A Fall of Princes (10 page)

“And the body’s?”

“The power is the body,” said Zha’dan. “If the great magics
were all mine to use, and I lost them because I let myself fall into a trap, I
would want to die.”

“What are you asking of me?” demanded Hirel. “I have no
power to wring sanity from that madman.”

“He is no god to you. You can make him act like a man of
sense.”

“Sense? In Sarevan Is’kelion?” Hirel laughed almost freely.
“Tribesman, you seek a miracle. Pray to your god. Perhaps he will hear you.”

Hirel retrieved his coat, with a sigh for his lost bath.
While Zha’dan stood in silence, eyes wide and hurt like the eyes of a wounded
kimouri
,
Hirel stepped around him and walked away.

o0o

The nine Zhil’ari were becoming people, if slowly. There
was Zha’dan, who hovered and worried; who painted concentric circles in scarlet
on his brow and on his breast, and who liked to sing in a loud unmusical voice.
There was Gazhin his brother, who always bellowed him into silence, and who was
as burly as Zha’dan was slender. Unlike the others, whose beards were still
uncertain of their welcome, he had thick copper-wound braids that brushed his
breastbone. There were the twins, Rokan and Kodan, as like as two pups of the
same litter, but Rokan painted himself with crimson, Kodan with blue.

Sometimes Hirel amused himself in trying to find the faces
behind the thickets of hair, and in wondering how their women could possibly
endure to kiss those bristling cheeks. Small wonder that Zhiani had taken such
delight in learning the arts of love from a beardless Asanian boy.

They had made camp boisterously, as seemed to be their wont,
and amid apparent chaos, but it was well made: a firepit dug, the daymeal set
to cook, a guard sent off into the trees. The rest tended seneldi or swam in
the lake. Two coupled in the open like animals; Hirel did not think they were
the same two whose thrashings had kept him awake all last night.

The one on top saw him staring and grinned, never missing a
stroke. He tore his eyes away.

This was an art. It had its times, its private places, its
rites and its cadences. Always it was to be regarded with reverence as the
highest of earthly pleasures. These hulking shaggy men, with their noise and
their contortions—they made of it a mockery.

“This is play. With women, it’s as sacred a rite as you
could wish for.” Sarevan stood beside him, perfectly steady, garish in his
paint. Hirel saw no black bird of death perched on his shoulder.

“Sacred.” Hirel snorted his contempt for the very word.
“Sacred enough to buy with gold and amber and trumpet from the mountaintops.”

“No priest enters his rite unrehearsed,” said Sarevan. He
looked Hirel up and down. “I confess, I didn’t believe you were capable. Even
after all the tales I’d heard. Is it true that the training begins in the
cradle?”

“I am not an infant!” Hirel’s voice cracked upon the words.

Sarevan laughed. “Of course not, cubling. But does it?”

“Yes.” Hirel’s eyes would not lift from the ground. “It is
an art. Like dancing, like weaponry, like courtcraft. The sooner begun, the
greater the skill.”

“Even with that?”

At last Hirel could look up. Sarevan looked bemused, and
amused, and insufferable. “I suppose I should envy you. I merely learned
dancing and weaponry and courtcraft, and the rest was for whispering in
corners. For a while I committed a dreadful sin. I went into the minds of
people who were loving. Women, even. One day my mother caught me at it. I was
mortified, and I knew that I was about to be flayed alive.”

“Were you?” Hirel asked in spite of himself.

“Oh, yes. With words so keen, the air bled where they
passed. And then I had to serve my penance. I’d been trying to see if I could
will a child out of the coupling, and it turned out I had. I lived in the
woman’s mind throughout her pregnancy, and it was far from an easy one, even in
our nest of mages: it was her first, and she was old for it, one of my mother’s
warrior women who’d never taken time for childbearing until I tampered with her
protections. She forgave me. Eventually. After we’d birthed her daughter
together.”

“But how—”

“I lived in two bodies, and my own was often asleep. My
tutors were much concerned. If they had known . . . It was hard
sometimes, to know I was a boy of twelve summers, strong and quite disgustingly
healthy, but to feel like a woman of thirty with a child growing in her belly.
Toward the end I had to watch every moment, or I’d even walk like her. And that
was painful, stretching a boy’s bones to move as a woman’s. But never as
painful as hers, that stretched to carry the child.”

