A Fall of Princes (3 page)

Hirel drew himself up before them. Dark eyes in brown faces,
and Sarevan’s darkest of all, and the priestess’ the golden amber of the old
pure blood. Of his own.

She saw what he was. She must.

Sarevan spoke, and the eyes flicked back to him, abruptly,
completely.

He did not speak long. He turned to Hirel. “Come,” he said
in Asanian. And when Hirel gathered to resist: “You may stay if you please, and
no one will harm you. But I intend to rest and eat.”

Hirel drew a sharp breath. “Very well. Lead me.”

The crowding commoners did not try to pass the gate,
although several of the children protested loudly the loss of their mounts.
Sarevan paused to tease them into smiles. When the gate closed upon them, he
was smiling himself.

“Ah, lad,” the priestess said in Asanian considerably better
than his, “you do have a way with them.”

Sarevan shrugged, laughed a little. “They have a way with
me.” He laid his hand on Ulan’s head and not quite on Hirel’s shoulder. “I have
two who need feeding, and one has hurts which you should see.”

o0o

Hirel could suffer her touch, the better for that Sarevan
left them in a chamber of the inner temple and went away with the novices. She
did not strip him unceremoniously, but undressed him properly and modestly,
with his back to her, and she bathed him so with sponge and scented water, and
offered a wrapping for his loins.

After the barbarities he had endured, that simple decency
brought him close to tears. He fought them, fumbling with the strip of cloth
until he could turn and face her.

She inspected his hurts with care and without questions.
“They are clean,” she said at length, as Sarevan had.

She wrapped the worst in fresh new bandages, left the rest
to the air, and set a light soft robe upon him. As she settled the folds of it,
the bare plain room in which they stood seemed to fill with light.

It was only Sarevan. He had bathed: his hair was loose,
curling with damp, his beard combed into tameness, and he had found a robe much
like Hirel’s. He was rebinding the band of his Journey as he came; his quick
eyes glanced from the priestess to Hirel and back again.

“You have done all that you should,” she said, “and done it
well.”

With a gesture she brought them both out of the antechamber
into the inner temple, the little courtyard with its garden, and the narrow
chamber beyond, open wide to the air and the evening, where waited the novices
with the daymeal. A poor feast as Hirel the prince might have reckoned it,
plain fare served with little grace, but tonight it seemed as splendid as any
high banquet in Kundri’j Asan. No matter that Hirel must share it with a
barbarian and a woman; he had a royal hunger and for once a complaisant
stomach, and the priestess was excellent company.

Her name was Orozia; she came of an old family, the
Vinicharyas of eastern Markad. “Little though they would rejoice to hear me
confess it,” she said, sipping the surprisingly good wine and nibbling a bit of
cheese. “It is not proper for the daughter of a high house to cleave to the
eastern superstition. And to vow herself to the priesthood . . .
appalling.” She laughed with the merest edge of bitterness. “My poor father!
When I came to him with my braid and torque, dressed for my Journey, I thought
that I had slain him. How could he ever explain this to his equals? How would
he dare to hold up his head at court?”

“He was a coward,” Hirel said.

She bowed her head, suddenly grave. “No. He was not that. He
was a lord of the Middle Court whose fathers had stood higher, and he had the
honor of the house to consider. Whereas I was young and cruel, burning with
love for my god, whom he had scoffed at as a lie and a dream. He was a fool and
I was a worse one, and we did not part friends. Within the year he was dead.”

Hirel bent his eyes on his cup. It was plain wood like the
others, unadorned.

The cap, Sarevan’s coarse awkward commoner’s cap, slipped
down, half blinding him. With a fierce gesture he flung it away.

The air was cold on his naked head. “Within the year my
brothers will not be dead. They will be shorn and branded and gelded as they
would have done to me, and sold as slaves into the south.”

He looked up. The novices had withdrawn. Priest and
priestess regarded him steadily, black eyes and amber, unreadable both.

He wanted to scream at them. He addressed them with tight
control. “I have no god to make me wise. No dream. No lies. Only revenge. I
will have it, priests. I will have it or die.”

“They would have been wiser to kill you,” Sarevan said.

