A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  “With much outrage and no little relish.” Hirel smiled a little. “A banner for their war. My father would not wish that. Aranos most certainly would not. He will be making certain that he receives the title as the empire expects. Then, alive or dead, I can do nothing: I will have been superseded in law.”

  “Surely your father won’t allow it.”

  “By law, if I am not present on the day of my coming of age, I forfeit my right to the title. He can do nothing to change that. Even if he would. For then I would prove myself unworthy to rule after him.”

  “Hard,” mused Sarevan, “but fair enough. Maybe it’s he who’s behind it all. Testing you.”

  Hirel bridled. Sarevan grinned at him. He leaped up, nearly casting Sarevan on the stones. “Into the water with you, barbarian. You reek.”

  “Of what?” Sarevan asked sweetly. “The truth?”

  o0o

  Their attendant mages, whether Aranos’ hirelings or another’s, seemed not to have found their way to this latest resting place. But someone had; and perhaps he had only been caught by the young lord’s unusual retinue, and perhaps there was deeper purpose in it. This was, after all, Asanion.

  The messenger was waiting at the door of the bathhouse. “Young lord,” he said, bowing and touching his shaven brow to Hirel’s foot, “my master, the Lord of the Ninth Rank Uzmeidjian y Viduganyas, begs the pleasure of your company at his humble table.”

  Even Sarevan, whose Asanian was hardly perfect, could detect the intonation that made the request a command. Hirel’s lips thinned. Sarevan, trapped in his disguise, could say nothing. After a pause Hirel said, “Tell the Lord of the Ninth Rank that the Lord-designate of the Second Rank Insevirel y Kunziad will be pleased to accept his most august hospitality.”

  o0o

  The Lord Uzmeidjian was likewise a traveler, but his estate was too lofty by far to suffer the indignities of the posthouse. With his small army of Olenyai and plain men-at-arms, his slaves and servants and his veiled and secluded women, he had appropriated the house of a magnate of the town.

  He himself was a man of middle years inclining toward age. His body was strong yet, for an Asanian’s, but softening, growing thick about the middle. His virility, of which he was publicly proud, had tonsured him in youth, but he cultivated the fringe of hair that yet lingered, cajoling it into oiled ringlets.

  He gilded his eyelids, which plainly Hirel did not approve of: it was, perhaps, above his station. Though he stood very high, at the height of the Middle Court.

  His manner toward Hirel was that of a great lord bestowing his favor upon a being much lower than himself. Hirel did not bear it with perfect ease.

  “Of the second rank, are you, lord-designate?” the lord inquired after the innumerable courses of an Asanian banquet had come and gone. Only the wine was left, and a sweet or two, and a bowl of ices.

  He had eaten well and drunk deep. Hirel had hardly eaten at all, and only pretended to drink. “Coming to take your place in court, I presume. Commendable, commendable. It is the first time, no?”

  Hirel murmured. It might have been taken for assent.

  Lord Uzmeidjian took it so, expansively. “Ah, so! I am sure you have been well taught. But the Court of the Empire is unlike anything the provinces might dream of. Even the Lower Court: it is preparation, certainly, but nothing equals the truth.”

  “Have you ever been in the High Court, my lord?”

  That was malice, clad as innocence. The lord flushed. Perhaps it was only the wine. “I have not been so privileged. It is very rare, that dispensation. The High Court is far above us all.”

  “Indeed,” said Hirel.

  “Your accent is excellent,” the lord observed, mounting again to his eminence. “Indeed it is almost perfect: scarce a suggestion of the provinces.”

  Hirel bit his lip. His eyes were smoldering. Sarevan damned protocol and laid a hand on his shoulder, tightening it: warning, strengthening.

  And diverting the Lord Uzmeidjian most conclusively. “Ah, young sir, such slaves you have! and matched so perfectly. Your slavemaster must be a man of genius.”

  Zha’dan, who knew no Asanian but who needed to know none, and Sarevan, who was pretending to be ignorant of it, stood perforce in silence. The lord reached for Zha’dan who was closer, taking the young man’s arm, feeling of it. “You leave them in their natural state, I see. But cleaner, certainly cleaner, and sweeter to the nose. I had thought that they were all as rank as foxes.”

  “My overseers were careful to teach them proper cleanliness,” said Hirel.

