding to. He did not care. Sometimes there were people; they stared. No doubt they thought him indecent: all but naked, with one thin robe and no attendants.

  Ulan and Zha’dan had forsaken him; had stayed with Hirel. Faithless, both of them. Traitors to their master.

  He found a tower. He climbed to the top of it and sat under the stars.

  They were the same stars that shone on Keruvarion, in the same sky. But the air was strange, Asanian air, warm and cloying. He choked on it.

  “I did it,” he said to the pattern of stars that he had made his own, the one that in Ianon was the Eagle and in Han-Gilen the Sunbird. “I confess it freely. I brought it on myself. I cast away my power and my princedom. And for what? For a dream of prophecy? For peace? For the empire that will be?” He laughed without mirth. “For all of those. And for something I never looked for. For the worst of all my enemies.”

  He lay back, hands clasped beneath his head. His temper had passed. He was calm, empty. “I think I hate him. I’m afraid I love him. I know we quarrel like lovers.

  “And what hope do we have? If he were a woman I’d marry him, if I didn’t kill him first. If he were a commoner I’d make him a lord and keep him by me. Even if he were a lord . . . even an Asanian lord . . .” Sarevan surged up, crying out, “O Avaryan! Why did you do this to us?”

  The god was not answering.

  “No doubt,” said Sarevan dryly after a starlit while, “I’ve solved everything with tonight’s performance. If he’s even civil to me hereafter, I’ll count it an honest miracle.”

  The stars were silent. The god said nothing.

  “I hate him,” said Sarevan with sudden fierceness. “I hate him. Haughty, corrupt, cruel—damn him. Damn him to all twenty-seven of his own hells.”

  SEVENTEEN

  The Golden Courts settled swiftly enough under the emperor’s strong hand; and, in the way of courts, went on as if they had never risen up in near-revolt. Hirel was solely and certainly their high prince. Sarevan was neither spy nor upstart; he had never presumed so far as to ordain whom they would accept as their lord. Matters of such indelicacy were not discussed.

  He was their new darling. He would have been their new pet, but like Ulan, Sarevan Is’kelion was not a tame creature. He did not trouble himself with all the intricacies of protocol; he would not keep to the paths ordained for a royal hostage. He rode his blue-eyed stallion wherever he pleased. He crossed swords with guardsmen. He wrestled uproariously with the painted savage who was his shadow, and sometimes he won, but sometimes, resoundingly, he lost.

  He discovered that certain courtyards looked upward to the latticed windows of the harem, and that if he lingered there alone, in time soft voices would call to him. They told him of unfrequented passages, of walled gardens and of chambers where a handsome outlander might go to be stared at through hidden screens.

  But never suffered to stare in return. Even if he were minded to chance the loss of his eyes for letting them rest on a royal lady, not to mention his manhood for daring to be aware of her existence, his sweet-voiced companions grew almost shrill in forbidding it. It was sin enough that he heard them speak.

  Their kinsmen were enchanted with him. He frightened them, deliciously. They reckoned him a giant; they waxed incredulous at skin so dark and hair so bright and teeth so very white; they called him Sunlord and Stormborn and Lord of Panthers.

  He was as vain as a sunbird, but he knew what the flattery of the courtiers was worth. Wizard’s gold. While one labored to maintain the spell, it glittered brightly. But a moment’s lapse, a few breaths’ pause, and it withered away.

  Avaryan knew, there were wizards enough here. The charlatans were everywhere: men of little power but great flamboyance, who wrought illusions and told fortunes and found lost jewels for the credulous of the court. But they were only a diversion. While they persuaded the skeptics of Asanion that there was nothing to fear from their kind, the true mages passed unseen and unregarded.

  Nondescript persons, seldom noticed but always in evidence, robed in grey or in violet, often accompanied by a beast or a bird. Sarevan did not know that any of them had the emperor’s ear. They did not confess it and Ziad-Ilarios did not admit to it, although he was free enough with Sarevan in other matters.

