Mortal Suns (33 page)

Clouds rolled in across the Sun, amethyst, and languid slaty plum. From the upper hills there was no sound beyond the crisping of the crickets. Everything, but they, stayed dumb before Elakti’s strident agony.

“
Why
must I suffer this?
Why
must a woman suffer
this
? The gods
the gods
—I piss on the cruelty of the gods—” railed Elakti, and then she screamed for Amdysos, wailing how he would have held her, bracing her effort with his strong arms. Unlike, apparently, the first time.

“He’s behind the moon, he lives there, in the dark. My husband the Dead Sun—who will return—look down and pity me.’”

Phelia bound her bitten hand, from which the blood streamed. She had not eaten the magic herbs either. Like the spy she always pretended. Phelia had seen none of the sorcerous creatures who circled the altar.

Now, observing Elakti, writhing and tumbling on a birthing couch unfit for any royal woman, Phelia clasped her heart in a new fear. For the thing in her mistress’s belly churned and bulged, bestial, abnormal and obscure. It had no look of anything natural. Indeed, it never had, for Elakti’s burgeoning shape had always seemed grotesque.

It could not get out this being, whatever it was. Would it work its escape with claws?

In the coils of an incredible fright, Phelia rushed from the room.

Above, the cruel gods might have heard Elakti’s vituperation. Lightning split the clouds, the thunder crashed and guttered through the hills. No rain fell.

Nevertheless, Phelia was quite wrong. The child would soon be born.

The spear-bride-wife Elakti leaned on the chaos of her bloody, rumpled bed. The room was in silence. No one made a noise. And she, cleared of all her screams, pointed at the crone with one blunt wooden finger.

“
What have you done?
”

“I? Done? Done nothing.”

“Those
herbs—some wickedness.”

“
No
, lady. Done nothing.”

“You shall be skinned alive. My girls will see to it.”

The crone crouched low. She hid her face in her robe. Elakti’s women whispered, and were still.

Elakti sank back. She shut her eyes.

“They punish me. Always. Amdysos, cry to the gods, for me.”

The room was full of shadows, also turning the color of cinnamon as the storm lapped up all light. Even the bloodstains had lost their cheerful red.

In one corner, a rough stone image of Bandri, goddess of birth, smuggled there by one of Elakti’s girls, watched indifferently. She seemed to say, All things may occur. Even this.

“How have I deserved it? What shall I do?” Elakti asked, but of no one in the room.

The crone crackled, “Child comes too fast. Too eager.”

The child lay on the bed. It was wrapped in a piece of cloth. But still, despite Phelia’s care, it was partly visible.

No one looked at the child.

No one spoke.

Outside, the swarthy lightning flashed, the clouds were mute black with nightfall, in the dying afternoon.

How are we to live?

There is no sorrow unknown to men.

Birth sends us to a house of shadows,

And at the end, to Night.

The verse spoken between the dances

C
ONTENTMENT MAKES NO STORY
, as they say in every land, even here, in the Moon City. Tales of heroes end with bliss, or with death. But for me it was as if death had died. Or, it was the lot of others. For Klyton and for myself there stretched forward the pathway of destiny. And we were young. There was to be more than a year, much less than two. In memory this time floats, a lucent bubble shot with colors. Who would not ask, after, was it for this I paid in my heart’s blood? Was it then worth its price? The gods were kind, hiding the future behind a veil. Or they laughed at us, thinking, how high they fly these mortal things, up into the Sun which will destroy them. Unless such gods as those do not exist, and random chance rules all. Chance which is blind and deaf and crushes worlds under its feet, unseen, unheard.

That summer, I was
crowned Klyton’s consort in the Temple of the Sun, some days after he had been diademed as the Great Sun. Udrombis, the most important woman in Akhemony, far more than I would ever be, stood for my mother. This honor did not go unheeded. I was garbed in gold on gold, and the heavy golden crown, with its dazzles of ruby and diamond, made me dizzy, but I did not care.

The King wore robes of lions’ skins, fringed with silk stained red from the marroi. His golden diadem masked over his eyes also in gold. That he was a stranger in these moments did not count against us. The god had filled him. I knew him also as the stranger.

Could I see anything aside from Klyton?

We went about Akhemony, greeted everywhere with flowers and songs. I recall a landscape made of precious metals, gems and dyes, scented with summer blooms, like Paradise. The edges of Bulos received us, and three hundred pearls as large as the paws of my white dog were heaped before me. From Oriali they brought us gums, ointments, and silks. Later we went north into Ipyra, and the old Karrad, my unknown grandfather, greeted me, once Klyton had carried me in his arms up the awkward stair of his fort. In a raftered cavern baked primrose with sulphur, and mostly floored by fire, two ancient women, with the faces of lizards, told Klyton he was a true-born King. They did not prophecy, I remember. He did not ask it of them. He knew, and doubted nothing. Besides, they were always ambiguous.

I recollect
nights with stars so thick the sky itself was like a fretted lamp. Great windows which opened on these skies, the sound of rivers, acres of wheat sighing, and a coast where Uarian ships lay in reptilian lines, sailors bringing the homage of copper ingots, coral and aquamarines, and horses whose manes had been made green, like the scales of the water.

But all these sights, this jewelry of the earth, has become one with Klyton. It is he that is their center, like the Sun, holding them out to me, pouring them down on me. The taste of the delicious peach is not more yearned for than his mouth. He is my temple, larger than any country, the golden pillars of his body, the altar of sex, the sword of pleasure with which he cleaves me. In a torrent of sights, I watch only his eyes sea-green. Or the faultless choreography of his limbs at exercise and riding. He seems tall, to me as the sky, and at night, his hair rays through all the lamped stars as he possesses me, I am obliterated and reborn.

