A Strange and Ancient Name

by Josepha Sherman

  “You failed.”

  “But it was such a narrow thing, wasn’t it?”

  Serein’s abstract calm was beginning to grate. “How could you do it?” Hauberin asked.

  “What, try to kill you?”

  “No, curse you! Do you think I’m so human I’m surprised at that? The child! How could you torment a child?”

  “Why, the whelp had to be in the properly receptive frame of mind. Even you must know how such spells work.”

  “No, thank the Powers! No matter how much you ached for my crown, how could you ever have stooped to such foulness? You, who always taunted me with now truly of Faerie you are?”

  “Oh, cousin, really. It wasn’t a Faerie child, after all.”

  “He was still a child! To use him, torture him, not caring if you broke his mind, if you killed him—” Hauberin broke off sharply, sickened by the unreachable serenity of the sea-green eyes. His cousin smiled.

  “Oh, Hauberin, what a sentimental little half-blood you are! A child? How should that ugly, dirty vicious creature be anything but a tool?”

  Hauberin bit back the hot, useless words he’d been about to shout. “Were it not impossible for our folk,” he said in a rigidly controlled voice, “I would call you possessed. But I’m not going to waste any more time arguing morality. Come, yield.”

  “And you’ll let me live? What, have you a pretty picture of me humbled in silver chains? Oh no, cousin, I’ll not surrender for that!” Serein’s smile was thin and sharp. “In fact, I don’t yet see the need to surrender at all. Tell me, what moved you to come after me yourself? Surely you could have sent your faithful warriors to find me.” (I could have let that archer shoot you, Hauberin thought.) “Why come after me alone? Honor? Powers above, pity?” He made that human emotion sound like an obscenity.

  “Just this,” Hauberin said slowly. “Traitor though you are, murderer though you are, you are still my kinsman, reluctant though I am to admit it. I . . . couldn’t see you hunted down like a stag.”

  “Such scruples.” Serein’s eyes glittered. “But here we are, alone. Tell me, cousin, what’s to stop my escape after I kill you?” There was the faintest, subtlest trembling of the air. “I’m of the blood royal, more so than you. And you have no heir—save me.” The trembling heightened ever so slightly, became a barely perceptible glowing. “With you slain, how long do you think it would take our oh-so-practical people to forget the past and welcome me to the throne? With you dead, how long before they come to prefer my rule to that of a mongrel? With you dead!” The glowing was a surge of raw Power that came crashing fiercely down—

  Against a suddenly upthrust wall of force. Power broke apart like a wave against rock, and flowed harmlessly aside.

  “Oh, well done, cousin!” Serein gasped, unable to hide the drain from that wild waste of strength. “But the force-wall must have cost you dearly.”

  It had, but Hauberin was hardly about to admit it. “You never would admit the truth.” He managed to say that in an almost-steady voice. “There’s no lack of magic in my blood.” (True enough; I never would have ruled if I hadn’t inherited it from both sides of the family. Though what Power was doing flowing through a human woman’s veins . . .) “And—Swords, now, is it? So be it!”

  That first savage clash of blades almost threw Hauberin off his feet. He stumbled back, nearly falling, wishing he hadn’t been so hasty to agree to this, painfully aware that he was at a disadvantage of height, of weight, of reach. A flash of memory raced through his mind, of himself as a boy, and the royal master of arms saying bluntly to his disheartened charge: “You’ll never have your sire’s height. Accept it. You’re likely to be smaller than most of the swordsmen you may have to meet. Accept that, too. But you’re quicker than most, light on your feet. There’s your edge—use it!”

  Use it, indeed. With a hiss, Serein attacked. But his sword only shrieked against rock. Hauberin had twisted out of the way, gaining firmer footing with a sideways leap—daring, on so perilous a ledge—trying to find enough room to make use of his supple speed, cutting and cutting at Serein dazzlingly, both of them knowing he must end the fight quickly or burn himself out.

  And so Serein braced himself, feet planted firmly, forcing Hauberin to bring the fight to him, waiting with inhuman patience.

