A Fall of Princes Read online

  NINETEEN

  Hirel could believe that sorcerers had snatched him away from Kundri’j. He could easily believe that he was a hostage. He could even find it credible that his captors were a conspiracy of the world’s mages.

  But this.

  At first they would not tell him what they had done with Sarevan. Then he heard them: the cries of a man in mortal agony.

  His jailers, a pair of young mages, one in violet and one in grey, insisted that they heard nothing; that all was silent. No force of his could shake them. When he lunged for the door, their power caught and bound him.

  The cries went on unabated. They tore at his heart; they rent his sanity. They came from everywhere and from nowhere. They echoed in his brain.

  Night came. The guard changed. A man and a woman, these, older and considerably stronger.

  They brought silence. They forced sleep upon him, from which he woke to a cold and relentless fury. And, with crawling slowness, to what they called the truth.

  They broke it gently. Too gently. At first Hirel heard only that they had wrought some unspeakable sorcery upon Sarevan. That they hoped by it to end the war. That they had slain him.

  “No,” said the woman. “He is not dead.”

  He was worse than dead. Hirel commanded; for a wonder they obeyed. They took him to a chamber almost princely in this barren fortress. They set him before the bed and left him to stare. A dark lithe body; a flood of molten-copper hair.

  A body. Hirel’s mind struggled against the impossibility of it. Liars, they were liars. This was a stranger. A stranger who was a woman.

  “It is Sarevadin,” said the mage in grey, unmoved by Hirel’s rage.

  She was as splendid as Sarevan had ever been. She was fire and ebony, strength and delicacy melded together, the eagle’s profile smoothed and fined into a stunning, high-nosed beauty.

  Hirel rounded on his jailers. The guard had changed again. High ones indeed now: Han-Gilen’s prince and the Mageguild’s master.

  He addressed them almost gently. “Undo your magic.”

  “We cannot,” the prince said.

  “You must,” said Hirel, still without force, still with the semblance of reason.

  “It cannot be done.” The master leaned heavily on a staff; nor was it only the twisting of his legs that so weakened him. “This magecraft is perilous to endure even once. Twice is deadly.”

  “Undo it,” Hirel repeated, obstinate. “Change him back. I command you.”

  “No.”

  It did not matter who said it. Even now Hirel could recognize finality.

  And hate. Hate as pure as that profile. “You will pay for this,” he whispered. He turned face and mind away from them. “Get out,” he said.

  In time they obeyed. Hirel sat, cold and still, waiting with the patience of princes.

  o0o

  He waited long and long. The changed one slept. Sometimes she stirred. Once she murmured. Her voice was low, but it was most certainly a woman’s.

  Hirel knew when she woke; knew it beneath his skin. Carefully he drew back.

  For a long while she neither moved nor opened her eyes. Her face betrayed nothing. When the lids lifted, the eyes were dim, clouded.

  Slowly they cleared. Her hands wandered amid the coverlets.

  One crept up. She stared at it, turned it. Gold flamed in the palm. She flexed slender fingers, eyes wandering along the fine-boned rounded arm.

  She touched her thigh. Raised her knee. Frowned at it. Turned it, peering at her foot. Not a remarkably small foot, but narrow and shapely.

  She was long in coming to her middle. Hesitant. Perhaps afraid. She felt of her face; of her neck. Ran fingers through her hair. Brushed a breast as if by accident, and recoiled, creeping back, trembling.

  Her frown deepened. Her lips set. She sat up, glaring down at the altered lines of her body; breasts high and round and firm above the narrow waist; hips a gentle flare; and where her thighs met, the worst of it.

  She touched it. No miracle transformed it. It was a miracle itself, frightening in its perfection; and no memory in it of the man who had been. That was all within.

  She rose, awkward-graceful, feeling out the balance of this new shape. Flexing narrowed shoulders, swaying on broadened hips, essaying an uncertain step. Little by little her gait eased, though it was taut still, wary.

  A shield hung on the wall, polished for a mirror; she faced it with an air of great and hard-won courage. She turned slowly, twisting about, knotting her hair around her hand, peering over her shoulder at her mirrored back.

