by Judith Tarr
“I am not a mage,” said Korusan.
She took no offense at the flatness of his tone. “Of course you are not. But you have the gift. I saw you when you ran the dreamwood.”
“All your ilk saw me,” Korusan said. “I could wish to return the favor.”
“You pay the price of princes,” said the lightmage. She clasped her knees, looking all of his own age, if that, and smiled at him.
He could strike her, and she would have no defense.
Not of the body. But that was not what held his hand: not knowing that she had magic. He had a use for her. “Tell me somewhat,” he said.
She raised moon-silvered brows and waited.
He wondered if she had tried to enter his mind. Mages did that. He had felt nothing, no crawling of the spine that would have warned him. “Tell me this, mage. Will I beget a son?”
Her brows rose higher. “Do you take me for a village witch, to tell your fortune for you?”
“Will I?” he pressed her, stepping closer. She neither recoiled nor betrayed alarm. Her magic would protect her, no doubt, and she was sure of it.
“Truly,” she said, “I am not a soothsayer. Find you a market, prince, and ask there.”
He stood over her. She was complacent still, but she had to lean back a little lest he topple her. “Look inside me. Tell me what all your kind know. Will there be another after me? Or am I the last?”
“Are you not young to fret over that?”
He struck her, flat-handed, on the cheek. She looked perfectly astonished. No one ever laid hand on a mage. No one dared.
“You are older than I,” he said, “but which of us is the greater fool?”
“I could blast you with fire,” she said, no rancor in it, nor threat, but simple certainty.
He laughed in her face. “So you could; and kill your magic with it. Yes, I know that secret of your trade. Who does not, after the plot that succeeded so well for your kind? You disposed of an emperor; you maimed his son. But you betrayed yourselves to those with wits to see.”
“We betrayed nothing that belonged to us,” she said, and now at last her voice had an edge of anger. “All who speak of that killing, speak of the fool who did it. No one knows who set him there, or who took his wits from him lest the priests discover the truth.”
“No one,” said Korusan, “but the Olenyai. And we are too valuable as we are. Tell me, mage. Tell the one whom you would make your emperor. Am I to be the last and only, and after me, nothing?”
“One will rule after you,” she said.
“Indeed? And will that one be the Master of your Guild?” She did not answer that.
“The blood has failed,” he said. “Has it not? I remember, mage. When I was not quite yet a man, and one of my many fevers was fiercer than the rest, and you thought that I was unconscious, but I heard. You could save me, but you could not save my children who would be.”
“Not I,” she said. “That was not I.”
“Are you not all one?” He stepped back, releasing her from his shadow. “It is true. I can beget no sons.”
“You are young,” she said, but faint, as if he had frightened her. “You cannot know . . .”
He wheeled. The moons spun. He flung himself through the gate. He did not care how he went, save that it was swift; or whom he trampled in going there.
o0o
When he stopped, it was not by choice of his own. He might have struck a wall, but there was only air, and a chamber lit with lamps—but none of them flickered as earthly fire would—and cold eyes regarding him from the cushions and coverlets of a bed.
The Master of Mages slept alone, or liked to have it seem that he did. He slept decently in underrobe and outer robe, and warmed his sparse-haired crown with a cap. He looked like a merchant from the provinces, but that was a deception.
“You are violent this morning, my lord,” he said. “Did our youngest girlchild offend your highness? Does your highness wish her heart on a salver?”
“If I assented, would you give it to me?”
The Guildmaster smiled. These mages were all as complacent as cats. “I would, my lord, if it would content you.”
“Anything for the prince,” said Korusan with a bitter twist. “Anything at all. Except an heir.”
“I am sorry for that,” the Guildmaster said.
Perhaps it was honest regret. “So it is true,” Korusan said.
“Even had the fever not made sure of it, we would have held out little hope,” said the Guildmaster. “You are a miracle in yourself, with all the aid that we have given you, to keep you living, to raise you to manhood. We would not look for another such chance.”
Korusan was prepared for it. He had looked for no gender truth, but it was no easier to face for that.
“Olenyai gain rank,” he said, “for the number of sons they sire.”
“Not only for that,” said the Guildmaster, “and not even for that among the highest. Any beast can beget young. It needs a man to rule men.”
“And what is a man but a father of sons?”
“I have no sons,” the Guildmaster said. “No mage of my rank does, or can. We make that sacrifice when we choose this path.”
Korusan was not shocked. That too he had known, from what he had heard or suspected. “But you are not a prince, mage. You will not be emperor. And emperors must beget heirs.”
“Not all of them do,” the mage said, “or have.”
“What, then?” Korusan demanded as he had of the lightmage. “What comes after me?”
“Do you care?”
Korusan drew up short.
“Do you truly care?” the Guildmaster asked him. “You live to take revenge against the Sun’s brood. Once they are gone and you are dead, what does it matter who calls himself lord of the world?”
“It matters,” Korusan said, “if that lord is the lord of your Guild.”
“Why? Might not a mage rule as well as any man?”
