A Fall of Princes (29 page)

“My overseers were careful to teach them proper
cleanliness,” said Hirel.

“That is clear to see. They were taken as cubs, I presume;
they do not train well else. And left entire—that was courageous. Or did you
wait for the beards to come before you had them gelded?”

“They are quite as nature made them,” Hirel said.

“So,” said the Lord Uzmeidjian, “I see.” And so most
certainly could he feel.

Zha’dan was rigid. Not with outrage at the fondling hand;
his own could be free enough, and Zhil’ari did not know that kind of shame. But
the talk of gelding had frozen him where he stood.

And now, in more ways than one, his lordship came to it. “I
confess, Lord Insevirel, that I am most intrigued. In the high arts I have a
certain reputation, yet this I have never known: the embrace of a savage in his
natural state.”

“They have no art,” said Hirel.

“But instinct, young lord—that surely they have. Like bulls,
like stallions. So huge, so beautifully hideous: animals, yet shaped like us.
Splendid parodies of humanity.”

“Their beards are harsh to the hand,” Hirel said.

Lord Uzmeidjian proved it to himself, shivering with
delight. “O marvelous! Lord Insevirel, I should not ask, I overstep myself, and
yet—and yet—”

“Ah,” said Hirel, wide-eyed, regretful. “But I promised. My
father made me swear on our ancestors’ bones. I may not part them, nor may I
sell them. I may not even let them wander apart from me. They are our
slavemaster’s triumph. They are to give me consequence at court.”

“Indeed, young lord, they shall,” said the Lord Uzmeidjian.
“And yet surely, if you should merely lend them for a night . . .”

Hirel was silent. Sarevan’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
He seemed not to feel it. At last he said, “I promised.”

The lord smiled, but his eyes were hard. “A night. And in
the morning their swift return, alive and undamaged, with gold in their
purses.”

Hirel drew himself up sharply. “I am not a merchant!”

“Most surely you are not, young sir. No more than I. We are
courtiers, both of us. The court is difficult for one new come to it; but if a
high lord should deign to take a young one into his care, what might that young
lord become? Your family holds the second rank, and there, alas, it is not the
highest, else certainly I would know its name; but it need not remain so
forever. A house may rise high under a clever lord. Or,” he added, soft and
smooth, “it may fall.”

Hirel looked into the lord’s face. Slowly he said, “Please,
my lord. Pardon me. I am new to this; I do not know the proper words to say.
Would one of my panthers suffice for you? Then I would break only half of my
promise.”

Lord Uzmeidjian laughed, jovial again. “Surely, surely, you
must not break it all! This beauty, by your leave, I shall keep; in the morning
he will come back to you. You have my word on it.”

“With honor?” Hirel asked, innocently precise.

“With honor,” the lord answered him with only the merest
shadow of hesitation.

o0o

Sarevan held his tongue by sheer force of royal will, and
held it full into the posthouse, and even into Hirel’s chamber. But when their
door was shut and Ulan was greeting him with princely gladness and Hirel was
moving calmly about the shedding of his robes, Sarevan’s rage burst its bonds.

He was on Hirel before the boy could have seen him move,
bearing him back and down, shaking him until his neck bade fair to break. “You
son of a snake! You pimp! You panderer! By all the gods in your sink of a
country, how could you think—how could you dare—”

Hirel twisted, impossibly supple, impossibly strong. He
broke Sarevan’s brutal hold and rolled to his feet. A dagger glittered in his
hand.

Sarevan sat on his heels, breathing hard. The fire had left
him. He was cold; his head throbbed dully. “How could you do that to Zha’dan?”

“Would you rather I had done it to you?”

Sarevan surged up. Hirel was not there; his knife was. With
the swiftness of thought, Sarevan spun it out of his hand.

They stood still, wrist crossing wrist, like fencers in a
match. Hirel looked up into Sarevan’s burning eyes. “I had no choice. He was
seven full ranks above what I pretended to be; and he was beginning to suspect
trickery, else he would never have warned me that he had not heard of my house.
I trod the edge in resisting him even as far as I did. He could have seized
you, slain or imprisoned me on a charge of imposture or worse, and had his will
of us all; and he would have been perfectly within his rights.”

“That is unspeakable!”

“It is the world’s way. I preserved your precious virginity,
priest. Does that count for nothing?”

“Not when you bought it with Zha’dan.”

