A Fall of Princes (38 page)

He lay back, hands clasped beneath his head. His temper had
passed. He was calm, empty. “I think I hate him. I’m afraid I love him. I know
we quarrel like lovers.

“And what hope do we have? If he were a woman I’d marry him,
if I didn’t kill him first. If he were a commoner I’d make him a lord and keep
him by me. Even if he were a lord . . . even an Asanian lord . . .”
Sarevan surged up, crying out, “O Avaryan! Why did you do this to us?”

The god was not answering.

“No doubt,” said Sarevan dryly after a starlit while, “I’ve
solved everything with tonight’s performance. If he’s even civil to me
hereafter, I’ll count it an honest miracle.”

The stars were silent. The god said nothing.

“I hate him,” said Sarevan with sudden fierceness. “I hate
him. Haughty, corrupt, cruel—damn him. Damn him to all twenty-seven of his own
hells.”

The Golden Courts settled swiftly enough under the emperor’s
strong hand; and, in the way of courts, went on as if they had never risen up
in near-revolt. Hirel was solely and certainly their high prince. Sarevan was
neither spy nor upstart; he had never presumed so far as to ordain whom they
would accept as their lord. Matters of such indelicacy were not discussed.

He was their new darling. He would have been their new pet,
but like Ulan, Sarevan Is’kelion was not a tame creature. He did not trouble
himself with all the intricacies of protocol; he would not keep to the paths
ordained for a royal hostage. He rode his blue-eyed stallion wherever he
pleased. He crossed swords with guardsmen. He wrestled uproariously with the
painted savage who was his shadow, and sometimes he won, but sometimes,
resoundingly, he lost.

He discovered that certain courtyards looked upward to the
latticed windows of the harem, and that if he lingered there alone, in time
soft voices would call to him. They told him of unfrequented passages, of
walled gardens and of chambers where a handsome outlander might go to be stared
at through hidden screens.

But never suffered to stare in return. Even if he were
minded to chance the loss of his eyes for letting them rest on a royal lady,
not to mention his manhood for daring to be aware of her existence, his
sweet-voiced companions grew almost shrill in forbidding it. It was sin enough
that he heard them speak.

Their kinsmen were enchanted with him. He frightened them,
deliciously. They reckoned him a giant; they waxed incredulous at skin so dark
and hair so bright and teeth so very white; they called him Sunlord and
Stormborn and Lord of Panthers.

He was as vain as a sunbird, but he knew what the flattery
of the courtiers was worth. Wizard’s gold. While one labored to maintain the
spell, it glittered brightly. But a moment’s lapse, a few breaths’ pause, and
it withered away.

Avaryan knew, there were wizards enough here. The charlatans
were everywhere: men of little power but great flamboyance, who wrought
illusions and told fortunes and found lost jewels for the credulous of the
court. But they were only a diversion. While they persuaded the skeptics of
Asanion that there was nothing to fear from their kind, the true mages passed
unseen and unregarded.

Nondescript persons, seldom noticed but always in evidence,
robed in grey or in violet, often accompanied by a beast or a bird. Sarevan did
not know that any of them had the emperor’s ear. They did not confess it and
Ziad-Ilarios did not admit to it, although he was free enough with Sarevan in
other matters.

When Sarevan appeared in his council and in his courts of
justice, he said no word, though eyes glittered and lips tightened at the
enormity of it. The emperor refused to see, refused to restrain the interloper,
who had a little sense, when it came to that. He never tried to speak where he
listened so avidly, though often his eyes would spark or his jaw tense, as if
he yearned to burst out in a flood of outland interference.

People were calling him the emperor’s favorite. Some, in a
country where tongues were freer, would have called it more. Would have
remembered who his mother was, and what she had been to his majesty. Would,
perhaps, have spoken of bewitchment.

There was one who did not speak at all, nor in any way
betray that he had had aught to do with the return of Asanion’s high prince and
the presence of Keruvarion’s high prince in Kundri’j Asan. Aranos had made no
public appearance since Autumn Firstday.

That, it seemed, was perfectly usual. He was known for his
strangeness. His name, when it was spoken, was spoken most often in a whisper.

It was cleverly done. As much as Asanian courtiers could
love anything, they loved their bright and haughty high prince. Aranos they
feared.

