A Fall of Princes (36 page)

Hirel set his foot on the first step of the dais. He went no
farther. He stood, waiting, eyes lifted still to his father.

People behind the princes saw him now, and the beast with
him, and the two tall guards. Their voices were like a wind in the forest, swelling
to a roar.

Still the emperor did not move. His mask was bent upon his
son. His Voice wavered, at a loss.

Sarevan was beginning to twitch. This had gone on much too
long. If the man in the mask did not soon make up his mind, if mind he had to
make up, there was going to be a riot in the hall.

Sarevan tore at the catches of his armor, shook off the
shell of it, kicked it out of the way. Were those gasps behind him? He had had
his own splendor of folly: he had demanded, and received, full and imperial
northern finery.

It would seem very nakedness to these people. White sandals
laced to the knee. White kilt. A great burden of gold and rubies hung wherever
an ornament would hang.

It left a remarkable quantity of bare skin. Zha’dan had
twisted his hair into high chieftain’s braids: the Zhil’ari did not know the
Ianyn royal way, and there had been no time to teach him. No one here would
know the difference; and it did not matter. The color of the many woven plaits
was proof enough of his station.

He tossed down his helmet, shook out his braids, looked the
emperor’s mask in the eye and bowed his head briefly as king to king. “Lord
emperor,” he said, clear and cool above the rising tumult, “I bring you back
your son.”

That won a spreading silence. Incredulous; avid with
curiosity.

Hirel was whitely furious. Sarevan hoped devoutly that
Aranos was the same. He smiled. “Your son, lord emperor. Your heir, I believe.
Will you name him, or shall I?”

That was boldness beyond belief. It awed even Hirel. It
struck the High Court dumb.

The emperor did a terrible thing, an unheard-of thing. In
his casings of silk and velvet and cloth of the sun, in his mask and his crown
and his wig of pure and deathly heavy gold, he stepped away from his throne. He
moved with mighty dignity, with ponderous slowness.

He came down. On the step above Hirel, he stopped. He raised
his hand.

His knights tensed to spring. His son stood unmoving, braced
for the blow.

The hand fell in its glittering glove. It closed on Hirel’s
shoulder.

He caught his breath as if with pain, but he did not waver.
His eyes met the eyes within the mask.

It came up. A voice rolled forth from it. It was a beautiful
voice, rich and deep, more beautiful even than his imperial Voice. “Asuchirel,”
said the Emperor of Asanion. “Asuchirel inZiad Uverias.”

o0o

That was not, by any means, the end of it. Hirel and
Sarevan between them had seen to that. They had shattered the ritual; they had
shocked the High Court to its foundations.

It was rising to a riot when the emperor’s knights swept
them out of it. Hirel resisted. “We are not done,” he said. Loudly, above the
uproar. “I must take their homage. I must—”

“They’ll take your hide,” Sarevan said, laying hands on him,
because no one else would. He was too furious to struggle.

Silence was blessed, and abrupt. Sarevan took in the chamber
to which the Olenyai had herded them. It must have been meant for the emperor
to rest in between audiences, or for hidden listeners to take their ease in
while peering through screens at the throne and the hall.

The screens were closed and barred now; one of the Olenyai
drew curtains across it. There was something familiar about him; about his eyes
above the helmet’s molded mask.

Sarevan clapped hands to his swordless belt. All his weapons
lay lost and useless on the floor of the hall. “Halid!”

The Olenyas bowed. His glance was ironic, his right-hand
sword drawn and eloquent. His companions ringed the walls: a round dozen.

Very slowly, very carefully, Sarevan turned back to Hirel.
Ulan was alert but quiet. Likewise Zha’dan who had shed his armor, who was all
Zhil’ari beneath, painted with princely richness.

“We seem,” said Sarevan, “to have made a mistake.”

“Several mistakes.”

The Olenyai snapped to attention. A man had entered through
the inner door. He wore a robe of stark simplicity, for Asanion. It was merely
twofold, overrobe and underrobe, plain white linen beneath, amber silk above,
with no jewels save the golden circlet permitted to any noble of the High
Court.

He was not young, but neither was he old. The years had
thickened his body and furrowed his face, and the hair cropped shorter even
than Hirel’s was shot with white.

