A Fall of Princes (31 page)

Sarevan, raised to abhor the thought of men kept like
cattle, took refuge in the schooling of a prince. What one could not alter, one
endured. And though it shamed him, he was glad for once of his mind’s
crippling, that he could not sense the misery that throbbed about the chained
and plodding lines. He could look away and make himself forget.

But he had not had to ride within sight and sound of a slave
market.

o0o

Sarevan did not ask the name of the town. He did not wish
to know. It was large; it trumpeted prosperity. The road ran straight through
it, dividing its market, so that travelers might pause to trade a wayworn senel
for a fresh one, to satisfy hunger or thirst, to buy a weapon or a garment or a
jewel.

Or a slave. There were, it seemed, a number of purveyors of
such goods. Some did so in the privacy of walls, marked only by a sign above
the door: a gilded manacle or an image carven in the likeness of a particular
breed. Others set up tents, open or half open or enclosed. And here and there
stood a simple platform, perhaps canopied, perhaps not, with a man crying the
day’s wares to a throng of buyers.

The three of them rode close together with Hirel in the
middle. Even behind his mask, the boy seemed much as always. A little stiff, a
little haughty, disdaining to take notice of the world about him. His mare was
moving very slowly.

She stopped. Sarevan’s glance strayed. When he looked back,
the saddle was empty.

Bregalan spun on his haunches, breasting a current turned
suddenly against him. Sarevan raged, but the stallion could advance no swifter
than a walk, and for that he was jostled and cursed, even threatened by a
charger with bronze-sheathed horns. He snorted and slashed; the destrier veered
away. He plunged through the gap that the other had left.

Hirel’s rough-coated mare stood abandoned and beginning to
wander. Beyond her the road gave way to a broad shallow space filled with
people, focused on a platform and a huddle of slaves.

They were all boys, the youngest perhaps nine summers old,
the eldest a little older than Hirel. They were naked, collared, their hands
bound behind them that they might not seek to cover their shame.

Most were Asanians, slight and tawny; two were pale-skinned
green-eyed Islanders; one was a tribesman of the north, haughty and sullen, and
several standing close together had the faces of desert wanderers. They were
all eunuchs, every one.

Sarevan found Hirel easily enough. He was taller than many,
and he was the only one in Olenyai black. He stood on the edge of the crowd,
straight as a carven knight. His mask was crumpled in his hand. Beneath the
dusty headcloth his face was bloodless.

Sarevan followed his eyes. One of the Asanians stood a
little apart. The others were chained together, neck and ankle. This one had
his own chain and his own guard; his collar was gilded, and from it hung a
written tablet.

“A thoroughbred,” said Hirel. “He will be offered last, and
the seller will accept no price unless he judges it sufficient. See, how fair
his skin, how pure a gold his hair, how flawless his face; how perfect his age,
the very flower of boyhood. I wonder that he is sold in the open market; that
is not common for slaves of his quality. Perhaps his lord has a debt to pay.”

It was too calm, that voice. His eyes were too wide and too
pale.

Sarevan gripped his shoulder; it was rigid, impervious.
“It’s not you, Hirel.”

“A season ago,” said Hirel, “it was. It would have—I would
have—”

Sarevan pulled him close. He did not resist. He was shaking;
his brow was damp. But he would not turn away from the boy who was so much like
himself as he had been when Sarevan found him, a child poised on the very brink
of manhood.

He had passed it in the season since. This one never would.

“He is not you,” Sarevan said again. “He is brass and
painted bone. He is soft; he is pretty; his eyes are not the eyes of the lion.
He is nothing beside you.”

“He is myself,” whispered Hirel.

Sarevan slapped him. He swayed, but his face did not change.
“You are beautiful,” Sarevan said to him, “and certainly a man. No one now can
make you like him. No one ever could. He is false coin. You are true gold.”

Hirel did not hear him. Something, at last, had broken him;
or something had roused that had been long and safely sleeping.

“He’s gone away.” Zha’dan, who had won through to them. Even
muffled in the mask, his voice was deeply worried. “I can’t find him at all.”

Sarevan reached to touch Hirel, to wake him, lift him, he
hardly knew which. The boy, who had been so limp and lifeless to look at,
turned demon under his hands.

