A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  “He is myself,” whispered Hirel.

  Sarevan slapped him. He swayed, but his face did not change. “You are beautiful,” Sarevan said to him, “and certainly a man. No one now can make you like him. No one ever could. He is false coin. You are true gold.”

  Hirel did not hear him. Something, at last, had broken him; or something had roused that had been long and safely sleeping.

  “He’s gone away.” Zha’dan, who had won through to them. Even muffled in the mask, his voice was deeply worried. “I can’t find him at all.”

  Sarevan reached to touch Hirel, to wake him, lift him, he hardly knew which. The boy, who had been so limp and lifeless to look at, turned demon under his hands.

  Steel slashed. Sarevan recoiled. Hirel whipped about in a swirl of robes and bolted.

  They bolted after him. He ran like a deer. The crowd parted before him but closed behind, hindering the pursuit, jarring it aside, even challenging it.

  Sarevan drew one of his swords. The challenges stopped. The hindrances did not.

  Hirel twisted and doubled and darted. His face when Sarevan glimpsed it sidelong was chalk-white. His eyes were blind.

  The throngs thinned. The pursuit began to gain on its quarry.

  A procession swayed and chanted from a side way, full across their path: marchers innumerable, linked hand to hand, eyes closed, trancebound. The narrow street was clogged with them. Even at his wits’ end Sarevan could not bring himself to cut a path with steel.

  The procession wound away. Hirel was gone.

  Zha’dan caught Sarevan’s arm. “There!”

  They sped from the narrow way down one narrower yet, walled in the stink of cities; past blind gates and blinder walls. There was no sign of Hirel.

  Zha’dan slowed to a stumbling trot, then to a walk. He swayed against Sarevan. He tore at his mask, rending it, flinging it away. His face was grey and sheened with sweat.

  “Hard,” he whispered. “So many people. So many walls.”

  “Hirel?” Sarevan snapped at him, cruel with desperation.

  His head tossed. He halted. He leaned on Sarevan and trembled. “Can’t,” he gasped. “Can’t—”

  Sarevan would have given his soul for a few breaths’ worth of power. He had only pain.

  No Hirel, anywhere. The seneldi were lost and forgotten. Ulan had withdrawn to circle the town. Unless he too was bewitched, led astray, ensnared.

  Zha’dan staggered erect. Both his swords were out. He whirled.

  Sarevan backed away from him, raging at heaven. Not Zha’dan, too. One madman was more than enough.

  “Zha’dan!” Sarevan lashed out with the full power of his voice. “Zhaniedan!”

  The Zhil’ari checked, turning slowly. His lips were drawn back from his teeth. “Caught,” he said. “Trapped. Sorcery—it has the little stallion. I can’t win him back. I have not that much power. I can’t even stop them. I can’t—”

  He broke off. The swords fell from his slackened fingers. With a low cry, of anger, of despair, he whipped about, spinning. The air filled with a thin high keening. He was drawing in his power.

  Sarevan cried out, protesting. Zha’dan never heard. Light gathered to him. Lightnings cracked.

  The walls were as bare and blank as cliffs of stone. The street darkened.

  From either end of it, men closed in. Grim men, armored, with drawn bows.

  Sarevan knew an instant’s bitter mirth. Whoever the enemy was, he was taking no chances. Not even Olenyai swords could stand against a company of archers.

  An arrow sang past Sarevan’s ear. It caught fire.

  Zha’dan flung darts of power against the darts of mortal making. He laughed in the sweet madness of magery.

  Setting his teeth, making his body a prayer, Sarevan flung himself at the young fool.

  They went down together. Over them hissed a rain of arrows. Power spat and flared about Sarevan, but it did not touch him.

  Nor did it shield him. Sarevan knew the blow before it fell. It was neither spell nor weapon. It was a bubble, drifting over them. It broke.

  His body had gasped it in before his mind could act: gagging, cloying sweetness; and in it, irresistible, a heavy weight of sleep.

  “Not sorcery,” he tried to say. To instruct Zha’dan. “Not magic. This is alchemy.” It was very important that Zha’dan know it. He did not know why. He only knew. “Alchemy,” he repeated. “Alchemy.”

