Arrows of the Sun (51 page)

The empress was dead. Estarion was worse than that, maybe.
Iburan was alive, half kneeling, half sitting with the empress’ body in his
arms. But as Vanyi came down off the scaffold, he sighed and slid sidewise. She
braced herself against the weight of him, and gasped. “You’re hurt!”

“Assassins’ knives,” he said calmly, “as we know too well,
are poisoned. Not that that need have stopped me, you understand, but it slowed
me when I should have shielded. Do you know what I was to him? A stinging fly.
He plucked the wings from me and let me fall.”

“No,” said Vanyi.

But that was her tongue, being a fool. She hardly needed
power to know that his magery was gone. He was all dulled for lack of it, his
great body shrunken. The eyes he raised to her were wry. “I always did misjudge
him,” he said. “Here I thought I could stop him, or at least slow him down, and
he never even knew I tried. You’re going to have your hands full with him,
Vanyi.”

“I?” She thrust the thought away. “I’m not anyone to deal
with a Sunlord gone mad.”

“Who else is there?”

“Oromin,” she answered promptly. “Shaiyel.”

“No,” said Iburan. He sighed. It bubbled; he coughed. “They
don’t know—they can’t master him. You have the power. No one—else—”

He coughed again, a froth of bright blood, struggling to say
more, all that there had been no time to say. That she had more magery than she
would ever admit. That he had meant her to follow him—but not now. Not so soon.
Not until he was ancient and august and tired, and she was fit to take his
place.

“No,” she said. But he only smiled, damn him; and the life
pouring out of him as she watched.

She must not weep, nor could she linger. She set the
burliest of Estarion’s northerners to work fashioning a litter, and the rest to
taking up the dead and clearing away the flotsam of the battle.

Iburan might have called that taking his place. She called
it plain common sense. Someone had to make order of this chaos. It had nothing
at all to do with magic, or with mastering emperors.

o0o

Somewhere in the midst of it Lord Shurichan appeared.
There was not a mark on his armor, not a drop of blood on his prettily drawn
sword. He had ambitions, Vanyi saw, to take matters in hand. He was the only
great one left standing, and the only man of rank in that place.

Just as he drew breath to issue orders, she set herself in
front of him. She was markedly smaller than he was, and markedly female, but he
could hardly ignore the hand that plucked his sword from him and returned it to
its sheath, or the voice that said with acid clarity, “My lord Shurichan. How
convenient that you should appear. I was just about to send a messenger to
inform you that the battle is over; it’s safe to come out.”

His mouth was open. He shut it.

“I commend your prudence,” Vanyi said, “and I forbear to
remark that a lord of a province who fails to stand at his emperor’s back when
that emperor is threatened might find his loyalty called into question. You
were taking the road of greater sense, I presume, and trusting to your men—who
are as brave as a lord can wish for, and as faithful in defense—to guard his
majesty. Since of course if he emerged alive, you would be present to aid him
in your fullest capacity; and if he should, alas, fail to survive the
consequences of his rashness, why then there would still be a lord in Ansavaar,
and the empire’s unity would be preserved.”

His face had gone crimson as she spoke; now it was vaguely
green. She smiled sweetly. “Set your mind at rest, my lord. Everything has been
seen to, and at no cost to your comfort. Surely now you are weary from so much
excitement; you should rest. These gentlemen will assist you to your rooms.”

A company of Estarion’s Varyani took station about him. The
smallest topped him by a head.

He looked, she thought, like a gaffed fish. By the time he
reached his chambers he would be bellowing; but that was no concern of hers. If
Estarion came out of this alive, he would soothe the man’s ruffled feathers. If
he did not, then Vanyi would fret about it when she came to it. Estarion dead
and his heir nine cycles in the womb, and no surety that the child would live
to be born—

She would not think of that. Shock and the suddenness of
attack kept order now, but once it had faded, there would be war.

Not if she could help it. She straightened her back and set
her jaw and did what she had to do.

o0o

There was an ungodly lot of it, and no sleep until it was
done. Somewhere amid the endless hours—it was dark beyond the window of the
room in which she had taken station, but how long it had been so, she did not
remember—some of Estarion’s Guard came to her.

