A Fall of Princes (24 page)

Mirain An-Sh’Endor? Asking forgiveness?

“You are all that I am and more,” he said, raw with pain,
“and I love you to the point of folly. I never meant to cage you. I only wished
to keep you safe, so that you may be the emperor you were born to be.”

“Emperor of what?” Sarevan cried from the depths of his
darkness. “Dust and ashes, and war’s desolation?”

“Emperor of all that lies under Avaryan. I was born for war,
for the winning of empires. Peace saps all my strength. But you—you can rule
where I have won. You have the strength of will that I have not, to hold in
peace what war has gained. Don’t you see, Vayan? You are not simply my son and
heir. You are the fulfillment of this creature that I am. You as much as I are
the instrument of the god.”

“The sword cuts,” said Sarevan. “It cuts too deep for any
healing.”

“Save yours.”

Sarevan’s sight cleared, a little. He saw his father’s
living face. It was close, a shadow limned in light, with shining eyes. There
were tears in them. He had struck harder than he knew, and deeper.

No, he warned himself. No softening. This man who grieved
for his son’s pain was king and conqueror; and by his own admission, born and
shaped for slaughter.

“I will not haunt you,” Mirain said. “No longer. When you go
into the north, you go free, to rule in my name but according to your will.”

“Even if that will is to oppose you?”

Mirain started, stiffening.

“If I hold the north,” Sarevan said, “and forbid it to join
in your war, what will you do?”

“Would you do that, Sarevadin?”

Yes
, Sarevan was
going to say. But he could not. To defy his father by himself—that, he could
do. To take a kingdom with him, a kingdom that had been his father’s . . .

“I could do it,” he said.

“Would you?”

He shivered. “No,” he said, slow and hard. “No. That would
rouse war as surely as anything else I’ve done since I resisted you and went
into Asanion.”

Mirain smoothed Sarevan’s hair with a steady hand, worrying
out a tangle, stroking beneath where he was cold and shaking. Sarevan tensed
but did not try to escape.

“Father,” he said after a while. “Must you fight this war?”

The hand did not pause in its stroking. “You know that I
have no choice. Asanion’s emperor will not yield for words or for wishing. Only
war can choose between us.”

“If you could see what I see—would that stop you?”

“I see that the darkness has deceived you. Another trap of
our enemies’ laying. They know what you are; that you are more perilous even
than I. They have labored long and hard to ensnare you; to destroy you, lest
you become what they most fear.”

“What am I, that you are not thrice over?”

“You will be lord of the world.”

“I don’t
want
—”
Sarevan stopped. That, he knew in the cold heart of him, was false. He wanted
it with all that he was: a wanting so deep that it seemed almost the negation
of itself. But what it was, and what his father wanted it to be—there they
differed. “I don’t want it stained with blood and fire.”

“Perhaps it need not be. But perhaps,” said Mirain before
hope could wake, “it must. Will you rule the north for me?”

“Will you stop the war for me?”

“No.”

That was absolute. Sarevan drew back, steadying himself. His
temper had died; he was, almost, at peace. He found that he could smile, though
faintly, and not for pleasure. “I love you, Father. Never forget that.”

“Will you rule the north?”

Sarevan let himself sink down in weariness that was not
feigned. “I need time,” he said. “I’m not—I can’t— Give me a day. Let me
think.”

For an instant he knew that he had gone too far. But Mirain
said, “Think as much as you like. Your princedom can wait. So,” he added more
softly, “can I.”

Slowly Sarevan turned. Mirain’s face was not soft at all.
Sarevan hardened his own to match it. “A day,” he said. “To set my mind in
order.”

“A day,” Mirain granted him. “Or more, if you have need of
them.”

Sarevan shivered. His eyes dropped; he could not force them
up again. “No,” he said very low. “A day will be enough. Then,” he said, lower
still, “then you will know.”

When Sarevan came, Hirel was ready. Scowling but ready, in
plain dark riding clothes, with a long knife at his side and a scrip in his
hand.

“I have had the ambassador’s message,” he said with no warmth
at all. “You are thorough.”

“Of course.” Sarevan turned. “Follow me.”

They walked quietly but not stealthily. There were secret
ways; a palace was not a palace without them, as Mirain often said. But this
palace was full of mages, and they would be on guard, alert for walkers in the
dark. Walkers in the light, however dim, they might not pause to wonder at.

