A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  o0o

  Sarevan nursed his temper. It had to bear him up until he was well away from Endros. He nursed it well and he fed it with good food and ample, and he masked it with his best and whitest smile.

  He was not smiling when his father found him. He was in his tower, bare and damp from the bath, turning a length of white silk in his fingers. It was naked yet, its mate lost in Shon’ai with its four disks of gold hammered from coins as custom commanded, pierced and sewn by the hands of the priest who bore it.

  No time to make them anew. That would have to wait until this coil was all unraveled.

  He heard the door open. He knew the tread, light, almost soundless.

  He had been expecting it. It always happened when he quarreled with his mother. His father gave him time to cool a little, and came, and sat by him, saying nothing.

  His mother did it, for the matter of that, when he crossed wills with his father. It was one of the world’s patterns, like the dance of the moons.

  He had to struggle. To turn his eyes deliberately toward the night within him, to rouse the vision that told him why he must not yield.

  A hand set itself beside his own. Palm beside palm. Kasar and Kasar. Sarevan’s eyes narrowed against the twofold brilliance. “While you have this,” Mirain said, “you are my heir. I made that law when you were born, and I will not alter it.”

  “Nothing was said of altering it. Much was implied of regretting it.”

  “Only by you, Sarevadin.”

  Sarevan flung up his head, tossing the damp coppery hair out of his face. “Don’t try to lie to me. I’m worth nothing as I am, except to those who would shatter Asanion in my name. For revenge. Because I was too bloody arrogant to know when I was outmatched.”

  “Not so much arrogant as unwise. And you’re no wiser now. All your mother wanted was to keep you from killing yourself with too much strain too soon.”

  “She succeeded, didn’t she?”

  “Hardly,” said Mirain. “You should have done as you threatened to. You’d have been the better for it.”

  “I am a sworn priest,” Sarevan gritted, to keep from howling.

  “So am I.”

  “But you are a king.”

  “And you are High Prince of Keruvarion.”

  “I wish,” said Sarevan, and that was not what he had meant to say at all, “I wish he were a woman.”

  The silence stretched. Mirain’s charity. Sarevan wound the Journey-band about his hand and clasped his knees, letting his forehead rest briefly on them.

  He was not tired, it was nothing so simple. He ached, but that was more pleasant than not, the ache of muscles remembering their old strength. He shivered a little, not wanting to, unable to help himself.

  A robe dangled before him. He let his father coax him into the warmth of it. “We never could keep clothes on you,” Mirain said.

  When Sarevan looked, he was close to a smile, though he retreated all too soon. “We can’t keep you here. Even if your Journey would allow it, you wouldn’t stand for it.”

  Sarevan could not move. He hardly dared breathe.

  Mirain went on calmly, as if he could not reckon Sarevan’s tension to its last degree. “The Red Prince has sent a message. He wants to see you. Soon, he says, and for as long as you please. There’s work and to spare for you, if you’re minded to do any, and you can prove to Han-Gilen what you’ve tried so hard to prove to Endros: that you’re none the worse for wear.”

  Sarevan started at that, but he bit his tongue before it could betray him.

  “You’d do well to go,” said Mirain, “for a while. When Greatmoon is full again, Vadin will be riding to Ianon to secure it and the north. I would like you to go with him.”

  In spite of himself, Sarevan whipped about. “Why? What can I do that Vadin can’t?”

  “Speak as my chosen successor. Prove that I haven’t abandoned my first kingdom for the decadence of the south. Wield the power of your presence.”

  The words came flooding. What power? What presence? Sarevan choked them down. He had been wielding the latter in Endros without care for the cost.

  This much he had won. His father would grant him a Greatmoon-month in Han-Gilen with the man he loved best of all his kin. Who had taught him the mastery of his power; who had brought him back from death. Who had no patience at all with self-pity. And after that strong medicine, a trust as great as any he had been given: to speak for his father before the princes of the north.

  His eyes narrowed. His jaw set. “So Grandfather’s to be my nursemaid. And when he’s tired of me, Vadin will take me in hand.”

