A Fall of Princes (57 page)

“What is left in the light for you? Your lady is dead. Your
soul’s brother has gone back to the night from which you called him.”

“Before they were part of me, I was Mirain.”

“You can live without them? You can endure the emptiness in
heart and power?”

Mirain stiffened. His eyes closed; his jaw set. A spasm of
grief twisted his face.

It passed before the strength of his will. “My armies wait
for me. My war is not yet ended.”

“I think,” said the Red Prince, “that it is.” His hand took
in the two who stood in silence: Hirel because he had no part in it, Sevayin
because she could not find the words to speak. Her hands were locked in his,
braced above the child in her belly. “There is the end of it. You have refused
it. Be wise at last, son of my heart. Accept this that you yourself have
yearned for.”

“And I?” Mirain demanded. “Am I to fall upon my sword?”

Sevayin started forward, breaking away from Hirel. “No,
Father. You can rule as you have ruled, until the god comes to take you.
Keruvarion is yours. Asanion is mine to share with my emperor. Our son will
hold them both.”

He could see it. It was in his eyes. Almost they smiled.

But the prince said, “How long will you be content? How long
before it begins to rankle in you? You have struck deep into the heart of Asanion.
Will you insist that all you have won is yours?”

“He has won nothing yet,” said Hirel.

Sevayin spun upon him. And back, furious, upon her father.

“Yes,” Prince Orsan said. “There is no peace while you live,
Mirain An-Sh’Endor.”

“You will have to kill me with your own hands,” said Mirain.

And Sevayin said very softly, “You will have to slay me if
you hope to touch him.”

The Red Prince’s eyes sparked at last with Gileni temper.
“Was ever a man beset by such a brood of royal intransigents?” In three swift strides
he stood before Mirain. He was very much the taller, and he was not to be
towered over, even by the Sunborn.

He did what Hirel would not have done for worlds: set hands
on Mirain’s shoulders and held them, looking down into the Sun-bright eyes. “I will
slay you if I must. I pray that I may have no need.”

He could do it. Mirain smiled. Knowing surely, as did they
all, that he himself could take that life which beat so close, end it before
the prince could set hand to weapon. And yet, loving him, this master of the
masters of kingmakers, this weaver of plots that could dazzle even Asanian
wits. Loving him and hating him.

“Foster-father.” His voice was almost gentle. “Tell me.”

Prince Orsan met his smile with one fully as wise and fully
as implacable. “There is another way.”

“Of course,” said Mirain.

“An enchantment.” The prince paused. “The Great Spell. The
long sleep that lies on the borders of death.”

“But not full within its country.” Mirain tilted his head
back, the better to meet the prince’s gaze. “What profit is there in that?
Better and easier that I die. Then at least my soul will be whole again.”

“For you, perhaps, there may be no profit. For this world
that you have ruled, which you may yet destroy . . . Your
daughter has waked to wisdom. She sees that light and dark are one; she knows
in truth what power is. To that truth you may come. And if the years pass as I
forebode they will pass, a time will come when again the balance is threatened:
when Avaryan will need the Sword that he has forged.”

“Thrifty,” said Mirain. “And hard. Have you ever laid an
easy task on anyone?”

He asked it of Prince Orsan, but he asked it also of one who
could not be seen. He did not sound either awed or frightened. Hirel could
admire that.

“If I won’t do it,” he asked, and now he spoke only to the
prince, “what will you do?”

“I will do my best to kill you.”

“You could fail.”

“I could,” the prince agreed calmly.

Mirain laughed, sudden and wonderfully light. “And if I do
it—a wonder. A splendor of legend; a deed beyond any that I have ever done. But
the cost . . .” He sobered. “The cost is deadly high.”

“The great choices do not come cheaply.”

Mirain’s eyes flashed beyond the prince to Sevayin. They
softened a very little. “No,” he said. “They do not.”

There was a silence. No one moved. Mirain stared wide-eyed
into the dark. His mind was as clear to Hirel as if he spoke aloud, its vision
shimmering behind Hirel’s own eyes.

