A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  Sarevan sighed from the bottom of his lungs. It was almost sinful, this. Purest animal contentment.

  What an artist the child was with those hands. What an innocent, in spite of everything.

  “You would have made a splendid bath-slave,” Sarevan’s tongue observed, incorrigible.

  Hirel worked his way downward, inch by blissful inch. Then up, and with more ease than he had any right to, he turned Sarevan onto his back.

  A faint flush stained his cheeks. His curls were loosening as they grew, falling over his forehead. Sarevan had no will left; he reached to stroke them.

  The boy was learning. He tensed, but he held himself still. Only his hands moved. Upward.

  Sarevan laughed. “I dare you,” he said.

  Slowly Hirel straightened, gathered himself, sat on the bed’s edge. His eyes slanted toward Sarevan’s middle, and slanted away.

  Sarevan refused to cover it. Even and especially when Hirel observed to the air, “So very much, to so very little purpose.”

  “What, child! Envy?”

  “Moral outrage.” Hirel tucked up his feet and drew his brows together. The line between them was going to be etched there before he was very much older. “Sun-prince, there is that which I must say.”

  Sarevan waited.

  Hirel’s hands fisted on his knees. “This should never have come to pass. You, I. You should have slain me before ever I woke by your fire. I should have taken your life while you lay helpless by the Lakes of the Moon, or held you back on the journey until you died of your own accord. We cannot be what we are. We must not. For I have heard and I have seen, in Kundri’j and in Endros. I know that two emperors rule the two faces of the world; but when our time comes, only one of us may claim throne or power. And that time is coming soon. Your father makes no secret of it. Mine intends to move before him. Has moved already, subtly. Are you not the proof of it?”

  Sarevan’s throat tightened into pain. He thrust his voice through it. “I’m proof of nothing but my own stupidity.”

  “That, too,” Hirel said all too willingly. “As am I of mine. Your father declares that his god will not permit a peaceful union of our empires. Mine insists that we must not be overrun by the barbarian vigor of the east. Yet here are we. I am not going to find it easy to bring about your death.”

  “What ever makes you think that you should have to?”

  “Bow to me, then. Bow to me now, and swear that you will serve me when I am emperor.”

  Sarevan sat bolt upright. The last languor of Hirel’s ministrations had vanished. His branded hand had flared into agony. But he laughed, though it was half a howl. “You forget, cubling. You forget what I am. Avaryan is not only my father’s god. He is mine, and he rules me. He—still—rules me.”

  Still. Sarevan laughed harder, freer, cradling the pain that was driving him through madness into blessed, blissful clarity.

  Avaryan. Burning Avaryan. No mere mage could drive him from his only son’s only son. He was there. He was pain. He was—

  Sarevan’s cheeks stung. He rocked with the force of Hirel’s blows, blinking, still grinning.

  “Are you mad?” Hirel all but screamed at him.

  “No,” said Sarevan. “No more than I ever am.”

  The boy hissed like a cat, thrust his hand into his coat, held it up shaking and glittering. “Do you know what this is?”

  Laughter, joy, even madness forsook Sarevan utterly. The thing in Hirel’s palm glowed with more than sunlight, but its heart was a darkness that writhed and twisted like a creature in agony.

  Or like a slow and deadly dance. It lured Sarevan’s eyes, drew them down and down, beckoned, whispered, promised. Come, and I will make you strong again. Come, take me, wield me. I am power. I am all the magics you have lost. Take me and be healed.

  Sarevan gasped, retched. “Take it—take—”

  It withdrew. Slowly, far too slowly, into the embroidered coat.

  “No!” cried Sarevan. “Not there!” He snatched wildly, striking, hurling the jewel through the air. It fell like a star, whispering.

  He seized Hirel’s wrists. “How often has it touched your skin? How often?”

  The boy blinked like an idiot. “Just now. And when first I took it. I do not like to hold it. But—”

  “Never,” said Sarevan, choking on bile. “Never touch it again. It is deadly.”

  “It is but a jewel. The deadliness lies in what it stands for.”