Shaiyel was there. He had come ostensibly to tell her that
Iburan lived still, but she could have ascertained that with a flick of magery.
He thought to guard her; when the guardsmen entered, he was working his subtle
western way round to coaxing her to sleep.

They were the young hellions she had always liked best, with
redheaded Alidan in front. He looked tired and unwontedly grim, his fire banked
for once, but no less fierce for that. He had a captive, a figure in soiled and
bloodstained white, chained, gagged, and stumbling. The man behind him dragged
another such. They flung both at Vanyi’s feet.

The assassins lay unmoving, save that one of them twitched
as he struck the tiled floor. Alidan kicked him. He jerked and went still.

“Do you need to be quite so emphatic?” Vanyi asked.

“With these,” Alidan said, all but spitting, “yes.” He
hauled the man onto his back.

Man, no. The hair was cropped, the breasts were small, but
the face was too fine even for a boy’s. The robe was torn. There was another
under it, or a shift, neither blue nor purple but somewhere between. And the
other, who was male, wore grey beneath the white.

Vanyi drew a long slow breath. She did not need the touch of
power on minds that had been stripped naked and left to find their way
unwarded; she did not need to sense here two of those who had threatened
Estarion with magecraft. The robes were proof enough.

“Guildmages,” she said. “They were to rise up in triumph, I
suppose, and cast off their disguises, and proclaim the Guild’s return.”

The man was nigh dead; his life ebbed low. The woman opened
bruised and swelling eyes. She did not speak. Her mind offered nothing but
contempt.

“Half a mage I may be,” Vanyi said, “but I’m more now than
you. Is there another invasion coming? Should we look to be besieged?”

The answer flickered in the shallows of the ruined power,
tangled in a weed-growth of nonsense. Vanyi swooped to pluck it out.

It fled darting-swift. She made a hedge of her power’s
fingers, and snapped it shut.

On nothing.

The woman’s eyes stared up. Life faded from them; but even
in death they gleamed with mockery.

The other was dead and growing cold. Vanyi straightened,
swallowing bile. “See if you can find more of these. And quickly, before
they’re dead, too.”

“There are no more,” Alidan said. He sounded more angry than
regretful. “These were the only two who lived. They waited, I think. To mock
you.”

“They were fools,” she said. “Shaiyel, go with these men.
Find what there is to find.”

He was willing, but he hesitated. “And these?”

Her shoulders ached with keeping them level, her neck with
holding up her head. “Search them. Then dispose of them.”

There was nothing to find, of course. Their minds were wiped
clean. That was a mage’s trick, to leave no trace of themselves behind, even in
the helplessness of death.

But she had learned enough. She had proof that the Guild yet
lived, and ways, maybe, to track them down.

They had built a Gate. It was fallen now—Estarion had seen
to that. But she had memory of how it had come, and how it had stood, and how
it had broken.

She needed time, which she did not have, and leisure, which
was forbidden her, but she would search out the truth. She swore a vow on it,
alone in the dark before dawn, with the weight of empires on her shoulders, and
the emperor clinging to life in a guarded chamber.

o0o

Haliya was with him. Vanyi had been aware of that from the
first: how the little idiot crept through all the tumult, melted the guards
with tears, and established herself at his bedside. She had not done anything
foolhardy, and she did not make herself a nuisance. Now and then she bathed his
brow, as if that little could bring down the fever that raged in him, or tried
to coax water down his throat.

She was harmless enough where she was. If anyone ventured
the chamber, he would be dead before he touched either, emperor or empress who
would be. And if Estarion woke, he would not threaten her, Vanyi did not think.
Even if he woke raging.

Vanyi need not approach him while Haliya was there. It was
cowardice, she knew that, but she clung to it.

Of Korusan there was no sign. He had been with Estarion in
the beginning. Now the Olenyai who stood guard were all strangers.

