A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  “Keruvarion,” Sarevan answered.

  The boy tilted his head and vouchsafed one of his rare smiles. He looked like a cat in cream.

  Sarevan swallowed. It hurt. “Hirel,” he said with great care, “last night. What did I—”

  “You were remarkable,” said Hirel. “You were the life and soul of the gathering. You were a light and a fire, and you held each man and woman in the palm of your hand.”

  “Of course I did. That’s what I went for. But why was I—” This was hard, and Hirel was making it no easier, going all warm and supple and melting-eyed. Playing some game of his own, and enjoying it much too much. “How did I end in your bed?”

  “You do not remember?”

  His astonishment was well played, but not well enough. Sarevan fixed him with a grim eye. “All right, cubling. What did I do, and what are you up to?”

  Hirel dropped the mask of the courtesan for that of the spoiled princeling, a little sulky, more than a little offended. “You did nothing. Except drown yourself in wine, roister everyone into a stupor, and fall into bed. Mine. Because, you said, two hundred steps were too many, and people were talking, and you were minded to give them something to talk of. Surely you remember.”

  “Vaguely,” Sarevan admitted. “Now answer the rest of it.”

  “No.”

  Sarevan gripped that stubborn chin, forced it up. It set against him. With a rush of temper, he bent and seized a long, thorough kiss. Thorough enough to bruise, and long enough to heat them both.

  He let go so swiftly that Hirel swayed. “Is that what you’re angling for?”

  Hirel bared his teeth. It was more grin than snarl. “It will do,” he said, “for a beginning.”

  Sarevan’s temper subsided; he took Hirel’s shoulders, but gently, shaking them a little. “They’re only a pack of jealous children. For all their prattle, they know the truth as well as we do.”

  “But,” Hirel asked, “what is the truth?”

  “What should it be?”

  Hirel tossed his head, swift, nervous, as if he would fling back his lost splendid mane. “The truth,” he snapped, “is that I am a whore and a spy, and I was your prisoner, and I contemplated your murder, and at a word, at one lone word, I would fling myself into your arms.” He glared into Sarevan’s craven silence. “No, I cannot help myself. No, I am not glad of it! I am the worst of all fools. I took you to wield you, and because there was no one else to take. I gave you my trust. I found that I could not hate you, even when you seemed to betray me. And now I am lost. I would be your lover, and I would do it gladly, and I would not ask even a harlot’s recompense. But in the end, I remain as I was born. High Prince of Asanion. They know, your kinsmen. They see clearly. I would love you without regret, and betray you with deep regret, even to your death.”

  “Avaryan,” Sarevan said softly. “Sweet Avaryan. I never meant—”

  “What an innocent you are,” said that most unchildlike child, shaking the slack hands from his shoulders. “You are plotting something, and I know what it must be, and I think that it is utterly mad.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “I would not if I could. I will help you as I can. But I give you fair warning. I will not betray my empire, and I will think nothing of betraying the god to whom you are sworn.”

  Sarevan laughed suddenly. “I’ll take my chances. If I win this throw, there will be no need for betrayal. If I lose it, I doubt I’ll be alive to care.”

  “That is the heart of it, is it not? Without your power, you see little purpose in living.”

  “I see one, and I am pursuing it. By your leave, sir?” Sarevan asked, mocking.

  Hirel bowed, mocking. With a grin and a flash of his hand, Sarevan left him.

  o0o

  It was flight; but it was flight from bad to worse. Sarevan’s new strength could not carry him quite as far as he had to go. He paused in a side chamber of his father’s antechambers, in a recess that offered a moment’s curtained quiet. The press of people did not find its way here; the servants were elsewhere about their duties.

  As he gathered himself to go on, he froze behind his arras. Swift feet; the snick of a bolt; laughter barely stifled. It rippled in two ranges, man-deep and woman-sweet. What accompanied it was obvious enough. A pair of lovers had found a haven.

  Sarevan did not know whether to laugh or to groan aloud. There was no door but the one the lovers had barred, and no escape except past them; and he was in no state to eavesdrop on their sport.

