Arrows of the Sun (10 page)

“Early is all I have,” said Korusan. But not loudly. Not for
Marid to hear. He thrust himself to his feet. “Maybe it will be tonight.”

Marid grinned, transparent in his relief. “Maybe it will.
Luck to your sowing, Olenyas.”

“Luck to your reaping,” said Korusan, “Olenyas.”

o0o

The woman was willing. She was beautiful, also, as they
often were, and she was skilled in the high arts. She could receive as well as
give pleasure. Her murmur of thanks seemed honest, her smile unfeigned when he
paid her the compliment of asking, “May I come to you again?”

She lowered her eyes as was proper, and said, “My lord, you
may.” And then she said: “Tomorrow, if it pleases my lord.”

His heart should have been light. The women of the Olenyai
were given to choose whom they would see a second time, as it was given the men
to choose whom they would visit once. He had pleased her, then, and well.

But he was in a bleak mood as he left the place of the women
and entered the place of the men. Harems in the world without, he was told,
were scented, close-walled places. This was walled, to be sure, but its scents
were simple ones: clean flesh, clean garments, the pungency of herbs or the
sweetness of a flower in a woman’s hair. Olenyai knew well the arts of
simplicity. It made them strong; it taught them to focus on what mattered.

Men leaving the women’s quarters walked a path well trodden
through the years, up a stair worn deep in the middle, along a passage hung
with tapestries so old as to have lost all color and figure and faded to the
muted brown-grey of the stone behind them. Then they turned, either up to their
own place—whether chamber or barracks—or down to the training grounds and the
gates.

Although it was late, well past the midnight bell, Korusan
turned toward one of the gates. It was unguarded. No one in Asanion would enter
the fortress of the Olenyai, even if he had won his way so far. To pass those
walls was forbidden any not of the Order, or of the House of the Lion. The
lands that lay about it were not wide as princely domains went, but they
sufficed to feed and furbish the castle; and they were guarded as the gates
were not, by men in black robes with hidden faces.

He slid the bolt easily, for it was kept well oiled, and
stepped into the cool of the dark before dawn. It had rained in the early
night, but now all the clouds were blown away. The moons were glorious:
blood-red Greatmoon at the full, silver Brightmoon some days short of it,
filling the sky with fire, overwhelming all but the brightest of the stars.

There was someone sitting near the gate on a heap of stone
left over from the building and grown now into the earth it lay on. In the
bright moonlight the robe was silver, but it would be grey in the sun; the hair
was frosted white, but would be youthful gold where eyes saw daylight-clear.

Korusan knew this lightmage by sight. It was a woman, and
often about the castle. He had not seen her alone before, without her darkmage
shadow. Here she had shadows in plenty, but none lived and breathed. They were
all born of the moons.

Her eyes glittered as she turned them toward him. He knew
better than to think that she had not been aware of him from the moment he
opened the gate, and likely before that.

“It is odd,” he said, “to see a lightmage here, under the
moons.”

“But they are as bright almost as day,” she said.

“Almost,” said Korusan. Perhaps he should feel his
presumption. Olenyai did not speak thus easily with mages, as if mages were
folk like any other. But he was not born an Olenyas.

“We all must understand our opposites,” the lightmage said,
“or they may consume us.”

“Have you consumed your opposite?” Korusan inquired.

She laughed, a silver sound, so alien to her rank and to
this place that he started. “Oh, my darkmage! He is a daytime creature; the sun
sets, and he falls asleep, and sleeps the night through. But I can never sleep
when the moons are high. Do you hear them singing?”

“I am not a mage,” said Korusan.

She took no offense at the flatness of his tone. “Of course
you are not. But you have the gift. I saw you when you ran the dreamwood.”

“All your ilk saw me,” Korusan said. “I could wish to return
the favor.”

“You pay the price of princes,” said the lightmage. She
clasped her knees, looking all of his own age, if that, and smiled at him.

He could strike her, and she would have no defense.

Not of the body. But that was not what held his hand: not
knowing that she had magic. He had a use for her. “Tell me somewhat,” he said.

She raised moon-silvered brows and waited.

