A Fall of Princes (47 page)

His head tossed. He was breaking. To think such thoughts: to
shrink from Sevayin; to dream of slaying his own child. The heir of the
empires, the seal of the peace.

“Peace!” Laughter ripped itself from him. “There is no
peace. There is no hope of it.”

“There may be,” she said.

She spoke quietly, yet she shook him from his despair. He
tasted blood. He had bitten his fist. The pain was only beginning.

She was calm, eyes narrowed, thinking deep within the walls
of her mind. Hirel eyed her with growing wariness.

“Plots within plots,” she said. “Magics within magics. Our
jailers have not told us all that they know or intend. But of this we can be
certain. They will do all they may to set themselves at the center of their
balance.”

“Whoever falls in the doing of it.”

Their hands met and clasped. Hirel contemplated them, hers
long and slender, his own shorter, broader, with the blood drying on it.

“It would serve them well were we dead and our heir newborn,
raw clay to be shaped as they would have it. It would be logical. We are all
set firm in our gods and our enmities, and none of us has ever yielded to any
will but his own.”

“What makes you think our offspring will be any different?”

Hirel’s free hand rested again on her belly. Her own covered
it. Her smile echoed his, slow to bloom, edged with wickedness. “The
guildmaster,” said Hirel, “has little knowledge of princes.”

“You could never have been the hellion I was.”

“I was worse. I was civilized.”

Her mirth deepened and brightened. “He’s mageborn, Hirel.
Mageborn and twice imperial.”

“He?” Hirel asked.

“Can’t you tell?”

He could. He had called the little one
he
, because an
Asanian did not consider the possibility of daughters, and because it irked
Sevayin. But it was he, that body stirring beneath his hand. Mageborn and twice
imperial. “He will be a terror to his nurses.”

“He will,” she said, and she said it as a vow.

“And it shall be we who raise him.” Which was his own vow,
sworn to any gods who were.

o0o

Sevayin had found it. Their own world, surely,
incontestably. Twin moons looked down upon it. The winter stars filled the sky.
And on the broad bare plain, replete with the flesh of plainsbuck, drowsed a
green-eyed shadow.

“Ulan,” whispered Sevayin.

The slitted eyes opened wide. The great head came up, ears
pricked. Ulan growled softly.

“Brother,” she said. “Heart’s brother.”

He flowed to his feet. The tip of his tail twitched. His
eyes burned.

He shattered. Sevayin cried out in pain.

Hirel was all but blind with it. She stumbled against him;
he sank down beneath her.

o0o

“That was unwise,” said the mage who was the Sun-priest’s
shadow.

He stood over them in a dark sheen of power. Sevayin
bristled at it, her own power rallying, rising, sparking red-golden.

He damped it with a single soft word. She shrank in Hirel’s
arms.

The mage regarded her coolly. “It was clever to think to
forge a gate through your brother-in-fur. But it was blindest folly. Has no one
ever taught you what the wielding of the greater powers can do to an unborn
child?”

“No doubt it would please you to teach me.” Her voice was
faint but far from subdued.

“I do not take pleasure in the destruction of a soul.”

“But you would do it, if it served your purposes.”

“At the moment, it does not. We need you, and we need your
heir. We will not let harm come to either of you.” She bared her teeth. He
blinked once, slowly. “You may look upon the worlds to your heart’s content.
You will not attempt to meddle in them.”

“Or?”

“Need I say it?”

“I hope,” she said, shaping each word precisely, “that your
manhood dies of the rotting disease.”

He said nothing, with great care. When he had said it, he
walked away.

Sevayin began to laugh. Softly at first. Sanely. But she did
not stop. Nor would she, even for the mages, even for the Red Prince’s coming.

Her laughter turned to a torrent of curses in every language
Hirel knew and several he did not. It was Orozia who dosed her at last with
wine and dreamflower and saw her laid in her bed.

Even under the drug she tossed, muttering, clinging
desperately to Hirel’s hand. One of the mages had tried to separate them; he
did not try twice.

What price the darkmage paid for his mischief, Hirel did not
ask. It was enough that he saw no more of the man.

