A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  The guildmaster leaned on twin staffs. His robe, which had never seemed to be of any color in particular, in that light seemed woven of silver and violet together, shimmering like imperial silk. “I must know,” Hirel answered him. “Has Asanion fallen?”

  “No.”

  “Is my father dead?”

  “Indeed not.”

  “Have I been stripped of my titles?”

  “You know that you have not.”

  “Then,” said Hirel, “I have nothing to fear.”

  The mage sat by him. Why, thought Hirel, the man was young. It was the twisting of his body, and the pain of the twisting, that had aged him so terribly.

  It was no less than he deserved.

  “Indeed,” he said calmly. “It was my payment for the power I wield. I had great beauty once and great strength, and grace such as few of mortal race are given. I was a dancer in the temple of Shavaan in Esharan of the Nine Cities.”

  “But they are—”

  “Yes. They are all women. What I did to your beloved, I did to myself. And more. All that I had been, I surrendered, to be the master of mages.”

  Hirel considered that broken body, those clear eyes. “What price will you demand of me?”

  “Not I, prince. The power. It will do with you as it chooses.”

  “I do the choosing, guildmaster.”

  The master smiled. “Perhaps you do. Perhaps you have. Are you not inextricably bound to the Sunchild? Do you not accept the reality of magic?”

  “Perforce,” said Hirel, “yes.” He narrowed his eyes. “Tell me.”

  The master bowed his head, raised it. “Perhaps, after all, it is not so terrible. It is merely a wielding of power. We are out of your world, prince, and out of your time. It is still autumn there; the war has barely begun. Mirain An-Sh’Endor has taken Kovruen. Ziad-Ilarios has announced that he will lead the Asanian armies in his own sacred person, as he led them before he took the throne.”

  Hirel bared his teeth in a smile. “Scandalous.”

  “Is it not? But that is nothing to the greater scandal that rocks Asanion. The emperor your father will not only command his own forces in the field. He has sent an embassy to the Sunborn, proposing an alliance.”

  Hirel stiffened, incredulous.

  “Truly, prince. An alliance against us who dare to hold you hostage.”

  Hirel laughed suddenly. “Thus is the biter bit!”

  “If either of them can find us.”

  “They will,” said Hirel. “You are not the master of all mages.”

  “I am not,” the guildmaster conceded. “The Sunborn is greater than I. But if he accepts your father’s embassy, he will have fulfilled our purpose. They may find our gate; they may besiege it; they may even conquer it. It does not matter. You are here, with your lady who bears the heir of the empires.”

  “And they fight together.” Hirel frowned. “If all is turning to your advantage, why are your mages so reluctant to boast of it?”

  “It is too early yet for certainty. The Sunborn may refuse the alliance. The Golden Courts may turn against your father. Ziad-Ilarios himself may choose to act alone in despite of his ambassadors.”

  “And,” said Hirel, seeing clearly now, “we their children may manage to escape you. What will the Sunborn do when he discovers that he is father to a daughter?”

  “He will discover it. In good time. When it will best serve us all.”

  “How long, guildmaster? How long will you imprison us here?”

  “As long as we must.”

  “As long as you can.” Hirel stood. “I should be compassionate. Your order will bear the brunt of the emperor’s wrath. Does it trouble you that even as your people suffer, certain princes will enjoy the full trust of their lords?”

  “That trust serves us well,” the master said.

  “Trust us, magelord. Let us share in your counsels. We are your great weapon; should we not have a voice in our wielding?”

  “What sword is given such grace?”

  “What sword has a will to oppose its bearer?”

  “Your lady will not. She has foreseen what will be. She will not betray her prophecy.”

  Hirel heard the echo behind the words. “You fear her even more than you fear me. You struck a bargain of desperation with a prince bereft of his power. A mageborn princess is a new and frightening thing; for she may choose to disregard the fears and follies of her elder self. Is it you who give her such pain with each new flexing of her power? Is it you who would strengthen each wall as she casts it down?” Hirel stood over the mage, wielding his presence with all his royal skill. “Trust we meet with trust; and there may be much that we can do to aid you. But if you persist in treating us as captives, we will do all that we can to set ourselves free.”

