by Judith Tarr
“If you had been a woman,” Estarion said, “singers would be making songs of you.”
“Not in Asanion,” said Korusan. He ran fingers through cropped yellow curls, pulling out tangles with ruthlessness that made Estarion wince. “It is wanton to sing of a lady or an Olenyas.”
“Or a prince of the court?”
“That,” said the boy, “I am not.” He said it strangely, but that was his fever: he was shaking again, cursing himself. With the same ferocity that had startled Estarion when he bared his face, he wrenched free and shed his robes and his weapons, all of them.
Beautiful, yes, and clad in scars and a single ornament, a topaz on a chain about his neck; and so young, caught between boy and man, slender but with breadth coming in his shoulders, taut-muscled as a swordsman must be, light on his feet as a dancer, even dizzy with fever. This time as he swayed, he caught at Estarion. His hands fisted in robe and tore.
Estarion had stopped trying to guess what the boy would do next. He was not afraid. Probably he should have been. A bred-warrior’s body was as much a weapon as one of his swords, and if anything more deadly. But there was no death here, unless it were in Korusan’s sickness.
The air was cool on his bared skin. He shivered lightly. Korusan touched him. A spark leaped, jolting them both. He laughed. Korusan recoiled; then sprang, lion-swift, lion-strong, bearing him down in a tangle of limbs and robes.
Estarion struck tiles hard enough to jar the breath from him, guarding his throat by instinct, seizing what presented itself: a shoulder, a wrist. Korusan twisted with boneless suppleness. His body was burning hot, fever-dry. Estarion let him hurl himself sidewise, guiding him, toppling them both into the water.
It closed over them. Korusan’s legs locked about Estarion’s middle. Estarion thrashed. Drown—he would drown—
He burst into blessed air, gulped, scrambled feet beneath him. Korusan clung with blind ferocity. Gasping. Weeping? Face buried in Estarion’s shoulder, arms inextricable about his neck, chest heaving with sobs or with battling for breath. His weight was as light as it was strong.
Estarion’s hand found itself stroking the boy’s back. Its sleekness was all muscle, its bones just perceptible—thin as Asanians went, and smooth as they all were, like ivory. And cooler, maybe, than it had been.
He sank down carefully, braced against the pool’s side, alert for mischief. But Korusan offered none. His breathing quieted. His clasp loosened, though it did not let go.
It was trust, Estarion knew with sudden clarity. Estarion could thrust him under and hold him, and he would not fight.
His head moved on Estarion’s shoulder, from side to side as an infant’s will, seeking the breast. But no infant this. One hand crooked still about Estarion’s neck. The other explored the long curve of neck and shoulder and arm, and up again, over belly and breast and throat. Pausing there, as if tempted; but tangling itself at last in beard. Estarion looked down past clenching fist into eyes gone wide, all pupil, in a face as white as bone, and the blood-red slash of scars.
Estarion traced the line of them with a fingertip. “Sword?” he asked.
“Knife,” said Korusan. His voice was as cool as ever. It seemed to come from elsewhere than that stark face. “One for initiate. Two for honor. Because I showed myself worthy in the battle that made me Olenyas.”
They fought to win the veils and the swords. Of course. Estarion should have known without asking.
“Are you all so beautiful?”
Korusan looked startled. That was rare. It made Estarion laugh, at which the boy scowled. “What does beauty matter?”
“Little,” said Estarion, “if one wears veils to hide it. Is that why? To keep people from thinking you pretty idiots?”
“You who deny your own beauty: you think to be a judge of mine?”
“I’m not—”
Korusan tugged. Estarion swallowed a yelp. The boy’s teeth bared. They were white and even, no flash of barbarian fang, but sharp enough as they sank into his shoulder. Estarion howled. “Hells take you!”
Korusan pulled his head the rest of the way down.
