Arrows of the Sun (21 page)

Estarion could not have felt less like an emperor. His body
was dripping wet, shoulders and breast and thighs rubbed raw between the weight
of robes and the unfamiliarity of the high Asanian saddle.

He had not inflicted that torment on Umizan. The beast he
rode was one of Lord Dushai’s own, placid to torpidity but blessed with a coat
the color of pure minted gold.

Umizan’s contempt for the creature was the only distinct
thing in this blurred and sun-battered world. The stallion would have broken
his halter when this ride began and taught his rival a lesson, if Estarion had
not forbidden and Godri mounted him.

He could not shed that born rider short of flinging himself
down and rolling; and that, even in his fit of temper, he was too sensible to
do. He contented himself with flattened ears and horns lowered not quite enough
for threat, keeping to the place reckoned proper for the squire who rode him,
and stabbing Estarion with darts of acute displeasure.

I, too, brother
,
Estarion said to him behind words.

Ulyai would not even pass the first gate. She tried. She
clung as close as Estarion’s idiot mount would allow, from Induverran across
the plain to Kundri’j. But as the walls drew closer, her ears went flatter, her
tail lashed more fiercely.

Before the bridge that spanned the river of Asanion, broad
brown Shahriz’uan, she halted. Her muzzle wrinkled, baring fangs. She could not
bear the scent or the sound or the sense of this city of all the cities in the
Golden Empire.

Her eyes were as close to pleading as an ul-queen’s could
ever be: pleading afire with rage. She could not cross the bridge. Not unless
he laid his will on her.

And that, he would not do.
Go
, he willed her.
Be free
.

A yowl escaped her, a cry of protest. She wheeled. Seneldi
shied. She broke through them, running swift as a shadow on the grass.

The last horned idiot veered and skittered. Then she was
free. The plain was open before her, her freedom calling. She sped to meet it.

Estarion’s heart yearned after her. But he was bound by his
word and his damnable duty.

He shifted in the saddle. His mount plodded on. The sun beat
down. The city swallowed him.

o0o

Nine circles in the circle of the river, Shahriz’uan in
its chains of locks and bridges. Nine levels as in the courts of this empire,
from lowest to highest, from plain white marble to burning gold. It turned its
splendor toward him, its high houses, its thousand temples, its broad plazas
and straight ways, even its gardens and its cool places. The walls were hung
with banners, the fountains flowing with wine and sweet perfumes, the way paved
with flowers or carpeted with richness, priceless rarities to be trampled under
hoof and foot.

He would happier have seen that wealth fed to the people who
were not permitted to line the ways, the poor and the sick, the maimed, any who
fell short of perfection. They were there: he felt them. There was hunger here,
and sickness in this unrelenting heat. Squalor behind the splendor. A reek of
dung beneath the heavy scent of flowers.

The imperial majesty was not to see such things, not to know
of them, lest they sully him. His Asanian teachers had not said so in as many
words. They knew it, as he knew that majesty must see everything, the dark and
the bright, and know the face of death as he knew life. How else could he rule?
How else speak for his people in the courts of the god?

He passed through the nine gates, white marble, black
marble, lapis, carnelian, jasper, malachite, ice-blue agate, silver, and last
of them all, the innermost, bright gold. It drank the sun’s heat and poured it
forth again, a blinding brightness, a fire as terrible as that which burned in
his hand.

His mount halted unbidden. He raised burning hand to burning
gate. It did not rock and fall.

It was only stone sheathed in gold. The sun was only sun,
fierce with the breath of summer on Asanion’s plain. His hand was flesh, his
arm, his shoulder itching where he could not scratch.

Laughter welled in him. The Olenyai who rode ahead, the
point of the spear, understood at last that he was not behind them. The court
in back of him, the Guard, the servants in their multitudes, had begun to knot
and tangle.

He was a great discomfiture to the heart of the Golden
Empire. He kicked the senel back into its amble, and passed through the gate.

o0o

From Golden Gate to the Gate of the Lion was an avenue of
lions, great stone beasts crouched on guard. The gate itself was a frieze of
lions on the hunt and in the pride, rearing rampant to form the lintel and the
posts. There was a joy in them that struck Estarion strangely in this joyless
place, a delight in their play, even a welcome for this lost mongrel child
riding under them, into the prison that was the Golden Palace.

