A Fall of Princes (54 page)

Her love for him touched the borders of pain. From that pain
she drew strength to hold the circle. To make it her own. To call on its
manifold potencies, and from them to build the gate of the worlds.

Stone by stone she built it, each stone a mage’s soul,
mortared with power. Such magic had wrought the unfading gate at the Heart of
the World, the highest of high magics, the blackest of black sorceries:
sacrifice of souls for the gate’s sake.

This need not endure so long. Only long enough to shatter a
conspiracy. The lesser powers that were her stones would know no more than
weariness and an ache or two, and perhaps a little more. Starion was very much
taken with his companion of the lintel. They met with force like love, and held
with joyful tenacity.

She smiled in the working, even through the beginnings of
weariness. Only the capstone remained. She chose him with care, knowing that he
would resist. He was part of Mirain. He would not be condemned to helplessness
while his foster brother cast dice with death.

Halenan
. Her voice
rang in the circle.
Halenan of Han-Gilen,
you must permit it. No one else has the strength. No one else can hold the gate
against the full force of the mages
.

With the eyes of the body she saw his head come up, his body
stiffen, his eyes burn with the fire of his resistance. But he submitted. He
bowed that high head. He yielded his power into her hands.

She accepted it as the great gift it was, and set it at the
summit of the gate. The power flowed full and free.

She brought her hands together, and bent her will. What she
had wrought with bare power took shape in the living world: a gate indeed
because she saw it so, white stones set on black, and the capstone of its high
arch was burning gold.

The mages of its making lay in a circle, linked hand to
hand, seeming to sleep. One tawny head lay on Starion’s breast. Power shimmered
over them.

Twelve stood within them, four who were royal and four who
owed allegiance to the Asanian emperor, and Vadin and Zha’dan and Ulan, and
Ziad-Ilarios himself.

He had no power, but he had his firm will. He would go. He
would witness this great working and see it to its end.

Hirel was his prop, set against all protests. Sevayin had no
strength to spare for them.

Ulan’s mind touched hers, with no power to offer, but the
full and potent strength of his kind. It bore her up. She turned her back on
fate and her face to the void and cast them all into it.

o0o

Void
, Prince
Orsan had taught her long ago,
seeks ever
for form, as form seeks ever to return to void
. She heard him say it now, clear
as if he stood beside her, cool and dispassionate, and yet, somehow, loving
her.

She thrust the love away. She wrought sanity from his words:
knowledge; comprehension. Suspended in nothingness, nexus of power, she focused
her will.

They were mighty, these mages of her circle. They
acknowledged no fear. She touched each briefly, imparting strength even as she
drew it forth.

The road was simple and sparing of power, and she knew with
soul’s certainty that it was guarded. But there was another way. A shorter way
by far, but harder, and if she took it, she might spend all their strength
before they came to the battle.

Take it
. Mirain,
and Elian with him, fire and prophecy, and the weft on which they were woven:
the Lord of the Northern Realms in the full and quiet surety of his power.

The echo rang sevenfold, with a touch of desperation,
private, Hirel- scented:
Father cannot
endure the long road. Go swift, Vayin. Go now, and damn the cost
.

Formless, she willed assent. Shaping. Forming. Compelling.
The void, gaining substance, gained will to shape itself.

She raised the full force of her power. Chaos roared
rebellion. She smote it down.

o0o

Cold stone. Air cold to bitterness. The warmth of fire.

She could not see. She could not hear. Her power was
draining away.

She clutched at it. Not again. By all the gods, not again.

“Vayin.” Hirel, tight with urgency, calming her. He was in
her mind; she had not lost him.

Light grew, limning his face. She always forgot how
beautiful he was. She smiled.

He scowled, lest he weaken and smile back. “Vayin, it is
done. We stand in the Heart of the World. But—”

“But?”

“It is empty,” a stranger said, an Asanian, a priestess in
black-bordered scarlet. Sevayin wondered fleetingly which deity she served. It
mattered little here.

Sevayin struggled to her feet. She had fallen by the fire,
which burned as it had always burned, unwearied.

