A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  o0o

  Sarevan’s mind and body, grown and set on betraying all three faces of that one shining power, had no power of their own to fight against. But soul they had, and the soul had found its match. The other did not know what it was; he called it desire, and yearned for what he could not have.

  “Avaryan,” Sarevan whispered. “O Avaryan. Is this how you amuse yourself? Of all the souls in the world, this is the one you’ve made for me. And you set it in that of all the bodies there are. We can’t be man and woman together. We can’t share the world’s rule. We can’t even be brothers, still less lovers while I wear your torque. What do you want us to do? Suffer in silence? Tear one another apart? Kill one another?”

  The god’s answer was silence. Sarevan buried his face in Ulan’s warm musky fur. The cat purred, soft, barely to be heard. Slowly Sarevan slid into sleep.

  o0o

  Zha’dan would never dream of gloating, but he was conspicuously content. “It’s true what they say,” he said toward the next sunset, “of Asanian arts.”

  “I’m sure,” said Sarevan, meaning to be cool. His tongue was not so minded. “It’s me he wants, you know.”

  Zha’dan did not flinch from the stroke. “Of course he does, my lord. But even he knows better than to stretch so high.”

  “He’s no lower than I.”

  Zha’dan was polite. He did not voice the objections that glittered in his eyes.

  This inn was no less crowded than the last, but its master was more difficult. He took exception, it seemed, to Ulan, or perhaps to the young lord’s slaves.

  Hirel had expressed his will already. The cat was to be neither caged in the courtyard nor penned in the stable. The slaves did not leave his presence.

  Halid was making slow headway. Hirel had settled for the siege, drawing prince and savage to the heaped carpets at his feet, which he rested on Ulan’s quiescent back.

  Zha’dan was entirely content to lean against Hirel and be stroked and fed bits of meat from the Asanian’s plate. Sarevan was not content at all, but resistance here would have been too conspicuous. He yielded because he must.

  Hirel smiled at his rebellious glare and fed him a beancake dipped in something dark, pungent, and hot as fire. Sarevan gasped, sputtered, nearly leaped up in his outrage.

  His tormentor caught him, bending close as if to kiss. “Do you see those men in yonder corner?”

  Sarevan stilled abruptly. His eyes were hot still, hotter even than his throat, but his mind had remembered princely training.

  He knew better than to turn and stare; but the edge of his eye marked them. Two Asanians sitting together, eating and drinking as did everyone else in the common room, doing nothing that might rouse suspicion. Their hair was cut strangely, shaven from brow to crown, worn long and loose behind.

  “Those,” said Hirel, “are priests of Uvarra. They were in the inn last night. They watched us then as they watch us now.”

  “We’re interesting,” Sarevan said, “and we’re on the straight road to Kundri’j. Why shouldn’t they be on it with us?”

  Hirel fed him wine in dainty sips, a lordling amusing himself with his favorite slave. “Priests of Uvarra do not wear that tonsure unless they serve in the high temple in Kundri’j Asan. Nor do they wander as your kind do, save for very great need.”

  “They’re too conspicuous to be spies.”

  “Perhaps, like us, they know the virtue of hiding in plain sight.”

  “But why—”

  “They are mages.”

  Sarevan’s teeth clicked together. Oh, indeed that was stretching coincidence. But how could the boy know? He had no power.

  Sarevan darted a glance. One’s robe was light, and perhaps it was grey. The other’s was dark: violet, perhaps. Guild colors. A lightmage and a dark.

  “They’re sorcerers,” murmured Zha’dan, resting his head on Hirel’s knee.

  Sarevan’s eyes flashed to him. He would know. The wisewoman of the Zhil’ari was his grandmother. He was her pupil and her heir, and quite as mageborn as Sarevan himself, though never so free with it. Mages of the wild tribes did not wield full power until they were judged worthy of it.

  A custom which Sarevan might have been wise to follow. He met Zha’dan’s clear stare with the width of Hirel’s knees between. “You’ve set wards?” he asked in Zhil’ari, just above a whisper.

  Zha’dan’s eyes glinted. “I hardly need to. You’re guarded. The veiled ones are invisible to power—I’d pay high to know how they do that.”

