Arrows of the Sun (5 page)

“You’re besotted,” he said. But a little of the tautness was
gone. Not all, yet enough that he could lie down, and let her hold him, and be
soothed into something resembling peace.

o0o

Dark. Stars. Eyes. Teeth that gleamed in the blackness.
Maws opened wide, gaping to devour.

“Vanyi!” "

She clutched at warm solidity. Estarion’s voice thrummed out
of it, deeper always than one expected, with a singer’s purity. She clung as
much to the voice as to the body, gulping air. He stroked the rigid line of her
back. “Hush, love. Hush.”

She pulled free. She was laughing, hiccoughing. “No! That’s
my part. You’re the one with nightmares.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “one has to share.” He was barely
smiling. His eyes were as dark as lion-eyes could be, all pupil, and about it
the thin rim of gold.

She burrowed into the warmth of him. The dream was fading in
his brightness, the horror shrinking to insignificance. She had forgotten to
eat after her vigil in the temple, that was all, and the oddity in the Gate had
come back to haunt her empty stomach. No mage alive knew all the secrets of
Gates. Maybe the Guild had, that in its prime had made them and used them and
ruled them with fabled power.

The Guild was long since fallen. Vanyi was not supposed to
regret that, or to wish that it had survived long enough to teach her what she
yearned to know, of Gates, of magic, of the worlds beyond the world. But it was
gone; only memory remained, embodied in the Gates.

Pride had laid it low. It had set empire against empire,
Keruvarion against Asanion, striving to fell them both and set a puppet of its
own making upon the doubled throne. But the puppet it had made had turned
against it—and, wise cruelty, done nothing to destroy the Guild. Only let it be
known what the Guild had done and intended, and offered a newer way to those
who would be mages: the priesthood of god or goddess, and training in the
temples of Sun or Dark. The Guild had withered, its twinned pairs of mages dead
or lost. The robes that once had won such awe, lightmage grey and darkmage
violet, were all faded, gone to the dim no-color of hedge-witches and hired
sorcerers.

But the Gates endured. That one of them had gone briefly
strange—it meant nothing. The priest who came to relieve Vanyi had said as
much; and he was a mage and a master. She was initiate merely, priestess on
Journey, mage in training. She was making nightmares of hunger and
sleeplessness and a lover who might be taken from her.

Estarion did not know of this, nor would he. He had troubles
enough.

She attacked him suddenly with kisses. That made him laugh,
reluctant at first, then more freely.

Yes, she thought. Laughter drove away the dark. Laughter,
and love; and that they had in plenty.

The City of the Sun lay in the arms of deep-running
Suvien, where the river curved round a great prow of crag. To north and east
the walls rose sheer. Southward they eased to a long level of windswept land
and, half a day’s journey down a smooth straight road, the white gates of its
mother and its servant, Han-Gilen of the princes.

Westward was no wall but the river and the quays of ships
and, black to its white beauty, that crag from which the city took its name,
Endros Avaryan, Throne of the Sun.

The sunrise bank teemed with men and beasts and boats. On
the sunset side nothing walked, and no bird flew. The crag stood alone, dark
against the sky, and on its crown a Tower.

No window broke that wall, no gate marred its smoothness.
Blind, eyeless, doorless, it clawed its way toward heaven.

Estarion stood atop the highest tower of his palace, on the
northern promontory of his city, and glared across the river. He was nearly
level with the summit of the black Tower, with the globe of crystal that,
catching the sun, blazed blinding. But he was the Sun’s heir: he could look
unflinching on the face of his forefather. This, mere magewrought crystal,
barely narrowed his eyes.

That whole Tower was a work of three mages conjoined, Sunborn
king and Gileni empress and northern warrior, and they had wrought it in a
night. “And why?” Estarion asked aloud. “Except to keep men off the crag, since
any man who walked there must come down mad.”

The cat Ulyai yawned vastly and stretched. She propped her
forepaws on the parapet, leaning into Estarion. He wrapped an arm about her
neck. “Have you ever seen a more useless braggart thing? Caves like lacework
through that whole great rock, and tombs enough for a thousand years of kings,
and he witches a Tower on top of it. And no way in or out, either, unless
there’s a Gate somewhere, or a key I haven’t found.”

