A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

Sarevan, fantastically armored and viciously uncomfortable, had taken station with Aranos’ personal guard. As the tallest of the line save for Zha’dan who stood beside him, he had been given the place of honor directly behind the prince. Hirel was farther down, invisible unless he turned his head in the stiff and blinkering helmet.

  Which he did, more than once, damning discipline. Hirel’s armor was as ridiculous as his own, his visor a dragon mask with darkness in the slits of its eyes. Of Hirel there was nothing to be seen.

  When the boy woke to a pale dawn, he had been as catastrophically sick as Sarevan had expected. Aranos’ slaves had brought him a potion with which he seemed unhappily familiar. He took it with distaste, grimacing as he swallowed it, but it brought the light back to his eyes and the color to his cheeks.

  He even ate a bite or two, under duress. Thereafter he seemed much as he always was, facing what he had to face with admirable steadiness.

  Sarevan was not sure he trusted it. Hirel had not spoken to him since the night’s bitter words. He had not let Sarevan touch him in his sickness; when Sarevan tried to speak, he turned his back. He had put on his haughtiest mask, at its most insufferable angle.

  Sarevan sighed and faced forward. He could not see the army of Hirel’s brothers, but he could feel them behind him. Aranos had come in last and most royal; they had had to bow as he marched in slow procession before them.

  Sarevan had had time to number them, even to consider faces. Forty, he had counted, which could not be all of them: the rest, no doubt, were too young or too indisposed to stand in court. Boys and youths and young men of every shade from umber to ivory, clad variously according to degree in robes of five and six and seven, bull-broad and whip-thin, twitching with nervousness and motionless with hauteur, beautiful and unbeautiful and frankly ugly, but all marked with the stamp of their lineage.

  It might be as little as the set of the head. It might be as complete as Hirel himself, whose portrait graced the Hall of the High Princes; but that portrait was his father’s before him, and his father’s father’s.

  Sarevan had marked two princes most clearly. They stood highest but for Aranos; like him and like no other save a handful of very young children, they wore the sevenfold robes of princes of the first degree.

  They were not the least beautiful of the emperor’s sons. Indeed Vuad might have surpassed Hirel but for the misfortune that had given him hair the color of old bronze.

  That was reckoned a flaw here, and a tragedy. Sarevan thought it very handsome. But he was only a tarry-skinned barbarian with no eye for beauty.

  Sayel he liked less, at least to look at. He was a pale creature, pretty enough if one were fond of milk and water, attired unwisely in gradations of crimson. His eyes were sharper than Vuad’s, his tension less readily apparent.

  He was watching Aranos as a bird watches a cat: in fear, but mindful of its beak and claws. He had noticed the prince’s following. Too carefully. By the pricking of Sarevan’s nape as the ceremonies crawled on, he was still noticing it.

  Sarevan shifted infinitesimally. His back itched. His bladder twinged. He cursed them both, and his armor into the bargain: steaming hot, hideously heavy, and far too ornate to trust in any battle. If its weight did not fell him, its curlicues would, catching blades and hampering his arms.

  He would not have to fight. Not here. Not in front of the Asanian emperor. Courtiers waged their battles more subtly, with poisoned words and poisoned wine.

  It was close now. He dared a twist of his body, a sweep of his eyes within the helmet. The princes had tensed subtly. Their eyes were wide and bright.

  A very young lord was being presented to the emperor with the full rite, even to the nine prostrations. He performed them with grace and composure, although his face was ashen.

  He rose for the last time, said the words that he must say, backed from the presence. When he had taken his place among the ranked nobles, there was silence. Bodies shifted, eyes flickered. Only Aranos did not move.

  With imperial slowness Ziad-Ilarios stood. Not dignity alone constrained him: his robes were heavy, as heavy as his burden of empire. He rose like an image ensorceled to life, and his face was no face at all, but a mask of beaten gold.

  It was custom, Hirel had told Sarevan. The mask was the mask of a god: ageless, flawless, impervious to human frailties. How simple then, Saraven had said, to murder an emperor in secret and take on his mask and his name and his power.