Hirel looked at him with something like respect. “So they
would. But they were both craven and cruel. Neither of them wanted my blood on
his hands; and even if I were found and recognized, what could I do? A eunuch
cannot sit the Golden Throne. Their misfortune that they listened to the barber
who was to geld me. I must be purged, he said, and left unfed for a day at
least, or surely I would die under the knife. That night I found a window with
a broken catch, and made use of it. Fools. They called me
Goldilocks
, and
Father’s
spoiled darling
, and
plaything of the
harem
. They never thought that I would have the wits to run.”

“No one ever credits beauty with brains.” Sarevan sat back
in his chair, gloriously insolent, and said, “Tell me, Orozia. Shall I take
this cubling back to his father? Or shall I take him to mine and see what comes
of it?”

Hirel sat still as he had learned to do in the High Court of
Asanion, toying with a half-eaten fruit and veiling his burning eyes.

Treachery. Of course. Haled off to some northern hill fort,
given to a kilted savage, set to cleaning stables for his meager bread. And he
was trapped here with a woman who had abandoned all her honor to take the
demon’s torque, and with a man who had never known what honor was.

“You know what you will do,” said the priestess, eyes level
on Sarevan, and she spoke to him with an inflection that raised Hirel’s
hackles. Not as to the inferior he was, or as to the equal her graciousness
might have allowed, but as to one set high above her. “But if I am to be
consulted, I advise the latter. His highness is in great danger in the west,
and you would be in no less. Avaryan is not welcome in Asanion. In any of his
forms.”

“Still,” said Sarevan, “the boy wishes it.”

“When did that ever sway you, Sarevan Is’kelion?”

The barbarian grinned, unabashed. “I should like to see the
fabled empire. And he needs a keeper. Demands one, in fact.”

“I need a guard,” snapped Hirel. “You do not suit. You are
insolent, and you try my patience.” He turned his shoulder to the mongrel and
faced Orozia. “Madam, I shall require clothing and a mount, and provisions for
several days’ journey, and an escort with some sense of respect.”

She did not glance at him. Her eyes fixed on Sarevan. She
had changed. There was no lightness in her now, nor in the one she spoke to.
“Have you considered what your death would mean? They are killing priests in
Asanion. And if they learn what you are . . .”

“What I am,” Sarevan said softly, “yes. You forget the
extent of it. I will venture this.”

Her voice shook slightly. “Why?”

He touched her hand. “Dear lady. It is no whim. I must go. I
have dreamed it; the dream binds me.”

Her eyes widened. She had paled.

“Yes,” he said, as cool as he had ever been. “It begins.”

“And you submit?”

“I wait upon the god. That he has given me this of all
companions— that is his will and his choice, and he will reveal his reasons
when he chooses.”

Her head bowed as if beneath a bitter weight; but it came up
again, with spirit in it. “You are mad, and you were born mad, of a line of
madmen. Avaryan help you; I will do what I can.” She rose and sketched a blessing.
“It were best that I begin now. Rest well, children.”

Hirel knotted his hands into fist and buried them in the
hollows of his arms. “I will not!”

They had cajoled him into the rough garb of a commoner, and
given him a cap that fit him properly, and begun to persuade him that he could
pretend to be lowborn. If he must. But when the smaller and plainer novice came
toward him with a short sharp knife, he erupted into rebellion.

“I will not make my hands like a slave’s. I will
not
!”

Orozia’s patience strained somewhat at the edges, but her
words were quiet. “Highness, you must. Would you betray yourself for merest
vanity? A commoner cannot make his hands beautiful; it is banned.”

Hirel backed to the wall. He was beyond reason. The cap
bound his throbbing brows; the harsh homespun garments grated on his skin. The
long nails, touched still with fugitive glimmers of gilt, drew blood from his
palms. But they were all he had left. The only remnant of his royalty.

Firm hands seized his shoulders, lifted him, set him down
again with gentle force. “Look,” Sarevan commanded him.

He struck the mirror with all his strength. It rang
silver-bright but did not bend or break. In it trembled and raged a peasant’s
child.

“Look,” said the barbarian behind him. Forcing him, gripping
his head when he struggled to spin away.

