A Fall of Princes (43 page)

Blessed numbness had brought him so far; now it was
forsaking him. His brain screamed and struggled, battling for escape. His body
lay meekly where it was bidden. He could not even move to bid it farewell.

The mages stood about him, a circle of shadows against the
windows’ brightness. One bent. His grandfather kissed him gently on the
forehead.

No word passed between them.
Make me stop
, he tried to plead.
Don’t let me do this
.

The Red Prince straightened. His hands rose. Power gathered
in them.

Sarevan closed his eyes, breathing deep. He could still see.

Witch-sight. They had given it to him: thinking to have
mercy, maybe. They had forgotten how bitterly clear it could be.

Slowly his breath left him, and with it fear. He had chosen.
Not his tongue, not his madness. His deepest self. There had never been such a
choosing, for such a cause; nor would there ever be again.

Avaryan
, he prayed
in the center of the power,
take me. Hold
me fast.

Light wove with dark. Chanting fused with silence. Mage and
sorcerer wrought together.

And there was beauty in it. There was rightness. Balance.
Perfection. A strength that, wielded, could alter worlds.

He would remember. He swore it, even as the power took him.
He would remember the truth.

Then there was no memory. Only pain.

Hirel Uverias

Hirel could believe that sorcerers had snatched him away from
Kundri’j. He could easily believe that he was a hostage. He could even find it
credible that his captors were a conspiracy of the world’s mages.

But this.

At first they would not tell him what they had done with
Sarevan. Then he heard them: the cries of a man in mortal agony.

His jailers, a pair of young mages, one in violet and one in
grey, insisted that they heard nothing; that all was silent. No force of his
could shake them. When he lunged for the door, their power caught and bound
him.

The cries went on unabated. They tore at his heart; they
rent his sanity. They came from everywhere and from nowhere. They echoed in his
brain.

Night came. The guard changed. A man and a woman, these,
older and considerably stronger.

They brought silence. They forced sleep upon him, from which
he woke to a cold and relentless fury. And, with crawling slowness, to what
they called the truth.

They broke it gently. Too gently. At first Hirel heard only
that they had wrought some unspeakable sorcery upon Sarevan. That they hoped by
it to end the war. That they had slain him.

“No,” said the woman. “He is not dead.”

He was worse than dead. Hirel commanded; for a wonder they
obeyed. They took him to a chamber almost princely in this barren fortress.
They set him before the bed and left him to stare. A dark lithe body; a flood
of molten-copper hair.

A body. Hirel’s mind struggled against the impossibility of
it. Liars, they were liars. This was a stranger. A stranger who was a woman.

“It is Sarevadin,” said the mage in grey, unmoved by Hirel’s
rage.

She was as splendid as Sarevan had ever been. She was fire
and ebony, strength and delicacy melded together, the eagle’s profile smoothed
and fined into a stunning, high-nosed beauty.

Hirel rounded on his jailers. The guard had changed again.
High ones indeed now: Han-Gilen’s prince and the Mageguild’s master.

He addressed them almost gently. “Undo your magic.”

“We cannot,” the prince said.

“You must,” said Hirel, still without force, still with the
semblance of reason.

“It cannot be done.” The master leaned heavily on a staff;
nor was it only the twisting of his legs that so weakened him. “This magecraft
is perilous to endure even once. Twice is deadly.”

“Undo it,” Hirel repeated, obstinate. “Change him back. I
command you.”

“No.”

It did not matter who said it. Even now Hirel could
recognize finality.

And hate. Hate as pure as that profile. “You will pay for
this,” he whispered. He turned face and mind away from them. “Get out,” he
said.

In time they obeyed. Hirel sat, cold and still, waiting with
the patience of princes.

o0o

He waited long and long. The changed one slept. Sometimes
she stirred. Once she murmured. Her voice was low, but it was most certainly a
woman’s.

Hirel knew when she woke; knew it beneath his skin.
Carefully he drew back.

For a long while she neither moved nor opened her eyes. Her
face betrayed nothing. When the lids lifted, the eyes were dim, clouded.

Slowly they cleared. Her hands wandered amid the coverlets.