  “It is an instrument of blackest sorcery.” Sarevan dragged himself up, dragging Hirel with him until he remembered to let go. He snatched the first cloth that came to hand, and fell to his knees.

  The stone sang to him. Power. Power I bear.

  His sight narrowed. He groped. His right hand throbbed.

  He fell forward. His hand dropped boneless to the stone. He had no will to rule it. To close. To take, or to cast away.

  Gold met topaz. The song rose to a shriek. The pain mounted through anguish into agony, through agony into purest, whitest torment, and through torment into blissful nothingness.

  o0o

  “Vayan. Vayan!”

  Sarevan groaned. Again? Would he never be allowed to die in peace?

  “Sarevadin.” That was his mother, in that tone of hers which brooked no opposition. “Sarevadin Halenan, if you do not open your eyes—”

  His mind cursed her, but his eyes opened. He was in bed again, and they were there, she and his father, and Hirel green-pale and great-eyed beside them.

  “Poor cubling,” said Sarevan. “We’re too much for you, we madmen.”

  “Mad, yes,” snapped Elian, “striking an Eye of Power with no weapon but your Kasar.”

  Sarevan struggled to sit up. “Is it gone? Did I do it? It wanted me to take it. It promised me—it promised—”

  They all fell on him at once, bearing him down, holding him, trying to stroke him calm again. But it was his own will that stilled him, and his own wish that laid him back in his bed, somehow gripping three hands in his two.

  One freed itself: his mother’s, strong and slender. She looked angry, as always when her pride refused to weep. “Will you never learn?” she demanded.

  “I rather think not.”

  “Puppy.” Her slap was half caress. “It’s gone. There are aching heads from here to Han-Gilen, but the Eye is broken. As you very nearly were.”

  “I wish I had been!” he cried with sudden passion. “I wish I had died in Shon’ai. What use am I? Crippled, helpless, weak as a baby—what good am I to anyone?”

  “At the moment,” Mirain said coolly, “not remarkably much.” He won back his hand and turned to Hirel. “Prince, are you well? That was a great flare of power, and you almost upon it when it burst. If you will permit . . .”

  Whether Hirel would or no, Mirain searched him with eyes and hands and power. Sarevan, numb to the last, still could know that it was there, and how it was wielded, and why.

  But he was forgetting the vow that he had sworn. He willed away the unshed tears and sat up.

  This time no one stopped him. He set his feet on the floor, gathered his wavering strength, rose.

  His knees buckled. He stiffened them. He made them bear him to the eastward window, though he asked no more of them there, but let them give way until he half sat, half lay on the broad ledge.

  Night had fallen without his knowing it; the air was cool and he as bare as he was born. He shivered.

  Warmth folded itself about him. One of his own cloaks, with his mother’s hands on it and her arms circling him.

  Her swift unthinking smile was for an old jest, of mothers and strapping broad-shouldered sons. Her scowl was for the jut of bones in those shoulders.

  He kissed her cheek, quickly, before she could escape. “I’ll be strong,” he said as much to himself as to her. “I will be.”

  ELEVEN

  “Little whore.”

  The voice came from beyond the door into the Green Court. Sarevan knew it, as he knew the o
ne that spoke after. “Yellow barbarian. You couldn’t kill him cleanly, could you? You had to make him suffer.”

  And a third: “But we know. We see what you try to do to him now that he can’t defend himself.”

  “Yes, catamite,” sneered the first, “try it. See where it gets you.”

  Sarevan shot the bolt, blind for a moment in the dazzle of sunlight, forcing his eyes to see. Hirel stood at bay in a cluster of young men, some in the emperor’s livery, others clad as the lordlings they were. Sarevan knew them all. Some he even loved.

  Whatever Hirel had tried, he had forsaken it in favor of his imperial Asanian mask. Only his lips betrayed him; they were tight, and they were bone-white.

  Starion had spoken third and most ominously. Now he spoke again. He sounded as if he had been weeping, or as if he were not far from it. “I saw him yesterday in the stableyard. I saw how he had to be carried away. Your doing, you and your devil of a father. You lured him into the trap that almost killed him. You tricked him into bringing you here. You set your Eye of sorcery in his very hand; and yet you found a way to crawl into the emperor’s good graces. But we know you for what you are.”