  Stalemate! Hauberin could still move too quickly to be cut down, but he just could never pierce his cousin’s guard. His side was beginning to ache now, too; he really had been straining that only half-healed iron-burn. The royal physician would be furious with him. If he lived that long.

  As though he’d overheard the prince’s thoughts, Serein slashed out at him, connecting with Hauberin’s injured side. The good dwarven mail absorbed most of the blow, but even so, the sudden blaze of pain forced a gasp from Hauberin and sent him stumbling helplessly back. Serein gave a soft, delighted laugh.

  “You’re tiring, little cousin. Oh yes, there’s no doubt of it.”

  Without warning, Serein slashed out again with all his strength behind the blow, fierce enough to cut through helm and head alike, but Hauberin desperately brought his blade up, two-handed, to parry. The sword held true, but the shock of impact upset his already-shaken balance. He went sprawling.

  Ae, and here came the death blow!

  Frantic, Hauberin rolled, slipped, fell right off the ledge, twisting about blindly in mid-air, sure he was about to die—

  And landed with jarring force on his feet, on a ledge a man-length below. Struggling to catch his breath, he saw Serein spring down to the far end of the ledge with a light chiming of mail, ready, wary, deadly. And in that moment, Hauberin accepted with true Faerie fatality what he hadn’t really believed till then: Death could be the only end to this.

  Both saw their chance at the same time. Both struck from where they stood, heads thrown back, swords out-thrust, extensions of their arms. Lightning flashed in a clear sky, twin magics cut the suddenly acrid air, gleaming, blinding—

  Both men fell.

  Only one regained his feet.

  Hauberin stood gasping, at that moment helpless to the slightest attack, mail scorched and torn, mind dazed, able to think only, Serein . . . Is he . . . ? Did I . . . ?

  Oh, Powers, no! The prince had meant to kill cleanly, since kill he must, but though his cousin’s body was too broken to survive, somehow, horribly, Serein still breathed . . .

  I . . . can’t . . .

  There wasn’t any pain in the dying man’s eyes, not even the hatred Hauberin expected. Nothing but mockery burned there, sharp and cruel. As his exhausted cousin stood over him, sick at heart, sword still in shaking hand, Serein laughed faintly. “Do you think yourself rid of me, kinsman?” It was a whisper. “Oh no. You’ve only slain this shell, that’s all.”

  “Serein . . .”

  “You’re not rid of me.” The soft, mocking voice dragged to a stop. For an instant, Serein’s will faltered, for an instant sheer terror of his approaching death flickered in the sea-green eyes. His eyelids drooped. Hauberin leaned forward warily, sure it was over. Not a breath stirred his cousin’s chest . . .

  But all at once Serein was staring up at him again, eyes once more wild with mockery. “Tell me this, dear Hauberin,” he cried out in a voice sharp as iron. “Who was your mother’s father?”

  “What—”

  “Are my words not plain enough? Where did her magic come from? Who was your mother’s father? Can you name him? No?” Serein’s smile was triumphant. “Then, poor little half-blood, my curse on you! My curse that you know not peace, not sleep, till you learn your mother’s father’s name! My curse on you in the Binding Names of—”

  But what terrible forces he might have invoked were silenced by the fall of the sword.

  Hauberin straightened slowly, wondering at his numbness: no grief, no joy, nothing . . . He took one determined step away. But then legs still trembling with strain buckled under him, and he fell.

  ###

  The prince hadn’t actually
lost consciousness, and the rough, hard stone on which he lay wasn’t particularly comfortable, but for the moment it was enough not to have to move or think, to just let his body regain its strength. But of course after a time Hauberin heard his warriors come climbing up, looking for their prince, and he sighed silently at the thought of having to move.

  “Ae, terrible!” he heard them cry from the ledge just over his head. “The two of them fallen!”

  “And are they both dead? The last of the royal line—are we left without any prince at all?”

  “Not quite,” Hauberin muttered drily, raising himself on one elbow, watching them start. “Your concern for my well-being touches me.”

  They jumped lightly down beside him. “Are you hurt, my prince? Are you badly hurt?”

