Arrows of the Sun (20 page)

All but one part of it. That, sensing his body’s pleasure,
rose to claim its share.

If he had been on his guard he would have quelled it before
it began. But he was not entirely in his body. He drifted now in, now out of
it, half asleep, half awake, haunted by the dimness of his dream. He watched
the banner go up, distantly interested. Proper behavior would bid him do
something discreet: sink down into the water in which he stood, exert the
discipline he practiced too seldom, master the upstart.

He did none of those things. He stood slack, back arched
into the hands that smoothed it with long slow strokes, and let his eyelids
fall. There was a drugged serenity in it, a mingling of exhaustion and heat and
hands that knew his most sensitive places.

How they came from his back to his front, he never knew. But
what they did there woke him abruptly and completely.

He could not bolt. The Asanian held him too firmly. In that
appalled instant he saw the whole of the plot against him. Why take his life if
they could take his hope of heirs instead?”

“No,” he said. Tried to say.

The Asanian took no notice. The rest of them went about
their business; he was aware of them, a prickling in his skin. He tasted no
hostility, nor anything but calm preoccupation. This terror, this shame, was no
more to them than duty. His majesty had need; this one of their number
fulfilled it.

He was going to start laughing, and once he started, he
would not be able to stop. It was pure high comedy to be trapped so, in such a
predicament, and no escape that he could see. The nether half of him was
delighted. It had been far too long since he took notice of it.

Very, very carefully he closed his fingers over those clever
hands. They froze. “No,” he said much more clearly this time, if no more
steadily.

The Asanian actually raised his eyes. They darted everywhere
before they fell, but for a moment they met Estarion’s. “This is not what I
wish,” Estarion said.

“My lord needs,” the Asanian whispered. He was young, little
more than a child; he had the nervous look of too much breeding, like a fine
stallion or a lordling of the High Court. They bred their slaves here as they
bred their princes, and for much the same qualities.

“My lord needs discipline,” Estarion said.

“I do not satisfy?” the boy asked. His face was white. He
began to tremble.

“There now,” said Estarion. “There. You satisfy me
perfectly. Just not . . . in that. We don’t reckon that a need,
where I was raised.”

The Asanian’s eyes flashed up again in pure incredulity.

“Not that kind of need,” Estarion said. He still had the
child by the hands. He drew him to his feet.

The Asanian was pallid with shock, but he seemed to have
mastered the worst of it. “Ah,” he said. “My lord prefers the higher arts. Will
it be a woman, then?”

Estarion opened his mouth, shut it again. “I don’t need
anything. Anyone.”

He saw the crossing of glances, the silent speech that was
not magery, but was as clear as any words. They had decided that he was a
witling or worse.

“Not now,” Estarion said. “Later. Maybe. If it suits me.”

That mollified them a little. It did not convince them that
he was a rational being.

Maybe they had the right of it. He stood in the shallows of
the bathing-pool and knew that if he did not do something, he would run raving
through the city.

“Kundri’j,” he said. “Kundri’j Asan.” They stared at him in
Asanian fashion, sidelong and in glances. “I have had enough of this,” he said
to them, but in good part to the air and the memory of his Regent. “It is time
I left here. I must go. I must come to Kundri’j.”

Korusan had dwelt all his life in the castle of the
Olenyai, in Kunzeran to the north of Kundri’j Asan. He had gone out in his
training, ridden on the hunt, gone with the rest of the young Olenyai to the
market in the town that was nearest. But he had never been farther than half a
day’s journey from the castle, and he had never walked in the city of the
emperors.

To one place he went often, a place that he had made his
own: the remnant of old forest that bordered the Olenyai’s lands to north and
east. He rode there of a morning in high summer, on the senel that he favored
among those in the stable, and he rode alone as it best pleased him to do.

As he came under the trees he found one waiting for him. To
the eye it was simply one of the brothers, an Olenyas like any other in robes
and veils and twinned swords. But the carriage of the head and the glint of the
eyes could belong to none but the Master.

Korusan knew the prick of temper, but he quelled it. He did
not bare his face, nor did he speak.