  “Spy and traitor,” said a prince’s son from Baian, his round amiable face gone grim, “set here like a worm to gnaw Keruvarion’s heart. Is it fools you animals take us for?”

  “What’s the use of talk?” Ianyn, this massive yearling bull of a boy, not quite the tallest but by far the broadest of them all. “He’s Asanian; he was born with a serpent’s tongue, though he’s not deigning to use it on the likes of us. Not when he’s got royalty to hiss in the ears of. Here, little snake, I’ll tie your tongue for you.”

  Hirel spat in his face.

  Sarevan hardly heard the snarl, or saw the lunge of several bodies at once. He was in the midst of them, striking open-handed, taking at least one blow that all but felled him, until someone cried sharply, “Vayan!”

  The circle had widened in dismay. Sarevan almost laughed to see their faces. With great deliberation he laid his arm about Hirel’s rigid shoulders and said, “So there you are, brother. I’ve been looking for you.”

  Starion broke at that. “Don’t you know what he is, Vayan?”

  “Certainly,” Sarevan answered. And to Hirel: “Come with me. There’s something I want you to see.”

  “How can you show him anything? How can you trust him? He’s here to destroy us all, and you foremost.”

  Sarevan drew a deep breath.

  “He’s so thin,” someone whispered, too low to put a name to the voice; and Sarevan would not take his eyes from Starion. “So weak. O ’Varyan!”

  Sarevan swallowed bile and spoke as evenly as he could. “Kinsmen, your concern warms me. But I would thank you to reserve your righteous passion for those who truly mean me harm. Of whom this prince is not one. Touch him again, threaten him, speak one ill word of him, and it will be I who call you to account.” He drew Hirel forward. “Come.”

  o0o

  “That was not wise,” Hirel said.

  Sarevan laughed lest the pain lash him into shameful tears. “What’s wise? I’ve pulled rank on that pack of idiots before. Though not,” he admitted, “quite so viciously as that. I’m afraid I’ve not done you much good with them.”

  “Or yourself, either.”

  “That’s nothing. They’ll mutter a little, they’ll cold-shoulder me for a while, and then they’ll come back as if nothing had ever happened. They always do.”

  “Unless they are driven too far.”

  “Not yet,” said Sarevan with more confidence than he felt. He opened a locked door, passing again from dimness into the heat and glare of noon in full summer, and had his reward: the catch of Hirel’s breath. “This is my own garden. My father and mother made it for me with their power. It’s not as big as it looks.”

  “The pool seems as broad as a sea,” Hirel said, sounding for once like the boychild he was. “A sea, and a forest, and a green plain. What mountain is that?”

  “The palace wall, painted and ensorceled to look like the peak of Zigayan as it rises over Lake Umien.” Sarevan shed his kilt and waded into the water. After a long moment Hirel followed. Sarevan struck his shoulder lightly, challenging. “Race you to the island.”

  Hirel won, but only barely. They lay on the grass, getting their breaths, back, grinning at one another and at the brazen sky.

  Hirel’s grin died first; his frown came back. “Sun-prince, I was in no danger, and I was about to escape. You had no need to go to war for me.”

  “No? It looked as if they were going to war for me.” Something in Hirel’s face made Sarevan tense, rolling onto his stomach, raising himself on his elbows. “What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie, cubling. You’re no good at it.”

  “Very well, mongrel. I will tell you. They are indeed going to war for you. And not they alone. It is noised abroad in your empire: my father and I between us fomented this plot to destroy you, and through you your father and all his realm. Your people are crying for vengeance. Your lords and your princes are arming for war. Your wise men are calling for calm, but no one heeds them.”

  Despite the sun’s heat, Sarevan was cold to the bone. He had come to Endros for his father’s sake, with warning of war in Asanion; with hope, however frail, that he could hold it back. And he had failed more utterly even than he had feared. Coming as he had come, on the very edge of death, he had fanned the spark that he had meant to quench. Now it was a full and raging fire; and all for his own invincible folly.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. My father has a little sanity left. He will stop it.”

