Mortal Suns (38 page)

She raised one hand, and all the women flooded away, were gone.

She said, “Don’t ask me what I know, for I know nothing except what I have written to you, and your Hylis has discovered.”

No point in quibbling. Or asking. She would know if any did, and if she did but would not say, it must rest.

I said, “What shall I do, madam?”

“Sensible Calistra. Act as always. Nothing from the ordinary.”

Amdysos had been her son
. But oh, one did not wonder if her heart beat.

“One thing,” she said, “show no dismay. Klyton won’t make the Offering. He is detained. Adargon will do it.”

“Yes, madam.”

My own heart, weighing like her helm-crown, wore down through my body, turning all of me to iron.

Then she said, “Once, when I was with Akreon the King, in Uaria, a madman broke through the guard and leapt against him. Akreon slew the man himself, with his own sword. After that we went on to the house where we were to dine. Neither of us spoke of it, either to our host, one of their little lords with a green moustache, or together. The danger wasn’t discussed, and so it withered. Do you understand me, Calistra?”

I said that
I did.

For a moment I saw her, young then, slight, and more malleable, yet still unbreakable, stronger than a pherom spear.

Now even in her shadow on the floor, some of her jewels glimmered from the gathering sky.

Up the stairs to the East Terrace I climbed, my women behind me. I recalled Ermias, panting as she followed me. Ermias, exiled to her estate. And then I dwelled a second on Kelbalba, who had left the trained girl for my massage, and gone away, saying not much, wishing me well. I had not bothered with it. I was Klyton’s wife.

Tonight, not myself, the steps winded me somewhat. I paused on the landings, before the golden altars of the Sun in his disguises, the horse with chariot, ram and bull, the eagle—yes, the eagle. The boar. Behind me, a Lakesea like melted steel under a sky that kept the savor of brass.

The air was fragrant with flowers, with subtle smokes. I could hear music, a sithra down in the Garden of the Sun. No longer any shouting detectable …

On the East Terrace, the young god presided in his marble marvel, hiding his loins in a Sunburst. Though reverenced at daybreak, a trail of smoke simmered up from some gum left burning there. I had never seen this before, at Sunfall.

There were people on the Terrace, as on the landings. They bowed, greeting me with several of my titles.

Was there tension, like that of the string of the sithra, in their faces, their spines?

I did not offer to the god.
She
had forbidden anything abnormal. Besides, I felt it once again, and so deeply now, what, after all, was
I
?

Through the east doors I went, as so many times since my exaltation, a princess, a queen, a woman walking on two feet.

The Hall, with its oval of dark yellow stems, slid by me, the fighting walls of battle, the gigantic lion skull, large as a man’s torso, an animal killed by King Okos in his boyhood. At the Hearth, the god kneeled twice, back to back with himself, black on a heart of fire. Smolders rose up to the waiting Daystars in the ceiling. Old King to Hag, Young King to Maiden. The Kings had eyes, the Queens none. But Mokpor told you this, long ago in my book. Did he inquire if women, then, should be made blind?

I stood on the
women’s side of the West Terrace, my girls and Maidens about me. At Hylis’s order, two of them arranged the folds of my gown. Was
I
blind? I recall not a single face, only the blur of skin and hair and raiment and gems, in the Sun’s ending light.

He was low, the Sun, but not this evening spectacular, Amdysos had been seized by an eagle of gold and thunder, but this Sun would sink merely in drained afterglow. No mass of dyes was on the skyline, where Koi rose, and behind Koi, the phantom of the Mountain of the Heart of Akhemony.

The gongs were sounding in the town, a mile away.

I found I had braced my body and my mind—it was for the shouting to begin again below. But there was nothing other than the gongs. Even the sithra had been set aside.

Like diluted butter, the western sky.

The boy chosen tonight to sing the Sun down, piped up. His voice cracked a little on the first note. This had happened before. He was nervous, but at nothing more than his role. No one responded, and now his voice was pure as the light.

Splendor of leaving,

Beauty of going away,

We stand powerless at the Gate of Night.

I had heard these words on so many, many evenings, as I had often heard the welcoming ode of dawn, brought there with Klyton from our bed, where we had scarcely slumbered.

The words—meant nothing.

Do not forget us, O Greatest God.

Do not forget.

Adargon faultlessly offered to the Sun.

