A Fall of Princes (4 page)

o0o

Slowly they worked their way westward. They did not strike
straight into Pri’nai; they angled north, keeping for an unconscionable while
to the marches of Keruvarion. Rough country, hill and crag and bleak stony
uplands all but empty of folk, and those few and suspicious, hunters and
herdsmen. Sarevan’s torque was his passport there, that and the brilliance
which he could unleash at will. He could charm a stone, that one.

He tried his utmost to charm Hirel. He told tales as they
walked. He sang. He simply talked, easily and freely, unperturbed by silence or
shortness or outright rejection.

His voice was like the rhythm of walking, like the wind and
the rain and the open sky; steady, lulling, even comforting. Then he would fall
silent, and that in turn would bring its comfort, a companionship that demanded
nothing beyond itself.

o0o

“Your hair is growing,” he said once after a full morning
of such silence.

Hirel had lost count of the days, but the land seemed a
little gentler, the air frankly warm. Sarevan had stripped down to boots and
swordbelt and scrip, and nothing else. Even Hirel had put aside his cap and
unbuttoned his coat, and he could feel the light touch of wind on his hair. His
hand, searching, found a tight cap of curls.

Sarevan laughed at his expression. “You’re going brown, do
you know that? Take off your coat at least and let Avaryan paint the rest of
you.”

He could say that. Splendid naked animal, he did not burn
and slough and darken like a field slave.

But the sun was warm and Hirel’s skin raw with heat, and
Sarevan knew no more of modesty than of honor or courtliness. With hammering
heart Hirel undid the last button, dropped the coat and the shirt beneath,
breathed free. And flung the trousers after them with reckless abandon.

He had done it. He had widened those so-wise eyes. He
knotted his hands behind him to keep them from clutching his shame, and bared
his teeth in a grin, and fought a blush.

Sarevan grinned back. “They’d have my hide in the Nine
Cities,” he said, “for corrupting the youth.”

“What are you, then? Ancient?”

“Twenty-one on Autumn Firstday, infant.”

Hirel blinked. “That is
my
birthday!”

“I’d cry your loftiness’ pardon for usurping it; but I had
it first.”

Hirel found his dignity somewhere and put it on, which was
not easy when he stood bare to the sky. “I shall be fifteen. My father will
confirm all my titles, and give me ruling right in Veyadzan which is the most
royal of the royal satrapies.”

Sarevan’s head tilted. “When I turned fifteen I became
Avaryan’s novice and began to win my torque.” He touched it, a quick brush of
the finger, rather like a caress. “My father took me to the temple in Han-Gilen
and gave me to the priests. It was my free choice, and I was determined to
embrace it like a man, but when other and older novices led me away, I almost
broke down and wept. I would have given anything to be a child again.”

“A prince stops being a child when he is born,” Hirel said.

“What, did you never play at children’s games?”

That was shock in Sarevan’s eyes, and pity, and more that
Hirel did not want to see. “Royalty does not play,” he said frigidly.

“Alas for royalty.”

“I was free,” snapped Hirel. “I was learning, doing things
that mattered.”

“Did they?” Sarevan turned and began to pick his way down
from the sunstruck height. Even his braid was insolent, and the flex of his
bare flat buttocks, and the lightness of his tread upon the stones.

Hirel gathered his garments together. He did not put them
on. Carefully he folded them into the bag Orozia had given him, in which he
carried a second shirt and a roll of bandages and a packet or two of journey-bread.

He slung the bag baldric-fashion and shouldered the rough
woolen roll of his blanket. Sarevan was well away now, not looking back. Hirel
lifted a stone, weighed it in his hand, let it fall.

Too paltry a vengeance, and too crude. Carefully, but not slowly,
he set his foot on the path that Sarevan had taken.

o0o

Hirel paid for his recklessness. He burned scarlet in
places too tender for words; and he had to suffer Sarevan’s hands with a balm
the priest made of herbs and a little oil. But having burned away his fairness,
he browned.

“Goldened,” Sarevan said, admiring unabashed, as he did
everything.

“There is no such word.”

“Now there is.” Sarevan pillowed himself on Ulan’s flank,
face to the splendor of stars and moons, a creature of fire and shadow.