  The guildmaster sat silent, uncowed. Hirel refused to let the silence diminish him.

  At last the mage said, “Perhaps we have erred. We meant but to spare you anxiety.”

  Hirel folded his arms and bulked a little larger.

  “Would you rather have heard rumors and half-truths from the mouths of our apprentices?”

  “There are no apprentices here.”

  The guildmaster shifted his body, sighing. “Prince Orsan warned us. My fault that I would not listen. I am not greatly skilled in dealing with princes.”

  “Young princes. Children who refuse to be children. Apprentices with the arrogance of masters.”

  The mage smiled. “Just so, high prince. Will you pardon me?”

  “If you will trust me.”

  “I can try.”

  “I will know if you do not.” Hirel stepped back. “Good day, sir.”

  o0o

  It struck Hirel as he left the hall behind. A lady who bore the heir of empires.

  Already.

  How could they know?

  Of course they must. They were mages.

  He began to run. Stopped short, mindful of dignity. Damned it all and bolted toward the whisper of her presence.

  It was not hard, with necessity to drive him. She was on the mountain, perched on the tip of its fang, calling to eagles.

  Hirel dropped gasping at her feet. Heights had never troubled him overmuch, but this was loftiest lunacy.

  For a long while he could only struggle to breathe. Then he looked down and nearly lost his senses.

  He clutched at unheeding stone and forced his eyes to open. She filled them.

  In the bitter cold she wore torque and trousers and an armlet or three. Her feet were bare. Her mantle she wrapped about Hirel, wrapping herself about that, firing him with kisses.

  “I can talk to them,” she said, exultant. “The eagles. They’re bronze, have you seen? They know no white kin.”

  Hirel glared at her. “Are you going to face the courts of the empires as you face yonder eagles?”

  She followed his glance downward to her breasts. “They don’t like coverings.”

  “Have you paused to wonder why?”

  It was Hirel who blushed. She shrugged. “It’s common, I suppose. I may be more sensitive than most. Or maybe I’m simply not used to it. Other women grow into it gradually.”

  “Yes,” said Hirel, “it is gradual. Twice nine Brightmoon-cycles, more or less.”

  There was a very long silence. She drew back, sitting on her heels, staring down at her body. She weighed her breasts in her hands. She spanned the faint curve of her belly.

  She reached inward, a quiver of Hirel’s newborn senses. Her head came up. Her face was blank, shocked.

  “I am,” she said. “I . . . actually . . . am.” She still did not believe it. Even though she knew. Even though she had wedded him for this very purpose.

  She had begun to shiver. Hirel spread her cloak over them both, holding her in silence.

  Her mind was walled and barred. How far he had come in so little time: he floundered in its absence, like a man struck blind. It was easier when he was apart from her; then he could endure to be alone.
But to be body to body and shut away . . .

  Anger flared, warming him in the wind. Was that how he must live? Crippled when he walked alone, whole only when he lay in her embrace. Living for the touch of her hand. Pining for the lack of it.

  Suddenly she flung him away from her. “I don’t want it,” she said. Her voice rose. “I don’t want it! I want my body back. I want to be what I was born to be!”

  Hirel’s temper collapsed into terror. He hardly dared breathe. One step and she would tumble from the precipice. He watched her ponder it, poised on the edge, hands clawed as if to rend this flesh that had imprisoned her.

  She whipped about. She laughed, and that was frightening. “Not me alone, my husband. That’s the heart of it. Now I know why so many men try so hard to keep their women locked in cages. We’re weak. We’re fragile. We’re strangers to reason. And we have this mighty power. Without us, none of you would be. Without our consent, granted freely or by force, none of you would have a son to brag of.”

  “So too must we consent,” Hirel said, treading with care.

  She swayed backward. His heart stopped.