Hirel lowered his arm. “Do you rate him so low? I do not. He
is, you say, a mage; he is insatiable in pleasure; and he has more intelligence
than he would like any of us to know. If he does not turn this night entirely
to his own advantage, then he is not the man I took him for.”

Sarevan tossed his aching head. Hirel had the right of it.
Damn him. “That doesn’t excuse your peddling him like a common whore.”

“It does not,” Hirel said wearily, startling him speechless.
The boy sank down to the scattered cushions of the bed, half-clad as he was.

His underrobe was torn. He struggled out of it and lay in
his trousers, closing his eyes. “I did what I had to do. It does not matter
that you hate me for it. You will hate me more deeply still before it is ended,
if we come to Kundri’j, if I take back my titles.”

Sarevan was silent.

“I have told you what I am,” Hirel said. “Now do you begin
to believe it?”

“You weren’t like this in Keruvarion.”

Hirel’s eyes opened. There was nothing of the child in them.
“I had no occasion to be. Your empire is remarkable, prince. It is young. Its
emperor is a god’s son and a mage and a great king. He can afford to live by
the truth; so likewise can his people. I never feared that he would break his
word to me while I kept mine to him.”

“Nor even when you didn’t,” muttered Sarevan. He dropped to
the cushions. “We’re clean in Keruvarion. We’re honorable. We don’t play foul
even with our enemies.”

“How fortunate,” said Hirel with weary irony. His hand
brushed Sarevan’s cheek. “I lied a little. Your beard is not harsh to the
hand.”

“Neither is Zha’dan’s.”

“There is power in words; particularly in words addressed to
a man already well gone in lust.”

Sarevan ground his teeth. “That swine. That barrel of
butter. I would have strangled him if he had touched me.”

“Therefore I did not let him. I would not have liked him to
see your true colors.”

Sarevan’s cheeks burned. He buried them in the cushions.

He hated this unnatural child. He hated this lying empire.
And he had trapped himself in it. For its sake he had turned traitor to all
that he had ever been.

o0o

How long he lay there, he did not know. Pain brought him
up at last. The throbbing behind his eyes was mounting to agony.

“Sorcery,” he whispered. Even that nearly split his skull.

Hirel was asleep, or feigning it. Ulan lay across his feet.
The cat raised his head and growled softly.

Sarevan struggled to his knees. If he could think—if he
could only think. Plots, counterplots. Zha’dan lured away, his magecraft taken where
it could not protect his companions. The Olenyai—

Sarevan gasped, blind and retching, but thinking. Thinking
hard, for all the good it could do.

This posthouse had no space for a lord’s meinie. They had
perforce to lodge in the common barracks. The two who should have stood guard
at the door had not been there when Sarevan came back. He had been too wild
with rage to notice, still less to care.

Sorcery. Betrayal. Deadly danger.

This was Asanion.
Asanion
.

Cool. Hands. Cool hands. Cool voice—but not so cool, calling
his name, commanding him to answer.

Light broke upon him. He stared into Hirel’s face. He was on
his back. Hirel was holding his head, looking for once entirely human. He was
stark with fear. “Sarevadin, if you die now, I shall be most displeased.
Sarevadin!”

Sarevan could not help it. He laughed, though he paid for it
in white pain. “I haven’t died on you yet, cubling.”

“That is not for lack of trying,” Hirel snapped.

Sarevan sat up, reeling. All lightness drained from him.
“We’re in a trap. They’ve got Zha’dan away from us and stripped us of our
Olenyai. You said Aranos hadn’t tried to kill you yet. This may be the stroke.”

He rose, though Hirel tried to stop him. His sight had
narrowed, but he could see. He could walk.

“Where are you going?” Hirel demanded.

“To confront a pair of sorcerers.”

“You are mad! You have no power. You can barely set one foot
before the other.”

“What would you have me do? Lie quietly and wait for them to
slaughter us?”

“They will hardly slay us with their power. I have a little
skill in arms; and we have Ulan. We can give a good account of ourselves.”

“If any of us kills a man here, we’ll all pay in blood.”

“So then,” said Hirel. “Can you ride?”

“Yes, damn it!” Sarevan paused. Escape now. Yes. But with
pursuit on their heels; and Zha’dan . . .

A new wave of agony crested, passed. He snatched up their
belongings, flung Hirel’s discarded garments at him, scrambled together what
food he could find.