It began, Estarion observed with dreadful calm, somewhere in the vicinity of his tailbone. It felt most nearly like the spark of magery swelling into fire, searing up his spine, bursting through his skull. He would not have been surprised at all if this young lunatic had bitten off his tongue and spat it into the water; but he seemed content to settle for devouring Estarion alive. Lips first, cheeks, chin, throat—nip of teeth there, but not quite to draw blood—breast and still-throbbing shoulder, arms, hands, barely shying from the flame of gold. And breast again, and belly, and—
Estarion heaved them both up bodily, dripping by the pool. Korusan made no effort to steady himself on his feet, but sank down, arms about Estarion’s knees. Estarion’s banner was up and flying. He could not tell if Korusan was awed. He looked stunned, but that might only be fever.
Estarion pried him loose. He had to kneel to do it. It set Korusan eye to chin, which was better than what else he had been staring at. Estarion kept a grip on his wrists, though he made no move to break free. He was, Estarion noticed, a fair figure of a man himself, for one still half a boy.
There was nothing girlish about him, for all his beauty. If there had been, Estarion could not have done what he did. Taken vengeance. Kissed him hard and long. And when they were both reeling, drawn back. He held Korusan’s wrists even yet. He let them go.
“You are velvet,” said Korusan, “and steel.”
“Steel,” said Estarion, “and ivory.”
“Your life belongs to me,” Korusan said.
“And yours to me,” said Estarion. It came from he knew not where, but when it was spoken, he knew it for truth.
Korusan rose. He neither swayed nor staggered. He drew Estarion up.
Estarion could stop it now. He knew that. He need only resist: pull free of that hand, speak the words that waited on his tongue. This was nothing that he had ever looked for, or wanted. He had seen how some men were with beautiful boys. He had not understood them. He was a man for women, always, since he was old enough to know what a woman was for.
This went beyond man and woman or man and boy or—if he were honest—man and man. It was certainly unwise for an emperor to discover a passion for his guardsman. It could very likely kill them both. And it did not matter in the least.
Korusan’s fever had changed. It was a whiter heat now, a fiercer burning, and it knew precisely how to cure itself. Estarion, Sunborn, panther’s cub, had never thought to be a cool spring or a healing draught. He found it wonderfully strange.
It was not like loving a woman. Vanyi was as fierce, Ziana as serpent-supple, Haliya as quick to know where was his greatest pleasure. None of them was so close to his own strength.
They grappled like warriors. They made a glorious shambles of the bed, tumbling from it to the floor, ending in a knot of cushions and carpets, gasping.
Estarion was dizzy. Korusan was breathing quickly, stretched the length of Estarion’s body.
Suddenly the boy laughed. It was edged with hysteria, but it was true mirth. He ran sharp-clawed hands down Estarion’s sides. Estarion spilled him over, set knee on his chest, grinned down at him.
He grinned back. “Am I a match for you?”
“Almost,” said Estarion. He bent to seize another kiss. It lingered, softened. No war this time. No contest for mastery. Long, slow, impossibly sweet. Bodies so different, and so much the same.
Not all the dampness on Korusan’s cheeks was sweat. Estarion tasted the sharper salt of tears.
Korusan would have raged, had he known that Estarion knew. Estarion kept silence, and held him long after he had fallen asleep. Even in dreams he kept a shadow of tension, a memory of the warrior that he was.
But not in his face. That was a youth’s, a boy’s, more beautiful than any girl’s.
Estarion eased himself out of Korusan’s arms. Korusan stirred, murmured, but did n
ot wake. His brow was cool, his fever gone.
It had lodged itself in Estarion. He bathed quickly. His robe was rent, but there was another in the clothing-chest. He put it on. He bound his hair back in a thong, out of his face. He had not, yet, begun to shake.
His shoulder ached; his ribs stung. Vicious, that one, before he let himself be tamed.
What he did then . . .
o0o
Estarion was striding swiftly. His robe swirled in the wind of his speed. He nearly cast it off. A guard’s eyes restrained him, and the gleam of lamplight on bronze.
The spear drew back before him. The guard—broad brown plainsman’s face, name forgotten somewhere in Korusan’s shadow—flashed a smile. Estarion had none to return.
There was no peace on the roof, no stars, and a thin cold wind blowing, cutting to the bone. The winter of Asanion was begun.
