A Strange and Ancient Name by Josepha Sherman Page A

mockery, his certainty: “You’re not rid of me.”
    Hauberin forced a laugh. “Credit me with enough skill to banish a ghost.” He took a deep breath. “Serein cursed me.”
    “What! And you just stand here? By what Powers did he—ae, what Names did he—”
    “None. I had more sense than to let him finish.”
    Alliar blinked. “Why, then, whatever curse he began can have no hold on you!”
    “So the rules of such things would have it.”
    “But?”
    Hauberin sighed. “But, as I told you, I’ve been sleeping poorly of late.”
    “I don’t understand. Surely there are aids for those who can’t sleep? Potions? Or . . . some willing lady, Aydris or—or Charailis?”
    The prince snorted. “You saw her trying to seduce me during the Second Triad celebration, didn’t you?”
    “I . . . uh . . . assumed that’s what she was trying to do,” the sexless being said uncertainly. “But you didn’t seem to want to—”
    “And you don’t know why. Oh my dear Li, the woman despises me. The only reason she wanted to bed me was to snare my will.”
    Alliar’s eyes widened. “You mean, flesh-pleasures are that dangerous?”
    Hauberin bit back a laugh. “Not usually. In her case, however . . . With Serein dead, she’s virtually next in line for the crown—unless, of course, Ereledan murders her. If she could control me and take the throne, why, how long do you think she would leave me alive?”
    Alliar shuddered. “But I wasn’t thinking of politics,” the being said plaintively. “All I meant . . . I thought gendered folk found relaxation in that odd act of—”
    “Oh, we do.” He grinned. “But it would hardly be polite to use someone as a living sleeping-potion, would it?”
    The being let out a long sigh of frustration. “Will you stop playing games? If the difficulty isn’t simple lack of sleep, what in the name of all the Winds is it?”
    Hauberin winced. Unable to meet his friend’s fierce stare, he turned away, leaning on the balustrade, looking blankly out into space. “Dreams,” he said softly. “But then, you don’t dream, do you?”
    “Not as you do.”
    “You can’t possibly know the power our unconscious minds can hold over us.” He glanced at Alliar. “Do you want to hear the exact words of Serein’s curse? That I ‘know not peace, not sleep,’ till I learn my mother’s father’s name.”
    “Now, that’s an odd thing!”
    “Isn’t it? I didn’t take it seriously, of course, not at first, particularly since I knew no Binding Names had been invoked. But since then . . .” Hauberin paused. “It began so slowly, with the slightest troubling of my dreams.” He glanced at Alliar again. “All dreaming beings have such things from time to time. And I . . . was more disturbed by Serein’s death than I admitted even to you; I told myself it was natural for my sleep to be uneasy for a time after . . . that.”
    The prince felt himself starting to shiver, and snatched at his cloak, wrapping it tightly about himself, struggling for composure. “But with each night of the moon’s waning, I’ve been falling deeper and deeper into nightmare. Now, at Moon Dark, I—I can’t sleep, I dare not sleep—oh, Alliar, how do I rid myself of a curse that all the rules flatly state can’t exist?”
    “You have tried magic?”
    “Everything from the slightest little charm for sweet sleep all the way up to the Spell of Ryellan Banishment.”
    Alliar raised a startled brow. “And even that didn’t work?”
    “Other than alarming half the court sages, who were wondering just what their prince was trying to do, no. And if such a powerful spell failed, it . . . seems to imply something very unhappy.”
    “Eh?”
    The prince hesitated a long while. Alliar, with all the alien patience of a spirit, did not push him. And at last Hauberin said painfully, “I am a half-blood, after all. Not fully of my father’s kind, nor of my mother’s. Not quite looking or acting like either.”
    Even