  When Sarevan appeared in his council and in his courts of justice, he said no word, though eyes glittered and lips tightened at the enormity of it. The emperor refused to see, refused to restrain the interloper, who had a little sense, when it came to that. He never tried to speak where he listened so avidly, though often his eyes would spark or his jaw tense, as if he yearned to burst out in a flood of outland interference.

  People were calling him the emperor’s favorite. Some, in a country where tongues were freer, would have called it more. Would have remembered who his mother was, and what she had been to his majesty. Would, perhaps, have spoken of bewitchment.

  There was one who did not speak at all, nor in any way betray that he had had aught to do with the return of Asanion’s high prince and the presence of Keruvarion’s high prince in Kundri’j Asan. Aranos had made no public appearance since Autumn Firstday.

  That, it seemed, was perfectly usual. He was known for his strangeness. His name, when it was spoken, was spoken most often in a whisper.

  It was cleverly done. As much as Asanian courtiers could love anything, they loved their bright and haughty high prince. Aranos they feared.

  “He doesn’t even have to do anything,” said Zha’dan. “Just hide in his walls and refuse to come out. And let people talk.”

  “Serpent ways,” said Sarevan. He smiled at the guard who stood before Aranos’ gate. It was his most charming smile. “I will speak with your lord,” he said in Asanian.

  The man surprised him. He bowed with every evidence of respect and stepped back from the gate.

  A mage was waiting. Sarevan was painfully glad that it was not a darkmage. The man bowed and was most courteous. He led Sarevan into the black-and-silver chambers.

  o0o

  Aranos did not see fit to keep Sarevan waiting, though an Asanian would have reckoned him indisposed. Perhaps it was its own kind of insult. He had bathed; he lay on sable furs as a slave rubbed sweet oil into his skin, while another combed out his hair. His mane, unbound, was longer than his body.

  He was, indeed, a perfect miniature of a man. Rumor had cast doubts on it. He had begotten no children that anyone knew of; and that, in an Asanian prince some years Sarevan’s elder, was frankly scandalous.

  Sarevan, looking at him, knew.

  His eyelids lowered, raised. He almost smiled. “I, too,” he said.

  Sarevan glanced at the slaves. Aranos’ smile came clearer. “Deaf-mutes,” he said. “Most useful, and most discreet.”

  “But why would an Asanian choose to—”

  “For the power in it.”

  Sarevan sat on the edge of Aranos’ furs and frowned. “I’ve heard of that. I never found it to be true. Maybe my kind of power was different.”

  Aranos was gravely astonished. “It did nothing for you, and yet you suffered it?”

  “For the vows and the mystery
. For the god.”

  “Ah.” The essential Asanian syllable: eloquent of volumes. “And yet you knew me.”

  “No one in your harem has ever told anyone?”

  “They are women,” said Aranos. He did not even trouble to be contemptuous. “Every one believes that another enjoys my favors. Some have even lied to claim them, to gain what can be gained. I indulge it. It serves me; it quiets my so-called concubines.”

  “And you? Have you gained anything?”

  Aranos shrugged slightly. “I am an apprentice still. The full power, I am told, comes with full knowledge.”

  “You’re not mageborn.”

  For an instant Sarevan saw the man beneath the mask. The prince cast him down. “I am not. I must learn to fly with wings of wax and wire, where you were eagle-fledged in infancy.”

  Sarevan quelled a shiver. In that moment of Aranos’ nakedness, he had seen desolation and hatred and corroding envy. And yet, beside it, he had seen compassion.

  Even the unmasked man was Asanian. Webs within webs. Sarevan made his tongue a sword to cleave them. “I fly no longer. I walk as a man walks, and no more. But this much of power I have left: I can see the snares about my feet.” Aranos was silent. Sarevan thrust, swift and straight. “You promised to stand at your brother’s back; to name him heir before your father. You did not. You accused our Olenyai of treachery. They have proved to be loyal, and to your father. How do I know that you did not lie in all the rest?”