It struck Hirel like a blow, startling, not quite
unpleasant. Sarevan was beautiful. His alienness had obscured it, and Hirel’s
eye trained to see beauty in a fair skin and a sleek full-fleshed body and a
smooth oval straight-nosed face. But Sarevan, who by all the tenets of artist
and poet should have been hideous, was as splendid as the ul-cat that drowsed
and purred beside him.

Hirel did not like him the better for it. And he, damn him,
cared not at all. “Tomorrow,” he said, half asleep already, “we cross into
Asanion.”

For all the warmth of air and blanket, Hirel shivered.
So soon?
part of him cried. Too large a
part by far, for his mind’s peace. But the rest had risen up in exultation.

o0o

There was no visible border, no wall or boundary of stone.
Yet the land changed. Softened. Rolled into the green plains of Kovruen,
ripening into summer, rich with its herds and its fields of grain, hatched with
the broad paved roads of the emperors and dotted with shrines to various of the
thousand gods.

Sarevan conceded to civilization. He bound his loins with a
bit of cloth. Hirel put on his trousers and the lighter of his shirts, and
hated himself for hating the touch of them against his skin. But he gained
something: he could walk barefoot on the road, his boots banished to his bag.
It would have been more of a pleasure if Sarevan had not strode bootless beside
him, near naked and gloriously comfortable.

People stared at the barbarian. For there were people here,
workers in the fields, walkers on the road. There was nothing like him in that
land, or likely in the world. No one would speak to him; those whom he
approached ducked their heads and fled.

o0o

“Are they so modest?” he asked Hirel, standing in the road
with his braid like a tail of fire and the sun swooning on his dusky hide.

“They take you for a devil,” Hirel said. “Or perhaps a god.
One of the Thousand might choose to look like you, if it suited his whim.”

Sarevan tilted his head as if he would contest the point,
but he said nothing. He did not make any move to cover himself. No garment in
the world could make him smaller or paler or his mane less beacon-bright.

Hirel frowned. “You might be wise to take off your torque.”

“I may not,” It was flat, final, and unwearied with
repetition.

“I can call it a badge of slavery. Perhaps people will
believe me.”

“Perhaps your father will swear fealty to the Sunborn.”
Sarevan settled his scrip over his shoulder and began to walk. “I’ll not rely
on deceptions, but trust to the god.”

“To a superstitious lie.”

Sarevan stopped, turned lithely on his heel. “You believe
that?”

“I know it. There are no gods. They are but dreams, wishes
and fears given names and faces. Every wise man knows as much, and many a
priest. There is great profit in gods, when the common crowd knows no better
than to worship them.”

“You believe that,” Sarevan repeated. He sounded
incredulous. “You poor child, trapped in a world so drab. So logical. So very
blind.”

Hirel’s lip curled. “At least I do not spend my every waking
hour in dread lest I give offense to some divinity.”

“How can you, a mere mortal, offend a god? But then,”
Sarevan said, “you don’t know Avaryan.”

“I know all that I need to. He is the sun. He insists that
he be worshipped as sole god. His priests must never touch women, and his priestesses
cannot know men, or they die in fire. And if that is not punishment for
offending the god, what do you call it?”

“We worship him as the sun, because its light is the closest
this world may come to his true face. He is worshipped alone because he is
alone, high lord of all that walks in the light, as his sister is queen of all
darkness. Our vows before him are a mystery and a sacrifice, and their breaking
is weakness and unworthiness and betrayal of faith. The god keeps his word; we
can at least try to follow his example.”

“Are you a virgin, then?”

“Ah,” said Sarevan, undismayed. “You want to know if I’m a
proper man. Can’t you tell by looking at me?”

“You are.” A virgin, Hirel meant. He looked at Sarevan and
tried to imagine a man grown who had never, even once, practiced the highest
and most pleasant of the arts. It was shocking. It was appalling. It was
utterly against nature.

Hirel eased, a little. “Ah. I see. You are speaking of
women. It is boys you love, then.”

“If it were, cubling, you’d know it by now.”

Bold eyes, those. Laughing. Knowing no shame.

He was proud to be as he was. He was alien. Hirel’s gorge
rose at the sight and the thought of him.

“I serve my god,” he said, light and proud and oblivious. “I
have walked in his presence. I have known his son.”

