Arrows of the Sun (58 page)

They locked blades. Korusan’s eyes held fast on Estarion’s.
His wrist wavered a fraction. Estarion’s sword sprang free, flashed round,
halted a hair’s breadth from the boy’s throat.

Korusan smiled. “Yes,” he said, a mere breath of sound.
“Slay me now.”

Estarion let fall the sword and pulled him in. “Idiot
child,” he said. “I’ll never kill you. I’ll keep you alive till you grow old
with me.”

“That will never happen,” said Korusan against his breast.
Estarion bent his head over the yellow curls. They were damp with exertion,
scented with something faintly sweet: spices, or the ghosts of flowers. “You’re
growing tall,” he said. “Look, your shoulders are nigh as wide as mine.”

“Never,” said Korusan, “as tall as you.”

“That’s the northerner in me. I’m small among my kin, as you
are tall among yours. That makes us even.”

Korusan tilted his head back. “Do you love me?”

“You know I do.”

“Do I?” Korusan looked hard into his eyes. Estarion did not
look away. He had no shame to hide, no lie to dissemble. “Do I know that, my
lord? You are all the world to me. To you I am an afternoon’s diversion. If I
died, you would mourn, and raise your beautiful voice in the rite for me, and
lay me in my tomb; and then you would forget me.”

Estarion recoiled, wounded. “Do you think so little of me?”

“I think that you are greater than I. My heart has room only
for you. Yours contains a world.”

“You’re calling me a whore,” Estarion said, lightly he
thought, but Korusan lashed out with temper.

“Always you laugh at me. Always you reckon me a child. If I
were a man grown, would you cast me off as men do their boys who are boys no
longer?”

“Are you trying to make me hate you?” Estarion asked. “You
can’t do that.”

“No? Even if I told you that I have been sent to slay you?”

“I knew that already,” Estarion said. “You haven’t killed me
yet. I don’t think you will.”

“I will,” said Korusan. “I have sworn it. I hate you,
beloved. I scorn you. I spurn your name beneath my feet.”

Yet as he said it he clung with fever-passion, pulling
Estarion’s head down, kissing him until he gasped. Estarion laughed. “You’re
eating me alive.”

“I hate you,” said Korusan. “I hate you with all my heart. I
will slay you, and mount my throne above your grave.”

“I love you, too, dear lunatic,” said Estarion.

Korusan thrust back, furious. “You do not believe me! I am
your enemy. I am the Lion’s son. I was bred to destroy you.”

“And I am the Sun’s child,” Estarion said, “and the other
half of you. The throne is mine, and shall be till I die. Not even you can take
it from me.”

“Mad,” said Korusan in despair. “Mad, mad, mad.”

“Hush,” said Estarion. “Love me.”

He had not been certain that Korusan would obey. But the boy
was his, whatever the blood he claimed. He yielded as all men must, to the will
of the Sun’s son.

Sun and Greatmoon sat face to face on each horizon,
winter-gold and blood-red, the sun its wonted fiery disk, the moon a shield of
blood. One could, if one blurred one’s eyes just so, see how' the sun reached across
the arc of heaven to embrace the moon, god embracing goddess, light bending to
its will the power of the dark.

There was none of that here where no windows were.
Estarion’s power had taken flight of itself to look on sun and moon and open
sky; he dragged it back to the walls and the wards and the circle of watchful
faces. Vanyi had brought in everyone whom she thought she could trust, who had
power to sustain her Gate.

It was a surprising number. Her priests and priestesses, of
course, and some from Estarion’s Guard, and a handful from the guard that had
been his mother’s and must now be Haliya’s. But also the dark-robed priestesses
who had walked soft in his mother’s shadow, and a pair of nervous, darting-eyed
Asanians in Lord Shurichan’s livery.

One wore the robe of a tame mage. He looked even less at
ease than the other, who was a servant of rank, with a spark of magery that
burned low but steady.

When Estarion came to the circle, Vanyi had already begun to
draw them together, to make them one mingled skein of magic. His coming nearly
shattered it, but she seemed to have expected that; she pulled him into the
center with hand and power and held him there, willing him to be still.

He did not resist her. He had never stood beside her in a
great working, or even in a lesser one. He had never been mage enough to
venture it.