Incense was ignited, a drift of pinpoint lights, the musky steam rising as the pastel Sun sank down. The mild Sunset reminded us that death might be a simple matter.

Klyton came in late to the Hall, with Adargon and some of the other Suns. They were elegantly clothed, jeweled, fresh from the bath, laughing together. It might have been any evening when they had been kept behind on the business of war and Kingship. Save Klyton would have broken off, to make the Offering.

Klyton walked up
the Hall. He gestured graciously to me, and to Udrombis, who sat a few feet apart from my own chair, but, no lower.

“Excuse my tardiness, ladies. There was work to do. But now I’m here. The sight of you makes me glad to have hastened.”

A courtly speech, playful, and light.

The laughter in the room was also light, and might be false.

It came to me that perhaps he had not officiated at the Offering because it was deemed ill-augered. To reverence a
sinking
Sun—as now things stood. My heart beat its slow hard iron, but I smiled and let him take my hand. He leaned down, and muttered in my ear, “Thank the God, not long now till bedtime.” He was warm. His hair had a scent of thyme and myrrh. His lips brushed my cheek, and at the touch my skin crinkled like the sea, tingling at proximity, to be stretched beneath him, and in my loins the twang of desire, out of rhythm with the heavy heart that beat too slowly now to match the Drum on the mountain.

As he walked to the King’s place and sat down, I gazed at him for a scatter of moments, never too long, for even in a wedded Queen, it must be thought forward. He had put on dark red, with a border of gold deer running. He had not overdressed, had not needed to. He was the Great Sun. His presence, his gracious, graceful lightness, were enough. Nothing had disturbed Klyton. Nothing had caused him an instant of doubt.

I had come to know him, not thinking that I did. This was a show, careful and clever, not a chink left open.

As I sampled the meats and conserves, the egg dish with its pretty decorations, the fruits and sugars, complimenting the cooks, drinking from the goblet sparingly—all Udrombis and dead Stabia had taught me—I, too, kept an uncreased surface. I, too, had not experienced one second of unease.

The harper sang. He was a man from Ipyra, with a special song for me about a golden flower that with its fragrance unified two lands. I barely heard it, but he was much applauded, and Klyton gave him a ring set with an emerald. So I sent to him, all across the floor, a yellow flower from the table and my armlet with the turquoise. He bowed very low. But I had seen, even missing most of the words of his song, how his eyes now and then darted.
He
had heard things, even if we were so inured to them.

Soon I
could get up and leave, and presently Udrombis would also. Klyton would stay to drink a while. But Oceaxis knew he cared for me. They knew a King’s work had detained him all today. How natural then, that he should seek early the couch of his young wife.

For myself I did not know if he would then come to me. What he had implied might have no relevance to what he must do.

I thought that, even if he did visit my rooms, he would go first to her, to Udrombis who had made herself his mother.

In my apartments, I had myself prepared for bed, as on every night. Then I sent my women away. Some went to their own beds, some slipped off to others. I had never seen a need to reprimand them.

Hylis was last to depart the bedchamber.

She came and combed out my hair, in exact strokes that had no involvement in them, no interest, and I thought again of Kelbalba and of Ermias.

Hylis was faithful, reliable and without fault. She cared nothing for me. If I had struck her she would have dismissed my act as that of a royal woman in a rage. If I had kissed her, or clasped her hand in terror, she would have soothed me, and going out, forgotten me.

She said, “The King will come tonight, madam.”

For the first, it seemed, I saw how often my servants would give me these personal fragments. When he would be with me, if he would, even, sometimes, the hour he must leave—or that he was already gone.

“Thank you, Hylis. That’s enough.”

She put down the comb, anointed with saffron and myrrh—she had chosen perfumes to match with his. Her eyes were lambent and void as glass. She said, “Shall I see to your shoes, madam?” My
shoes
—the silver feet. Tactful, impervious Hylis.

“Don’t trouble. Good night, Hylis.”

She bowed and left me.

The lamps burn low. In the chamber with the pool, Gemli stands and palely gleams on the air, again in the water. The turtle is swimming, by night. I see her pass like a dark sigh through Gemli’s reflection. And in their cage the pink doves are nestled, two by two, to sleep. The white dog pads to my side. He stares at what I seem to be staring at, sees nothing in it, goes away back into the outer room.

