A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

“Human cruelty, guildmaster. Human envy and betrayal.”

  “The worse for those who perpetrated it, that they had no god to make their bloodshed holy.”

  Sarevan sat back, stroking his beard: sure sign of his tension, but he could not stop it. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe you are. Balance could be another name for spinelessness. Avaryan has made himself known in the world; no other god has done that. No other god will. There is none but the one.”

  “Save, by your belief, his sister. The dark to his light. The ice to his fire. The silence to his great roar of power. The other side of his self.”

  “That is Asanian teaching. We say that they are separate. He has chained her, lest she plunge the world into everlasting night.”

  “Or lest she prevent him from tipping the balance. The sun gives life yet also destroys it. Excess of light condemns a man to blindness.”

  “Not if he be pure of soul.”

  “Are you, prince?”

  “Hardly.” Sarevan smiled, little more than a grimace. “If I were, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be Journeying in blissful ignorance, or kinging it in Ianon.”

  The master was silent. Waiting.

  Sarevan let him have that victory. “Yes. Yes, I doubt my god. I wonder if my father is mad. If the Asanians, after all, worship the truth: twofold Uvarra who is above the gods.”

  “Have you come to me for an answer?”

  Sarevan laughed sharply. “I spent an hour in Uvarra’s temple. It’s much like all the others. Crusted with jewels, fogged with incense, infested with priests who know no god but gold. The image of the deity would rouse blushes in a Suvieni brothel. And yet,” he said, “and yet, for all of that, when I bowed down and prayed to Avaryan, a madness struck me. I thought it was Uvarra who heard. Uvarra of the light and Ivuryas of the dark, all one. And the dark was beautiful, guildmaster. It called to me. It offered me my power, the dark power which I refused and which is still within me, if only I will free it.”

  “There is no law which forbids the gods to lie.”

  “Precisely my response,” said Sarevan. “But if I can taste a lie, I can also taste the truth. And there I tasted truth.”

  “There is always a price.”

  “Of course. And for this, my mother’s life and my father’s heart. I refused. It was too easy, mage. Much too easy.” Sarevan leaned across the table. “Choices should be difficult. I think I’ve yet to be given one. I know you have something to do with it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Sarevan frowned. It hurt. He cradled his head in his hands. “Maybe the god drives me: whichever god is the true one. Maybe I’m mad. I think I’ve been chosen for something. If only for a traitor’s death.”

  “Are you asking for a foreseeing?”

  “I am asking for the truth. I know what I’ve done and why I did it. But it’s been too smooth, mage. Too simple. I think I’ve had help that hasn’t chosen to uncover itself.”

  The master raised his brows. “Indeed?”

  “Indeed,” said Sarevan, throttling his impatience. The tactics of the sword worked wonders with Asanian courtiers, but this was a mage, in that mage’s own demesne. He chose his words with care. “Consider. A trap laid in Asanion; a prince’s pride caught in it, his power taken from him. A hunt through two empires by a mighty master of power, who could find nothing; but an Eye of Power found the one for whom it was meant. Chance, maybe; a god’s inscrutable will. But for two princes and two seneldi and an ul-cat to pass through the heart of Keruvarion, under the eye of the Sunborn, with treason on their minds—for them to pass so, with no whisper of their passing, no rumor of their betrayal, no sign of a hunt raised against them, that is not chance. That is magecraft.”

  “Or skillful deception.”

  “No,” said Sarevan. “It takes power to lie to my father. Power, and great bravery. And someone has done it. Someone ventured to cover my going; to open my road through Keruvarion.”

  “We are not the only mages in the world.”

  “You are the only mages, aside from the Sun-priests in Endros, who gather together under a firm rule. And they would never have woven this web: it smacks too much of treason against my father. The little prince is part of it. He professes not to be the master of it; and that’s unlikely enough to be true. He’s no servant, he’s serving himself and no one else, but at the moment it suits him to be a loyal conspirator. He’d not be loyal to anyone whom he didn’t at least pretend to respect.”

  “You see great complexities in what may be no more than luck and chance and a prince’s plotting.”