  They were most merry in it. He blocked his ears as best he could, and shut his eyes to aid them. Behind the quivering lids, Hirel smiled: but Hirel become a maiden, sweet and wicked. Grimly he began the first of the Prayers of Penitence, with its nine invocations of bodily pain.

  The lovers ended before the prayer. Sarevan, lowering hands from ears, heard only silence. He waited, hardly breathing. Nothing moved. No voice spoke. With great care he parted the curtain.

  His breath caught. They were there still, in a nest of carpets. Her head lay on his shoulder; his hand tangled itself in her hair. Hair that, had she stood, would have tumbled to her knees, fire-bright as Sarevan’s own.

  He sank back in his hiding place, hands clapped over mouth. His shoulders shook with the utter and delicious absurdity of it. Lovers, indeed. The Emperor and the Empress of Keruvarion, twenty years wed, trysting like children; and their son trapped without escape, all unwilling to be their witness.

  Elian would be livid when she knew; he could hope that she would soften into laughter. He did not fancy another nine months’ span in a woman’s body.

  She spoke, a murmur, drowsily tender. Sarevan, moving to reveal himself, paused.

  “No one’s here,” Mirain said. “We have a while yet before anyone looks for me. I told them I was going to ride the Mad One.”

  She laughed softly. “And no one dares to trouble you then. Alas for me, I never stopped to think. They’ll be combing the corridors for me.”

  “Let them.” Properly imperial, that, but with a smile beneath it. “Were you so eager, then?”

  “You hardly gave me time to begin. Hot as a boy, you are. And you more than old enough to know better.”

  “Come now, madam. May not even a greybeard take what pleasure he can?”

  She snorted. “Even if you had a beard, which I am glad you do not, there would be scarce enough silver in it to buy a night with a camp follower.”

  “I found a thread,” he said, “this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “I don’t see—” She stopped. There was a flurry, with his laughter in it, and her mirthful outrage. “Ah, trickster! That’s the silver in your robe.”

  “It’s all I have. I’m not aging gracefully, my love. I keep thinking I’m a youth still.”

  “You are!”

  His voice held a smile, for her vehemence. “And you are as wild as ever you were. But not,” he added judiciously, “as beautiful.”

  She growled. He laughed. “O vain! You were nothing in your youth to what you are in your womanhood. Men sighed for you then. Now they swoon over you.”

  “Indeed,” she muttered. “Flat at my feet, mooncalves all, and blind with it. Though one or two . . . if you were not so fierce in your jealousy . . .”

  “When was I ever—”

  “When were you not? Vadin you never minded: the world never saw a man more thoroughly married than that one, or more perfectly a brother to his soul’s sister. But let other eyes slide toward me, and you turn to thunder.”

  “Only once,” he said, “and that was long ago; and I had reason.” He paused. His tone softened. “Elian. Do you regret it? That you chose as you did, and bound yourself to me, and let the prince go back alone to Asanion?”

  “Sometimes . . .” Her voice was softer even than his. “Sometimes I wonder. But regret, never. You are all that I ever wanted.”

  “Even my damnable temper? Even our battles?”
/>   “What would life be without a good clean fight?”

  “He would have given you a spat or two, I think. He was never as insipid as he looked.”

  “He was not insipid! He was gentle. You were never that, Mirain. Tender, with me, with Sarevan when he was small. But never gentle.”

  “Ziad-Ilarios was as gentle as a lion sleeping. His son is more like him than anyone might guess, though not so soft to the eye or the mind. There are scars in that child. New wounds; but old ones too, buried deep. He’ll be a strong emperor, or he’ll break before he comes to his throne.”

  “If he were going to break, he would have broken before this. Do you know what it cost him to bring Sarevan to us?”

  “Not entirely of his own will,” said Mirain.

  “Less so than he or anyone thinks. He has his father’s curse. He’s honorable.”

  “Not all would call it honor, to bring an Eye of Power into Endros.”

  “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “Did he not? He hid it from us. He brought it to Sarevan in his greatest weakness, and very nearly destroyed him.”