Sleep that was like death, but was not death. Long ages
passing. Dreams, perhaps. Awareness trapped in unending night. And at the end
of it, a hope too frail to bear the name of prophecy. A foreseeing that might
prove founded on falsehood. A waking into utter solitude, utter abandonment, in
a world beyond any seer’s perceiving.

Better the simple way. A battle of weapons and power. Death
if he fell, life and empire if he won. The prince was strong, but he was old;
he had never been Mirain’s match in combat. Nor even yet could he equal the
Sunborn’s power.

Mirain drew a long shuddering breath. He looked on his
daughter and his daughter’s lover. Their hands had met again without their
willing it, their bodies touched.

Pain swayed him. His hands reached as if to seek the ones
who were gone; his power wailed in its solitude.
Alone, all alone
.

But to die—

He had no fear of it. He knew wholly and truly what it was.
And yet . . . “I’m young,” he said. “I’m strong. There are years
of living left in me.”

None of them spoke. Years indeed, Hirel thought. Years of
war.

Mirain flung back his head. It burst from him in pain and
rage and royal resistance. “I am not called!”

“You are not,” Prince Orsan said. “The god will accept you
if you go. But he does not summon you into his presence.”

Mirain closed his eyes, opened his hands. Hirel’s eyes could
not bear the brilliance of the Kasar. “I am summoned,” the emperor said softly.
“But not to that.

“Father,” he said, “Father, you are not merciful.”

“But just,” said Orsan, to whom he had not been speaking,
“he has always been.”

Mirain smiled as a strong man can, even in great pain. He
held out his hands, the one that was night, the one that was fire. “And now you
see. To the will of a god, even the Sunborn can submit.” He bowed his head. “I
am yours, O instrument of my father. Do with me as you will.”

The Red Prince bowed low. “Not for myself, my lord and my
emperor. For the god who is above us all.”

Mirain lay on the table that could have been either bier or
altar. Prince Orsan did nothing for an endless while, gazing into darkness. He
gathered power, yet not as Hirel had known it, in light and fire. This was
quiet, inexorable, immeasurable.

Mirain did not move under it, save for his fist, that
clenched once, then slowly unclenched.

The Red Prince stood over him. His eyes sparked. Rebellion.
Repentance of his choice.

Sevayin trembled under Hirel’s hands, remembering, living
again the terror of great magic chosen and not yet begun. Seeing once more that
stern dark face bent above her, pitiless as the face of a god. Hirel tried to
think calm into her; to give her strength.

Prince Orsan laid a hand on Mirain’s brow and a hand on his
breast. Mirain drew a shuddering breath. “Now,” he said, low and rough. “Do it
now.”

The prince bowed his head. “Sleep, my son,” he said. “Sleep
until the god calls you to your waking.”

Mirain smiled. The air was full of power. Throbbing,
singing. It filled Hirel, poured through him, reft him of will and wit and
waking.

He caught at solidity: dark, fire-crowned. She brought back
the world.

They bent over the man upon the stone. He woke still, though
dimly; he saw them. He smiled.

“Children,” he murmured. “Children who loved beyond hope and
beyond help. I see—I am glad—after all—”

His voice faded. “Love one another. Be joyful. Joyful . . .
joy . . .”

Sevayin broke down and wept. He never knew. He was kingly in
his sleep, and young, and at peace; and on his face lay the shadow of a smile.

Even as she wept she straightened his kilt so that it was
seemly, folded his hands on his breast, laid his braid with care on his
shoulder. She shook off the hands that would have helped her.

Slowly she straightened. Her eyes burned, emptied of their
tears. “There has never been anyone like him. There shall never be his like
again.”

“He was a strong king,” Hirel said, “and a true king, and an
emperor.”

“He was Mirain An-Sh’Endor,” the Red Prince said.

Sevayin kissed him. One last tear fell to glitter on his
cheek. “Sleep well,” she said softly. “Dream long. And when you wake, may you
have learned to be wise. To face the dark. To know it; to transcend it.”

“Or may you never wake.” Prince Orsan signed the still brow.
Where his hand passed, light glimmered, shaping words of blessing and of
binding. “Remember, O my soul’s son. Remember that I loved you.”

He turned slowly. He wept like a king, strongly, out of a
face of stone. “He has gone beyond us now. His end I cannot see. Perhaps for
him there shall be none.

