Arrows of the Sun (63 page)

His heart shrank from facing Asanion again. Even Haliya,
even his ladies in Kundri’j—he was duty to them, no more. Asanion would never
be his, would never learn to love an outland conqueror.

He knelt beside Korusan’s body. He had straightened it when
he laid it down, so that the head did not hang awry on its broken neck.

The face was quieter than it had ever been in life. Not at
peace, no. Peace was alien to emperors, or to princes of the Lion’s brood.

Estarion was the last of that blood, but for the child in
Haliya’s womb: he with his dark hands, his alien face. He was the Son of the
Lion.

He kissed the cold lips. “I loved you,” he said. “Not
enough. Not as you loved me. No one can love like that and live. But as a
Sunlord can love—so I loved you.” He lifted the body, cradling it. Already it
had begun to stiffen.

He could not lay it on the bier. It was not fitting. Yet he
did not wish to take it from the Tower.

His power was in him, filling him like wine in a cup. It flexed
a tendril of itself.

The Tower responded. Where had been blank luminous wall, a
niche stood open, like the tombs of the kings in the crag below. Estarion laid
Korusan in it. It fit him precisely.

As Estarion drew back, the wall closed again. Through it as
in a glass he could see the shadow that had been his lover, his enemy, his
kinsman.

He kissed his burning palm and laid it against the stone. He
did not speak. All that he could say was said. There was nothing left but
silence.

o0o

They were waiting still, Olenyai and mages beyond the
Gate, Vanyi and the cat on this side of it.

He spoke to the Olenyai. “Let your prisoners go.”

The Olenyai did not wish to obey, but he was their emperor.
The mages responded variously to freedom. Some stood still, as if they did not
dare to move. Some shook themselves like ruffled birds. A few stepped apart
from their erstwhile jailers and faced Estarion through the Gate. Those would
be the strongest of them, or the most determined in rebellion.

“The battle is mine,” he said to them.

“But the war may not be,” said a woman in grey. Her
shadow-brother stood behind her, hands on her shoulders, and fixed Estarion
with a cold stare.

He gave them fire-heat. “You have a custom, yes? Whoever
defeats your master in battle of magecraft becomes master in his stead.”

The lightmage was not pleased to answer, but answer she did.
“That is so.”

“Then by your law,” said Estarion, sweeping his hand toward
Vanyi, “this woman is your master.”

Vanyi opened her mouth. The lightmage spoke before she could
begin. “That is none of ours. She belongs to the temple.”

“She is a mage,” said Estarion, “and a master of Gates.”

“Estarion—” said Vanyi. She sounded as if she could not
decide whether to kill him quickly or let him die slowly, in the most exquisite
agony she could devise.

“She defeated your master in combat,” Estarion said to the
mages. “Fair, I would hardly call it, but there is no question as to the
victor.”

Some of the mages looked as if they would have argued, but
the lightmage, who seemed to hold rank among them, silenced them with a slash
of the hand. “What are you proposing, Sunlord?”

Another merchant, this one, and settling in to haggle. He
was in no mood to indulge her. “This is your trial, mage. I judge you guilty.
You have earned death, but I am weary of killing. I give you all to this
priestess-mage. Your Guild is hers, to break or to keep. But if she breaks it,
then you die.”

“And if I won’t kill them?” Vanyi demanded.

“Then I will.” There was iron in his voice, the taste of it
in his throat like blood. “Let them live, and be master of them. Refuse to
master them, and they die.”

She looked long at him, studying him as if he were a
stranger.

Maybe he was. He was not the fragile young thing that had
come to this place. He was not whole, either, not surely, not yet. But he was
beginning to be what he was born to be: mage, priest, emperor.

“If I do this,” she said, “you’ll lose all hope of making me
your empress.”

His belly knotted. He had been going to command her in that,
too; to name her empress in despite of the woman in Pri’nai. No one else was
more fit to rule.

“Haliya might surprise you,” she said, reading his thoughts
as she always could, even when he was shielded; as he had been able to read
hers even when he had no power to speak of.

It was not magery. It was love.

“Yes, I love you,” she said. “I always have. I always will.”

“And your price is the Guild—the deaths of its mages?”

She flinched. He had not meant to say that. It had come out
of him, out of the high cold thing that he was becoming, here in the Tower of
his fathers.

She seized his hands. “You won’t let them live? Even for
me?”

He looked down at her. He never remembered how small she
was. Not much taller than Haliya, but tall in the soul, and great in power.
Very great. She made so little of it that even mages failed to see the truth.

“You don’t want me,” he said, reading it in the eyes that
lifted to meet his. “Not except for yourself; not for what I am or the titles I
bear. You were never made for empire. But power and the Gates—there you are
mistress and queen.”

“Not queen,” she said.

“No,” he said. “But Master of the Guild, yes. It won’t be
easy. There are more mages, maybe, than any of us imagines. I wager you’ll find
them on all the worlds of the Gates, or near enough. And they’re mostly
Asanians. They hate foreigners, and they despise the lowborn.”

She was shaking as if with cold. She was no fool, to be
fearless of what he wished on her.