  “In ignorance,” she persisted. “He knows nothing of magic; he knows little more of trust. But Sarevan he trusts, though not willingly. He brought a thing that frightened him, to the one person he knew who might know what to do with it.”

  “If I grant you that, will you grant me this? There was design in what he did. Not his own, maybe. But he found a place of black sacrifice— Asanian black sacrifice—within sight of my city. He brought what it had wrought into the heart of my palace.”

  “Traps within traps,” she said slowly. “Wheels within wheels. It’s too obvious. As if someone were trying, deliberately and all but openly, to turn you against the Golden Empire.”

  “Need it be so complex? Asanion is arming on all fronts. And it has the Mageguild.”

  “Does it also have Ulan? He set the Eye in the child’s hand.”

  “Oh, come,” said Mirain with a flicker of impatience. “You yourself saw a reason for that. He sensed the evil; he cherishes a remarkable fondness for the boy. He trusted Hirel to dispose of the thing.”

  “You underrate Ulan, I think. If he was ever an ordinary creature, he’s one no longer. He’s steeped in magery.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Vadin’s, for hunting an ul-queen and bringing back her cub. Yours and mine, for letting our own cub out of sight for long enough to lose him. Sarevan’s, for finding his way to the cage and witching away the lock and swearing brotherhood with the cat. How were we to know that he had that much power, at five years old? Or that he’d give his heart to the deadliest of the world’s hunters?”

  “It’s done,” Mirain said. “I don’t think it was ill done. The beast has played his part more than once in keeping the boy alive. He’s part of no conspiracy. But that Asanion has declared war in its own subtle and serpentine way—that, I’m sure of. It chose my son as its target. It will pay.” His voice deepened. “It will pay to the last man.”

  “Someone may be longing for precisely that. Any man in the world can name your weakness: Prince Sarevadin.”

  “He is my son. He is all that I may have.”

  “Mirain—” she began.

  He silenced her. With a kiss, from the sound of it: a long one, ended with reluctance. When he spoke, he spoke softly, with a hint of sadness. “Of all that I am and have done, this I most regret: that I could give you no more than the one son.”

  “Sarevadin is enough.”

  “Surely. But I would have given you a daughter for yourself.”

  “I need no more than you gave me.” Her voice was strange. Sarevan, listening in helpless fascination, could not put a name to the strangeness. It faded almost as swiftly as he noticed it. “I want no more than I have. But I would not have you destroy an empire for his sake alone.”

  “For what higher cause would you have me do it?”

  “You may have no cause!” she cried. “This that he suffers, he did to himself. He knows it. He wants no vengeance. He wants no war.”

  “He will have both.”

  “He will die to stop it.”

  “He will not.”

  “How can you know?” Her passion rocked Sarevan in his shadow, flung him against the cold stone of the wall. “I carried him in my body. I feel him there yet. He is an open wound; he will do anything, anything at all, to put an end to the pain.”

  “He will not,” Mirain said again, grim as stone. “I will avenge him. He will rule the world with me, and none shall live who dares to stand against us.”

  “Oh, you man!” If Sarevan had been less benumbed by all he had heard, he would have smiled at the depth of her disgust. “Can’t you ever see anything but force? You’ll settle it all with the sword, and set his will at naught while you do it, and expect him to be glad of it.”

  “How else can anyone unravel this tangle? I should have struck against Asanion when Ilarios took the throne. I listened to prudence; I had mercy. I gave them peace. Fool that I am. You see how I pay: with my only son. If he dies before this war is ended, I swear to you, I will leave not one stone standing on its brother. I will raze Asanion to the ground.”

  “Not before I will.” She was as grim as he. “But it will cost you more than Vayan. It will cost you me.”

  “It will not.”

  The silence stretched, as after thunder. Sarevan’s hand reached of its own accord, drew back the curtain. They did not see. They stood face to face, eye to eye.

  “I walk with the god,” he said. “He gives me victory.”

  Her head tossed. All of Sarevan’s protests blazed in her eyes.