  FIFTEEN

  Alchemy; but mageborne. Their hunters had found them, and were not minded to let them go.

  Sarevan did not remember all of it. He saw the mages, the dark and the light. No doubt he gave them defiance. They gave him nothing.

  Zha’dan was there. They looked closely at both; they were not pleased. Their armed companions pried hands from sides, fingers from palms.

  The Kasar startled even the mages, although surely they had been looking for it. Perhaps they had not known how brightly it could burn.

  They left Zha’dan to drugged dreams. They stripped Sarevan, though they did not take his torque; they scoured him without mercy.

  His body howled with the pain of cleanroot and ashes on his raw skin. They finished with something that was purest agony, and then it was blessedly cool, with a scent of herbs and healing.

  They drugged him again. He fought it: the bruises lingered.

  Useless enough. They were too strong.

  o0o

  He woke at last from a black dream. He was cold and sick, and he hurt wherever a body could hurt. The earth rocked; he clutched at solidity.

  Walls, closing in upon him. They rattled and shook.

  Cushions narrowed the narrow prison. He was naked on them, his hair loose and tangled, and for a moment he did not understand why he was startled. It was as copper-bright as it had ever been.

  He was not alone in that hot and breathless space. Someone else strove with him for what air there was. Someone as bare as himself, as pale as he was dark, coiled in apparent comfort at the utmost end of the box.

  Only Hirel’s face held Sarevan to sanity. It was calm to coldness; it was entirely conscious, and sane, and princely proud. It was not the face of one whose will had broken.

  Sarevan struggled up. He could sit; he could kneel, if he crouched. He could not stand.

  Light came through intricate lattices, one on either side of him. It shifted, changing. They were moving.

  He pressed his face to the lattice. Air brushed it, warm, heavy, but cooler and cleaner than what filled the box. Shadows passed. Trees, perhaps. Towers. Mounted men.

  He dropped back. He wanted to claw the walls. He drew himself into a quivering knot and glared at Hirel.

  The boy uncoiled, stretching. “You look like a panther at bay,” he observed.

  Sarevan snarled at him. “You did this. You led us into this.”

  Hirel’s ease shattered. “I was tricked and trapped. I was”—he choked on it—“bespelled. I knew what they were doing to me. I could not stop it. Because—because I had seen what I would be, if I did not run then, run as far and as fast as I could.”

  “You may be a eunuch yet.”

  “I may die for this, but this much I have been promised: I will not die unmanned.” Hirel had calmed himself again. “We are in a litter,” he said, “like ladies who must travel swiftly. You see how we are prevented from escaping.”

  Sarevan did not. He found a door. He set his nails to the crack of it. It groaned but did not yield.

  “If you succeed,” said Hirel, cool and maddening, “where will you go? An armed company surrounds us. We are unarmed and unarmored. We are also,” he pointed out, “unclad.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  Hirel looked as if he could not choose between laughter and shock. “To you, perhaps, none. To me, enough. I am not a spectacle for lowborn eyes to see.”

  “Why? You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I have a body,” Hirel snapped.

  Sarevan was mute.
Hirel withdrew again, barricading himself with cushions.

  The silence stretched. The walls closed in. Sarevan set his will to the task of enduring. Of keeping himself from going mad like an ul-cat in a cage.

  After an eternal while Hirel spoke, low and taut. “The people must not see. That I am mortal. That I wear flesh like any one of them. That my blood is as red as theirs, and flows as freely. I am royal; every inch of me is holy. My nails were never cut save by priests, with prayers and incantations. My hair was never cut at all. The water of my bath was preserved for the anointing of the sick.”

  “What did you do with nature’s tribute? House it in gold and give it to the gods?”

  Hirel’s breath hissed. “I did not say that I believed in it! I meant to change it when I could. But until I came into my power, I was my power’s slave. I served it most dutifully. I was a very proper prince, O prince of savages.”

  “Wise,” said Sarevan. “Did anyone ever know how much of your mind was your own?”

  The golden eyes hooded. “A prince’s body belongs to his people. His mind does not enter into it.”

