A Fall of Princes (13 page)

For the first time since he woke beside Sarevan’s fire,
Hirel felt the world shrink to its wonted size. He was a well-grown stripling,
tall for his age, like to overtop his father who was not reckoned a small man;
and he could look this man in the eye without strain.

“You cannot guess,” he said, “how blessed it is to stand
straight and look into a face, and not into a breast or a belt or worse.”

The rider smiled, and his smile was splendid; it made him
look even younger, little more than a boy. “That is quite the most pleasant
thing anyone has ever said about my size.”

He had a marvel of a voice, deep yet clear. Like Sarevan’s.
Incredibly like.

Hirel was never an idiot twice running. And he had seen
enough of magic to credit a stroke of sheerest, blindest luck. But he was all
fuddled, and it did not come out properly. “This,” he said. “Is this the Mad
One?”

“Indeed,” said the rider in rags and gold, as the stallion
suffered Hirel to stroke his neck. He was hardly warm, for all his dancing. He
blew into Hirel’s hand, feigned to nip, rolled his wild eye when Hirel smiled.

Hirel turned with a hand on the black mane. The man watched
him, amused and, it seemed, intrigued. “You’ve just joined a rare fraternity,
stranger: the chosen few who can lay hands on the battle charger of the
Sunborn.”

Hirel did not bow. If he did, he knew that he would fall;
and a high prince did not perform the prostration. “We have brought your son to
you, lord emperor. But no one will believe us, and we are turned away wherever
we go, and I fear—”

He never finished. The Lord of Keruvarion had vanished.
Hirel was alone with the Mad One, who held him up. “But,” he said, “the Sunborn
is
old
. Older than my father.”

He unwound his fingers from the long mane. He had to follow
the emperor. The Zhil’ari would not be likely to recognize their lord, ragged
as he was. That would be a bitter turnabout; and Sarevan on the brink of death,
if not past it.

Hirel burst through the gate, stopped short. The Sunborn
stood in the center of a circle.

The Zhil’ari had fallen back with awe in their eyes. They
knew their master, perhaps as beasts might, by instinct. Only Gazhin, burdened
with Sarevan, had not moved from his seat on the fountain’s rim. His face was
blank, blinded.

The emperor looked down at the shape in Gazhin’s arms. He
wore no expression at all. But he looked young no longer. He was grim, old;
worn to the bone by the long hard years.

He took up the lifeless body. With utmost gentleness he
cradled it. He did not speak. Perhaps he could not. He turned in silence, and
walked through the sudden throng as if it had been empty air, and was gone.

Hirel had won entry for all them into the inner palace, and
they were accorded some semblance of honor. The poor savages from the Lakes of
the Moon, bereft of a battle, were utterly at a loss. They shrank from the
hampering walls and eyed the ceilings uneasily and jumped like deer when doors
shut behind them. The smooth laconic servants terrified them as no armed
warrior could; they huddled together, a draggled flock of sunbirds with wary
darting eyes.

They fastened on Hirel as the only familiar creature in an
alien world. He saw them through a feeding, which he did not share, and through
a bath, which was rather simpler. They were clean people, cleaner in strict
truth than most Asanians.

The ever-running stream of water, heated in furnaces,
fascinated them; they played in it like children, forgetting at last to be
afraid of the men who tried valiantly to serve them. Hirel, who had never seen
them without their paint and their braids, was rather pleasantly surprised.
They looked almost human with their faces bared under the water-sleeked beards.

Then a man came at them with a razor. Offering, not
compelling, but they bellowed like bulls. He retreated rapidly. Gazhin lunged
after him, blind with outrage.

Hirel shouted. His voice cracked hideously. Gazhin veered,
shocked, beginning to come to himself. The servant escaped forgotten.

Hirel dragged himself out of the water, in which he yearned
to lie until it washed away all his troubles. He found the man who seemed to
command the servants; who bowed respectfully enough, but not as to a prince.
“Let them be,” Hirel said, “and quarter them with me. They belong to the Prince
Sarevadin; if—when he is able, he will dispose of them as he sees fit.”

The man bowed again. Hirel would approve of him, when this
creeping exhaustion passed.

