A Fall of Princes (42 page)

Something flickered in Orsan’s eyes, too swift to be sure
of, but perhaps a smile. After a moment he said, “As you see and as my lord
prince has affirmed, we are a conspiracy. A reluctant one, truth to tell. I
cannot say who began it. It seems that we came independently to the same
conclusion: that both Keruvarion and Asanion were advancing toward an
inevitable conflict, and that that conflict would be one not only of weapons
but of wizardry. Many wielders of power would welcome that: a final battle for
the mastery, light against dark, with the god’s own son on the side of the
light, and arrayed against him all the cult of the goddess and of the gods
below.

“But a few of us have seen past the names and the divisions.
The true masters of mages, and with them the shamans of the tribes, have always
known that it is not a war of opposing powers, but a balance. I have learned it
slowly and against my will, for it flies in the face of much that I thought I
knew.

“Some few years past, I had a sending. It was you who
brought it, Sarevadin, with your dream of destruction repeated night after
night until we feared for your sanity. For you were and are no prophet, and it
is your mother who is the Seer of Han-Gilen; and if she has had such a
foreseeing, she has not seen fit to reveal it to any of us.”

“She has,” said Sarevan. “She refuses it.”

“So,” said Orsan steadily. “I know that I wished your dream
to be a nightmare only, the midnight fancies of a boy on the brink of manhood.
But the truth came surely, if slowly. I saw what you have come to see. I knew
that I must do all in my power to avert the destruction. First I spoke with trusted
priests. Then I spoke to Baran of Endros, who sent me where I would never have
gone of my own accord. He sent me to his shadow in the guild: to the one who
was matched with him at his initiation, darkness to his light, black sorcerer
to his white enchanter. We spoke, and it was slow, for there was no trust on
either side. But at last we agreed. We would fight together to keep Avaryan
within the bounds ordained for him. Which he ordained for himself before the
world was made.”

“Why?” cried Sarevan. “Why can’t my father see it?”

“He can. He denies it. My fault, my grievous fault. I raised
him all in the light. I never taught him to comprehend the dark. Nor did he
ever learn it from all the wizards whom he vanquished. They turned to the dark,
and they did it without wisdom, and he laid them low. When the guild would have
taught him, he called it falsehood and drove them from his empire.”

Sarevan’s throat ached with tension. “They say,” he said,
low and rough, “that Avaryan is not his father at all. That you came to his
mother in your magic. That you begot him upon her.”

“Look at your hand, Sarevadin. Look into your heart. What do
you see there?”

“Gold,” grated Sarevan, “and doubt. My father is wrong in
one thing. Why not in all the rest?”

“A man may err once, even if he be half a god. If he is a
great man, he may commit a great error. It does not negate either his lineage
or his greatness.”

Sarevan let his eyes fall. His fingers flexed around the
anguish of the
Kasar
. “What do we do,
then? What can we do?”

“We have you,” Orsan answered, “and we have the heir of
Asanion. By now that is known. One hostage was not enough; two may well be.”

“For a while,” said the guildmaster. “This is the Heart of
the World, the hidden place that only our masters may know. I will not tell you
where it is. It may not be in the world at all. Certainly neither your father
nor his loyal mages, nor the sorcerers whom the Asanian emperor has sworn to
him, can find you and snatch you free.”

Comprehension dawned, late but almost comforting. Sarevan’s
head came up. “He was going to do it. My father. Take me before they killed
me.”

“But we came before him.”

“I would have refused. I would have killed myself to stop
him.”

“You would have. It would have been a great waste and a very
great folly. Now that danger is averted. The Asanian prince will sleep until we
wake him. For you we have a choice.”

Sarevan sat perfectly still. They had all tensed. He
remembered what he had said to the guildmaster. Chance? A remnant of foresight
beyond even dreaming?

It would be hard. They were not all in accord over it. The
younger mages were losing their composure, and beneath lay a fire of protest.
It might be hard enough even to suit Sarevan’s madness.

He smiled with remarkably little strain. “So now we come to
it. You’ve plotted this from the beginning, haven’t you? Aimed my every stroke;
guided my every move. To bring me here before you.”