“Preposterous,” said Hirel.

“Utterly.” Sarevan lay near the fire, and Ulan came to be
his bolster. “When we come to Endros, you must meet Merian. My mother is
fostering her, and I when I can be near her. She’s a very charming
impossibility.”

“
You
are impossible.” Hirel sat on his heels. Sarevan
had closed his eyes. The lids were painted, following the tiger-patterning of
the rest, so that his features seemed to blur and shift, eluding the steadiest
stare.

But if Hirel narrowed his eyes and glanced sidelong, he
could see the bones thrusting high beneath the thin-stretched skin. That was
not paint which paled Sarevan’s lips, nor dew which gleamed on his brow. For
all his seeming ease, his body was taut, its trembling not quite invisible.

Hirel blinked and found himself meeting Ulan’s eyes. The cat
yawned. His tail twitched and raised and came to rest over Sarevan, protecting,
guarding. Sarevan seemed to have slid into a doze.

Hirel went away in silence, found what he needed, came back.
As he touched sponge to the damp brow, Sarevan’s eyes snapped open. Hirel
considered modes of unarmed combat. But Sarevan lay still.

With oil and salve, then water with cleanroot rubbed in, Hirel
washed away the paint. Then having done that, for thoroughness he bathed the
rest, as if he were a servant; and Sarevan never said a word. Except, at the
end: “You have light hands.”

“Training,” said Hirel with a touch of irony. It helped to
hide dismay. If he had looked on a dying man before the Zhil’ari found them,
now he saw one all but dead.

And yet Sarevan rode so well—pretended so well. How could he
do that?

“Because,” answered Sarevan when it burst out of Hirel, “I
must.” He smiled, alarming as the grin of a skull. “I won’t die. When I come to
Endros, my father will heal me. I’m certain of it.”

It was well for him that he could be. Hirel lidded jars,
wrung out sponges, emptied the basin into the roots of a tree. The sun had gone
down at last; the stars were coming out, and Greatmoon waxing to the full,
broad as a shield in the darkening sky.

Savory scents hung over the camp where the Zhil’ari gathered
and babbled and waited to be fed. The lovers were done, sitting by one another;
the green-painted one oiled and braided the other’s hair.

The lake was silver and black, glowing with the last of the
light. A flock of water birds drifted and murmured, black-waked black shapes on
the sheet of silver. Hirel dropped his garments and waded into the water’s sudden
chill, drew a breath, plunged.

Midway between the shore and the gathering of birds, he
floated on his back. The air was cold on his wet face, the water warm about the
rest of him. One lone splendid star stared down into his blurred eyes.

Tonight he could do it. Take the striped mare and a sackful
of food and run. Last night he had wandered, testing, and the sentry had only
grinned and saluted him, taking no particular notice of his rovings.

None of them seemed to know who Hirel was, or to care; nor did
any keep watch. Feckless boys, all of them.

Sarevan was too ill and too urgent to give chase for any
great while. If Hirel slipped away as soon as everyone slept, and rode uncaught
until morning, he would be safe thereafter.

He turned onto his face and swam slowly to shore. In camp
they were eating, and being uproarious about it. Hirel dried himself, pulled on
his breeches, slung coat and cloth over his shoulder.

There was meat on a spit still. Hirel slid around a savage
who was not inclined to move. Laughter rumbled; Hirel spun, startled.

The man looked down at him. Very far down. The eyes were
dark in the gaudy face, taking Hirel in at leisure and with unmistakable
intent. Hirel bared his teeth, which were very sharp, and let the hulking lout
choose whether to call it a grin or a snarl.

The eyes began to glitter. A hand closed around Hirel’s
privates. With all his strength he held himself still, though his teeth set.
“Let me go,” he said.

The savage let go, not without a bit of fondling. He said
something; the others laughed.

Hirel’s fingers clawed. The man grinned all over his
harlequin face, and went to fill it with roast wildbuck.

“He said,” said Sarevan, “that for some things a dagger is
more effective than a broadsword.”

“Would he know?” Hirel retrieved the spit and addressed
himself to its savory burden.

o0o

Azhuran’s hellions drank and copulated and caterwauled
themselves toward sleep. Sarevan, having eaten—yes, Ulan was getting most of
it, even under Zha’dan’s reproachful eye—rolled himself in his blanket and
closed his eyes.