  She bared her teeth. “Such consent! A few moments’ pleasure and you can walk away. It’s the woman who faces twice nine cycles of steadily worsening pain, with agony at the end of it, and all too often death.”

  “Not always. Far more often there is great joy.”

  “Maybe.” She tossed her wild bright hair. “I endured this once, Hirel; and even then I could take refuge in my own body. I can’t endure it again with no such escape. I’ll break. I was made to hunt, to fight, to face death edged or fanged: for man’s courage. Not for this.”

  “I never marked you for a coward.”

  “Of course I’m a coward. I’m a woman.” She leaned toward him. “You are a bold brave prince. You carry this child.”

  “I cannot.”

  “No; you can’t. You shrink from the very thought of it.”

  “Sevayin—”

  “Sevayin!” she mocked him. “Sevayin! Sarevadin who ever was, with all the bloom worn off, and grim reality staring her in the face. It was a splendid game when it was new. A body my old self would have lusted after; freedom at last to be your lover; my power born again all unlooked for. Wouldn’t you think I’d paid enough for all of that? Couldn’t I stop now and go back to what I was before? I can even face the war. Nothing I’ve done seems even to have delayed it, let alone put a stop to it.”

  “Would you give me up, Vayin?”

  She left the brink. She swooped upon Hirel.

  He tumbled backward. She raged; she laughed; she dropped beside him, hands fisted over her eyes, tears escaping beneath them. “You must despise me.”

  Gently he drew her hands down, holding them against his breast. “I love you.”

  “The god alone knows why.”

  “Yes.” He kissed her. She tasted of salt.

  Her head twisted away from him. “You like me better this way. You’re freer with me.”

  “Because you are freer with me.”

  “That’s not I. That’s this body I’m trapped in.”

  “But surely your body is as much your own as is your mind.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” She faced him. “You love me because the mages have bound you to it. I desire you because they set the same spell on my body.”

  “No mage alive,” said Hirel, “can compel a man to love. My body has desired you since first it saw you, all exotic insolence beside a gangrel’s fire. My heart was yours soon enough thereafter.”

  She curled her lip. He fixed her with a cold stare. “Yes, what heart I have. Do not belittle it. It belongs to you.”

  “You are beyond hope.” She freed her hands, to clasp them behind him. “We both have matters to settle with the mages.”

  “We do indeed,” said Hirel. “Promise me, Vayin. You will not begin without me.”

  She hesitated. Hirel firmed his will. Slowly she said, “If I can.”

  “You will.”

  She set her lips and would not speak. Hirel drew her to her feet. “Come back to prison with me.”

  “We do keep meeting in chains, don’t we?”

  She led him down from the pinnacle, surefooted as a mountain cat, fearless as any madwoman born. It was her good fortune that Hirel loved her to distraction. Else he would have hated her cordially for daring so to best him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The walls of the hall of fire were sometimes stone, sometimes tapestry, sometimes windows on alien worlds. Worlds utterly strange or strangely familiar; worlds that were hells and worlds that were paradises; worlds held motionless in time, worlds plunging headlong into the glittering dark. None was Hirel’s, no more than this one with its brilliant moonless sky.

  Sevayin was learning to shift the worlds, to call up new visions and bring back the old. It passed the time; it honed her power. It diverted her from wilder pursuits: scaling peaks, herding clouds, challenging mages to combat with swords or staves or bare hands.

  Hirel found her there on a day like every other day, white-sunned and bitter cold. She sat staring at one of the gentle places: green, with flowers and bright birds and falling water. Her eyes upon them were anything but gentle.

  He sat on his heels beside her. She had had to forsake her breeches. It would have been like her to go naked, but she had wrapped herself in a robe the color of the sky at sunrise. It glowed against the midnight of her skin; it showed clearly the shape of her body.

  She insisted that she was ungainly. She had lost none of her grace. It was merely changed, deepened: not the hunting panther now but the ul-queen growing great with her cubs.