Estarion barely felt it. His vitals were afire.
The sun was coming. He should sing it into the sky. But he was empty of either prayer or song.
“Do I love him?” he asked the dark. “Do I even like him? Does it matter at all?”
The dark kept its counsel.
“I never meant this,” Estarion said, “or anything like it. I’m bewitched, ensorcelled. And I don’t care. Why can’t I care? Is he doing it to me? Will he kill me when he has me in his power?”
Korusan had had Estarion in his power many times this night, and had done nothing but love him. It was love: love as cats knew it, with claws. Estarion was a pitiful excuse for a mage, but some things could not elude him. The boy’s heart was his.
Fierce, prickly, deathly dangerous, marvelous thing. Clasping him was like clasping a naked blade. Estarion had never known anything like it, or conceived of it.
Now he had it. Now he could imagine it. And he would not give it up.
o0o
The empress’ palace was quiet, its guards alert, but silent when he bade them be. If she was not awake, she would be soon: the goddess’ servants made a rite of the last darkness as did the god’s priests of the first light.
He advanced softly through the rooms, from latticed light to latticed shadow, through curtains that strove to snare him in silk, past guards who bowed if they were Asanian, or bent their heads if they were Varyani.
Women and eunuchs all. No men here. None but Estarion.
His body was bent on proving it. Again. And he had called Korusan insatiable. He was like a man waked from too long a sleep: waked to find himself wrapped in chains, but those chains were falling one by one.
He must rule in Asanion. There was no arguing it. But he could not rule in Kundri’j Asan. It was stifling him, throttling him, robbing him of wits and will and magery.
His mother knew. He had been shutting her out as he had done to them all, all who could teach him to be wise.
The last door was shut and, he would notice later, barred. It barely gave him pause. Locks had never mattered much between them, not when there was such need as this.
The lamps burned low. He had night-eyes; dimness mattered little. He saw the tumble of her hair on the pillows, black untouched with silver; the curve of her cheek like the arc of a moon, the swell of her breast, the hand that moved upon it, broad strong-fingered hand that was no woman’s that Estarion had ever seen.
Estarion froze. Shadow distilled itself into shape. It would tower over Estarion’s slenderness. What Korusan was to Estarion, Estarion was to this: slight smooth-skinned stripling. But Korusan was stronger than he looked. Estarion was weaker. Weak to spinelessness.
Iburan opened eyes unclouded by sleep, or by guilt, or surprise. It was Estarion whose privates shriveled, whose cheeks burned.
“Fair morning to you,” said the man who had been his foster-father. And, for what clearly was no single night, father in more than name. Even, maybe—
Estarion’s hand flared to sudden pain. He gasped.
To have been such a fool. Such perfect, utter, unconscionable fool. To have seen it full before his face, how they were always together, always in accord, never separated for long or at great distance. To have seen, and to have failed so utterly to see.
He wheeled.
“Starion!”
His mother’s voice. He shut his ears to it, to everything but the truth.
He had been asleep. Now he was awake. He had been blind. Now he could see. He raised hands to his eyes, his lion-eyes. One hand that was dark. One that was burning gold. The agony of it was exquisite. It made him laugh. It was that, or shriek aloud.
“Starion!”
His name pursued him, but it could not hold him. This truth had shown him what he must do. He was free, and freed.
33
Korusan woke alone. He knew at once where he was, and what defenses there could be if anyone struck to maim or to kill. There were more of those than anyone could imagine who was not Olenyas, to see a slender youth naked and forsaken in the emperor’s bed.
Not even a servant hovered. He regretted that somewhat. The creature would have had to die for having looked on Korusan’s face.
Estarion would die. But not yet. Korusan had been delirious with fever, but not so much as to have lost awareness of his purpose. To have gone so far, so soon . . . no, he had not intended that. Nor expected so easy a victory.
If victory it had been. His fingers flexed in the silk of the coverlets, remembering a very different silk, with panther-strength beneath, and the red heat of blood. No shrinking there, no priestly scruples, and if no art, then instinct enough to make in time a master.