  “My brother is high prince as he was born to be.”

  “For how long?”

  The golden eyes hooded. “For as long as he can hold.”

  Sarevan considered seizing him; chose not to move. “You wanted us away from Halid and his men. Why?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “Cannot or will not?”

  “Both.”

  “I can beat it out of you.”

  “Can you?”

  Sarevan measured distances, boltholes, the prince and his two silent slaves. He smiled.

  Aranos smiled back. “Beautiful barbarian. How you must tempt my brother!”

  Sarevan fitted his long fingers to that delicate neck. “Tell me how I tempt you. Tell me what you plot against us.”

  “Truly,” said Aranos, undisturbed by the hand about his throat, “I cannot. I have my own designs, I admit it freely; perhaps my brother will not be emperor as long as he would like. But this that concerns you . . . I am part of it, but I do not rule it. I am not free to tell you more.”

  Cold walked down Sarevan’s spine. “You’re lying.”

  “As I have never known a woman, I swear to you, I am not.”

  Sarevan looked at him more than a little wildly. It had been so clear. So obvious. And if he lied—but he did not. It was enough to drive a man mad. “Then, if not you, who?”

  “I am forbidden to tell you.”

  Sarevan’s teeth bared. “You are the Second Prince of the Golden Empire. How can anyone presume to forbid you anything?”

  “My father can.”

  Almost—almost—Sarevan fell into the trap. But he knew Ziad-Ilarios. Liked him. Loved him, maybe, a little.

  None of it was enough to blind him. Ziad-Ilarios was a strong king, a good man as far as an emperor could be in Asanion, and an intriguer of no little subtlety. And yet.

  “This is not his weaving. No more than it is my father’s. Neither could have done what has been done in the other’s empire. Even the shattering of my power—I blamed him for it once. No longer. It was too magelike a trick. Too—much—like—”

  Sarevan stilled, suddenly, completely. Aranos’ eyes were wide and clear as topazes.

  “Mage,” Sarevan murmured. “Like.” A sweet wildness rose in him. Under the sky, he would have let it out in a whoop. “Ah,” he said tenderly. “Ah, little man, how cleverly you plan this game. Do they know it, your fellows? Do they guess how very dangerous you are?”

  “Any man is dangerous.”

  “Don’t babble.”

  Aranos said nothing.

  Sarevan smiled at last and let him go. Already the bruises were rising on his ivory neck. His skin was as delicate as a woman’s was supposed to be but almost never was.

  “You are dangerous. Your brother is dangerous. I—I am violent, and therefore dangerous.”

  “And subtler than you think, Sun-prince.”

  “Avaryan forbid,” said Sarevan. He rose, and bowed without mockery. “I thank you, prince.”

  “Perhaps in the end you will not.”

  Sarevan paused. He could not read the princeling at all. He shrugged. “That will be as it will be. Good day, little man.”

  o0o

  The Mageguild had settled itself in an unprepossessing quarter of the city, in the fifth circle between the cloth market and the high temple of Uvarra Goldeneyes. There along a narrow twisting street that ended behind the temple were the sages and the diviners, the sorcerers, the necromancers, the thaumaturges, the enchanters.

  They had divided the power into the light and the dark. They had named the greater powers, which were prophecy and healing and ruling of men and of demons and mastery of the earth and walking of the road between the worlds and raising of the dead. They had named the lesser, which were mind-speech and beast-mastery and firemaking and flying and cloudherding and the arts of shifting the world’s substance by will alone. They had even made a craft of the naming, turning a gift of the inscrutable gods into a scholar’s pursuit.