  “Maybe I do. I’m a prince myself; I’m an only son. I’m spoiled. Indulge me.” Sarevan smiled his whitest smile. “Your people can have no love for my father. He was too inflexible with them. Either he would rule them or they would leave his empire. They chose exile. Now suppose,” he said, “that some of them have seen a path of both revenge and peace. A conspiracy. To deny him his war, rob him of his heir, and in the end, it may be, to have their own country back again. With the Sunborn safely dead and someone young, malleable, and comfortably powerless to stand in his place.”

  “Logical,” the master said.

  Sarevan bowed to the tribute. “My insanity has been a godsend. I’m not only well out of the way; I’m in debt to your plotting. Don’t you think it’s time for a truth or two? A man can’t pay a debt if he doesn’t even know to whom he owes it.”

  “If you knew,” inquired the master, “would you be willing to pay?”

  “That depends. There may be more to this web than I’ve been allowed to see. It may lead to a blacker infamy even than I’m willing to stomach.”

  “Have your deeds been as vile as that?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  The guildmaster smiled. “I was warned, Sun-prince. Your father is called the greatest courtesan in Keruvarion, but there are many who would contest that primacy; who would give it to Sarevan Is’kelion.”

  “Would you?”

  The smile widened a fraction. “The Sunborn does not know that he is beautiful.”

  “He knows that he has never betrayed a trust.”

  The silence sang, hurting-sweet. Slowly the master said, “He has never been forced to choose. I envy that certainty. I would that it had been granted to me.”

  “Neither of us is the son of a god.”

  The master’s head bowed. “This much, high prince, I can give you. A web has been spun about you. I will not say that you are the center of it. There is more to the world and the power than a pair of warring empires. Yet what you have done has been woven into the pattern.”

  “And the pattern?”

  “You have seen it.”

  Sarevan rose. He leaned on his hands, keeping temper at bay, willing a smile over his clenched teeth. “You have told me nothing that I did not already know. Do you expect me to leave and be content?”

  The master looked up at him, resting cool eyes on his burning face. “You were not born for contentment. I would give you what you ask for, or as much as concerns you, yet I may not.” And as Sarevan straightened, thunderous: “Not yet. I am the Master of the Guild. No more than the Prince Aranos do I command my allies. That is given to no one of us. I must speak with the rest; I must win their consent before I uncover our secrets.”

  Sarevan snorted in disgust. “What did you model this mummery on? The Syndics of the Nine Cities?”

  “Any tribe in the north is so ruled. Keruvarion’s emperor himself pays heed to his lords in council.”

  “But in the end he rules,” said Sarevan. “So. You have to agree to make me part of what I’ve been part of since it began. You’ll pardon me if I feel used. And ill-used, at that.”

  The master spread his hands. “Prince. It shall be redressed. That I promise you.”

  Sarevan turned his hand palm up on the table. It burned and blazed. “On this?”

  The master drew a breath as if in apprehension. He touched a finger to the Kasar. A spark leaped;
he drew back. “Upon your power,” he said.

  Sarevan’s fist clenched. Its pain was no greater for the mage’s touch, though the man looked pale and shaken, as if he had gained more than he bargained for. “I accept your promise.”

  “It shall be kept,” the master said. “And you shall have as much of the truth as you may. I will speak with my allies. When it is done, have I your leave to summon you?”

  Sarevan considered the mage, and his words, and his honor. “You have my leave,” he said.

  o0o

  Sarevan had his honest miracle. Hirel had been not merely civil to Sarevan after their quarrel. He had been magnanimous. He had been princely. He had chosen to forgive even the most bitter of Sarevan’s words.

  Sarevan found it harder to forgive himself. It was not Hirel who told him what had become of Vuad and Sayel.

  A courtier related it, half in admiration, half in incredulity: how the princes had languished shaven-headed in a cell of the emperor’s prisons, and how after a night and a day in which they went well-nigh out of their wits with dread of the gelders’ coming, Hirel himself had come with a choice. A life of ease and power as eunuchs of the Lower Court in the far reaches of the empire, or a tour of duty as officers of the imperial army, with the strong likelihood of falling in battle, but the chance also of surviving to regain their rank and their brother’s favor.