And still so much to do. He did not know where Sarevan was.
No one would tell him. He did not even know if the emperor had come in time: if
Sarevan lived, or if he was dead.

With tradespeech and plain force, Hirel persuaded his
unwelcome entourage to remain in the rooms they had been given. A small suite
in Hirel’s estimation, appropriate for a very minor nobleman, but endurable.

The garments given him matched his lodgings, and those would
not do at all; he returned to his travelworn Zhil’ari finery and put on a fair
sampling of Zhiani’s golden gifts. When he left, the tribesmen were restoring
one another’s paint, and exploring the rooms with affected nonchalance, and
taking liberal advantage of the wine that the servants had brought them.

o0o

Sarevan would have said that the god guided Hirel. Hirel
called it luck, the second such stroke since he came to Endros. He chose a
passage at random, and it led him through a court and along a wall and up a
stair.

One or two servants passed him, preoccupied. There were no
guards. It seemed a servants’ way, narrow, unadorned, and leading past
occasional unassuming doors. The one at the end led to a more public corridor,
broad, high, and hung with tapestries which Hirel’s wavering eyes did not try
to examine.

There were doors, but only one was guarded, and that by two
who were high and most haughty, liveried in scarlet and gold. For an astounded
instant Hirel thought that the shorter of the two was Sarevan. But this was
more boy still than man; his bright hair made his skin seem doubly dark, but it
was shades fairer than Sarevan’s, like old bronze, and his features were
blunter though still very fine, the nose straight, the long mouth apt to
laughter. But at the moment it was set hard, the dark eyes glittering with
unshed tears.

It was he who leveled his spear on Hirel and spoke the
challenge. “Who trespasses in the domains of the emperor?”

Hirel eyed the spearpoint that hovered a handspan from his
throat. It was exceedingly sharp, though not as sharp as the voice of its
bearer.

He glanced at the second guard, an enormously tall and
long-limbed creature who was, for all of that, quite definitely a woman. She
reminded him inevitably and a little painfully of Zhiani, even to the look in
her eye, the frank appreciation of an attractive young male.

She was not as beautiful as Zhiani. Too lean, too firm of
feature. Yet as his hope of escape, she was lovely beyond compare.

He addressed her carefully, in the Gileni the other had
used. “I would look on the high prince. I mean him no harm.”

The spear touched his throat. “Sure you don’t,” growled the
Gileni princeling. “They’re getting bold, these cockerels, sending their spies
into the Sunborn’s own bedchamber.”

Hirel swallowed. Metal pricked. He retreated a hair’s width.
“I was one of those who brought Prince Sarevadin here. We have been companions.
I would see him.”

“So would all the rest of the world.” The woman spoke
without gentleness, but also without hostility. “Apologies, stranger, but no
one passes. Emperor’s orders.”

“I would pass. I must see him. I must tell him—”

The Gileni cut him off. “No one will be telling him anything
for a long time. Maybe never. Thanks to your kind, Yellow-eyes.”

He wept openly, without shame, his words spat out in a fire
of hate. But the spear had wavered. Hirel slid inside it.

Firm hands caught him, thrust him back, left him where he
had stood before, in utter ignominy. “Don’t try that again,” the Ianyn woman
warned him, not without amusement. “You’re the westerner he came with, I’ll
credit that, but no one sees him now. The emperor is working a great magic over
him. No one can pass the wards until the working is done.”

“He lives,” said Hirel. He did not know what he should be
thinking. He knew that he should not be as glad as this.

“He may live,” the woman said. “He may die. He walks in the
shadows; he may not want to come back. Or he may not be able to.”

Hirel’s heart contracted. “He must not do that. I do not
wish it.”

They stared at him. The Gileni’s scorn was a lash across his
skin. He was past caring for it: or for reason or logic or princely policy, or
anything but his own will.

“I do not wish it,” he said again.

“Are you a mage, then?” the Gileni mocked him. “Can you
master even the Sunborn with your power?”

Hirel looked at him, but did not see him. The Eye of Power
burned at his belt, burned and sang. “I am high prince. I am his equal. He will
not die while I have will to hold him.”

Perhaps they spoke again. He did not heed them. He turned
away from them, the red Gileni who hated him, the black Ianyn who laughed at
him.