He had done Sevayin no lasting harm; when she woke from her
drugged sleep she was as close to sane as she ever was. But she was slow to
return to her hunting of worlds.

o0o

“I still have it,” she said.

Hirel’s mind was empty of aught but pleasure. Her skill had
begun to approach art; and that art was all her own, at once wild and gentle,
shot through with sudden fire.

She traced her words in kisses round his center; they sank
through his skin, trickling slowly to his brain.

She followed them, nibbling, stroking, teasing. Her eyes
dawned on his horizon. They were wide and wickedly bright.

His breath shuddered as he loosed it. “What do you have? My
heart? My hand? My—”

She tugged it; he gasped and snatched, rising, rolling. She
lay under him and laughed. “O perfect! There is no world but you.”

He glared. “You rob me of my wits, and then you ask me to
use them?”

“Ah,” she said. “I had forgotten. You strong wise men have
to choose: the brain or the body. Whereas we who are women, however that came
about—”

He silenced her with a kiss and a long, lingering caress.
“Now,” he said sternly, “what have you done?”

“Hoodwinked the mages.”

He widened his eyes.

“You believed it, didn’t you? That one black sorcerer could
threaten my sanity.”

“You gave me no reason to doubt it.”

“It was my grandfather. The others don’t know me; they see
the body and forget what is in it. But I had to make the Red Prince forget. I
had to convince even you.”

“He has been gone for a hand of days.”

She pulled Hirel’s head down. “Don’t sulk, child. Do you
want to escape from here?”

“There is no escape.”

“There is,” she said. “And it’s not insanity. I’ve held the
link with Ulan. It’s still there; it’s been growing stronger. I think it’s strong
enough to ride on, if you give me your strength.”

“You are mad.”

She grinned. He shook her. “You cannot do it. I am not the
idiot you take me for—I know how great a magic is the building of gates from
world to world. Your power is still remembering its old mastery; the child saps
it as he grows within you. This that you contemplate will slay you both.”

“How wise a mage his father is.”

She kissed Hirel long and deep. Her mind flowed burning into
his own.
They’re going to kill us, Hirel.
I saw it in the necromancer’s mind when he thought I was too well conquered to
see. But first our fathers will die. It’s all prepared. They only needed my
grandfather’s consent
.

Hirel’s body was rousing to her touch. It had no interest in
words. He made it shape them. “Why do they need—”

Because he has the
power to stop them
. She turned, drawing him with her until they lay side by
side. Her lips withdrew; her power plunged deeper.
He won’t help, but he’s been persuaded not to hinder. They’ll kill him
with all of this, and regret it sincerely enough, and sigh that a man so old
should have been caught in a war so bitter. But we are far from old, and we
have power, and no one has persuaded us with logic or with threats. We will
stop them
.

“We will die,” Hirel said.

They’ve overcome you
without a blow struck. They had only to hint at harm to your son
.

Her scorn was like a lash of sleet. He hardened himself
against it. “Very well. Work the magic. But I will pass the gate alone.”

You can’t. It’s I whom
they need to see, and I who can make my father see the danger in time to stop
it
.

“But—”

Would you rather die
now or later? Me they’ll keep alive; I’m valuable. Until I whelp their royal
puppet
.

Hirel let the silence swell. She played with his hair,
unraveling its many tangles.

He glared at the ceiling. “Power,” he said. “It is all
power. My brothers began this dance with their lusting after the name of high
prince. Our fathers contest the rule of the world. Our jailers conspire to rule
the world’s ruler. And we play at magecraft and dream of thrones, and fancy
that we have a right to either.”

She was in his mind, mute, listening within and without.

“I would curse the day I met you, Sarevadin. If I were the
child I was. If you were even a shade less purely yourself.” He raised himself on
his elbow. She lay all bare, tousled, swollen, glorious. “We will die together.
Lead me; I follow.”

o0o

He was a reed in the wind of the gods. He was a leaf in
the tossing of the sea. He was the sword and she the swordsman; he was power,
she power and mastery.

Through him and in him she raised the shields. She laid bare
the bond like a thread of fire. She sang it into a road, fire and silver, with
a glitter of emerald.