  Vuad had found the choice ridiculously easy. Sayel, it was said, had wavered. But Sayel was not well loved in the Golden Courts. He had gone with his brother to serve on the marches of the east; and before they left, they swore great oaths of loyalty to their high prince.

  o0o

  Hirel was in the harem when Sarevan looked for him, doing his duty by his twice ninescore concubines. It was just, Sarevan conceded, that he should have to wait, and for such a cause. He did not have to like it.

  He prowled his own rooms. He prowled Hirel’s. He drank rather more wine than he needed, and worked it off in a heated mock battle with Zha’dan. He came very close to deciding that Hirel did not deserve an apology.

  The wine was stronger than Sarevan had expected. It made him see what he should do: and that was outrageous. It kept him from hanging back.

  He had a little sense. He left Zha’dan in Hirel’s rooms, rebellious but subdued. Ulan would be guard enough, and would be less likely to pay in blood.

  They passed the empty courtyards and traversed an unfrequented passage. Today no sweet voices called through hidden lattices. Sarevan strode beyond them on ways that he had not taken before.

  The Golden Palace stood in two worlds. The outer was all of men and eunuchs. The inner was all of women and eunuchs.

  The unmanned walked freely in both. A whole man walked within only where he was unquestioned master: only among the women who were his own.

  Sarevan was alien in the outer world. In the inner, there was no word for him. The women who dwelt there had never seen sky unbounded by walls. They had never stood face to face with any man but father or brother or master. Husband, few of them could claim. Not here, where every one of fifty princes had his proper number of concubines.

  Sarevan had learned what every concubine prayed for. That her lord might marry, for then by custom he might set her free. Or better far, that she might bear him a son. Then was she not only freed; she gained honor and power among the ladies of the palace.

  If he had not known it was a prison, he would have found the harem no stranger than the rest of the palace. It was opulent to satiety, it was redolent of alien unguents, it was labyrinthine in its complexity. Its guards were eunuchs, but eunuchs both tall and strong, with drawn swords.

  Black eunuchs. Northerners gone strange with their beardless faces, their shaven skulls, their eyes like the eyes of oxen: dark, stolid, and unyielding.

  Sarevan was nothing to them. He was a man. He could not pass.

  Almost he turned away. But having come so far, he could not surrender like a meek child.

  “The high prince will see me,” he said. “You may impede me. My furred brother may not be pleased. I cannot answer for what he will do then.”

  Two swords lowered eloquently, to pause within an arm’s length of Sarevan’s middle.

  Ulan growled deep in his throat.

  The edged bronze dropped a handspan.

  Sarevan essayed a smile.

  Behind the eunuchs, the door opened.

  Asanian, this one, and flustered. He paid no heed to the guards, but beckoned with every evidence of impatience. “Come, come. Why do you dally? Time’s wasting!”

  Sarevan stared, nonplussed. The little eunuch clapped his hands in frustration. “Will you come? You’re wanted!”

  Sarevan looked down. The swords had shifted. Carefully, restraining an urge to protect his tender treasures with his hands, he edged between the guards. The Asanian hardly waited for him.

  o0o

  Long as his stride was, he had to stretch it to keep pace with his guide. The harem’s corridors passed in a blur. No one was in those through which he was led: deliberate, perhaps.

  In his bemusement he found himself wondering. Was he being rapt away like the wise fool in the bawdy song? Made a prisoner among the women forevermore, his manhood slave to their every whim?

  He laughed, striding. Softly; but it startled him. It was so very deep.

  His guide all but flung him through a door into a chamber like any other chamber in this palace. A space neither large nor excessively small. A low table, a mound of cushions, a flutter of silken hangings.

  No odalisque awaited him. He was disappointed.

  There was wine. He stopped short, remembering Asanion and Asanians. Sniffed it. It was thin and wretchedly sour: superb, to Asanian taste.

