Arrows of the Sun (38 page)

Estarion traced the line of them with a fingertip. “Sword?”
he asked.

“Knife,” said Korusan. His voice was as cool as ever. It
seemed to come from elsewhere than that stark face. “One for initiate. Two for
honor. Because I showed myself worthy in the battle that made me Olenyas.”

They fought to win the veils and the swords. Of course.
Estarion should have known without asking.

“Are you all so beautiful?”

Korusan looked startled. That was rare. It made Estarion
laugh, at which the boy scowled. “What does beauty matter?”

“Little,” said Estarion, “if one wears veils to hide it. Is
that why? To keep people from thinking you pretty idiots?”

“You who deny your own beauty: you think to be a judge of
mine?”

“I’m not—”

Korusan tugged. Estarion swallowed a yelp. The boy’s teeth
bared. They were white and even, no flash of barbarian fang, but sharp enough
as they sank into his shoulder. Estarion howled. “Hells take you!”

Korusan pulled his head the rest of the way down.

It began, Estarion observed with dreadful calm, somewhere in
the vicinity of his tailbone. It felt most nearly like the spark of magery
swelling into fire, searing up his spine, bursting through his skull. He would
not have been surprised at all if this young lunatic had bitten off his tongue
and spat it into the water; but he seemed content to settle for devouring
Estarion alive. Lips first, cheeks, chin, throat—nip of teeth there, but not
quite to draw blood—breast and still-throbbing shoulder, arms, hands, barely
shying from the flame of gold. And breast again, and belly, and—

Estarion heaved them both up bodily, dripping by the pool.
Korusan made no effort to steady himself on his feet, but sank down, arms about
Estarion’s knees. Estarion’s banner was up and flying. He could not tell if
Korusan was awed. He looked stunned, but that might only be fever.

Estarion pried him loose. He had to kneel to do it. It set
Korusan eye to chin, which was better than what else he had been staring at.
Estarion kept a grip on his wrists, though he made no move to break free. He
was, Estarion noticed, a fair figure of a man himself, for one still half a
boy.

There was nothing girlish about him, for all his beauty. If
there had been, Estarion could not have done what he did. Taken vengeance.
Kissed him hard and long. And when they were both reeling, drawn back. He held
Korusan’s wrists even yet. He let them go.

“You are velvet,” said Korusan, “and steel.”

“Steel,” said Estarion, “and ivory.”

“Your life belongs to me,” Korusan said.

“And yours to me,” said Estarion. It came from he knew not
where, but when it was spoken, he knew it for truth.

Korusan rose. He neither swayed nor staggered. He drew
Estarion up.

Estarion could stop it now. He knew that. He need only
resist: pull free of that hand, speak the words that waited on his tongue. This
was nothing that he had ever looked for, or wanted. He had seen how some men
were with beautiful boys. He had not understood them. He was a man for women,
always, since he was old enough to know what a woman was for.

This went beyond man and woman or man and boy or—if he were
honest—man and man. It was certainly unwise for an emperor to discover a
passion for his guardsman. It could very likely kill them both. And it did not
matter in the least.

Korusan’s fever had changed. It was a whiter heat now, a
fiercer burning, and it knew precisely how to cure itself. Estarion, Sunborn,
panther’s cub, had never thought to be a cool spring or a healing draught. He
found it wonderfully strange.

It was not like loving a woman. Vanyi was as fierce, Ziana
as serpent-supple, Haliya as quick to know where was his greatest pleasure.
None of them was so close to his own strength.

They grappled like warriors. They made a glorious shambles
of the bed, tumbling from it to the floor, ending in a knot of cushions and
carpets, gasping.

Estarion was dizzy. Korusan was breathing quickly, stretched
the length of Estarion’s body.

Suddenly the boy laughed. It was edged with hysteria, but it
was true mirth. He ran sharp-clawed hands down Estarion’s sides. Estarion
spilled him over, set knee on his chest, grinned down at him.

He grinned back. “Am I a match for you?”

“Almost,” said Estarion. He bent to seize another kiss. It
lingered, softened. No war this time. No contest for mastery. Long, slow,
impossibly sweet. Bodies so different, and so much the same.