  “That is clear to see. They were taken as cubs, I presume; they do not train well else. And left entire—that was courageous. Or did you wait for the beards to come before you had them gelded?”

  “They are quite as nature made them,” Hirel said.

  “So,” said the Lord Uzmeidjian, “I see.” And so most certainly could he feel.

  Zha’dan was rigid. Not with outrage at the fondling hand; his own could be free enough, and Zhil’ari did not know that kind of shame. But the talk of gelding had frozen him where he stood.

  And now, in more ways than one, his lordship came to it. “I confess, Lord Insevirel, that I am most intrigued. In the high arts I have a certain reputation, yet this I have never known: the embrace of a savage in his natural state.”

  “They have no art,” said Hirel.

  “But instinct, young lord—that surely they have. Like bulls, like stallions. So huge, so beautifully hideous: animals, yet shaped like us. Splendid parodies of humanity.”

  “Their beards are harsh to the hand,” Hirel said.

  Lord Uzmeidjian proved it to himself, shivering with delight. “O marvelous! Lord Insevirel, I should not ask, I overstep myself, and yet—and yet—”

  “Ah,” said Hirel, wide-eyed, regretful. “But I promised. My father made me swear on our ancestors’ bones. I may not part them, nor may I sell them. I may not even let them wander apart from me. They are our slavemaster’s triumph. They are to give me consequence at court.”

  “Indeed, young lord, they shall,” said the Lord Uzmeidjian. “And yet surely, if you should merely lend them for a night . . .”

  Hirel was silent. Sarevan’s hand tightened on his shoulder. He seemed not to feel it. At last he said, “I promised.”

  The lord smiled, but his eyes were hard. “A night. And in the morning their swift return, alive and undamaged, with gold in their purses.”

  Hirel drew himself up sharply. “I am not a merchant!”

  “Most surely you are not, young sir. No more than I. We are courtiers, both of us. The court is difficult for one new come to it; but if a high lord should deign to take a young one into his care, what might that young lord become? Your family holds the second rank, and there, alas, it is not the highest, else certainly I would know its name; but it need not remain so forever. A house may rise high under a clever lord. Or,” he added, soft and smooth, “it may fall.”

  Hirel looked into the lord’s face. Slowly he said, “Please, my lord. Pardon me. I am new to this; I do not know the proper words to say. Would one of my panthers suffice for you? Then I would break only half of my promise.”

  Lord Uzmeidjian laughed, jovial again. “Surely, surely, you must not break it all! This beauty, by your leave, I shall keep; in the morning he will come back to you. You have my word on it.”

  “With honor?” Hirel asked, innocently precise.

  “With honor,” the lord answered him with only the merest shadow of hesitation.

  o0o

  Sarevan held his tongue by sheer force of royal will, and held it full into the posthouse, and even into Hirel’s chamber. But when their door was shut and Ulan was greeting him with princely gladness and Hirel was moving calmly about the shedding of his robes, Sarevan’s rage burst its bonds.

  He was on Hirel before the boy could have seen him move, bearing him back and down, shaking him until his neck bade fair to break. “You son of a snake! You pimp! Yo
u panderer! By all the gods in your sink of a country, how could you think—how could you dare—”

  Hirel twisted, impossibly supple, impossibly strong. He broke Sarevan’s brutal hold and rolled to his feet. A dagger glittered in his hand.

  Sarevan sat on his heels, breathing hard. The fire had left him. He was cold; his head throbbed dully. “How could you do that to Zha’dan?”

  “Would you rather I had done it to you?”

  Sarevan surged up. Hirel was not there; his knife was. With the swiftness of thought, Sarevan spun it out of his hand.

  They stood still, wrist crossing wrist, like fencers in a match. Hirel looked up into Sarevan’s burning eyes. “I had no choice. He was seven full ranks above what I pretended to be; and he was beginning to suspect trickery, else he would never have warned me that he had not heard of my house. I trod the edge in resisting him even as far as I did. He could have seized you, slain or imprisoned me on a charge of imposture or worse, and had his will of us all; and he would have been perfectly within his rights.”

  “That is unspeakable!”

  “It is the world’s way. I preserved your precious virginity, priest. Does that count for nothing?”

  “Not when you bought it with Zha’dan.”

