Arrows of the Sun (24 page)

Korusan widened his eyes at that. “Truly? And was he born
with such a face?”

“Oh, no. Those are his manhood-marks and his killing-marks,
and some of them are for a prince. He’ll talk to us sometimes. He’s almost
human under the devil-mask.”

How strange, thought Korusan. How utterly foreign. His
stomach was tight, but for once it did not want to empty itself. Perhaps it
understood that he was here, at last, where he needed most to be.

He set hand to the door’s latch. Marid frowned at him. “You
aren’t going to. Are you?”

Korusan answered by opening the door. Marid did not stop
him. Duty bound the other to keep his post, but Korusan had no orders yet, and
no ban upon him.

He knew these chambers within as if he had dwelt there all
his life. They were the heart of his teaching, the place to which he had been
born, in which he hoped to die. He walked in them like a shadow, faceless,
unregarded: simply another of the Olenyai.

They were trusting in Keruvarion. That too Korusan had been
taught, with some degree of incredulity; but his teachers averred that it was
true. Now he saw the reality of it. All these open chambers, unquestioning
guards, servants walking in and out; no locks, no bars in any place but one.

That one room had been the emperor’s bedchamber. The bar was
new, the lock still bright from the forging. It did not yield to Korusan’s
touch.

“You! What do you there?”

He turned carefully, and not too quickly. The voice was
sweet for all the barbarousness of its accent, speaking a rough but
comprehensible Asanian patois. The speaker was half-expected, the tattooed
savage in Varyani livery. He looked alarming, but his challenge held little
hostility.

Korusan answered him in the same patois that he had spoken.
“Do you hold his majesty prisoner?”

The emperor’s servant looked narrowly at him, then shrugged.
“What, are you new here? Of course we don’t. That’s where his father died. He
won’t go in, or let anyone else go in, either.”

Such innocence. Korusan almost admired him for it. “The last
emperor died these ten years past. Surely he does not bear the grief still.”

“He can’t forget. It almost killed him, too. He still has
the black dreams.”

“He is as weak as that?”

The savage’s eyes glittered. “Only look at him, and you’ll
know that for the lie it is.” He calmed himself visibly. “There now. You people
don’t know him; and mages are different, and Sunlords most different of all.”

“It is clear to see,” said Korusan, “that his servant loves
him.”

“So do all who know him.”

Someone called from down a passage. The savage snapped
alert. “There! He’s looking for me. Do your duty, blackrobe, but don’t try to
do it in there. He’ll have your hide for a kilt.”

Korusan followed the emperor’s servant quietly, with steps
that slowed, the deeper he went into the maze of chambers. Still he was not
challenged. There were more of his own kind here, but they would reckon that he
came under orders. And so he did if he was truly their prince, with authority
to command himself.

The black king was in a chamber that had been meant for
guests, but that he seemed to have claimed for his own. He must have come from
High Court: his servant was divesting him of the robes.

Korusan had seen northerners since he came to Kundri’j.
There had been enough of those in the palace, and others in the city and on the
road. He had grown inured to black faces, arched noses, blue-black hair; he was
prepared for towering height.

This was not a giant as his kind went. He was only a head
taller than Korusan, and narrow, almost slight. He was long-legged like a colt,
with some of a colt’s awkwardness, as if he had not quite come to his growth;
and maybe he would grow into the shoulders that seemed so wide against the rest
of him.

No beauty, no. Ugly indeed, with that sooty skin, that blade
of a nose, that long mobile mouth half-hidden in curling beard. His eyes were
as keen a shock as Korusan had been warned to expect. They were all of the
Lion, clear deep gold, no rim of white to lessen them, until he widened them at
something that his servant said.

Korusan was braced for them, and for the coal of anger that
burned his belly at the sight of them. He was prepared for strangeness, even
for revulsion. But he had not expected to be captivated.

There was grace in that long body, something like beauty in
the way the head turned, looking over his shoulder at the servant, who was
struggling with the heavy masses of his hair. He smiled, white in that dark
face, and said something in a tongue that Korusan did not know, that made the
servant laugh. And Korusan was angry; no, Korusan was jealous, because neither
of them had seen him, or cared that he watched.