“He doesn’t even have to do anything,” said Zha’dan. “Just
hide in his walls and refuse to come out. And let people talk.”

“Serpent ways,” said Sarevan. He smiled at the guard who
stood before Aranos’ gate. It was his most charming smile. “I will speak with
your lord,” he said in Asanian.

The man surprised him. He bowed with every evidence of
respect and stepped back from the gate.

A mage was waiting. Sarevan was painfully glad that it was
not a darkmage. The man bowed and was most courteous. He led Sarevan into the
black-and-silver chambers.

o0o

Aranos did not see fit to keep Sarevan waiting, though an
Asanian would have reckoned him indisposed. Perhaps it was its own kind of
insult. He had bathed; he lay on sable furs as a slave rubbed sweet oil into
his skin, while another combed out his hair. His mane, unbound, was longer than
his body.

He was, indeed, a perfect miniature of a man. Rumor had cast
doubts on it. He had begotten no children that anyone knew of; and that, in an
Asanian prince some years Sarevan’s elder, was frankly scandalous.

Sarevan, looking at him, knew.

His eyelids lowered, raised. He almost smiled. “I, too,” he
said.

Sarevan glanced at the slaves. Aranos’ smile came clearer.
“Deaf-mutes,” he said. “Most useful, and most discreet.”

“But why would an Asanian choose to—”

“For the power in it.”

Sarevan sat on the edge of Aranos’ furs and frowned. “I’ve
heard of that. I never found it to be true. Maybe my kind of power was
different.”

Aranos was gravely astonished. “It did nothing for you, and
yet you suffered it?”

“For the vows and the mystery. For the god.”

“Ah.” The essential Asanian syllable: eloquent of volumes.
“And yet you knew me.”

“No one in your harem has ever told anyone?”

“They are women,” said Aranos. He did not even trouble to be
contemptuous. “Every one believes that another enjoys my favors. Some have even
lied to claim them, to gain what can be gained. I indulge it. It serves me; it
quiets my so-called concubines.”

“And you? Have you gained anything?”

Aranos shrugged slightly. “I am an apprentice still. The
full power, I am told, comes with full knowledge.”

“You’re not mageborn.”

For an instant Sarevan saw the man beneath the mask. The
prince cast him down. “I am not. I must learn to fly with wings of wax and
wire, where you were eagle-fledged in infancy.”

Sarevan quelled a shiver. In that moment of Aranos’
nakedness, he had seen desolation and hatred and corroding envy. And yet, beside
it, he had seen compassion.

Even the unmasked man was Asanian. Webs within webs. Sarevan
made his tongue a sword to cleave them. “I fly no longer. I walk as a man
walks, and no more. But this much of power I have left: I can see the snares
about my feet.” Aranos was silent. Sarevan thrust, swift and straight. “You
promised to stand at your brother’s back; to name him heir before your father.
You did not. You accused our Olenyai of treachery. They have proved to be
loyal, and to your father. How do I know that you did not lie in all the rest?”

“My brother is high prince as he was born to be.”

“For how long?”

The golden eyes hooded. “For as long as he can hold.”

Sarevan considered seizing him; chose not to move. “You
wanted us away from Halid and his men. Why?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Cannot or will not?”

“Both.”

“I can beat it out of you.”

“Can you?”

Sarevan measured distances, boltholes, the prince and his
two silent slaves. He smiled.

Aranos smiled back. “Beautiful barbarian. How you must tempt
my brother!”

Sarevan fitted his long fingers to that delicate neck. “Tell
me how I tempt you. Tell me what you plot against us.”

“Truly,” said Aranos, undisturbed by the hand about his
throat, “I cannot. I have my own designs, I admit it freely; perhaps my brother
will not be emperor as long as he would like. But this that concerns you . . .
I am part of it, but I do not rule it. I am not free to tell you more.”

Cold walked down Sarevan’s spine. “You’re lying.”

“As I have never known a woman, I swear to you, I am not.”

Sarevan looked at him more than a little wildly. It had been
so clear. So obvious. And if he lied—but he did not. It was enough to drive a
man mad. “Then, if not you, who?”

“I am forbidden to tell you.”

Sarevan’s teeth bared. “You are the Second Prince of the
Golden Empire. How can anyone presume to forbid you anything?”

“My father can.”