The Master turned his mount beside Korusan’s. They rode
under the trees in silence. It was strangely companionable, for all of
Korusan’s displeasure at the loss of his solitude.

There was a place not far within, but off the wonted track,
that Korusan had taken as a refuge. It was a clearing, not large, where a house
or a small temple had been once. Part of a wall remained, and a bit of the
floor, overgrown with creepers that flowered in the spring and fruited sweet in
the autumn. Now, in summer, the flowers were gone, the fruit hard and green,
but the shade was pleasant. There was water in a stream that ran beside the
broken wall, grass for a senel to graze on, quiet to rest in away from the
clamorings of duty.

Korusan had come here more than once with Marid, but he had
not made it known to any other. The Master’s presence surprised him in that it
did not break the quiet.

Once he had loosened his senel’s girth and unhooked the bit
from the bridle and turned the beast loose to graze, the Master pulled off veil
and headcloth. His hair was flax-fair, as tightly curled as a fleece; he dug
fingers into it, smiling into the sun. “Ah,” he said. “Here’s a rare pleasure.”

Korusan, moving more warily, freed his senel as the Master
had, and bared his head. If he had been alone as he had hoped to be, he would
have uncovered more than that; but modesty restrained him, even when the Master
stripped to shirt and loose-cut trousers and waded barefoot in the stream.

The Master paused in dipping a handful of water, and slanted
a glance at Korusan. “Do I shock you, young prince?”

“That depends on what you wish of me,” said Korusan stiffly.

“You were always impeccable in your manners,” the Master
said: “more Olenyas than the Olenyai.”

“Am I to consider myself rebuked?”

“Not at all,” the Master said. “The young ones are always
punctilious. It does them credit.”

“I think,” said Korusan after a moment, “that I am being
made sport of.”

“Is my prince offended?”

“No,” said Korusan. He unbent sufficiently to put aside his
outer robe, if not the inner, and to take off his boots.

The water was shockingly cold. He did not stand in it longer
than he must, to lave his face and drink a little. Safe on dry land again, he
sat with knees drawn up, watching the Master out of the corners of his eyes.

The Master came out of the water and sat a little distance
from Korusan, lay back on the grass and sighed. “There will be no such
pleasures for me again, I fear. Tomorrow I ride to Kundri’j.”

Korusan went still, body and mind.

“Before I am Master of Olenyai,” the Master said, “I am
captain of the guard of the Golden Palace. That duty has never beset me: I had
but attained the fourth rank when Ganiman died. But now I must take it up.”

“I had heard,” Korusan said carefully, “that a company of
our brothers had ridden from Kundri’j under the Regent’s command.”

“Yes,” said the Master. “They rode to Induverran, where the
emperor is, to await his departure for Kundri’j Asan.”

Korusan’s heart began to beat hard. “Then,” he said, “it is
time. He comes.”

“He comes,” the Master said. “And I must command his guard.”

“You should have gone to Induverran,” Korusan said.

“No,” said the Master, but without rebuke. “I rank too high.
It was only the Regent who commanded, you see.”

Korusan did see. But he said, “The Regent summoned you to
Kundri’j.”

“I summon myself to Kundri’j, to prepare for the emperor’s
coming.”

Korusan was shivering, but his body burned with fever. He
did not trouble to curse it. It was only shock. “So soon,” he said, “and yet it
has been so long . . .”

“Did I say that you would accompany me?”

Korusan met the Master’s gaze. “I say that I will.”

The Master’s eyes narrowed. “Would you risk yourself so, in
the very face of the enemy?”

“Where else can I be, if I am to destroy him?”

“Here,” the Master answered. “In safety, under guard, while
your servants serve you.”

“No,” said Korusan. “This, no one can do for me.”

The Master frowned.

“I must see him,” Korusan said. “I must know what he is.” He
raised his hand, although the Master had made no move to speak. “Yes, I have
seen the portraits, heard the tales, had his every act and thought laid out
before me with tedious precision. I know that he favors sour apples, that he
rides a blue-eyed stallion, that he has a training scar on his right thigh
above the knee. I know all that a spy can know. But I do not know him.”

“Would you have him know you, and destroy you?”