  “They pay high for a spell; it’s laid on each of them at initiation. In an amulet.” Sarevan was in no mood for teaching, even in a good cause. “And the cubling?”

  “Safe,” said Zha’dan. “With little enough help from me. He doesn’t chatter inside. He knows how to throw up walls.”

  “He’s no mage.”

  “He’s not. But he has shields.”

  Sarevan scowled blackly at nothing. Hirel had never had shields when Sarevan had power. His mind had been as open and aimless as any other man’s, with walls where scars were, closing off memory that pricked him to pain; but nothing a mage could not pass if he chose.

  If it puzzled Zha’dan, he did not let it vex his peace. He stroked his cheek against Hirel’s thigh, catlike, smiling at Hirel’s frown. In tradespeech he said, “We talk about how beautiful you are.”

  Hirel flushed, but he had perforce to swallow his temper. Halid had won his battle with the innkeeper. The innkeeper himself had been prevailed upon to serve to young lord’s pleasure.

  He occupied them all with his fluttering, until at last they drove him out. By then, Hirel had forgotten Zha’dan’s insolence; or simply let it pass.

  o0o

  They were being followed.

  It was not always obvious. The roads were crowded with troops, with travelers, with traders. But Sarevan remembered faces, and even where that failed in the likeness of one plump yellow face to another, Uvarra’s tonsure and the Mageguild’s colors, once noticed, were hard to mistake.

  He did not see them every day, nor every night in inn or posthouse. Still, he saw them often enough, and perhaps they had allies: men less conspicuous yet oddly tenacious; the same faces, or faces like them, appearing again and again.

  “They’re not strong in power,” Zha’dan said of the mages.

  “Who needs strength?” Sarevan demanded. “They only need to know where eyes have seen two black slaves together.”

  Zha’dan regarded his hands on the reins of his gelding. “Better black than bilious,” he said.

  Sarevan bit back laughter. “Oh, surely! But there’s no one like us between here and the Lakes of the Moon. We’re noticeable.”

  The Zhil’ari looked about at the Olenyai ringing them, the prince on the blue-eyed stallion in front of him, the traffic of the Golden Empire making way for their passing. “Illusion?” he suggested.

  “Too late for that. They’d track us by the scent of your power.”

  A knot of wagons blocked their path; Sarevan muscled his ironmouthed nag to a halt beside Bregalan. The stallion adamantly refused to collapse or go lame or even look tired. Maybe he had learned to drink the sun. The Mad One could; why not his daughter’s son?

  Sarevan straightened in the saddle and set his teeth. His head had been aching in spasms for a day or three. Not often; not in any pattern.

  He could have blamed it on the sun, but today there was none: the clouds were heavy, threatening rain.

  This was no dull throbbing ache. This was pain as keen as a dagger’s blade, stabbing deep behind his eyes. It wrung a gasp from him.

  “Hirel,” someone said, light and bantering, “Hirel, think about last night, and Zha’dan, and the woman with the passion for two lovers at once.”

  The someone was himself. He was going mad.

  Hirel had flushed scarlet, which made Zha’dan grin, but his eyes on Sarevan were steady. Thinking hard.

  With crawling slowness the pain faded. Sarevan
almost fainted with the relief of it. And with the knowledge.

  Now he must suffer not only when he tried to get out of his mind, but when someone else tried to get in.

  They had said it, the old masters. For him who slew with power, there was no end to expiation. Even if he had not intended to do it. Even if he had done it in the best of causes. Even . . .

  “Stronger shields,” Zha’dan was saying in his own tongue. “Dream-wards. I’ll post them hereafter. I’ll snare our hunters with false dreams.”

  “Even in our young master?”

  Zha’dan laughed. “Even in the little stallion; though he’s doing well enough by himself. Maybe when he dies he’ll come back one of us.”

  The lion’s cub would have been appalled at the prospect. Sarevan sipped wine from the flask at his saddlebow, washing away the sour aftertaste of pain.

  They had skirted the wagons. At the head of the line, Halid signaled a quickening of pace.

  o0o

  “Tell me about your brother,” Sarevan said.