Barbarians. This alien country, these alien faces, they
crowded on him. They bore him down.

o0o

He found a door without guards, that opened on an empty
room that opened on light and greenness.

A shadow glided from amid the green. Even Ulan languished in
exile from his prince. He did not precisely come to Hirel for comfort, but when
Hirel’s knees, weakening, cast him on the carpet, Ulan was there to cling to.

Hirel buried his face in the musky fur. He would not be sick
again. He would
not
.

He wept instead. Because he was alone, and forsaken, and
betrayed. Because his only anchor to this unlovely world was dying or dead, in
a welter of magic.

Ulan was patient. He did not upbraid Hirel, or remind him
with elaborate tact that a high prince did not cry. A high prince did nothing
but bear the deadly burden of his robes, standing like a carven image for an
empire to worship, enduring until he should be set on the Golden Throne in the
mantle of gold, with his face forever hidden behind the golden mask.

That was the dream, the nightmare that had haunted Hirel
since he was a young child. In it the world was all gold, harsh, yellow,
heavier than lead; and he was borne on it, shrouded in it, chained with it, and
above him loomed a mask of gold.

It lowered slowly, infinitely slowly. It was the precise
shape of his face, but it opened nowhere, blind, nostrilless, its mouth but a
sculpted curve. Twist, struggle, cry out though he would, he could not escape it.

Sometimes it came close enough to rob him of sight and
breath and voice. But always he woke before it touched his skin. If ever it
came so far, he knew surely, he would wake and it would truly lie upon him. His
face forever after would be not his own but the beautiful inhuman mask of the
emperor.

Hirel lay coiled with the ul-cat, his tears drying slowly on
face and fur. He had not had the dream since he fled from Pri’nai. That much he
owed to the kindness of his brothers.

Softly Ulan began to purr. Hirel let it lull him into a
sleep blessedly free of dreams.

o0o

When Hirel woke, miraculously hungry, all nine Zhil’ari
were there in their paint and their finery. Whatever this room was, they seemed
to have laid claim to it and its garden.

There were servants about, distraught, but none braved
Ulan’s claws to eject the invaders. Hirel sent one for food and drink.

The garden had a pool of some size, which one or two of the
Zhil’ari were playing in. Hirel bathed lightly, considered, sent another of the
hovering servants for garments proper to a gentleman. Those that came were
adequate, cut of good plain cloth in the southern fashion; they fit well
enough.

Ulan growled. A voice babbled. The growl rose to a roar.

Hirel, emerging from the garden, found that the cat had
cornered a stranger. Save that he had a strong tinge of Asanian gold in his
plump cheeks, he was the image of the creature who had barred them from the
emperor.

“Please,” the man said faintly. “Please, sir . . .”

Hirel laid a hand on Ulan’s head. The ul-cat subsided to a
crouch, but his lips wrinkled still, baring his formidable fangs.

Hirel looked his victim up and down. “You have a purpose
here?”

The man gathered himself together with an effort that shook
his body. “Sir, you cannot— This is one of the empress’ private chambers. It is
not suited for . . . guests.”

Hirel looked about. “True. It needs a bed or two. And a
canopy would not be amiss, should it rain when we would bathe.”

The servant bridled at Hirel’s princely hauteur, all fear
forgotten. “You are trespassing in the personal quarters of her imperial
majesty. If you do not leave of your own accord, I shall see to it that you are
escorted out.”

“I think not,” said Hirel coolly. “The beds. Fetch them. And
wine. The canopy can wait if it must, but cleansing foam and cloths cannot.”

A poor servant, this one, to have risen so high. He lost his
temper much too easily, and with it his lordly accent. “This is not a barbarian
pigsty!”

“Unless,” Hirel mused, “you can provide me with a suite of
rooms close by the Prince Sarevadin. Very close. And with service appropriate
to my station.”

“You’ll get service. Direct to the slave-chain that let you
loose.”

“You are no good to me, I see. Go away, I tire of you.”

Hirel loosed Ulan. With a joyous leap, the cat drove the
fool from the room.

o0o

Having tried servants of varying ranks, they resorted to
guards, who could not pass a door filled with Ulan and who dared not empty it
with bronze.