“What can he know? I am an Olenyas, a blackrobe, a faceless
warrior. And he is no mage, whatever he was in his childhood. He can work
magics, if they are small enough, and he can read a soul if it is close and he
is undistracted. More than that, he cannot do. So the mages say.”

“Do you trust the mages, prince?” the Master asked.

Korusan paused for a breath’s span. “I trust them well enough
to believe that they have examined him and found him feeble. That they might
have underestimated him, I grant you; but even they cannot read me.”

“And that, prince, may be a fatal arrogance.”

“Then I wager that it is not. I must see him, my lord. I must
know my enemy.”

The Master was silent for a long moment, eyes fixed on
Korusan’s face as if to limn it in his memory. “You were bred to hate him. Can
you bear to stand guard over him, to dwell close to him, to be called his
servant? Can you do that, prince? For if you cannot, then you have destroyed us
all.”

“I can do whatever I must,” Korusan said, soft and level.
“For if I cannot, then all your training has been in vain, and your hopes have
failed.”

“He is alien, prince. He is taller than any man you have
seen. His skin is like black glass. He speaks Asanian with a barbarous accent,
in a voice like mountains shifting. And for all of that, my prince, he has your
eyes. Eyes of the Lion in the face of an outland beast.”

“I have seen the portraits,” Korusan said, still steadily,
whatever his heart might be doing. “He has no beauty. He is merely strange.
Strangeness I can endure, if I know that there is an end to it.”

“I do not think,” mused the Master, “that the mages would
approve. They would call it folly to risk you so openly.”

“And you, my lord?”

“I,” said the Master, “do not approve. But I can understand.
I too wish to see what kind of man he has become. He was an engaging child, for
a foreigner.”

“You knew him?” Korusan asked, startled.

“I guarded him. He coaxed my name out of me, but he never
saw my face.”

“And I have your face but not your name,” said Korusan with
careful mildness.

The Master raised his brows. “What, you do not know? My name
is Asadi.” He sighed. “Such nonsense, to conceal one’s name. We never did so
before the mages came among us.”

“Before I came,” said Korusan, “newborn of a mother who died
before they took me from the womb, in a flock of mages. Would I know my own
true name, my lord, if I had not insisted on it?”

The Master’s lips twitched. “Perhaps not, my lord Ushayan
inMuriaz. But your usename serves you well.”

“It will serve me in the Golden Palace.”

“And what of the truth that it embodies? All that any
stranger may see of you is your eyes, and those alone suffice to betray your lineage.”

“I will chance that,” said Korusan. “Some of the Olenyai
lines come close enough, and all of us walk faceless. Who will see aught but
the veil and the swords, unless I wish him to see?”

The Master was wavering again toward resistance. Korusan steadied
him with a last, strong thrust. “You are the captain of the emperor’s guard.
You have named me your emperor. I will enter Kundri’j; I will serve in the
palace. Do you refuse me?”

He looked for anger, or for outraged pride. He received wry
amusement: lifted hands, crooked smile. “You know that I cannot refuse my
emperor.”

Korusan looked hard at him, suspicious. “Is this a game you
play?”

“Certainly,” the Master said. “The greatest game of all: the
game of kings.” He rose and stretched, supple as a cat. “And it does please me
to set a caltrop in the mages’ path. They presume too much, my prince: of you,
of all of us.”

Korusan’s heart eased its hammering. His fever was high
still, dizzying him, but his mind was clear on top of it. He smiled slowly. “So
they do, my lord. So indeed they do.”

Kundri’j Asan.

Estarion said the name to himself in silence, like the
silence that rode with him. Even the clatter of hooves on paving stones was
muted, the clink of armor among the guards, the snort of a senel as it shied at
a dangling pennon. The sky was the color of hammered brass, the heat a living
thing, breathing heavy on his neck, and he robed ninefold; not ten, not on his
last march, for he was not yet come to the throne, and he would not wear the
mask that made the emperor.

He was mere high prince, then, with his bared face and his
nine robes. He cared little for the count of the damnable things, only that he
wore them. It was that or wear armor, and he would not come as a conqueror.