A Fall of Princes (41 page)

Dream above dream. This was dimmer than the last, and yet
wondrous real. He stole a drowsy kiss.

It tasted strange. Strange-familiar. His hand, seeking,
found no firm fullness of breast; but fullness enough below.

Sarevan’s fingers had closed. He willed them open.

Hirel blinked up at him, still more than half asleep, but
frowning. He was certainly not a dream.

“What are you doing here?” Sarevan demanded, sharp with
startlement.

Hirel’s frown deepened to a scowl. “Do you know no words but
those?”

“Do you know no tricks but this?”

“Was it I who set your hand where it is now?”

It snapped back. “I was dreaming,” Sarevan said.

“Ah,” said Hirel. “Surely. And not of me.”

Sarevan gaped. Suddenly he laughed. It was not at all wise,
but he could not help it. “You’re not jealous of me. You’re jealous of her!”

Hirel struck him. It was not a strong blow; Sarevan hardly
felt it.

Hirel rolled away from him, drawing into a knot, spitting
words to the wall. “A man who has never had a woman is an unnatural thing. A
prince in that condition is an abomination. She has done her duty by you; she
has made you a virtuous man. It was my duty to you as my brother and my equal,
not only to allow it but to encourage it. But it is not my duty to be glad of
it.”

“Hirel—” Sarevan began.

“She is the jewel of the harem. I do not need to ask if she
pleased you. She is a great artist of the inner chamber; she has taught me much
of what I know. And all the while you lay with her, I who am royal, I who by
birth must be your enemy, I who can never be aught to you but lust and guilt
and in the end revulsion—I could not rest for that you lay with her and not
with me.”

He drew his breath in sharply. It sounded like a sob. “I
give her to you. It is she for whom you were born, she and all her sex.”

“Asuchirel,” said Sarevan. This time Hirel did not cut him
off. “Hirel Uverias, I never lay with her.”

“Surely not. You knelt with her. Or did you mount her
stallion-wise?”

Sarevan went briefly blind. When he saw again, Hirel was
under him, and the marks of his open palm were blazoned on the boy’s cheeks.
“Never,” he gritted. “Never.”

Hirel was not fighting him.

He began to cool, to be ashamed. He drew back carefully.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. Your brothers, your
sister . . . all of it.”

Hirel said nothing. His face was rigid, at once haughty and
miserable.

His skin in the lamplight was downy, a child’s. It would
bear bruises where Sarevan had struck it.

Sarevan’s hand laid itself with utmost gentleness on the
worst of them. “Hear a truth, Little brother. Jania is very beautiful. I think
that I would gladly give my torque and my vows into her keeping; I would
rejoice to make her my queen. And yet that gladness rises not simply out of
Jania who is woman and beauty and high heart. It rises out of Jania who is her
brother’s image.”

Hirel was silent.

Sarevan pressed on. “I can’t be your lover, Hirel. I’m not
made for it. But what my soul is, what it longs for—Jania is nothing to it.
Hirel is not. Hirel is most emphatically not.” He swallowed. “I’m afraid I love
you, little brother.”

Hirel flung himself away from Sarevan’s hand. His eyes were
blazing; his cheeks were wet. “You must not!”

“I don’t think I can help it,” Sarevan said.

“You must not!” Hirel’s voice cracked. “You must
not
!”

“Hirel,” said Sarevan, reaching for him. “Cubling. We can be
friends. We can be brothers. We can—”

Hirel went still in his hands. Cold again, and far too calm.
“We cannot.” The tears ran unheeded down his face. “I have not told you the
truth. While I embodied the jealous lover, word came. Your father has received
my father’s message. He has answered it. His armies have begun the invasion of
Asanion.”

Sarevan frowned. “That can’t be. He wouldn’t—”

“He has. And you must die, and even if I could prevent it, I
would not. And it is the custom—with royal hostages, it is the custom that the
high prince commands the executioners.”

It was not real. Not yet. Not that Sarevan had failed more
utterly even than he had feared. That the war had come; that he would die.

But Hirel’s pain was present and potent. He held the boy,
rocking him, wordless.

Hirel allowed it: that was the depth of his pain. “Clearly
your father does not believe that we will slay you. He will expect us to shrink
from the threat of his vengeance; to bargain with your life. Therefore,” said
Hirel, “you must die.”