  Hirel’s hand found its way to the waxing curve of her belly. Heels drummed a greeting; he laughed, struck with wonder. “He knows his father, that one.”

  “If it’s a she, what will you do? Disown her?”

  “Spoil her to ruin.” Hirel set a kiss in the corner of Sevayin’s mouth. She did not pull away, but her mood was not to be lightened by either joy or desire.

  “They’ll bind us here,” she said, “for the full twice nine cycles, if they can. And keep our child for their own purposes.”

  “So they dream,” said Hirel, calm because he must be. Refusing to consider that a little more than half of that span had driven him perilously close to breaking. They must not break, either of them.

  Her eyes burned upon him. “You haven’t heard, have you? You know my father has been up to his old bandit’s tricks: running like a fire through the whole of eastern Asanion, driving the satraps’ armies before him; or pretending to retreat and leading his pursuers into the full might of his army; or simply conquering with the fear of his name. And always managing by sheerest chance to escape engagement with your father’s forces.

  “Ziad-Ilarios’ ambassadors had a bitter chase, but at last they found the Sunborn. He kept them about for days while he took a baron’s surrender, rested his men, raided a fortress that had threatened resistance. But when he deigned to receive his guests, he barely heard them out. He refused the alliance. ‘My son is safe,’ he said, ‘where none will dare to touch him. I will give him the world to rule.’”

  Hirel was silent. He was not surprised. But the pain robbed him of words. Her pain.

  She had honed it into anger. “And then,” she said, choking on the words, “and then he began the conquest of Asanion. All the rest was merely prelude. The armies of the north have swept over the mountains. The armies of the south have flooded the plains of Ansavaar. Ziad-Ilarios is beset, driven back and back, battling for the heart of his empire.”

  “But surely it is winter now, even there. The rains—”

  “They have not come. Avaryan rules the sky. The mages say that that in part is my father’s doing. His weathermasters are stronger than Ziad- Ilarios’; the earth is his ally.” She thrust herself to her feet. “And we sit here. Moldering.”

  “Growing an heir.”

  “An heir of what? My father
has been wise in one respect: he’s made little use of power beyond the encouraging of a cloud or two to shed its rain outside of Asanion. His armies have been enough, and his generalship that can leap from mind to mind across a battlefield or across an empire. But your father has unleashed his mages. Black mages, most of them, vicious with hatred of the Sun’s son. Even now their master is hard put to restrain them. The city of Imuryaz is gone, and every living thing within its walls; Avaryan’s banner rules the emptiness. And that is only the beginning.”

  Hirel had known Imuryaz. It was called the City of Spices. There where Greatflood divided into Oroz’uan of the mountains and Anz’uan of the desert, the three great southward roads came together. Its market was the gateway to the spicelands of the south and west. It had been a city of the Compact: no wars could be waged in or about it, and within its boundaries all enmities were void. It was frighteningly close to Kundri’j Asan.

  “Gone,” said Sevayin, “shattered in the clashing of power. I can wish that a mage or two shared in the shattering.”

  Hirel was up, circling the hall, striding swifter and swifter. Trapped. Trapped and helpless, while cities fell, while barbarians destroyed the labors of a thousand years.

  Barbarians of both sides, and mages, always mages. Even his father had cast off the shackles of his rank to defend his realm: to take the place that should have been Hirel’s. Because Hirel could not take it; because a foregathering of traitors had walled him in their prison.

  “How long?” he cried in a flare of passion. “How low must Asanion fall? How close must I come to madness before they let me go?”

  He spun to a halt in front of Sevayin. Her face was a blur of darkness. This he had wedded, this he had bedded, this creature of sorcery. His hand was white against the shadow of her. The child that swelled her body would be like her: outland, alien, barely human. In older days they would have drowned it lest it defile the purity of the dynasty.

  His head tossed. He was breaking. To think such thoughts: to shrink from Sevayin; to dream of slaying his own child. The heir of the empires, the seal of the peace.

  “Peace!” Laughter ripped itself from him. “There is no peace. There is no hope of it.”