  She touched her shoulder where the deep pitted scar should have been. It was gone. She was all new, whole and smooth and unmarred.

  She confronted herself, face to reflected face. Her hand rose to her cheek.

  “I’m not ugly,” she said in wonder. Starting at the sound of her voice, speaking again with an air of defiance. “I’m . . . not . . . ugly.”

  Hirel’s body moved of itself. She spun, quick as a cat.

  Hirel gasped under the force of those eyes. They had changed not at all; they were black-brilliant as ever, sweeping over him, flashing to his face.

  “You,” she said. “You look different.”

  His jaw was hanging. He retrieved it. Laughter burst from him: hysteria certainly, and incredulity, and something astonishingly like relief.

  For a moment she only stared. Then she echoed him, a ringing peal, tribute to perfect absurdity.

  They hiccoughed into silence. They were holding one another up, eye to streaming eye. She was a hair’s breadth the taller.

  She stiffened all at once, going cold in his hands. He let her go.

  She drew back. Her back met the mirror; she whirled upon it, tearing at it, flinging it wide. It rang as it fell. She sank down shivering, veiled in the bright cloud of her hair.

  Hirel stood over her. Touched her.

  She did not erupt as he had half expected. He sat by her, wordless. When she did not heed him, he stroked her hair. Her ear beneath it was exquisite. He kissed it.

  She pulled away with the swiftness of rage. “Stop pitying me!”

  “That,” said Hirel, “I had not begun to do.”

  His flatness gave her pause. For a moment. She flung back her hair. “Not yet. Oh, no. Not yet. I merely disgust you. I did the unspeakable. I who was a lord of creation, I who was nature’s darling, I let myself be twisted into this.”

  “A woman of great valor and beauty.”

  “Don’t lie to me, cubling. I can taste your anger. You think I was tricked, or forced. I was neither. No one made me do it. I chose it for myself.” She scrambled to her feet. “Look at me, Hirel. Look at me!”

  Hirel had learned to measure beauty by Sarevan Is’kelion. This that he had become was fairer still. Fair and wild, with the recklessness of despair.

  “I am angry,” he said. “They had no right to demand such a thing of you. None even to conceive of it.”

  “They demanded nothing. They tried to dissuade me.”

  “Surely,” said Hirel with a curl of his lip. “They warned you of the dangers, and spoke of the faces of courage, and named all the lesser choices. It was cleverly done. I applaud them.”

  “It was the only choice with hope in it.” She clenched her lists. “It’s no matter to you. You can wed me, bed me, get the child who will bring the peace, and go back to your twice ninescore concubines.”

  Hirel regarded her. She looked very young.

  As indeed she was: scarce a full day old. But Sarevan Is’kelion lived in her. It was in her eyes, and her bearing and the tenor of her words.

  “Am I to wed you?” he asked. “I was not consulted.”

  “Did you need to be? It should be easy enough for a man of your attainments. You’re not asked to love me. Only to beget a son on me.”

  Hirel frowned. She stiffened; he frowned the more blackly at himself, cursing his wayward face.

  This was going all awry. He tried to choose his words
with care. “You are too certain of my thoughts, Sunchild. Must I be revolted by you? Might I not find you as beautiful now as you ever were? Perhaps I even find endurable the prospect of contracting a marriage with you. After all, it is logical.”

  “Of course it is. Else I’d never have done this.”

  “But,” said Hirel, “I would that you had spoken to me before you submitted yourself to the mages.”

  She heard none of his regret. She heard only the rebuke which he had not intended.

  The glitter of her eyes warned him; he faced her, pulling her to him, holding her too close for struggle. She was no soft pliant woman. She was strong in her slenderness, like a panther, like a steel blade.

  In the instant of her surprise, he kissed her hard and deep. She tasted much the same. A little sweeter, even in resistance.

  For a long moment she was rigid. With suddenness that startled them both, her arms locked about him. Her body arched. Her sweetness turned to fire.

