A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  Hirel’s voice cracked with bitter mockery. “What! Will you not take them, too?”

  “We take nothing that cannot be restored.” The priest leaned against the wall, arms folded. “Think of it as a game. A splendid gamble, the seeds of a song.”

  “Certainly. A satire on the fall of princes.”

  Sarevan only laughed and flashed his bold black eyes at the priestess, who blushed like a girl.

  Yet for all of that, when she spoke to him she was grave and almost stern. “Be gentle with him, Sarevan. He is neither as weak as he looks nor as strong as he pretends, and he was not raised as you were.”

  “I should hope not,” snapped Hirel.

  They were not listening. They seldom were.

  The priestess’ eyes said a multitude of things, and the priest answered with a level stare.

  She beseeched.

  He refused. He had a look about him, not hard, not cold, but somehow implacable.

  At last he said, and he said it in Asanian which he need not have done, “This is a suckling infant who fancies himself a man. He is haughty, intolerant, and ruinously spoiled. Would you have me cater to his every whim?”

  “Haughty,” she repeated. “Intolerant. Ruinously spoiled. Are you perfection itself, Sarevan Is’kelion?”

  “Ulan likes him,” Sarevan said. “I’ll be as gentle as I can bear to be. Will that content you?”

  She sighed deeply. “I think you are mad. I know he will find no one he can trust more implicitly. Curse your honor, Sarevan, and curse the compassion that you will not confess; and be warned. I have sent word of this to your father.”

  That had the air of a threat, but Sarevan smiled. “He knows,” he said. “I sent him a message of my own. I’m a dutiful son, madam.”

  “He has given you leave?”

  Sarevan’s smile gained an edge. “He’s made no serious effort to stop me.”

  Her head came up. Her brows met. “Sarevan—”

  He met her eyes in silence, his own level, glittering. After a stretching moment, Orozia’s head bowed. Her sigh was deep. “Very well. There will be a price for this; pray Avaryan it is no higher than it must be.”

  “I will pay as I must pay,” said Sarevan.

  She did not look up, as if she could not. “Go, then,” she said. Hirel could barely hear her. “And may the god protect you.”

  o0o

  The road into Asanion stretched long under Hirel’s protesting feet. Mounts they had none and were not to get, and Ulan was not precisely a tame cat. He came and went at will, hunted for them when it pleased him, vanished sometimes for an hour or a morning or a day. He was only rarely amenable to carrying a footsore prince.

  But Hirel did not press him. Spoiled, Sarevan had said. It rankled like an old wound. Worse than Hirel’s own hurts, which healed well and quickly, and left scars he did not look at. Spoiled to ruin.

  His brothers had said much the same. It had not hurt as much then, perhaps because they had weakened and paled it with envy and slain it with treason.

  Sarevan had only said it once. It was enough. Hirel would show him. Did show him. Walked without a word of protest, though the sun beat down, though the rain lashed his ill-protected head. Climbed when he must, stumbled only rarely, and slowly hardened. At night he tumbled headlong into sleep.

  It was a drug of sorts. It helped him to forget. But he had dreams of barbers and of knives, and of his brothers laughing; and sometimes he woke shaking, awash in tears, biting back a howl of rage and loss and sheer homesickness.

  o0o

  Slowly they worked their way westward. They did not strike straight into Pri’nai; they angled north, keeping for an unconscionable while to the marches of Keruvarion. Rough country, hill and crag and bleak stony uplands all but empty of folk, and those few and suspicious, hunters and herdsmen. Sarevan’s torque was his passport there, that and the brilliance which he could unleash at will. He could charm a stone, that one.

  He tried his utmost to charm Hirel. He told tales as they walked. He sang. He simply talked, easily and freely, unperturbed by silence or shortness or outright rejection.

  His voice was like the rhythm of walking, like the wind and the rain and the open sky; steady, lulling, even comforting. Then he would fall silent, and that in turn would bring its comfort, a companionship that demanded nothing beyond itself.

  o0o

  “Your hair is growing,” he said once after a full morning of such silence.

