Read Online A Strange and Ancient Name by Josepha Sherman - Free Book Online

he was gaining. He could hear Serein somewhere just ahead of him, scattering tiny avalanches of pebbles as he hunted for a better place to make a stand. Suddenly inspired, Hauberin left the rugged trail he had been climbing, scrabbling up the bare mountainside instead by fingers, toes, and sheer will, struggling to get ahead of Serein, somewhere off to his right, succeeding by being smaller and lighter than his cousin. Spread-eagled against the mountainside, struggling to catch his breath, the prince glanced back down over his right shoulder, and saw Serein reach a relatively flat, relatively wide ledge.
    There isn’t likely to be a better place.
    Resisting the urge to yell a melodramatic war-cry, Hauberin pushed oil from the mountainside and sprang down to confront him. The impact left him winded. Fortunately, Serein was just as breathless from his climb. And so it came down to this: not elegant prince and noble, not kinsmen making claims on memory, only two tired warriors on a mountain ledge, clad in dust-stained mail.
    For a long time they faced each other in tense, weary silence. Then Hauberin said softly, “It’s over.”
    “Not quite.”
    “Face facts! You failed. Now you’re cornered and alone.”
    The sea-green eyes were bitterly amused. “For which you’re so pleased to take credit.”
    “It wasn’t difficult!” Hauberin snapped. “I knew there wasn’t any well-planned revolution behind you.” Remembering those desperately hate-filled slaves urging him to the loll, he added with a shudder, “Powers above, you couldn’t have expected even those maltreated servants of yours to cleave to you!”
    A shrug of elegant shoulders. “I confess, I never thought it would come down to my needing an army. After all, there was the boy.” Serein’s smile was a slow, chill thing. “Ah, the boy. These six long years struggling to find a weakness in your shields, and then to chance upon him—my little human truly had you off your guard, didn’t he? Granted, I never expected you to steal him from me. But that only made my task easier!”
    “You failed.”
    “But it was such a narrow thing, wasn’t it?”
    Serein’s abstract calm was beginning to grate. “How could you do it?” Hauberin asked.
    “What, try to kill you?”
    “No, curse you! Do you think I’m so human I’m surprised at that? The child! How could you torment a child?”
    “Why, the whelp had to be in the properly receptive frame of mind. Even you must know how such spells work.”
    “No, thank the Powers! No matter how much you ached for my crown, how could you ever have stooped to such foulness? You, who always taunted me with now truly of Faerie you are?”
    “Oh, cousin, really. It wasn’t a Faerie child, after all.”
    “He was still a child! To use him, torture him, not caring if you broke his mind, if you killed him—” Hauberin broke off sharply, sickened by the unreachable serenity of the sea-green eyes. His cousin smiled.
    “Oh, Hauberin, what a sentimental little half-blood you are! A child? How should that ugly, dirty vicious creature be anything but a tool?”
    Hauberin bit back the hot, useless words he’d been about to shout. “Were it not impossible for our folk,” he said in a rigidly controlled voice, “I would call you possessed. But I’m not going to waste any more time arguing morality. Come, yield.”
    “And you’ll let me live? What, have you a pretty picture of me humbled in silver chains? Oh no, cousin, I’ll not surrender for that!” Serein’s smile was thin and sharp. “In fact, I don’t yet see the need to surrender at all. Tell me, what moved you to come after me yourself? Surely you could have sent your faithful warriors to find me.” (I could have let that archer shoot you, Hauberin thought.) “Why come after me alone? Honor? Powers above, pity?” He made that human emotion sound like an obscenity.
    “Just this,” Hauberin said slowly. “Traitor though you are, murderer though you are,