Arrows of the Sun (28 page)

Estarion drew a shaking breath. “That was hardly necessary,”
he said to the air, or perhaps to the god.

The door opened to his touch. The hinges were oiled, the air
within clean, touched but faintly with the taint of disuse. Death’s stains were
long since disposed of, Ganiman’s body embalmed with spices and borne away into
the east, to lie in the tomb of kings under Avaryan’s Tower. The floor where he
had fallen was clean, the bed mounded in cushions, no mark of his dying throes.

He had not died easily or quickly. Estarion had been there.
Others remembered: they had told him. How he stood, how he would not speak, nor
move, nor suffer any to touch him, but fixed his eyes on Ganiman’s face.

He had no memory of that. His mind had been far away,
hunting a mage who was a murderer. He had not seen what the poison and the
sorcery did to his strong beautiful father, withered and shriveled him, robbed
him of voice and strength and wits, made of him a mindless mewling thing.

There was mercy, maybe, in that bar to his memory. When he
saw his father, he saw him as he had been: tall robust handsome man, stern
enough before his people, but lighthearted as a boy, and apt for mischief.

“The night before he died,” Estarion said, “he led a whole
regiment of his Guard on a raid against the queen’s palace, abducted my mother
and carried her away to this room, and held it against all comers. The uproar
went on till dawn. People thought the palace was invaded; the eunuchs shrieked
and wailed, and all the guards came out in arms. It was splendid.”

Godri inspected an image that stood in a niche. “That’s
himself?”

Estarion did not need to look at it. “That’s the Sunborn.
Father was handsomer than that. Pretty, he said. He cultivated a beard and a
severe expression. They only made him the more beautiful.”

“You look like this one,” said Godri. “Interesting face. He
wasn’t a tamed thing, was he?”

“And I am?” Estarion asked coldly.

Godri glanced over his shoulder. “Did I say that? You’ll see
reason now and then, when you’ve had your nose rubbed in it. Look at the eyes
on him. Nothing reasonable about him at all.”

“That was the god in him, I was always told.”

Estarion stood by the bed. He did not feel anything. It was
not numbness, not exactly. More as if he had felt all that there was to feel,
and there was nothing left.

Godri wandered on past the carving of Varuyan on senelback,
thrusting a spear into a direwolf’s vitals. When he paused again, it was in
front of a painted portrait. “Hirel and Sarevadin,” he said. It was not a
question. “Was his majesty really that young?”

“He’d not turned sixteen when his son was born,” Estarion
said.

“Well,” said Godri after a pause. “The yellowheads don’t
live long. I suppose they have to get in their breeding while they can.”

Estarion stood very still.

Godri did not seem to notice. “The lady was beautiful,
wasn’t she? That Ianyn face, and that hair, like new copper. They say your
father looked like her as she was before she was a she.”

Estarion had no difficulty in untangling that. He eased by
degrees. “That’s the Gileni blood. Not like the royal Ianyn. All beak and
bones, those.”

“You’d be less of both if you fed yourself better.” Godri
came round to Estarion’s side and looked up him, black eyes bright in the
swirling patterns of his face. “Is it bad?” he asked.

“No,” Estarion said, too quickly maybe. But when he thought
about it: “No. He was on the throne when I came to it. He’s round about the
palace, sometimes. But not here. This is only where he left his body behind.”

Godri shivered but held his ground. “You’re healing.”

“If you want to call it that,” Estarion said.

“It was well you came here, even if it makes you ill. Some
fevers are necessary. They burn away old scars.”

“Maybe,” said Estarion.

o0o

The fever that was in him would not let him rest. He went
to his mother for a while. She tried to comfort him, but she had her own burden
of memories, and her own troubles.

The harem was waiting on his pleasure. One was very fine
upon the lute; another had a wonderful voice. None was importunate, or tried to
lure him to the inner chamber.

Haliya was not there. She was tired, her sister said, and
had gone to bed. “But if my lord wishes . . .”

“No,” he said. He listened to the singer and the
lute-player. He said polite things to the others. When enough time had passed,
he sent them away.

Ziana was last and slowest to go. He almost called her back.
It did not matter that she had no love for him. Her beauty pleased him, and her
calmness soothed his temper.