  Hirel had been far from amused. The common crowd was not to know when an emperor was old or ill or unbeautiful. Indeed the emperor who had begun the custom had been an outland invader with a terribly scarred face and the gall to have won his predecessor’s confidence, wedded that emperor’s only daughter, and disposed of his marriage-father by means more foul than fair. But no one in the years since had succeeded in perpetrating an imposture. Not only were the princes and the queens and certain of the High Court entitled to see their lord’s face; his identity was attested at intervals by a council of priests and lords, aged and wary and incorruptible.

  So had they attested at the beginning of this endless festival. Sarevan did not need to be told. His skin knew who wore that mask; the void behind his eyes was sure of it.

  Save only when he spoke of matters of the highest import, the emperor did not speak even to the High Court. A Voice spoke for him, a shadow-speaker, a herald in black whose mask was black and featureless but whose voice was rich and full.

  “It is time,” he proclaimed, “and time, and time. The throne is filled, its majesty is strong, may its bearer live forever. But even highest majesty, which makes the laws, must also obey them. So was it decreed in the days of Asutharanyas whose memory is everlasting: Every lord must name his heir. If that heir be of full years, one naming suffices. If said heir be yet in his minority, whether babe newborn or youth well grown, he must himself, upon attainment of his manhood, request and receive the name of heir from the lips of his lord. Then only may his title be affirmed.”

  The herald paused. The silence deepened. Even the manifold sounds of a thousand people living and breathing and standing close together had sunk into stillness.

  “On the first day of autumn in the thirty-second year of the reign of the divine emperor, Garan-Shiraz Oluenyas, whose memory endures forever, to the High Prince Ziad inShiraz Ilarios and the Princess Azia of pure blood and great worship, was born a son: Asuchirel inZiad Uverias, highborn, chosen heir of the chosen heir of Asanion. In the eighth year of the reign of his majesty, the great one, the Lion, the golden warrior of Asanion, Ziad inShiraz Ushallin Ilarios, came word of the death of his chosen heir. In the night it came, in the spring of the year, in grief immeasurable.

  “But the law endures; it knows no grief. Every lord, even to the very lord of lords, must name his heir. It is time; it is time and time. Hear and attend.”

  The silence focused, stirred, began to thrum. This was the highest of moments. The emperor must speak as the law commanded; he must name a name. The princes waited, even Aranos standing erect, alert, forsaking his pretense of ennui.

  It smote Sarevan then, almost felling him. How cruelly, how bitterly they had failed. The emperor must name the name. If Hirel had gone to him, made himself known, assured himself of the naming—but they had obeyed Aranos. They had trusted him; they had let him seclude them all.

  And thus, serpentinely, he mocked them. Ziad-Ilarios did not even know that his true heir was there to be chosen. Before Hirel’s very face he would name Aranos the heir of Asanion.

  In the mighty silence, metal chinked on metal. Sarevan glanced aside, cursed the helmet, turned half his body.

  One of Aranos’ guards had left his post. He stood on the glittering sand all alone. The Golden Guard lowered their spears, warning. He had discarded his own.

  The emperor seemed not to see him. He was only a lone madman, a nonentity; beyond the sand, only the princes could know that he was there. The Guard would deal with him; the court need never know what had
passed. The golden mask lifted.

  The man on the sand moved swiftly. His hands caught at his corselet. The emperor’s knights began to close in upon him. Sarevan left his place, elbowing through startled guardsmen, shrinking slaves, the odd inscrutable mage.

  Within the elaborate armor, hidden clasps gave way. The whole clever shell opened at once and fell clattering to the sand. Robes gleamed beneath, white on white on white: simplicity of purely Asanian complexity.

  There were seven of them, and over them a shimmer of gold. The eighth robe, the imperial robe, the robe of the high prince.

  A grey shadow sprang from air, or perhaps from among the mages. It crouched before Hirel. Its snarl was soft and distinct and deadly. The emperor’s knights paused.

  Sarevan won his way to Hirel’s back. Zha’dan was with him. They stood, warding him.

  He seemed aware of none of them. His back was straight, slender still for all the waxing breadth of his shoulders; proud and yet ineffably lonely with all the staring eyes behind him and his helmeted face turned toward his father. He set his hands to the helmet’s plumed extravagance. He flung it aside with sudden and most uncourtly force, shaking out his shorn hair. He raised his chin and fixed his eyes upon the emperor.