  Asanian modesty had its uses. A young lord could purchase a room in a bathhouse, with a bolt on the door and his own slaves to wait on him. There he could lie on a bench above steaming stones with his head in Zha’dan’s lap and Sarevan sitting at a judicious distance.

  Hirel eyed him with a flicker of amusement. Without his tunic he was an odd harlequin creature, copper-pelted on breast and belly and between his thighs, but the rest of him safely dark.

  The boy sat up suddenly, leaning toward him, and peered. “You will be needing the dye again soon.”

  “We only touched it up two days ago.”

  “Your body is not pleased. The black wishes to turn to rust. And thence, I presume, to honest copper.”

  “Too honest for my peace of mind. The dye is almost gone.” Sarevan rubbed his chin. It itched incessantly and with waxing ferocity. He struggled to keep from clawing it. “Maybe I should shave my face and blacken my brows with charcoal and wash my hair clean, and find a hat to cover it. It would be easier. It might work. Who’d recognize me even if I lost the hat? You traveled with me for half a season without the slightest suspicion.”

  Hirel pulled Sarevan’s beard until he hissed in pain. “I was an unconscionable fool. Our . . . friends are not.”

  “Why? What are they likely to know? I’m a slave. Slaves count for nothing.”

  Perhaps he sounded more bitter than he knew. Hirel regarded him oddly. Zha’dan said, “I’d dye my hair red for the splendor of it and for the confusion of our trackers, but my beard I’ll not give up. I’m no capon.”

  Sarevan’s eyes narrowed. “Would you, Zhaniedan? Would you go from night to fire?”

  “With delight. But not,” Zha’dan said vehemently, “from man to eunuch.”

  Hirel looked from one to the other of them. “Have you lost your wits?”

  “I’m losing my disguise,” Sarevan reminded him. “And we’ll find precious little black dye here. But copper—that, I think . . .”

  Zha’dan was warming to the sport. “Let’s do it, my lord! Let’s do it tonight.”

  But Sarevan had cooled a little. “Soon,” he said. “Maybe. I need to think. And while I do it,” he said, turning his eyes on Hirel, “you can do as I bid you. Tell me about your brother.”

  For a moment Hirel looked ready to upbraid his insanity. Then the boy sighed, sharp with temper, and lay down again. He took only a small revenge, but it was ample for the purpose: he set his feet in Sarevan’s lap. They were very handsome feet.

  “Surely,” he said, “you mean to say my brothers. I have half a hundred.”

  Zha’dan was properly impressed. Sarevan did not stoop to be. “Most of them are nonentities. Even the two who trapped you—you’ve said yourself that they couldn’t have conceived the plot alone. Tell me about the one who matters. Tell me about the Prince Aranos.”

  Hirel hissed at him. “Not so loudly, idiot. Ears are everywhere.”

  “Not here,” said Sarevan. “Zha’dan’s on guard. He’s mageborn.”

  Hirel started, half rising, staring at his nights’ companion. Zha’dan was grave for once, level-eyed.

  Hirel was surprised. That was rare; it made him angry. “Is there anyone in Keruvarion who is not?”

  “It’s only Zha’dan.” And Orozia; but that was her own secret.

  “Ah,” said Hirel, unmollified. He faced Zha’dan. “That is why you fretted so before we came to Endros. Because you have power, but it was not enough to heal your prince.”

  Zha’dan looked down, embarrassed.

  “Did you fret?” Sarevan asked him. “I’d forgotten.”

  Zha’dan mumbled something. Sarevan cuffed him lightly, brother-fashion. It soothed him, though he would not look up. Sarevan turned back to Hirel. “Now, cubling. Answer me.”

  Hirel’s brows drew together. Sweat did not presume to bead and streak and stink on that gold-and-ivory skin. It imparted a polished sheen, salt-scented, with a hint of sweetness. “Aranos,” he said at last, “is the eldest of my father’s sons. His mother was a prince’s daughter from the far west of Asanion. They say she was a witch; I no longer deny that possibility. I do not think that Aranos is mageborn.”