  “No.” Weary, yes, weary nigh to death, and with a side that burned like living coals . . . But he wasn’t going to admit it to them. “Only bruised a bit.”

  Somehow he struggled to his feet unaided, standing as proudly as he was able, one slender, bedraggled, dark young man amid their sleek golden height. “Come,” the prince said shortly. “There is still work to be done.”

  Yes he hesitated for a confused moment.

  Serein. He would have to do something about Serein; see to his proper burial. Till then, someone had better cast a Shield around the body. One of the men would have to manage it; right now he didn’t have the strength to spare. Not that he was going to confess that, either. Let them think him ruthless enough not to care what happened to a traitor’s body. Good for the royal image.

  It hardly seemed possible, but it was over. Serein was dead, his curse weightless. It was surely over.

  Wasn’t it?

  V

  NIGHTWALKER

  A sleek Faerie woman curled up on either side of him, Ereledan, smoothly golden in candlelight, hair a bright, tangled flame, lay awake and brooding.

  He had waited so long, more patiently than anyone who thought they knew him would ever have believed. He had let the tedious years go by without a hint of regal ambition, hiding behind the mask of a shallow, sensation-hungry fool, waiting only for the passing of time to safely dull the memory of late, deposed Grandfather. Perilous Grandfather.

  But he had waited long enough! Serein had been dead for nearly a full moon-cycle, and yet here Ereledan lay, no closer to his goal since before the night of that disastrous duel with the half-blood prince and the equally disastrous meeting with his kin, when he had rambled and stammered like a mindless fool . . . What if something like that incredible loss of control happened again? It could destroy him . . .

  “Nonsense,” Ereledan muttered. The first had been . . . too much wine. The second, too much tension. He was thoroughly himself again, as both these lovely creatures could attest. And his difficulties these days had nothing to do with wine or mental quirks. No one would meet with him, no one listen to him—Dammit, he wasn’t even sure anyone was receiving his messages. Ever since that message-bird had returned to him with great, bleeding gaps in its side, as though some larger, more deadly creature had deliberately driven it back, Ereledan had suspected the truth: “Charailis.”

  She was next in line for the crown, the cold-blooded creature. And so, while she plotted whatever lurked in that devious mind of hers, she was making sure he stayed neatly in his place, no threat to her, nicely submissive—

  “Ha!”

  It was nearly a roar. The women stirred sleepily. One of them giggled and reached out a caressing hand. At first, Ereledan almost knocked it away, angry at her singlemindedness. But wasn’t that total devotion to her art exactly why he’d taken her and her sister to his bed? What he wanted in all his women? (And yet, once there had been another . . . a woman unlike any he had ever known, sweet and lovely though fully human. Blanche, gentle, lonely Blanche . . . She had loved him. But, unlike Prince Laherin and his own human love, he hadn’t appreciated the gift offered him. Oh no, he’d been a fool, he’d lightly used and abandoned her. And only then, far too late, realized he’d forever lost that one true love.)

  No. He wouldn’t think of the past. Ereledan forced himself to relax, letting the woman’s soft hand rove where it would, toying just for a moment with the fantasy of it being Charailis in his bed instead, her long, elegant body cool against his own, her hand, with its silvery nails, exploring his body. Powers, no! She’d probably gut him like a fish with those claws!

  He shivered as the hand ran ticklingly down his chest, down his stomach, down . . . And after a bit Ereledan grinned, mentally murmuring the words of a restorative spell, and pulled the giggling woman to him. But just before he let his mind surrender with his body, the Lord of Llyrh told Charailis silently: Try to block my plans, will you? We’ll see how you like it!

  ###

  In her white and silver bedroom, lovely Charailis lay alone, fuming. Serein dead for a moon-cycle now, and she no closer to Hauberin than she had been on that night of his Second Triad celebration.

  “Ereledan.”

  When none of her little messenger-sprites had reached the palace, returning instead with their small forms trembling with fatigue, whispering words of blinding fogs and swift, perilous winds, she had suspected. When her prized matched team of white, winged steeds had literally grounded themselves, suffering broken flight feathers in a fight—they, who never fought—she knew who must have goaded them on.