He wondered if she had tried to enter his mind. Mages did
that. He had felt nothing, no crawling of the spine that would have warned him.
“Tell me this, mage. Will I beget a son?”

Her brows rose higher. “Do you take me for a village witch,
to tell your fortune for you?”

“Will I?” he pressed her, stepping closer. She neither
recoiled nor betrayed alarm. Her magic would protect her, no doubt, and she was
sure of it.

“Truly,” she said, “I am not a soothsayer. Find you a
market, prince, and ask there.”

He stood over her. She was complacent still, but she had to
lean back a little lest he topple her. “Look inside me. Tell me what all your
kind know. Will there be another after me? Or am I the last?”

“Are you not young to fret over that?”

He struck her, flat-handed, on the cheek. She looked
perfectly astonished. No one ever laid hand on a mage. No one dared.

“You are older than I,” he said, “but which of us is the
greater fool?”

“I could blast you with fire,” she said, no rancor in it,
nor threat, but simple certainty.

He laughed in her face. “So you could; and kill your magic
with it. Yes, I know that secret of your trade. Who does not, after the plot
that succeeded so well for your kind? You disposed of an emperor; you maimed
his son. But you betrayed yourselves to those with wits to see.”

“We betrayed nothing that belonged to us,” she said, and now
at last her voice had an edge of anger. “All who speak of that killing, speak
of the fool who did it. No one knows who set him there, or who took his wits
from him lest the priests discover the truth.”

“No one,” said Korusan, “but the Olenyai. And we are too
valuable as we are. Tell me, mage. Tell the one whom you would make your
emperor. Am I to be the last and only, and after me, nothing?”

“One will rule after you,” she said.

“Indeed? And will that one be the Master of your Guild?” She
did not answer that.

“The blood has failed,” he said. “Has it not? I remember,
mage. When I was not quite yet a man, and one of my many fevers was fiercer
than the rest, and you thought that I was unconscious, but I heard. You could
save me, but you could not save my children who would be.”

“Not I,” she said. “That was not I.”

“Are you not all one?” He stepped back, releasing her from
his shadow. “It is true. I can beget no sons.”

“You are young,” she said, but faint, as if he had
frightened her. “You cannot know . . .”

He wheeled. The moons spun. He flung himself through the
gate. He did not care how he went, save that it was swift; or whom he trampled
in going there.

o0o

When he stopped, it was not by choice of his own. He might
have struck a wall, but there was only air, and a chamber lit with lamps—but
none of them flickered as earthly fire would—and cold eyes regarding him from
the cushions and coverlets of a bed.

The Master of Mages slept alone, or liked to have it seem
that he did. He slept decently in underrobe and outer robe, and warmed his
sparse-haired crown with a cap. He looked like a merchant from the provinces,
but that was a deception.

“You are violent this morning, my lord,” he said. “Did our
youngest girlchild offend your highness? Does your highness wish her heart on a
salver?”

“If I assented, would you give it to me?”

The Guildmaster smiled. These mages were all as complacent
as cats. “I would, my lord, if it would content you.”

“Anything for the prince,” said Korusan with a bitter twist.
“Anything at all. Except an heir.”

“I am sorry for that,” the Guildmaster said.

Perhaps it was honest regret. “So it is true,” Korusan said.

“Even had the fever not made sure of it, we would have held
out little hope,” said the Guildmaster. “You are a miracle in yourself, with
all the aid that we have given you, to keep you living, to raise you to
manhood. We would not look for another such chance.”

Korusan was prepared for it. He had looked for no gender
truth, but it was no easier to face for that.

“Olenyai gain rank,” he said, “for the number of sons they
sire.”

“Not only for that,” said the Guildmaster, “and not even for
that among the highest. Any beast can beget young. It needs a man to rule men.”

“And what is a man but a father of sons?”

“I have no sons,” the Guildmaster said. “No mage of my rank
does, or can. We make that sacrifice when we choose this path.”

Korusan was not shocked. That too he had known, from what he
had heard or suspected. “But you are not a prince, mage. You will not be
emperor. And emperors must beget heirs.”

