Arrows of the Sun (46 page)

“Had she been a man, Asanion would never have fallen.”

“Oh,” said the old one, the empress who had been, who should
have been dead, “it would have fallen, cubling, in blood and fire.”

“So may it yet.”

“In the end, yes. All things end. But not in this
generation. He’s a charming child, isn’t he? He looks like my father.”

“He looks like you.”

“So he does, though I was prettier, even when I walked in
man’s shape. The god meant me for a woman, I think, but changed his mind. For a
while.” She brushed Korusan’s cheek with her unbranded hand. The touch was like
bone sheathed in raw silk. “Do you love him, youngling?”

Korusan wrenched away. The terror of it was not that she was
dead and yet she lived. It was not even that she was the enemy, the one whom he
had been born to hate—more even than Estarion. It was that he felt the power of
her, the same power that was in her grandson’s grandson. To dwell in his blood.
To make herself a part of him.

Korusan was not her consort, not that great lord and
traitor. Hirel Uverias was dead. Korusan might wear his face, and bitter
penance that was, but he was no one but himself.

“You can’t deny the blood,” said Sarevadin.

He whirled away from her, back into the tent and the dimness
and the blessed quiet. He shuddered with cold that pierced to the bone. So it
was, fools and children said, when one spoke with the dead.

He lay again beside Estarion, pressed body to fire-warm
body. Estarion half-woke, smiled, gathered him in.

He struggled not to cling. Estarion was asleep again
already, his arms a wall against the dark.

It snowed by morning, but lightly, drifting from a leaden
sky. Estarion had them all up and riding by full light. A great restlessness
was on him. It made Vanyi’s skin twitch.

The heat of him made nothing of cold or snow. He was
everywhere, it seemed, with and without his yellow-eyed shadow: now in the lead
with Sidani, now riding back to speak with one or another of his escort, now
bringing up the rear.

Haliya had been avoiding him with remarkable subtlety,
managing always to be where he was not. Not that it was difficult. She needed
but to stay close by Iburan, and make herself small when Estarion rode past.

But on this raw grey morning, Iburan’s mare came up lame. He
fell back to the rear and the remounts, calling to the others to go on, he
would follow.

Vanyi would have stayed to guard him—and in great relief to
be freed from her other and more onerous duty. But he sent her away. He had
Shaiyel and Oromin and a pair of the empress’ warrior women, and he would tend
his mare before he sought out another that would carry his bulk. He did not
need Vanyi. Haliya, the leveling of his brows reminded her, did.

Haliya took what refuge she could among the empress’ women.
She was the only Asanian among them, and the smallest but for Vanyi. As
Estarion roved rearward for the dozenth time, he checked Umizan’s stride and
swung in beside her.

Vanyi roused with a start to find her mare sidling toward
Umizan with clear and present intent: ears flat, neck arched in the way mares
had when they came into heat. Umizan would have been more than senel if he had
been oblivious.

Estarion did not even see the mare or the woman who rode
her. His eyes were on Haliya. Haliya looked as serene as an Asanian woman could
in her veils and her modesty, but Vanyi caught the trapped-beast dart of her
glance.

Vanyi let slip a finger’s width of rein. It was enough for
the mare. She slashed at Umizan’s shoulder.

He veered, snorting and tossing his horns. Estarion cursed;
and met Vanyi’s eyes.

She would have wagered gold that, had he been as fair as
she, he would have blushed scarlet. “Good morning, sire,” she said.

Haliya’s gratitude was an intense annoyance. He was blind to
it. They were on either side of him now, hemming him in.

Vanyi was not going to make it easy for him, or for his lady,
either. She called her mare to order. It took time, and sufficient attention to
keep her eyes from fixing on his face as they were sorely tempted to do.

She was aware even so that he looked from one of them to the
other, and did battle with training against transparent cowardice. “My ladies,”
he said at length, stiffly. “Are you well?”

“Very well,” said Haliya with perfect steadiness. “And you?”

It went on so, an exquisite dance of Asanian courtesies. Vanyi
would not have believed Estarion capable of it.

Unless, she thought, he suspected something. He would not
get it out of Vanyi, and Haliya was bred to keep secrets. In the end, and none
too soon, he went back to the lead and the woman whose mysteries were nothing
to do with him.