  Hirel laughed, short and bitter. “Your father could ask for nothing better. He has you, alive and well enough, and he has the war for which he has waited so long. By next High Summer, he has sworn, he will sit on the Golden Throne.”

  “No.” Sarevan could not stop saying it. “Not for me.”

  The boy’s face hovered close. He looked frightened.

  As well he might. Sarevan was losing what little wits he had had. He lurched to his knees; his fists struck the ground. He flung himself into the water.

  o0o

  He must have remembered to dress. His hair had worked out of its braid, but it was drying; and for the first time since he left Shon’ai, his body had forborne to betray him. It carried him he cared not where.

  To his tower, in the end. To court dress and the massive weight of his torque and a feast to which he had not been bidden.

  Because someone—Shatri, damn his diligence—had made him rest a little, he was late. They were all seated. Emperor, empress, Lord of the Northern Realms, Lord Chancellor of the South, their ladies, their servants, certain of their children. And in the place of honor, still as a golden image, Hirel Uverias.

  Their eyes weighed him down. Most were seeing him for the first time since he came back. He read horror in them, and dismay, and pity swiftly veiled. And anger, deep and abiding, most strongly marked in the youngest, who were his kin and his friends.

  He gave them his whitest, wildest grin, and said, “Good evening, my lords and ladies. I hear you’re having a war without me.”

  No one spoke. He did not look at his father, or at his mother, although he knew she had half risen. He sat beside Hirel and reached for a brimming cup. He raised it. “To death,” he said.

  o0o

  He paid for that, and not cheaply. Not that Mirain dealt him a reprimand. The emperor said nothing, which was infinitely worse. And Sarevan must sit, eat, drink, prove to them all that he was still Sarevan Is’kelion.

  He woke as inevitably he must, in a bed not his own. Hirel slept in a warm knot against him. “Damn them,” he whispered. “Oh, damn them.”

  “Damn whom?”

  He started up, winced, clutched his stomach, fell back, torn between anger and mirth. “Cubling! I thought you were asleep.”

  “Obviously not.” Hirel settled more co
mfortably, head on folded arm. His eyes were soft still with sleep. “Damn whom?” he asked again.

  “Everyone!” Hirel raised his brows. Sarevan had better fortune in his second rising. He spread his arms wide. “They’ve made me an object of rage and pity, a banner for their war.”

  “I know,” said Hirel. “It amazes me that you did not. That you came as you did, when you did, in my company—how could it have ended otherwise?”

  Sarevan’s own thoughts, bitter to hear from a stranger’s mouth. His hand flew up to strike; with all his strength he willed it down.

  “You should be rejoicing,” the young demon said. “You are getting a war. A chance to look splendid in armor and brandish a sword and win a hero’s name. Is that not the heart’s desire of every good barbarian?”

  “Barbarian I may be,” gritted Sarevan, “but I will not be the cause of this war. I will not.”

  “Is it not a little late for that?”

  “It may not be.” Sarevan stopped short. His teeth clicked together. “It is not. I will not have it!”

  For a miracle, Hirel was silent. Sarevan’s chin itched. His fingers rasped on stubble; he grimaced, rising slowly.

  His knees were steady. A wave of sickness passed, and it was all wine. No weakness. He stretched each muscle, and each responded, remembering at last its old suppleness. As close to rage or madness as he was, he could have sung.

  He availed himself of Hirel’s bath and servants, and sent for his own clothing, and ate while he waited for it, for a mighty hunger had roused in him. Which was an excellent sign, better even than the ease with which he moved.

  When he dressed, he dressed with care, contemplating his image in the tall bronze mirror. Clean, smooth-shaven, his hair tamed as much as it could ever be: yes. And the princely plainness of his boots and trousers, and the understated elegance of his coat, and the rich red gold of the torque at his throat: excellent.

  His eyes were too large and bright in the hollowed face, but that he could not help; though he had a moment’s regret. If he had had all his wits about him, he would not have sacrificed the concealment of his beard.

  He sighed and shrugged, and smiled at Hirel whose reflection had come to stand beside his own. Hirel looked him up and down, eyes glinting. “Are you plotting to seduce someone?”