A Fall of Princes Read Online Free PDF Page B

betrayal of faith. The god keeps his word; we
can at least try to follow his example.”
    “Are you a virgin, then?”
    “Ah,” said Sarevan, undismayed. “You want to know if I’m a
proper man. Can’t you tell by looking at me?”
    “You are.” A virgin, Hirel meant. He looked at Sarevan and
tried to imagine a man grown who had never, even once, practiced the highest
and most pleasant of the arts. It was shocking. It was appalling. It was
utterly against nature.
    Hirel eased, a little. “Ah. I see. You are speaking of
women. It is boys you love, then.”
    “If it were, cubling, you’d know it by now.”
    Bold eyes, those. Laughing. Knowing no shame.
    He was proud to be as he was. He was alien. Hirel’s gorge
rose at the sight and the thought of him.
    “I serve my god,” he said, light and proud and oblivious. “I
have walked in his presence. I have known his son.”
    “Avaryan’s son.” It was bitter in Hirel’s throat, but less
bitter than what had come before it. “The mighty king. The conqueror with the
clever tale. He is a mage, they say, a great master of illusion.”
    “Not great enough to have begotten himself.”
    “Ah,” said Hirel, “everyone knows the truth of that. The
Prince of Han-Gilen sired him on the Ianyn priestess, and arranged his mating
to the princess his half-sister, and so built an empire to rule from the
shadows behind its throne.”
    “By your account, the Emperor of Asanion has that in common
with the Sunborn: he wedded his sister. But he at least rules his own empire.
However diminished by the encroachments of the Red Prince’s puppet.” Sarevan’s
mockery was burning cold. “Child, you know many words and many tales, but the
truth is far beyond your grasp. When you have seen the Lord An-Sh’Endor, when
you have looked on my god, then and only then may you speak with honest
certainty.”
    “It angers you. That I will not accept your lies. That I
will not bow to your god.”
    “That you cannot see what stares you in the face.” Sarevan
spun about, braid whipping his flanks.
    Hirel wanted to savor the victory, that insufferable mask
torn aside at last. But fear had slain all gladness. That he had driven the
barbarian away: this alien, this mocker of nature, whose face at least he knew.
Whom alone he could dream of trusting, here where he was alone, unarmed, and
every stone might harbor an enemy. He ran after the swiftly striding figure.
    Sarevan slowed after a furlong or two, but he did not speak,
nor would he glance at Hirel. His face was grim and wild. Oddly, he looked the
younger for it, but no less panther-dangerous.
    “Perhaps,” Hirel said in a time and a time, “your Avaryan
could be a truth. A way of understanding the First Cause of the philosophers.”
    It was as close to an apology as Hirel had ever come. It
fell on deaf ears.
    Damned arrogant barbarian. It must be all or nothing.
Avaryan with his disk and his rays and his burning heat, and how he had ever
begotten a son on a woman without scorching her to a cinder was not for mere
men to know.
    Hirel threw up his hands in disgust. Perhaps that tissue of
lies and legends was enough for a simple man, a partbred tribesman. Hirel was a
prince and a scholar. And he did not grovel. He let Sarevan stalk ahead,
walking himself at a pace which suited him, letting the road draw him westward.
    o0o
    They were coming to a city as it would be reckoned in
these distant provinces, a town of respectable size even for the inner realms of
the empire. The shrines came closer together now, and many were shrines to the
dead, stark white tombs and cenotaphs, hung with offerings. It was easy to mark
the newest or the richest: the birds were thick about them, and the flies, and
now and then the jeweled brilliance of a dragonel. In the dust-hazed distance
Hirel could discern a wall with houses clustered about it.
    “Shon’ai,” Sarevan said.
    At first Hirel tried to make it a word in a tongue he knew.
Then he grimaced at