  Hirel had lost count of the days, but the land seemed a little gentler, the air frankly warm. Sarevan had stripped down to boots and swordbelt and scrip, and nothing else. Even Hirel had put aside his cap and unbuttoned his coat, and he could feel the light touch of wind on his hair. His hand, searching, found a tight cap of curls.

  Sarevan laughed at his expression. “You’re going brown, do you know that? Take off your coat at least and let Avaryan paint the rest of you.”

  He could say that. Splendid naked animal, he did not burn and slough and darken like a field slave.

  But the sun was warm and Hirel’s skin raw with heat, and Sarevan knew no more of modesty than of honor or courtliness. With hammering heart Hirel undid the last button, dropped the coat and the shirt beneath, breathed free. And flung the trousers after them with reckless abandon.

  He had done it. He had widened those so-wise eyes. He knotted his hands behind him to keep them from clutching his shame, and bared his teeth in a grin, and fought a blush.

  Sarevan grinned back. “They’d have my hide in the Nine Cities,” he said, “for corrupting the youth.”

  “What are you, then? Ancient?”

  “Twenty-one on Autumn Firstday, infant.”

  Hirel blinked. “That is my birthday!”

  “I’d cry your loftiness’ pardon for usurping it; but I had it first.”

  Hirel found his dignity somewhere and put it on, which was not easy when he stood bare to the sky. “I shall be fifteen. My father will confirm all my titles, and give me ruling right in Veyadzan which is the most royal of the royal satrapies.”

  Sarevan’s head tilted. “When I turned fifteen I became Avaryan’s novice and began to win my torque.” He touched it, a quick brush of the finger, rather like a caress. “My father took me to the temple in Han-Gilen and gave me to the priests. It was my free choice, and I was determined to embrace it like a man, but when other and older novices led me away, I almost broke down and wept. I would have given anything to be a child again.”

  “A prince stops being a child when he is born,” Hirel said.

  “What, did you never play at children’s games?”

  That was shock in Sarevan’s eyes, and pity, and more that Hirel did not want to see. “Royalty does not play,” he said frigidly.

  “Alas for royalty.”

  “I was free,” snapped Hirel. “I was learning, doing things that mattered.”

  “Did they?” Sarevan turned and began to pick his way down from the sunstruck height. Even his braid was insolent, and the flex of his bare flat buttocks, and the lightness of his tread upon the stones.

  Hirel gathered his garments together. He did not put them on. Carefully he folded them into the bag Orozia had given him, in which he carried a second shirt and a roll of bandages and a packet or two of journey-bread.

  He slung the bag baldric-fashion and shouldered the rough woolen roll of his blanket. Sarevan was well away now, not looking back. Hirel lifted a stone, weighed it in his hand, let it fall.

  Too paltry a vengeance, and too crude. Carefully, but not slowly, he set his foot on the path that Sarevan had taken.

  o0o

  Hirel paid for his recklessness. He burned scarlet in places too tender for words; and he had to suffer Sarevan’s hands with a balm the priest made of herbs and a little oil. But having burned away his fairness, he browned.

  “Goldened,” Sarevan said, admiring unabashed, as he did everything.

  “There is no such word.”

  “Now the
re is.” Sarevan pillowed himself on Ulan’s flank, face to the splendor of stars and moons, a creature of fire and shadow.

  It struck Hirel like a blow, startling, not quite unpleasant. Sarevan was beautiful. His alienness had obscured it, and Hirel’s eye trained to see beauty in a fair skin and a sleek full-fleshed body and a smooth oval straight-nosed face. But Sarevan, who by all the tenets of artist and poet should have been hideous, was as splendid as the ul-cat that drowsed and purred beside him.

  Hirel did not like him the better for it. And he, damn him, cared not at all. “Tomorrow,” he said, half asleep already, “we cross into Asanion.”

  For all the warmth of air and blanket, Hirel shivered. So soon? part of him cried. Too large a part by far, for his mind’s peace. But the rest had risen up in exultation.

  o0o

  There was no visible border, no wall or boundary of stone. Yet the land changed. Softened. Rolled into the green plains of Kovruen, ripening into summer, rich with its herds and its fields of grain, hatched with the broad paved roads of the emperors and dotted with shrines to various of the thousand gods.

