A Fall of Princes (6 page)

The lord smiled. He was tall for an Asanian, a bare head
shorter than Sarevan, and slender, and exquisitely attired. His slaves were
skillful: one had to peer close to see that he was not young, that his hair was
not as thick as it feigned to be. But his eyes were not the eyes of a fool.

“Fascinating,” he repeated, circling Sarevan, lifting the
loosened braid and letting it fall. “High sorcery in my own city before the
faces of my people, and the sorcerer . . . What is your name,
priest of Avaryan?”

“You know it as well as I,” said Sarevan with perfect calm.

“Do I?” the lord inquired. He raised a hand. “Unbind him.”

Soldiers and servants slanted their eyes and muttered, but
under their lord’s eye they obeyed, retreating quickly as if the sorcerer might
blast them where they stood. He barely moved except to flex his good shoulder
and to draw a breath. “Ah then, perhaps I’ve changed a little; I was somewhat
younger when we met. I remember you, Ebraz y Baryas ul Shon’ai.”

“And I you,” the lord admitted, “Sarevan Is’kelion y Endros.
I confess I never expected to see you here in such state, with such
attendance.”

“What, my boy?” Sarevan grinned and ruffled Hirel’s hair.
“Do you like him? I found him in a hedgerow; I’m making a man of him, though
it’s hard going. His old master didn’t use him well, and he’s not quite sane.
Fancies himself a prince of your empire, if you can believe it.”

Ebraz barely glanced at Hirel, whose rage bade fair to burst
him asunder. “He has the look, true enough. They breed for it in slave-stables
here and there; it fetches a high price.”

“I had him for a song. The strain is flawed, it seems. It
produces incorrigibles. But I’ve not given up hope yet.”

“What will you do with him when you have tamed him?”

“Set him free, of course.”

Ebraz laughed, a high well-bred whinny. “Of course!” He
sobered. “Meanwhile, my lord, you have presented me with rather a dilemma. By
command of my overlord, all priests of Avaryan are outlawed in Kovruen; and you
have not only stood forth publicly as a bearer of the torque, you have also
wielded magecraft without the sanction of the guild.”

“Guild?” Sarevan asked.

“Guild,” Ebraz answered. “Surely you know that your kind are
licensed and taxed in the Golden Empire.” He spread his narrow elegant hands.
“So you see, my lord, between emperor and overlord I am compelled to hold you
prisoner. I regret the necessity, and I regret still more deeply the
circumstances which led to your wounding. You can be sure that I will send to
my lord with a full explanation. And to your father, of course, with
profoundest apologies.”

Sarevan flinched, although he tried to make light of it.
“You needn’t trouble my father with my foolishness.”

“But, my lord, if he discovers for himself—”

“We can take care that he does not. Imprison me if you must,
I’ve earned it, but spare me my father’s wrath for yet a while.”

The lord smiled in understanding. “I can be slow to send a
message. But Prince Zorayan must know; your freedom lies in his hands.”

“That will suffice,” said Sarevan. He swayed; his lips were
ashen. “If you will pardon me—”

“That would not be wise, my lord.”

Hirel started. A man had come out of nowhere, a man who
looked much less a mage than Sarevan, small, dark-robed, quiet. “My lord,” he
said, “this weakness is a lie. He plots to deceive you, to cozen you into
giving him a gentle imprisonment, and thence to escape by his arts. See, such a
fine fierce glare. He knows that his power is no match for mine.”

“No?” asked Sarevan, eyes glittering. He no longer looked as
if he were about to faint. “I would have had you, journeyman, but for an
archer’s good fortune. You are but a spellcaster, a slave to your grimoires; I
am mageborn.”

“Mageborn, but young, and arrogant with it. Arrogant far
beyond your skill or your strength.”

“Do you care to test me, conjurer? Here and now, with no book
and no charmed circle. Come, summon your familiar; invoke your devils. I will
be generous. I will hold them back if they seek to turn on you.”

“I have your blood, Sunchild,” the mage said calmly. “That
is book and circle enough.”

Sarevan’s breath caught. His defiance had an air of
desperation. Feigned, perhaps. Perhaps not. “You cannot touch me.”

“Enough,” said Ebraz quietly, but they heard him. “I cannot
afford an escape, my lord. Surely you understand. Your word would suffice, but . . .
Prince Zorayan is not an easy man, and he is not altogether certain that he
trusts me. I must be strict. For appearance’s sake. I will be no more rigorous
than I must.”