One crept up. She stared at it, turned it. Gold flamed in
the palm. She flexed slender fingers, eyes wandering along the fine-boned
rounded arm.

She touched her thigh. Raised her knee. Frowned at it.
Turned it, peering at her foot. Not a remarkably small foot, but narrow and
shapely.

She was long in coming to her middle. Hesitant. Perhaps
afraid. She felt of her face; of her neck. Ran fingers through her hair.
Brushed a breast as if by accident, and recoiled, creeping back, trembling.

Her frown deepened. Her lips set. She sat up, glaring down
at the altered lines of her body; breasts high and round and firm above the
narrow waist; hips a gentle flare; and where her thighs met, the worst of it.

She touched it. No miracle transformed it. It was a miracle
itself, frightening in its perfection; and no memory in it of the man who had
been. That was all within.

She rose, awkward-graceful, feeling out the balance of this
new shape. Flexing narrowed shoulders, swaying on broadened hips, essaying an
uncertain step. Little by little her gait eased, though it was taut still,
wary.

A shield hung on the wall, polished for a mirror; she faced
it with an air of great and hard-won courage. She turned slowly, twisting
about, knotting her hair around her hand, peering over her shoulder at her
mirrored back.

She touched her shoulder where the deep pitted scar should
have been. It was gone. She was all new, whole and smooth and unmarred.

She confronted herself, face to reflected face. Her hand
rose to her cheek.

“I’m not ugly,” she said in wonder. Starting at the sound of
her voice, speaking again with an air of defiance. “I’m . . .
not
 . . . ugly.”

Hirel’s body moved of itself. She spun, quick as a cat.

Hirel gasped under the force of those eyes. They had changed
not at all; they were black-brilliant as ever, sweeping over him, flashing to
his face.

“You,” she said. “You look different.”

His jaw was hanging. He retrieved it. Laughter burst from
him: hysteria certainly, and incredulity, and something astonishingly like
relief.

For a moment she only stared. Then she echoed him, a ringing
peal, tribute to perfect absurdity.

They hiccoughed into silence. They were holding one another
up, eye to streaming eye. She was a hair’s breadth the taller.

She stiffened all at once, going cold in his hands. He let
her go.

She drew back. Her back met the mirror; she whirled upon it,
tearing at it, flinging it wide. It rang as it fell. She sank down shivering,
veiled in the bright cloud of her hair.

Hirel stood over her. Touched her.

She did not erupt as he had half expected. He sat by her,
wordless. When she did not heed him, he stroked her hair. Her ear beneath it
was exquisite. He kissed it.

She pulled away with the swiftness of rage. “Stop pitying
me!”

“That,” said Hirel, “I had not begun to do.”

His flatness gave her pause. For a moment. She flung back
her hair. “Not yet. Oh, no. Not yet. I merely disgust you. I did the
unspeakable. I who was a lord of creation, I who was nature’s darling, I let
myself be twisted into this.”

“A woman of great valor and beauty.”

“Don’t lie to me, cubling. I can taste your anger. You think
I was tricked, or forced. I was neither. No one made me do it. I chose it for
myself.” She scrambled to her feet. “Look at me, Hirel. Look at me!”

Hirel had learned to measure beauty by Sarevan Is’kelion.
This that he had become was fairer still. Fair and wild, with the recklessness
of despair.

“I am angry,” he said. “They had no right to demand such a
thing of you. None even to conceive of it.”

“They demanded nothing. They tried to dissuade me.”

“Surely,” said Hirel with a curl of his lip. “They warned
you of the dangers, and spoke of the faces of courage, and named all the lesser
choices. It was cleverly done. I applaud them.”

“It was the only choice with hope in it.” She clenched her
lists. “It’s no matter to you. You can wed me, bed me, get the child who will
bring the peace, and go back to your twice ninescore concubines.”

Hirel regarded her. She looked very young.

As indeed she was: scarce a full day old. But Sarevan
Is’kelion lived in her. It was in her eyes, and her bearing and the tenor of
her words.

“Am I to wed you?” he asked. “I was not consulted.”

“Did you need to be? It should be easy enough for a man of
your attainments. You’re not asked to love me. Only to beget a son on me.”