Not all the dampness on Korusan’s cheeks was sweat. Estarion
tasted the sharper salt of tears.

Korusan would have raged, had he known that Estarion knew.
Estarion kept silence, and held him long after he had fallen asleep. Even in
dreams he kept a shadow of tension, a memory of the warrior that he was.

But not in his face. That was a youth’s, a boy’s, more
beautiful than any girl’s.

Estarion eased himself out of Korusan’s arms. Korusan stirred,
murmured, but did not wake. His brow was cool, his fever gone.

It had lodged itself in Estarion. He bathed quickly. His
robe was rent, but there was another in the clothing-chest. He put it on. He
bound his hair back in a thong, out of his face. He had not, yet, begun to
shake.

His shoulder ached; his ribs stung. Vicious, that one,
before he let himself be tamed.

What he did then . . .

o0o

Estarion was striding swiftly. His robe swirled in the
wind of his speed. He nearly cast it off. A guard’s eyes restrained him, and
the gleam of lamplight on bronze.

The spear drew back before him. The guard—broad brown
plainsman’s face, name forgotten somewhere in Korusan’s shadow—flashed a smile.
Estarion had none to return.

There was no peace on the roof, no stars, and a thin cold
wind blowing, cutting to the bone. The winter of Asanion was begun.

Estarion barely felt it. His vitals were afire.

The sun was coming. He should sing it into the sky. But he
was empty of either prayer or song.

“Do I love him?” he asked the dark. “Do I even like him?
Does it matter at all?”

The dark kept its counsel.

“I never meant this,” Estarion said, “or anything like it.
I’m bewitched, ensorcelled. And I don’t care. Why can’t I care? Is he doing it
to me? Will he kill me when he has me in his power?”

Korusan had had Estarion in his power many times this night,
and had done nothing but love him. It was love: love as cats knew it, with
claws. Estarion was a pitiful excuse for a mage, but some things could not
elude him. The boy’s heart was his.

Fierce, prickly, deathly dangerous, marvelous thing.
Clasping him was like clasping a naked blade. Estarion had never known anything
like it, or conceived of it.

Now he had it. Now he could imagine it. And he would not
give it up.

o0o

The empress’ palace was quiet, its guards alert, but
silent when he bade them be. If she was not awake, she would be soon: the
goddess’ servants made a rite of the last darkness as did the god’s priests of
the first light.

He advanced softly through the rooms, from latticed light to
latticed shadow, through curtains that strove to snare him in silk, past guards
who bowed if they were Asanian, or bent their heads if they were Varyani.

Women and eunuchs all. No men here. None but Estarion.

His body was bent on proving it. Again. And he had called
Korusan insatiable. He was like a man waked from too long a sleep: waked to
find himself wrapped in chains, but those chains were falling one by one.

He must rule in Asanion. There was no arguing it. But he
could not rule in Kundri’j Asan. It was stifling him, throttling him, robbing
him of wits and will and magery.

His mother knew. He had been shutting her out as he had done
to them all, all who could teach him to be wise.

The last door was shut and, he would notice later, barred. It
barely gave him pause. Locks had never mattered much between them, not when
there was such need as this.

The lamps burned low. He had night-eyes; dimness mattered little.
He saw the tumble of her hair on the pillows, black untouched with silver; the
curve of her cheek like the arc of a moon, the swell of her breast, the hand
that moved upon it, broad strong-fingered hand that was no woman’s that
Estarion had ever seen.

Estarion froze. Shadow distilled itself into shape. It would
tower over Estarion’s slenderness. What Korusan was to Estarion, Estarion was
to this: slight smooth-skinned stripling. But Korusan was stronger than he
looked. Estarion was weaker. Weak to spinelessness.

Iburan opened eyes unclouded by sleep, or by guilt, or
surprise. It was Estarion whose privates shriveled, whose cheeks burned.

“Fair morning to you,” said the man who had been his
foster-father. And, for what clearly was no single night, father in more than
name. Even, maybe—

Estarion’s hand flared to sudden pain. He gasped.

To have been such a fool. Such perfect, utter,
unconscionable fool. To have seen it full before his face, how they were always
together, always in accord, never separated for long or at great distance. To
have seen, and to have failed so utterly to see.

He wheeled.

