A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  But most, having barely begun the charge, or having waited in reserve for the second assault, had fallen back in good order. These were the cream of their empires: seasoned fighters who knew how to face the unexpected, and who knew when to wait.

  There were mages among them. Sevayin felt the pricks of their power, testing this working of hers, measuring her strength; goading the beast that haunted the field, deepening the shadow of it.

  It crouched, catlike. Its eyes were madness visible. It began a slow and sinuous stalk.

  It was not even a tool, that creature. No mage had willed to make it. It was pure raw power. Neither dark nor light; neither good nor evil. Death was its sustenance.

  Power fed it. Lightnings swelled it. The wall was nothing to it. It had never lived, therefore it could not die.

  She gave it flat denial. It was not. It had never been. It had no power to touch her.

  It stretched forth a limb like the shadow of a claw.

  She refused its existence.

  It closed its claws about her.

  She felt nothing. She saw nothing. There was nothing.

  o0o

  The sky was clear. A shadow passed: a bird, a cloud, an eyelid’s flicker.

  Sevayin wound her fingers in Bregalan’s mane. Night and raven, woven. The stallion danced gently.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He gathered his body, held for a singing moment, loosed it.

  She rode headlong between the armies, flaming in the sun. One bold bowman loosed an arrow. She caught it, laughing, and flung it skyward. It kindled as it flew, flared and burned and fell.

  Now they knew her. The roar went up behind her, followed her, rolled ahead of her. “Sarevadin!”

  And in the army of Asanion, someone had counted robes and marked a crown and raised the cry: “Asuchirel!”

  Army faced army once again across the no-man’s-land, the broad expanse of ash and ruin made terrible with power. In its center Sevayin halted.

  Her Zhil’ari spread in a broad circle. Hirel set his mare side by side with Bregalan, facing his people as she faced her own. The thunder of their names rose to a crescendo and died.

  Gazhin circled the circle, his stallion dancing, snorting at shadows. He halted a little apart and raised his great bull’s voice. The clamor sank into silence.

  “The heirs of the empires have come before you. They command you to lay down your arms. They bid you lay aside your enmity. They say to you: ‘We must rule when the war is ended. We will not rule a realm made desolate. If you will not give us peace of your own will, then we will compel it, as we compelled the sundering of the armies.’”

  Never had such words been spoken on any field of battle. Never had the heirs of two great kings not only refused to fight, but put an end to the fighting by sheer force of wizardry. It was presumptuous. It was preposterous. It was highest treason.

  Sevayin was well past caring. She could not sustain the wall. The Zhil’ari were flagging. Hirel had begun to waver. Healed though he had been, he was but newly come from a bitter wounding. Already the power was escaping his control, sending darts of fire through brain and body.

  With infinite care she loosed the bonds. Too swift, and the power would run wild and destroy them all. Too slow, and Hirel would break and burn and die.

  He knew, because she knew. His fear, rising, sapped her strength and fed the power.

  He struggled in vain to quell it. She could not touch him; dared not. He was a shell of glass about a rioting fire. A breath would shatter him.

  The last bond melted. Sevayin nearly fell.

  Hirel snatched. Sparks leaped, startling them both. He recoiled in horror; but it was only power’s fierce farewell.

  Sevayin gripped his hands and laughed. He scowled. “I am a disgrace to my lineage.”

  “You are indeed. Practicing high sorcery, interfering in imperial wars—”

  “Turning coward at the crux and nearly destroying my consort.”

  “You’d be worse than a disgrace if you hadn’t, cubling. You’d be truly, heroically stupid.”

  He glared at her. She remembered the lesser world and turned to it.

  It had gone mad. Much of it was howling for blood. Some was roaring for the emperors’ destruction and the enthronement of their heirs. A vanishing fragment was striving for sanity. The battle looked fair to begin again, true chaos now, man against man, mage against mage, and no commander but the beast-mind of the mob.

  She raised a cry with more than voice, a great roar and flame that cowed and quelled and fixed every eye and mind and power upon her alone. She made of them a summoning. You who would rule this waste, come forth. Answer to me.