“I will remember,” Sarevan said. Warning, promising.

“Remember, my lord, but forgive.” Ebraz signaled to his men.
“The lower prison. Minimal restraint but constant guard. Within reason, let him
have whatever he asks for.”

o0o

It was dark. It was damp. It stank. It was a dungeon, and
it was vile, and Sarevan smiled at it.

“Spacious,” he said to the guard who stood nearest, “and
well lit; the straw is clean, I see. Rats? Yes? Ah well, what would a dungeon
be without rats?”

They had taken off Hirel’s chain. He bolted for the door. A
guard caught him with contemptuous ease, and took his time letting go, groping
down Hirel’s trousers. Hirel laid him flat.

Sarevan laughed. “Isn’t he a wonder? Protects his virtue
better than any maid. But with a little persuasion . . .”

The guards were grinning. Hirel’s victim got up painfully,
but the murder had retreated from his eyes. He did not try to touch Hirel
again.

They left the dim lamp high in its niche, where it bred more
shadows than it vanquished. The door thudded shut; bolts rattled across it.
Hirel turned on Sarevan. “You unspeakable—”

“Yes, I held your tongue for you, and it was well for you I
did. If my elegant lord had taken any notice of you, he would have kept you. He
likes a pretty boy now and then. But he likes them docile and he likes them
devoted, and I made sure that he thought I might have tainted you with my
sorceries. Why, your very face could have been a trap.”

“What do you think you have led me into? I could have been
free. I could have proven my rank and had an escort to my father.”

“You could have been held hostage well apart from me, with
no hope of escape.”

“What hope is there now?”

“More than none.” Before Hirel could muster a riposte,
Sarevan had withdrawn, turning his eyes toward the deepest of deep shadows.

His breath hissed. He swooped on something.

Hirel’s eyes were sharpening to the gloom. He saw what
Sarevan knelt beside. A bundle of rags. A tangle of—

Hair like black water flecked with white. The tatters of a
robe such as all priests wore by law in Asanion, torn most on the breast where
the badge of the god should be. The prisoner had on something beneath,
something dark and indistinct, but glinting on the edge of vision.

Hirel’s stomach heaved. It was no garment at all, but flesh
flayed to the bone. And the face—the face—

It had been a woman once. It could still speak with a
clarity horrible amid the ruin, and the voice was sweet. It was a young voice,
light and pure despite the greying hair.
“Avar’charin?”
It shifted to accented Asanian. “Brother. Brother my lord,
Avar’charin.
I see you in the darkness. How bright is the light of
you!”

Sarevan stroked the beautiful hair. His face was deadly
still. “Hush,” he murmured. “Hush.”

She stirred. Though it must have roused her to agony, she
touched his hand. His fingers closed over hers, gently, infinitely gently, for
they were little more than blood and broken bone. “My lord,” she cried with
sudden urgency, “you should not be here! This land is death for you.”

“It has been worse for you.” His voice was as still as his
face.

“I am no one. My pain belongs to the god; it is nearly done.
But you—Endros iVaryan, you were mad to pass your father’s borders.”

“The god is leading me. He brought me to you. Give me your
pain, sister. Give me your suffering, that I may heal it.”

“No. No, you must not.”

“I must.”

She clutched him, though she gasped, though her broken body
writhed with the effort and the anguish of it. “No. Oh, no. They left me alive
for this. They left lips and tongue. They knew—they wanted—”

Sarevan’s face was set, closed, implacable. He laid his
hands on that head with its bitter paradox of beauty and ruin.

The air sang; Hirel’s flesh prickled. Almost he could see.
Almost he could hear. Almost know. Power like wind and fire, solid as a sword,
ghostly as a dream, terrible as the lightning.

Gathering, waxing, focusing. Reaching within the shattered
body, willing it to live, to mend, to be whole.

“No!” cried the priestess, high and despairing.

The bait was taken, the trap was sprung. The hunter came in
wind and fire, but his fire was black and his wind bore the stink of darkness.

The healing frayed and chilled and broke. Sarevan reared up,
and the masks were gone, torn away from purest, reddest rage. He roared, and it
was no man who sprang, but a great cat the color of night, with eyes of fire.