  “Mages need not be born. They can be made. We call them mages of the book. Sorcerers. They have no native power, but they find it in books; in spells and rituals; in summonings of demons and elementals and familiars. Does your brother have a familiar?”

  Hirel lay back again, shifting until he was comfortable. “I think not. Perhaps it is only, not yet.” He raised his head slightly, struck with a thought. “Is Ulan your familiar?”

  Sarevan quelled a retort. The child could not know how he insulted them both. “Ulan is my friend and my brother-in-fur. He is neither slave nor willing servant.”

  “Ah.” Hirel’s frown was different, puzzled, seeking to understand. “A familiar provides power to the powerless. It is a vessel. An instrument.”

  “In essence, yes. But any man can’t set himself up as a sorcerer. He has to have a talent for it. A desire for power. The willingness to devote his life to the finding of it. Singlemindedness and ruthlessness and a certain inborn strength of will. You have it, Hirel Uverias. You have so much of it that you’re almost mageborn.”

  The boy reared up like a startled cat. All the color had drained from his face; his eyes were wild. “I am not a mumbler of spells!”

  “It’s in your blood. Ulan sees it and approves of it. So does Bregalan. So most certainly does Zha’dan. It’s the heart of the lion.”

  “Ah,” said Hirel, relaxing by degrees. “It is royalty, that is all.”

  Sarevan did not gainsay him. Let him call it that, if it gave him comfort. “If your brother is anything like you, then he may very well be a worker of magic.”

  Hirel had drawn taut again. “We are not alike. We are—not—”

  “He’s royal, isn’t he?”

  “There are,” said Hirel with vicious precision, “three ranks of imperial princes, and the high prince above them all. Princes of five robes are sons of slaves and commoners. Princes of six are sons of lower nobility. Princes of seven are sons of high ladies. Vuad, who is a slave’s child, is a prince of seven by my father’s favor, because his mother is the most favored of the concubines.”

  “Is? Still?”

  “My father is renowned for his constancy.” Hirel had recovered himself. It was frightening to see how young he was, and how cold he seemed, and how dispassionately he spoke of betrayal. “There was no perceptible sign of my eldest brother in what was done to me, and yet he must have been the master of the plot, the mind behind the bodies of Vuad and Sayel. He had the most to gain from it. They could not have hoped to seize my titles while he lived, nor to dispose of him as easily as they thought to dispose of me. That they failed speaks very ill of their intelligence. Aranos would not have failed.”

  “He may not care, if it gets him what he aims for. It’s fairly certain, isn’t it? He’ll be name
d high prince on Autumn Firstday. I’ll wager that your father won’t live long thereafter.”

  “No wager,” Hirel said. “Even before I left Kundri’j I had heard whispers that Aranos was surrounding himself with mages. I do not need to wonder why. To protect him while he lives; to forestall opposition when he has the throne. And yet he cannot have set these mages to spy upon us. A lordling of the Middle Court is no threat to the Second Prince before the Golden Throne. If he knew what I truly am, he would have slain me long before this.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe it has nothing to do with you at all. Zha’dan and I could very well be Varyani spies.”

  “Perhaps,” murmured Hirel. “It is what we might expect of your father: outrageous and blatant and insolent. It is not at all like Aranos. It is too simple.”

  “It looks complicated enough to me.”

  Hirel’s glance was purest Asanian arrogance. “Ah, but you are of Keruvarion. To you I am subtle, a proper golden serpent; and yet in the palace I am reckoned the purest of innocents, a sheltered child who knew no better than to trust his brothers. Aranos was weaving plots in his cradle.”

  “You were a child when your brothers trapped you. How were you to know that they’d turn traitor?”

  “I should have known. They are my brothers. But Aranos . . . Aranos is a very prince of serpents. I shall never be more beside him than a pretty fool.”

  “And his emperor.”

  “There is that,” said Hirel. He frowned, brooding. “The Golden Palace cannot but know that I live. It has not seen fit to publish the glad tidings, else there would be no mention of a new high prince.”

  “No,” said Sarevan. “They’d be saying that you’d gone over to us, or that you were our prisoner.”