A Fall of Princes (58 page)
Authors: Judith Tarr
Tags: #Judith Tarr, #Fantasy, #Avaryan, #Epic Fantasy
She laughed, standing over her dead, because she wanted most
to howl.
They were all staring. All her mages now, those who would
have slain the emperors and those who would have defended them.
Each had half succeeded. One alive as wicked fate had
promised her, one dead as he had wished to be, both gone where no harm could
reach them; where they themselves could do no harm.
So much to do. She opened her arms. “See,” she said. “The
morning has come. The war is won. We have a throne to claim, my prince and I.
Who dares to gainsay me?”
“I.”
She spun on Hirel in shock and sudden rage.
He stood in front of her, gold-maned in the morning, his
robes in tatters and his eyes black-shadowed and his will indomitable. The mask
of his father was in his hand. He raised it, and held it before his face.
His voice came forth from it, a stranger’s voice, cold and
quiet. “I,” he repeated. “I am the Emperor of Asanion. I yield my power to no
man.”
She stalked him, cat-soft. “No man,” she said, “certainly.
But a woman, Hirel Uverias? A woman of the bright god’s line. Mage and queen
and bearer of your son.”
The golden face was still, inhuman, imperial. It granted
nothing. It yielded nothing.
It lowered slowly. She saw his eyes over it, and then his
living face, more beautiful than any mask. “And my lover? Are you that, madam?”
“That,” she said, “always and ever. But before all else, I
am Empress of Keruvarion.”
“So.” He looked her up and down. His brows met. He bent his
eyes upon the mask, turning it in his hands, pondering long and deep within the
walls of his mind.
She held herself still. Not even for love of him would she
surrender her half of the throne.
“Only half?” he asked her.
“No more,” she answered, “and no less.”
He raised his hand. She raised her own. His eyes narrowed
against the flame of it.
He set palm to burning palm. His face was still, but his
eyes were all gold. “So be it,” said the Emperor of Asanion.
Copyright & CreditsA FALL OF PRINCES
Avaryan Rising, Book Three
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Edition
July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-269-3
Copyright © 1988 Judith Tarr
First published: Tor, 1988
Production team:
Proofreader: Julianne Lee;
Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.
v20130628vnm
About the AuthorJudith Tarr
holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for
The Isle of Glass
and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.
Novels
Ars Magica
Alamut
The Dagger and the Cross
Living in Threes
Lord of the Two Lands
A Wind in Cairo
His Majesty’s Elephant
Series
Avaryan Rising
The Hall of the Mountain King
The Lady of Han-Gilen
A Fall of Princes
The Hound and the Falcon
The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn
The Hounds of God
Nonfiction
Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right
BVC Anthologies
Beyond Grimm
Breaking Waves
Brewing Fine Fiction
Ways to Trash Your
Writing Career
Dragon Lords and Warrior
Women
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy II
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The Lady of Han-GilenAvaryan Rising Volume II
Sample Chapter
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Edition
June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-268-6
Copyright © 1987 Judith Tarr
To my agent, Jane Butler
For performance above and beyond the call of
duty
“Elian! Oh, Lady! Elian!”
The Hawkmaster paused in mending a hood and raised an
inquiring brow. Elian laid a finger on her lips.
The voice drew nearer, a high sweet voice like a bird’s.
“Lady? Lady, where
have
you got to? Your lady mother—”
Elian sighed deeply. It was always her lady mother. She
bound off her last stitch and smoothed the crest of feathers thus attached to
the hood: feathers the color of fire or of new copper, rising above soft
leather dyed a deep and luminous green. Flame and green for the ruling house of
Han-Gilen: green to match her much-patched coat, flame no brighter than her
hair.
She laid the hood in the box with the others she had made
and rose. The Hawkmaster watched her. Although he was not mute, he seldom spoke
save to address his falcons in their own wild tongue.
He did not speak now, nor did she. But his eyes held a smile
for her.
oOo
In the mews beyond the workroom, the hooded falcons rested
on their perches. The small russet hunters for the ladies and the servants; the
knights’ grey beauties, each with its heraldic hood; her brother’s red hawk
shifting restlessly in its bonds, for it was young and but newly proven; and in
solitary splendor, the white eagle that came to no hand but that of the prince
her father.
Her own falcon drowsed near her brother’s. Though smaller,
it was swifter, and rarer even than the eagle: a golden falcon from the north.
Her father’s gift for her birth-feast, a season past. It had
been new-caught then; soon it would be ready for proving, that first, free
hunt, when the bird must choose: to come back to its tamer’s hand or to escape
into freedom.
She paused to stroke the shimmering back with a feather. The
falcon roused slightly from its dream, a tightening of talons on the perch, an
infinitesimal turning of the blinded head.
“Lady!"
The mews erupted in a flurry of wings and fierce
hawk-screams. Only the eagle held still. The eagle, and Elian’s falcon, that
opened its beak in a contemptuous hiss and was silent.
The Hawkmaster emerged from his workroom, followed by his
two lads. Wordlessly they set about soothing their charges.
The cause of the uproar paid it no heed at all. She fit her
voice admirably well, plump and pretty, wrinkling her delicate nose at the
scents of the mews and holding her skirts well away from the floor. “Lady, look
at you! What her highness will say—”
Elian had already thrust past her, nearly oversetting her
into the mud of the yard.
oOo
The Princess of Han-Gilen sat among her ladies in a bower
of living green, her gown all green and gold, and a circlet of gold binding her
brows. A delicate embroidery lay half finished in her lap; one of her ladies
plucked a soft melody upon a lute.
She contemplated her daughter for a long while in silence.
Elian kept her back straight and her chin up, but she was all too painfully
aware of the figure she cut. Her coat had been her brother’s; it was ancient, threadbare,
and much too large. Her shirt and breeches and boots fit well enough, but they
stood in sore need of cleaning. She bore with her a faint but distinct odor of
the stables, overlaid with the pungency of the mews.
She was, in short, a disgrace.
The princess released Elian from her gaze to stitch a
perfect blossom. Once the most beautiful woman in her father’s princedom of
Sarios, she remained the fairest lady in Han-Gilen. Her smooth skin was the
color of honey; her eyes were long and dark and enchantingly tilted, with fine
arching brows; her hair beneath its drift of veil was deep bronze with golden
lights.
Her one flaw, the chin that was a shade too pronounced, a
shade too obstinate, only strengthened her beauty. Without it she would have
been lovely; with it, she was breathtaking.