And if she conceived his son, what then? Did he want her for
his empress?

o0o

He returned to his chambers in a mood as black as the sky.
No stars tonight; no moons. Clouds had come up while he tarried; there was rain
in the wind.

Guards hovered. Varyani, no Olenyai. Those were hidden in
shadows. “Go,” he said to the ones he could see, those who had been his
friends, while he could have friends, before he was emperor in Asanion. “Go,
rest, carouse in a tavern, do something that isn’t fretting over me.”

“But,” said Alidan, “it’s our duty to fret over you.”

“I command you,” Estarion said. And when they would not
move: “I’m strangling with all the hovering and the watching, and knowing how
you hate it. Some of you at least, be free for me.”

“And if anything happens?” Alidan persisted.

“What can happen?”

Alidan refused to answer that, and rightly. But Estarion was
in no mood to be reasonable. He drove them out, even Alidan, who needed main
force.

o0o

His chambers were full of shadows. Some of them had eyes.
He rid himself of them by dropping his robes and baring his teeth. Whether for
fear of his armament or horror of his shamelessness, they vanished with
gratifying speed.

There was always wine on the table by the bed. Godri
insisted on tasting it. “Dreadful,” he said, “but nothing deadly in it, that I
can tell.”

Estarion knew that already. That was another magery he kept,
to know what was in the wine he drank.

Or maybe it was only a keen nose. He downed a cup, and then
another. Godri combed his hair out of its tangles.

“Do you notice,” Estarion asked him, “what the Asanians do?
They don’t comb it, except on top. They let it set into a mat.”

“So could you,” said Godri, “if you didn’t want to wear the
king-braids again.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I ever will.” Estarion poured a third
cup. The wine was strong, but it barely blunted the edge of his mood. Godri was
no lady’s maid: sometimes he tugged too hard.

The pain was welcome. Less so the brush of his fingers as he
plaited Estarion’s mane into a single braid, bound and tamed it for the night.

Estarion’s skin was as twitchy as his temper. He almost
wheeled, almost seized those tormenting hands. But they went away. Godri
smoothed back the coverlet of the great bed and bent to trim the lamp.

Estarion let his body fall into the bed. Godri drew up the
coverlet gravely, but with the flicker of a smile. “Good night, my lord,” he
said.

Estarion’s growl made the smile brighten before it vanished.
Godri went lightly enough to his own bed in the outer room.

Fortunate creature. His moods passed as quickly as they
came. He was even reconciled to Kundri’j; or close enough to make no
difference.

Estarion lay on his face. The wine soured in his stomach.
The coverlets were heavy, galling. He kicked them off.

Cool air stroked his back. He rolled onto it, then onto his
side. Canopy and curtains closed in on him.

He covered his eyes with his hands. The dark was no more
blessed than the nightlamp’s glow. He ran his hands down his face, neck,
breast.

His fingers clawed. He clenched them into fists, pressed
them together in his middle, knotted himself about them. He was not weeping.
That much fortitude at least he had.

The dreams would be bad tonight. He had no power to turn
them aside. The wine worked in him, dragging him down into the whispering dark.

o0o

Fear. Terror. Panic.

Estarion clawed toward the light. His breath shuddered and
rasped. His nose twitched with the sharpness of sweat. His body could not move.

He willed his eyes to open. Slowly the lids yielded. They
were like stone. A thin line of light pierced the darkness.

He was not alone. His head would not turn, his hands were
dead things. But he knew.

There was someone else in the room. Breathing. Watching.

Magery?

A drug? And how, if not in the wine?

His power was as numbed as the rest of him. It could not
lift itself, could not batter down the walls that it had raised. He was locked
within. Trapped.

Laughter shivered through him. Oh, he was a fine image of an
emperor, trapped and spelled and stinking of fear. Rats faced death with more
grace.

That it was death, he had no doubt. It stalked him through
the dimness of the chamber, breathing faster as it drew closer, though it tried
to be silent. It could not know what senses he had, when he troubled to use
them.

He gathered all of himself that there was. He did not try to
open his eyes further, or to flex his fingers. When the blow came, he must be
ready. He must move. Must. Move.

