A Fall of Princes (17 page)

They brought it home to him. The finality of it. The Son of
the Lion was dead and burned and enrolled among the immortals, with ritual
regret that he had not had time to become an ancestor. Ah well, folk would be
saying, poor little thing, always sick and never very strong, though he was a
pretty one to look at while he lasted. He did seem to have been getting over
his youngling weaknesses, but blood and the gods would always tell. Between
them they had carried him off.

Hirel let his head fall back, and laughed long and loud and
free. Still laughing, he flung off his damnable swaddlings and faced Varzun in
the bare sufficiency of silken trousers.

The old man looked ready to faint again, more at his
prince’s nakedness than at the scars revealed upon it. Hirel’s mirth died. He
rapped Varzun lightly with a finger, driving the poor man back to his knees.

“Sit,” Hirel commanded him, “and ease your bones. And
listen.”

Varzun took the chair one of the servants brought, but he
took little ease in it. Doubt was creeping back into his eyes. Hirel was not
conducting himself as he ought; the old man’s scrutiny hardened, searching the
altered face.

“Yes,” Hirel said, “I am your prince, and I have changed. I
wandered the roads for a Greatmoon-cycle and more, companioned only by a priest
of Avaryan; I dwelt for a while among northern savages. And what brought me to
it, that laid bare a new face of the world. I am not the child who rode
trustingly into the claws of his dearest brothers.” His raised hand forestalled
Varzun’s speech. “By now the couriers will be well on their way to Kundri’j
with the news of my resurrection. I will follow them. Not at once and not as
swiftly, but neither will I ride in imperial state. Have you a dozen of the
warrior caste whom you may trust beyond death if need be?”

“My prince, you know that all I have is yours.” The
ambassador was not an utter fool; despite the blows it had suffered, his mind
had begun to work again. “My Olenyai are not all as loyal to me as they
pretend, but your dozen I can find. Must you venture abroad with so few?”

“I require speed and secrecy. I shall ride as a lordling who
comes to Kundri’j with his Olenyai, to claim his place in the Middle Court. My
enemies will not learn the truth of my coming until I am upon them.”

Varzun was becoming inured to shock. He did not protest the
unseemliness of Hirel’s plotting, still less the madness of it. He said only,
“Then you will be using the roads and the posthouses, and you will need a token
of passage. But, my prince, the lands may not be—”

“See to it,” said Hirel. “I must be in Kundri’j by Autumn
Firstday.”

Varzun had the sense to venture no further protests; he
bowed in his seat.

Hirel returned to the tall chair and vouchsafed his most
charming smile. “Now, honored uncle, tell me all that has passed since I left
Pri’nai.”

o0o

Hirel had expected to be summoned in his own turn and
called to account for his machinations. He had not expected the messenger to be
waiting when Varzun left.

He eyed the eightfold robe that would have been proper,
settled on coat and trousers, and followed the liveried squire, holding
apprehension firmly at bay. He had no apologies to make and no secrets to keep.
Even before Mirain An-Sh’Endor.

But, having summoned Hirel, the Sunborn kept him waiting for
a bitter while. He was comfortable enough, it was true: the antechamber was
rich, furnished with cushions and carpets in the western manner, and a servant
brought wine and sweets and even a book or two, none of which Hirel was minded
to touch. He sat, arranging himself with care, and simmered slowly.

He had reached a fine pitch of temper when the squire called
him into the emperor’s presence. But he was cool to look at, composed,
imperial.

The Lord An-Sh’Endor was not even attired for audience, much
less set aloft in the Hall of the Throne. He had been standing for a sculptor;
the man was there still, measuring living body and half-hewn marble image with
cord and calipers.

The statue wore the beginnings of state robes. The emperor
wore only his torque and his kingship.

He had no more shame than his son, and no less beauty of
form. Over the sculptor’s head he addressed a man in full court dress, who
seemed unperturbed by the disparity. “By now even they should know what they’ve
brought upon themselves. I am not betrayed twice.”

“And their messenger, sire?” the courtier inquired.

