Arrows of the Sun (2 page)

Vanyi, anonymous among the priests and the lesser nobles,
watched as he passed in procession. He was aware of her: a ghost-hand lay brief
against her cheek, a ghost-smile warmed her from within.

Most of him was centered on the rite. For a moment she
walked within him down the long aisle between the white pillars, from sun to
shade and back to sun again, and before him, looming larger as he came closer
to it, the simple chair set on its dais. The wall behind it burst and bloomed
in gold, the rayed sun of his fathers, image and remembrance of the god. But he
saw nothing of the gold, no more than he saw of the people who thronged the
hall and filled the courts without. The throne was waiting.

He had never sat in it. He was too young and it too strong,
his regents had thought, for the fragility of his mind. It was a simple thing,
a chair carved of pale stone, neither silver nor grey but somewhere between.
But there was mighty magic in it. It was carved of dawnstone, the stone that
woke to the coming of the sun, and imbued with the power of his line.

It was glimmering, Vanyi thought. Faintly; difficult to see
from so far, with so many bodies between. But it was more silver than grey.

He was closed to her now. For a moment she was empty,
bereft; then she shook herself, bolstering the wards about her thoughts. Far
behind them, deep and safe, she allowed herself to smile. A year yet, and four
days: that long she had to wait until her Journey was done. Then the oath was
ended. The bonds of her womb were loosed. And she would give him the gift she
most longed to give: an heir of her body.

Let another be empress if it would please his princes and
his lady mother. Vanyi would bear his son.

The throne gleamed clearly now, a pure light that though
pale was never cold, like the sky at the coming of the sun. She could not see
Estarion’s face. She knew that it was rapt, like the rest of him. Drawn toward
it; bound to it.

He paused at the foot of the dais, with the high ones about
him. The empress in royal white, tall and cold and beautiful. The chancellor of
his empire, elegant southern prince with his startling bright hair. Priests of
Sun and Shadow, god and goddess, torqued in gold and in black iron. The lords
of his council in their manifold splendor, from bearded, kilted, glittering
northerner to clean-shaven trousered southerner to robed and turbaned syndic of
the Nine Cities. And one lone westerner in the fivefold robe of a prince,
wearing an ambassador’s fluted hat.

They surrounded their emperor, overwhelming him. Then he mounted
above them. His mother followed, and his chancellor, a step behind, at right
hand and left. On the last step he paused. They passed him and turned. They
were of a height, northerner and southerner, dark woman and bronze-skinned man
with his hair the color of new copper. They bowed to one another and held out
each a hand.

Estarion laid his hands in theirs and let them draw him
upward. He was taller than either, and for a moment he seemed very slight,
almost frail.

He straightened. Vanyi saw his head come up, his shoulders
go back. They were broad, those shoulders, for all the narrowness of the rest
of him. He inclined his head to each of his regents. They bowed in return.

He turned. His face was a shadow against the sudden blaze of
thronelight. His eyes were full of it.

Without great ceremony, but without haste, he sat. The
thronelight blazed like the full sunrise. Vanyi staggered with the power and
the glory of it—the great singing surge of exultation. Terrible, magical, awful
thing: it knew its lord and servant. It took him to itself.

Drums beat, pulse-beat. Slow, slow, then swifter, rising
up and up to a rattle of panic-terror.

The boy ran.

Sometimes as he ran he was himself: wind in his face, breath
in his lungs, fire in his blood. Pain, sudden and sharp, as a branch caught his
hair and tore it at the roots; or a stone turned underfoot and pierced the
unprotected skin; or a thorn sank claw in his side.

Sometimes he was wholly outside of himself. A bird, maybe,
in the dark of the trees, looking down at the pale naked thing running from it
knew not what, leaving its panic-trail of flesh and blood and acrid human
scent.

The law said,
Run
.
The drums said,
Run
. Therefore he
ran.

The mind paused. Saw wood, twilight dimness, sweat-streaming
bloody self running from nothing at all, and said,
Why?

It mastered the feet, slowed them, willed them to a
standstill. The heart was harder, and the breath in starved lungs; those, it
left to heal themselves. It brought its scattered selves together and bound
them with its name.