Ulyai was not interested in the Tower across the river.
There were ringdoves in the lower reaches of this lesser tower; she watched
them with fierce intentness.

Estarion sighed. She would not care either that the Sunborn
had left his bones there, and a story that he lacked the grace to die before he
did it, but had himself ensorceled into sleep, because his empire was won, and
there were no more battles to fight. He would rise again, the talespinners
said, when the god called him back to his wars.

“It’s only a story,” Estarion said. “Or if it’s true, it’s
so far away it doesn’t matter. I’m all the Sun-blood there is, until I get
myself an heir. I’m all the emperor this world will have.” He shivered in the
bright sunlight. “There’s no Tower in Kundri’j Asan. He never came there, did
the Sunborn. They stopped him before he marched so far. He was a madman, they
say. I say he was saner than anyone else who came near him. He hated Asanion
with all his heart.”

“He was a fool,” his mother said behind him.

He did not turn to face her. He had been aware of her
coming, but he had chosen to take no notice.

He had not spoken to her since the day of his enthronement,
nor had she sought him out. A pleasant enough arrangement, he had been
thinking.

“An emperor cannot hate the full half of his empire,” she
said. “Not and remain emperor.”

“Is that what they hope for?” he asked, light, barely
bitter. “That I’ll hate them so much, I let them go of my own free will?”

“Maybe,” she said.

His lips stretched back from his teeth. “Maybe I should do
it, then. Give up Asanion. Leave it to rot in peace.”

“It will hardly do that. More likely it will rise up and
overwhelm the east, and rule us as it ruled us long ago, under an iron heel.”

Estarion spun to face her. “Listen to yourself! Even you
think of
us
and
them
. It’s we in Keruvarion, they in Asanion. There’s never been
one empire. There never will be. Only irreconcilable opposites.”

“If you think so,” she said calmly, “you make it so. You
have that power, Meruvan Estarion.”

“I have too much power. Everyone has always said that. Too
much power was never enough to save my father. Only to twist me and break me,
and mend me awry.” He laughed at her frown: laughter that tore his throat.
“Yes, that’s wallowing! I wallow extraordinarily well.”

“You are too clever by half,” his mother said. She was not
smiling.

There was a silence. They had quarreled before—they could
hardly help it: he had her temper, and that was as quick as her wits. But never
for so long. Never for so much.

He would not be the one to end this. She asked of him what
she had not had the strength to demand of herself. She could hardly fault him
for seeing the flaw in it.

After a while she spoke, shaping the words carefully, as she
did when she was holding anger at bay. “I am told that I am not to accompany
you to Asanion. That I remain as regent in Keruvarion.”

“There is a regent in Asanion,” he said with equal care, but
no more anger than she deserved.

“An Asanian,” she said. “A great lord and prince, and loyal
to the Blood of the Lion. But Asanian.”

“Wasn’t it you who said that I have to learn to face the
rest of my empire?”

“The scars are deep. They will not heal in a day.”

“Now you say it,” he said.

“I have never failed to know it.” She paused for breath,
perhaps to nerve herself, perhaps simply to let him simmer. “Will you take me
with you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her. He loved her, he could hardly deny that.
But love and hate were womb-kin. Someone had said that once, long ago. One of
his ancestors, very likely. It was something they would understand.

“So,” he said, pitching his voice light, easy, purposely
exasperating. “You would come, then? And hold my hand? And pimp for me in the
harems of the Golden Empire?”

She did not answer that. “The Red Prince is wise, and the
people love him. He would do well as regent in your absence.”

“Hal is barely older than I am.”

“And you are emperor.”

He accorded her a swordsman’s salute. “Well struck! And suppose
he forgives me for leaving him behind—what then, Mother? Do you think I’m not
to be trusted, where I’m going?”

“I think that you will need me. Even,” she said, “if you
hate me for it.”

She stood as straight as ever, her face as still, its beauty
unmarred. But she was fighting back tears. He felt them burning in his own
eyes.

Tricks. She was a master of woman-sleights as of the wiles
of courts. And she had magery: she wielded it on him, and no matter the cost to
his aching head.

