A Fall of Princes (33 page)

He was thinking aloud, but Hirel answered him. “Convenience.
And cleverness. If all is as he has told us, we owe him a debt for our escape.
That can be parlayed into great power.”

“But not imperial power.”

“He is my heir until I sire a son.”

“You’d best get about it, then, hadn’t you?”

Hirel blushed, but his tongue had not lost its sting. “Can
you preach to me, O priest of the Sun?”

Sarevan grinned. “A priest can always preach. It’s practice
he has to walk shy of.” He shook off levity. “Are you going to trust him?”

“I have little choice.”

Sarevan bowed to that. “We can all walk warily. I’ll guard
your back; will you guard mine?”

“Until it behooves me to betray you,” answered Hirel, “yes.”

o0o

Hirel armed himself and rode in the free air as one of
Aranos’ men-at-arms. He did not even need his helmet unless he wished to wear
it: his face was pure High Asanian, but there were others like it in the
company.

Sarevan and Zha’dan had no such fortune. Sarevan refused
flatly the concealment of the litter, and shied away from Aranos’ curtained
chariot with its team of blue dun mares.

He was betraying his cowardice, he knew it, but he could not
master himself. He insisted on his freedom and the sweet familiarity of
Bregalan’s back.

He won it, and Zha’dan won it with him, but as always, at a
price. He wore armor from head to foot, magewrought to his measure, with a
great masked helm. It was ridiculously ornate and ridiculously uncomfortable,
but it matched him to the small company of the princeling’s personal guard; and
it hid all his strangenesses.

The mages rode with their master. The forging had wearied
them; they slept, perhaps, behind the swaying curtains.

Sarevan did not like to think that a darkmage had had a hand
in the making of his armor. It seemed perfectly earthly gilded bronze; no stink
of evil clung to it. Only when he first put it on did his branded hand throb as
at the touch of power; thereafter he had no pain, of hand or of head.

o0o

If a lordling of the Middle Court or a riding of
shiu’oth Olenyai
could win free passage
on the roads, a prince of the High Court could empty them before him. To him
all inns were open, all posthouses his own to command; if that did not please
him, he had his way of the local lords. No one impeded him; no one ventured to
question him.

That Hirel had not chosen to ride in comfort with his
brother was a scandal in the guard. Sarevan and Zha’dan were endurable: they
were only outlanders, however royal they might consider themselves, and they
did not inflict their barbarian faces on good human men. Hirel was more than
human, and they all knew it. They liked not at all to have him riding knee to
knee with the least of them, cropped head bare, helmet on saddlebow in the
heat, looking as mortal as any man.

He did not seem to notice, still less to care. Often he rode
by Sarevan at the tail of the princeling’s personal guard and the head of the
company of men-at-arms. Sometimes he reached across as if he could not help it,
and stroked Bregalan’s neck.

He did not ask to ride the stallion, nor would he let
Sarevan offer it. He was turned in upon himself. He spoke, sometimes, in the
beginning, but the Asanians would not answer him. After the first morning he
did not speak at all.

o0o

On the fourth night of the compact with Aranos, three days
yet at swift pace from Kundri’j Asan and four days shy of Autumn Firstday, the
princeling took an inn for himself. Its patrons left perforce, with no objections
that they let him or his small army hear.

It was not fitting, Sarevan had been told the first night he
tried it, that he bed down with the guard. He suspected that they were not
pleased to bed down with a barbarian. He was given a chamber of his own; he was
allowed to keep Zha’dan with him.

Tonight he had been offered his choice of the house’s women,
an error which had not been committed before. Someone must have forgotten to
warn the innkeeper.

He was interested to witness Hirel’s swift and scathing
refusal on his behalf. It was much swifter and more scathing than his own would
have been.

Everyone looked at Zha’dan and thought he understood. Some
looked at Hirel, longer, and grew very wise. The boy quelled them by choosing
the most pleasing of the women and departing for his chamber, from which
neither of them returned.

Sarevan went slowly to his solitary bed. Zha’dan took
station across the door, too wise to long for what he could not have, too
fastidious to sample the innkeeper’s culls.

