Mortal Suns (40 page)

“Yes,” she quietly said. “Yes, Torca.”

He went, limping
the sweat clinging on his back. But it was not
she
who had made him afraid.

Akreon.

He had been, as the Great Sun must, without flaw. Amdysos also he had formed in this mould. But if Amdysos truly lived on, half destroyed, the shambling parody of a god, human decay, corrupt and earthly mortality—was it not
this
which would draw the wrath of heaven upon them? And the House of the Sun, gold and cinnebar, thewed marble with blood of flame, the hearts of lions—besmirched, spoiled. What else could come to it but the plummet to the abyss.

Udrombis went into an inner room. From a chest she took a mantle of dark orange, embroidered by golden thread.

Stabia’s women had woven it, Stabia embroidered it with great skill, despite her then increasing long-sightedness. How old had Amdysos been at that time … nineteen, surely. And Stabia’s son, his friend, his brother, Klyton, seventeen years.

This mantle, Stabia had offered to Udrombis. It was a color she had worn in youth, the female orange that was the handmaiden of a King’s scarlet. She had not divined that Stabia was working this for her, the elaborate stitchwork the softness. “Oh, no, my dear. I’ll never wear such a color again. You know that.” And Stabia, sadly saying, “But, your looks. Always to wear mourning—why not for the Summer Festival?” Udrombis shook her head, and seeing Stabia’s face, took the mantle in her arms. “But no other shall have it. It will lie on my bed in winter. It will remind me of him.” And Stabia had laughed: “He was a King.”

Udrombis took the mantle now and sat by a window, which looked out across her garden, the garden meant for a Sun Queen, that Calistra had not thought to request, and that Udrombis had not thought to render up.

Stabia had eventually begun to feel the pain to be more than pain, to be what killed her. She had nevertheless feigned ignorance, blaming a greedy, aging woman’s poor digestion.

There came the night, some while after Klyton’s crowning, when the royal pair, god and goddess, were away in another land.

“Do you know,” Stabia had said, sitting in that room with the almost matching chairs, where Calistra had sat, and Udrombis had told her she would be Klyton’s Queen, “do you know, I feel so very old tonight. I think I’m near the Gate.”

“Which gate
is that?” Udrombis asked her, calmly.

“Oh, Death. What else. But the path’s too hard.” Stabia had lifted up her face, and in the lamplight of that dark, Udrombis saw the memory of Stabia’s girlhood, a Stabia only voluptuous, and lively, her bright eyes and, tangled hair, and how their hands met on the comb, and their lips over the goblet. How long ago, far as some distant shore to which the boats no longer traveled.

“Let me prepare something to help you sleep.”

“And to take off the pain,” said Stabia, astutely. “My Sorceress. Only you can do it. But always it comes back, like a lean black dog with knives for teeth. This morning I cried. I cried just from the pain. Silly old woman.” Stabia had shut her eyes, as if she feared to see pain also in the eyes of her Queen, or else not to see it. “I always thought,” said Stabia in a stubborn small voice, “an hour would come you might need to be rid of me. And I never minded that, because I knew you’d have a deft hand. You’d never make me suffer. And I loved you, I love you so. Don’t be angry, my darling one—I loved you more than him, yes, more than our Sun King, Akreon. Much more.”

Udrombis took her hand. In remembrance now she seemed to take it again, among the folds of the mantle.

“Do you see,” said Stabia, “what I’m asking for?”

Udrombis had risen. She mixed the draught without subterfuge. If Stabia recognized the ingredients she did not say. They were only those which Udrombis had employed before, to kill the pain and bring sleep. In a greater quantity they would end pain and sleep together. As now.

Stabia had accepted the glass of thin, greenish crystal. She kissed the brim, rather than the lips of a lover.

“Thank you.”

“It will take a little while,” Udrombis had said. “The pain goes first, then comes serenity. Time for you to reach your rooms and prepare. To offer and to pray, if you wish. I will pray here for you and make the offering. About two hours. Is it too quick?”

“Of course,” said Stabia, “if I had life. But life’s already stolen. Two hours are exactly all I need.”

Udrombis kissed her forehead, and went on holding her hand as Stabia drank, and said, “It tasted very nice. You know how I like my food.”

Udrombis said, “Your son is King. His children will rule this world.”