He was softening. Fool that he was. He knew what she was
doing; knew what she would do if she rode with him, if she had leisure to work
on him through the long leagues to Asanion.

Maybe he needed the challenge. And it was true enough: he
would need her wits, and her skill in bending men’s wills. Especially in
Asanion, where deception was a game of princes, and murder their pastime.

“Come, then,” he said, “and do as you please. What I do, in
the end, I’ll do because I will it. And for no other reason.”

“Have you ever done otherwise?” she asked.

She would not lock stares. She was too canny for that. She
set a kiss on his brow and left him there. The scent of her lingered for a long
while after she was gone.

o0o

It was nearer nine days than three before the court could
be ready for the long road into Asanion. Even at that, the chamberlains were
beside themselves with the haste of it all.

“Talk to the sergeants,” Estarion said to the chief of them.
“They can move an army of twenty thousand inside of a day, and you can’t move a
court of twenty score in a tenday?”

Nuryan fluttered and squawked. Estarion did not trouble to
listen. “I’m going,” he said. “In the morning. Anyone who can ride, will ride.
Anyone who is late, is late.”

“
Sire
!” his
chamberlain shrieked. “The baggage—the wagons—your wardrobe—”

Estarion said a word both brief and vulgar. It shocked
Nuryan into silence. “I’ll wear what I can carry. There are cloth merchants in
Asanion, no? And tailors. And, I trust, jewelers and hatters and cobblers—”

“An emperor wears no shoes in his palace.” Nuryan truly was
distraught: he had interrupted his emperor.

“He rides, surely? And walks elsewhere?”

“No,” said Nuryan, “sire. He never leaves his palace.”

So Nuryan might think. Estarion was of another mind; but
that was another battle. “He has to get to his palace,” he said. “And so he
shall. I ride in the morning. The court may follow as it will.”

o0o

The emperor rode out on a fine bright morning, with the
sun a dazzle in a flawless sky, and a brisk wind to set his banners flying. The
slow and the litter-borne and the baggage would follow when they chose. These
were the swift and the mounted. The emperor’s guard in its full ranks, blazing
in scarlet and gold; the empress’ guard in gold and green; a battalion of high
ones, lords and ladies both, and guards and grooms and servants; and a little
company of priests and priestesses, bearing no emblem, affecting no great
estate, but each marked by the torque at the throat and the plait down the
back. Vanyi was with them, a white face amid the black and brown and gold.

Estarion rode at their head. His senel was a black of the
Mad One’s line, blue-eyed, dagger-horned, with a star on his forehead; young
enough to be a little silly with all the tumult, but wise enough to keep his
temper in hand.

Umizan snorted at Ulyai who paced beside him, but not in
fear: he had been foaled among the royal cats. She snarled amiably at him and
paced just out of reach of the sharp cloven hooves, queenly oblivious to the
crowds that lined the road. All of Endros seemed to have streamed outside the
walls to watch their emperor ride away.

Their cheering rolled over him. It was heartfelt, but there
was darkness in it. They were losing him to the west. Not forever, that he had
vowed to them, swearing it by the Tower on its crag. But the last emperor who
had gone to Asanion had sworn that same vow; and he had come back, but never
living.

His bones lay under the Tower. Estarion could see it beyond
the city’s white walls: black crag, black horns, crown of crystal that caught
the sun’s light. He saluted it, flinging up his burning hand. The sun, escaping
a wisp of cloud, struck the crystal and blazed.

Estarion laughed at the glare of it. “Until I return,” he
said, “watch well, old bones. Look after my city.”

“You take that one too lightly,” said Iburan.

Estarion slanted a glance at the priest, who had ridden up
through the line and matched his mare’s pace to black Umizan’s. He was not
smiling. “There is a power there,” he said, “that would make a god tremble.”

“Isn’t that a heresy?” asked Estarion, bowing to the crowd,
dazzling them with his white smile, giving Umizan leave to dance and flag his
tasseled tail.

Iburan said nothing. But neither did he leave Estarion’s
side.

The people followed them far out of the city, mounted and
afoot, calling Estarion’s name. At length even the most determined of them grew
weary or felt the distance of their city and the sun’s descent into the alien
west.