None of them denied it. He sat back. He was almost easy.
Almost comfortable, here at the heart of things, with the truth within his
grasp.

“Tell me now, O bold conspirators. How shall we escape our
dilemma? Is there any escape? I can die. That will leave my father without an
heir. You can protect Hirel, and when it’s over, produce him to rule the
ruins.”

“Or,” said the Zhil’ari witch, “we may slay him and leave
you alone to live. But we will not.”

Sarevan shivered. He did not want to die. But he was ready
for it. He had been ready since he left Endros. "So, then. Hirel lives. I
die. May I ask you to kill me quickly?”

“You may not,” Prince Orsan said.

Sarevan had no words to say. The Red Prince looked long at
him. He stared back. He could read nothing in those hooded eyes. He was
beginning to be afraid.

“There can be but one emperor,” Orsan said. Steady, quiet.
“Another emperor may not share his throne. But,” he said, “an empress may.”

Sarevan stared at him, incredulous, almost laughing. “That
is the summit of all your plotting? Even I know it’s not worth thinking of. I
could marry every princess in Asanion, but the emperor would still have sons.
Unless you mean to kill all forty-odd of them.”

“Fifty-one,” murmured Aranos. “There was no mention of their
murder, and no intention thereof. Nor any of your marriage to my royal sister.”

That was a shrewd blow. Sarevan hardly felt it. If there had
ever been any logic in this council, it had fled.

He sat back under the force of their stares. He was
quick-witted. Too quick, many would say. He had never felt as slow as he felt
now. He should know what they were telling him. He could not begin to guess.

Zha’dan sprang up. “Tell him, damn you. Stop torturing him.
Tell him what you want to do to him!”

No one would. He smote his hands together. Lightnings
cracked; he started.

Sarevan would have smiled if he had had time. Zha’dan gave
him none. “It’s you, you fool. It’s you who’d be the empress.”

Sarevan laughed, sudden and full and free.

No one else laughed with him. The silence was thunderous.
His mirth shrank and fled. “That’s preposterous,” he said. “I know
shapeshifting is possible, though it’s not supposed to be. But you can’t—”

“We know we can,” the guildmaster said. “It has been done.
It has been done to me.”

This was not illogic. It was insanity. Sarevan could only
think to ask numbly, “Why?”

“It was one of the tests of my mastery. Not the greatest and
not the most perilous, but great enough and perilous enough, and not easy for
the mind to endure.”

Sarevan closed his eyes. When he opened them again, nothing
had changed. He thought of the woman whom the master must have been. Of the
girl whom Hirel could have been, to no purpose; not with fifty brothers. Of
himself. Great, gangling, eagle-nosed mongrel of a creature: attractive enough
as a man, but as a woman—

He gripped the arms of his chair until the wood groaned in
pain. He could not take his eyes from the master. He dared not; for that would
slay all his courage.

“It is not easy,” the master said. “There is pain. Great
pain in the working and great pain after. But the foreseeings have shown us. If
you do it, if you wed Hirel Uverias, if you bear him a child . . .”

He went on and on. Sarevan stopped listening. This was worse
than death. Worse even than death of power.

“It is not so terrible to be a woman,” said the Zhil’ari
witch. Her eyes glittered, perhaps with anger, perhaps with mockery. “Less
terrible than to be a man. To be a man, and to rule over ruin.”

“At least I would be—” Sarevan throttled his tongue. He had
never been like Asanians, who were said to thank their gods on each day’s
rising that they had not been born women. He knew that they were not lesser
beings or weaker vessels or pretty idiots to be pampered and protected. He had
known his mother; he had spent long hours with her warrior women. He had been
one. Almost. When in Liavi’s mind he had shared the bearing and the birthing of
her daughter.

But to be one in truth. To face his father, his mother, his
kin. To face his empire. A eunuch could not rule. And that, broadly and
brutally, was what they would call him.

“That will be a lie,” the witch said, reading him with
almost contemptuous ease. “You will be a woman whole and entire, in all
respects. You will unite the empires; you will lessen the destruction.”

“But not stop it.”