  Sarevan conceded to civilization. He bound his loins with a bit of cloth. Hirel put on his trousers and the lighter of his shirts, and hated himself for hating the touch of them against his skin. But he gained something: he could walk barefoot on the road, his boots banished to his bag. It would have been more of a pleasure if Sarevan had not strode bootless beside him, near naked and gloriously comfortable.

  People stared at the barbarian. For there were people here, workers in the fields, walkers on the road. There was nothing like him in that land, or likely in the world. No one would speak to him; those whom he approached ducked their heads and fled.

  o0o

  “Are they so modest?” he asked Hirel, standing in the road with his braid like a tail of fire and the sun swooning on his dusky hide.

  “They take you for a devil,” Hirel said. “Or perhaps a god. One of the Thousand might choose to look like you, if it suited his whim.”

  Sarevan tilted his head as if he would contest the point, but he said nothing. He did not make any move to cover himself. No garment in the world could make him smaller or paler or his mane less beacon-bright.

  Hirel frowned. “You might be wise to take off your torque.”

  “I may not,” It was flat, final, and unwearied with repetition.

  “I can call it a badge of slavery. Perhaps people will believe me.”

  “Perhaps your father will swear fealty to the Sunborn.” Sarevan settled his scrip over his shoulder and began to walk. “I’ll not rely on deceptions, but trust to the god.”

  “To a superstitious lie.”

  Sarevan stopped, turned lithely on his heel. “You believe that?”

  “I know it. There are no gods. They are but dreams, wishes and fears given names and faces. Every wise man knows as much, and many a priest. There is great profit in gods, when the common crowd knows no better than to worship them.”

  “You believe that,” Sarevan repeated. He sounded incredulous. “You poor child, trapped in a world so drab. So logical. So very blind.”

  Hirel’s lip curled. “At least I do not spend my every waking hour in dread lest I give offense to some divinity.”

  “How can you, a mere mortal, offend a god? But then,” Sarevan said, “you don’t know Avaryan.”

  “I know all that I need to. He is the sun. He insists that he be worshipped as sole god. His priests must never touch women, and his priestesses cannot know men, or they die in fire. And if that is not punishment for offending the god, what do you call it?”

  “We worship him as the sun, because its light is the closest this world may come to his true face. He is worshipped alone because he is alone, high lord of all that walks in the light, as his sister is queen of all darkness. Our vows before him are a mystery and a sacrifice, and their breaking is weakness and unworthiness and betrayal of faith. The god keeps his word; we can at least try to follow his example.”

  “Are you a virgin, then?”

  “Ah,” said Sarevan, undismayed. “You want to know if I’m a proper man. Can’t you tell by looking at me?”

  “You are.” A virgin, Hirel meant. He looked at Sarevan and tried to imagine a man grown who had never, even once, practiced the highest and most pleasant of the arts. It was shocking. It was appalling. It was utterly against nature.

  Hirel eased, a little. “Ah. I see. You are speaking of women. It is boys you love, then.”

  “If it were, cubling, you’d know it by now.”

  Bold eyes, those. Laughing. Knowing no shame.

  He was proud to be as he was. He was alien. Hirel’s gorge rose at the sight and the thought of him.

  “I serve my god,” he said, light and proud and oblivious. “I have walked in his presence. I have known his son.”

  “Avaryan’s son.” It was bitter in Hirel’s throat, but less bitter than what had come before it. “The mighty king. The conqueror with the clever tale. He is a mage, they say, a great master of illusion.”

  “Not great enough to have begotten himself.”

  “Ah,” said Hirel, “everyone knows the truth of that. The Prince of Han-Gilen sired him on the Ianyn priestess, and arranged his mating to the princess his half-sister, and so built an empire to rule from the shadows behind its throne.”

  “By your account, the Emperor of Asanion has that in common with the Sunborn: he wedded his sister. But he at least rules his own empire. However diminished by the encroachments of the Red Prince’s puppet.” Sarevan’s mockery was burning cold. “Child, you know many words and many tales, but the truth is far beyond your grasp. When you have seen the Lord An-Sh’Endor, when you have looked on my god, then and only then may you speak with honest certainty.”

