by Judith Tarr
If he lived, he would grieve: for his father, for the Lord Vadin, for the Lady Kalirien. But if he must die, he preferred to do it by his lady’s side.
His empress’ now. He smiled a little at the irony of it, setting his hands on her shoulders. She scarcely knew he was there, but her body let him draw it back against him. Tremors racked it: exhaustion, fear, more pain than Hirel could easily bear. He caught his breath, set his teeth, held fast.
The lightning fell.
There was splendor in it. Like mountains falling; like a storm upon the sea. The castle rocked beneath their feet. Whips of levin-fire lashed above their heads. The magefire roared to the roof; the world-walls writhed with visions of madness.
Mirain was a white flame in the heart of it. They had erred, the mages, in their lofty wisdom. They had slain the two who shared his self: thinking so to weaken him, to bring him into their power.
So had they done with that part of him which was mortal man, that part which had seemed the whole of him. Which had been but the veil over the truth: the bonds that bound the light.
The son of the Ianyn priestess was gone. Avaryan’s son stood forth in all his terrible splendor. He was pure power and pure wrath, bodiless, blinding. He would destroy those who had destroyed his empress and his brother; in the doing he might well destroy himself; and he would not care. No more than does a god when he has risen in his rage.
“Father,” Sevayin said, soft yet clear. “Father.”
She kept saying it. Her own power had touched his once, seeking to calm him; much of her pain was the payment.
He heeded her voice no more than he had her mind-cry. Mere human need, mere human strength. Not even for the light of the god in her would he turn from his course.
“Mirain.” His name rang like a gong. “Mirain An-Sh’Endor.”
The flame of him flickered, turning, bending toward the magefire. He spat power. The fire drank it like wine. Again the deep voice spoke. “Mirain An-Sh’Endor.”
Amid the terrible brightness that had been the Sunborn, a face flickered. Eyes, dark and almost soft, entranced. The lips smiled. The power caught a handful of lightnings and cast them into the fire.
A man walked out of it as through a gate: a young sunbird in Zhil’ari finery. His name hovered on Hirel’s tongue. Zha’dan. Hirel had thought him dead.
He limped: he bore a wound. But he was still bright irrepressible Zhaniedan, giving way with deep respect to the one whom he had brought. An old man, bent and grey, cloaked in black.
The old man straightened. He was tall, broad of shoulder even in his age, and perhaps stronger than he seemed.
The Prince of Han-Gilen let fall his cloak, which was not black but deepest green, and faced the pillar of fire. His hand brushed the peak of it, lightly. A breath escaped him: his only tribute to that awful strength.
Hirel reeled in sudden darkness. The flame was snuffed out. Shadow filled its place: Mirain on his knees in his black kilt, the gold of belt and armlets, torque and earrings and braids, a pallid gleam after the splendor that had been.
He raised his head. His face was a skull, stripped of youth and hope, but never of strength.
The Red Prince passed him and dropped to the floor beside Elian’s body. “Daughter,” he said with all the sadness in the worlds. “Ah, daughter, if you could but have waited, this would never have been.”
His voice died of its own weight. He kissed her brow and rose, laboring. They watched him. Hirel wondered why the mages had not struck him down.
“Because,” Sevayin said, clear and bitter, “he is one of them.” She dragged herself up. “Go on, Grandfather. Kill him before he gets his senses back.”
The old man did not look at her. He faced Mirain, who frowned like a man in the throes of bafflement. Trying to remember. Trying to remember why he should remember.
“He led them!” Sevayin cried in a passion of despair. “He began it all. Now he ends it. Now it is all ended.”
Mirain studied his foster father’s face. He bowed his head a fraction. “Of course it would be you.” He smiled faintly. “It has always been you. I saw your mark on my daughter’s soul. I thought only that it was her love for you, and the teaching you gave her when she was my son. Who but you could have wrought the change?”
“No one,” Prince Orsan said. “It was all mine, this making. Now, as my lady says, I must end it.”