Korusan had meant to take the outlander by surprise. And so he had. But the outlander had surprised him in turn. Not by being Asanian—gods forbid, if there were gods—but by being himself.
Love was nothing that Korusan had time to know. Obsession he had already, and no room in it for another. This, he had no name for.
“I have you now,” he said to the air with its memory of Estarion’s face. “You belong to me. No one else shall take you.”
He smiled. No. No one else. Least of all a woman who could bear Estarion a son.
The Masters would be most displeased. He was to slay this upstart and any offspring he might sire, and claim the throne to which his blood entitled him. To slay with love, to prevent the siring of offspring at all . . . they would not understand. They were not the Lion’s brood.
Only Estarion, whose eyes were lion-eyes—only Estarion could comprehend it.
“I the darkness,” said Korusan, half in a dream, “you the light. I the image of ivory, you of ebony. Uveryen-face, Avaryan-face, now the one, now the other, matched, opposed, lovers and warriors . . .” He laughed, although he wept. “You were to wake alone, I to escape before you could snare me in your magics. How dared you claim the part that was mine?”
“Did I?”
Korusan started, surging to his knees. Estarion leaned against the pillar of the bed, more like a panther than ever in his tautness that masked itself as ease. His expression was calm to coldness; and that, in fiery Estarion, was perilous.
“I thought you would be gone,” Estarion said.
“So should I have been.” Korusan composed himself with care, sitting on his heels, hands on thighs. “You should never have let me come to this.”
“What?” Estarion’s voice was sharp. “Guilt? Humiliation?”
“You.”
“I’m sorry.”
He was. Korusan bared teeth at him. “Do you regret me?”
Estarion looked down as if searching for a lie. Korusan watched his fist clench and unclench beside his cheek on the carved whorl of the pillar.
It was the right, the branded fist. He had pain there: Korusan had seen it before, how he flexed it or, when he thought no one was watching, rubbed it along his side or his thigh, or simply held it beside him, knotted, trying not to tremble. It was a magic, the tales said, to keep Sun-blood from waxing too proud.
When Estarion spoke, he spoke slowly, eyes fixed on his feet. “I can’t
regret you or anything that I’ve done with you. I suppose I should. You’re so young, and I—”
“Oh, you are ancient.” The scorn in Korusan’s voice brought the lion-eyes up, wide and improbably golden in that outland face. “You are ages old, ages wise, an elder, a sage, a patriarch.” Korusan rose to face him. “You have seen but a fifth part of the life that your god has granted you. I have lived three parts of the four that have been given to me. I am old, Sunlord. I am a brief breath’s span from the grave.”
“That’s not true.”
“That is most true.” And it was nothing that this of all men should know; but Korusan could not stop himself. “My blood, the blood that gives me this beauty you make so much of—it bears a price. We die young. Very young, Sunlord.”
“Not that young,” said Estarion. “You’ll see forty. Fifty even, if you’re fortunate.”
“I shall not see twenty,” Korusan said.
“Nonsense,” said Estarion, flat and hurting-hard. “It’s hard enough to tell with only eyes to go by, but the rest of your Olenyai aren’t children. All the others are men grown.”
“Not I,” said Korusan. “Not my line. I am the last of it. After me there are no others.”
“Then why—” Estarion stopped himself before he came too close to the truth. “Never mind. You’re still sick, aren’t you? You’re seeing death in every shadow. You won’t die. I’m not going to let you.”
“No one has such power,” Korusan said.
“I do.”
Korusan laughed, because he always laughed at death and folly. He who had no magic still had eyes within, half of training, half of his own nature. He saw the death that slept in him, blood and bone.
It was waking. Years and training, medicine and magic, had lulled it, but even the Sun’s power could not drive it out. It was sunk too deep.
Estarion’s hands on him were burning cold, both pain and exquisite pleasure. “You’ll live,” said Estarion. “My word on it.”
“Great lord,” said Korusan. “Bright emperor.” His mockery was bitter. “Will you swear not to outlive me?”
“That’s in the god’s hands,” Estarion said a shade too quickly.