“Tomorrow?”

Hirel began to tremble. “I do not know. By all the gods, I
do not know.”

“There’s still the night,” Sarevan said.

“You do not believe it, either!” Hirel cried. “You think we
will not dare. But we will, Sarevan. As surely as I hope to sit the Golden
Throne, we will.”

“I know.” Sarevan played with the tumbled curls, smiling at
their refusal to go any way but their own. “I’m not afraid to die. I don’t even
have much to regret. Though I would have liked to know a woman. Just once. In
my own body.”

Hirel pulled back. “I shall bring her to you.”

“No,” said Sarevan, holding him. “I can’t do it to her. Even
for my line’s sake—and she would conceive, Hirel. That is certain. I can’t
abandon her to bear a Sunborn child in the heart of Asanion.”

“I would raise it as my own.”

“As your heir?”

Hirel would not answer.

Sarevan sighed, smiled a little. “You see. And yet he would
overcome any heir you begot, any heir you named. There would be no stopping
him. We are born to rule, we Varyani princes. We suffer no rivals.”

“No,” said Hirel. “You conquer them. You make them love
you.”

“Sarevan. Sarevan Is’kelion.”

They had come for him. So soon. He was up before his eyes
were well open, hissing fiercely, “Don’t wake him. Don’t make him do it. Take
me now and get it over.”

“Sun-prince.”

The voice was—baffled? Amused? Sarevan glared through a tangle
of hair; he raked it back.

Prince Aranos regarded him with great interest.

He eased, and yet he tensed. “Good. You can do it. Don’t
tell him till it’s done.”

Aranos said nothing. Slowly Sarevan’s mind recorded what his
eyes were seeing. The silken chamber had vanished. These walls were stone,
stark and unadorned, and the floor was stone spread with woven mats. The
ceiling was a grey vault from which hung a cluster of lamps.

None was lit. The light that filled the room came pouring
from a high round window. Sunlight, bright, with little warmth in it.

Sarevan turned completely about. The bed was intact, rich
and foreign in this stark place, with Hirel coiled in it. The scars on his side
and thigh, though paling with age, were livid still. The light was cruel to
them.

On the wall above him was a tapestry. Beasts, birds, a
dragonel.

Sarevan had seen it. Somewhere. He could not, in the shock
of the moment, remember where.

He faced Aranos again. The prince had companions. One was a
mage clad in the violet robe of a master of the dark. The other was a priest of
Avaryan, torqued and braided, with his familiar on his shoulder.

Sarevan stilled. He was remembering a promise made and his
leave given, and the part the Mageguild had played in all of this.

“I think,” he said, “that I should begin again. Good
morning, my lords. Where is the guildmaster, and what is this place?”

Aranos bowed slightly, but he was not choosing to answer.
The mage said, “You will please to come with us.”

The chief priest of Avaryan’s temple in Endros said nothing,
but he smiled. It was a smile that reassured Sarevan, yet frightened him. He
was all a tangle.

He took refuge in vanity. “Must I go as I am?”

“Come,” said the mage.

o0o

None of them would say more than that. The way seemed
long; it was dim and cold, all stone, with now and then a lofty window.

Whatever this place was, it could not be Kundri’j Asan. The
air was too icily pure.

He was entirely out of his reckoning. It made him want to
laugh. All his plotting, his betrayals, his multiple sins, and nowhere but in a
dream that he had all but forgotten had he seen himself in this place.

His companions would not answer his questions. They would
not speak at all. After his third failure he desisted, not entirely gracefully.
He was not used to being ignored.

This was a castle, perhaps. The stone and the steep narrow
stairways had a flavor of fortresses.

The end was a hall like the great hall of a lord, with its
central fire and its stone-flagged floor and its walls hung with faded
tapestries. Unlike a lord’s hall, it was all but empty. The pillared bays
around its edges, where men slept and gamed and kept their belongings and often
a woman or two, were dark. There were no hounds, no hunting cats, no falcons on
perches. No singers sang by the fire; no guards stood at attention, no servants
waited on those who sat together in the warmth.

Sarevan stopped short. There was the master of the Order of
Mages. There was the witch of the Zhil’ari with her grandson mute and
motionless at her feet. There, in a moment, were the priest and the mage and
the prince.