  She could not see the emperors. They were walled and buried in furious princes.

  Asanian, Varyani, they thought for once with one mind. They cried treachery. They dreaded a trap. And in it the bait: the heirs of the empires. Prisoners still, or illusions of magery, set to lure even greater hostages than themselves. Or set to lure the emperors to their deaths.

  She shifted infinitesimally. Her bones ached with the passage of power. It took most of her strength to sit unmoving, to keep her head up and her mind shielded. Mages sought to pierce it; their touch was pain. With each swift stabbing probe it mounted higher, with no blessed gift of numbness to grant her ease.

  The end of it came all at once. In white flame among the Varyani; in a scattering of Asanian princes. The Mad One burst from the lines. Ziad- Ilarios’ chariot rolled past the last of his attendants, his twin golden mares matching stride and stride.

  Sevayin’s lips stretched in a grim smile. They were alone, both of them, without attendance: Mirain with only his Mad One, Ziad-Ilarios with only his charioteer.

  Neither came without defense. Mirain needed none but his power. A thousand archers stood in the foremost rank of the Asanian army, bows strung, arrows nocked, aimed, waiting.

  The emperors advanced without haste, moving slowly yet all too swiftly. The Zhil’ari drew back before them.

  They halted. Mirain was not quite close enough to touch.

  Sevayin held herself rigidly still. His anger was hot enough to feel on the skin. Too hot to let him see aught beyond a dark face, a bright mane, a defiance the more bitter for that it was his own child who defied him.

  He flung it back in her face. “What have you done? You young fool, what have—you—”

  She watched it strike him. Watched him refuse it. Watched him struggle to see the truth.

  His truth. His son who was young enough still to change remarkably from season to season; who had gained flesh, but who had needed it desperately, and who even gaunt to a shadow had looked much younger than his years. It was not impossible that in full health he should look more like a beardless boy than a man grown. A beautiful boy. A boy as lovely as a girl.

  She sensed rather than saw Hirel moving away from her, dismounting, advancing to help his father from the chariot. She knew when Ziad-Ilarios laid aside his mask: Hirel’s pain was sharp inside her.

  The emperor had aged terribly. He walked because he must, but his every step was anguish, his every joint swollen and all but rigid; his face had lost the last of its beauty, his hair gone white. He embraced his son and let himself weep.

  Mirain had not changed at all. He was a little leaner, maybe; a little harder. He looked as he had when his heir was a child, when he waged his wars in the outlands of the world. Though Sevayin knew with mage’s certainty that he was mortal, she could comprehend the tale men told of him, that he was a god incarnate; that he would never age or die.

  Good bones and good fortune, and hair that was slow to go grey. He dismounted slowly, calm now: a quivering calm. His eyes never left Sevayin’s face.

  He took off his helmet, hung it from the pommel, shook down his simple braid. Their minds could not meet while hers was barred.

  She touched Bregalan’s neck. He knelt; she left the saddle. Her knees buckled briefly. The child kicked hard, protesting; her breath
caught. She drew herself up.

  He could not deny it now. It was as obvious as the shape of her under the archaic robe.

  He stepped toward her. She stiffened, willing herself to stand fast. She was not as tall as he.

  His army saw it; they were slow to understand. His hand brushed her hair, her cheek. “What have you done?” he whispered. “What have you done?”

  “Given us hope.”

  He flinched at the sound of her voice. He touched her again. Set hands on her shoulders, gripping cruelly tight. Tears of pain and weakness flooded to her eyes; she would not let them fall. “Why?” he cried out to her in pain at least the match of hers.

  “It was possible,” her tongue said for her. “It seemed logical. Should I simply have killed myself?”

  “You should have killed the lion’s whelp.”

  “I love him.”

  “You—” He stopped. His eyes were wild. “You fool. You bloody fool.” He shook her until she gasped. “You have betrayed us all.”

  “I have saved us.” She tore his hand from her shoulder, pressed it to her middle. “This is our hope, Father. This is our peace.”

