A Fall of Princes (52 page)

The empress drew her into a swift embrace. They were
trembling, both of them, with all that roiled in them.

“Come,” said Elian. “Your people are waiting.”

o0o

Sevayin did not face her people naked, but she faced them
as a woman and a priestess and a queen.

She needed all her pride. She could have done without her
temper.

It was not the common folk who tried her sorely. They had
needed most to see her, to know that she was well and strong and triumphant in
her sacrifice. She knew how to make them her own.

But no lord yet born had sense enough to listen and let be.
It was the same fruitless battle. Keruvarion’s lords and captains would not
ally themselves with Asanion. They would not suffer an Asanian prince. They
would not acknowledge the legitimacy of the union: not without contract or
witnesses.

That broke her. She did not fling herself at the idiot who
had said it. She dared not; she would have killed him.

She rose from her seat in front of her father’s tent. She
smiled a clenched-teeth smile. She inquired very softly, “Are you calling my
child a bastard?”

She did not heed the scramble of denials. Commoners had
sense. They understood logic; when they hated, they hated with reason. Lords
were like seneldi stallions. They bred and they fought; they snorted and gored
the air, and they raised their voices at every whisper of a threat.

They had fallen silent, staring. Some looked frightened.

And well they might be. “I have heard you,” she said. “I
have heard all I need to hear. It changes nothing. I have taken as consort the
High Prince of Asanion. Refuse him and you refuse me.” She faced her father.
“Now the beast has danced for all your people. Has it danced well? Has it
pleased you? Must it return to its cage, or may it go back to its mate?”

Mirain was not angry. He seemed more proud of her than not;
and he had never been one to meddle where his heir was faring well enough
alone. He sat back, arms folded, and said, “We have matters to consider, you
and I. They need a night’s pondering. Will you tarry for it?”

She could refuse. He offered that, to her who had betrayed
his trust. But Mirain An-Sh’Endor always granted a second accounting. Then he
had no mercy.

“I will stay,” she said, “until morning.”

He bowed his head. She moved without thinking, knelt, kissed
his hand.

Her eyes rose. His own were clear, steady, and filled to the
brim with power.

She shivered. He was king and emperor, great general, mage
and priest: death had always ridden at his right hand. But now when she looked
at him, it lay upon him like his own dark-sheened skin.

o0o

“Sarevadin.”

She stood on the edge of the cavalry lines, gazing over the
shattered city, watching the sun set behind the Asanian camp.

Hirel lived; she knew that. But no more. A shield of power
lay between them. She ached with trying not to batter it down.

When her father’s voice spoke behind her, she was perilously
close to mounting Bregalan and damning all promises and storming to her
prince’s rescue. She whirled, as fierce with guilt as with startlement.

Mirain’s gaze rested where hers had been. There was no one
with him; he could have been a hired soldier in his plain kilt, his cloak of
leather lined with fleece against the chill, his hair in its plait behind him.

He stroked Bregalan’s shoulder, and the stallion raised his
head from cropping the winter grass, snorting gently in greeting. Mirain was
rare in his world: a two-legged brother. Like Sevayin herself. Like Hirel.

She shivered a little. The wind was rising as the sun sank,
and her robe was less warm than it was splendid.

Mirain spread his cloak over her. She thought of resistance,
sighed, submitted. It was warmer within than without, and she had nothing in
truth to hate her father for. He was only doing what he must.

She closed her eyes. He was doing it to her. Again. Being
the Sunborn. Luring her mind into acceptance of his madnesses. It was he who
had begun this war; it was his intransigence that had brought her here, and
that was all too likely to be his death.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

He was slow to answer. “Because,” he said “I am my father’s
son. I was born for this: to subdue the Golden Empire. To turn the world to the
worship of Avaryan. To bring light where none has ever been.”

“By invading a country in the face of its ruler’s pleas for
peace?”