  “Vadin will ride under your command. He proposed it. It’s past time you earned your title.”

  Sarevan almost laughed. “O clever! You’ll bribe me with the sweetest plum of all: the promise of a princedom. No doubt I’ll be allowed to rule it as I choose—and well out of the way of your war.”

  Mirain did not even blink. “You can’t stay here. Nor can you wander free as you have until now. The lands are too unsettled; and you are much too valuable. Twice our enemies have sought to snare you. The third time may destroy you.”

  There was no danger now of Sarevan’s temper cooling. He let it flame in him, searing his mind clean even of awe for the Sunborn. His voice was soft, almost light, deadly in its gentleness. “Ah,” he said. “I see. You and Mother both—you labor to protect me. I’m your only son. For good or for black ill, I’m the only hope you have of a dynasty. You guard me and shield me and shelter me lest any danger touch me. And where your guardianship has failed, you take dire vengeance.”

  “How have I sheltered you?” his father asked, quickly, but calm still. “Have I ever denied you anything you wished for? You wanted priesthood and training in magecraft. I never hindered you. You Journeyed where you chose, even into deadly danger. I never raised my power to hold you back.”

  “But you watched me. Your power haunted me. All through Keruvarion your guards were never far from me. They failed in Asanion; but that was not for lack of trying. I’ve heard how Ebraz of Shon’ai paid for the trap he laid: paid with life and sanity. I know how you searched for me and never found me, though you combed the empires for me. It drove you mad that I had escaped your watchfulnes; that I had only my own will to guide me.”

  “My hunters’ blindness has been dealt with,” said Mirain.

  Sarevan raised his clenched fists, swept them down. “Damn it, Father! Am I still a child? Am I incapable even of picking myself up when I stumble? How long are you going to live my life for me?”

  At long last, Mirain wavered. His face tightened as if with pain. “I let you do as you would, even when you would do what I reckoned madness or folly.”

  “But you were there, always, to do the letting.”

  Mirain stretched out his hand. Not beseeching; not quite.

  Sarevan pulled back out of his reach. “Even this war—even that has begun for me. Has it never crossed your mind that I might want to win something for myself?”

  “You will have it all when I am gone.”

  “When you are gone!” Sarevan laughed, brief and bitter. “All signed and sealed, from your hand. A gift and a burden and a curse, and none of my doing. Am I so much less than you? Do you think so little of me?”

  “I think the world of you.”

  Sarevan was trembling. His eyes were open, and he was as full awake as he could ever be, and his sight was lost in the blackest of his dreams. Elian Kalirien dead in the ashes of the world, and the Sunborn gone mad.

  “Vayan,” his father said. Had perhaps said more than once. “Vayan, forgive me.”

  Mirain An-Sh’Endor? Asking forgiveness?

  “You are all that I am and more,” he said, raw with pain, “and I love you to the point of folly. I never meant to cage you. I only wished to keep you safe, so that you may be the emperor you were born to be.”

  “Emperor of what?” Sarevan cried from the depths of his darkness. “Dust and ashes, and war’s
desolation?”

  “Emperor of all that lies under Avaryan. I was born for war, for the winning of empires. Peace saps all my strength. But you—you can rule where I have won. You have the strength of will that I have not, to hold in peace what war has gained. Don’t you see, Vayan? You are not simply my son and heir. You are the fulfillment of this creature that I am. You as much as I are the instrument of the god.”

  “The sword cuts,” said Sarevan. “It cuts too deep for any healing.”

  “Save yours.”

  Sarevan’s sight cleared, a little. He saw his father’s living face. It was close, a shadow limned in light, with shining eyes. There were tears in them. He had struck harder than he knew, and deeper.

  No, he warned himself. No softening. This man who grieved for his son’s pain was king and conqueror; and by his own admission, born and shaped for slaughter.

  “I will not haunt you,” Mirain said. “No longer. When you go into the north, you go free, to rule in my name but according to your will.”

  “Even if that will is to oppose you?”

  Mirain started, stiffening.

  “If I hold the north,” Sarevan said, “and forbid it to join in your war, what will you do?”