  Sarevan’s mouth was dry. He would have given much to be able to see the faces of Vuad and Sayel. But more, infinitely more, to see the emperor’s.

  The mask betrayed nothing at all of the man behind it. He had half a hundred sons. Would he even recognize this one, altered as he was, grown from child into man? And even if he did, would he name the boy his heir?

  Hirel did a thing that could only be perfect courage, unless it was perfect insanity. He walked forward. Ulan walked with him. He walked straight and unwavering toward the lowered steel. Just before the first spearpoint touched his breast, he raised a hand.

  The spears hesitated. Suddenly they swung up. The Olenyai stepped slowly back.

  The princes could see all of it. Perhaps some of them understood it. In the hall beyond, the silence’s length had begun to rouse wonder. A murmur grew.

  Hirel set his foot on the first step of the dais. He went no farther. He stood, waiting, eyes lifted still to his father.

  People behind the princes saw him now, and the beast with him, and the two tall guards. Their voices were like a wind in the forest, swelling to a roar.

  Still the emperor did not move. His mask was bent upon his son. His Voice wavered, at a loss.

  Sarevan was beginning to twitch. This had gone on much too long. If the man in the mask did not soon make up his mind, if mind he had to make up, there was going to be a riot in the hall.

  Sarevan tore at the catches of his armor, shook off the shell of it, kicked it out of the way. Were those gasps behind him? He had had his own splendor of folly: he had demanded, and received, full and imperial northern finery.

  It would seem very nakedness to these people. White sandals laced to the knee. White kilt. A great burden of gold and rubies hung wherever an ornament would hang.

  It left a remarkable quantity of bare skin. Zha’dan had twisted his hair into high chieftain’s braids: the Zhil’ari did not know the Ianyn royal way, and there had been no time to teach him. No one here would know the difference; and it did not matter. The color of the many woven plaits was proof enough of his station.

  He tossed down his helmet, shook out his braids, looked the emperor’s mask in the eye and bowed his head briefly as king to king. “Lord emperor,” he said, clear and cool above the rising tumult, “I bring you back your son.”

  That won a spreading silence. Incredulous; avid with curiosity.

  Hirel was whitely furious. Sarevan hoped devoutly that Aranos was the same. He smiled. “Your son, lord emperor. Your heir, I believe. Will you name him, or shall I?”

  That was boldness beyond belief. It awed even Hirel. It struck the High Court dumb.

  The emperor did a terrible thing, an unheard-of thing. In his casings of silk and velvet and cloth of the sun, in his mask and his crown and his wig of pure and deathly heavy gold, he stepped away from his throne. He moved with mighty dignity, with ponderous slowness.

  He came down. On the step above Hirel, he stopped. He raised his hand.

  His knights tensed to spring. His son stood unmoving, braced for the blow.

  The hand fell in its glittering glove. It closed on Hirel’s shoulder.

  He caught his breath as if with pain, but he did not waver. His eyes met the eyes within the mask.

  It came up. A voice rolled forth from it. It was a beautiful voice, rich and deep, more beautiful even than his imperial Voice. “Asuchirel,” said the Emperor of Asanion. “Asuchirel inZiad Uverias.”

  o0o

  That was not, by any means, the end of it. Hirel and Sarevan between them had seen to that. They had shattered the ritual; they had shocked the High Court to its foundations.

  It was rising to a riot when the emperor’s knights swept them out of it. Hirel resisted. “We are not done,” he said. Loudly, above the uproar. “I must take their homage. I must—”

  “They’ll take your hide,” Sarevan said, laying hands on him, because no one else would. He was too furious to struggle.

  Silence was blessed, and abrupt. Sarevan took in the chamber to which the Olenyai had herded them. It must have been meant for the emperor to rest in between audiences, or for hidden listeners to take their ease in while peering through screens at the throne and the hall.

  The screens were closed and barred now; one of the Olenyai drew curtains across it. There was something familiar about him; about his eyes above the helmet’s molded mask.