“Starion!”

His mother’s voice. He shut his ears to it, to everything
but the truth.

He had been asleep. Now he was awake. He had been blind. Now
he could see. He raised hands to his eyes, his lion-eyes. One hand that was
dark. One that was burning gold. The agony of it was exquisite. It made him
laugh. It was that, or shriek aloud.

“
Starion
!”

His name pursued him, but it could not hold him. This truth
had shown him what he must do. He was free, and freed.

Korusan woke alone. He knew at once where he was, and what
defenses there could be if anyone struck to maim or to kill. There were more of
those than anyone could imagine who was not Olenyas, to see a slender youth
naked and forsaken in the emperor’s bed.

Not even a servant hovered. He regretted that somewhat. The
creature would have had to die for having looked on Korusan’s face.

Estarion would die. But not yet. Korusan had been delirious
with fever, but not so much as to have lost awareness of his purpose. To have
gone so far, so soon . . . no, he had not intended that. Nor
expected so easy a victory.

If victory it had been. His fingers flexed in the silk of
the coverlets, remembering a very different silk, with panther-strength
beneath, and the red heat of blood. No shrinking there, no priestly scruples,
and if no art, then instinct enough to make in time a master.

Korusan had meant to take the outlander by surprise. And so
he had. But the outlander had surprised him in turn. Not by being Asanian—gods
forbid, if there were gods—but by being himself.

Love was nothing that Korusan had time to know. Obsession he
had already, and no room in it for another. This, he had no name for.

“I have you now,” he said to the air with its memory of
Estarion’s face. “You belong to me. No one else shall take you.”

He smiled. No. No one else. Least of all a woman who could
bear Estarion a son.

The Masters would be most displeased. He was to slay this
upstart and any offspring he might sire, and claim the throne to which his
blood entitled him. To slay with love, to prevent the siring of offspring at
all . . . they would not understand. They were not the Lion’s
brood.

Only Estarion, whose eyes were lion-eyes—only Estarion could
comprehend it.

“I the darkness,” said Korusan, half in a dream, “you the
light. I the image of ivory, you of ebony. Uveryen-face, Avaryan-face, now the
one, now the other, matched, opposed, lovers and warriors . . .”
He laughed, although he wept. “You were to wake alone, I to escape before you
could snare me in your magics. How dared you claim the part that was mine?”

“Did I?”

Korusan started, surging to his knees. Estarion leaned
against the pillar of the bed, more like a panther than ever in his tautness
that masked itself as ease. His expression was calm to coldness; and that, in
fiery Estarion, was perilous.

“I thought you would be gone,” Estarion said.

“So should I have been.” Korusan composed himself with care,
sitting on his heels, hands on thighs. “You should never have let me come to
this.”

“What?” Estarion’s voice was sharp. “Guilt? Humiliation?”

“You.”

“I’m sorry.”

He was. Korusan bared teeth at him. “Do you regret me?”

Estarion looked down as if searching for a lie. Korusan
watched his fist clench and unclench beside his cheek on the carved whorl of
the pillar.

It was the right, the branded fist. He had pain there:
Korusan had seen it before, how he flexed it or, when he thought no one was
watching, rubbed it along his side or his thigh, or simply held it beside him,
knotted, trying not to tremble. It was a magic, the tales said, to keep Sun-blood
from waxing too proud.

When Estarion spoke, he spoke slowly, eyes fixed on his
feet. “I can’t regret you or anything that I’ve done with you. I suppose I
should. You’re so young, and I—”

“Oh, you are ancient.” The scorn in Korusan’s voice brought
the lion-eyes up, wide and improbably golden in that outland face. “You are
ages old, ages wise, an elder, a sage, a patriarch.” Korusan rose to face him.
“You have seen but a fifth part of the life that your god has granted you. I
have lived three parts of the four that have been given to me. I am old,
Sunlord. I am a brief breath’s span from the grave.”

“That’s not true.”

“That is most true.” And it was nothing that this of all men
should know; but Korusan could not stop himself. “My blood, the blood that gives
me this beauty you make so much of—it bears a price. We die young. Very young,
Sunlord.”

“Not that young,” said Estarion. “You’ll see forty. Fifty
even, if you’re fortunate.”