  “Ereledan,” she repeated softly.

  Who else could it be? Who else was her chief rival for the throne? Though if that fool thought anyone would support him in a power-drive—he who came from traitor stock—if he thought anyone would stand by him if by some wild mischance he came to rule, or prefer his bluster to her subtlety . . .

  Charailis smiled coldly. But then, slowly, the smile faded, leaving her face bleak as she considered the years, the long, weary years behind her, before her . . . Boredom was the crudest threat to one untouched by time. Oh, there were some, she knew, who claimed to savor every moment of life, like elderly Sharailan, who never seemed to weary of the intricacies of law and politics, or those others who jumped delightedly from interest to interest, announcing to one and all that even with their lengthy Faerie spans there could never be enough time to learn all there was to be learned, do all there was to be done.

  “Fools,” Charailis whispered bitterly. “Self-deluding fools.”

  She had done so many things in her life already, though she was hardly old by Faerie terms, played so many roles. But it was all in vain. No matter what she did, there was still the emptiness, the hopelessness, waiting for the moment when the thrill of new, of unexpected, was gone.

  Charailis bit her lip. If it was only now, belatedly, that the idea had struck her to vie for a crown, for the heady new challenge of royal power that just might stave off the emptiness for a time, that didn’t mean she wasn’t totally determined. To escape that emptiness, she would do whatever she must. Including destroying anyone who blocked her path. Especially you, she warned Ereledan silently.

  ###

  Strangling, smothering, Hauberin clawed his frantic way up from darkness and—

  Awoke. He twisted free of the cocoon of blankets, sitting up in his perspiration-soaked bed, alone, shaking. Gradually the bedchamber took on reality about him, chairs, tables, lovely silken tapestries, comforting him that, yes, it had been only a dream.

  Only another dream.

  Only another time of broken sleep and little rest—Powers, oh, Powers.

  Hauberin sat for a time, head in hands, trying to steady his breathing. How many foul nights did this make? So far, he had covered this . . . weakness well. No one at court suspected the truth. He had managed to keep Ereledan and Charailis ready at each other’s throats and away from his own, with each blaming the other for whatever went wrong. He had even had the satisfaction of seeing a prediction he’d made come true: quarrelers Lietlal and Ethenial, the date come round for their duel, had begged off, both pleading, a bit too coincidentally, incapacitating illness.
<
br />   Hauberin smiled faintly. That had made Sharailan regard his prince with new respect! And as for his ever more darkly circled eyes and gradually increasing slips of logic, why, the nobles all believed them the signs of a man deeply engrossed in magical research. (Commendable, they murmured, citing that expanded wheat-fertility spell as evidence, shows that despite his unfortunately mixed blood, he takes his Faerie heritage seriously.) The prince hadn’t said anything to dissuade them.

  Powers, if they learn I can’t even deal with dreams . . .

  Hauberin rubbed his burning eyes with the heels of his hands. He didn’t dare return to sleep (to the darkness, to the dream . . .), but his body was crying out for rest. At last, reluctantly, he murmured the words of a fatigue-banishing spell and waited tensely for it to take effect. But too many uses of the spell in too short a time had weakened its effect on him; instead of a rush of new energy, all Hauberin felt was the slightest lifting of his fatigue. It would have to be enough.

  And what was he going to do when the spell stopped having any effect at all?

  No. He wouldn’t think of that.

  The prince slipped from his bed, flinging on the first clothes that came to hand, and set out to wander the palace halls yet again. Black of hair, clothes, cloak, he was very nearly invisible in the dark corridors that night of Moon Dark. His silent approach startled two guards, who whirled, silver-headed spears at the ready, only at the last moment recognizing: “Ae, my prince, forgive us! We didn’t realize—”

  “No matter. No. Don’t follow. I would be alone.”

  Hauberin kept himself most regally proud of carriage till he was out of their sight, then slowly let his shoulders sag. Those guards were supposed to have been actively patrolling. He should have said something. But he just hadn’t been able to find the energy.