  He laughed, breathless. She did not laugh with him. Her eyes were wild and soft at once, and more than a little mad. “Lady,” he said. “Lady, I have wanted this, I have dreamed of this, so long, so long . . . Bright lady, I think I love you.”

  The softness fled; the wildness filled her. “Damn them,” she whispered. “Damn their meddling magic.”

  He drew breath to speak. To protest, perhaps. But she was gone.

  Hirel started after her, stopped. She was raw, looking for pain wherever she turned. Pain had brought her to the choosing; pain had made the choice, and wrought the woman where a man had been. Time would heal her; he could only hinder it.

  o0o

  He left the room slowly, letting his feet bear him where they would. He was not surprised to gain a companion, nor, at all, to recognize the man who walked beside him.

  Aranos was as coolly wise as ever, and as full of serpent’s sympathy. “She is a woman, brother,” he said with the suggestion of a smile. “These moods will beset her.”

  Hirel kept his anger at bay. Saving it. Hoarding it for when he should have the power to wield it. “You have made a woman. You have not unmade the Sunborn’s heir.”

  “Indeed we have not,” said Aranos. “But we have assured that you will live to rule not Asanion alone, but with it Keruvarion.”

  “Do you believe that?” asked Hirel.

  “It will require tact, of course. She was born a man and raised to rule. She will not accept meekly the woman’s portion: the harem and the bearing of children. But her body will aid you. It will guide her on the path of her chosen sex; it will yield to your mastery. Get her with child and keep her with child, and she will be glad to surrender her power into your hands.”

  Hirel knew that he should be calm. Aranos spoke simple wisdom. The philosophers proclaimed it. Women were begotten of a lesser nature, of flawed seed, with no purpose but to nourish the children which their lords set in them. And of course, the sages averred, to give pleasure in the seed’s sowing. Beasts might do as much. Beasts did, some believed; for what was the female but a blurred and bestial image of the male?

  “No,” Hirel said. “Lies and folly, all of it.”

  Aranos looked long at him. “Ah, Asuchirel. You have fallen in love.”

  “So I have. But I have not lost my ability to see what lies before my face.”

  “The better for you both,” Aranos said undaunted, “if you are besotted with her, if only you remember who you are. And what this marriage can gain you.”

  “I am not likely to forget,” said Hirel.

  Aranos was too well trained to lay hand on a high prince, but he raised that hand athwart Hirel’s advance. “See that you do not. Yon conspirators dream that they have won great victories: the Varyani that Asanion is theirs in the person of a malleable child, the mages that they have found a way to lessen Avaryan’s power and increase their own. I know that you are not the pretty fool that you so often choose to seem; I believe that the victor can be Asanion. If you press your advantage. If, having lost your heart, you do not lose your head.”

  Hirel smiled, honey-sweet. “My head is entirely safe. You might do well to be concerned for your own.”

  He stepped around his brother’s hand and stretched his stride. Aranos, in robes and dignity, did not see fit to follow.

  They had a fine nest of mages here. One or another was always within sight, though none accosted Hirel once he had rid himself of Aranos.

  He paced off the limits of the fortress. Much of it was carved into living rock, the rest built on the summit of a mountain. Beyond it was a wilderness of stone and cloud and sky.

  Some of the thronging peaks were higher, clad in snow. Many marched below in jagged ranks, black and red and grey and blinding white.

  No green. No sign of human habitation.

  Water rose bitter cold from a spring within the mountain. Food came by the will of mages: solid enough, and plentiful if not rich. The cooks knew no art but the art of spiceless stews and boiled grain. The wine was little better.

  There were compensations. The purity of the air. The splendor of the heights, and at nightfall the stars, great flaming flowers in the perfect blackness of the sky.

  o0o

  Mages found Hirel at a high window, set a robe on him, and led him to the hall. After the vault of heaven, the chamber of stone was dim and cramped. Hirel struggled to breathe its heavy air.

  The conspirators had gathered. They had a haggard look; the Red Prince was not among them, nor had they left a place for him. The Varyani sat a little apart from the mages, and Aranos stood with his brace of sorcerers. They were saying little.