  Sarevan found the guildhall by scent, as it were: by the throbbing behind his eyes. Its door was neither hidden from sight nor blazoned with the badge of the order; it was a plain wooden panel behind a bronze gate, with a porter who eyed Sarevan through a grille, taking in the man in plain lordly garb of the Hundred Realms, with a cap on his head but his bright hair plain to see below it, and an ul-cat beside him and a painted Zhil’ari guarding him.

  The eye betrayed no surprise. Gate and door opened; the porter, an Asanian of no age in particular, bowed and said, “If you will follow, prince.”

  o0o

  It seemed a house like any other. No twisting shadowed passages. No stink of potions or moaning of incantations. No shimmering sorcerous barriers. Through open doors Sarevan saw men and a few women bent over books or deep in colloquy or engaged in instructing apprentices.

  Nearly all the masters were earth-brown easterners or bone-pale islanders. Most of the apprentices were Asanians. Some glanced at him as he passed. Curious, even fascinated, but unsurprised.

  Sarevan had expected to be expected. He had not expected to be piqued by it. They could at least have pretended to be amazed that the son of the Sunborn dared to show his face among them.

  He followed his guide up a stair and down a corridor. One door in it stood open. The chamber within was a library: shelves of scrolls, rolled and tagged, and a long cluttered table, and a man working at it.

  There was no telling his age. His hair was white but his skin was smooth; his back was bent but his eyes were bright; and the fingers that held the stylus, though thin to emaciation, were straight and fine and strong. Sarevan saw no familiar; he knew that he would see none.

  He bowed his aching head. “Master,” he said. No more. No name. Mages of the order gave their names only as great gifts.

  The guildmaster bowed in return. “Prince,” he said. “Your pardon, I pray you; I cannot rise to greet you properly. Will it please you to sit with me?”

  The porter had gone. Zha’dan established himself by the door; Sarevan sat across the table from the master, with Ulan at his side, chin on the table, watching the master of mages with an unblinking emerald stare.

  They all waited. Sarevan did not intend to speak first. He glanced at the scroll nearest: a treatise on the arts of the dark.

  His grandfather the Red Prince had made him read it. “A mage must know all the uses of his power,” Prince Orsan had said.

  “And its abuses,” Sarevan had countered.

  “The dark arts are
not abuse of power. They are as native to it as the arts of the light; but where light heals, the dark destroys.”

  “I would never fall so low,” Sarevan had declared. “My blood is Sun-blood. The dark is my sworn enemy. I will always heal; I will never destroy.”

  He smiled now, bitterly, remembering. He had been too proud of himself. And now he was here, traitor to Keruvarion, facing the master of the guild that had turned its back on his father.

  “Because,” said its master, “he would have constrained us to his will alone. We will not deny the dark; we will not ban the practice of its arts. That would be to deny the world’s balance.”

  Sarevan held himself still. The man had read his face, that was all. His mind was barred as firmly as ever, despite all assaults upon it. “I have heard,” he said, “that you will ban the arts of light and turn altogether to the dark.”

  “There are those who would do so, out of greed or out of bitterness. I am not one of them.”

  “And yet you suffer them.”

  “While they obey me, I do not cast them out.”

  “Even though they work abominations in the name of their magic?”

  “What are abominations, prince? Refusal to deny their gods and worship Avaryan? Insistence upon their own rites and prayers? Resistance to laws which they reckon tyranny?”

  “If it is tyranny to forbid the slaughter of children,” answered Sarevan, “yes. I know what rites you speak of. The Midwinter sacrifice. The calling up of the dead and the feeding of the gods below. The making of Eyes of Power.”

  The master folded his long beautiful hands. He wore a ring, a topaz.

  Sarevan shivered a little. He could no longer abide topazes.

  Quietly the mage said, “The world is not gentle. Nor are the gods. If they must have blood, then blood they will have. It is not for us to judge them.”

  “We contend that they demand no blood. That that is human avarice and cruelty and grasping after power.”

  “Is your Avaryan pure, prince? Has he spurned the blood shed in his name? Did he spare even his bride the pain of death?”