A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

“I,” said Hirel, “do not ask it. My father has no hope of more and no will to suffer your refusal. If you will not grant the truce, he asks at least that you restrain your mages while his own are engaged in preserving your life.”

  Mirain laughed across the mutter of outrage. “What if I offer him my mages? Will he take them?”

  “Can he trust them?”

  “My presence will keep them honest.”

  Hirel rose to one knee. “So I told my father. I vowed that I would bring you back with me.”

  “And you say you are no mage.” Mirain stood over him, drawing him up and embracing him with ceremony. “I will keep your vow for you.”

  o0o

  They rode into the Asanian camp in the deep hours of the night: four priest-mages who bore within them the gathered power of their order, and Mirain, and Elian and Vadin and Zha’dan, and Prince Halenan with Starion who was the strongest in power of all his children; and Hirel leading them with Sevayin.

  She had lost her weariness in the exhilaration of danger, the light keen madness that comes before a battle. They all had it. Hirel thrummed with it, vaulting from his mare’s back, swinging Sevayin to the ground.

  She snatched a kiss. He drank deep of it before he pulled free.

  Ziad-Ilarios was waiting for them. He sat like a golden image in his golden pavilion, in its center where the roof lay open to the stars: a court of fire and darkness. His mages stood about him, nine men and women garbed variously as priests, courtiers, guildsfolk, but all mantled in power.

  It rose like a wall before the Varyani. They halted, drawing together. Their power gathered, flexed. Ulan growled softly despite Sevayin’s calming hand.

  The air breathed enmity. Sevayin thrust herself into it. Made herself face that shadow of her own power and see it as it saw itself. Born of the god as was her own. Necessary; inevitable.

  Her body did not want to accept it. Her mind wanted to fling it away in revulsion. Only her raw will drove her forward. Opened her mind. Embraced the darkness and the fire in its heart.

  She stood before Ziad-Ilarios. Ulan was with her, and Hirel standing at her right hand. She bowed as queen to king.

  The emperor took off his mask and met Sevayin’s eyes. “Help me up,” he said, “daughter.”

  She was as gentle as she could be, and yet she caused him pain. He had worsened even since the morning. Death had lodged deep within him.

  “No,” she whispered. “Not you, too.”

  He smiled and touched her cheek with a swollen finger. “Present me to your escort,” he bade her.

  She named them one by one. They bowed low, even Starion under Mirain’s stern eye.

  Elian did not bow. She came to the emperor, her shock well hidden, her smile warm and no more than a little unsteady. He took her hands and raised them to his lips.

  Neither spoke. There was too much to say, and too little.

  Sevayin, watching, swallowed hard. She knew what they had been once. The songs were full of it.

  She had known that he still loved this one whom he had lost. She had not known that her mother loved him a little still. Maybe more than a little.

  Elian drew back. Her smile died; she averted her face so that he might not see her brimming eyes.

  Sevayin saw and held her peace; but she reached for her mother’s hand. It was thin and cold. It did not pull away, but closed tightly over Sevayin’s fingers, drawing from them a glimmer of comfort.

  Mirain faced his rival. He was all that Ziad-Ilarios was not: hale, strong, young in body and great in power. But they were both imperial.

  Mirain acknowledged it. He bent his head and sketched a gesture of respect. “It seems that we are allies after all,” he said.

  “And kinsmen,” Ziad-Ilarios responded, “after all. I find that I am not displeased.”

  “My daughter has chosen well, if not entirely wisely.”

  “My son has chosen as he could not but choose. So too must we.”

  “And your eldest son? I do not see him. How has he chosen?”

  “For himself.” Ziad-Ilarios’ irony had no bitterness in it. “He has returned to his old allies, lest they suspect that he has betrayed them. He will aid us as he can.”

  “He might have been better dead.”

  Ziad-Ilarios smiled with terrible gentleness. “Perhaps. But he has yet to betray me openly. Even were he not my son, I would not condemn him to death for simple suspicion.” He raised his hand, ending the matter, inviting Mirain to his side. “The gate waits upon our opening. Will you begin, son of Avaryan?”