Sarevan carried his coat slung over his shoulder and, as if
by chance, over both their scrips. He did not hasten; he did not linger. Above
all else, he did not think of mutiny. “

Think,” he warned Hirel when they began, “of a restless
stomach and an hour’s brisk walking, and of deep sleep after.”

Hirel had given him an odd look, but had not protested. He
did not speak at all as they went, until they met a lord with his retinue.

The voices came first; at the sound of them, Hirel slipped
his arm around Sarevan’s waist and leaned, hand to middle. His face when he
lifted it was pale. “A little better,” he said loudly enough to be heard, “but
still not—”

The company was upon them, large, varied, and warm with
wine. Sarevan almost groaned aloud at the sight of the leader: a baron from the
east of Kavros, rich with pearls and with sea gold, older than he liked to be
and less powerful than he hoped. He dandled a girl on each arm; he thrust them
away, to bow as low as his belly would allow.

“Lord prince! How splendid to see you about, and so strong,
too, after all I had heard, though you look thin, very thin; that is not well,
you must look after yourself, we need you sorely in Keruvarion.”

Sarevan’s smile bared set teeth. “Good evening, Baron
Faruun.”

“Oh, good, yes, very good, my lord, as the lord your father
said to me, just a little while ago it was, he said—”

“I think,” said Hirel distinctly and rather more shrilly
than he had in many days, “that, after all, I shall be ill.”

Sarevan caught at him. He looked ghastly. But his eyes were
lambent gold.

“You can’t,” Sarevan said as that shimmering stare dared him
to. “I won’t let you. Think about keeping it down. Think about the honor of
princes.”

Hirel sighed, and swallowed audibly. “You are a tyrant,
Vayan.”

“I’m growing you up, little brother. You can’t do this every
time you drink a cup or three.”

Hirel drooped against Sarevan. “I want to go to bed,” he
said plaintively. Swallowing in the middle. Nuzzling a little, working mischief
with his hands where the watchers could just see.

“You’ll pardon us, I’m sure,” Sarevan said, flashing his
teeth at them all and sweeping Hirel away.

o0o

Hirel recovered quickly enough once he had no audience to
play to, though his color was slow to come back. He did not let go of Sarevan;
Sarevan let him stay. Laughter kept rising and refusing to be conquered.

“
You
can laugh,”
Hirel snarled at him.

Contrition sobered him, somewhat. “But you aren’t really—”

“I always am.”

Hirel’s bitterness was real, and deep. Sarevan pulled him
forward. “Quick now; be strong. We’re almost out.”

They met no one else of consequence. A servant or two; a
lady’s small downy pet trailing its jeweled leash and looking utterly pleased
with itself. Then they had passed an unwarded postern and entered the city. The
rain had ended; wind tattered the clouds, baring a glimpse of stars, a scatter
of moonlight.

o0o

The main thoroughfares of Endros were lit with lamps and
tended by honored guildsmen, but its side ways were dark enough for any
footpad. Sarevan kept to the latter, daring now to run, dragging the other by
the hand. Nothing threatened them save a cur that snarled as they passed.

The wall came sooner than Sarevan had expected. By the wan
gleam of Greatmoon he groped his way along it, searching for a stone that would
yield to his touch. If he had come too far, or not far enough—

It turned under his hand and sank. The wall opened into a
tunnel a little higher than a man and a very little wider. Sarevan could just
walk erect. Hirel followed him without trouble, gripping his belt.

Another stone, another shifting. They stood on the open
plain with the wind in their faces. Sarevan drank it in great gulps. Hirel retched
into the grass.

He would not let Sarevan carry him. His resistance was quiet
but furious, and he gasped through it, choking, until Sarevan shook him to make
him stop. “You’re wasting time, damn you! Up with you.”

“I am not,” Hirel gasped. “I am not—I had to convince—I
convinced myself. Put me down!”

He walked, though he let Sarevan hold him up. It was not
remarkably far. A thousand man-lengths, perhaps more, perhaps less. There was a
hill and a copse and a crumbling byre, and in the byre Shatri with Bregalan and
the striped Zhil’ari mare and one more: a rawboned, ugly-headed, sand-colored
creature with a bright wild eye and a laden saddle. “No,” Sarevan said. “No,
Shatri.”