  “Would you do that, Sarevadin?”

  Yes, Sarevan was going to say. But he could not. To defy his father by himself—that, he could do. To take a kingdom with him, a kingdom that had been his father’s . . .

  “I could do it,” he said.

  “Would you?”

  He shivered. “No,” he said, slow and hard. “No. That would rouse war as surely as anything else I’ve done since I resisted you and went into Asanion.”

  Mirain smoothed Sarevan’s hair with a steady hand, worrying out a tangle, stroking beneath where he was cold and shaking. Sarevan tensed but did not try to escape.

  “Father,” he said after a while. “Must you fight this war?”

  The hand did not pause in its stroking. “You know that I have no choice. Asanion’s emperor will not yield for words or for wishing. Only war can choose between us.”

  “If you could see what I see—would that stop you?”

  “I see that the darkness has deceived you. Another trap of our enemies’ laying. They know what you are; that you are more perilous even than I. They have labored long and hard to ensnare you; to destroy you, lest you become what they most fear.”

  “What am I, that you are not thrice over?”

  “You will be lord of the world.”

  “I don’t want—” Sarevan stopped. That, he knew in the cold heart of him, was false. He wanted it with all that he was: a wanting so deep that it seemed almost the negation of itself. But what it was, and what his father wanted it to be—there they differed. “I don’t want it stained with blood and fire.”

  “Perhaps it need not be. But perhaps,” said Mirain before hope could wake, “it must. Will you rule the north for me?”

  “Will you stop the war for me?”

  “No.”

  That was absolute. Sarevan drew back, steadying himself. His temper had died; he was, almost, at peace. He found that he could smile, though faintly, and not for pleasure. “I love you, Father. Never forget that.”

  “Will you rule the north?”

  Sarevan let himself sink down in weariness that was not feigned. “I need time,” he said. “I’m not—I can’t— Give me a day. Let me think.”

  For an instant he knew that he had gone too far. But Mirain said, “Think as much as you like. Your princedom can wait. So,” he added more softly, “can I.”

  Slowly Sarevan turned. Mirain’s face was not soft at all. Sarevan hardened his own to match it. “A day,” he said. “To set my mind in order.”

  “A day,” Mirain granted him. “Or more, if you have need of them.”

  Sarevan shivered. His eyes dropped; he could not force them up again. “No,” he said very low. “A day will be enough. Then,” he said, lower still, “then you will know.”

  THIRTEEN

  When Sarevan came, Hirel was ready. Scowling but ready, in plain dark riding clothes, with a long knife at his side and a scrip in his hand.

  “I have had the ambassador’s message,” he said with no warmth at all. “You are thorough.”

  “Of course.” Sarevan turned. “Follow me.”

  They walked quietly but not stealthily. There were secret ways; a palace was not a palace without them, as Mirain often said. But this palace was full of mages, and they would be on guard, alert for walkers in the dark. Walkers in the light, however dim, they might not pause to wonder at.

  Sarevan carried his coat slung over his shoulder and, as if by chance, over both their scrips. He did not hasten; he did not linger. Above all else, he did not think of mutiny. “

  Think,” he warned Hirel when they began, “of a restless stomach and an hour’s brisk walking, and of deep sleep after.”

  Hirel had given him an odd look, but had not protested. He did not speak at all as they went, until they met a lord with his retinue.

  The voices came first; at the sound of them, Hirel slipped his arm around Sarevan’s waist and leaned, hand to middle. His face when he lifted it was pale. “A little better,” he said loudly enough to be heard, “but still not—”

  The company was upon them, large, varied, and warm with wine. Sarevan almost groaned aloud at the sight of the leader: a baron from the east of Kavros, rich with pearls and with sea gold, older than he liked to be and less powerful than he hoped. He dandled a girl on each arm; he thrust them away, to bow as low as his belly would allow.

  “Lord prince! How splendid to see you about, and so strong, too, after all I had heard, though you look thin, very thin; that is not well, you must look after yourself, we need you sorely in Keruvarion.”

  Sarevan’s smile bared set teeth. “Good evening, Baron Faruun.”