“Avaryan’s son.” It was bitter in Hirel’s throat, but less
bitter than what had come before it. “The mighty king. The conqueror with the
clever tale. He is a mage, they say, a great master of illusion.”

“Not great enough to have begotten himself.”

“Ah,” said Hirel, “everyone knows the truth of that. The
Prince of Han-Gilen sired him on the Ianyn priestess, and arranged his mating
to the princess his half-sister, and so built an empire to rule from the
shadows behind its throne.”

“By your account, the Emperor of Asanion has that in common
with the Sunborn: he wedded his sister. But he at least rules his own empire.
However diminished by the encroachments of the Red Prince’s puppet.” Sarevan’s
mockery was burning cold. “Child, you know many words and many tales, but the
truth is far beyond your grasp. When you have seen the Lord An-Sh’Endor, when
you have looked on my god, then and only then may you speak with honest
certainty.”

“It angers you. That I will not accept your lies. That I
will not bow to your god.”

“That you cannot see what stares you in the face.” Sarevan
spun about, braid whipping his flanks.

Hirel wanted to savor the victory, that insufferable mask
torn aside at last. But fear had slain all gladness. That he had driven the
barbarian away: this alien, this mocker of nature, whose face at least he knew.
Whom alone he could dream of trusting, here where he was alone, unarmed, and
every stone might harbor an enemy. He ran after the swiftly striding figure.

Sarevan slowed after a furlong or two, but he did not speak,
nor would he glance at Hirel. His face was grim and wild. Oddly, he looked the
younger for it, but no less panther-dangerous.

“Perhaps,” Hirel said in a time and a time, “your Avaryan
could be a truth. A way of understanding the First Cause of the philosophers.”

It was as close to an apology as Hirel had ever come. It
fell on deaf ears.

Damned arrogant barbarian. It must be all or nothing.
Avaryan with his disk and his rays and his burning heat, and how he had ever
begotten a son on a woman without scorching her to a cinder was not for mere
men to know.

Hirel threw up his hands in disgust. Perhaps that tissue of
lies and legends was enough for a simple man, a partbred tribesman. Hirel was a
prince and a scholar. And he did not grovel. He let Sarevan stalk ahead,
walking himself at a pace which suited him, letting the road draw him westward.

o0o

They were coming to a city as it would be reckoned in
these distant provinces, a town of respectable size even for the inner realms of
the empire. The shrines came closer together now, and many were shrines to the
dead, stark white tombs and cenotaphs, hung with offerings. It was easy to mark
the newest or the richest: the birds were thick about them, and the flies, and
now and then the jeweled brilliance of a dragonel. In the dust-hazed distance
Hirel could discern a wall with houses clustered about it.

“Shon’ai,” Sarevan said.

At first Hirel tried to make it a word in a tongue he knew.
Then he grimaced at himself. It was only the name of the town.

People were thickening on and around the road, moving toward
the gate, some laden with baskets or bales, or drawing handcarts, or leading
burdened beasts. Hirel saw the haughty figure of a man in a chariot, and a
large woman on a very small pony, and a personage carried in a litter.

Swiftly as Sarevan moved, in a little while they were in the
midst of the stream. Hirel kept close to the priest. He had seen no one at all
for so long, and then had walked so far apart, and after days of Sarevan’s black
eagle-mask these round golden faces were strange.

Of course they stared. Children ran after Sarevan, once or
twice even dared to throw stones at him.

The stones flew wide. The priest glanced neither right nor
left. He walked as a prince was trained to walk, as a panther was born to. He
towered over everyone who came near him.

o0o

The gate of the town was open wide, the guards making no
effort to stem the tide of people. It was no mere market day but the festival
of a god. Which meant a market indeed and a great deal of profit, but
processions with it, and sacrifices, and much feasting and drinking and
roistering. There were garlands of flowers everywhere within the walls, on all
the houses and the several temples, and on every neck and brow and wrist.

Hirel clung to a dangling end of Sarevan’s loincloth and let
himself be towed through the crowds. Very soon now he was going to disgrace
himself. It was different for a prince. Where he went, the way was always
clear, the throngs held at bay. Not pressing in, breathing foul in his face,
bellowing in his ear.