Steel slashed. Sarevan recoiled. Hirel whipped about in a
swirl of robes and bolted.

They bolted after him. He ran like a deer. The crowd parted
before him but closed behind, hindering the pursuit, jarring it aside, even
challenging it.

Sarevan drew one of his swords. The challenges stopped. The
hindrances did not.

Hirel twisted and doubled and darted. His face when Sarevan
glimpsed it sidelong was chalk-white. His eyes were blind.

The throngs thinned. The pursuit began to gain on its
quarry.

A procession swayed and chanted from a side way, full across
their path: marchers innumerable, linked hand to hand, eyes closed,
trancebound. The narrow street was clogged with them. Even at his wits’ end
Sarevan could not bring himself to cut a path with steel.

The procession wound away. Hirel was gone.

Zha’dan caught Sarevan’s arm. “There!”

They sped from the narrow way down one narrower yet, walled
in the stink of cities; past blind gates and blinder walls. There was no sign
of Hirel.

Zha’dan slowed to a stumbling trot, then to a walk. He
swayed against Sarevan. He tore at his mask, rending it, flinging it away. His
face was grey and sheened with sweat.

“Hard,” he whispered. “So many people. So many walls.”

“Hirel?” Sarevan snapped at him, cruel with desperation.

His head tossed. He halted. He leaned on Sarevan and
trembled. “Can’t,” he gasped. “Can’t—”

Sarevan would have given his soul for a few breaths’ worth
of power. He had only pain.

No Hirel, anywhere. The seneldi were lost and forgotten.
Ulan had withdrawn to circle the town. Unless he too was bewitched, led astray,
ensnared.

Zha’dan staggered erect. Both his swords were out. He
whirled.

Sarevan backed away from him, raging at heaven. Not Zha’dan,
too. One madman was more than enough.

“Zha’dan!” Sarevan lashed out with the full power of his
voice. “Zhaniedan!”

The Zhil’ari checked, turning slowly. His lips were drawn
back from his teeth. “Caught,” he said. “Trapped. Sorcery—it has the little
stallion. I can’t win him back. I have not that much power. I can’t even stop
them. I can’t—”

He broke off. The swords fell from his slackened fingers.
With a low cry, of anger, of despair, he whipped about, spinning. The air
filled with a thin high keening. He was drawing in his power.

Sarevan cried out, protesting. Zha’dan never heard. Light
gathered to him. Lightnings cracked.

The walls were as bare and blank as cliffs of stone. The
street darkened.

From either end of it, men closed in. Grim men, armored,
with drawn bows.

Sarevan knew an instant’s bitter mirth. Whoever the enemy
was, he was taking no chances. Not even Olenyai swords could stand against a
company of archers.

An arrow sang past Sarevan’s ear. It caught fire.

Zha’dan flung darts of power against the darts of mortal
making. He laughed in the sweet madness of magery.

Setting his teeth, making his body a prayer, Sarevan flung
himself at the young fool.

They went down together. Over them hissed a rain of arrows.
Power spat and flared about Sarevan, but it did not touch him.

Nor did it shield him. Sarevan knew the blow before it fell.
It was neither spell nor weapon. It was a bubble, drifting over them. It broke.

His body had gasped it in before his mind could act:
gagging, cloying sweetness; and in it, irresistible, a heavy weight of sleep.

“Not sorcery,” he tried to say. To instruct Zha’dan. “Not
magic. This is alchemy.” It was very important that Zha’dan know it. He did not
know why. He only knew. “Alchemy,” he repeated. “
Alchemy
.”

Alchemy; but mageborne. Their hunters had found them, and
were not minded to let them go.

Sarevan did not remember all of it. He saw the mages, the
dark and the light. No doubt he gave them defiance. They gave him nothing.

Zha’dan was there. They looked closely at both; they were
not pleased. Their armed companions pried hands from sides, fingers from palms.

The
Kasar
startled
even the mages, although surely they had been looking for it. Perhaps they had
not known how brightly it could burn.

They left Zha’dan to drugged dreams. They stripped Sarevan,
though they did not take his torque; they scoured him without mercy.

His body howled with the pain of cleanroot and ashes on his
raw skin. They finished with something that was purest agony, and then it was
blessedly cool, with a scent of herbs and healing.