  He tensed to break free. The child kicked. He froze.

  “Our son,” she said. “Mine; the young lion’s. He shall be mageborn, Father. Mageborn and doubly royal.”

  He said nothing. He seemed transfixed.

  She laughed, sharp and high. “Yes, go, disown me. It’s your right. I’m an attainted traitor. I’ve sinned against you; I’ve sinned against nature itself. But you can’t deny your grandson his inheritance.”

  “Do you think I can deny you?”

  She started, swayed. He held her up. There was no gentleness in him; his wrath had diminished not at all. He said, “I do not revoke the laws that I have made. Nor do I call you to account for this latest of many insanities. Not yet. But if I come within reach of those who laid it upon you . . .”

  “There,” Hirel said, “I am your ally.” He stood with his father, the emperor’s hand on his shoulder, two pairs of burning golden eyes. Hirel moved slightly. Warning, as a cat will, or a wolf: This is my mate. Touch her at your peril.

  Mirain regarded them steadily. “You have gained much,” he said to Hirel. “Are you regretting it?”

  “Never,” Hirel answered. “Nor shall I forgive those who wrought it.”

  Sevayin set herself in the cold space between them, filling it with the heat of her temper. “You’ll both have to wait until I’m done with them.”

  All three would have spoken. She overrode them. “Have you forgotten where we are? Or why?” She spread her hands across her swollen middle. “Here lies the end of this war. Will you leave him a world to rule?”

  The emperors did not move, but they had drawn away. “It is not so simple,” said Ziad-Ilarios. And Mirain said, “You cannot buy peace with love alone.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “Why ever not?”

  “Child,” said Mirain.

  “Lady,” said Ziad-Ilarios.

  She flung up her fists and swept them wide, taking in the ruin about them. “I will not hear you! One of you must rule. You hardly care which. You care not at all what price the land pays for your rivalry.”

  “I care what price Asanion pays,” Ziad-Ilarios said. “And it has paid high. Our most grievous fault. We are men of reason. We have little defense against the fanatics of the east.”

  “And what is reason,” Mirain countered, “but blindness of soul? You deny your own gods. You refuse aught but what your eyes can see, your hands touch. You call us fanatics who are merely believers in the truth.”

  “Are you?” They both rounded on Hirel. He folded his arms and regarded them coolly. “There are times and places for the settling of old grievances. I do not believe that this is one. You have seen us; you know that we come of our own will, and that we have made our own peace. Will you accept it? Will you agree at least to consider it?”

  The emperors eyed one another. Sevayin saw no hate in either, nor even dislike.

  In another world they might have been brothers. In this one, neither could yield. Too much divided them. Too many wars. Too many deaths. The world was not wide enough for them both.

  She came to Hirel’s side, even as he came to hers. They stood shoulder to shoulder. “You can kill one another,” she said. “We will live, and we will do what you refuse to do. Now or later, Father, Father-in-love. Choose.”

  There was a long silence. Hirel, so calm to look on, was trembling just perceptibly. She shifted, leaning lightly against him; his arm circled her waist.

  She tasted the emperors’ bitter joy. Every man rejoiced to see his line’s continuance. But that it must continue thus—that was not easy to endure.

  Slowly Mirain said, “I can consider what you have done. I cannot promise to accept it.”

  “And I,” said Ziad-Ilarios. “My people must know, and I must think. You will come with me, Asuchirel. You will tell me, at length and before our princes, why I should yield to your presumption.”

  Hirel drew his breath in sharply. “How do I know that I can trust you? I have seen enough of betrayals, and more than enough of prisons.”

  Anger sparked in Ilarios’ eye. He spoke with deadly softness. “You are my son and my heir. Neither title is irrevocable. Remember that.”

  Hirel started as if struck. Sevayin held him tightly. “Trust him,” she said. “He may try to lure you into his war, but he won’t compel you. He knows there’s no profit in turning you against him.”

  “I will not go without you,” Hirel gritted. “I will not.”