Lord Firaz was waiting beyond the gate, on foot, attended by
courtiers in the robes of princes. He greeted Estarion with the nine
prostrations and the nine great salutations, less the tenth that was for the
emperor enthroned. Then he took Estarion’s bridle and led him inward, pacing
slowly, as princes did in the Golden Empire.

The chain of courts opened and closed before them. In one
they left the seneldi. In another, Estarion’s courtiers found themselves
politely but firmly directed toward another way than the one on which he was
led. In the next, all but the core of his Guard fell back; but the bulk of the
Olenyai were kept back as well, and that was a comfort. Lightly guarded, with
the Regent ahead of him still, not quite touching him to guide him, he came to
the heart of the palace.

The Sunborn had built the hall of the throne in Endros in
the image of this: the Hall of the Thousand Years with its thousand pillars and
its roof of gold, wide enough for armies to march in, and a floor of panels
inlaid with jewels and gold, that could be lifted up from golden sand and dust
of jewels, ruby, sapphire, topaz, emerald. The throne was moated so, behind a
black wall of Olenyai.

In older days the throne had been a great bowl of gold
lifted on the backs of golden lions. That did not please its last true-blood
emperor. He had had it remade, suffering its lions to stand as they had stood for
a thousand years, but setting on their backs a broad chair. Two could sit there
on an abundance of cushions, taking their ease, and behind them a marvel of
jewelwork: a lion rampant upon the face of a golden Sun.

Estarion faltered. He had come well-nigh to the wall of
Olenyai, hardly marking the glittering ranks of the High Court, aware chiefly
of the man who led him and the guards who paced behind, and the throne to which
he came.

It was not the great work of magery that was the throne in
Endros, and yet it had its own power. Hirel Uverias had made it to share with
his Varyani empress. Their son had sat in it, and their son’s son. Their names
rang in his memory. Hirel and Sarevadin, Ganiman, Varuyan, Ganiman. And now, if
he did not falter, Meruvan Estarion.

He was dazzled, or ill with heat. He saw a shadow on the
throne, a dark man, dark-eyed, with a sudden, brilliant smile. Not a young man,
for he had married late, but still in the prime of his manhood, and gifted with
the light bold spirit of his Gileni mother. He bore the weight of robes with
easy grace, wore the mask when he must and smiled at it after, and was all the
emperor that the Asanians could have wished for. And they killed him.

The throne was empty. Lord Firaz had just begun to perceive
Estarion’s hesitation. Before he could pause or turn, Estarion finished the
stride he had begun. Briefly he wondered if the Olenyai would hold the way
against him. But they parted smoothly, with no sign of reluctance.

Lord Firaz halted at the foot of the dais. Estarion must
mount alone. One waited beside the throne, prince of seven robes with a face as
like to the Regent’s as a brother’s or close cousin’s, and in his hands, upheld
with the barest hint of waver, the tenth robe, the emperor’s mantle, woven of silk
and gold.

It was as heavy as worlds. How the Asanian had borne it,
Estarion could not imagine. He was a small man even for one of his kind, and
yet he laid the mantle about Estarion’s shoulders, hardly trembling with the
effort, and secured it, and sank down in obeisance.

It was not Estarion’s part to raise him, still less to thank
him. He backed down the steps and past the Olenyai, into the first rank of
princes.

Estarion stood erect in front of the throne, though the
mantle’s weight strove to bow him down. The court lay flat to a man, all but
the Olenyai, black motionless stones among the pillars of the hall.

Then at last Lord Firaz came up. He held the mask, the
dreadful golden thing that Estarion had refused. It glittered in his hands.
Blind eyeless face, Asanian to the last graven curl of its nostril, and
beautiful in the way of these people: broad low brow, full cheeks, straight
nose, lips that seemed as soft as a girl’s.

It was all smooth curves, no planes, no angles. It grew no
beard. It never aged or scarred, or suffered the shame of a flaw.