“Korusan!”

No.

“Koru-Asan!”

Better.

He opened his eyes. The wood was gone, had never been, except
in his mind, and in the rattle of the drums. They were silent now. He stood on
stone, in walls of stone. Rough tunic rasped on skin as whole as skin could be,
no mark that was not long since won, no scar that had not healed.

Cold metal touched his nape. He did not flinch, even
inwardly.

“Strong,” said the voice behind him, that had known his
name. “And self-willed.”

“Blood of the Lion,” said the man who stood in front of him.
The man had no face. None of them did, of all who stood about him: clad in
black from crown to toe, not even a glitter of eyes through the swathing of
veils. Korusan, whose face was bare for any to see, made of it a mask and
schooled his eyes to stillness.

They would always betray him, those eyes, unless he mastered
them. He was named for them: Koru-Asan, Goldeneyes. Yellow eyes. Eyes of the
Lion.

“Proud,” said the one behind, the one who held the knife.
“Haughty, if truth be told. And why? His blood is none of ours.”

“It has its own distinction.” Dry, that, from one who stood
in the circle.

“And its own destruction.” Cold and soft. Korusan stiffened
at it. Infinitesimally; but here of all places, now of all times, there could
be no concealment. “He will be dead before he is a man; and if he lives to get
a son, what will that son be, as weakened as the blood has grown? Dead in
infancy, or witless, or mad—if any are born at all of seed so sore enfeebled.
Such is the Brood of the Lion.”

“He will live long enough,” said the dry voice. “He will do
what he is born to do.”

“Will he live so long?” the cold one inquired.

Run
, said the law.
And Korusan had run.
Keep silent
, it
said. And he had kept silent. Running had won him nothing but pain. He said, “I
will live as long as I must.”

“You will be dead at twenty,” said the cold one, the cruel
one. “You fancy yourself strong enough now; and with magic and physic and
training, so you are. But those have their limits. I see the darkness in you.
Already it sinks claws in your bones.”

“All men die,” said Korusan steadily. “It is a gift, maybe,
that I know what I shall die of, and when.”

“Is it a gift, too, to hate those who willed this doom on
you?”

He laughed. They started, those grim men in their circle,
and that lightened his mood immeasurably. No one ever laughed in this rite,
under this questioning. “They are dead who condemned my house to its death—man
without woman and woman without man, lifelong, and never a child of any union
but one; and that was their weakness, that they permitted her to live. Or maybe
their cruelty. They would know that the sickness was in her, the blood-beast,
the thing that goes down from father to son, from mother to daughter, and
weakens and twists and kills. But—hate them? No,” he said. “No. It was never
their choice that she wed daughter to son and son to daughter, and they
likewise, to preserve the line pure. If I hate anyone, it is that one. She was
a fool, my ancestor. Far better had she done as her brother did, and wedded
with barbarians.”

“Then the Blood of the Lion would truly be lost,” the dry
voice said. Not so dry now; there was a whisper of passion in it.

“It is lost in any event,” said Korusan. “My sisters are
dead or idiots. I may die before I can sire sons. But before I die, I will have
our blood-price. The blood of the Sun is more robust than mine, but it too
resides in one man, and one man alone. And he has no son.”

“That we know of,” said the cold one.

“There is none.” A new voice, that. It spoke with surety,
from an unveiled face. Korusan regarded the man in grey who emerged from the
circle. He was not afraid, though he saw the man’s shadow, a woman in black, as
barefaced as he, and as deadly keen of eye. Lightmage, darkmage.

He raised a brow. The lightmage met his stare blandly and
said, “He has no son. No daughter, either.”

“I hope,” said Korusan, “that he refrains from women, then,
until I hold his life in my hands.” He smiled at the mages. “You will see to
that.”

They were affronted. He watched them remember who he was.

The knife shifted on his nape. He spun. The world ran slow,
slow. Still, almost it failed to slow enough. He lost a lock of his hair, a
drop of blood. He won the knife.

