A Fall of Princes (23 page)

Now it was her part to stare and pause and hunt for words.
She did not look like a fool. She looked more beautiful than ever, and more
tired, and more—something. Sad. Angry. Pitying. “No, Vayan,” she said much too
easily. “I can face it alone. If you won’t rest, will you look in on our guest
from Asanion? I saw him a little while ago, cursing the rain. He seemed in need
of company.”

Sarevan sat still. There was a darkness in him, a bitterness
on his tongue. She had not used that tone with him since he was still small
enough to carry. That tone which said,
Yes,
yes, child, of course you may help Mother, but not now; Mother will come back
when she’s done, and then we’ll play, yes?
Which said,
Of course you can’t handle the council alone, poor innocent. You have
no power to handle it with
. Which said,
You
are weak and you are a cripple, and you tear my heart, because you strive so
bravely to be as you were before. But you cannot. You cannot, and you must not
pretend that you can
.

Sarevan was on his feet again. It could still surprise him
to find her so small, no higher than his chin, who had towered over his
childhood. Now he was a man, and if not the largest of her redheaded Gileni
kinsmen, not the smallest, either.

Among mages, he was nothing at all. “Yes,” his tongue said,
acid-sweet, “I’ll go and play with the heir of Asanion. He wants to teach me a
new game. It’s played in bed, mostly, and it’s fascinating. Though I may be a
little old to learn it properly. Am I too old, do you think, Mother?”

She slapped him. Not lightly. Not in play. He swayed with
the blow, and met her white fury with something whiter and colder. “Don’t treat
me like a child, Mother. Or like a simpleton. Or like a broken creature who
must be handled gently lest he shatter. I’m none of them. I still carry
Avaryan’s brand, and the fire that comes with it. I’m still High Prince of
Keruvarion. And nowhere,” he said, soft and deadly, “nowhere at all does the
law ordain that the king must also be a mage.”

Her rage had chilled and died. “Vayan,” she said. “Vayan, I
didn’t mean—”

“You didn’t, did you? You only believed it. That’s your
deepest trouble. Keruvarion’s heir is no longer fit to hold his title.
Keruvarion’s emperor refuses to speak of it. Keruvarion’s chancellor insists
that there’s no profit in fretting. The Lord of the Northern Realms, most
reluctant of mages that he is, has no sympathy to spare for you. And I—I know
that if I don’t teach myself to live as a simple man, I won’t be able to live
at all.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.

“Such trust. Such faith in your strong young son.”

“Don’t sneer. It’s unbecoming.”

His lip curled further. He raised his chin. “I’ll go to my
lessons, Mother. Then at least, if I can’t rule, I’ll know how to beget a son
who can.”

If she tried to stop him, she did not try hard enough. His
temper brought him to Hirel’s door and flung him through it.

o0o

No one was there to applaud or to jeer. He stalked through
the rooms in the dim rainlight.

A lamp burned in the innermost chamber, shining on two
twined bodies, bronze and gold. Hirel had a woman in his arms, and neither wore
more than a bauble or two, and it was clear enough what they had been doing.
Even as Sarevan froze on the threshold, Hirel’s hand moved, wandering over a
ripe swell of breast.

Sarevan backed away. That was not jealousy, that twisting in
his vitals. It was outrage. This was a lady. A baroness. The widow of a high
baron. How dared she let that infidel seduce her? How dared he do it?

They saw him. She rose with aplomb. Her eyes sparkled; her
cheeks were rose-bronze. She curtsied deeply. “My prince,” she said. Her face
had no great beauty: broad-cheeked, blunt-nosed, wide-mouthed. But her eyes
were splendid, and her body . . .

She covered it, not hastily, not slowly, and took her
graceful leave.

Sarevan shuddered and remembered to breathe. Hirel had risen
to face him. The boy did not have the grace to look ashamed.

“Is that your revenge on Keruvarion?” Sarevan asked him.
“The corruption of its nobility?”

“You say it, not I.”

“So.” Sarevan advanced into the chamber. “Corrupt me.”

“No.”

“Why? Because I want you to?”

“Not at all.” Hirel returned to his nest of cushions,
stretching out like a cat, yawning as maidens were taught to do, with becoming
delicacy. He propped himself on his elbow and looked up under level brows. “I
do not corrupt. I teach, and I tame, and I set free.”

Sarevan dropped to one knee, bending close. “Free? Can you
set me free?” His hand closed lightly about the boy’s throat. “Can you, Hirel
Uverias?”

“You,” said Hirel calmly, “are in a remarkable state. Are
you dangerous? Should I be begging for mercy?”

Sarevan looked at the placid face. At the hand below it. At
the body below that. He thought of being dangerous. Of falling on Hirel; of
disdaining to grant mercy.

His hand fell. He tasted bile. He was not made for that sort
of violence.

He lay on his face among the cushions. It was that, or run
howling through Endros. “I won’t,” he gritted. “I won’t be shunted aside,
watched over, indulged and protected like an idiot child. They’d leave me
nothing that befits my breeding or my training. Only pity. Because they are all
mages, and I—and I—”

“Stop it,” said Hirel. “Or I swear, I will laugh, and you
will try to strike me, and I am in no mood for battles.”

Sarevan thought of murder. Even with power he would have
gone no further than that. But his mind did not know it. It reached for what
was not there, and touched something, and that something was pain.

He dragged himself up. He fought his hands that would have
clutched his throbbing head. “Tonight,” he said. “Tonight we ride.”

“So soon? But I have told Varzun—two days—”

“Tonight.” He turned with care. He set one foot before the
other.

He struck an obstacle. It was well grown and strong, and
subtly skilled in the use of its strength. It said, “You are being quite
unreasonable.”

“Be ready,” Sarevan repeated. “I’ll come for you.”

“You are mad,” Hirel said. But he let Sarevan pass.

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.”