“But for us,” he said, “the world is waiting.” He bowed low
and low. “Empress. My soul is yours, my body, my power, my heart. Do with me as
you will.”

Sevayin shuddered at the title. At his oath, she raised her
clenched fists.

He waited, mute. His life was hers for the taking: his
title, his power, all that he had been. She could slay him, she could exile
him, she could leave him here to go mad and die. For this was the crag of
Endros Avaryan, and he was a mortal man, and the curse was strong about them
all.

Her hands fell; she breathed deep, trembling. She stepped
toward him. He did not move.

“I chose you,” she said, “in the end. It will be a long
while before I can forgive you. I may never trust you fully. But love . . .
love has no logic in it.” Her voice cleared, sharpened. “Get up, Grandfather.
Since when have you ever bowed to me?”

“Since you became my empress.”

“You never bowed to Mother. Or to Father, either. Stop your
nonsense now and help me. I don’t have the strength for a magegate, and there
is no other way out of this place.”

“There is one,” he said, rising. He took her hand. It
stiffened against him, eased slowly, opened. He turned the palm up. The
Kasar
flared and flamed. “Here is that
which opens all doors.”

“But there are no doors,” she said.

“Save this.” He met her eyes. “The way is simple. Inward
through the
Kasar
. Outward through
the Heart of the World.”

She frowned. She was very close to the end of her strength.

Hirel lent her what he had, hardly caring how he did it.
Little by little her mind cleared.

“Inward,” she said, fitting her will about the word. “In.”
Gathering their threefold awareness. “Ward.” The Kasar swelled and bloomed and
closed about them, a torrent of fiery gold. The worlds whirled away.

Sevayin Is’kirien

There were no endings. That was the truth which ruled the
gods. Sevayin would have been a great sage, if she had cared a jot for wisdom.

Inward through the
Kasar
.
Outward through the Heart of the World. Simple; inevitable.

When she came out of the darkness, it was all changed. The
mages laid themselves at her feet and called her empress.

She looked down at them and saw no sweetness in revenge. She
glanced at her consort. “Hirel?”

He eyed his Olenyai blades, measured the bowed and humble
necks. Remembered the hatred he had borne them.

He raised his empty hands to her, angry, yet bitterly
amused. “It is gone,” he said. “All of it, I cannot even despise them.”

“Nor I. But,” she said, “this we can do. We can rule them.”

“That has always been our intent,” said the guildmaster.

She did not believe him; she did not trust him. But he was
hers, he and his mages, while she had strength to bind him. She made them swear
fealty to Hirel as to herself; she won from them an oath, that they would do no
harm to herself or to her consort, or to the child she bore.

They made her sleep, all of them together, there outside of
the world’s time. She wanted to fight them. Her body refused.

It was fordone, and it had a child to think of. A living
child, dreaming in his warm dark womb, his flame of power burning
diamond-bright.

The mages had been afraid of him; they would learn to be
afraid of him. If he had ever been a simple mortal infant, this night’s working
had put an end to it.

He would be something new, this heir of Sun and Lion.
Something wonderful.

“But of course,” said Hirel with his inimitable certainty.
“He is our child.”

She was not ready to laugh again, not quite yet. But she
smiled: she kissed him and said, “I do think I love you, Hirel Uverias.”

o0o

She slept in her old chamber, cradling her son as Hirel
cradled her; if she dreamed, she remembered nothing of it. When she woke, she
ate because she must, but her mind had leaped far ahead. She hardly saw who
followed her from the chamber to the hall of fire.

Her worldgate had fallen. She had felled it herself. Vadin,
Starion, her poor mages—

Inward through the
Kasar
.
Outward through the Heart of the World.

Avaryan was rising. His light lay gentle on the dead. Vadin
Uthanyas who had died at last, fearlessly and joyfully so that the rest might
live. His body lay in royal company: Asanian emperor, Varyani empress.

Sevayin would mourn. Later. She would reckon up her guilt
when there was time for reckoning.

Two armies waited, hating one another. Two herds of princes
hot for war. Two empires, two royal cities, two palaces with their flutter of
courtiers. Two lifetimes’ worth of battles to make them one.