They drugged him again. He fought it: the bruises lingered.

Useless enough. They were too strong.

o0o

He woke at last from a black dream. He was cold and sick,
and he hurt wherever a body could hurt. The earth rocked; he clutched at
solidity.

Walls, closing in upon him. They rattled and shook.

Cushions narrowed the narrow prison. He was naked on them,
his hair loose and tangled, and for a moment he did not understand why he was
startled. It was as copper-bright as it had ever been.

He was not alone in that hot and breathless space. Someone
else strove with him for what air there was. Someone as bare as himself, as
pale as he was dark, coiled in apparent comfort at the utmost end of the box.

Only Hirel’s face held Sarevan to sanity. It was calm to
coldness; it was entirely conscious, and sane, and princely proud. It was not
the face of one whose will had broken.

Sarevan struggled up. He could sit; he could kneel, if he
crouched. He could not stand.

Light came through intricate lattices, one on either side of
him. It shifted, changing. They were moving.

He pressed his face to the lattice. Air brushed it, warm,
heavy, but cooler and cleaner than what filled the box. Shadows passed. Trees,
perhaps. Towers. Mounted men.

He dropped back. He wanted to claw the walls. He drew
himself into a quivering knot and glared at Hirel.

The boy uncoiled, stretching. “You look like a panther at
bay,” he observed.

Sarevan snarled at him. “You did this. You led us into
this.”

Hirel’s ease shattered. “I was tricked and trapped. I
was”—he choked on it—“bespelled. I knew what they were doing to me. I could not
stop it. Because—because I had seen what I would be, if I did not run then, run
as far and as fast as I could.”

“You may be a eunuch yet.”

“I may die for this, but this much I have been promised: I
will not die unmanned.” Hirel had calmed himself again. “We are in a litter,”
he said, “like ladies who must travel swiftly. You see how we are prevented
from escaping.”

Sarevan did not. He found a door. He set his nails to the
crack of it. It groaned but did not yield.

“If you succeed,” said Hirel, cool and maddening, “where
will you go? An armed company surrounds us. We are unarmed and unarmored. We
are also,” he pointed out, “unclad.”

“What difference does that make?”

Hirel looked as if he could not choose between laughter and
shock. “To you, perhaps, none. To me, enough. I am not a spectacle for lowborn
eyes to see.”

“Why? You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I have a body,” Hirel snapped.

Sarevan was mute. Hirel withdrew again, barricading himself
with cushions.

The silence stretched. The walls closed in. Sarevan set his
will to the task of enduring. Of keeping himself from going mad like an ul-cat
in a cage.

After an eternal while Hirel spoke, low and taut. “The
people must not see. That I am mortal. That I wear flesh like any one of them.
That my blood is as red as theirs, and flows as freely. I am royal; every inch
of me is holy. My nails were never cut save by priests, with prayers and
incantations. My hair was never cut at all. The water of my bath was preserved
for the anointing of the sick.”

“What did you do with nature’s tribute? House it in gold and
give it to the gods?”

Hirel’s breath hissed. “I did not say that I believed in it!
I meant to change it when I could. But until I came into my power, I was my
power’s slave. I served it most dutifully. I was a very proper prince, O prince
of savages.”

“Wise,” said Sarevan. “Did anyone ever know how much of your
mind was your own?”

The golden eyes hooded. “A prince’s body belongs to his
people. His mind does not enter into it.”

“But they aren’t supposed to know you have a body.”

“Flesh,” Hirel said. He trust out his arm. Sunlight
shattered on the lattice, turned the fine hairs to sparks of gold, found a
bruise and a healing cut and an old white scar. “Blood and bone. Humanity. When
I am emperor, I will be not even that. I will be pure royal image.”

Sarevan shivered in the breathless heat. He felt very
mortal. His throat was dry and his face itched and he ached. He said, “When you
are emperor? Will you come to it now?”

Hirel smiled. It was not a comfortable smile. “I will come
to it. I am captive; I am not dead. And I do not surrender. Nor do I ever
forgive.”

“I pity your enemies.”

“Do that,” said Hirel, still smiling.

o0o

With the sun’s setting, their prison halted. Sarevan had
not spoken for a long while. He dared not, lest he howl like a beast.