“Or I.” Mirain stood, light and swift and deadly. “Thrice nine mages could not fell me. Would you venture it, O prince of traitors?”
“I have no need. The Asanian emperor is dead. His successor stands at your daughter’s back, soul-woven with her. Will you slay them? Or will you grant them the peace for which they have fought?”
“There is no peace but death.”
“For you,” said the prince, “there is not.”
Mirain laughed bitterly. “How you all must hate me!”
“No.” The prince was almost gentle. “No, Mirain. Will you not bow to defeat? In truth, it is a victory.”
“My lady always told me that I had no grace in defeat. And truly I have none. I do not lose battles, prince. I do not know how.”
“Perhaps it is time you learned.”
“No,” said Mirain. “I would have made our world a citadel of the light. You have condemned it forever to the outlands of the dark.”
“So be it,” Prince Orsan said.
Mirain sighed, drooping, as if weariness had mastered him. The Red Prince stretched out a hand. Perhaps in compassion; perhaps in warning. Mirain reared up like a serpent striking.
Sevayin tore herself from Hirel’s hands and sprang between her father and her mother’s father. Her power roared through Hirel’s brain.
The choice consumed but the flicker of a moment. It endured for an eternity. Father, grandfather. Light, light and dark together. Love, love turned to hate. Grief and grief, and no joy in any of it, no comfort and no hope.
She struck. It nearly slew her. Mirain’s power wavered the merest degree. In that weakened instant, Prince Orsan pierced his shields. Plunged deep and deep, seized his heart, and closed.
His eyes opened wide, fixed upon his death. He knew it. He comprehended it. All of it: betrayal and necessity and bitter choosing. With his last desperate strength he lunged, seized the prince, seized his daughter, cast them all into the fire.
Someone howled. Hirel’s throat was raw. He was blind, deaf, stunned. She was gone. He had nothing left.
Only death.
He laughed in the emptiness. For if she saw truth, he would have her back; if his was the way of the worlds, and death was mere oblivion, it would not matter.
No reasonable man would love a woman so much.
No reasonable man would have given his soul to Sevayin Is’kirien.
He was still laughing as he fell into the fire’s arms.
o0o
It hurt. By all the nonexistent gods, it hurt. But it did not burn. It was bitter cold, fiery cold, and it struck him a millionfold: each atom of his being tormented separately and exquisitely, in endless variety.
His scattered being laughed. What a splendid irony it would be, if the end of this pain found him in woman’s semblance. Then it would all begin again, the whole mad comedy.
Pain did not like to be laughed at. It flung his body together with claws of ice, thrust his battered mind into the midst of it, and cast him down in stillness.
He was one great bruise. Did the dead know such petty pain? He counted his bones; he had them all, etched in aches. The head was his own, the hands, the body blessedly his own. Even dead, he was the beginning of a man.
“If this is hell,” he said to the silent dark, “it is a poor thing. Where are the mighty torments? Where are the agonies of the damned?”
“Perhaps,” a deep voice responded with a touch of irony, “we are in paradise.”
A body moved; a hand groped along Hirel’s arm, tightening on it. Hirel’s mind quivered at a sudden mothwing touch. Slow light
grew.
“Ah,” said Prince Orsan with a scholar’s cool pleasure. “You are stronger than I thought.”
Hirel spat the shortest curse he knew. It was also the most appalling. “What am I? A candle for any mage’s lighting?”
“Hardly,” said the prince. “I am your lady’s master. Her power is woven with mine. As, therefore, is yours.”
“We are not dead.” Hirel’s voice was flat. He rose, letting his body protest itself into speechlessness, and glanced about. It was a little disconcerting: he was the center of the light, a sheen of gold that waxed as his strength grew.
If one stood in the heart of a diamond. If that diamond’s center were a flaw, black without light, a shape as simple as an altar. If two stood frozen, face to face across the altar, man and woman both in black, and a grey shadow-cat crouched at its foot. If any of it were possible, it would be this place.