Just so I
gaze on this world of my youth, my Queenship, I Calistra, wife of the Sun, and as the dog did, I see nothing that makes, suddenly, any sense to me. And like the dog I turn away.

The door opens, the outer door. I glimpse the well-lit corridor, and hear men laughing, and then the clank of the sentry’s salute.

My husband enters the room and the door closes. The dog trots up to him. He bends and affectionately, gently, pulls its ears, just as he whispered his promise in mine.

Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

Sirai stopped at this point, and clapped her hands. I looked at her, I suppose, aghast. She said I was like a child when the storyteller falters. But she did not smile. “Put down now,” she said commandingly, “what the Muhzum is. Yes, here. You see, Dobzah, I don’t want to do it. Say what the Muhzum is.”

And so I dislocate the narrative to describe the Muhzum, which is perhaps anyway familiar to you.

In our land of Pesh, the Muhzum was at first a keepsake of the dead. It was intended to retain a tangible momento. And so into a box would be placed a coil of hair from the corpse, perhaps a fingernail, a small bone even, or a tooth, or perhaps a drop of blood kept in a vial. Even now one may come on an old widow lady who has kept such a box by her, or see the lovely boxes kept in great houses, that are many hundreds of years old, boxes of silver and enamel, or poor little boxes made of wood or parchment, or out of two hollow stones. These keepsakes are mostly crumbled now, when one examines them. One wonders, how many tears are dried up in their dust.

In recent times, although that is before I was born, the Muhzum became also a battle object, a thing of power. By obtaining such trophies from one who had been slain, a warrior could take dominion over the spirit of the deceased, which then could not afflict him after. They have been used too in magic, to summon up the dead. We may know many such stories.

The first Battle-Prince Shajhima took death tokens from the brother-husband of Sirai. But later he gave to her the Muhzum box, of hyacinth enamel that is like the sky.

Sirai says now to write the holy words,
Sharash f’lum
. She tells me I must also say what is their meaning. I finally protest that in Pesh, we know. But Sirai says, “Pesh is not all the world.” And though, now, surely Pesh
is
all the world, I will explain.
Sharash f’lum
is spoken at the end of a prayer and means,
So it is through God’s will
.

My husband is
made of gold.

He has flung away the mantle, the tunic, the jewelry, leggings, boots, leather and linen. His groin lifts a fire to me, one shaft of fire from the golden fleece.

Klyton puts me gently on the floor, and keeps one arm under my head. He penetrates me almost at once. But I burst to a blossom of lust—his scent, his skin—his hair rains gold on gold and I am molten and I die. His own cry is low, muffled in my breast.

Soon he releases me, then picks me up and carries me to my bed, pushing aside curtains like thought. Once we are there, he begins again.

A frenzy. Lovers. Stars explode and perish in our bodies or the night. It seems an act of Death, not life. Is Death so wonderful? Or more wonderful—

“What can I tell you that you’d understand, Calistra? It doesn’t make much sense. Yes, a crowd came and they shouted. Some dolt from Airis had brought him, this wreckage of a man. A soldier, a captain—he should have known not to. And that bitch Elakti was there, prancing about with a trail of women, filthy and half out of their minds with some drug. The soldiers dealt with that. Then the temple sent to me. They wanted him, this—
thing
. Presumably human once.
Amdysos,
” Klyton said. He gave a short harsh laugh. “
He
would have been the first to say, Put it out of its misery. It shouldn’t go on living in that state. How do I know this? Well, we had a conversation, once.” He had left the bed. The night was hot, thick with the nocturnal taste of flowers, the peppery scent of sex and skin. He paced back and forth, naked. His strides were swift, and the dog, which had jumped up to keep in step with him, drew away and sat down. “But it isn’t Amdysos. God’s Heart, I’d know. He’s Below. I’ve had—true dreams of him there. I’ll keep him in my brain and thoughts, I’ll do him honor. But
that
—that—God knows what it is. Some crippled felon set on in a mountain village down in Ipyra. Wandered to Airis. Taken up. Mistaken. A fluke of fortune. Yes, I glimpsed it—him. It wasn’t for me to go and
inspect
—Anyway, the priests want to and so they can decide. This is beneath the King, or beyond him. And Torca is there—do you remember Torca—of course you do. He was in the Sun Temple on religious business. He has a level head. And he knew Amdysos at least as well as he knew me.”