  Hirel lowered his arm. “Do you rate him so low? I do not. He is, you say, a mage; he is insatiable in pleasure; and he has more intelligence than he would like any of us to know. If he does not turn this night entirely to his own advantage, then he is not the man I took him for.”

  Sarevan tossed his aching head. Hirel had the right of it. Damn him. “That doesn’t excuse your peddling him like a common whore.”

  “It does not,” Hirel said wearily, startling him speechless. The boy sank down to the scattered cushions of the bed, half-clad as he was.

  His underrobe was torn. He struggled out of it and lay in his trousers, closing his eyes. “I did what I had to do. It does not matter that you hate me for it. You will hate me more deeply still before it is ended, if we come to Kundri’j, if I take back my titles.”

  Sarevan was silent.

  “I have told you what I am,” Hirel said. “Now do you begin to believe it?”

  “You weren’t like this in Keruvarion.”

  Hirel’s eyes opened. There was nothing of the child in them. “I had no occasion to be. Your empire is remarkable, prince. It is young. Its emperor is a god’s son and a mage and a great king. He can afford to live by the truth; so likewise can his people. I never feared that he would break his word to me while I kept mine to him.”

  “Nor even when you didn’t,” muttered Sarevan. He dropped to the cushions. “We’re clean in Keruvarion. We’re honorable. We don’t play foul even with our enemies.”

  “How fortunate,” said Hirel with weary irony. His hand brushed Sarevan’s cheek. “I lied a little. Your beard is not harsh to the hand.”

  “Neither is Zha’dan’s.”

  “There is power in words; particularly in words addressed to a man already well gone in lust.”

  Sarevan ground his teeth. “That swine. That barrel of butter. I would have strangled him if he had touched me.”

  “Therefore I did not let him. I would not have liked him to see your true colors.”

  Sarevan’s cheeks burned. He buried them in the cushions.

  He hated this unnatural child. He hated this lying empire. And he had trapped himself in it. For its sake he had turned traitor to all that he had ever been.

  o0o

  How long he lay there, he did not know. Pain brought him up at last. The throbbing behind his eyes was mounting to agony.

  “Sorcery,” he whispered. Even that nearly split his skull.

  Hirel was asleep, or feigning it. Ulan lay across his feet. The cat raised his head and growled softly.

  Sarevan struggled to his knees. If he could think—if he could only think. Plots, counterplots. Zha’dan lured away, his magecraft taken where it could not protect his companions. The Olenyai—

  Sarevan gasped, blind and retching, but thinking. Thinking hard, for all the good it could do.

  This posthouse had no space for a lord’s meinie. They had perforce to lodge in the common barracks. The two who should have stood guard at the door had not been there when Sarevan came back. He had been too wild with rage to notice, still less to care.

  Sorcery. Betrayal. Deadly danger.

  This was Asanion. Asanion.

  Cool. Hands. Cool hands. Cool voice—but not so cool, calling his name, commanding him to answer.

  Light broke upon him. He stared into Hirel’s face. He was on his back. Hirel was holding his head, looking for once entirely human. He was stark with fear. “Sarevadin, if you die now, I shall be most displeased. Sarevadin!”

  Sarevan could not help it. He laughed, though he paid for it in white pain. “I haven’t died on you yet, cubling.”

  “That is not for lack of trying,” Hirel snapped.

  Sarevan sat up, reeling. All lightness drained from him. “We’re in a trap. They’ve got Zha’dan away from us and stripped us of our Olenyai. You said Aranos hadn’t tried to kill you yet. This may be the stroke.”

  He rose, though Hirel tried to stop him. His sight had narrowed, but he could see. He could walk.

  “Where are you going?” Hirel demanded.

  “To confront a pair of sorcerers.”

  “You are mad! You have no power. You can barely set one foot before the other.”

  “What would you have me do? Lie quietly and wait for them to slaughter us?”

  “They will hardly slay us with their power. I have a little skill in arms; and we have Ulan. We can give a good account of ourselves.”

  “If any of us kills a man here, we’ll all pay in blood.”

  “So then,” said Hirel. “Can you ride?”

  “Yes, damn it!” Sarevan paused. Escape now. Yes. But with pursuit on their heels; and Zha’dan . . .

  A new wave of agony crested, passed. He snatched up their belongings, flung Hirel’s discarded garments at him, scrambled together what food he could find.

