A Fall of Princes (56 page)

No
. Vadin, clear
in her mind.
Will you kill your son? Back
now; this fight is mine.

She struggled. He had not her strength, even now, but he had
learned his skill from Mirain himself. He eased her out and away, then poised,
paused. He made himself a spear, and plunged full into the mages’ wall.

It burst in a shower of fire. The spear burst with it,
exulting.

Mirain bestrode his lady’s body and cried aloud. The gate
was gone. Vadin was gone. Elian died even as Mirain bent to heal her.

He who had raised the dead had no awe of death. Her soul
eluded him; he pursued it. He was the Son of the Sun. He would not let her die.

You must
. Hers was
no witless flitting soul, befuddled with its freedom. She barred the way, even
to him who was half a god.

Perhaps she grieved that she must do it. She was stern
before him and all the silent helpless mages.
The gods are not mocked. Go, Mirain An-Sh’Endor. Leave me to my peace
.

He fought the truth of it. All of death’s ways had closed
against him, save only his own.

He contemplated it. He yearned for it.

But he was the Sunborn. He had been that before ever wife or
brother came to share his soul. He was the high god’s son, the Sword of Avaryan,
the lord of the eastern world. The lord of the west was dead. He had a world to
claim.

In the looming silence, he turned. No madness marred his
face. He looked quiet and sane and worn to the bone.

His hands opened and closed. No hilt came to fill them. Sevayin
had destroyed them all.

He sank to one knee. With utmost gentleness he lifted his
empress, his brother. He cradled them. He murmured a word, two. Sevayin did not
try to understand.

Gently again he laid them down, straightening their limbs, smoothing
their hair, closing their eyes. He kissed them both, brow, lips, lingering.

He rose. Sevayin shivered. He was perfectly, terribly calm.
He raised his hand.

Twice nine mages remained. Most were wounded, but they had
no fear of him. They had robbed him of the greater part of his soul.

Limping, halting, they came together. They raised their
shields and waited for the lightning to fall.

Hirel Uverias

The world was ending. Hirel was not uncomfortable,
contemplating it. His neck stung where the knife had cut, but the bladesman was
gone, felled or fled.

No one else had touched him. He was the merest shadow of
nothing: the Sunchild’s familiar. He had no power in himself; his steel they
would not face. He could not make them face it.

He had been angry, a moment or an age ago. It did not matter
now. Nothing mattered but that his death was waiting. It was strangely
beautiful. It had Uvarra’s face.

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?”