He should have taken himself away, but he could not will his
feet to move. This was the enemy of all that he was. This, taking its ease in
these chambers that should have been Korusan’s, casting off with patent
contempt the robes to which Korusan was born. Holding Korusan rooted with the
purity of a line, long straight back, long plait down the center of it, long
hand outstretched to touch the servant’s shoulder, to rest lightly on it.

“There, don’t fret, I’ll be well,” the Sunlord said in
Gileni. Korusan understood: he had been taught that tongue, the better to know
his enemy.

Likewise in Gileni the servant said, “How can I not fret, my
lord? You keep to yourself too much these days; and you left court so suddenly,
as if you were ill, or worse. Won’t you come out to the training ground? Won’t
you do a round with the swords?”

“Later,” the Sunlord said, as if he humored a child. His
voice was deep, like a lion’s purr, but it had an odd clarity. The servant
seemed troubled, opening his mouth as if to speak, seeming to think better of
it. He withdrew slowly, giving his master ample time to call him back.

His master did not take it. Korusan, unmarked and
undismissed, watched the outlander decide that he was alone.

He stretched first, languidly, as a cat stretches, and
yawned. His teeth were whiter than an Asanian’s, sharper, the eyeteeth long and
narrow and perceptibly curved.

He dropped the robe that still covered him. He was lean,
skin stretched over smooth muscle, long bone. There was no softness to him. He
was all planes and angles.

So strange. Hardly like a human creature at all. Korusan saw
the glare of gold as the right hand came up, the impossible thing, the brand
the priest-mages made when one of Sun-blood was born, swearing solemnly that it
was bred there. But no living thing grew gold in its flesh.

The Varyani emperor wandered toward a curtained wall, caught
at an edge, hurled back the hangings with vehemence that made Korusan start.
Sun flooded the room. Through the dazzle of it Korusan realized that this was a
bank of windows, and they looked down on the gardens.

One by one the outlander flung them open, letting in heat as
well as light. He leaned on a windowframe, seeming to care not at all if anyone
below should see his nakedness, and said to the hot golden air, “Sometimes I
think that my dreams are real, and the Golden Palace all the world, and
Keruvarion the delusion of a fevered brain. Sometimes I imagine that I’ve never
breathed any air but this, never walked on ground not smoothed before me, never
worn less than the nine robes of a high prince. Was I bred for this after all,
do you think, and not for that other world?” He was speaking Asanian, not
perfectly but well enough. “Hound,” he said, still to the air. “Patient, silent
guardhound. What do you think of me?”

Korusan went very still. It was foolish: his presence was
known. But instinct had its own logic.

The Sunlord was dripping light. It ran down him in streams
like water, pooling on the floor.

Impossible. Sorcerous. Magic wrought to overawe the
credulous, to frighten the yellow-faced spy.

But there was no denying the sight of it. Korusan slid
toward it, essayed it with a fingertip. It burned and stung. He drew back
carefully, keeping the comer of his eye on the barbarian. Emperor he would not
call him, not naked and shameless, head fallen back, eyes closed, wallowing in
his puddle of sun.

When the creature turned, Korusan was taken by surprise. He
was cat-quick, and not above malice. “There, my hound. Run at my heel. See what
I do, faithful slave that I am, and obedient emperor.”

Pure insolence. Korusan would teach him manners. He smiled
behind his veils, and followed the black king, not for obedience, but to see
what he would do.

Estarion had won a few small skirmishes. Lord Firaz was
winning the war.

He had had a bellyful of High Court this morning, walked out
of it before he did something more unfortunate; and now he went back, dragging
robes. He could not even say why he did it. Sun’s heat, maybe, addling his
brain while it made his body stronger. Or a pair of yellow eyes in a swathing
of veils, and a subtle shimmer of contempt as they looked at him.