Between the fire and the circle shimmered their gate; most
of them stood near it, close together, taut and wary. Mirain roved the hall
like a cat in a strange lair, and Ulan walked as his shadow, growling softly at
the shifting world-walls.

“It is an ambush,” said Ziad-Ilarios. He took the seat that
Prince Orsan had so often favored.

His voice and his face startled Sevayin, for they were
strong, as if the power in its working had given him sustenance. His eyes were
clear, bright, fascinated. They flicked round the chamber, taking it in.

“Mark you,” he said. “They tempt us with emptiness. They
wait for us to betray ourselves; to become complacent; to let our guard fall.”

Mirain halted, spun on his heel. “Yes. Yes, I sense them.”

He returned to the fire. It bent toward him. He laughed and
spread his arms wide. “Come, my enemies. Come and face me.”

“Enemies not by our choice.” The Master of the Guild stood in
the hall, leaning on his staffs. Behind him a worldgate shimmered, changing.

So with each: thrice nine gates, thrice nine mages, light
joining with dark as the circle closed. Sevayin knew Baran of Endros and the
witch of the Zhil’ari and Orozia refusing to meet her eyes. The rest were
familiar strangers, faces from her captivity, silent and nameless. Some smiled.
Some were only implacable.

Last of them came Aranos in his princely finery. He neither
smiled nor was implacable. He wore no expression at all.

Mirain set fists on hips and tilted his head. He looked like
a boy: a young cockerel with no wits to spare for honest fear. “What,
guildmaster! Were you compelled to plot my death?”

“You have compelled us,” the master said.

“Because I would not abandon my truth for your fabric of
lies?”

“Because you will destroy all that is not of your truth.”

Mirain laughed, light and easy. “Such destruction! A little
matter of war and conquest; a city or two fallen. I have preserved life where
it has consented to be preserved, and bidden my mages to heal when they have
done with destroying. If I have been ruthless, I have been so only where mercy
has failed. That is a king’s fate, guildmaster, and his grim duty.”

“Granted,” the master said willingly. “You have ruled well, little
corrupted by the immensity of your power: which alone would prove to me that
you are the son of a god. Yet still you are our enemy. You have destroyed all
worship but that of Avaryan; you have slain or driven out all mages but those
of the light. And not only of the light, but of your light, which bows to your
god and names you sole and highest master. Your Avaryan suffers no god before
him; your magecraft suffers no power beside it.”

“All others are corruptions of the truth.”

“Corruptions? Or true faces? You thunder denunciations of
Uveryen’s sacrifices. What of all her temples sought out and destroyed, her
priesthood slaughtered to the last novice, her rites and her holy things ground
into the dust? For every temple, one man would die, perhaps, in a year; or if
the observance were strict, one in each dark of Greatmoon. Abominable;
horrible; and no matter that few of these sacrifices were aught but willing.
And how many died in your purgings? Hundreds? Thousands? How many went to the
fire, how many to the torture, for the mere invoking of the goddess’ name? And
all to save one life in every Greatmoon-cycle.”

Mirain’s lightness had gone dark. He straightened; his face
hardened. The boy was gone. The king stood in his majesty, his masks forsaken.
“I cast down darkness wherever it rises.”

“But what is darkness?” the mage demanded. “Can it be no
more than that which dares to oppose you? You are a just king; you temper your
justice with mercy. You even suffer your people to contest your judgments. Save
in one thing only. Avaryan must be worshipped as you worship him. Power must be
wielded as you wield it.”

Mirain’s voice came softer still, scarcely more than a
whisper. “And for that I must die? That I do not wield power as you wield it?”

The mage smiled sadly. “To your eyes, no doubt, it would
seem so. You have shown yourself incapable of comprehending the truth that lies
behind all magics. Light is mighty, and it is beautiful, and it is most
congenial to the human spirit. But no man can live forever under the sun. It
burns him; it withers him; at last it consumes him. Remember the Sun-death of
your order.”

“It was swifter by far than the cold-death of the goddess.”