  “Oh, good, yes, very good, my lord, as the lord your father said to me, just a little while ago it was, he said—”

  “I think,” said Hirel distinctly and rather more shrilly than he had in many days, “that, after all, I shall be ill.”

  Sarevan caught at him. He looked ghastly. But his eyes were lambent gold.

  “You can’t,” Sarevan said as that shimmering stare dared him to. “I won’t let you. Think about keeping it down. Think about the honor of princes.”

  Hirel sighed, and swallowed audibly. “You are a tyrant, Vayan.”

  “I’m growing you up, little brother. You can’t do this every time you drink a cup or three.”

  Hirel drooped against Sarevan. “I want to go to bed,” he said plaintively. Swallowing in the middle. Nuzzling a little, working mischief with his hands where the watchers could just see.

  “You’ll pardon us, I’m sure,” Sarevan said, flashing his teeth at them all and sweeping Hirel away.

  o0o

  Hirel recovered quickly enough once he had no audience to play to, though his color was slow to come back. He did not let go of Sarevan; Sarevan let him stay. Laughter kept rising and refusing to be conquered.

  “You can laugh,” Hirel snarled at him.

  Contrition sobered him, somewhat. “But you aren’t really—”

  “I always am.”

  Hirel’s bitterness was real, and deep. Sarevan pulled him forward. “Quick now; be strong. We’re almost out.”

  They met no one else of consequence. A servant or two; a lady’s small downy pet trailing its jeweled leash and looking utterly pleased with itself. Then they had passed an unwarded postern and entered the city. The rain had ended; wind tattered the clouds, baring a glimpse of stars, a scatter of moonlight.

  o0o

  The main thoroughfares of Endros were lit with lamps and tended by honored guildsmen, but its side ways were dark enough for any footpad. Sarevan kept to the latter, daring now to run, dragging the other by the hand. Nothing threatened them save a cur that snarled as they passed.

  The wall came sooner than Sarevan had expected. By the wan g
leam of Greatmoon he groped his way along it, searching for a stone that would yield to his touch. If he had come too far, or not far enough—

  It turned under his hand and sank. The wall opened into a tunnel a little higher than a man and a very little wider. Sarevan could just walk erect. Hirel followed him without trouble, gripping his belt.

  Another stone, another shifting. They stood on the open plain with the wind in their faces. Sarevan drank it in great gulps. Hirel retched into the grass.

  He would not let Sarevan carry him. His resistance was quiet but furious, and he gasped through it, choking, until Sarevan shook him to make him stop. “You’re wasting time, damn you! Up with you.”

  “I am not,” Hirel gasped. “I am not—I had to convince—I convinced myself. Put me down!”

  He walked, though he let Sarevan hold him up. It was not remarkably far. A thousand man-lengths, perhaps more, perhaps less. There was a hill and a copse and a crumbling byre, and in the byre Shatri with Bregalan and the striped Zhil’ari mare and one more: a rawboned, ugly-headed, sand-colored creature with a bright wild eye and a laden saddle. “No,” Sarevan said. “No, Shatri.”

  The squire did not even lower his eyes. “He told me, my lord. Your father. Whatever you did, to stay with you.”

  “Are you his man or mine?”

  “Yours, of course, my lord. With all my soul. But he is the emperor.”

  That, said Shatri’s tone, was inarguable. Sarevan drew breath to argue with it.

  The sand-colored mare snorted and rolled her eyes. The source of their wildness stalked out of shadow, rumbling gently. Of the seneldi, only Bregalan was calm; but Ulan had been there when he was foaled.

  The great cat circled Shatri, who stood very still, and came to press against Sarevan and purr. “Go back,” Sarevan commanded Shatri. “I am a priest on Journey. I may have no squire or servant.”

  “But, my lord—”

  “In Avaryan’s name,” Sarevan said, relentless, “and in the name of his priesthood. Go.”

  “My lord!”

  Sarevan turned his back on him and mounted.

  “My lord,” the boy said, pleading.

  Bregalan sidled but would not advance. Sarevan would not turn.