  If there was poison in it, surely the sourness had killed it. He poured a cup, drained it, prowled. Ulan, wiser, had arrayed himself royally atop the cushions.

  One of the hangings concealed a latticed window. He tensed, remembering a litter and a long day’s madness. Grimly he made himself forget, and set eyes to the lattice.

  A courtyard opened below. There was something of familiarity in it. If one set a man just beneath the window, a very tall man as men went here, with wondrous bright hair; and set a woman behind the lattice, or a handful of women, taking high delight in the pastime . . .

  He turned slowly. Words began, died. New words flooded to the gates. Hirel in gown and veil, eyes dancing, mocking him, driving him to madness.

  Hirel was a boy of great and almost girlish beauty. But no boy had ever had so rich an abundance of breast, so wondrous a curve of hip within the clinging silk. Hirel had never walked as this creature walked, light and supple, yes, but swaying enchantingly, smiling beneath her veil.

  She was all sweetness, and ah, she was wicked as she laughed at him: great outland oaf with his jaw hanging on his breastbone. Her head came barely so high. She stood and looked and laughed as a bird sings, for the pure joy of it.

  He had to sit. His knees gave him no choice in the matter. He clung to Ulan and stared, grinning like the perfect idiot he was.

  Her mirth rippled into silence. She stood and smiled at him.

  “You look,” he said, “exactly—”

  “How not? He is my brother.”

  Her voice. He knew it. “Jania!”

  She curtsied. “Prince Sarevadin. You are . . . much . . . more imposing without a lattice between.”

  He had not felt so large or so awkward since he grew a full head’s height in a season. He was painfully aware of his long thin feet and his long thin limbs and his great eagle’s beak of a nose. All of them blushing the more fiercely for that no one could know. “Jania,” he said. “How did you know I was here?”

  She pointed to the lattice. “I saw you. Then I heard you at the gate.”

  “And you had me let in.” He drew his breath in sharply. “You shouldn’t have. Your duennas will flay you alive.”

  She tossed her head, fully as haughty as Hirel. “They will not. E
ven before I knew that you would come, I informed my brother that he would give me leave to speak with you. He was wise. He granted it.” Her eyes sparked. “Sometimes it profits him to remember: I could have been a man. Then he would not be high prince.”

  Sarevan blinked stupidly. He had known her spirit and delighted in it, even through a lattice. He had not known who she was.

  Suddenly he laughed. “If my father only knew!” Now she in her turn was speechless, caught off guard. “You could have been given to me. It was thought of: to ask the Asanian emperor for his daughter.”

  “He has a legion of them,” she said.

  “But only one born to the gold.”

  “Do you think that you are worthy of me?”

  This was princely combat. Sarevan lounged in the cushions, Sarevan Is’kelion again, with his bold black eyes and his wide white smile. “Your brother has called me his equal.”

  “Ah,” she said. “My brother. He has always been besotted with fire.”

  “What, princess! You don’t find me fascinating?”

  “I find you conceited.” She laughed at his indignation. She leaned toward him over Ulan’s body, bright and fearless, and ran a finger down his beard. He had kept it when his face healed, because no one in the court had one; this morning Zha’dan had plaited it with threads of gold, taking most of an hour to do it.

  “And beautiful,” she said.

  “Truly? Have the poets changed the canons?”

  “Damn the canons.”

  She was a little too reckless in saying it. Defiant; outrageous.

  Sarevan laughed. “Have a care, princess. You might make me fall in love with you.”

  “I should fear that?”

  Fine bold words, but they were neither of them very steady. Her fingers seemed scarcely able to help themselves, weaving among the braids of his beard. No woman, not even his mother, had ever touched him so. So soon. So perfectly rightly.

  “Gold,” he said with dreamy conviction, “is the only color for eyes.”

  “Black,” she said. Firmly.

  They laughed. Her breast was full and soft and irresistibly there. Her lips were honey and fire.

  His torque was light to vanishing. He was in no danger. This was only delight. His mind remembered what one did. His body was more than glad to learn it.