Stabia
sighed. “May the gods watch over him. And over you. I’ll see you in a hundred years, my Queen. I’ll wait for you then, by Tithaxeli, with a garland of the black roses they say grow there.”

When Stabia had gone, Udrombis offered to the Sun at the altar in her rooms. She gave him a rare incense of Artepta, wine, and drops of her own blood. Into the offering flame, the last she let down a golden collar that Akreon had gifted her. So great was her respect for the woman she had assisted to depart.

And Klyton would rule. His children would rule after him.

Was it then for
this
they had dwelled here, and suffered and stayed proud and strong?

For a creature like a smashed, brainless bird?

And was it her own—her son—No.
No.
An apple, a bee, an eagle—these had taken her sons. Phaidix, and the god.

Klyton, too fastidious to go and see, knew this.

And Akhemony, which had feasted on nectar and wine, should, not be made to eat the leavings of the jackal.

That night Crow Claw was seen by many about the palace at Oceaxis. Calistra, the Queen, did not see her.

For several she glided, Crow Claw, across some thoroughfare, vanishing through some wall.

In the wild garden, a slave beheld her at the altar of Phaidix, but Crow Claw stood motionless, and the slave took her only for some lesser noblewoman of the house.

Nimi, the Sun-Consort’s slave, was sitting with the new attendant, the child from Thon’s Temple, for whom Calistra had expressed a fancy. This girl, almost ten years old, was yet mostly dumb and breathless from her sudden flight. With huge eyes she watched as Nimi, accustomed now, set out the figures of an easy game, in her little cubicle, and a dish of delicious sweets.

Then Nimi glanced up, her earrings twinkling, and saw Crow Claw standing
in
the wall. Indeed, inside, among the painted figures there.

Nimi who was more of a nurturer than a slave, had care for the unnerved child. And so she did not shriek. Nimi too had now and then heard tell of a deceased wisewoman of the palace, who wore crow black and rich gems.

Crow
Claw’s face was neither benign or malignant. But in her hand she held a narrow alabaster vessel, and upending it, poured out a stream of fiery embers to the floor.

Nimi, not unaware of symbols, recognized the sequence of a death.

Then Crow Claw smiled at her and said. “It’s nothing, girl. After, is everything.”

With this she faded, as a shadow fades with the coming of the moon.

Nimi looked away, and seeing the little Thon child two years her junior, had turned and seen and was frightened—despite or because of her origins—Nimi said. “She’s only a guardian of the house. It’s all right. She often goes about. You’ll get used to her. Now, will you play yellow or red?”

Night lay always inside the hill. Above, the three tiers of the temple, white and hot with color, stretched to the glittering chimney that by day enticed the Sun. But in the rock beneath, as in the sea beneath the world, was darkness.

Calistra had rarely heard of the Precinct of Night. It was a secretive place. In the sumptuous euphoria of her coronation and marriage, it had enfolded and left her like a cloud.

Those that saw the guarded litter pass, imagined some woman of the palace went through the town. Those that noticed the litter borne up towards the temple paid some attention, for armed men stood about the terraces now and a Sun Prince, Lektos, son of Akreon by a Daystar of Akhemony, kept the main doors. But the litter and its guards were muffled and had no device. Maybe the young Queen had sent someone, or the Widow had sent another.

There had been some confusion and noise in the town a day or so before, when the rumor spread. Dead Amdysos had returned. Women had danced and screamed, throwing flowers upward to the Sun. Soldiers dispelled the women and the crowd. There had been three women they took away. They must have been peasants, from their clothes. One carried a bundle that seemed alive and made a hoarse, mewing sound—some animal perhaps, meant for sacrifice.

The town
of Oceaxis was uneasy. From Sunrise the Sun had beaten on it, and at the wharfs the fish market began to stink even before noon. A Sunset, thunder-red, lit by flickerings over towards Mt. Koi, ushered in a night like smothered velvet, smeared with misty stars.

Inside the temple hill, Night was also close and airless, and set with uncanny stars, but it had a roof and walls of stone.

Lektos, standing in the upper temple, before the altar, had called aside his men. A woman alone did not much alarm him, until he saw who it was.