  “It angers you. That I will not accept your lies. That I will not bow to your god.”

  “That you cannot see what stares you in the face.” Sarevan spun about, braid whipping his flanks.

  Hirel wanted to savor the victory, that insufferable mask torn aside at last. But fear had slain all gladness. That he had driven the barbarian away: this alien, this mocker of nature, whose face at least he knew. Whom alone he could dream of trusting, here where he was alone, unarmed, and every stone might harbor an enemy. He ran after the swiftly striding figure.

  Sarevan slowed after a furlong or two, but he did not speak, nor would he glance at Hirel. His face was grim and wild. Oddly, he looked the younger for it, but no less panther-dangerous.

  “Perhaps,” Hirel said in a time and a time, “your Avaryan could be a truth. A way of understanding the First Cause of the philosophers.”

  It was as close to an apology as Hirel had ever come. It fell on deaf ears.

  Damned arrogant barbarian. It must be all or nothing. Avaryan with his disk and his rays and his burning heat, and how he had ever begotten a son on a woman without scorching her to a cinder was not for mere men to know.

  Hirel threw up his hands in disgust. Perhaps that tissue of lies and legends was enough for a simple man, a partbred tribesman. Hirel was a prince and a scholar. And he did not grovel. He let Sarevan stalk ahead, walking himself at a pace which suited him, letting the road draw him westward.

  o0o

  They were coming to a city as it would be reckoned in these distant provinces, a town of respectable size even for the inner realms of the empire. The shrines came closer together now, and many were shrines to the dead, stark white tombs and cenotaphs, hung with offerings. It was easy to mark the newest or the richest: the birds were thick about them, and the flies, and now and then the jeweled brilliance of a dragonel. In the dust-hazed distance Hirel could discern a wall with houses clustered about it.

  “Shon’ai,” Sarevan said.

  At first Hirel tried to make it a word in a tongue he knew. Then he grimaced at himself. It was only the name of the town.

  People were thickening on and around the road, moving toward the gate, some laden with
baskets or bales, or drawing handcarts, or leading burdened beasts. Hirel saw the haughty figure of a man in a chariot, and a large woman on a very small pony, and a personage carried in a litter.

  Swiftly as Sarevan moved, in a little while they were in the midst of the stream. Hirel kept close to the priest. He had seen no one at all for so long, and then had walked so far apart, and after days of Sarevan’s black eagle-mask these round golden faces were strange.

  Of course they stared. Children ran after Sarevan, once or twice even dared to throw stones at him.

  The stones flew wide. The priest glanced neither right nor left. He walked as a prince was trained to walk, as a panther was born to. He towered over everyone who came near him.

  o0o

  The gate of the town was open wide, the guards making no effort to stem the tide of people. It was no mere market day but the festival of a god. Which meant a market indeed and a great deal of profit, but processions with it, and sacrifices, and much feasting and drinking and roistering. There were garlands of flowers everywhere within the walls, on all the houses and the several temples, and on every neck and brow and wrist.

  Hirel clung to a dangling end of Sarevan’s loincloth and let himself be towed through the crowds. Very soon now he was going to disgrace himself. It was different for a prince. Where he went, the way was always clear, the throngs held at bay. Not pressing in, breathing foul in his face, bellowing in his ear.

  He could not see. He could not think. He could not—

  A strong arm swept him up. Hooves and horns and seneldi bellings ramped where he had been, clove a path through the press, and vanished.

  Hirel’s arms had locked about Sarevan’s neck. His breath came in quick hard gasps. “Take,” he forced out. “Take me—”

  Sarevan wasted no words. He breasted the crowd, and no one touched him; and in a blessed while the crowd was gone.

  Hirel raised his head, blinking. It was dark. Sarevan was speaking. “A room, a bath, and wine. Silver for you if you are quick, gold if you fly.”

  Slowly Hirel focused. They were in a wide room, surrounded by carpets, cushions, tables, an effluvium of ale. An inn.