“Once was enough,” he said as he spread his blanket.
“They’re not clean, these people. No wonder they shave themselves smooth. Else
they’d crawl with vermin.”

“They say much the same of us, I think,” Sarevan said.

Zha’dan snorted. Even if he had not bathed every day, more
often if he could manage it, he would not have deigned to entertain small
itching guests. Vermin did not like mages, even apprentice mages of the
Zhil’ari.

Some air of it must still have clung to Sarevan. He was in
comfort, in that respect at least.

He lay and closed his eyes and tried not to think. It was
hard. Last night, after a blessed respite, he had dreamed again. The old
darkness; the old fear. But at the end of it, strangeness, which he both hoped
and feared was not prophecy but plain dreaming born of wish and fear and the
day’s living.

It was clear in him even yet, try though he would to blot it
out. After the lightning-torn blackness of foreseeing, a soft light. Lamplight
on walls of grey stone; a tapestry, rich and intricate, alive with figures:
beasts, birds, blossoms, a jeweled dragonel. He was lying on softness, languid,
free for a little while of either horror or urgency; although there was a
strangeness in him, in the way he lay, in the way his body felt, it did not
trouble him. Stranger still was the way his heart was singing.

A light finger caressed his cheek. Its touch was distinct.
It made him shiver with pleasure.

He turned his head. In his dream he knew no surprise at all,
nor any of the alarm that in waking would have cast him into flight. It was
perfectly and properly right that Hirel should be lying there with all his
masks laid aside, smiling a warm and sated smile.

Sarevan’s mind had not even troubled to transform him into a
woman. He was a little older and a great deal larger—as large, impossibly, as
Sarevan himself—and incontestably a man.

Perhaps he would have spoken. Sarevan never knew. Zha’dan
had awakened him, calling him to the sunrise prayer and the day’s riding.

All day, as they rode, Sarevan had caught himself shooting
glances at the boy: not a simple feat in the heavy gilded helm. Hirel showed no
signs of growing suddenly to match Sarevan’s Gileni height. Sarevan’s body did
not yearn toward him as it had in the dream, although he was very good to look
on in the plain harness of a man-at-arms, erect and proud, sitting his mount
with the easy grace of the born rider.

o0o

It was the mind, Sarevan told himself as he lay alone. It
confused the body with the soul. He did not want Hirel to his bed.

Then why, asked a small wicked portion of his self, was he
tossing in it like a thwarted lover?

Because he was dream-maddened. Because on Autumn Firstday he
would be two-and-twenty, and his body had never known either woman or man, but
his mind—his wild mageling’s mind—had known them both very well indeed.

The Litany of Pain frayed in his head and scattered. He
tried to mock himself. It was the Asanian air. It was full of lechery. He
offended its sense of rightness; it struggled to make him like all the rest of
the Golden Empire. Would it then turn his copper to gold and bleach his skin to
ivory?

He rose on his elbow, regarding himself in the nightlamp’s
flicker. He was as perfectly a mongrel as he had ever been, and rather more
rampantly male than he was wont to be. He covered it, somewhat, with the robe
that which one was expected to wear to sleep here: odd constricting custom, but
useful if one were in a state which one did not wish to proclaim to every eye.

Zha’dan did not stir when Sarevan stepped over him. Sarevan
prowled softly through the passages. Movement cooled him a little. No one else
was abroad. Aranos’ guards eyed him warily but did not challenge him.

The kitchen’s fires were banked, cooks and scullions snoring
in concert. A grin of pure mischief found its way to Sarevan’s face. Royal
prince and man grown he might be, but he was young yet; and it took more than a
year or six to forget old skills. He uncovered a trove of sweet cakes and a
flask of the thin sour wine that was all they seemed to drink here. He filled a
napkin, appropriated the flask.

A small door opened on starlight and coolness. He had found
the kitchen garden; a breeze was keeping at bay the stink of the midden.

Near the wall stood a bench overhung by a tree in full and
fragrant fruit. He sat back against the bole, filling himself with cakes and
fruit, drinking from the flask. His body’s heat had all but faded; the ache of
it was passing. He stretched to pluck another sweetapple.

His hand stopped. Someone was walking toward him among the
beds of herbs.