  The Sunchild stood alone by the fire. Her hair was loose down her back; her robe was plain to starkness, white girdled with white.

  She was not wearing Avaryan’s torque. The Sun-priests’ glances deplored it, but her shoulder was turned firmly away from them. She played with the flames as if they had been water, letting them lick at her fingers.

  Hirel sprang toward her. Her glance halted him. It was a stranger’s stare, cool and composed, with no spark of recognition. Hirel stiffened against it.

  The fire had done her no harm. Of course; she was born of it. He had tasted the anguish of the birthing.

  She did not even choose to know him.

  Hirel stood beside her. He knew that the mages watched. He was past caring.

  He spoke quietly but not furtively, and reasonably enough when all was considered. “Lady, whether we will or nill, we are bound together. We can make of that bond a misery, or we can transform it into a triumph.”

  “Such a triumph,” she said. The words were bitter; the tone was remote and cold. “You with all your women. I in the harem’s chains.”

  Aranos’ satisfaction was distinct, like a hand on Hirel’s shoulder, a voice murmuring complacencies in his ear. He twitched them away. “You would be a fool to choose that, lady.”

  “I have already.”

  He looked at her then. At the bowed bright head; at the suggestion of her body within the robe. At the hand half hidden in her skirt, knotted into a fist, trembling with repressed violence. “Yes,” Hirel said, “it is a great pity that the spell’s weaving did not slay you as you wished it to. And that, having condemned yourself to life in a woman’s body, you should have waked to find yourself fair. And greatest of all, that I cannot find it in me to shrink from you. That I find you beautiful; that I desire you.”

  “Of course you desire me. I’m female. I’m dowered with an empire.”

  Hirel paused. “Perhaps,” he said, “I am at fault. To your eyes I would be no great marvel of a man. I shall never be more than small as your people reckon it; I am pallid away from the sun and sallow in his presence; and I am years too young for you.”

  “Now who’s talking like a fool?”

  Hirel spread his hands. “Is it folly? You insist that you repel me. Since you do not, then surely it is I who repel you. Did they fail, your meddling mages? Did they make you a woman who can love n
one but women?”

  Her head flew up. Her eyes were wild.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Touch me. What does your body say of me?”

  She would look. For a long moment he feared that she would not touch. Her hand trembled as she reached, as it traced his cheek. “It sings,” she whispered. “It sings of you.”

  “Of me? Not merely of men?”

  She drew a breath fierce-edged with temper. “Of you, damn you. It never—it didn’t—I still don’t want just any man. Or—or any woman. But you, I want. I want you with all that is in me.”

  “So always,” murmured Hirel, “have I wanted you.” His voice rose a little, clear and calm. “It is not the shape of you from which I recoil. It is that it was done to you. That, I can never forgive. Since it is done and is not to be undone, I bide my time; I wait upon my vengeance. And while I wait for it, I am minded to love you. I will share the world with you.”

  “If I am minded to share it.”

  “Half of it is mine, my lady.”

  “But half of it is not.”

  She smiled. Hirel was comforted, a little. He hoped that Aranos was not. It was a white wild smile, with no softness in it. “You’ll free your concubines, prince. You’ll swear solemnly to take no other woman as bedmate or queen. Else you’ll not have me.”

  “The concubines,” said Hirel, “I can agree to. But the rest—”

  “Swear.”

  Hirel struggled to master his temper. “You must be reasonable, my lady. There will be times when you do not want me. Would you have me force you?”

  “So then. We compromise. When you don’t want me, I’ll find another bedmate.”

  Hirel flung up his head. “You will not!”

  “Why not?”

  “It is unthinkable. It is forbidden. It is a breach of the marriage contract.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I do not understand you,” Hirel said with heroic restraint. “You suffered all of this for one sole end: to contract an alliance with me. Now you demand of me a concession which you know I cannot grant.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “I have no need of you. You need me, or your sacrifice is worthless.”

  “Without me, you die and your empire falls, and I live to rule.”