Korusan stood up against the mage’s wall and tasted the savors of rage, impotence, raw grief. And hate, always hate, like blood and iron. “So that is what you intend. Why trouble with me, then? Why breed me, raise me, keep me alive? Why not simply face the Sun-worshippers direct, and fight an open war? Surely it would be less trouble. Even,” he said, “for cowardice as mighty as yours.”
The Master of the Guild was not to be pricked by such words, however bitter they might be. “Perhaps we prefer the symmetry of this conflict, Sun against Lion. Perhaps the gods demand it, or fate, or the turning of the worlds; and if we defy it or seek to alter it, we destroy ourselves with our enemies.”
“Perhaps you are afraid to face the Sun and its priests, because they are strong, and they may defeat you.”
“We are stronger,” said the mage, “and we are older in our magic. But secrecy is our armor, that is true enough. And we owe the Lion a debt. It took us in when we were driven from the Sunborn’s empire; it protected us when his heir would have blotted us from the earth. We repay in you, in raising you to the throne that is yours.”
“A barren throne,” said Korusan. “An empty victory.”
“Do you believe that, Lion’s cub? It will be your throne, your victory.”
“And I your puppet.”
“You are no man’s puppet,” said the Guildmaster.
“What if,” said Korusan, “when I had won the victory, when I had my throne—what if I ordered all of you destroyed? What would you do then?”
“We would fight,” the Guildmaster said. “We wager high, prince, and we wager long. We gamble on your clemency, as we gambled on your being born at all, or living to stand here now, and show yourself in truth the Lion’s heir.”
“Flattery,” said Korusan. But the anger had gone out of him. He was cold within, and empty. Where another man had his little tribe of ancestors, he had a thousand years and more, an army of emperors. Where even the simplest man had hope of sons, he had nothing. Only emptiness and the line’s ending.
/> “Perhaps it may console you,” the Guildmaster said, “that your enemy has begotten a son, but the son is lost.”
“And that too was your doing?”
“No,” said the Guildmaster with all apparent calm. “His own priests did it for us, in womb-binding the woman who is his lover. Fools all. None bethought himself of what must come of working that spell on a Sunlord’s leman.”
Korusan’s gorge rose. That his blood enemy should do what he could not do. That this fat merchant with his half-god’s magic should gloat so over the death of a child.
He turned without speaking, without even the courtesy of a glance, and left as he had come, headlong. No wall barred him. Nothing stopped or slowed him but his own bones’ weariness and the dawn breaking, and the rousing of the Olenyai to the morning’s duties. His first duty was sword-practice. And though he ached within and without, he was glad of that grueling dance, glad of anything that bent his mind away from the dark.
10
Vanyi had no intention of feigning illness, or of suffering it. She could ride. She had before when her courses racked her, numbed with a potion the priestesses brewed for just such troubles as this.
Estarion could not move her, even when he lost his temper. She turned her back on the blast of it and set about readying to depart.
The drug numbed her body. There was pain somewhere on the edge of things, but it was no part of her, no more than the memory of what had caused it: what had broken, and what had mended, before Avaryan’s altar.
She had lost nothing that she had known she had. She had gained a thing beyond hope. She could bear a child now. She could give Estarion his heir.
Through drug and distance and grim endurance, her entrails clamped tight. Only Estarion’s presence kept her erect. She reached blindly for she knew not what; stared at what her hand fell on. For a long moment she could not guess what it was, could not name it or imagine a use for it.
Her fingers clenched. She had not even known.
“Who took off my torque?” she asked. Her throat was tight, had been since she got up, not knowing itself unbound, no more than her womb until it gave up its burden.
“Sidani,” Estarion answered. “She feared you’d choke.”
“Damn her,” said Vanyi. “Damn her.”
He reached for her. She slid away. Her hands trembled as she lifted the torque. It was deadly heavy, and cold. It locked like jaws about her neck.
She looked up into Estarion’s face. “She was a priestess, you know. Sidani. Or whatever her name was then. She turned apostate.”
“She told you that?”
“Would I lie?”
He stiffened as if she had struck him. She should kiss him, or say something to comfort him. Mind and heart were empty, void of comfort. It had bled out of her in the long grim night.
She shouldered her saddlepacks. The world spun briefly. Estarion spun in it, too bleak for anger. She walked away from him.
“You may go,” he said behind her, “but I am staying here.”
She stopped. She refused to turn.
“I promised the priestess that I would sing the tenth-day rite with her. That is tomorrow. I’ll not leave till that is done.”
“And when did you promise that?”
“Does it matter?”
The doorpost swung toward her. She caught at it.
He was there, hovering. She did not want him to touch her. “Let me,” she said, thick enough to choke on. “Let me be.”
“Vanyi—”
“Let me be!”
He retreated, too startled for hurt. That would come later. She did not want to see it.
He had mercy. He left her alone.
o0o
“That was well done,” said Iburan.
Vanyi burrowed deeper into her nest of blankets. How long it had been, whether it was morning or evening, she neither knew nor cared. People had come in at intervals. Some had left food or drink. Some had tried to speak to her. She had shut them out.
Iburan was not to be deterred by anything as simple as blankets or a magewall. His voice followed her wherever she escaped. “Yes, you did well, to drive away the one who could best have healed you.”