“Not what has already begun. More than ruin will remain.”
She folded her arms over her breasts. “No one will be astonished if you refuse.
You will live, whatever befalls. You need not live maimed.”

Sarevan’s own frequent thought, mercilessly twisted. He
flashed out against them. “I’m maimed already. A woman is anything but that.
But I was never made to be one.”

“We can see to that,” Orsan said.

Sarevan surged up. “You. Even you would consent to this?”

“I proposed it,” said the Red Prince.

Sarevan sank down, all strength gone. He had thought his
world was broken when he woke without power. He had not known that it could
break again. And again. And again. Or that his mother’s father, his master and
his teacher, his blood kin, could grind the shards beneath his heel.

“Would it be so terrible?” asked Aranos. “You longed for a
solution. This one is simple. It gives you your empire and your peace. It gives
you my brother whom you love.”

“Will he have me?” Sarevan demanded. “Will he want me?”

“How will you know unless you do it?”

“I can ask him.”

“No,” Aranos said. “That is not part of the bargain. You and
you alone must choose. No other may make your choice for you.”

Sarevan laughed in pain. “It comes to that, doesn’t it?
Myself, alone. Courage or cowardice. Peace or war. Life or death. You think you
know what you ask of me. Do you? Even you, master—do you?”

“Yes,” the master answered levelly. “We do not compel you.
It is not a simple magic, and the pain of it is terrible. All your body will be
rent asunder and made anew; so too your mind and your soul. You will pass
through the sun’s fires, slowly, infinitely slowly, with no mercy of
unconsciousness.”

Sarevan shivered in spite of himself. But he said, “Hirel
will survive, you say.”

“And your father,” said the mage who had been silent for so
long.

Sarevan spun to face him. It was truth he spoke. He spoke it
without joy, as one who knows he must, for the truth’s sake.

But he was a servant of the dark. His stare raised Sarevan’s
hackles. Strangeness roiled in it. Darkness. Warmthless, sunless cold.

And yet, woven into it, something that Sarevan had never
expected to see: acceptance. He could endure the survival of the Sunborn, if
the balance was kept.

“You’re lying,” Sarevan said to him, a soft snarl.

“Not in this,” said Baran, the light of his shadow, who
never lied.

Mirain alive. Hirel alive. The war ended.

For a price.

Such a price.

Sarevan gathered his body together. His beautiful proud
body, just now awakened to the delights of a woman’s embrace: one woman, who
might have been, who might still be his lady and his queen. He had been more
vain of it than of anything but his power. He had lost the one. Now must he
lose the other? Would he have nothing left?

Mirain. Hirel. Two empires made one. Peace. A child. They
had all but promised that. An heir of his body.

Even if it must be a woman’s body. He was not afraid of
that. He had birthed a child already.

They waited. He could read them. Even Orsan. Even the
darkmage. They would not scorn him if he shrank from the choice. Orsan could
not have made it. None of them could. The master, who had, had begun as a
woman. Had passed in the world’s eyes from lesser to greater.

Sarevan stood again. His knees melted; he froze them with
his terror. They asked too much. He could not do this.

He was royal; he was a warrior trained. He could die for his
empire. He could even betray it for its own salvation. But he was no great
selfless saint, to give up all that he was and to live on after. Death was
frightening, but it was final. This . . .

“I suppose,” his tongue said, hardly stumbling, “that you’ll
do it now, before we all have time to turn craven.”

Damn his tongue. Damn it.

No one smiled. No one looked triumphant. Orsan rose as
Sarevan had never seen him rise, as an old man, stiff and palsied. “We will do
it now,” he said.

o0o

They brought Sarevan to a high bare chamber. Its many tall
windows were open to the wind; its center was a table of stone. Dawnstone slab
on nightstone base, stones of the light and the dark brought together in
balance.

They took his robe; they freed his hair from its braid and
combed it carefully; they took the gold from his beard and the emeralds from
his ears and the torque from about his neck. With no knot or weaving on him,
bare as he had come into the world, he lay upon the table.

And started a little. His skin, braced for cold stone,
recoiled from a warmth as of the sun in summer. The dawnstone knew his lineage;
it kindled for him although it was full day and not rising dawn, flushing with
the splendor of the morning sky.