  Mirain bowed to his courtesy. The mages of the Sun went where their lord’s will bade them, weaving into the Asanian circle.

  It strained, resisting. Eyes glittered; tempers sparked.

  It was Starion, wild Starion, who broke the wall. His mate in power was young and lovely and very much a woman, and by good fortune a lightmage, a priestess of Uvarra. His body drew him toward her; his hair caught her eye and his face held it, and won from her a blush and a smile.

  They had met before they knew it, clasped hands and power, and laughed both at once, both alike, for the wonder of the meeting.

  The rest moved then. Light met dark, thrust, parried, struggled and twisted and locked. Their very hostility was strength, their sundering a bond as firm as forged iron, holding them ever joined and ever apart. Out of the weaving rose wonder, and a flare of joy that was half terror.

  The terror was Sevayin’s. Body and power shaped the center of the circle, her body clinging fiercely to Hirel’s, her power drawing its potency from his presence.

  They were the strongest. Mirain himself, for all his flaming splendor, was less than they.

  It was the two of them, and the child they had made. Because she was what she was and had been, and because Hirel was what he was: the Sun and the Lion mated before all gods who were. The third made them greater than any three apart.

  The circle was in her hands. Had fallen into them.

  She could not even feign raw strength without skill. She wielded that skill to gather it all. Tensed to thrust it into her father’s hands. Paused.

  He had no part in the weaving with the dark, though he rested within it, accepting it as grim necessity. There was a sickness in him that he must do even so much. He could not raise the gate. He could not will himself to hold the dark together with the light.

  Her love for him touched the borders of pain. From that pain she drew strength to hold the circle. To make it her own. To call on its manifold potencies, and from them to build the gate of the worlds.

  Stone by stone she built it, each stone a mage’s soul, mortared with power. Such magic had wrought the unfading gate at the Heart of the World, the highest of high magics, the blackest of black sorceries: sacrifice of souls for the gate’s sake.

  This need not endure so long. Only long enough to shatter a conspiracy. The lesser powers that were her stones would know no more than weariness and an ache or two, and perhaps a little more. Starion was very much taken with his companion of the lintel. They met with force like love, and held with joyful tenacity.

  She smiled in the working, even through the beginnings of weariness. Only the capstone remained. She chose him with care, knowing that he would resist. He was part of Mirain. He would not be condemned to helplessness while his foster brother cast dice with death.

  Halenan. Her voice rang in the circle. Halenan of Han-Gilen, you must permit it. No one else has the strength. No one else can hold the gate against the full force of the mages.

  With the eyes of the body she saw his head come up, his body stiffen, his eyes burn with the fire of his resistance. But he submitted. He bowed that high head. He yielded his power into her hands.

  She accepted it as the great gift it was, and set it at the summit of the gate. The power flowed full and free.

  She brought her hands together, and bent her will. What she had wrought with bare power took shape in the living world: a gate indeed because she saw it so, white
stones set on black, and the capstone of its high arch was burning gold.

  The mages of its making lay in a circle, linked hand to hand, seeming to sleep. One tawny head lay on Starion’s breast. Power shimmered over them.

  Twelve stood within them, four who were royal and four who owed allegiance to the Asanian emperor, and Vadin and Zha’dan and Ulan, and Ziad-Ilarios himself.

  He had no power, but he had his firm will. He would go. He would witness this great working and see it to its end.

  Hirel was his prop, set against all protests. Sevayin had no strength to spare for them.

  Ulan’s mind touched hers, with no power to offer, but the full and potent strength of his kind. It bore her up. She turned her back on fate and her face to the void and cast them all into it.

  o0o

  Void, Prince Orsan had taught her long ago, seeks ever for form, as form seeks ever to return to void. She heard him say it now, clear as if he stood beside her, cool and dispassionate, and yet, somehow, loving her.

  She thrust the love away. She wrought sanity from his words: knowledge; comprehension. Suspended in nothingness, nexus of power, she focused her will.