The one who had held it now held a length of uncut gold.
Korusan grinned at him and finished what he had begun: set blade to the uncut
mane of his youth and cut it away, lock by heavy lock, and stood up a man. The
air was cold on his unprotected neck. His head was light. He ran fingers
through cropped curls, tugging lightly at them, but never letting down his
guard or his weapon.

“No,” he said, “I am not of your blood. No bred warrior, I.
I was bred to be your master. Bow then, Olenyas. Bow to your lord.”

He did not think that he had appalled them. They knew what
they had raised. But knowing in the head and knowing in the belly—there, he
thought, was a distinction they had not made. There were no eyes to read, to
uncover resentment or regret, or even fear, until the one whose knife he had
won lowered the outer veil. And then—and this he had not looked for—the inner.

It was a younger face than he had suspected, and more like
his own than he could have imagined, even knowing the women and the barefaced
children. The Master of the Olenyai regarded him with eyes well-nigh as pure a gold
as his, but white-bordered in simple human fashion, and no fear in them, nor
overmuch regret. Then they lowered, and he went down, down to the floor, in the
full prostration. “You are my lord,” he said, “and my emperor.”

“I am not the emperor,” said Korusan.

“Then there is none,” the Master said. He rose. His eyes
came up. That was permitted of Olenyai, to look in the face of royalty.

“I do not wish to be emperor,” said Korusan. “I would be
Olenyas.”

“May you not be both?” the Master said.

Korusan was silent. He had spoken enough foolishness, and
far beyond the limits of the rite. He reversed the knife in his hand and bowed
as initiate to Master, and returned the knife to its owner.

The Master accepted it. Korusan drew a slow breath. If it
had been refused, then so likewise would he; and he would be emperor without a
throne and Olenyas without the veil, rejected and found unworthy.

The fine steel flashed toward him. He stood his ground even
as it neared his eyes. Even as it licked down, once, twice, and the pain came
stinging. He kept his eyes steady on the Master’s face. Ninefold, the scars on
that cheek: from cheekbone to jaw, thinly parallel like the marks of claws. One
for each rank of his ascent.

Korusan said, “I will not take second rank for my blood
alone.”

“Nor do you,” said the Master. He wiped the knife clean of
Korusan’s blood and sheathed it. “You could be swifter in defense.”

“I was swifter than you.”

The Master’s hand was a blur, but Korusan caught it. The
Master smiled. “Better,” he said, then snapped free and slapped Korusan lightly
on the unwounded cheek. “That for your insolence. And this,” he said, “for your
wit.” He set hands on Korusan’s shoulders and leaned forward, and set a kiss
where his hand had stung. “Now you are Olenyas. Be proud, but never too proud.
Be strong, but never so strong that you betray yourself. Be swift, but never as
swift as your death. And take the oath as your kinsmen have taught you.”

Korusan knelt and laid his hands in the Master’s, looking up
into that face which now he was entitled to see. He was aware of other faces,
strange and yet familiar, and eyes that he had known when all the rest was
wrapped in darkness. But for the moment he saw only the one, and the two that
came up behind it, lightmage, darkmage, filling the Master’s shadow.

He shuddered a little inside himself. Magic he knew, because
he must know it. Magic he had, because it was bred in him, like his eyes, like
the death that would take him while lesser men were still no more than boys.
But he had no love for it.

“It is our custom,” the Master said, “to give the oath and
the protection, and to seal them in bronze, and bind them about your neck.”

“But for you,” said the lightmage, “bronze is too little a
thing, and a binding of chain too feeble. You, we seal and bind with the Word,
and with the Power that is behind the Word.”

Korusan felt it in his bones like the fire that had filled
him in the wood. He fought instinct that would have risen and swelled and
thrust the magic away. He let it crawl through him, though he shuddered at its
touch. He hoped devoutly that his stomach would keep its proper place. It was
never his most obedient servant; and he had not fed it since this rite began.

Preoccupied with keeping his belly quiet, he barely noticed
the wrench and twist as the magic pulled free. He did see the lightmage sway,
and the darkmage steady him. He heard the woman mutter, “Goddess! He is
strong.” And the man: “Hush! He hears us.”

Then he knew that they had not spoken aloud, but as mages
spoke, in the silence behind the words.