  Her hand flew up. Mirain stood steady. She laid her palm against his cheek. “I love you,” she said, soft, barely to be heard. “I love you more than anything in the world.”

  He turned his head to kiss her palm. Their eyes met, held, broke free. Wordless, oblivious to the one who watched, they left the chamber.

  Sarevan stumbled out of the alcove. The nest of carpets lay forgotten. He stood over it. He was shaking; he could not stop. He said the words with which he had meant to begin.

  “Father,” he said. “Father, consider. What can war do, that words and wisdom cannot?”

  He had his answer. Avenge one man’s idiocy. End an ancient enmity. Give Mirain the dominion for which he had been born. Which he meant, in its proper time, to pass to that young idiot who was his son.

  “Not,” said Sarevan, “if I can help it. Not this way.”

  The shaking had retreated inward. He could move. Hold up his head. Put on the most rakish of his faces. Stride forth into the full and brazen light of Avaryan.

  o0o

  Sarevan wooed Keruvarion with his presence and his smile and a word here and there. He traversed the palace; he sat an hour in the hall of audience; he made himself a magnet for the young bloods of the court.

  With Bregalan under him and Ulan striding by his side, he rode about Endros. He traded jests with his father’s soldiers, and took the daymeal with his own guard, and had an uproarious reunion with the Zhil’ari who had ridden with him from the Lakes of the Moon.

  He sang the sun down from his own tower, and let his nursemaids put him to bed, clucking over him as they did it. He would not let them feed him, but he ate enough to quiet the loudest of them.

  “And now,” he said, “off with you, and let me sleep in peace.”

  Sleep came fitfully, peace not at all. Behind Sarevan’s eyes shuddered the darkness of madness, or of prophecy. Death and destruction; bitter sunlight; a new dread: his mother fallen, his father gone mad over her body. He tossed in his bed, battling, as if his hands alone could drive back the horror that haunted him.

  With infinite slowness he quieted. His breathing eased. His mind cleared; his will hardened. But he did not sleep. He dared not.

  He watched the moons’ patterns shift on the floor. The windows were open to the wind; shadows danced, now lulling, now
startling, now alluring his eyes.

  One was very like a human shape. When it moved, it moved with fluid grace. The rest now approached, now retreated with the wind’s turning. This paused often, but never drew back.

  It stilled. Its shape was human surely: slender, supple, not tall. It sat at his bed’s foot, and its weight was not considerable, but weight it certainly had. It tucked up its feet and settled its rump and regarded Sarevan with wide moon-brightened eyes.

  A stare, like a shadow, can have weight. Sarevan fretted under it. It did not waver.

  “Cubling,” said Sarevan with elaborate patience, “it’s late. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “There are hours yet to midnight,” Hirel said. He blinked, which was a small but potent mercy.

  “Surely you have better things to do with those hours than sit and stare at me.”

  “No,” Hirel said. “I do not.”

  Sarevan sat up. “Damn it, cubling! What’s got into you?”

  “You kissed me.”

  Sarevan scrambled himself together, cursing the mane that tumbled and knotted and tried to blind him, raking it out of his face. Hirel watched with grave intentness. For once in his life, Sarevan was aware that he was naked: and under a blanket yet, and a heavy cloak of hair. “Damn it,” he said again. “Damn it, infant. That was a game I played, to stop your nonsense.”

  The golden eyes narrowed. “A game, prince?” Hirel asked very softly.

  “A game,” Sarevan repeated. “That was all. I erred, I admit it. I cry your pardon.”

  Hirel sat motionless. Sarevan could not read his face at all. He was all alien, inscrutable, like one of his own discredited gods.

  “Cubling,” said Sarevan, meaning to be gentle, sounding lame even to himself. “Hirel. Whatever you think I meant, I was only playing. Being outrageous, because you were there and being infuriating, and I couldn’t help myself. I’m like that. It’s the most glaring of all my flaws.”

  “What should I have thought you meant?”

  Sarevan gritted his teeth. “You know damned well—”

  Hirel tilted his head. “Would you be so angry if it truly had meant nothing?”