Hirel frowned. She stiffened; he frowned the more blackly at
himself, cursing his wayward face.

This was going all awry. He tried to choose his words with
care. “You are too certain of my thoughts, Sunchild. Must I be revolted by you?
Might I not find you as beautiful now as you ever were? Perhaps I even find
endurable the prospect of contracting a marriage with you. After all, it is
logical.”

“Of course it is. Else I’d never have done this.”

“But,” said Hirel, “I would that you had spoken to me before
you submitted yourself to the mages.”

She heard none of his regret. She heard only the rebuke
which he had not intended.

The glitter of her eyes warned him; he faced her, pulling
her to him, holding her too close for struggle. She was no soft pliant woman.
She was strong in her slenderness, like a panther, like a steel blade.

In the instant of her surprise, he kissed her hard and deep.
She tasted much the same. A little sweeter, even in resistance.

For a long moment she was rigid. With suddenness that
startled them both, her arms locked about him. Her body arched. Her sweetness
turned to fire.

He laughed, breathless. She did not laugh with him. Her eyes
were wild and soft at once, and more than a little mad. “Lady,” he said. “Lady,
I have wanted this, I have dreamed of this, so long, so long . . .
Bright lady, I think I love you.”

The softness fled; the wildness filled her. “Damn them,” she
whispered. “Damn their meddling magic.”

He drew breath to speak. To protest, perhaps. But she was
gone.

Hirel started after her, stopped. She was raw, looking for
pain wherever she turned. Pain had brought her to the choosing; pain had made
the choice, and wrought the woman where a man had been. Time would heal her; he
could only hinder it.

o0o

He left the room slowly, letting his feet bear him where
they would. He was not surprised to gain a companion, nor, at all, to recognize
the man who walked beside him.

Aranos was as coolly wise as ever, and as full of serpent’s
sympathy. “She is a woman, brother,” he said with the suggestion of a smile.
“These moods will beset her.”

Hirel kept his anger at bay. Saving it. Hoarding it for when
he should have the power to wield it. “You have made a woman. You have not
unmade the Sunborn’s heir.”

“Indeed we have not,” said Aranos. “But we have assured that
you will live to rule not Asanion alone, but with it Keruvarion.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Hirel.

“It will require tact, of course. She was born a man and
raised to rule. She will not accept meekly the woman’s portion: the harem and
the bearing of children. But her body will aid you. It will guide her on the
path of her chosen sex; it will yield to your mastery. Get her with child and
keep her with child, and she will be glad to surrender her power into your
hands.”

Hirel knew that he should be calm. Aranos spoke simple
wisdom. The philosophers proclaimed it. Women were begotten of a lesser nature,
of flawed seed, with no purpose but to nourish the children which their lords
set in them. And of course, the sages averred, to give pleasure in the seed’s
sowing. Beasts might do as much. Beasts did, some believed; for what was the
female but a blurred and bestial image of the male?

“No,” Hirel said. “Lies and folly, all of it.”

Aranos looked long at him. “Ah, Asuchirel. You have fallen
in love.”

“So I have. But I have not lost my ability to see what lies
before my face.”

“The better for you both,” Aranos said undaunted, “if you
are besotted with her, if only you remember who you are. And what this marriage
can gain you.”

“I am not likely to forget,” said Hirel.

Aranos was too well trained to lay hand on a high prince,
but he raised that hand athwart Hirel’s advance. “See that you do not. Yon
conspirators dream that they have won great victories: the Varyani that Asanion
is theirs in the person of a malleable child, the mages that they have found a
way to lessen Avaryan’s power and increase their own. I know that you are not
the pretty fool that you so often choose to seem; I believe that the victor can
be Asanion. If you press your advantage. If, having lost your heart, you do not
lose your head.”

Hirel smiled, honey-sweet. “My head is entirely safe. You
might do well to be concerned for your own.”

He stepped around his brother’s hand and stretched his
stride. Aranos, in robes and dignity, did not see fit to follow.

They had a fine nest of mages here. One or another was
always within sight, though none accosted Hirel once he had rid himself of
Aranos.