They stood upon it hand in hand. He felt most solid. His
heart beat; his palms were cold, his mouth dry. If he was not careful, his
stomach would forget that it belonged to a man grown. A very young one. A
youth. A boy.

A bark of laughter escaped him. Sevayin tugged him forward.
He followed. He had begun naked; somewhere in the working of witchery he had
gained boots and breeches, coat and cap, even a scrip: all his old traveling
gear. But she was clad as any free Asanian woman must be who presumed to walk
abroad, in the grey tent of the
dinaz
that veiled even the eyes. She passed as a shadow, laden with power.

The worlds passed them by. The mages had wrought a new
number in the reckoning of them: a thousand thousand; a million worlds. The
road pierced them, or they swept over it, or perhaps somewhat of both.

She did not vary her pace. Faceless, voiceless, all but
shapeless, she might have been a dream, save for her hand in his. It was
burning hot.

They walked, not swiftly, not slowly. They did not pause.
Not even for the strangest of the worlds: for creatures of fire swirling
heatless about them; for creatures of ice with no power to chill them; for a
battle of dragons in a sky of brass, and a dance of birds about a singing
jewel, and once even a single human figure.

He could almost have been Asanian, fair as he was, reddened
by the sun of his world which could almost have been Hirel’s own; but his eyes
were as blue as the sea that lapped his feet.

They lifted, narrowed against the glare. They met Hirel’s.

The man drew breath as if to speak, stretched out his hand.
Before he could touch, Sevayin had drawn Hirel away.

Hirel looked back. The stranger was gone with the rest of
his world.

The road stretched into bright obscurity. Uneasiness knotted
Hirel’s shoulders.

The bright way quivered, rippling like water. It fascinated
him.

He stumbled and almost fell. Sevayin held him up by main
force, flinging him forward. Her strides stretched. Her hand had gone cold.

He resisted. She was too strong, and ruthless with it. She
cursed, low and steady. He twisted out of her grip.

The road was mist and water. The world was dust and ashes.
The air caught at his throat.

Iron hands gripped him. He gasped, coughing, eyes streaming.

“Fool!” she gritted. “Idiot child. Let go again and you
die.”

They were on the road again. They breathed clean air,
neither hot nor cold, characterless, safe. Before and beside them lay a desert
of black sand, black glass, black sky with stars like shards of glass. Behind
them was mist. Shapes coiled in it.

“The mages,” said Sevayin. “Damn them. Damn them to all the
hells.”

She began again to walk, swift now, dragging him until he
found his stride. He had neither time nor breath for anger.

The road was narrowing, weakening. It yielded underfoot,
like grass, like sand, like mire. It dragged at his feet.

The mist had drawn closer. The worlds had dimmed about them.

Sevayin faltered. Her shape blurred beneath the robe. She
was a shadow edged with fire, and fire in the center of her.

For an instant she was not she at all, and the fire
struggled, dimming, dying. Hirel clutched it in a surge of terror.

The mist billowed forward. Sarevan shrank into Sevayin,
doubled in Hirel’s arms, arms wrapped about her burden.

She flung defiance into the dimness. “Will you kill, then?
Will you shatter all your machinations at a stroke?”

Hirel did not pause to think. He gathered her up. He
staggered: she was a solid weight, she and their son. He pressed on.

A voice boomed behind them, mighty with power. “It is you
who slay him. Who already may have slain him in your madness.”

Hirel could not listen. The road was a twisting track,
treacherous, now solid underfoot, now falling away into a seething void.

A wind had risen. It plucked at him. He tightened his grip,
set his head down, and persevered.

The worlds went mad.

There were dragons. There were eagles. There were ul-cats
and direwolves and seneldi stallions. And every one a mage; every one in grim
pursuit.

Some were hideously close. Some had begun to circle, to cut
off the advance.

Capture
. The word
rang in Hirel’s mind.
Capture, not kill
.

Even the boy
? A
whisper, the hint of a serpent’s hiss.

We may need him
,
the strong voice said: a master’s voice, calm in the immensity of its power.
If the child is damaged or dead. To beget
another
.