Haliya breathed a long sigh and let herself slump briefly
against her senel’s neck. “Oh, gods,” she said, “I was so afraid he’d want me
tonight.”

“Not likely,” said Vanyi. “Not with me here, watching him
think about it.”

Haliya did not understand, but she knew enough of Vanyi now
to believe what she said of Estarion.

Haliya’s hand crept to her middle. It often did that of
late. Vanyi was not finding it easier, the longer it went on. This should have
been her child, her secret, her fear of being sent back to chains and safety.

Grimly she reined herself in. She had brought this pain on
herself. She would bear it as she must, with a priestess’ fortitude.

Simple to say. Unbearably difficult to do.

o0o

Korusan was wretchedly ill. It was the cold and the snow,
and the fever that would not go down for any will he laid on it.

He had managed to conceal his weakness from Estarion: rising
before the emperor, pulling on his garments and his weapons, mastering himself
enough to mount and ride. Estarion might have questioned him, but he took
refuge in silence.

When Estarion rode back to speak with his ladies, Korusan
did not follow. Chirai’s gaits were soft, his responses light. Folly to expect
that a beast would understand a man’s troubles, but the stallion seemed to be
moving more carefully, smoothing his paces to spare Korusan’s pain.

For there was pain. It was deep, in the bones, and it
gripped with blood-red claws.

He did not allow himself to be afraid. When the pain set
deep, the mages had told him, there would be nothing that they could do.

They had kept him alive his life long, nursed him through
all his sicknesses, warded him with their magics and mounted guard on his
bones. Now their protections were failing. He could feel them unraveling,
fraying like silk in a cord.

He should have been dead in infancy like his brothers, or
feeble of mind and body as his sisters had been. He was the last of his blood,
the last child of the Lion. And he was dying.

But not now. Not, fate willing, too soon to do what he must do.

He was aware always of the madwoman’s eyes on him.
Sarevadin. He would have dismissed it as a folly of night and madness and
newborn fever, but in the cold snowlight he knew that it was true. She even
moved like Estarion, sat her mount as he did, with light long-limbed grace,
held her head at that unmistakable, arrogant angle. How anyone could fail to
see, he did not know. It was as clear as lightning in the dark.

She was dead, and he was close enough. It was said that the
dead knew one another, even when they walked among the living. She tilted a
smile at him, sweet and wild.

It widened for Estarion as he rode back from the
excruciation of two ladies in one orbit. He returned it with ease that knew
only innocence. Blind, blessed fool, not to know his own dead kin.

o0o

Estarion could not keep still. People noticed it: he saw
how their eyes rolled on him, and how they looked at one another and sighed. He
tried to keep down the pace, for the seneldi’s sake if not for the riders’, but
Umizan was willing, and he was possessed of a bone-deep urgency.

The land pulled him southward, and stronger the farther he
rode. The canker that was in Ansavaar was distinct and persistent, but there
was another, closer, and it rankled deeper as the day went on.

When they halted to rest in a wood protected from wind and
blowing snow, Estarion called in the chief of the scouts. The man was Olenyas,
shadow-silent and shadow-quick. It vexed his Asanian propriety sorely to see
his emperor go down on one knee in unmarked snow, but Estarion was in no mood
to care for outland decencies.

He smoothed the snow with his hand and took up a stick, and
drew the shape of the land as his land-sense knew it. He marked the ache that
was in Ansavaar, and the closer, stronger one that was on the road he followed,
and looked up into the amber eyes. “What is this?” he asked, thrusting his
stick into the latter marking.

The Olenyas would never show surprise, but he paused before
he spoke. “You do not know, sire?”

Estarion bared his teeth. “If I did, would I ask?”

“That is a map, majesty,” the Olenyas said. “Or so it
seems.”

“Indeed,” said Estarion. “And this?”

“A city, sire. A day’s ride from here, perhaps more in the
snow. Pri’nai.”

Estarion regarded the stick propped upright in the snow.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, that is what they call it. Pri’nai.” He rose. “Can
we get there by evening?”