Here, closed in the circle, he could see with both eyes and
power, with no fear of losing the capacity for either. She had done as he had,
dressed for comfort rather than for state; like him she had chosen well-worn
riding garb and plaited her hair behind her, and worn no ornament but the
torque of her priesthood.

She seemed at ease in the midst of her magic, frowning
slightly, oblivious to him except as a force to be constrained lest it shatter
the circle. She was something more here than she was elsewhere, and something
less, ageless, sexless, almost pure power.

Strange then to realize who, and what, stood a little apart
from them though still within the circle. Sarevadin truly had no age, no sex;
if Vanyi seemed made of power, this was the truth of it. She was calm, neither
helping nor hindering, watching Vanyi with a flicker of amusement and a glimmer
of approbation, as a mother watches a child, or a master her pupil.

Estarion had had training, however Sarevadin disparaged it.
He knew that this should be one mage’s working, that the rest were there simply
to provide Vanyi with strength as she needed it. Therefore he did not do as he
longed to do, seize the power that Vanyi had gathered and shape it more
swiftly, and raise the Gate in his own time and not in hers, that seemed so
crawling slow.

He could have done it more quickly, and more enduringly,
too. But this was not his working. He lacked Vanyi’s affinity for Gates, her
sense of the moment when at last all the power was gathered, the wards at their
strongest, and no force beyond them could know, or knowing hinder.

That moment sang in his blood, when sun and moon poised in
the last movement of their dance, before the sun sank beneath the rim of the
world and the moon sprang into the sky. Greatmoon was a cry like trumpets, the
sun a ringing of bronze upon bronze.

Vanyi smote her hands together, and the earth shook. What
had been raw shapeless power rose up taller than a man and broader, looming
over the lone small woman who presumed to master it.

She raised her hands joined palm to palm. Estarion moved on
instinct, laid his branded hand upon her shoulder. In the same instant
Sarevadin did the same.

Vanyi buckled under the weight of twin suns, but she was
stronger than they. Slowly, as if she parted the leaves of a door, she spread
her hands apart.

Wind howled. It rocked her, but the others held her, and her
hands never wavered. Lightnings cracked. None of them touched her. The force of
the Gate plucked at her. She braced against it, even when it strove to coil
about her, grip her, suck her into itself.

Estarion’s hand was white pain, her shoulder under it rigid.
The Gate, half opened, was a cauldron of twisting, seething, boiling fires. It
blinded him; it roiled in the pit of his stomach. His throat burned with bile.

Her hands were at their farthest extent, flattened as if
against the posts of a door. Her will snapped out.
Help me!

Estarion raised his free hand, fighting against sudden, leaden
weight, and gripped what felt, as it looked, much like a doorpost. He set his
teeth and pushed.

It pushed back. It tempted him to let go her shoulder; but
that, he must not do. Holding to her with his right hand, with his left he
thrust the gate wider, past the stretch of her shorter arm.

When his arm was straight, trembling with strain, he glanced
at her. The Gatefires had died down a little. Her face was a shifting pattern
of lights and colors, but it was discernibly a face, tight-lipped, intent. “Now,”
she said.

He hesitated a fraction of a breath. Then he let go.

The Gate pulsed. His arm snapped up again, but stopped
half-extended.

Vanyi sagged briefly under his hand, leaning against him,
before she remembered to be prickly-proud. “It’s done,” she said. Her voice was
crisp. “Best we move quickly. This is a warded Gate, and therefore secret, but
even that may not be proof against the mages who first mastered Gates.”

The circle shifted. One of them, the priest Shaiyel, came
out of it to face Vanyi. “I’ll keep the watch. The others should rest. If you
need them later . . .”

“You’ll know.” She smiled. “You did well, all of you. Places
are prepared for you, with wards to keep you safe until we come back.”

Not
if
, Estarion
noticed.
Until
. She had her own degree
of arrogance, and no little penchant for acting the empress.

She waited until the last of the circle, but for Shaiyel,
had retreated slowly, with many glances back at the wards, at the Gate, at the
three who stood before it. Shaiyel withdrew to the edge of the wards, shaping
the words and the gesture that would seal them anew.

A shadow slipped past him. Two shadows. One, feline, flung
himself on Estarion, purring raucously. The other, robed but unveiled, turned a
defiant face upon him.