The inn was utterly quiet. No one walked the passages.
Nothing moved there at all. It was as if it were enspelled.

Sarevan dragged Hirel through it with growing heedlessness,
flinging them both from inn to open air to the dark odorous confines of the
stable. Beasts thronged it. Sarevan found Bregalan almost by instinct. The shadow
next to him was tall enough to carry a tall man, which was not common in
Asanion.

It was also hornless: a mare. That was fortunate. Mares were
swifter and hardier and less given to nonsense; and even yet Sarevan did not
want to be caught on a stallion. He found saddles, bridles.

Hirel waited just past the door with Ulan, who could not
enter among so many seneldi lest he drive them mad with terror. The strange
senel, scenting him, snorted and danced, but under Sarevan’s hand she eased to
a trembling stillness.

They rode slowly from the yard, keeping to shadows. No one
challenged them, not even the hound that had welcomed them with yapping and
howling.

The air was still. The gate was open. Trap?

They spurred through it. Nothing stopped them.

The posthouse lay outside the walls of the town, hard by the
road; there was no second gate to pass. They kept to the grass on the verge,
which made for swift going, and silent. Town and posthouse shrank behind them.

The pain receded slowly. Sarevan’s mount was smooth-gaited.
In the starless night he could not guess her color, save that she was dark.

Hoofbeats behind. Sarevan clapped heels to the mare’s sides.
But Bregalan had broken stride, was turning. Was he mad? Had the spell caught
Hirel at last?

Cursing, Sarevan wheeled his own mount. Bregalan had
stopped. Sarevan snatched at his bridle; he shied away. “He will not heed me,”
Hirel said. He was calm, but it was a desperate calm.

The hooves neared swiftly. It was only one senel. Sarevan,
peering, could discern a swift-moving shadow.

Metal hissed. Hirel had drawn one of his swords.

The other flashed in sudden moonlight. Sarevan caught the
hilt. Armed and defiant, they waited.

It was a lone rider, and he was all a shadow. Sarevan’s
heart knew him before his mind could wake. “Zha’dan!”

The Zhil’ari pounded to a halt beside them. He was breathing
hard and his senel was blowing, but he grinned whitely in Brightmoon’s gleam.
“Thought you could creep out on me, did you?”

“We tried,” said Sarevan.

“Good,” he said. His grin vanished. “There’s death on the
wind tonight. Best we not tarry for it.”

o0o

They rode until Zha’dan would let them stop. The sky
greyed with dawn. The seneldi, ridden at the pace of the Long Race in the
north, surpassingly swift but not meant to kill, had a little strength left,
but none of the riders was minded to squander it. Posthouses would not be safe
thereafter; they had no swift hope of remounts.

They found refuge at some distance from the road, in the
deep cleft cut by a stream. Its banks offered grass for their seneldi; a
thicket offered both shelter and concealment, and a blessed gift of thomfruit
to eke out their scanty provisions.

Hirel, having eaten as much as Sarevan could bully into him,
fell at once into sleep. The others lingered, crouched side by side. “Was it
bad?” Sarevan asked.

Zha’dan shrugged. “He wasn’t the little stallion. He was
smooth all over. His yard was a bare finger’s length. He kept calling me ugly.”
Zha’dan was indignant. “I may be small, but even Gazhin admits that I’m beautiful.
I look like you, don’t I? You’re the most beautiful of us all.”

“Not to an Asanian,” said Sarevan. He gestured toward Hirel.
“That’s beauty here.”

“He’s not ill to look at. But he’s white, like a bone, and
his eyes are yellow. That’s very well for an honest lion, but men’s eyes are
black. And his nose, look. No arch. What’s a nose without an arch?”

“Pitiful,” Sarevan said wryly, rubbing his own royal curve.
“So his lordship has a crooked passion for beautifully ugly barbarians. And
then?”

“And then,” said Zha’dan. “He didn’t last long. He fell
asleep, and I was thinking of going, and then the mages struck. They were only
trying to read me, to be sure I was well occupied. I gave them something to
keep their ears burning for a while. Then they turned on you. And there I was,
locked in walls. I couldn’t get out. By the time I found a wall to climb over,
you were up and running. I borrowed one of the seneldi you left, and followed
you.” Zha’dan paused. Suddenly he grinned. “They won’t follow us for a while, I
don’t think. I told the seneldi to wait a bit. Then I untied them, and I left
the door open.”