“Andal’ar ’Varyan,” Prince Orsan said. “The Tower of the Sun atop Avaryan’s Throne in Endros of the Sunborn.” He spoke the names with a certain somber grandeur and a suggestion of despair. “We stand in the heart’s center of the Sunborn’s power.”
Mirain turned. The man and the god had come together.
Once before, Hirel had seen him so, standing in front of the Throne of the Sun. His grief had not diminished him. His loss had not cast him down. He remained Mirain An-Sh’Endor, the mighty one, the unconquerable king.
Hirel’s soul knit with a quivering sigh. Sevayin was beside him. He had not seen her come.
She was all that her father was. And more. Because her mortality bound her; because she was she, Sarevadin.
He laid himself open to her, for the battle which now must come.
“No,” Prince Orsan said. “The great wars are ended. The reign of the Sunborn is past.”
He had come to the center of the light. He was no stronger here, no younger, and no less powerful.
“Tell me now,” said Mirain, soft and calm. “Here at the end of things. Who is my father?”
“You are Avaryan’s son,” the Red Prince answered him.
Mirain held out his burning hand. “Swear on this, O weaver of webs. Swear that you had no part in my begetting.”
“I cannot.”
Mirain laughed. It was light, free. “You dare not. I think that you created me as has so often been proclaimed. The Hundred Realms had need of a king to rule them all; therefore you wrought me, setting me in the womb of an outland mother, casting upon her a spell of lies and dreams. But your spell succeeded beyond your wildest hopes and your blackest fears. The god himself came to fill you. Thus indeed he begot me, but through your flesh and your seed.”
“I summoned him,” the Red Prince said. “It was the rite, as well you know: the calling of the god to his bride. My foresight brought me to it; the god named his chosen through my power. Beyond that, I do not remember. Perhaps indeed he wielded me. Perhaps he had no need. I do not seek to define the limits of divinity.”
“Your working,” said Mirain. “Your working still, for all that you deny it. The world has shaped itself as you would have it. Now dare you dream that I will do the same?”
“What is left in the light for you? Your lady is dead. Your soul’s brother has gone back to the night from which you called him.”
“Before they were part of me, I was Mirain.”
“You can live without them? You can endure the emptiness in heart and power?”
Mirain stiffened. His eyes closed; his jaw set. A spasm of grief twisted his face.
It passed before the strength of his will. “My armies wait for me. My war is not yet ended.”
“I think,” said the Red Prince, “that it is.” His hand took in the two who stood in silence: Hirel because he had no part in it, Sevayin because she could not find the words to speak. Her hands were locked in his, braced above the child in her belly. “There is the end of it. You have refused it. Be wise at last, son of my heart. Accept this that you yourself have yearned for.”
“And I?” Mirain demanded. “Am I to fall upon my sword?”
Sevayin started forward, breaking away from Hirel. “No, Father. You can rule as you have ruled, until the god comes to take you. Keruvarion is yours. Asanion is mine to share with my emperor. Our son will hold them both.”
He could see it. It was in his eyes. Almost they smiled.
But the prince said, “How long will you be content? How long before it begins to rankle in you? You have struck deep into the heart of Asanion. Will you insist that all you have won is yours?”
“He has won nothing yet,” said Hirel.
Sevayin spun upon him. And back, furious, upon her father.
“Yes,” Prince Orsan said. “There is no peace while you live, Mirain An-Sh’Endor.”
“You will have to kill me with your own hands,” said Mirain.
And Sevayin said very softly, “You will have to slay me if you hope to touch him.”
The Red Prince’s eyes sparked at last with Gileni temper. “Was ever a man beset by such a brood of royal intransigents?” In three swift strides he stood before Mirain. He was very much the taller, and he was not to be towered over, even by the Sunborn.
He did what Hirel would not have done for worlds: set hands on Mirain’s shoulders and held them, looking down into the Sun-bright eyes. “I will slay you if I must. I pray that I may have no need.”
He could do it. Mirain smiled. Knowing surely, as did they all, that he himself could take that life which beat so close, end it before the prince could set hand to weapon. And yet, loving him, this master of the masters of kingmakers, this weaver of plots that could dazzle even Asanian wits. Loving him and hating him.