Hirel had no pride in the face of a world gone mad. He
cowered in the farthest comer. Perhaps he whimpered. He scrabbled at the wall,
hoping hopelessly that it would give way and free him from this horror.

As far from him as the cell’s walls permitted, and much too
hideously close, there was nothing to see, and there was everything. A cat
crouched over a shapeless thing that had been a woman. A cat that was also a
redheaded northerner, locked in combat with something that was now Lord Ebraz’
tame sorcerer and now a direwolf with bloody jaws.

The cat’s fangs closed on the wolf’s throat. It howled; it
fought. The cat grunted, perhaps with effort, perhaps with the laughter of the
prey turned hunter and slayer.

The wolf slashed helplessly at air. Cruel claws rent its
body. Its blood bubbled and flamed like the blood of mountains.

With a last vicious stroke, the cat flung down his enemy. A
man, broken and bleeding, and his blood had still that fiery, sorcerous
strangeness.

Power, Hirel knew without knowing how. The mage bled his
magic at Sarevan’s feet.

“Thus,” said the priest, cold and proud, “do you learn the
law. A journeyman does not challenge a master. Go now; reap the reward your
folly has won you. Live without power and without magic, and know that
Avaryan’s line cannot be cast down by any mortal man.”

The enemy vanished. Sarevan began to sink down beside the
body of the priestess.

Wind swept over him, with fire in its jaws. It caught him
unawares. He reeled and fell. Hirel’s wandering wits observed the priest’s
braid, how bright it was as he toppled, bright as new copper, clashing with the
blood on his bandages.

He twisted in the air, supple, impossible, feline. His form
blurred and steadied, human shape grappling with living shadow.

There were eyes in the shapeless darkness. Terrible eyes:
golden, luminous, and infinitely sad.
I
must
, they said, as the sky speaks of rain.
You threaten us all. I cannot grant you mercy
.

“Mercy?” Sarevan’s wrath had gone quiet. “Was it mercy you
granted my torque-sister? Share it, then. Share it in its fullness.”

They closed, darkness and darkness, flesh and shadow. The
shadow—

Hirel giggled, quite contentedly mad. The shadow had the
voice of a woman and the suggestion of a woman’s shape; a soft curve of cheek,
a swell of breasts, a slimness of waist. So close and so fiercely did they do
battle that they looked to be locked in an embrace less of war than of love.

Hirel’s manhood rose in fancied sympathy. His breathing
quickened. It was a woman, that shadow, and such a woman, ineffably beautiful,
ineffably sad. All Asanion dwelt in her body and in her great grieving eyes.

Sarevan destroyed them.

Hirel howled. Now that he must move, he could not. He raged
and wept. He forsook the last rags of his sanity. Yet through it all, his eyes
saw with perfect and hideous clarity.

As Sarevan had broken the wolf, so he broke the lady of the
empire and cast her down. But she clung to consciousness. She smiled as he set
his foot on her. Her smile was beautiful, and yet it was horrible; for it was a
smile of triumph.

“The battle,” she said, “is yours, O slave of the burning
god. But the war is mine.”

She grasped his foot with her last desperate strength, and
thrust it up and back. Lightnings leaped from her hands.

She laughed, high and sweet and taunting. It was laughter
made to madden a man, if he were young and proud and filled with the wrath of
his god.

It pricked, it stung. It drove Sarevan back; it roused his
power anew. He wielded the lightning like a sword. He swooped upon his tormentor
and smote her where she lay.

The silence was abrupt and absolute.

Sarevan stood empty-handed. His face was grey, his bandage
scarlet.

Slowly, stiffly, he knelt. He touched the body of the
sorceress. It lay whole and unmarred, as if it slept; but no breath stirred.

Sarevan sat on his heels. “’Varyan,” he whispered. “O
Avaryan.”

Hirel, having tasted the warmth of madness, found sanity
grim and cold. He stood over the priest and the sorceress. The priestess was
gone, if she had ever been aught but illusion.

Sarevan raised his head. His eyes were dull. Even his hair
seemed dim, faded, the brightness gone from it. He scraped it out of his eyes.
“I killed her,” he said calmly.

“So I see,” responded Hirel.

“Do you? Can you?” Sarevan laughed. It was not comfortable
to hear. “That was the trap. To make me kill her. To make—me—” His voice
cracked like a boy’s. He leaped to his feet, staggered, caught himself. “Quick
now. Walk.”