  The inn was utterly quiet. No one walked the passages. Nothing moved there at all. It was as if it were enspelled.

  Sarevan dragged Hirel through it with growing heedlessness, flinging them both from inn to open air to the dark odorous confines of the stable. Beasts thronged it. Sarevan found Bregalan almost by instinct. The shadow next to him was tall enough to carry a tall man, which was not common in Asanion.

  It was also hornless: a mare. That was fortunate. Mares were swifter and hardier and less given to nonsense; and even yet Sarevan did not want to be caught on a stallion. He found saddles, bridles.

  Hirel waited just past the door with Ulan, who could not enter among so many seneldi lest he drive them mad with terror. The strange senel, scenting him, snorted and danced, but under Sarevan’s hand she eased to a trembling stillness.

  They rode slowly from the yard, keeping to shadows. No one challenged them, not even the hound that had welcomed them with yapping and howling.

  The air was still. The gate was open. Trap?

  They spurred through it. Nothing stopped them.

  The posthouse lay outside the walls of the town, hard by the road; there was no second gate to pass. They kept to the grass on the verge, which made for swift going, and silent. Town and posthouse shrank behind them.

  The pain receded slowly. Sarevan’s mount was smooth-gaited. In the starless night he could not guess her color, save that she was dark.

  Hoofbeats behind. Sarevan clapped heels to the mare’s sides. But Bregalan had broken stride, was turning. Was he mad? Had the spell caught Hirel at last?

  Cursing, Sarevan wheeled his own mount. Bregalan had stopped. Sarevan snatched at his bridle; he shied away. “He will not heed me,” Hirel said. He was calm, but it was a desperate calm.

  The hooves neared swiftly. It was only one senel. Sarevan, peering, could discern a swift-moving shadow.

  Metal hissed. Hirel h
ad drawn one of his swords.

  The other flashed in sudden moonlight. Sarevan caught the hilt. Armed and defiant, they waited.

  It was a lone rider, and he was all a shadow. Sarevan’s heart knew him before his mind could wake. “Zha’dan!”

  The Zhil’ari pounded to a halt beside them. He was breathing hard and his senel was blowing, but he grinned whitely in Brightmoon’s gleam. “Thought you could creep out on me, did you?”

  “We tried,” said Sarevan.

  “Good,” he said. His grin vanished. “There’s death on the wind tonight. Best we not tarry for it.”

  o0o

  They rode until Zha’dan would let them stop. The sky greyed with dawn. The seneldi, ridden at the pace of the Long Race in the north, surpassingly swift but not meant to kill, had a little strength left, but none of the riders was minded to squander it. Posthouses would not be safe thereafter; they had no swift hope of remounts.

  They found refuge at some distance from the road, in the deep cleft cut by a stream. Its banks offered grass for their seneldi; a thicket offered both shelter and concealment, and a blessed gift of thomfruit to eke out their scanty provisions.

  Hirel, having eaten as much as Sarevan could bully into him, fell at once into sleep. The others lingered, crouched side by side. “Was it bad?” Sarevan asked.

  Zha’dan shrugged. “He wasn’t the little stallion. He was smooth all over. His yard was a bare finger’s length. He kept calling me ugly.” Zha’dan was indignant. “I may be small, but even Gazhin admits that I’m beautiful. I look like you, don’t I? You’re the most beautiful of us all.”

  “Not to an Asanian,” said Sarevan. He gestured toward Hirel. “That’s beauty here.”

  “He’s not ill to look at. But he’s white, like a bone, and his eyes are yellow. That’s very well for an honest lion, but men’s eyes are black. And his nose, look. No arch. What’s a nose without an arch?”

  “Pitiful,” Sarevan said wryly, rubbing his own royal curve. “So his lordship has a crooked passion for beautifully ugly barbarians. And then?”

  “And then,” said Zha’dan. “He didn’t last long. He fell asleep, and I was thinking of going, and then the mages struck. They were only trying to read me, to be sure I was well occupied. I gave them something to keep their ears burning for a while. Then they turned on you. And there I was, locked in walls. I couldn’t get out. By the time I found a wall to climb over, you were up and running. I borrowed one of the seneldi you left, and followed you.” Zha’dan paused. Suddenly he grinned. “They won’t follow us for a while, I don’t think. I told the seneldi to wait a bit. Then I untied them, and I left the door open.”