The Olenyas seemed to have decided that all foreigners were
mad, and Sunlords maddest of all. “We would be hard pressed to do it. And we
would leave some behind. Your priest—his mount—”

Iburan could fend for himself. But Estarion was not entirely
lost to sense. “No, we’d best not try to get there in the dark. And it will be
dark early tonight. We’ll camp as late as we can, and ride before sunup. We’ll
be in the city by midmorning.”

“Unless the snow worsens,” the Olenyas said. “Sire.”

“It won’t.” Estarion swept his foot across the map,
obliterating it. “It will clear by morning. We’ll have the sun with us when we
reach the gates. Then,” he said, “we shall see what waits for us in Pri’nai.”

The snow ended in the middle night, the clouds scattered
before a sudden wind. By dawn when Estarion was up and pacing, waiting for the
rest to rouse, it was bitter cold, the stars like frost in the paling sky.

The sunrise was brilliant but empty of warmth. It found them
on the road, hoofbeats muffled by the carpet of snow.

Estarion was barely aware of them. He knew that Korusan was
near him, that Sidani was beside him. He sensed the coming of another like a
shiver on the skin: Iburan on a tall Ianyn stallion, towering over Umizan.

Estarion would not glance at him. Even when he said,
“There’s trouble ahead.”

“The whole west is trouble,” said Sidani.

“Granted,” Iburan said equably, “but there’s worse here.”

“We’re riding under arms,” Estarion said, “and in battle
order.”

“So I noticed.” Iburan paused. “What drives you, Starion?”

“You need to ask, my lord of mages?”

“I need to ask,” Iburan said.

That was meant to shame Estarion into sense. It pricked his
temper, but it cleared his head a little. “Do you feel the land, Iburan?”

“I feel the trouble in it. Blood has flowed on it. Hate
rankles in it.”

“Yes,” Estarion said.

“And you think that you can stop it?”

“If not I, then who?”

Iburan was silent.

“You don’t think I’m arrogant?” Estarion asked.

“I think that you may be both more than anyone thought you,
and less.”

Estarion stiffened.

“Oh, he is that,” said Sidani. “Who trained him? You? You
didn’t do badly, as far as you went. But you didn’t make a Sunlord of him.”

They rounded on her, both alike and both astonished. The
irony of that did not escape Estarion.

She grinned at them. “Oh, he’s emperor enough, priest—and
more since he came to Asanion. He’s still not all that he could be.”

“He’s young,” Iburan said with a touch of sharpness. “He’ll
grow into it.”

“Will you still be saying that when he’s a greybeard?
Because he’ll be then as he is now.”

“And how is that?”

Estarion wondered if she enjoyed the spectacle as much as he
did. Iburan in a temper was a rare thing; Iburan struggling to keep from
roaring was a wonderful one.

She sat her evil-tempered gelding with grand insouciance and
laughed. “Oh, such outrage! Look at him, priest. Isn’t he a pretty thing? Fine
wits, fine mind, and a light foot in the dance. He knows how to make people
love him; and that without magery, because he assures himself that he has none.
Why is that, Iburan of Endros? What makes this prince of mages so eager to deny
the whole of himself?”

Estarion’s laughter died soon after she began. She could not
be saying what she said. She knew nothing of power, or of Sunlords, or of
anything but wild stories. It was too much like hope; too much like all his
prayers, before he had forgotten how to pray. “Woman, you are a fool. I have no
power worth the name, nor ever shall again.”

She waved him to silence. He had obeyed before he thought,
for pure startlement.

Iburan answered her slowly, as if Estarion had never spoken:
that too a goad to his temper. “He slew with power. He was slow to recover.”

“So simple,” she said. “So easy an escape. If you failed, or
if you left his training half done—why then, it was never your fault, but his.”

“We taught him all that we knew,” Iburan said. Growling it.
“And who are you, old woman, to cast reproach on me?”

“I am no one,” said Sidani. “No one reproaches you. But one
might wonder if you knew what you were doing. He was—he is—no common mageborn
child. And yet you raised him as one.”

“How else was I to raise him?”

“As his father’s son.”

“So,” grated Iburan, “we did.”

“Has he entered the Tower in Endros?”

Iburan looked ready to spit at her. “No one enters that
Tower.”