Hirel lay down as if at random some little distance from the
fire’s light, and pretended to sleep. One by one the others succumbed.

Hirel waited. Sleep crept up on him; he beat it back with a
litany. Asanion. Asanion and the Golden Palace, and his royalty restored.

With infinite slowness the fire died. The last rowdy youth
dropped like a stone, cup rolling from his hand.

Hirel counted, and almost crowed. Their sentry had come back
to eat, and had tarried to finish the last of the mares’-milk wine, and they
had forgotten to post another. They were all asleep in a tangle by the embers.

Hirel drew a breath. No one stirred. Inch by inch he drew
his blanket over his head. Waited. No sound but snoring.

Dark-swathed, veiled in night, Hirel crept away from the
sleepers. The seneldi grazed near the lake, loose as these tribesmen liked to
leave them, trusting to the training that kept each beast within sight of its
master.

The saddle was still in the brush where Hirel had hidden it,
and the bridle, and the waterskin and the laden saddlebags. He rolled his
blanket and bound it to the saddle, and, taking a bit of fruit, went to find
the mare.

Darkness surged out of the earth, rolled over him, threw him
down on the cruel hardness of defeat.

“I thought you’d try it tonight,” Sarevan said, dropping to
one knee beside the massive shadow that was Ulan. Greatmoon made his face a
featureless darkness; his eyes gleamed in it like an animal’s, his teeth
flashing white as he spoke. He seemed more amused than not. “A brave effort,
cubling, but alas, perfectly predictable. Ulan, let him up.”

Hirel rose slowly, judging distances. One of the stallions
was close enough to—

“Don’t even think of it,” Sarevan said softly.

“So that was a lie,” Hirel said. “You still have your magic.
You can read my mind.”

“I can read your eyes. And your face. And your body. I fear
I’ll have to bind you, for a little while. Until we’ve gone too far to make
escape worth the trouble.”

“Then you will have to drag me in chains all the way to
Endros Avaryan.”

“I brought no chains. Leather thongs will have to do.”
Sarevan bound Hirel’s hands in front of him, firmly though not cruelly, and led
him back to the fire.

No one woke to see. No one needed to. Even the bonds were
not entirely necessary: Ulan set himself by Hirel, and Hirel raged and wept
behind his frozen face, but he did not fancy bolting for it with the cat on his
heels.

Sarevan laid his head on Ulan’s flank and went to sleep.
Hirel sat wide-eyed, motionless, and watched the sky wheel into dawn.

Long before then, he was certain. Sarevan had plotted this.
To test Hirel. To seal his captivity.

And Hirel had been within a whisper’s span of pitying him,
racked with sickness as he was, bereft of his bright magic.

o0o

Sarevan did not make good his threat. In the grey morning
he loosed Hirel’s bonds and said, “If you will give me your word, I will let
you ride free.”

Hirel flexed his stiff shoulders, eyes burning on that
hated, mongrel face. It waited without expression. Would wait until the sun
fell, in perfect patience.

Hirel’s gaze dropped. “Yes,” he muttered. “I give it.”

“It is accepted.”

Then Hirel was forgotten, left to gather his belongings and
tend his mount and fall into the line of riders. Sarevan led, as always; Ulan
kept pace with him. The others rode in no perceptible order, except that Hirel
took care to hold the rear.

They left the lake, winding up a steep wooded ridge, and
wound down into a long valley. Trees closed in, but the valley’s center was
clear, like the last gasp of a road: grass and stones and stretches of barren
earth.

Toward midday the vale bent westward, rising into a long
gentle slope lightly furred with trees. Stones crowned the hill, a rough circle
that held a suggestion of men’s hands, but hands long fallen to dust.

Hirel slowed his mare as if to stare. No one noticed. He let
the gap widen. Sarevan was far ahead, striking for the eastward ridge, and Ulan
loped in front of him.

Hirel clapped heels to his mare’s sides, bending over her
neck. She bolted toward the hill.

Behind them, a shout went up. Hirel lashed the mare with the
rein-ends; she shifted from flat gallop to full flight.

They were far behind, all his jailers. Hirel grinned into
the teeth of the wind.

His jubilation shuddered and died. A grey shadow flowed over
the ground, and its eyes were green fire. It was closing. Angling. Moving to
cut him off.