Wished, no. He wanted her at his side, sharing his throne,
his bed, his heart.

Wisdom was a bitter thing.

“If you don’t lead them,” he said, “and keep them rigidly in
hand, they have to die. I can’t trust them. They contrived the death of my
father; they nearly killed me. I won’t leave them free to destroy my son.”

He had startled the mages and brought the Olenyai quivering
to attention. He would have laughed, if he had remembered how.

Vanyi took no notice. Her eyes were full of tears, but they
were as hard as his own, and as clear. “You’ve changed,” she said.

“For the worse, I’m sure.” She caught his irony; her lips
twitched. She still held his hands. He turned them to clasp hers. “I envy you.
I have my empire, and my power is mine again. You have the high magic. The
Gates are yours, and all the worlds they command.”

“If I can master them.”

“You doubt it?”

Her lip curled. “I’m not a prince’s get. I don’t know what I
can do until I do it.”

“Nor do I,” he said, “and I’m a Sunlord’s get.”

“You don’t leave me much choice, do you? Empress or
Guildmaster. What if I want to be a simple priestess on Journey?”

“The mages die,” he said.

She drew her breath in sharply. “And you? What are you going
to do? Hide in Endros? Hope your troubles go away?”

She thought she had him. It was fair, he supposed. “I . . .
thought I might rest. For a while.”

“While your empire falls about your ears? That’s wise, yes.”

“Of course,” he said, “before I can rest, there’s a little
matter of civil war. And a pair of empires that must be one. And two cities
that will submit to the mastery of another that is neither Asanian nor Varyani,
but both. Once that’s built, then I’ll sleep for a cycle, and go hunting for a
season, and forget that I was ever born to rule this monstrosity of an empire.”

She gaped. She would never forgive him, he thought, for
mocking her. Then she laughed.

There was pain in it, but it was real enough for that.
“Confess, Estarion. You didn’t know you’d say that until you said it.”

“I didn’t,” he said.

“We know each other well,” she said. She let go his hands,
ran hers up his arms, stroking them, as if she could not help herself. “If I
take the Guild, you’ve lost me. I won’t come to your bed. I won’t be your
lover. What I will be . . . I’ll be your friend, Meruvan
Estarion, but not your servant. I’ll serve you as I can, as the needs of the
Guild allow. But if I see that your commands will serve the Guild ill, I’ll
oppose you.”

“Even to death?” he asked her.

“If I must.”

Her hands rose to his shoulders, crossed his breast, came to
rest over his heart. It was beating hard. “I can’t promise you,” he said, “that
I’ll always do what’s best for the Guild. If breaking the Guild will serve my
empire, I’ll do it. Even if it kills you.”

She bowed her head, raised it again. This was no easier for
her than it was for him. But she had courage at least to match his, and will as
strong. She took his face in her hands, pulled it down and kissed him. “For
remembrance,” she said.

If he had had tears left, he would have wept. She let him
go, turned, walked toward the Gate. She stepped through it.

The watchers watched but did not move. She stood before the
mages. “You heard,” she said. “Now heed. You saw what came of your Master.
Remember it.”

They would remember. Estarion would never forget.

The ul-cub rose from his crouch by Estarion’s feet,
stretched from nose to tail, and eyed the Gate. He was thinking of his mother
and his sisters, of milk and meat and sleep.

Yes, Estarion thought. Sleep. The long night was past; the
dawn had come. He looked about, to remember: black bier, bright walls, shadow
in the stone.

Beyond the walls the sun was rising. It brought light into
this place of all places, great tides and torrents of it, flowing over him,
singing in his blood. He filled his hands with it, and bore it with him through
the Gate, and in that cold hall of all suns and none, poured it out upon the
stone.

The mages did not understand. The Olenyai, maybe, did. Vanyi
looked ready to strike him. “This is not your place,” she said.

“All places are mine,” he said, “and none, as they are for
any man. I’m lord of a world. May I not bear tribute from it to the Heart of
all worlds that are?”

She did not trust him. That was pain, but it was just. She
was his equal now; and that both pricked and pleased his pride.

He met her glare with the flicker of a smile. “Welcome me to
the heart of your realm, mistress of mages.”

Her glare did not abate. He would not have been surprised if
she had flung him back where he came from, cat and guards and all. “You have
nerve,” she said as if to herself, and not kindly either.

His smile widened. He did not mean it to. With all the grief
on him, the guilt, the blood on his hands, he should never smile again. But
there was a pool of sunlight between them, here where sunlight never came, and
she was wonderful to watch, mantled in her magic, wrestling with her temper.

She mastered it. Sparks still flew from it, but when she
spoke she was civil, if not precisely gracious. “Welcome,” she said, “to the
Heart of the World.” And after a pause, in which no one seemed to breathe: “My
lord emperor.”

That would do. For a beginning.

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Arrows of the Sun

Avaryan Resplendent Volume I

Judith Tarr

Book View Café Edition August 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-283-9
Copyright © 1993 Judith Tarr

First published: Tor Books, 1993

Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Production team: Julianne Lee, Vonda N. McIntyre

v20130801vnm

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Judith Tarr
holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for
The Isle of Glass
and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.