“Yelloweyes,” Estarion said, “you can’t—”

“Wherever you go,” said Korusan, “I go.”

“Even to my death?”

“There above all else.”

Estarion glanced at the women. Sarevadin had her blank blind
look, as if she had forgotten where she was, or when, or why. Vanyi seemed
merely interested; but that too was a mask.

“I don’t trust him at all,” she said, “but he belongs to
you. You bear the burden of him.”

Estarion wondered where she had learned to be so hard and
cold. Not, he prayed, from him.

He brushed the boy’s cheek with a finger. It was fevered as
it so often was, but the eyes were clear, unwavering. “Damn you,” Estarion
said. “If you kill me, you’ll die a grimmer death than you ever dealt me.”

“I would not wish to live if you were dead,” Korusan said.

Estarion looked from him to the Gate. Death was in it. He
saw the flicker and shift that was its shadow.

Sudden joy filled him; a fierce, reckless, heedless delight.
“Come, then,” he said. “Come with me and die.”

“Not,” said Vanyi, “if I can help it.”

Estarion barely heard her. He seized Korusan’s hand, caught
another—Sarevadin’s, fire-hot, fire-strong—and sprang.

“You blazing idiot!” Vanyi’s voice, stripped to raw panic.
Her hand, locking on his belt. They plunged into the maelstrom that was the
new-made Gate.

o0o

He was drowning. Stones dragged him down—Korusan,
Sarevadin, Vanyi, the ul-cub with claws sunk in his leg. He struck out with the
one leg that was free, and with arms—wings—something—some untrammeled part of
him that beat against the surging of the flood.

Wings, then, improbable as they were. And if he was winged,
then this was not sea but storm-wild air, this turmoil the boiling of clouds,
this tumult the thunder rolling in his blood. The winds that tore at him were
worldwinds, sweeping him through the chaos of the Gates.

Small things rode him, clinging like grim death. He roared
laughter, soared, swooped, soared again, riding the storm.

It was mighty, but only in resistance. It was terrible, but
only in battle. If he eased to it, yielded to its buffeting, it lost its power
to destroy. It bore up his wings. It carried him from cloud to cloud, each
cloud a world, each levin-bolt the fire of a Gate.

One of those who rode him crawled to his ear, shrieking into
it. He would not have heeded anything so shrill, but the words forced themselves
through the exultation of his flight. “Stop! Damn you, stop! You’ll lose us in
the worldwinds!”

He would not. But he had let himself forget why he flew
here.

While he paused, struck with remembrance, Vanyi flung a
bridle on him. He reared against it, but the bit was burning cold in his mouth,
the reins implacable, drawing him about. Like a rebellious stallion he fought
her; like a strong rider she turned his battle upon itself. And still the
worldwinds bore them all.

A new hand took the reins. A new voice spoke in his ear.
“Such a senel you make; and such wit, to gift yourself with wings. Tame
yourself now and fly.”

Sarevadin wore a new shape here, one that he had known in
portraits since he was a child: northern face, copper-bright hair. But whether
it was she or he, woman or man, he could not tell. Now it was the one, now the
other. The smile was the same in both, white and wild, and the bright dark
eyes.

“I know the way,” said the Twiceborn, shifting, woman to man
to woman. “Gates wrought me. Power is woven in me. I’ll bring us to the Heart
of the World.”

Not the Tower of the Sun? Estarion wondered. But he did not
speak. The bit forbade him, and the grip on the reins, and the legs clamped to
his sides, driving him on.

The storm was above him. Road rang beneath his feet—his
sharp cloven hooves, for he had willed this shape, and it was so. Worlds sped
past him, but the road was outside of them. Magic quivered in it, on it. Magic
rode him, nor could he turn aside.

He was pursued. How he knew it, at first he was not certain.
Then his ears, straining back, caught the sound of feet; his nostrils, flaring,
caught a scent like blood and burning.

“Mages,” said Sarevadin, settling briefly to woman’s shape.

And Vanyi behind her, holding to her, turning to peer past a
pair of golden-eyed shadows: “We’re warded against them.”

“Not here,” Sarevadin said. “Wards are no use on the
mageroad.” She—he—dug heels into Estarion’s sides. “On, young one. On!”