He wore full armor, as if for a battle, and the sword had been drawn, gleaming, in his hand. He bowed. He knew, she had never thought much of him, but he was not privy to her other thought, that she might need to have Lektos dealt with now. Udrombis’s spies had told her, he was not quite content, less jealous of Klyton’s Kingship, than eager for action. Lektos was happiest in times of strife. But he knew to be cautious of her.

She had put on her almost-black, and at her throat blazed the necklace of fabulous diamonds, the Seven Daystars. There were rubies of three shades on her hands, rose and purple and crimson. Her hair was roped with gold. All this the litter had obscured, but now the lamps of the temple showed it off. Near by, the enormous altar under the O of the fire chimney, dwarfed Lektos to a shiny toy.

“I regret you felt obliged to come here, madam.”

“Please,” she said, “don’t trouble yourself.”

Brushed aside, he bridled up like a girl overlooked in her best dress. He had been this too, had he, in Ipyra, going against Nexor?

“Why are you here, lady?”

“This is between myself and the priests. I won’t rob you of more of your time.”

She sailed by him, and the priests came and took her away. Leaving him biting his lip and wondering. He would have said to her, as he had to Klyton in the palace, that he was here to keep safe the honor of the temple, to prevent riotous mobs arriving. At no single moment had Lektos so far claimed the man-thing which had been brought to Oceaxis, was anything much. And yet, if pressed, passionately Lektos would have declared that, if the man were indeed Amdysos, the sword of Lektos was ready drawn, to defend his inalienable rights.

That Udrombis
had not bothered to question him and so receive such answers, demonstrated she already knew them quite well, and thought them irrelevant.

Udrombis trod down into the black Precinct. Behind her the great door thudded to, but this did not unnerve her. She was not easily upset, had never been. Sixty years had taught her, too, that most omens are nothing, or intended for others.

The stairway ran down into the hill, lighted at intervals by brazen bull’s heads that spouted fire from nostrils, jaws. The bull was the Sun creature that linked the Sun to the earth. Once the solar god had been driven underground to fight with this bull, which was both himself and his foe, the deity in two aspects, of patron and of ravisher.

The pair of escorting priests kept at Udrombis’s side. They were masked in bronze, in the faces of old men.

Under the earth the Sun went, and the old. Udrombis moved fluidly. She did not have the stiffness nor the tread of an aging woman.

At the stairfoot, the Precinct of Night opened, chamber upon chamber, circumvented and enmeshed by numerous passages, slopes and steps. It was a labyrinth, not quite impenetrable to those accustomed to it but to any other a wilderness. There must always be a guide.

In the third chamber, vast squat pillars held up the black-stained roof. From black beams hung the fretted lamps of Artepta and Oriali, letting fall pieces of light like silver coins.

A black-robed priest was waiting. He bowed to her as Queen, and she to him. He was not masked, being a keeper of this place, his features nondescript, yet banked with priestly power.

“I greet you, once Mirror of the Sun, Wife-Widow and Mother of Kings. Your messenger informed us you wish to regard him, the man who is your son.”

“Who is claimed to be,” she corrected.

“Great lady. The testing is done. Though not as you recall, this is Amdysos.”

Torca, now this one. Soon all Akhemony would hear it. And that toy warrior in the temple above, pale, inflammable Lektos.

She had been driven here, as the Sun was driven, to meet an enemy who was—perhaps—part of herself. For she dreaded it might be a fact, as Torca had told her. This thing—Amdysos. The parody, the crumbled effigy.

She meant that
it should be put to death quite soon. She would have herself the power to see to it, without defacing any other god. And if it were the remnant of her son she was to kill, she was determined now to know her sin. How else could she wrestle with it? How else be absolved?

Udrombis said, “Then you have decided. I have yet to do so.” She had served a King. These priests were only men. “But let me see him, certainly.” And the priest bowed to her once more.

She sensed conspiracy among them, but it was the plot of those who thought themselves right. Torca had written to Klyton. She guessed Klyton had refused to come here, look for himself, and this might well be fear, not aesthetics. She could forgive Klyton this. He had wished to retain the other picture of his friend. There had been times, too, when she had assisted Akreon, sparing him. A King must not bear all.

Given this creature’s physical condition, what she had been told of it, not only by Torca, it would be simple enough to remove—though all the priesthood, all the little Lektoses, stood against her. It was the woman god, Phaidix, who had made shadows.