Estarion reached, startling the Regent, capturing the mask.
It was gold, and heavy, and despite the heat of the air it was cool. He lifted
it. Its eyes were narrow windows on a world gone strange. Olenyai backs. The
clean line of a pillar. A lord still prostrate, hair thinning on his skull,
sadly exposed within the circle of his coronet.

Estarion lowered the mask before it touched his face. He
kept it in his hands as he sat, giving in at last to the weight of his robes.
Lord Firaz had recovered himself. Estarion could not tell whether he approved,
or whether he chose to take the bargain he was given.

He spoke in a clear, strong, trained voice, words as
numerous as the grains of sand under the paneled floor; but all of them came
simply to this: “Behold, lords of the Golden Courts. Behold your emperor!”

o0o

It was no more terrible than receiving homage from the
throne of Endros. Estarion had not expected that. His back grew tired; his rump
protested the long hours of sitting. Worse was hunger, but thirst was worst of
all. This was a test of imperial hardihood, to bring him straight from the road
into the hall, and set him down without food or drink or pause to rest, and
compel him to accept the full homage of the High Court.

But he had done almost as much in Keruvarion, coming to audience
from the hunt or the practice-field, forgetting to send for wine or water, and
laboring till dark over matters of state. His mother was not here to call him
away, nor did a servant creep up behind with a filled cup. That was not done in
Kundri’j Asan. The emperor must not appear to be a human man, with a man’s
needs of the body. He did not even join in banquets, although his son and heir
might do so.

Peculiar logic, Estarion thought, considering how many
feasts he had suffered on his journey here. Then he had been the Varyani
emperor, but not yet full lord of Asanion. Now that he would have welcomed a
cup of water as a gift from heaven, he was forbidden anything but homage.

A weaker man would faint, or call a halt to the ordeal. Estarion
refused. He received the respects of every lord in that hall, singly and in
companies, father or eldest brother with all his sons and brothers and cousins
and hangers-on, each of whom must be named to the imperial majesty, and his
place affirmed, his authority made certain by the emperor’s decree.

There was none who came as that lord had come to the throne
of Endros, defiant out of turn. Nor did his lordship appear among the princes
of five robes. Estarion was cravenly glad. These Asanians were making the best
of the emperor they had. They did not afflict him with hostility, nor did they
try visibly to shame him.

The emperor did not speak at the giving of homage, which was
a mercy. His Regent spoke for him, or his Voice if he had one. Firaz did duty
for both. He said all that an emperor should say, in phrases as elegant as they
were politic. No insults there, that Estarion could discern; no errors in the thousand
shades of inflection.

He could grow accustomed to this. The knowledge chilled him.
So many years, so many battles, so much hatred of Asanion and Asanians, and he
sat here, surrounded with them, and he accepted it. Worse than that: he knew
that he was born for it.

Maybe it was a poison. Or a mage’s trick; though the ache in
his head was for his empty stomach, and not for the touch of sorcery.

The last princeling came, made his obeisances, withdrew.
Estarion sat unmoving, but no one else came forth. He was to rise, then. Stiff,
struggling not to sway. The hall stretched endless in front of him. He must
walk the length of it, mantled if not masked.

He could not do it. It was nearly sunset; he had not eaten
or drunk since before dawn. He was drained dry.

He essayed a step. He did not fall. Another. It bred
another.

Like Asanians in their harems, spawning sons. That made him
want to laugh, dizzily, weak with fasting. And was that a fast, then, this mere
day’s stretch? He had gone thirsty three days running in the cause of his
priesthood, and fasted longer, until his body was a light and singing thing,
and his soul stood naked to the sun.

Pride, then. Stubbornness. He would not show himself weak to
the court of his western empire.

He hated them for testing him. He loved them as he loved
anything that dared him to outmatch it.

He walked unaided from the hall down the passage that
presented itself, into the room on which it opened. Servants waited there. The one
who relieved him of the mantle won the most loving of all his smiles. The one
who brought him water in a golden cup gained a prayer of thanks unto the
hundredth generation.

It was not a eunuch, either, which was Estarion’s good
fortune. Ungelded servants were rarer, he had noticed, the closer one came to
the throne. Were they afraid that the emperor would be seduced as women were,
and bear a child out of turn?