It had not gone away when he commanded the Olenyas to play
body-servant, which the bred-warrior did, and did well, with mute obedience. It
was still there as Estarion made his second entrance of the morning, breaking
in upon a court that was doing very well without him, throwing it into an
exquisitely restrained flurry. He lost sight of the guardsman thereafter among
all the rest, but he fancied that he could feel those eyes upon him still,
judging him and finding him wanting.

High Court was excruciating as always. The emperor did not
speak; his Regent spoke for him—as coolly now as ever, no shadow of rebuke, and
chiefly in platitudes, greeting this lord who had come from the far western
provinces, well-wishing that princeling for his taking of a new wife. His
seventh, Lord Firaz murmured under cover of the man’s prostrations, and a great
heiress; which was well, for his properties were insufficient to support the
tribe of his sons.

Estarion bit his tongue. Lord Firaz was revealing a
surprising store of wit, much of it wry. His aplomb, Estarion knew too well,
was unshakable, even for an emperor who fled and then came back, breaking every
dictate of propriety.

The next petitioner to be presented wore five robes to the
princeling’s three. It was, Estarion realized, a child. He had thought it was a
very small man: the infant carried himself so haughtily, refusing to bow
beneath the weight of his robes, wearing an expression so rigid that surely it
would shatter.

His name was almost longer than himself, with three princely
houses in it, and one royal connection. “He is come,” said Lord Firaz, “to beg
your majesty’s indulgence, and your forgetfulness of his father’s sins.”

Estarion raised a brow.

The child spoke for himself, which was just within the
bounds of protocol. “My father,” he said in a clear steady voice, “is dead. He
regretted deeply his dishonor. He took his life as the canons prescribe. He
died bravely, and courteously.”

“How can death be courteous?”

Estarion had never spoken aloud in that place before. He
fancied that his voice echoed, deeper than Asanian voices were wont to be, and
barbarously accented.

The child was too young or too scared to be shocked. He
answered, “He wished your majesty to know that he atoned for his disgrace.”

“What was that?”

“Majesty,” said Lord Firaz, soft and smooth. “His father was
that one who, so we are told, dared defy you in your court in Endros Avaryan.”

For a moment Estarion’s mind was blank. Then memory filled
it. An Asanian lord paying homage out of turn. Estarion’s great error, and the
Asanian’s greater one as his kind would reckon it, looking direct on the face
of his emperor.

This son had his father’s face, now that Estarion had eyes
to see it, though soft yet and unformed. But he had not, it seemed, inherited
his father’s recklessness.

Estarion regarded him in disbelief, and in swelling horror.
“He killed himself? Simply because he tested me?”

“One does not test the emperor.” The child sounded like no
child then.

No, thought Estarion. Let him have his name. He was Nizad of
the house of Ushavaar. Nizad said, “We will pay penalty as your majesty
decrees. He is dead, his ashes scattered on the midden, and the honor is taken
from his name. What more your majesty will have, we will pay.”

“No,” said Estarion. His heart was swelling, struggling in
the walls of his chest. “No. I’ll have them trying to kill me if that’s their
pleasure. I won’t have them die for me.”

“He defied you,” said Nizad. “He deserved his death.”

“He did not.” Estarion pushed himself to his feet. “There is
no dishonor. Do you understand? He only did as he thought best. The shame is
mine. I spoke ill to him. I never thought that he would take his life for it.”

Nizad raised wide astonished eyes. But never, quite, into
Estarion’s face.

Estarion came down, dragging the world-weight of robes, and
took the small cold hand. The Court was appalled. Again. He did not care.

“I give you back your father’s honor,” he said. “All else
that was his, I return to you. He was a brave man. I grieve that he took his
life for so little a cause.” “

You are everything,” Nizad said. “You are the emperor.”

Estarion sucked in a breath. There was no reasoning with
them, any of them. “Go,” he said: the first thing that came into his head. “Prosper.
Prove that I’m no fool for shocking the Court speechless.”

A normal child would have laughed, or smiled at least. Nizad
dropped down on his face. Even his babble was flawless, not an inflection out
of place. Estarion could pause to wonder at it, amid all the rest.

o0o

“They are not like us,” Estarion said to Godri. “They are
not like me. How can I rule them? I can’t begin to understand them.”