“Give him his fee and let him go.” The man bowed; his lord
shifted at the sculptor’s command. “One wing of cavalry should suffice.
Mardian’s, I think. He’s not as close as some, but he’s been idle lately. A
short campaign should distract his men from the local beer and himself from the
local matrons. Write up the order; bring it to me before the sunset bell.”

The man bowed again and departed. The sculptor finished his
measuring and departed likewise. At last the emperor deigned to notice who
stood by the door. “High prince! I pray your pardon. As soon as I’d sent for
you, half the empire decided to descend upon me.”

Hirel bowed acknowledgement.

A servant brought garments for his emperor: shirt and
trousers, heeled boots and richly embroidered coat, the casual dress of a lord
of the Hundred Realms. “I do turn and turn about,” the Sunborn said to Hirel
easily, as to a friend. “Now a Ianyn in kilt and cloak, now a trousered
southerner. It keeps folk in mind that I belong to no one realm but to all
together.” He beckoned. “Come, walk with me.”

He did not speak as one who expected to be refused. As Hirel
moved to obey, he considered his own wisdom in discarding Asanian robes for
eastern trousers. The Varyani emperor had the long panther-stride of his
northern kin, that Hirel had to stretch to match.

o0o

They did not go far. Only to that great hall in which
Hirel had expected to be received. It was even plainer than the rest of the
palace, austere in truth: a long pillared expanse, its floor of white stone
unadorned, its walls bare of carving or tapestry. At its farthest limit stood a
dais of nine deep steps, and a broad chair that seemed carved of a single
immense moonstone, its back rising and blooming into the rayed sun of Avaryan.

Solid gold, the legends said. Its rays ran from wall to wall
and leaped toward the lofty vault of the ceiling. Surely any man who sat
beneath that mighty flame of gold would seem a dwarf, an ant, a mote in the eye
of his god.

From the hall’s end, the throne seemed to glow in the gloom.
An illusion: the hall was shadowed, lit only by the sun through louvers in the
roof, and the gold cast its reflection on the translucent stone of the chair.

As the Sunborn drew closer, it grew brighter. Hirel’s eyes
narrowed with the beginnings of discomfort. Brightmoon itself attained no such
splendor, even at the full.

The emperor did not choose to mount the dais. He stood on
its lowest step and eyed the shining throne, his right hand clenching and
unclenching at his side. His face was still, young and old at once, ageless as
the face of the god.

“Do you know,” he said quietly, “when I sit there, I come as
close to freedom from pain as I may ever come, save only in arms of my empress.
But only for a little while. If I linger, if I begin to grow proud, if I
consider all the uses of this power I bear, the pain swells until it casts me
on the edge of darkness.”

Hirel did not speak. The Sunborn faced him, eyes glittering.
“Often as I sit there, I consider my power. I consider life and death, and
thrones and empires. More than once I have sought a way around our long
dilemma. Your father has daughters, all well born and many beautiful and some
legitimate. I have a son. Our empires united, war averted, peace purchased for
us all. Who can find fault with such a course?”

“My father has considered the same expedient. For all I know
he considers it still, but not with any great hope of fulfillment. Your empire
is too young and too vigorous and too close to its god. The union would be all
Keruvarion, and Asanion would fall as completely as to any war.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

Hirel looked at the Emperor of the East. Remembered the
tales. Upstart, fatherless, ruthless warrior and inexorable conqueror, blind,
fanatic, driven by his god. His son had been born while he conquered the Nine
Cities, born on the battlefield in the midst of hell’s own storm; had grown to
boyhood in the camps of the army as it spread north and east and south and
slowly, with many pauses, west.

He had only known peace as his son began to grow from boy
into youth, when the empires settled into the uneasy half-amity of warriors
who, finding themselves equally matched, see no profit in endless, fruitless
struggle. But they maneuvered; they tested. They wielded spies and insurgents
and mages, bandits and border lords, even hunters and herders who set no great
store by the borders of empires.

The warlord of Keruvarion was warlord still even in the garb
of a southern princeling, lean and hard and honed to a razor’s edge. And Hirel
had seen his people. Outside of Endros the common folk might have become
complacent with peace. Within it, lords and commons alike had a look for which
only now did Hirel find a name. The look of the falcon: bright, fierce, and
poised for the kill.