  “You must.” The Sunborn’s voice was velvet and steel. “Someone must face my army. Someone must tell them what has become of their high prince. I am not minded to lie to them, and I am even less inclined to give my enemies a hostage.”

  Sevayin had been expecting it. She did not have to be eager for it. “I must go, Hirel,” she said as steadily as she could.

  His face set in imperial obstinacy. “I will not hand you over to our enemies.”

  “They are my people,” she shot back. “And no one hands me over to anyone. I go where I choose to go.”

  “You are my wife.”

  “I am not your property!” She wrenched away from him before she struck him. “Damn it, cubling, now’s no time to get unreasonable. Go with your father. Beat some sense into his head. And be sure of this: I don’t intend to do my own arguing from a cage.”

  He was stiff and haughty, lest he break down and cry; angry, lest he blurt out the truth: that he could not bear to be apart from her. He would never know what it cost her to kiss him lightly, flash him her whitest grin, and turn her back on him.

  She was on Bregalan’s back before anyone could be solicitous, dispatching her Zhil’ari to guard Hirel. On that, she was adamant. She had Ulan, who was worth a dozen men, even men of the White Stallion.

  She did not watch them ride away. Her eyes and mind were on the army. Her father’s army. Her own by right of birth.

  If they did not rise up to a man and cast her out.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The truth crested slowly, like a wave: rising, gathering, poising long and long at its summit. It crashed with deadly and inexorable force.

  The Sunborn’s tent was an island in the torrent. The empress’ women guarded it with their full strength, which was potent, but which was sore beset. They could not abate the roar that overlay and underlay all that passed in the cramped and crowded space.

  Sevayin stood against the central pole with Ulan for wall and guard, facing her father’s princes. She had expected revulsion. She had been braced for bitter recrimination. She had known that a precious few would begin to accept her, and that all too many would reject her out of hand.

  But her foresight had failed her. That their high prince should sacrifice his manhood for his empire, that, they could endure. It was the act of a hero, of a saint; it had a certain tragic splendor. And she was very beautiful, they said, seeing
her there, glittering, growing desperate.

  They could endure a woman’s rule. They would not contemplate an Asanian consort. “I carry his son!” she had raged at them while she still had strength to rage.

  “You carry a Sunborn prince,” said the Chancellor of the Southlands. His Gileni temper was well in hand; he was struggling to be reasonable. “Sarevadin”—he said it gingerly as they all did, not wanting to slip and wound her with her old usename, not ready yet to call her by her new one— “Sarevadin, we cannot grant Asanion so much power. We are too young and too raw; it will overwhelm us with the strength of its thousand years. Keruvarion will shrink to a satrapy, a dependency of the Golden Empire.”

  It was not the first time he had said it. It was not the last. They all said it, singly and in chorus.

  They spoke of Asanion. Of the Golden Empire. Of it and they. Never of Hirel Uverias, or of Sarevadin who had no intention of dwindling into a mere and ornamental queen.

  When she cast the truth in their faces, they took no notice of it. She was a woman. Of course she would yield, or she would die. Asanion would make certain of it.

  “No,” the chancellor said at length, as weary as she. “It is not that you are a woman. It is that you are Varyani and their high prince’s consort. They will not suffer equals. They will assure that their prince holds all the power.”

  “Are you any different?” she demanded.

  He smiled wryly. “Of course not. We wish you to rule; we cannot let you share your throne.”

  “What will you do, then? Poison my husband? Strangle our son at birth?”

  “We do not murder children,” he said.

  “Hirel is hardly more than that.”

  “He is old enough to father a child. He is more than old enough to rule an empire.”

  “He’ll never be old enough to rule me.”

  “His empire—” the chancellor began.

  “Uncle,” she said. “Halenan. If he dies, I die. You call yourself a mage. Look within and see. We are soul-bound. There is no sundering us.”

  He looked within. He was gentle and skilled, but she was a tissue of half-healed wounds; and he had not his father’s mastery. He all but blinded her with pain.