  They were mighty, these mages of her circle. They acknowledged no fear. She touched each briefly, imparting strength even as she drew it forth.

  The road was simple and sparing of power, and she knew with soul’s certainty that it was guarded. But there was another way. A shorter way by far, but harder, and if she took it, she might spend all their strength before they came to the battle.

  Take it. Mirain, and Elian with him, fire and prophecy, and the weft on which they were woven: the Lord of the Northern Realms in the full and quiet surety of his power.

  The echo rang sevenfold, with a touch of desperation, private, Hirel- scented: Father cannot endure the long road. Go swift, Vayin. Go now, and damn the cost.

  Formless, she willed assent. Shaping. Forming. Compelling. The void, gaining substance, gained will to shape itself.

  She raised the full force of her power. Chaos roared rebellion. She smote it down.

  o0o

  Cold stone. Air cold to bitterness. The warmth of fire.

  She could not see. She could not hear. Her power was draining away.

  She clutched at it. Not again. By all the gods, not again.

  “Vayin.” Hirel, tight with urgency, calming her. He was in her mind; she had not lost him.

  Light grew, limning his face. She always forgot how beautiful he was. She smiled.

  He scowled, lest he weaken and smile back. “Vayin, it is done. We stand in the Heart of the World. But—”

  “But?”

  “It is empty,” a stranger said, an Asanian, a priestess in black-bordered scarlet. Sevayin wondered fleetingly which deity she served. It mattered little here.

  Sevayin struggled to her feet. She had fallen by the fire, which burned as it had always burned, unwearied.

  Between the fire and the circle shimmered their gate; most of them stood near it, close together, taut and wary. Mirain roved the hall like a cat in a strange lair, and Ulan walked as his shadow, growling softly at the shifting world-walls.

  “It is an ambush,” said Ziad-Ilarios. He took the seat that Prince Orsan had so often favored.

  His voice and his face startled Sevayin, for they were strong, as if the power in its working had given him sustenance. His eyes were clear, bright, fascinated. They flicked round the chamber, taking it in.

  “Mark you,” he said. “They tempt us with emptiness. They wait for us to betray ourselves; to become complacent; to let our guard fall.”

  Mirain halted, spun on his heel. “Yes. Yes, I sense them.”

  He returned to the fire. It bent toward him. He laughed and spread his arms wide. “Come, my enemies. Come and face me.”

  “Enemies not by our choice.” The Master of the Guild stood in the hall, leaning on his staffs. Behind him a worldgate shimmered, changing.

  So with each: thrice nine gates, thrice nine mages, light joining with dark as the circle closed. Sevayin knew Baran of Endros and the witch of the Zhil’ari and Orozia refusing to meet her eyes. The rest were familiar strangers, faces from her captivity, silent and nameless. Some smiled. Some were only implacable.

  Last of them came Aranos in his princely finery. He neither smiled nor was implacable. He wore no expression at all.

  Mirain set fists on hips and tilted his head. He looked like a boy: a young cockerel with no wits to spare for honest fear. “What, guildmaster! Were you compelled to plot my death?”

  “You have compelled us,” the master said.

  “Because I would not abandon my truth for your fabric of lies?”

  “Because you will destroy all that is not of your truth.”

  Mirain laughed, light and easy. “Such destruction! A little matter of war and conquest; a city or two fallen. I have preserved life where it has consented to be preserved, and bidden my mages to heal when they have done with destroying. If I have been ruthless, I have been so only where mercy has failed. That is a king’s fate, guildmaster, and his grim duty.”

  “Granted,” the master said willingly. “You have ruled well, little corrupted by the immensity of your power: which alone would prove to me that you are the son of a god. Yet still you are our enemy. You have destroyed all worship but that of Avaryan; you have slain or driven out all mages but those of the light. And not only of the light, but of your light, which bows to your god and names you sole and highest master. Your Avaryan suffers no god before him; your magecraft suffers no power beside it.”

  “All others are corruptions of the truth.”

