A Fall of Princes Read Online Free PDF Page A

utmost to charm Hirel. He told tales as they
walked. He sang. He simply talked, easily and freely, unperturbed by silence or
shortness or outright rejection.
    His voice was like the rhythm of walking, like the wind and
the rain and the open sky; steady, lulling, even comforting. Then he would fall
silent, and that in turn would bring its comfort, a companionship that demanded
nothing beyond itself.
    o0o
    “Your hair is growing,” he said once after a full morning
of such silence.
    Hirel had lost count of the days, but the land seemed a
little gentler, the air frankly warm. Sarevan had stripped down to boots and
swordbelt and scrip, and nothing else. Even Hirel had put aside his cap and
unbuttoned his coat, and he could feel the light touch of wind on his hair. His
hand, searching, found a tight cap of curls.
    Sarevan laughed at his expression. “You’re going brown, do
you know that? Take off your coat at least and let Avaryan paint the rest of
you.”
    He could say that. Splendid naked animal, he did not burn
and slough and darken like a field slave.
    But the sun was warm and Hirel’s skin raw with heat, and
Sarevan knew no more of modesty than of honor or courtliness. With hammering
heart Hirel undid the last button, dropped the coat and the shirt beneath,
breathed free. And flung the trousers after them with reckless abandon.
    He had done it. He had widened those so-wise eyes. He
knotted his hands behind him to keep them from clutching his shame, and bared
his teeth in a grin, and fought a blush.
    Sarevan grinned back. “They’d have my hide in the Nine
Cities,” he said, “for corrupting the youth.”
    “What are you, then? Ancient?”
    “Twenty-one on Autumn Firstday, infant.”
    Hirel blinked. “That is my birthday!”
    “I’d cry your loftiness’ pardon for usurping it; but I had
it first.”
    Hirel found his dignity somewhere and put it on, which was
not easy when he stood bare to the sky. “I shall be fifteen. My father will
confirm all my titles, and give me ruling right in Veyadzan which is the most
royal of the royal satrapies.”
    Sarevan’s head tilted. “When I turned fifteen I became
Avaryan’s novice and began to win my torque.” He touched it, a quick brush of
the finger, rather like a caress. “My father took me to the temple in Han-Gilen
and gave me to the priests. It was my free choice, and I was determined to
embrace it like a man, but when other and older novices led me away, I almost
broke down and wept. I would have given anything to be a child again.”
    “A prince stops being a child when he is born,” Hirel said.
    “What, did you never play at children’s games?”
    That was shock in Sarevan’s eyes, and pity, and more that
Hirel did not want to see. “Royalty does not play,” he said frigidly.
    “Alas for royalty.”
    “I was free,” snapped Hirel. “I was learning, doing things
that mattered.”
    “Did they?” Sarevan turned and began to pick his way down
from the sunstruck height. Even his braid was insolent, and the flex of his
bare flat buttocks, and the lightness of his tread upon the stones.
    Hirel gathered his garments together. He did not put them
on. Carefully he folded them into the bag Orozia had given him, in which he
carried a second shirt and a roll of bandages and a packet or two of journey-bread.
    He slung the bag baldric-fashion and shouldered the rough
woolen roll of his blanket. Sarevan was well away now, not looking back. Hirel
lifted a stone, weighed it in his hand, let it fall.
    Too paltry a vengeance, and too crude. Carefully, but not slowly,
he set his foot on the path that Sarevan had taken.
    o0o
    Hirel paid for his recklessness. He burned scarlet in
places too tender for words; and he had to suffer Sarevan’s hands with a balm
the priest made of herbs and a little oil. But having burned away his fairness,
he browned.
    “Goldened,” Sarevan said, admiring unabashed, as he did
everything.
    “There is no such word.”
    “Now there is.”