A Fall of Princes by Judith Tarr Page B

repay you—”
    “It was nothing,” Azhuran said. “We did it for the prince.
If anything, we’re in your debt. My daughter asks me to thank you with all her
heart. You’ve taught her more than she could ever have hoped for, even from a
yellow dwarf.”
    Hirel would ignore the insults. He would remember who and
what these people were. He would—
    The chieftain’s grin was abominably lewd. “Yes, you’re the
best teacher she’s ever had. Come Fall Gathering, when she spreads her girdle
in front of the tent, she’ll win a high chief’s son; and he’ll give a whole
herd to lie in her bed.”
    Zhiani stood beside her father, and she was smiling
luminously, not a tear to be seen. Hirel’s teeth locked on the words he would
have said.
    That he was more than a high chief’s son. That she could be
a queen; or as close to it as her barbarian kindred might ever come.
    She had never loved him, only the arts that he could teach
her, which every Asanian nobleman learned from his early youth. He was nothing
to her but the passport to a rich husband.
    “May you wed as you wish,” he said to her in his court
voice, that could mask anything. Anger. Hurt. Reluctant relief. “May your
husband give you many sons.”
    The mare fretted. Hirel let her dance about, away from
Zhiani’s heartless smile, toward his captivity.
    It would, he vowed, be brief. As brief as wits and will
could make it. He did not look back. The company sprang whooping into a gallop;
he kicked the mare after them. She bucked, squealed, and set herself to outpace
the wind.

FIVE
    “He kills himself,” said the smallest of the nine Zhil’ari,
who stood hardly taller than Sarevan.
    They were camped by the southernmost of the Lakes of the
Moon. Hirel eyed it longingly. If only this great lanky creature would go away,
he could bathe and swim and loosen his travel-wearied muscles. But Zha’dan had
caught him alone, and was not inclined to sacrifice the opportunity.
    Hirel took off his coat and hung it tidily from a branch.
With equal care he said, “Sarevan looks well enough to me. He rides without
falling. He eats well. He—”
    “He keeps the saddle because he refuses to fall. He pretends
to eat, but the demon cat eats for him. He paints himself not for beauty as is
proper: he hides what the riding does to him.”
    Hirel loosened his belt. The savage watched with interest.
Hirel let his hands fall. He was not ready to strip in front of this glittering
meddler; no matter that the whole tribe had seen all of him there was to see.
There was no logic in modesty.
    Nor in Sarevan’s weakness, if it came to that. “His wound is
healing. It was healing before we left the village. His wizardry—how can he be
dying of that?”
    Zha’dan regarded him as one would regard an idiot. Hirel
watched tolerance dawn behind the paint. Ah ,
it said. Foreigner .
    Zha’dan took care with his words, stumbling a little with
the roughness of tradespeech. “Mages are very great, like gods. But they are
not gods. They are men. They pay for their magics. Small magics, small prices.
Great magics, prices sometimes too great to pay. The body pays, always. And the
power itself pays more. The great one—he fought great mages, and he won, but he
killed one. A stone, you throw it, it strikes down the kimouri , but
maybe it comes back. It strikes you, too. It puts out your eye. So with power,
and mages who use it to kill. Death’s price is power’s death.”
    “And the body’s?”
    “The power is the body,” said Zha’dan. “If the great magics
were all mine to use, and I lost them because I let myself fall into a trap, I
would want to die.”
    “What are you asking of me?” demanded Hirel. “I have no
power to wring sanity from that madman.”
    “He is no god to you. You can make him act like a man of
sense.”
    “Sense? In Sarevan Is’kelion?” Hirel laughed almost freely.
“Tribesman, you seek a miracle. Pray to your god. Perhaps he will hear you.”
    Hirel