“Extremes, both. And necessary. The day must have its night.
The light must have its dark. The worlds hang in the balance; it is delicate,
and its laws are ineluctable. For every flame there is a spear of night. For
every good an evil; for every day of grief a day of gladness. One cannot be
without the other.”

“Sophistry,” said Mirain, cold with contempt. “The goddess
slips her chains. I would bind her for all of time.”

“Do that, and you destroy us all. It is the law. If the
light rules, so in its turn must the dark. Win us a thousand years under your
god and you gain a thousand more under our goddess. We can live in the light,
though in the end it burns us. In the dark we would wither away.”

Mirain closed face and mind against that vision. “I will
chain her. From the world’s throne I will do it, and none shall stand against
me.”

“First,” said the master, “you must come to it.”

He advanced slowly, and his circle advanced with him,
closing in upon the allies and the shimmer of their gate.

Mirain drew back into the circle. He was calm, alert,
unfrightened. His power gathered to his center. Elian and Vadin lent theirs to
it. Then after a moment, Sevayin, drawing in the others.

Ulan set himself on guard by her side, Hirel by his
father’s. Wise child. She sat on her heels to ease her body’s burden, and let
herself be power purely, hilt and guard of the sword in her father’s hand.

The mages struck hard and swiftly, and full upon Mirain. He
staggered. His hands caught at the two who stood with him, Ianyn lord, Gileni
lady. The mages took no notice of them, recked nothing of the unity that they
made.

The power struck at their center. Again. Again. It left no
time to parry, no breathing space, no hope of subtlety.

No need. They were many, the mages; they were strong; they
willed Mirain’s destruction. They did not care how they wrought it, if only he
was destroyed.

Sevayin could not even cry protest. A great blow sundered
her from the weaving and cast her into the living world.

She crouched, struggling to breathe. All her mages were
fallen, her father and her mother and her name’s kin stricken to their knees in
a whirlwind of power.

With a mighty effort they brought up their hands. Fires
leaped from them. The wind shrieked, buffeting them, beating them down.

Laboriously Sevayin straightened her back. Ulan sprawled
beside her. His mind was dark, his flanks unmoving. Men hemmed her in. Mages.
Strangers.

One came to face her, and she understood. Aranos was not
smiling. Not quite.

Her eyes flashed beyond the circle. Ziad-Ilarios sat in a
second circle, hemmed in by mages. Hirel struggled in strong hands. She lashed
out with her power.

The blow recoiled upon her and laid her low. Sundered from
her kin. Sundered from her brother-in-fur. Sundered from her prince. Sundered,
all sundered.

Hands stroked her. They meant to soothe; they drove her all
but mad.

Mages held her. They were strong. She spat in Aranos’ face.

He regarded her coolly, still smiling. “I chose,” he said,
“long ago. My brother has served his purpose; he has begotten the child who
will rule our twofold empires. You may keep him if it pleases you, though we
must draw his claws. Excise his power; render him fit for service in the
harem.”

“Only if you suffer it first.”

He was amused and slightly scandalized. “I shall have to
keep you in lovers, I see. And keep you with child, until it tames you.”

“You’ll kill me before you tame me.”

“I will not. I require you alive and obedient. Have you no
gratitude? My erstwhile allies would have slain you. I not only let you live; I
grant you your beloved. I will cherish you, Sunlady, and raise your children as
my own.”

He was pleased with himself. He thought that he was
generous. He expected her defiance; he did not let it trouble him. That a great
war of magery roared and flamed without him, concerned him not at all.

“Come,” he said, “be wise. Your father must fall, as you
yourself have endeavored to make certain. Mine is dead already. My brother dies
unless you accept the inevitable.”

She stared at him, loathing that miniature mockery of
Hirel’s face. “You did it for me,” she said.

“I did it for a twofold throne. But also,” he conceded,
“once I had seen you, for your own sake. I will not taint you with fleshly
desire. I wish only to possess you. To feast, on occasion, on your beauty.”

She lunged. Her captors were caught off guard. She fell upon
Aranos.

He was a serpent indeed, stronger by far than he looked, and
fanged. Steel flashed past her eyes.