  “Corruptions? Or true faces? You thunder denunciations of Uveryen’s sacrifices. What of all her temples sought out and destroyed, her priesthood slaughtered to the last novice, her rites and her holy things ground into the dust? For every temple, one man would die, perhaps, in a year; or if the observance were strict, one in each dark of Greatmoon. Abominable; horrible; and no matter that few of these sacrifices were aught but willing. And how many died in your purgings? Hundreds? Thousands? How many went to the fire, how many to the torture, for the mere invoking of the goddess’ name? And all to save one life in every Greatmoon-cycle.”

  Mirain’s lightness had gone dark. He straightened; his face hardened. The boy was gone. The king stood in his majesty, his masks forsaken. “I cast down darkness wherever it rises.”

  “But what is darkness?” the mage demanded. “Can it be no more than that which dares to oppose you? You are a just king; you temper your justice with mercy. You even suffer your people to contest your judgments. Save in one thing only. Avaryan must be worshipped as you worship him. Power must be wielded as you wield it.”

  Mirain’s voice came softer still, scarcely more than a whisper. “And for that I must die? That I do not wield power as you wield it?”

  The mage smiled sadly. “To your eyes, no doubt, it would seem so. You have shown yourself incapable of comprehending the truth that lies behind all magics. Light is mighty, and it is beautiful, and it is most congenial to the human spirit. But no man can live forever under the sun. It burns him; it withers him; at last it consumes him. Remember the Sun-death of your order.”

  “It was swifter by far than the cold-death of the goddess.”

  “Extremes, both. And necessary. The day must have its night. The light must have its dark. The worlds hang in the balance; it is delicate, and its laws are ineluctable. For every flame there is a spear of night. For every good an evil; for every day of grief a day of gladness. One cannot be without the other.”

  “Sophistry,” said Mirain, cold with contempt. “The goddess slips her chains. I would bind her for all of time.”

  “Do that, and you destroy us all. It is the law. If the light rules, so in its turn must the dark. Win us a thousand years under your god and you gain a thousand more under our goddess. We can live in the light, though in the end it burns us. In the dark we would wither away.”

 
Mirain closed face and mind against that vision. “I will chain her. From the world’s throne I will do it, and none shall stand against me.”

  “First,” said the master, “you must come to it.”

  He advanced slowly, and his circle advanced with him, closing in upon the allies and the shimmer of their gate.

  Mirain drew back into the circle. He was calm, alert, unfrightened. His power gathered to his center. Elian and Vadin lent theirs to it. Then after a moment, Sevayin, drawing in the others.

  Ulan set himself on guard by her side, Hirel by his father’s. Wise child. She sat on her heels to ease her body’s burden, and let herself be power purely, hilt and guard of the sword in her father’s hand.

  The mages struck hard and swiftly, and full upon Mirain. He staggered. His hands caught at the two who stood with him, Ianyn lord, Gileni lady. The mages took no notice of them, recked nothing of the unity that they made.

  The power struck at their center. Again. Again. It left no time to parry, no breathing space, no hope of subtlety.

  No need. They were many, the mages; they were strong; they willed Mirain’s destruction. They did not care how they wrought it, if only he was destroyed.

  Sevayin could not even cry protest. A great blow sundered her from the weaving and cast her into the living world.

  She crouched, struggling to breathe. All her mages were fallen, her father and her mother and her name’s kin stricken to their knees in a whirlwind of power.

  With a mighty effort they brought up their hands. Fires leaped from them. The wind shrieked, buffeting them, beating them down.

  Laboriously Sevayin straightened her back. Ulan sprawled beside her. His mind was dark, his flanks unmoving. Men hemmed her in. Mages. Strangers.

  One came to face her, and she understood. Aranos was not smiling. Not quite.

  Her eyes flashed beyond the circle. Ziad-Ilarios sat in a second circle, hemmed in by mages. Hirel struggled in strong hands. She lashed out with her power.

  The blow recoiled upon her and laid her low. Sundered from her kin. Sundered from her brother-in-fur. Sundered from her prince. Sundered, all sundered.

  Hands stroked her. They meant to soothe; they drove her all but mad.