His skin had a waxen pallor that narrowed Sarevan’s eyes;
but he was handsome still, with the strength of the lion that, though aging,
remains the lord of his domains. Hirel went down on his knees before him.

He laid his hands on the bowed head. Hands stiff and swollen
and grievously misshapen, trembling on the edge of perception. Yet it was not
his sickness that shook them. His face was carven ivory; his eyes were burning
gold.

Hirel raised his head. They had the same eyes, they two. The
same blazing stare in a face scoured of all expression.

It could have been deadly wrath. It could have been
apprehension. It could have been deep joy, bound and gagged and held grimly
prisoner.

“My lord,” said Hirel, “call off your dogs.”

“My son,” said the Emperor of Asanion, “call off your
panthers.”

Swords hissed into sheaths. The emperor’s Olenyai knelt
before their lord. Zha’dan did not see fit to follow suit; and Sarevan knelt to
no one but his god.

He let his hand rest on Ulan’s head and regarded with
interest his father’s rival. Ziad-Ilarios was not at all the bloated spider
that legend made him, but neither was he the splendid passionate youth who had
yearned to run away with a Gileni princess. Youth was long lost, and innocence,
and the gentleness for which the Lady Elian had loved him. Passion . . .

For Hirel, briefly, it had flared with all its youthful
heat. But the ice of age and royalty had risen to conquer it. He raised his
son, and they were eye to eye, which widened the emperor’s by the merest
fraction.

He stepped back. He said, “Sit.”

Hirel sat stiff and still on a cushion. His father sat
raised above him.

Sarevan stood with his cat and his Zhil’ari. He doubted very
much that he was wanted here. He doubted still more that Hirel would pass that
door again unscathed. The very silence was deadly.

Ziad-Ilarios had said no word for an endless while. He had
glanced more often at Sarevan than at his son, cool measuring glances as empty
of enmity as of warmth.

When Sarevan had had enough of it, he smiled, white and
insolent. “Well, old lion. Now that you have us, what are you going to do with
us?”

Hirel’s shoulders stiffened. Ziad-Ilarios let his gaze rest
on Sarevan. For the first time in a proud count of days, Sarevan’s longing for
his lost power passed the borders of pain. To touch that mind behind all its
veils and masks; to know truly what that silence portended.

The emperor raised a hand. “Come here,” he said.

Sarevan came. He did not wait to be invited; he sat,
returning stare for stare. “Well?” he asked.

Ziad-Ilarios leaned forward. His hand gripped Sarevan’s
chin, turning it from side to side, letting it go abruptly. He sat back. “You
favor your father,” he said.

“It’s the nose,” said Sarevan. “It conquers all the rest.”
He tilted his head. “If you want to play games, I’ll play them. But I’d rather
come to the point. Of this meeting, or of yonder sword. If you don’t want to
tell me what you intend to do with us, will you tell me what mistakes you think
we’ve made?”

“I will and I can,” answered the emperor directly, without
visible reluctance. Perhaps he was amused. “You should not have made it so
painfully clear that Keruvarion’s heir is here, and that he is here by his own
will, and that he must be thanked for the return and the naming of the heir of
Asanion.”

Sarevan leaned against the emperor’s divan, cheek propped on
hand. “You weren’t in any great hurry to name him yourself, and there was a
riot brewing. I had to do something.”

“Thereby beginning a riot indeed,” said Ziad-Ilarios.

“They’ll see sense soon enough. You named your heir. Once
the shock wears off, they’ll be content with him.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so,” said Sarevan. He was not as confident as he
hoped he sounded.

“And you? What will they say of you?”

“The truth. I come indeed of my own will, lord emperor. I
make a gift of myself to you.”

Ziad-Ilarios was neither startled nor dismayed. Of course
not. Halid was his man. He knew everything; had known it, most likely, from the
beginning. “There are two edges to that sword, Sun-prince. I can use you as a
pawn in my game. I can barter your life for your father’s empire.”

Tension contracted to a knot in Sarevan’s middle. He smiled.
“Don’t trouble. He won’t play. Alive I can keep him from you. Dead I can give
you your war. Keruvarion you’ll never get, from either of us.”

“And if I desire war?”

Sarevan tilted his head back, baring his throat. “I’m yours,
old lion. Do as you please.”