  “But they aren’t supposed to know you have a body.”

  “Flesh,” Hirel said. He trust out his arm. Sunlight shattered on the lattice, turned the fine hairs to sparks of gold, found a bruise and a healing cut and an old white scar. “Blood and bone. Humanity. When I am emperor, I will be not even that. I will be pure royal image.”

  Sarevan shivered in the breathless heat. He felt very mortal. His throat was dry and his face itched and he ached. He said, “When you are emperor? Will you come to it now?”

  Hirel smiled. It was not a comfortable smile. “I will come to it. I am captive; I am not dead. And I do not surrender. Nor do I ever forgive.”

  “I pity your enemies.”

  “Do that,” said Hirel, still smiling.

  o0o

  With the sun’s setting, their prison halted. Sarevan had not spoken for a long while. He dared not, lest he howl like a beast.

  He had been imprisoned before; he had been shut up in close walls, for punishment, for training as mage and priest. But he had had power. He had not been trapped inside himself. He had not had to fight to breathe, to think, to be himself and not mere mindless panic.

  With a scraping of bolts, the door opened. He had no will left. He burst into the light.

  Bodies barred him. He swept them away. He struck stone. Wall. Gate—

  Men closed upon him. He fought them.

  They were too many, and they were armored. His hands could only rock them; could not fell them. They caught him, bound him, dragged him into quiet.

  Hirel sat in it, robed from throat to toe, sipping from a cup. The walls about him were blessedly far away.

  Sarevan’s captors flung him into the chamber and bolted the door behind him. He lay on musty carpets, gasping, beginning to be sane again. The cords were twisted cruelly tight. His arms throbbed.

  Hirel knelt by him and began to worry at the knots. “Our jailers are most impressed,” he said, “with the perfection of your savagery.”

  “It’s not the cage,” Sarevan said carefully. “It’s that I can’t get my mind out of it. I can’t breathe inside; I can’t breathe without.”

  Hirel could not possibly understand. Or perhaps, and that might have been worse, he could. “You are not a creature of sealed palaces,” he said.

  Sarevan shuddered. He tried to be light, to turn his mind away from the dark. “Are our captors hoping I’ll maul you to death?”

  “It would be convenient,” Hirel said.

  “To whom?”

  The boy shrugged. “I asked. I was not answered.”

  One by one the knots yielded. The cords fell away. Sarevan lay and tried to make his numbed arms obey his will.

  Hirel sat on his heels, watching. After a moment he caught one of Sarevan’s arms, bringing it back to life again with those clever fingers of his. “I have not seen our mageling,” he said. “Nor our grey hunter.”

  Captivity had weakened Sarevan’s wits. He had to struggle to understand. Hope leaped; died. “Dead. Or fled.”

  “Perhaps.” Hirel exchanged one arm for the other. “We are wanted alive. No one moved to cut you down when you broke free. They gave way rather than wound you.”

  “Hostages?” The irony struck Sarevan; he laughed, though it hurt. “It may be well enough for me, as long as someone in Asanion is holding me. But for you . . .”

  “I think they do not know me,” said Hirel. “Yet.”

  He stood abruptly. Sarevan sat up, opening his mouth to speak.

  Hirel strode to the door and spoke. He raised his voice barely enough, Sarevan would have thought, to pass the panel, but its inflection raised Sarevan’s hackles. He had never heard the twelve tones of High Asanian wielded with such deadly subtlety, by one bred to the art.

  “O thou who guardest this door, send to thy master and tell him. The prince who is above princes would speak to him.”

  No sound came back from without. Hirel returned to the chamber’s center, settled himself on the mound of cushions there, and picked up his cup again. His free hand indicated the table beside him. “Eat,” he said.

  Sarevan was more than glad to obey, though warily, mistrusting Asanian sauces. He found himself yearning for good plain roast wildbuck, or fruit untainted with spices, or simple peasant cheese. Even the language in which he had always been pleased enough to address Hirel had grown to a mighty burden.

  He ate in silence, to quiet his stomach, tasting little. He drank sour Asanian wine. He prowled the space, which was endurable, wide but windowless.