“I gave him peace. I gave him a decade of it. And watched
him strengthen his armies and rouse my outland tribes to revolt and free his
slavetakers to raid within my borders. He lured the Mageguild into Kundri’j; he
sent his sorcerers as far as Endros, to whisper in the ears of my people, to
rouse them to their old dark rites, to slay as many as they might in the name
of gods long and well forgotten.”

“While you did almost exactly the same in Avaryan’s name.”

He sighed at her back, folding his arms a little more
tightly around her. “There were no slaves taken and no children sacrificed at
my command.”

“No. Only cities leveled with sword and power, and their
children slaughtered to sate your armies.”

“War is ugly, Sarevadin. I bring justice where none but
princes have ever had it, and one god where a thousand had stripped bare the
land and its people.”

She twisted to face him, hands knotted on his chest,
trembling with the effort of keeping them still. “It would have come without
your war. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? We did it, Father. While you
great emperors glowered and threatened and called up your armies, Hirel and I
forged our own peace.”

“I see,” he said levelly. “I understand that the Mageguild
seized upon a potent and mutual infatuation, and wielded that infatuation
entirely for its own ends.” She would have cried a protest; he silenced her. “I
have no objection to a love match. I made one myself; I swore long ago that if
the god granted you the same, I would not stand against it. Nor do I object to
the one you have chosen. Under other circumstances I would have urged you to
take him. But we have gone well past either logic or simplicity. We were past
it before you submitted yourself to the mages.”

Her throat had swelled shut. She forced words through it.
“You don’t want a bloodless end. You want to set your foot on Ziad-Ilarios’
neck; you want to see his people die. Because they pray to the wrong gods.
Because they dare to call your father a he.”

He touched her torque. “Your god also, Sarevadin.”

She struck his hand, flinging it from her, breaking his grip
and his spell. “My god is not your god. My vision is not your vision. You call
my hope simplicity, as if I were a child who would put an end to death with a
garland and a song. It is you who are the child. You strive to shape the world
in an image as false as the desolation of the black sorcerers. You blind
yourself to any enemy but the one who would choose to be your ally.”

“Asanian friendship is the friendship of the serpent.
Jeweled beauty without, poison within.”

She breathed deep, willing herself to be calm, to think. To
remember that men had died for words less bitter than these that she had cast
in his face. Which he was suffering with almost frightening forbearance.

“Father,” she said. “Suppose that you let us try our way. It
can’t harm you. If it succeeds, you become the begetter of the great peace. If
it fails, we children forced it on you with magery and with sheer youthful
heedlessness; and you can go back to war again. You know you’ll win. You have a
god to fight for you.”

“So do I now,” he said.

“But you have no son.”

He stepped back. His face was still in the dying light; his
eyes were like the eyes of one of his images, obsidian in ivory in ebony.

“I can’t go back, Father. Not only because the trying would
kill me. I have too much pride.”

“You always did.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Mine,” he said, “for begetting you.” He did not smile. “If
my death is ordained, Sarevadin, what right have you to hinder it?”

“Every right in the world.” She raised the white agony of
her hand. It cast its own light, sparks of gold in his shadowed face. “This is
how I endured the change. I had a pain to match it, and years to learn how to
bear it. It is not the same with my dream of your death. Yours and my mother’s,
Father. I saw her die before you. And though the years stretch long and the
pain never falters, it never numbs me. It only grows more terrible. Therefore I
chose this path. It offered a grain of hope: a chance that you would live.”

“And yet,” he said, “if I die, I assure your peace. Living,
I can only stand against you.”

“Not if I can persuade you to stand with me.”

“Why? Why prolong the agony, when I can be lord of the world
by tomorrow’s sunset?”

“Lord of the world, perhaps. But Elian Kalirien will be
dead.”

He tossed his haughty stubborn head. “You are no prophet,
Sun-child.”

“In this,” she said, “I am.”

There was a silence. She fixed her stinging eyes on
Bregalan, who had raised his head, drinking the night wind. Her father was a
shadow on the edge of her perception.

After a long while she said, “Tomorrow you may renew your
war. I shall not be here to see it.”