No longer do I make any songs to him. I have become the song itself.

I suppose he was not continuously with me. He was the King. He moved in the sphere of the male universe. Yet I was at anchor, held to him even in absence, lost in the daydream of him, until he returned to me, and the wonder of reality brought back the perfect light.

Nor was it solely with me, this abundance. From the land itself richness teemed out. The harvests overflowed the ending of that first year. Beasts bore two-fold, or three. And so I see a tapestry of sheaves and fruit, young animals, the beaded grapes on malachite vines, the honey dripping amber from the comb.

Stabia, his
mother, did not stay for the harvests. She had died that summer, in her sleep, before we came back to Oceaxis. For a queen, even a Daystar, the mother of the Great Sun, the priests did not bring flames from heaven. Embalmed, she lay in one of the granite tombs, her hands folded, on every inch of her the precious stones of her royalty and her years with Akreon. Udrombis had mourned her, in the ordained manner.

Klyton told me of his mother’s death in three sentences. “How I regret I wasn’t here, but she knew her days were done. She had courage. She’ll be glad to be with my father.”

I was all in all to him of womankind. I did not hear any murmur which said,
What will he say of you
? Because I did not remember I could ever die.

The winter was mild, the air so clear Koi and the Heart were usually visible, touched only with two wreaths of white.

Klyton had drawn the lands together. No longer a game-board for war, a challenge and testing ground.

Nevertheless, the army of Akhemony trained, turning a field of spears like silver corn in the wind. Sirma had added her battalions, and Ipyra. A corps from Uaria cantered on their ocean-maned horses. Embassies marched in from Charchis. And from everywhere came men, scholars, poets, any who would speak of the other land, which lay across the Endless Sea, the legend which now seemed to be coming into life, far out beyond the Benighted Isles. How curious it is. I remember the harpers now began to sing of it. And I recall not one word.

Through the dark, between lovemaking and brief sleep, he would talk to me. I learned all his plans. I heard of the past, of the years of pause, and of Amdysos, brother and friend—everything of
him
.

Klyton had had made a portable shrine to Amdysos. It went with us wherever we journeyed. It was of white crystal, plaited with gold, and within stood a polished marble statuette of the man, handsome and proportioned as he had been when alive. But the statue also was winged. Being now in the Place Below, Amdysos had forgone most human limitations, and might be thought of as a lesser god, since he had almost been a King. Klyton offered to him, giving him wine and incense, even portions of a kill when he had been hunting. Memory brings me the image of a beautiful bird, lying on the shrine, with turquoise feathers slowly growing dull. My husband told me he had consulted and spoken always with Amdysos, until their quarrel—the quarrel which had foretold, as does the dusk the night, Amdysos’s end. Now, still, Klyton spoke to Amdysos. In those separate kingly rooms, once or twice, I had heard Klyton conversing with Amdysos. There were silences too, as of listening to Amdysos’s answers.

“If he
had ruled Akhemony, I would have stood beside him. All this I do—I believe he showed me the way of it. It’s only right, to keep him informed.”

Love is unreasonable, therefore was I jealous? I think I was not. The male universe, I had always seen, was separate from my own. That Klyton spoke also to me was joy enough.

Of course, it was he who talked. What had I to tell? Sometimes the charming dog did some trick and amused us both. Klyton would stroke the turtle under her chin. He called her Old Lady. She had become remote from me as he drew always near. I was sorry for it, but had not time, every second filled by him, to rectify or lament. I could see nothing but him, I have said.

In the fall of the first year, amid the harvests, Bachis, his little spear-wife from Sirma, gave birth to Klyton’s son. This was a fine boy, with hair like the gold plaiting on Amdysos’s shrine. Again, I had no jealousy. Klyton visited Bachis prudently, once in every month. As the mild winter stepped on, I knew that he must also, then, lie in her bed. That was merely propriety. Similarly he had made her uncle a commander in the Sirmian military ranks. Now and then, though not often, I would meet with Bachis. She was always obsequious, bowing very very low. Udrombis had ascertained, she posed no threat. After all, Bachis had been lucky. She was a Daystar. And I—I was the Sun-Consort.

For Calistra, no idea of pregnancy interposed, for sexual delirium seemed everything in itself. No one chivied me. I was just sixteen years, and had, no doubt, time to prove myself. Even Udrombis, as she brooded on the edifice of our dynasty, must have thought so, for she left me to my idyll in peace.

I swear I felt nothing of my temporal power. The Widow ruled, and I had no wish to assume her mantle. I wanted only what I had. And very few petitioners sought me, most deduced where they must try, for favors, justice or advancement. Nor was I jealous of Udrombis.

Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.

But in Oceaxis that winter, among my now colossal train, I caught sight of Ermias.

I had forgotten
her, as I had forgotten everything. Even Kelbalba I had mislaid. She had lessoned another girl in her work, got me accustomed to her, then gone away to the hills. I had tried a little vague dissuasion. She jokingly refused me. I let her go. Sometimes I wonder, if Kelbalba had still been by me—but I shall never know.

Ermias wore clothes a princess would not have spurned. Her skirt border, which swept the earth, was a hand’s length thick and sewn with silver nuggets. Her face was haughty. I discovered she had another lover among the Suns. Something prompted me and I called her to me.

She entered the room carefully, and glanced at me, sidelong. She knew as well as I that Udrombis wished her neither elevated nor cast down. Did she ponder what I had become?

I asked her how she was. Ermias said she was well. I said I had been thinking she might like to own a small estate, one of several Klyton had given me to use as gifts.

Ermias flushed. “You’re very generous, madam.”

Did she ever think of that night, thousands of eons past, when she had wept and I had gone to her, and given her the drink Crow Claw seemed to have prepared. The night Ermias had ceased to hate me, and so taken me to the groves.