  He was going to break again. Anger did not help him. Should Keruvarion’s high prince go mad like an animal, simply for a few hours’ confinement?

  Bolts rattled. Sarevan spun, poised.

  The door boomed back. Armed men poured through it. They passed Hirel without a glance, spreading to surround Sarevan.

  “Thou wilt not touch him,” the boy said, again in that mastery of tones which came close to sorcery.

  The guards paused. Sarevan did not move. They leveled their spears, but neither touched him nor threatened him.

  His back was to the wall. He grinned suddenly, leaned against it, folded his arms. The men were not, he noticed, staring at him. They were working very hard at it.

  The tallest came barely to his chin. The smallest had to look up or sidewise, or close his eyes altogether, lest they fix on what he was trying hardest not to see.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarevan asked him. “Haven’t you ever seen a man before?”

  The Asanian flushed. He did not take vengeance with his spear. Sarevan admired him for that, and said so. He flushed more deeply yet, and scowled terribly.

  With the chamber well and valiantly secured, the captain of guards stepped back from the door, sword raised in salute. All of his men who were not hedging Sarevan with bronze clapped blades to shields and knelt.

  Their master entered at his leisure, escorted by a pair of Uvarra’s priests, one in silver grey and one in dusky violet. Sarevan almost laughed. He carried himself like an emperor, and yet he was as small as a child. He might have been taken for one, fair and smooth as his face was, perfect ivory: a nine years’ youngling of indeterminate gender, wrapped in fold on fold of midnight silk.

  But his eyes were never a child’s. They were like Hirel’s, clear gold, seeming whiteless unless they opened very wide; and they were bitterly bright.

  Hirel rose. He was tall here, even young as he was; he stood a full head above that perfect miniature of a man.

  Sarevan, watching, smiled. The other carried himself like an emperor. Hirel Uverias had no need to.

  It was beautifully played. “Brother,” he said, cool, unsurprised.

  Indeed. They were very like. Hirel, sun-painted, thinned and hardened with travel, looked almost the elder.

  “Brother,” said the silken mannikin. His voice was sweet and nearly sexless. “I rejoice to
see you well.”

  Hirel inclined his head. Then he paused, as if he waited. His eyes were steady.

  For the merest flicker of an instant, the other lost his poise. Hirel never moved.

  Slowly his brother knelt. More slowly yet under those quiet relentless eyes, he prostrated himself. His mages followed him.

  Hirel looked down at them all. No smile touched his Ups, but Sarevan found one in the light behind his eyes.

  The princeling rose with grace, the mages with relief. Hirel did not offer his hand. He sat and tucked up his feet and said, “Your bravos should be whipped. They have given insult to a prince.”

  “That has been remedied,” his brother said. Aranos, Sarevan was prepared to name him.

  “It has not,” said Hirel.

  Aranos followed his eyes. Sarevan smiled at them both.

  The lesser prince regarded him with interest and without visible embarrassment. The fine brows went up.

  Aranos approached. His spearmen drew back, not without reluctance.

  He put out a hand. It was child-small; its nails were fully as long as the fingers from which they grew, warded in jeweled sheaths.

  Sarevan shivered at the brush of those glittering claws, but his smile held. “Little man,” he said, purring, “I give you leave to touch me.”

  The hand paused. Aranos had to tilt his head well back to look into Sarevan’s face. He was not at all afraid. “You are splendid,” he said.

  He meant it; or he was far too subtle for Sarevan’s outland innocence. Or was simplicity another kind of subtlety?

  “Are you insulted?” asked Aranos.

  Sarevan thought about it. “That,” he answered in time, “is not what I would call it. But here . . . yes. It is an insult.”

  Aranos bowed his head. He gestured. A garment came quickly enough to interest Sarevan.

  It was a robe like Hirel’s, of heavy raw silk. It fit, which was more interesting still. The servant who brought it brought also a comb, which, when Sarevan had been persuaded to sit beside Hirel, he plied with a master’s skill.

  Aranos watched and waited. He did not sit. His robes, Sarevan thought, must have been deadly heavy. There were seven of them, one atop the other, each cut to show the one beneath.