“Indeed you will not. A bearing woman has no place on the
battlefield.”

“Not in armor, no. There’s none that would fit me and no
time to forge it. I have another battle to fight. I shall go back to the Heart
of the World and stand against the mages who have plotted to take you.”

She heard his swift intake of breath, but his voice was
quiet. “You know you cannot do it.”

“With power enough I can. The Asanian mages may be willing
to ally with me to preserve their emperor. Some of your own may choose the
same. You give them little enough to do while you wield your armies.”

“On the contrary. They hold back the Asanian sorcerers; they
ward my army against attacks from behind.”

“No need for that if there is truce; if all of us are joined
to break the conspiracy.”

“Light and dark together?”

“Why not?”

“You cannot do it.”

“I can try.”

“You must not. Your child—”

She laughed, but not in mirth. “How you all do fret! And yet
I don’t think any of you knows what power can do to an unborn child.”

“We know all too well. It destroys the waxing soul. If the
body is fortunate, it too dies.”

“Human soul. Human body. What of the mageborn? What of a
bearer of the
Kasar
?”

“You would be more than mad if you sought an answer.”

“What choice do I have? They will kill you otherwise, and
Mother with you. I would free you at least to find your own deaths in battle.”

He seized her. “You will not!”

“You can’t stop me.”

“No?”

She met his glittering eyes. “I will do it, Father. You
can’t bend all your power on me and keep your army in hand and wage your war
against Ziad-Ilarios. He has a message from me: if I fail to appear here by
sunrise tomorrow, he is to disregard any word you speak, even of peace, and
fall on you with his conjoined forces. He has more than you think, Father. His
sorcerers aren’t holding back out of weakness, still less out of fear of your
mages’ shields. They’re grateful for the favor: it frees them from the need to
maintain protections while they set about opening gates. Worldgates, Father.
The dragons of hell will be the least of what comes forth to face you.”

His hands were iron, his face lost in night. She had no fear
left. She had given her second accounting. Now she would see the face which he
turned toward treason.

His fingers tightened. She set her teeth against the pain.

Abruptly his grip was gone. The pain lingered, throbbing.

“What,” he demanded roughly, “if you are here and I am not?”

She hardly dared breathe. She could not have won. Mirain did
not lose battles.

He could, on occasion, retreat. To muster his forces. To
mount a new attack.

He could indeed. “I will face these traitorous mages. I will
end their plotting.”

“Alone?”

“My enchanters will follow me.”

“Not without me. Alone of anyone outside of the guild or the
conspiracy, I know the way.”

He was silent for so long that she wondered if he had heard;
or if she had at last gone too far. Then, startlingly, he laughed. “Oh, you are
mine indeed! You have me dancing to your music; now will you command that I
dance with the Asanians?”

“Can you bear to do that?”

He pondered it. “For this cause . . .
perhaps. But it can only be a truce, Sarevadin. I will not end this war until
Asanion bows to me as its overlord.”

“But now you need Asanion’s strength. Without it you can’t
face the full power of the Heart of the World. With it, you may be able not
only to face that power but to overcome it.”

“No certainty, princess?”

“What is certain?” She wanted to hit him. He was yielding,
but in his own way. Meaning to rule even where he was vanquished. “I’ll lead
you to the Heart of the World. I’ll stand with you there against our enemies.”

“With half of our enemies fighting at our side.” He took her
hands and held her gaze. “You will guide us. You will not join in the battle.”

She freed her eyes from their bondage and cast them down.
“If I can.”

“You must.”

“I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll fight if I have to. I’ll fight
you as hard as any of the mages, if you try to stop me. That is my solemn oath,
by the god who begot you.”

His anger seared her within and without. She stood firm
against it. Not fighting unless he forced her to it. Simply refusing to yield.

He drew back. She held, lest it be a trap. He said, “On your
head be it, O child of my body. May this mere and humble emperor request, at
the least, that you take thought for the child of your own?”