Compelled, he looked. Lowborn. Drab-clad, bare-skulled,
wealthless and kinless. But the skull was elegant, pale as ivory, sheened with
royal gold; and the face was fine, gold-browed, the wide eyes all burning gold,
the thin nostrils pinched white with anger. A peasant with the look of a
thoroughbred and the bearing of an emperor—

“Who will ever believe the lie?”

“Anyone,” answered Sarevan, “who sees the clothing. If you
have the hands to prove it.”

“Not the face?”

“Faces are the god’s gift. Hands are made, and the law
limits them.” Sarevan raised one of Hirel’s easily despite resistance. “Keri.”

Woman’s name, stolid all-but-sexless face. And the other,
sweet-mouthed, had proved to be male; he waited to pounce if his fellow novice
had need.

Hirel thrust out his stiff hands. “Do it, then, damn you.
Make me hideous.”

They laughed behind their eyes. Hirel the Beautiful, shorn
and clipped, was still a pretty creature, a plaything for a lady’s chamber. He
spat in the reflected face, blurring it into namelessness.

“You have blessings to count,” Sarevan said, cool and
unused. “Two, to be precise.”

Hirel’s voice cracked with bitter mockery. “What! Will you
not take them, too?”

“We take nothing that cannot be restored.” The priest leaned
against the wall, arms folded. “Think of it as a game. A splendid gamble, the
seeds of a song.”

“Certainly. A satire on the fall of princes.”

Sarevan only laughed and flashed his bold black eyes at the
priestess, who blushed like a girl.

Yet for all of that, when she spoke to him she was grave and
almost stern. “Be gentle with him, Sarevan. He is neither as weak as he looks
nor as strong as he pretends, and he was not raised as you were.”

“I should hope not,” snapped Hirel.

They were not listening. They seldom were.

The priestess’ eyes said a multitude of things, and the
priest answered with a level stare.

She beseeched.

He refused. He had a look about him, not hard, not cold, but
somehow implacable.

At last he said, and he said it in Asanian which he need not
have done, “This is a suckling infant who fancies himself a man. He is haughty,
intolerant, and ruinously spoiled. Would you have me cater to his every whim?”

“Haughty,” she repeated. “Intolerant. Ruinously spoiled. Are
you perfection itself, Sarevan Is’kelion?”

“Ulan likes him,” Sarevan said. “I’ll be as gentle as I can
bear to be. Will that content you?”

She sighed deeply. “I think you are mad. I know he will find
no one he can trust more implicitly. Curse your honor, Sarevan, and curse the
compassion that you will not confess; and be warned. I have sent word of this
to your father.”

That had the air of a threat, but Sarevan smiled. “He
knows,” he said. “I sent him a message of my own. I’m a dutiful son, madam.”

“He has given you leave?”

Sarevan’s smile gained an edge. “He’s made no serious effort
to stop me.”

Her head came up. Her brows met. “Sarevan—”

He met her eyes in silence, his own level, glittering. After
a stretching moment, Orozia’s head bowed. Her sigh was deep. “Very well. There
will be a price for this; pray Avaryan it is no higher than it must be.”

“I will pay as I must pay,” said Sarevan.

She did not look up, as if she could not. “Go, then,” she
said. Hirel could barely hear her. “And may the god protect you.”

o0o

The road into Asanion stretched long under Hirel’s
protesting feet. Mounts they had none and were not to get, and Ulan was not
precisely a tame cat. He came and went at will, hunted for them when it pleased
him, vanished sometimes for an hour or a morning or a day. He was only rarely
amenable to carrying a footsore prince.

But Hirel did not press him.
Spoiled
, Sarevan had said. It rankled like an old wound. Worse than
Hirel’s own hurts, which healed well and quickly, and left scars he did not
look at.
Spoiled to ruin
.

His brothers had said much the same. It had not hurt as much
then, perhaps because they had weakened and paled it with envy and slain it
with treason.

Sarevan had only said it once. It was enough. Hirel would
show him. Did show him. Walked without a word of protest, though the sun beat
down, though the rain lashed his ill-protected head. Climbed when he must,
stumbled only rarely, and slowly hardened. At night he tumbled headlong into
sleep.

It was a drug of sorts. It helped him to forget. But he had
dreams of barbers and of knives, and of his brothers laughing; and sometimes he
woke shaking, awash in tears, biting back a howl of rage and loss and sheer
homesickness.