“The one who caused my pain.”
He heard her. “So. You blame him.”
She erupted from her lair. “I blame myself. I should have known. I should have prevented—”
“You should,” he said. “Therefore you punish him for your own failing.”
“No,” she said. She shivered, though the air was warm. “No. I—” The rest would not come. She cried out through it. “Don’t you touch him. Don’t you dare! He knew even less than I.”
“Why would I touch him?”
“Time was,” she said, “when you would have taken us both and bound us to altars of iron, and turned the burning glass on us, and called down the Sun to sear away the source of our sin.”
“Those were older days, older laws. The Sunborn came to free us from them.”
“The Sunborn’s descendant is too free altogether.”
“You yourself said he didn’t know.”
She blinked. Her eyes were full of tears. Iburan was a blur beyond them, a shadow and a gleam. “It shouldn’t matter. Every turning of Brightmoon this comes to me, to every woman. Why I do want to weep and howl at the moons?”
“Because this time it took more than the moon’s blood. It took the child you made, you and he together.”
“No,” she said. “The moon didn’t take that. You took it, priest of the Sun. You and the magic you wove.”
Not he, not for her. That had been a priestess in the Isles, raising the great rite over the god’s new-made bride. But he knew what she meant. “We had no way of knowing that this would happen. This time, when we weave the bonds anew—”
“You will weave no bonds,” she said.
“You will bear him no child while your Journey endures.”
His voice was soft, but there was iron in it. She met it with iron as strong. “Nor shall I ever bear him one, if you have your way. His heir will be a yellow woman’s son.”
“Will you defy your vows?”
She sat stiff. Her body ached, but worse was the ache in her heart. “Are you binding me?”
“You said that I should not.”
It was too much, this war of wills. Her belly cramped. To yield to it—to crumple with a cry—that would be a clever diversion, and he would fall to it.
She would not do it. “At this moment,” she said, struggling to say it steadily, “when I think of him, I love him with all that I am. And when I think of him touching me, I shudder in my soul. Something is wrong with me, my lord. Something broke when the binding went away. Aren’t you glad?”
“Child,” he said. “Oh, child.”
His compassion did not make her want to weep. It made her want to kill him. “Don’t pity me!”
“That, I never have.”
He seemed at last to recall that he was looming over her. He sat in the chair beside the bed, sighing as he did it, as if with weariness.
Sleights and calculation. She hardened her heart against them.
His beard was braided with gold this morning, evening, whatever it was. He stroked it as he sat there, eyes turned away from her, fixed on something only he could see. He looked nothing like Estarion, except that he was so dark, and yet she could not get that other face out of her mind. Callow, beak-nosed, yellow-eyed face. She loved it, she hated it. She wanted to enfold herself in the memory of it. She wanted to efface it utterly.
“You hurt,” said Iburan, so low it was like a mountain shifting. “You strike out at anything that approaches you. Time will heal you. Time, and the nearness of those who love you.”
“Not his,” she said. “You’ll see to that, I’m sure. It’s best for everyone. He has to make an Asanian marriage. I’m an intrusion, an inconvenience. You never planned for me or wanted me, or anyone like me. You were keeping him for his royal bride.”
“And no wonder,” she said. Bitter laughter burst out of her. “Seed, you men call it? Arrows, the Sun-blood have. Nothing is proof against them.”
Iburan did not laugh with her. “What will you do, then? Take yourself away?”
“Wouldn’t it be best?”
“It would give him great pain.”
“Brief pain. Assuaged, I’m sure, by a procession of lovely ladies. Royal ladies. Ladies fit to be his queen.”
“Do you hold him so light?” Iburan asked her, as if he honestly wished to know.
She looked him in the face. “Sometimes, my lord, I wonder. I wasn’t raised to be a Sunlord’s bride. When I told my father I was going to the temple, he beat me. Loving me, you understand, and determined to save me from myself. I was to be a wife in Seiun town, marry one of the boys who hung about making eyes at me, breed his babies and mend his nets and weave his sails. The temple was for other people, priest-people, people bred to it. The witcheries that haunted me would go away, my father said, when I had a baby at the breast. So they’d done for my mother, and she a sea-eyed changeling too. The sea took her, I told him. Should I let it take me? So I went away, walking straight in spite of my bruises, and when I took the torque, he wouldn’t speak to me. What he would say if he knew what I’d gone away to, I dread to think.”
Iburan said nothing. Eloquent, she thought. Subtle.
“You can’t understand,” she said. “You’re all lords and princes. You don’t know what it’s like not to know for certain who your grandfather’s father was, or where he came from. You can’t imagine the clench of hunger in a lean winter, or the stink of fish in the summer’s heat. You’ve never gone barefoot because you had no shoes, or worn the same filthy shirt the year round because there was no cloth to make another. And you’ve never—never—been spat on for a witch, not for anything you’d done, but for that you looked like a changeling.”
“Estarion has.”
She caught her breath. “Estarion is the highest of all high princes. He’s as far above me as the sun itself. And he doesn’t know. He doesn’t think. He thinks he loves me.”
“He does.”