The squire did not even lower his eyes. “He told me, my
lord. Your father. Whatever you did, to stay with you.”

“Are you his man or mine?”

“Yours, of course, my lord. With all my soul. But he is the
emperor.”

That, said Shatri’s tone, was inarguable. Sarevan drew
breath to argue with it.

The sand-colored mare snorted and rolled her eyes. The
source of their wildness stalked out of shadow, rumbling gently. Of the
seneldi, only Bregalan was calm; but Ulan had been there when he was foaled.

The great cat circled Shatri, who stood very still, and came
to press against Sarevan and purr. “Go back,” Sarevan commanded Shatri. “I am a
priest on Journey. I may have no squire or servant.”

“But, my lord—”

“In Avaryan’s name,” Sarevan said, relentless, “and in the
name of his priesthood. Go.”

“My lord!”

Sarevan turned his back on him and mounted.

“My lord,” the boy said, pleading.

Bregalan sidled but would not advance. Sarevan would not
turn.

Hirel’s voice in the dark was cool and calming. “Your lord
has need of you here, to conceal his absence, to divert pursuit. He has trusted
you with this most difficult of all our tasks; will you prove his trust
misplaced?”

There was a silence, until Shatri broke it. “My lord.” He
gripped Sarevan’s knee. “My lord, I—you never—I wasn’t thinking.”

“Nor was I,” Sarevan admitted, with a glance at Hirel. “If
you don’t think you can do it—”

Shatri’s head whipped up. “I can do it! My lord,” he added
after a pause. He let go, backed away, bowed desert fashion: dropping to one
knee, setting palm against palm. Pride had struck fire in his eyes. “Have no
fear, my prince. They’ll not come after you while I’m here to stop them.”

Sarevan saluted him. His smile was luminous.

Then at last Bregalan would heed the touch of leg to side.
He sprang forward. The dun mare ran swift in his wake.

o0o

Even in the dark before dawn, Bregalan knew this country
as he knew his own stable. He set a strong pace, but one the other could match
with ease, striking westward across the plain. As it rose into wooded hills, he
slowed a little, but he ran lightly still, unwearied.

Dawn rose in rain-washed clarity. Sarevan called a halt to
rest the beasts and to see that Hirel took a little bread and a sip or two of
wine. By sunrise they were in the saddle again. Their shadows stretched long
before them.

They went by paths Sarevan knew, swift enough but hidden
from spying eyes. The shifting armies did not close in upon them; if they were
hunted, the hunters did not find them in the wilderness through which they
rode. Hirel practiced one of his greater virtues: he was silent, neither
questioning nor complaining.

They rode through the first day and well into the night,
until at last Sarevan’s urgency would let him rest. Hirel’s mare was stumbling
with exhaustion. The boy’s face was ghost-pale in the moonlight.

He fell from the saddle into Sarevan’s arms, so limp and so
still that for a moment Sarevan froze in fear. Then Hirel drew a long breath,
shuddering with it.

With utmost gentleness Sarevan laid him down, spreading all
their blankets for him, wrapping him in them. Cursing that damnable pride which
would never yield to its body’s frailty.

Sarevan left the child to sleep. He ate a little, drank from
the stream by which he had camped.

The seneldi grazed, placid. Ulan had gone hunting. Sarevan
lay back against his saddle and sighed. He did not want to sleep: the dream
waited, armed and deadly.

He settled more comfortably. Brightmoon gazed down.
Greatmoon had set; she had the sky to herself, for a while. His eyes filled
with her cool light.

o0o

The sun woke him. He lay under it, eyes closed, neither
knowing nor overmuch caring where he was. He ached in sundry places, not badly,
but enough to rouse curiosity, and with it memory. He started up.

He had not dreamed it. He was doing what he had resolved to
do. For all the sun’s warmth, he shivered.

“Don’t think about it,” he commanded himself. “Just do it.”

Hirel stared at him, half asleep still, baffled and scowling
and all bright gold. Sarevan laughed at the scowl and leaped up. “Come,” he
said. “Ride with me.”

They rode; and still no hunter followed them. Sarevan was
not easy, nor did he trust this quiet, but for a little while he accepted it;
he let it think that it had mastered him. Slowly he relaxed his vigilance,
letting it pass through thrumming tension to constant quiet watchfulness.