And there was Orozia of Magrin, and beside her the last man
whom Sarevan had ever thought to see. Orsan of Han-Gilen, his bright hair gone
ashen in the scarce three years since Sarevan had seen him, but his body strong
still, and his eyes darkly brilliant in the black-bronze face.

A more complete conspiracy could not have gathered. Except—

“Aren’t we missing someone?” Sarevan asked. “An emperor or
two, maybe?”

“We suffice,” the Red Prince said.

For all his training in the necessities of princes, Sarevan
almost cried his hurt. Even at his sternest, even in the midst of just
punishment of a scapegrace grandson, Prince Orsan had never looked as he looked
now. Cold. Remote. A stranger.

Sarevan stood straight before them all. “Well? Am I going to
have my answers? Or am I on trial for my sins?”

They were going to drive him mad with their silence.

It was Aranos who spoke, as if he too were losing patience
with this mummery. “You are not on trial, prince.”

“Ah now,” drawled Sarevan, “I’m not a perfect idiot. I’ve
killed with power. I’ve betrayed my father and my empire. I’ve sold my soul to
my greatest enemy. Now I’ve dared to look on the faces of your mighty and
hidden alliance, for which I’ll surely die. And you plainly intend to give me
no answers, and I’m not given even a moment’s grace to make myself decent. You
can’t tell me that you merely want to feast yourselves on my famous beauty.”

Aranos glanced at his companions. They were like stones. He
sighed just audibly. “You have committed no crimes that I know of, prince.
Unless it is a crime to wish for peace.”

“The priests would argue that,” Sarevan said.

“You have sinned as all men must while they dwell in living
flesh,” said the priest whose name was hidden behind his magecraft. In Endros
they called him Baran, which was simply,
Priest
.
“You will atone for it; have no fear of that. But now we ponder other matters.”

He raised his hand, commanding. Orozia came quietly, eyes
lowered. She halted behind Sarevan. He felt her hands on his hair, braiding it
with much patience for its tangles.

She bound it off and returned to her place. He thought he
saw tears on her cheeks; but that was not likely. She had never been able to
weep stone-faced as she wept now.

He swept his eyes around the circle. “You grant me my
priesthood. Now grant me your courtesy. Tell me what I see here. Have I guessed
rightly? You are a conspiracy?”

“Just so,” answered Aranos. “A conspiracy of mages. Of the
guild, and of those outside the guild. Of the light and of the dark. Of all
those who foresee only ruin in the Sunborn’s war.”

“Even you?” Sarevan demanded of his grandfather.

“Even I.” Orsan had warmed not at all. “I who began it by
snatching a priestess from the Sun-death and fostering the child she carried. I
saw even then that in him lay the seeds of the world’s salvation; yet also
those of its destruction. He is truly the son of the god. Of the true god, who
is both life and death.”

Sarevan was not astounded. He had heard it before, if never
so explicitly. But he set his chin and his mind and said coldly, “You and all
your line made Avaryan supreme long years before my father was born. Are you
repudiating your own doctrines?”

“I am not. No more than are you.”

“I don’t have any doctrines. I’m merely selfish. I don’t
want to be lord of a desert.”

“And you love him.”

“
Yes
!” cried
Sarevan with sudden heat. “I love him, and I think he’s trapped himself, and he
knows what he has to do, and he knows what will come of it, and he has no
escape. But at least he can die in a blaze of glory, with Asanion in ruins
under his heel.”

“It need not be so.”

“Of course it need not. But now it must. Even for me, he
wouldn’t stop it.” Sarevan tugged viciously at his braid. “Maybe we’re all
fools. If I’d succeeded, what would I have done except to postpone the
inevitable? I love the heir of Asanion; I love him as a brother. But he would
no more bow to my rule than I would to his. The world simply will not support
two such emperors as we would be.”

“Granted,” said the Red Prince. “Be patient for a moment
now. Believe that we shall return to your dilemma; but first, hear a tale.”

He paused. The young Zhil’ari rose. Like Orozia, he would
not let Sarevan catch his gaze. He brought a warm soft robe which Sarevan was
glad of even so close to the fire, and set a chair for him.

Sarevan sat as much at his ease as he might, and waited with
conspicuous patience.