Vanyi might have pursued that, but her solitude was broken.
There were disputes for her to settle, lordlings to placate, merchants of the
city to soothe. All of them repeated the rumor that the emperor was dead, that
he must be seen to be alive or they could not answer for the consequences. She
put them off as best she could, but there were more behind them, always more,
and no rest to be had.

And Estarion lived so his life long. Vanyi thanked the god
that she was not born to it; that she could walk away from it. Soon. When there
was someone to take the burden from her.

Peace was blessed for half of an eternity, but then, in
the way of things, it began to pall. Estarion knew first a glimmer of
restlessness, an ache that might have been boredom. The dark that had been so
sweet now seemed an unrelieved monotony. A single star, even the flicker of a
candle, would vex less than this endless night.

He stretched, flexed. The darkness yielded, but still it
conceived no light.

And should he wait for it?
Light
, he said, thought, willed. And there was light. One star,
then another, then another. Once begun, they gave birth to one another, a
blooming of stars like nightlilies in the fields beneath Mount Avaryan. All
creation was stars, and all dark was turned to light.

And it was not enough. He floated in a sea of stars upon the
breast of Mother Night, and it was only light, and he was only he, naked
fish-sleek self whose heart was fire.

Beyond light, beyond dark—what was there, what could there
be? All that was not light was dark; all that was not dark was light. And where
they met, they wrought a wonder: a miracle of living flesh.

He was flesh. He lived. He breathed: great bellows-roaring;
drumbeat of the blood along the white tracks of the bones. He counted each one:
all those that were whole, the arm that had been broken long ago and set just
perceptibly out of true, the ribs cracked and cracked again but healed the
stronger for it.

He traced their curve with fingers of the soul. And there,
see, the chalice of the skull, a goblet full of fire, light within light, flame
within flame, lightnings leaping from promontory to promontory. The Sun itself
was in it, in what had been mere mortal brain.

Even that was insufficient. There was world beyond this
world of the self. He opened his eyes to it.

And screamed.

“Hush, dear lord, hush. Hush.”

The hands on him were agony, the voice a dagger in his
skull. Everything—everything-—

“Too much!
Too much
!”

“Hush,” said the other. The Other. The half that was
himself, but was outside himself. He struck it away; he clung with the strength
of terror, till the creaking of bones, soft awful sound, brought him somewhat
to his senses.

Korusan’s face of flesh was a blur. Within was both darkness
and flame, and pain, such pain—

“Peace,” said the soft cool voice. Soft like velvet on the
skin; cool like water, but with still the edge of agony.

Estarion lay gasping in his arms. The world was itself
again, or near enough. It was Korusan who made it so, Korusan in his black
robes with his veils laid aside.

Gently—Estarion would not have said cautiously—he laid his hand
on Estarion’s cheek. “My lord,” he said.

Estarion closed his eyes and let that touch hold him to his
body. “Oh, unmerciful gods.”

“You wished to die?”

Estarion’s eyes snapped open. “Better if I had!”

“My lord—”

Estarion spoke much more quietly, much more carefully. “I
have the great-grandmother of headaches.”

“That would indeed,” Korusan said dryly, “make a man wish
himself dead.”

“How much wine did I—” Estarion broke off. “No. Oh, gods. I
didn’t dream it, did I? She’s dead. My mother is dead.”

“She is dead,” said Korusan.

The storm of weeping swept over him, battered him, left him
abandoned.

Korusan held him through all of it, saying nothing. When
even the dregs of it were gone, and Estarion lay exhausted, Korusan lowered his
head and kissed him softly.

It was not meant for seduction. It was comfort; warmth of
living flesh before the cold of the dead.

Korusan straightened. His cheeks were flushed, but his eyes
were somber.

“Tell me,” Estarion said. “Tell me everything.”

Korusan frowned. Estarion saw himself in the boy’s eyes:
waked screaming from a sleep like death, shaken still, sweat-sodden, grey about
the lips; but grim, and clearheaded enough, for the moment.

Korusan told him. Merian dead. Iburan alive but like to
die—the mages sustained him with their magic, but he was failing. Assassins
dead and burned; two mages caught, but dead before they could be questioned.