“You are young,” mused Ziad-Ilarios. His tone excused
nothing. “I am not a man who whips his sons. But were you mine, I would
consider it.”

Sarevan sat bolt upright. Ziad-Ilarios regarded him sternly,
yet with a spark beneath. “Young one, your folly has placed me in a very
difficult position. I have considered returning you forthwith to your father—”

“You can’t!” Sarevan burst out.

The emperor’s brows met. He looked more than ever like
Hirel. “Do not tell me what I can and cannot do. Your father suffered my son to
return to me, great though his advantage would have been had he held the boy
hostage. For that, I stand in his debt. I might choose to repay in kind. Or,”
he said, “I might not. I do not know what use you may be, save to cause dissension
in my court. You may be better dead or in chains.”

“So be it,” Sarevan said steadily.

Ziad-Ilarios looked long at him. For all his fixity of
purpose, for all that he had had long days to firm his will, Sarevan had all he
could do to sit unmoving, his face calm, his hands quiet on his thighs. His
heart beat hard; his mouth was dry. A cold trickle of sweat crept down his
spine.

The emperor said them, the words he dreaded. “Do you propose
to betray your empire?”

“No!”
cried
Sarevan, too swift, too loud, too high. Grimly he mastered himself. “No, Lord
of Asanion. Never. I propose to save it.” He spread his hands, letting
Ziad-Ilarios see them both, the one that was human-dark, the one that was
burning golden. “I offer myself. Hostage. Peace-bond. A shield against my
father’s war.”

“Are you so certain that he cannot win it?”

“I know he will.”

“Why, then? Surely you have no love for Asanion.”

“I know what that victory will cost.” The emperor raised his
brows. Sarevan swallowed. His throat seemed full of sand. “I was never the seer
my mother is. But I have seen what my god has given me to see. War, Lord of
Asanion. Red war. Two empires laid waste, the flower of their manhood slain,
the strength of their people broken.” Sarevan was on his feet. “I will not have
it. If I must die to prevent it, then let me die. I will not be emperor if that
empire is ruin.”

“That,” said Ziad-Ilarios, soft after Sarevan’s passionate
outcry, “is the heart of the matter. You will turn traitor rather than face
what you fear will come. Even in Asanion we have a name for that. We call it
cowardice.”

“Old lion,” purred Sarevan, “I am young and I am a fool and
I have no courage to speak of, but you cannot test my mettle by twisting the
truth. My father let your son leave Endros because he has no intention of
keeping peace and no taste for cold murder. He never dreamed that I would go as
far as I have.”

“Do you believe that I cannot have you put to death for my
realm’s sake?”

“I believe that Mirain An-Sh’Endor will hesitate to invade
Asanion while you hold me hostage. I am, after all, his only son. His father
has decreed that he may never have another.”

“But if war is inevitable, your death may move him to act in
haste, before he is well ready. Then may I claim the advantage.”

“He was ready when I left Endros. I may have delayed him by
escaping his vigilance, but if I die at your command, he will fall upon you at
once and without mercy.” Sarevan rose and stepped back, freeing Ziad-Ilarios
from the weight of his shadow. “Lord emperor, I came willingly, in full
knowledge of the consequences. I am yours to hold. I will serve you, whether
you use me as prince or slave, guest or prisoner, if only you do not ask me to
turn against my people.”

“What surety have you that I will not keep you and turn against
your father? He has no child of mine in his power.”

“In that,” Sarevan said levelly, “I trust to your honor. And
to the size of my father’s army.”

The emperor stood. “Asuchirel,” he said. “Judge. Do I keep
him? Do I put him to death? Do I send him back to his father?”

Hirel was slow to answer. Not for surprise, Sarevan could
see that. He looked as if he had been expecting the burden of judgment; and it
was heavy. Perhaps too heavy for his shoulders, however broad they had begun to
be.

At last he said, “Death would be wise, if we would consider
the years to come and the enemy he must inevitably be, but he has warned us
clearly against such foresight. If we send him to Endros, it must be in chains,
or he will not go. I counsel that we keep him. We may gain time thereby, and we
will certainly discomfit his father.”

“And you can always kill me later,” Sarevan pointed out. He
bowed with a flourish. “I am your servant, my lord. What will you have of me?”