Almost—almost—Sarevan fell into the trap. But he knew
Ziad-Ilarios. Liked him. Loved him, maybe, a little.

None of it was enough to blind him. Ziad-Ilarios was a strong
king, a good man as far as an emperor could be in Asanion, and an intriguer of
no little subtlety. And yet.

“This is not his weaving. No more than it is my father’s.
Neither could have done what has been done in the other’s empire. Even the
shattering of my power—I blamed him for it once. No longer. It was too magelike
a trick. Too—much—like—”

Sarevan stilled, suddenly, completely. Aranos’ eyes were
wide and clear as topazes.

“Mage,” Sarevan murmured. “Like.” A sweet wildness rose in
him. Under the sky, he would have let it out in a whoop. “Ah,” he said
tenderly. “Ah, little man, how cleverly you plan this game. Do they know it,
your fellows? Do they guess how very dangerous you are?”

“Any man is dangerous.”

“Don’t babble.”

Aranos said nothing.

Sarevan smiled at last and let him go. Already the bruises
were rising on his ivory neck. His skin was as delicate as a woman’s was
supposed to be but almost never was.

“You are dangerous. Your brother is dangerous. I—I am
violent, and therefore dangerous.”

“And subtler than you think, Sun-prince.”

“Avaryan forbid,” said Sarevan. He rose, and bowed without
mockery. “I thank you, prince.”

“Perhaps in the end you will not.”

Sarevan paused. He could not read the princeling at all. He
shrugged. “That will be as it will be. Good day, little man.”

o0o

The Mageguild had settled itself in an unprepossessing
quarter of the city, in the fifth circle between the cloth market and the high
temple of Uvarra Goldeneyes. There along a narrow twisting street that ended
behind the temple were the sages and the diviners, the sorcerers, the
necromancers, the thaumaturges, the enchanters.

They had divided the power into the light and the dark. They
had named the greater powers, which were prophecy and healing and ruling of men
and of demons and mastery of the earth and walking of the road between the
worlds and raising of the dead. They had named the lesser, which were
mind-speech and beast-mastery and firemaking and flying and cloudherding and
the arts of shifting the world’s substance by will alone. They had even made a
craft of the naming, turning a gift of the inscrutable gods into a scholar’s
pursuit.

Sarevan found the guildhall by scent, as it were: by the
throbbing behind his eyes. Its door was neither hidden from sight nor blazoned
with the badge of the order; it was a plain wooden panel behind a bronze gate,
with a porter who eyed Sarevan through a grille, taking in the man in plain
lordly garb of the Hundred Realms, with a cap on his head but his bright hair
plain to see below it, and an ul-cat beside him and a painted Zhil’ari guarding
him.

The eye betrayed no surprise. Gate and door opened; the
porter, an Asanian of no age in particular, bowed and said, “If you will
follow, prince.”

o0o

It seemed a house like any other. No twisting shadowed
passages. No stink of potions or moaning of incantations. No shimmering
sorcerous barriers. Through open doors Sarevan saw men and a few women bent
over books or deep in colloquy or engaged in instructing apprentices.

Nearly all the masters were earth-brown easterners or
bone-pale islanders. Most of the apprentices were Asanians. Some glanced at him
as he passed. Curious, even fascinated, but unsurprised.

Sarevan had expected to be expected. He had not expected to
be piqued by it. They could at least have pretended to be amazed that the son
of the Sunborn dared to show his face among them.

He followed his guide up a stair and down a corridor. One
door in it stood open. The chamber within was a library: shelves of scrolls,
rolled and tagged, and a long cluttered table, and a man working at it.

There was no telling his age. His hair was white but his
skin was smooth; his back was bent but his eyes were bright; and the fingers
that held the stylus, though thin to emaciation, were straight and fine and
strong. Sarevan saw no familiar; he knew that he would see none.

He bowed his aching head. “Master,” he said. No more. No
name. Mages of the order gave their names only as great gifts.

The guildmaster bowed in return. “Prince,” he said. “Your
pardon, I pray you; I cannot rise to greet you properly. Will it please you to
sit with me?”

The porter had gone. Zha’dan established himself by the
door; Sarevan sat across the table from the master, with Ulan at his side, chin
on the table, watching the master of mages with an unblinking emerald stare.