Under the world-weight of lids, through the veil of lashes,
he saw the shadow that crept across him. Veils, draperies. A woman?

No. That scent was male: strong with fear-musk, and
something else, cloyingly sweet. Dreamsmoke and honey.

Something gleamed. Steel. Wealthy assassin, that one, and a
fool, to carry bright metal and not black iron or greened bronze.

Move
, Estarion
willed his body.
Must move. Must
.

Nothing.

The knife poised over him. No face behind it, nor eyes,
hidden in veils.

Fear was gone. There was only the will. To move. To
move
.

Steel flashed down.

Estarion lurched, floundered, dragged lifeless limbs, but he
moved. Away from that glittering death, and up, into the shadow that bore it.

Two shadows. He crumpled bonelessly to the floor. The shadow
with the knife locked in battle with a second shadow. That one had eyes and a
face, and warrior-patterns thick on it.

Estarion’s body struggled against the spell that bound it.
Life crawled back, marking its way in pain. He could move hands, feet.

The shadow-battle swayed toward him. The knife was gone,
lost, but its wielder had the strength of desperation. And wanted, still
wanted, the life that flopped and gasped on the floor.

The assassin lunged. Hands clawed for Estarion’s eyes.

Godri struck them back. They yielded; one dropped.

Estarion saw the glint of metal, black now, assassin’s iron,
curved like a cat’s claw. Something—something he must know—

Godri caught the wrist that bore no weapon. The black knife
arced, slashed past the patterns of his cheek, but drew no blood there. It
darted at his hand. He seized it.

By the blade, the idiot, the brave, mad, damnable fool.
Gods, what it did to his fingers—blood welling, his face blank, unwounded hand
twisting, clasping the assassin’s wrist.

Bone snapped. A shriek tore out of the veils, but the
assassin would not yield, would not let go of that deadly blade.

Shadow reared up behind the shadow of the assassin.

The veiled one stiffened. If he had had eyes, they would,
perhaps, have gone wide. He dropped like a felled tree.

Godri swayed. He had the knife still, fist clenched upon its
blade.

Blood dripped. He did not seem to notice. He dropped
gracelessly to his knees, who had always been as graceful as a dancer.

“My lord,” he said. Were those tears on his cheeks? “Oh, my
lord!”

With all the strength that he had, Estarion shaped words.
“Godri. Godri, let go. The knife. Let go!”

Godri stared blankly at his bleeding hand, at the thing that
he clutched in it. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ll get a bandage—wrap it—”

“It is poisoned,” said a clear cold voice. An Olenyas kicked
the assassin’s body out of the way and stood over them both. His eyes were all
gold. “You are a dead man, tribesman. Whatever possessed you to take an
assassin’s knife by the blade?”

Godri drew himself up on his knees. “You’re talking
nonsense, yelloweyes.” His breath caught. He swayed again, steadied, spoke
through gritted teeth. “Don’t listen to him, my lord. Did that vermin strike
you? Are you hurt?”

“He never touched me,” Estarion said. It was easier now, or
would be, if he had not seen how grey Godri was, how his body shivered, his
unwounded hand clenched and unclenched.

“Gods be thanked,” Godri said. His voice was thin; he needed
three breaths for the three words. “Oh, my lord, I thought you were killed.”

“Spelled,” said Estarion. He struggled to sit up. The
numbness was fading. He was clumsy yet, as if half of him was turned to stone,
but he could wrap arms about Godri, and know how he shivered and spasmed.

Just as Estarion’s father had. But there was no mage to
hunt, no assassin to kill. The Olenyas had done that.

“Fetch a physician,” Estarion said. “Quickly.”

“What use?” asked the Olenyas. “He is dead. Nothing can mend
him.”

“A mage can,” said Estarion. He was growing—not angry. No.
There was no word for it. It was too perfect, too blackly brilliant. “You are
not going to die,” he said to Godri.

Godri did not answer. The poison was strong in him. Estarion
could smell it, could taste it in the air. It was vile, cloying-sweet.

He called his power to him. It was slow, it dragged, it
trickled where it should have been a thin but steady stream. It was not enough
even to fill the cup of his skull.