A remnant of youthful guilt made him tense to bolt. The rest
of him remembered that he was a wild boy no longer; no one would dare now to
thrash him for his thievery.

He finished plucking the apple. His eyes sharpened. Not one
figure approached him but two. The other paced on four legs, a great graceful
shadow with eyes that, turning upon him, flashed sudden green.

He forgot guilt, manhood, gluttony, even the fruit in his
hand. Ulan met him in midleap, singing his joy-song. “Brother,” Sarevan sang
back in a loving purr. “O brother!”

Ulan butted him full in his center. He dropped to his rump
half in the path, half in pungent herbs. He clung to the massive neck and
laughed, breathing cat-musk and silversage, while Ulan feigned with mighty
snarlings to devour him.

It was love, purely. He lost himself in it.

He remembered the sweetapple first. He was still holding it.
He laughed at that, using Ulan for a handhold as he pulled himself to his feet.

He was almost body to body with Ulan’s erstwhile companion.
It was, his skin knew utterly and instantly, a woman. He drew back swiftly, not
quite recoiling, shaping a spate of apologies.

None of them passed his tongue. The stranger had become a
shape he knew: plain epicene Asanian, he had thought the creature, or even a
eunuch. Tonsured for Uvarra’s service; robed as a mage.

The darkmage.

Knowledge and starlight limned her face, transformed eunuch
softness into feminine strength. She was not beautiful. She did not need to be.
She made his body sing.

And yet his heart was cold. She had come with Ulan. A black
sorceress. She had seen him in naked joy. She knew, now, the most mortal of his
weaknesses.

Ulan purred against him. The cat was not bewitched. Sarevan
would have known. There was no mark on him; no stink of evil.

Perhaps she sensed Sarevan’s thoughts. She seemed amused.
“He is a great hunter, your brother,” she said. “Did you know that he tracks by
scent of power? He marked mine. He cast me from my bed, that I might conduct
him to you.”

All of Sarevan’s training cried to him that she lied; that
no servant of darkness ever told the truth. And yet he knew that it was so.
Ulan could scent magery. It would be like him to seek out a mage, to demand an
escort to his lost brother. He knew how a simple man would see him; he did not
like to be shot at.

And yet, a darkmage. Sarevan glared at the cat. He felt
betrayed.

Ulan sat, yawned, began to lick his paw. His nose wrinkled.
He did not like the scent of silversage.

Yes, the witch was amused. “I see,” she said, “that the
tales are in error that give you the readiest tongue in Keruvarion. Or is it
that a priest of your order may not address a woman?”

Sarevan’s cheeks flamed. “What do I have to say to you? You
are a slave of the dark.”

“Are you any less a slave of the light?” she inquired
calmly.

“Your kind should be scoured from the earth.”

She sat on the bench that Sarevan had abandoned. Her robe
was belted loosely; it opened as she moved. He caught a glimpse of full and
lovely breasts.

His own was not belted at all. He clutched it about him.

She smiled. “One always fears most what one knows least.”

“I know all I need to know.”

That was feeble, and they both knew it. She took a cake,
nibbled it with visible pleasure. “Avaryan was Uvarra, long ago. She has kept
her two faces. He has bound himself to one alone. That I serve the night, that
my power is of the moons’ dark, does not bar me from either the arts or the
worship of the light.”

“There, priestess, you speak false. No servant of Night can
abide the Sun.”

“Is it so among your people?” She sounded both shocked and
sad. “Is it all so twisted? Do you know nothing of the truth?”

The hand with the apple in it whipped back. She sat still,
clear-eyed, unfrightened. She looked horribly like Hirel.

With a curse he spun away from her, flinging the apple with
all his strength. It arced high over the wall. He never heard it fall.

“You know,” she said. “In your heart, you know. If you did
not, you would not have come to Asanion.”

A shudder racked him. “I came to stop a war.”

“Just so.”

He whirled. “You came to stop me. You find I can’t be
ensorceled. You think I can be seduced. First with my brother; then with your
body.”

She laughed in pure mirth. “See what Avaryan’s vows can do
to a man! If I seduced you, prince, it would not be to destroy you. It would be
to heal you.”