  Sarevan clapped hands to his swordless belt. All his weapons lay lost and useless on the floor of the hall. “Halid!”

  The Olenyas bowed. His glance was ironic, his right-hand sword drawn and eloquent. His companions ringed the walls: a round dozen.

  Very slowly, very carefully, Sarevan turned back to Hirel. Ulan was alert but quiet. Likewise Zha’dan who had shed his armor, who was all Zhil’ari beneath, painted with princely richness.

  “We seem,” said Sarevan, “to have made a mistake.”

  “Several mistakes.”

  The Olenyai snapped to attention. A man had entered through the inner door. He wore a robe of stark simplicity, for Asanion. It was merely twofold, overrobe and underrobe, plain white linen beneath, amber silk above, with no jewels save the golden circlet permitted to any noble of the High Court.

  He was not young, but neither was he old. The years had thickened his body and furrowed his face, and the hair cropped shorter even than Hirel’s was shot with white.

  His skin had a waxen pallor that narrowed Sarevan’s eyes; but he was handsome still, with the strength of the lion that, though aging, remains the lord of his domains. Hirel went down on his knees before him.

  He laid his hands on the bowed head. Hands stiff and swollen and grievously misshapen, trembling on the edge of perception. Yet it was not his sickness that shook them. His face was carven ivory; his eyes were burning gold.

  Hirel raised his head. They had the same eyes, they two. The same blazing stare in a face scoured of all expression.

  It could have been deadly wrath. It could have been apprehension. It could have been deep joy, bound and gagged and held grimly prisoner.

  “My lord,” said Hirel, “call off your dogs.”

  “My son,” said the Emperor of Asanion, “call off your panthers.”

  Swords hissed into sheaths. The emperor’s Olenyai knelt before their lord. Zha’dan did not see fit to follow suit; and Sarevan knelt to no one but his god.

  He let his hand rest on Ulan’s head and regarded with interest his father’s rival. Ziad-Ilarios was not at all the bloated spider that legend made him, but neither was he the splendid passionate youth who had yearned to run away with a Gileni princess. Youth was long lost, and innocence, and the gentleness for which the Lady Elian had loved him. Passion . . .

  For Hirel, briefly, it
had flared with all its youthful heat. But the ice of age and royalty had risen to conquer it. He raised his son, and they were eye to eye, which widened the emperor’s by the merest fraction.

  He stepped back. He said, “Sit.”

  Hirel sat stiff and still on a cushion. His father sat raised above him.

  Sarevan stood with his cat and his Zhil’ari. He doubted very much that he was wanted here. He doubted still more that Hirel would pass that door again unscathed. The very silence was deadly.

  Ziad-Ilarios had said no word for an endless while. He had glanced more often at Sarevan than at his son, cool measuring glances as empty of enmity as of warmth.

  When Sarevan had had enough of it, he smiled, white and insolent. “Well, old lion. Now that you have us, what are you going to do with us?”

  Hirel’s shoulders stiffened. Ziad-Ilarios let his gaze rest on Sarevan. For the first time in a proud count of days, Sarevan’s longing for his lost power passed the borders of pain. To touch that mind behind all its veils and masks; to know truly what that silence portended.

  The emperor raised a hand. “Come here,” he said.

  Sarevan came. He did not wait to be invited; he sat, returning stare for stare. “Well?” he asked.

  Ziad-Ilarios leaned forward. His hand gripped Sarevan’s chin, turning it from side to side, letting it go abruptly. He sat back. “You favor your father,” he said.

  “It’s the nose,” said Sarevan. “It conquers all the rest.” He tilted his head. “If you want to play games, I’ll play them. But I’d rather come to the point. Of this meeting, or of yonder sword. If you don’t want to tell me what you intend to do with us, will you tell me what mistakes you think we’ve made?”

  “I will and I can,” answered the emperor directly, without visible reluctance. Perhaps he was amused. “You should not have made it so painfully clear that Keruvarion’s heir is here, and that he is here by his own will, and that he must be thanked for the return and the naming of the heir of Asanion.”

  Sarevan leaned against the emperor’s divan, cheek propped on hand. “You weren’t in any great hurry to name him yourself, and there was a riot brewing. I had to do something.”