“The god would have it so,” said their lord, not entirely
without regret. “Asanion is ancient and it is still strong, but its strength in
great part overlies corruption. It has forgotten its gods. Its people embrace
mere cowering superstition. Its great ones cleave to the cold follies of logic,
or to nothing at all save their own pleasure. In the name of their gods, or of
their pleasure, or of this new sophistry which they call science, they practice
horrors. Life, say they, is nothing; light is illusion; darkness waits and
beckons and proffers the delights of despair.”

Yes, Hirel thought. A fanatic. He sounded like a madman in
the bazaar. Woe, woe unto the Golden Empire! A worm has nested in its heart.
Soon shall it wither and crumble away.

Madmen had been crying thus for a thousand years. Some had
raised armies; some had even claimed descent from gods. But they were gone, and
Asanion remained. She had swallowed them. So would she swallow even this
greatest of the bandit kings.

The Sunborn laughed. His mirth seemed genuine, if not
unalloyed. He ran lightly up the dais and turned.

The throne was a blaze behind him, yet he outblazed it. He
shone; he flamed; he towered against the image of his father.

He sat, and he was a dark slight man of no great height or
handsomeness. Yet try though it would, Hirel’s eye could not force itself to
see aught else. The throne on which he sat, the Sun that rose behind him,
seemed but a setting for his royalty.

Hirel raised his chin and set his mind against his eyes’
seduction. This man had greatness, yes, he granted that. Power in many senses,
and presence, and a mingling of art and instinct that put a Kundri’ji courtesan
to shame.

How easy to yield, to bow down, to worship the godborn king.
Let his armies roll over languid world-weary Asanion, scour it, cleanse it,
make it anew in the image of Avaryan. A kingdom of light, where slaves were
free and free folk lived in peace and plenty, and lords ruled in wisdom and in
justice, and all gods were one god, and that god had sent his own son to sit
above them all.

“No,” said Hirel. “War is war, even if it be holy war. And
conquest is conquest. You stretched your hand toward that to which you have no
right.”

“I have the right which my father gives me.”

“We have the right of our ancient sovereignty. When you were
young and bold, you wounded us deeply; you eroded our southern borders, and
seized half our northern provinces. Where we were weakest, you struck deepest,
until my father’s father, worn with war and with the cruel years, sued for
peace. Why did you grant it?”

The Sunborn answered willingly, as one who indulges a
child’s attempts to be wise. “I too was weary, and my army longed to see its
homelands again, and my empire had need of a lord who was not always riding to
war. The old emperor’s death, the masking of Ziad-Ilarios, lengthened the peace
and made it stronger. As it strengthened my empire.”

“And now the peace is breaking. I hear much of what my father
does to threaten Keruvarion. I hear nothing of why he does it. Your armies
gathered and moving. Your spies spreading disaffection even into Kundri’j
itself. The revolts fomented in your name among our slaves. Your taking of yet
another northern satrapy.”

“That was a general grown overbold with power. He has been
punished.”

“Aye,” said Hirel, “with the governorship of your new
province.”

“No.” The Sunborn spoke with an edge of iron. “He was
executed. The province we kept. It was no use to you save to feed your slave
markets.”

“It was ours.”

“Was,” said Mirain An-Sh’Endor. “So too were the Hundred
Realms, half a thousand years ago. Now both are mine, and both are glad of me.”

“Of course. They dare not confess otherwise.”

“I would know.”

Hirel looked up at him and thought of being afraid. “Why did
you summon me? To subvert me? To forbid me to depart?”

“Neither.” The emperor rose from his throne and came down.
Hirel faced him steadily. The Sunborn smiled with no suggestion of strain. “I
owe you a debt as deep as any man has ever owed another. I would pay it as I
may, though in the end we must be enemies. What aid I can give you in your
riding through my lands, I will give; I lay no restrictions upon you, and
demand no conditions. I do not even ask that you dine with us before you go.
Unless, of course, you wish it.”

“You have no tasters here,” Hirel said. “Your magic is
enough, people say. Poison turns to honey in the cup.” He paused. Suddenly he
smiled. “I have a fondness for honeyed wine. I will dine with you.”