“Not all of them do,” the mage said, “or have.”

“What, then?” Korusan demanded as he had of the lightmage.
“What comes after me?”

“Do you care?”

Korusan drew up short.

“Do you truly care?” the Guildmaster asked him. “You live to
take revenge against the Sun’s brood. Once they are gone and you are dead, what
does it matter who calls himself lord of the world?”

“It matters,” Korusan said, “if that lord is the lord of
your Guild.”

“Why? Might not a mage rule as well as any man?”

Korusan stood up against the mage’s wall and tasted the
savors of rage, impotence, raw grief. And hate, always hate, like blood and
iron. “So that is what you intend. Why trouble with me, then? Why breed me,
raise me, keep me alive? Why not simply face the Sun-worshippers direct, and
fight an open war? Surely it would be less trouble. Even,” he said, “for
cowardice as mighty as yours.”

The Master of the Guild was not to be pricked by such words,
however bitter they might be. “Perhaps we prefer the symmetry of this conflict,
Sun against Lion. Perhaps the gods demand it, or fate, or the turning of the
worlds; and if we defy it or seek to alter it, we destroy ourselves with our
enemies.”

“Perhaps you are afraid to face the Sun and its priests,
because they are strong, and they may defeat you.”

“We are stronger,” said the mage, “and we are older in our
magic. But secrecy is our armor, that is true enough. And we owe the Lion a
debt. It took us in when we were driven from the Sunborn’s empire; it protected
us when his heir would have blotted us from the earth. We repay in you, in
raising you to the throne that is yours.”

“A barren throne,” said Korusan. “An empty victory.”

“Do you believe that, Lion’s cub? It will be your throne,
your victory.”

“And I your puppet.”

“You are no man’s puppet,” said the Guildmaster.

“What if,” said Korusan, “when I had won the victory, when I
had my throne—what if I ordered all of you destroyed? What would you do then?”

“We would fight,” the Guildmaster said. “We wager high,
prince, and we wager long. We gamble on your clemency, as we gambled on your
being born at all, or living to stand here now, and show yourself in truth the
Lion’s heir.”

“Flattery,” said Korusan. But the anger had gone out of him.
He was cold within, and empty. Where another man had his little tribe of ancestors,
he had a thousand years and more, an army of emperors. Where even the simplest
man had hope of sons, he had nothing. Only emptiness and the line’s ending.

“Perhaps it may console you,” the Guildmaster said, “that
your enemy has begotten a son, but the son is lost.”

“And that too was your doing?”

“No,” said the Guildmaster with all apparent calm. “His own
priests did it for us, in womb-binding the woman who is his lover. Fools all.
None bethought himself of what must come of working that spell on a Sunlord’s
leman.”

Korusan’s gorge rose. That his blood enemy should do what he
could not do. That this fat merchant with his half-god’s magic should gloat so
over the death of a child.

He turned without speaking, without even the courtesy of a
glance, and left as he had come, headlong. No wall barred him. Nothing stopped
or slowed him but his own bones’ weariness and the dawn breaking, and the
rousing of the Olenyai to the morning’s duties. His first duty was
sword-practice. And though he ached within and without, he was glad of that
grueling dance, glad of anything that bent his mind away from the dark.

Vanyi had no intention of feigning illness, or of
suffering it. She could ride. She had before when her courses racked her,
numbed with a potion the priestesses brewed for just such troubles as this.

Estarion could not move her, even when he lost his temper.
She turned her back on the blast of it and set about readying to depart.

The drug numbed her body. There was pain somewhere on the
edge of things, but it was no part of her, no more than the memory of what had
caused it: what had broken, and what had mended, before Avaryan’s altar.

She had lost nothing that she had known she had. She had
gained a thing beyond hope. She could bear a child now. She could give Estarion
his heir.

Through drug and distance and grim endurance, her entrails
clamped tight. Only Estarion’s presence kept her erect. She reached blindly for
she knew not what; stared at what her hand fell on. For a long moment she could
not guess what it was, could not name it or imagine a use for it.

Her fingers clenched. She had not even known.