“Foster-father.” His voice was almost gentle. “Tell me.”
Prince Orsan met his smile with one fully as wise and fully as implacable. “There is another way.”
“Of course,” said Mirain.
“An enchantment.” The prince paused. “The Great Spell. The long sleep that lies on the borders of death.”
“But not full within its country.” Mirain tilted his head back, the better to meet the prince’s gaze. “What profit is there in that? Better and easier that I die. Then at least my soul will be whole again.”
“For you, perhaps, there may be no profit. For this world that you have ruled, which you may yet destroy . . . Your daughter has waked to wisdom. She sees that light and dark are one; she knows in truth what power is. To that truth you may come. And if the years pass as I forebode they will pass, a time will come when again the balance is threatened: when Avaryan will need the Sword that he has forged.”
“Thrifty,” said Mirain. “And hard. Have you ever laid an easy task on anyone?”
He asked it of Prince Orsan, but he asked it also of one who could not be seen. He did not sound either awed or frightened. Hirel could admire that.
“If I won’t do it,” he asked, and now he spoke only to the prince, “what will you do?”
“I will do my best to kill you.”
“You could fail.”
“I could,” the prince agreed calmly.
Mirain laughed, sudden and wonderfully light. “And if I do it—a wonder. A splendor of legend; a deed beyond any that I have ever done. But the cost . . .” He sobered. “The cost is deadly high.”
“The great choices do not come cheaply.”
Mirain’s eyes flashed beyond the prince to Sevayin. They softened a very little. “No,” he said. “They do not.”
There was a silence. No one moved. Mirain stared wide-eyed into the dark. His mind was as clear to Hirel as if he spoke aloud, its vision shimmering behind Hirel’s own eyes.
Sleep that was like death, but was not death. Long ages passing. Dreams, perhaps. Awareness trapped in unending night. And at the end of it, a hope too frail to bear the name of prophecy. A foreseeing that might prove founded on falsehood. A waking into utter solitude, utter abandonment, in a world beyond any seer’s perceiving.
Better the
simple way. A battle of weapons and power. Death if he fell, life and empire if he won. The prince was strong, but he was old; he had never been Mirain’s match in combat. Nor even yet could he equal the Sunborn’s power.
Mirain drew a long shuddering breath. He looked on his daughter and his daughter’s lover. Their hands had met again without their willing it, their bodies touched.
Pain swayed him. His hands reached as if to seek the ones who were gone; his power wailed in its solitude. Alone, all alone.
But to die—
He had no fear of it. He knew wholly and truly what it was. And yet . . . “I’m young,” he said. “I’m strong. There are years of living left in me.”
None of them spoke. Years indeed, Hirel thought. Years of war.
Mirain flung back his head. It burst from him in pain and rage and royal resistance. “I am not called!”
“You are not,” Prince Orsan said. “The god will accept you if you go. But he does not summon you into his presence.”
Mirain closed his eyes, opened his hands. Hirel’s eyes could not bear the brilliance of the Kasar. “I am summoned,” the emperor said softly. “But not to that.
“Father,” he said, “Father, you are not merciful.”
“But just,” said Orsan, to whom he had not been speaking, “he has always been.”
Mirain smiled as a strong man can, even in great pain. He held out his hands, the one that was night, the one that was fire. “And now you see. To the will of a god, even the Sunborn can submit.” He bowed his head. “I am yours, O instrument of my father. Do with me as you will.”
The Red Prince bowed low. “Not for myself, my lord and my emperor. For the god who is above us all.”
Mirain lay on the table that could have been either bier or altar. Prince Orsan did nothing for an endless while, gazing into darkness. He gathered power, yet not as Hirel had known it, in light and fire. This was quiet, inexorable, immeasurable.
Mirain did not move under it, save for his fist, that clenched once, then slowly unclenched.
The Red Prince stood over him. His eyes sparked. Rebellion. Repentance of his choice.