A Fall of Princes Read Online Free PDF

Sarevan pillowed himself on Ulan’s flank,
face to the splendor of stars and moons, a creature of fire and shadow.
    It struck Hirel like a blow, startling, not quite
unpleasant. Sarevan was beautiful. His alienness had obscured it, and Hirel’s
eye trained to see beauty in a fair skin and a sleek full-fleshed body and a
smooth oval straight-nosed face. But Sarevan, who by all the tenets of artist
and poet should have been hideous, was as splendid as the ul-cat that drowsed
and purred beside him.
    Hirel did not like him the better for it. And he, damn him,
cared not at all. “Tomorrow,” he said, half asleep already, “we cross into
Asanion.”
    For all the warmth of air and blanket, Hirel shivered. So soon? part of him cried. Too large a
part by far, for his mind’s peace. But the rest had risen up in exultation.
    o0o
    There was no visible border, no wall or boundary of stone.
Yet the land changed. Softened. Rolled into the green plains of Kovruen,
ripening into summer, rich with its herds and its fields of grain, hatched with
the broad paved roads of the emperors and dotted with shrines to various of the
thousand gods.
    Sarevan conceded to civilization. He bound his loins with a
bit of cloth. Hirel put on his trousers and the lighter of his shirts, and
hated himself for hating the touch of them against his skin. But he gained
something: he could walk barefoot on the road, his boots banished to his bag.
It would have been more of a pleasure if Sarevan had not strode bootless beside
him, near naked and gloriously comfortable.
    People stared at the barbarian. For there were people here,
workers in the fields, walkers on the road. There was nothing like him in that
land, or likely in the world. No one would speak to him; those whom he
approached ducked their heads and fled.
    o0o
    “Are they so modest?” he asked Hirel, standing in the road
with his braid like a tail of fire and the sun swooning on his dusky hide.
    “They take you for a devil,” Hirel said. “Or perhaps a god.
One of the Thousand might choose to look like you, if it suited his whim.”
    Sarevan tilted his head as if he would contest the point,
but he said nothing. He did not make any move to cover himself. No garment in
the world could make him smaller or paler or his mane less beacon-bright.
    Hirel frowned. “You might be wise to take off your torque.”
    “I may not,” It was flat, final, and unwearied with
repetition.
    “I can call it a badge of slavery. Perhaps people will
believe me.”
    “Perhaps your father will swear fealty to the Sunborn.”
Sarevan settled his scrip over his shoulder and began to walk. “I’ll not rely
on deceptions, but trust to the god.”
    “To a superstitious lie.”
    Sarevan stopped, turned lithely on his heel. “You believe
that?”
    “I know it. There are no gods. They are but dreams, wishes
and fears given names and faces. Every wise man knows as much, and many a
priest. There is great profit in gods, when the common crowd knows no better
than to worship them.”
    “You believe that,” Sarevan repeated. He sounded
incredulous. “You poor child, trapped in a world so drab. So logical. So very
blind.”
    Hirel’s lip curled. “At least I do not spend my every waking
hour in dread lest I give offense to some divinity.”
    “How can you, a mere mortal, offend a god? But then,”
Sarevan said, “you don’t know Avaryan.”
    “I know all that I need to. He is the sun. He insists that
he be worshipped as sole god. His priests must never touch women, and his priestesses
cannot know men, or they die in fire. And if that is not punishment for
offending the god, what do you call it?”
    “We worship him as the sun, because its light is the closest
this world may come to his true face. He is worshipped alone because he is
alone, high lord of all that walks in the light, as his sister is queen of all
darkness. Our vows before him are a mystery and a sacrifice, and their breaking
is weakness and unworthiness and