Arrows of the Sun

by Judith Tarr

  “And,” said Vanyi as the truth unfolded in her, “that’s why you didn’t die when Hirel did. You can’t, can you? Not while the power is in you. You made yourself age, for a disguise. Left to yourself, you’d still be as you were when you left Endros. And that wasn’t as a woman of threescore years should be. In yourself, in truth, you haven’t aged since the mages made you anew. Have you?”

  Sarevadin smiled. “Are you going to remake yourself, priestess, and be immortal?”

  Vanyi shuddered. “Gods, no. I’ve earned the scars the years have given me. I want to die when my time comes, and go where the dead go.”

  “If that is anywhere,” said Sarevadin, “and not to oblivion.”

  “Oblivion would be pleasant enough,” Vanyi said. “You’re barred from it, yes? You tried to enter it, and it refused you. And Hirel went without you. Will you ever forgive him for that?”

  “No,” said Sarevadin. She was no longer smiling. “You should be less wise. You’ll live longer.”

  “Are you going to kill me, and kill Estarion, and take back your throne?”

  Sarevadin shuddered precisely as Vanyi had. “I’m going to keep you children alive. We made a royal mess of things, my father and I; we need you to patch it together. Estarion will, you know, if he doesn’t shatter before morning. And you, if you don’t do something ridiculous.”

  “And if we do,” said Vanyi, “you’ll live. You’ll do what must be done. Promise me that.”

  “I promise nothing,” said Sarevadin.

  “Then I give you nothing,” Vanyi said. She stretched out her hand, limbered her power. “No Gate. No help. No defense against the mages.”

  She would do it. She was angry enough, and tired enough of all of it. She was not royal, not even noble. She cared nothing for honor or duty or any such foolishness.

  Sarevadin sighed. She was looking younger; or maybe it was the light. There was a faint coppery sheen in the frost of her hair. “Avaryan defend us from stiff-necked commoners. If we’re trading threats, then shall I threaten to separate you from your magic?”

  “Then I’ll be no good to you,” Vanyi said. “And Estarion might object. He’s stronger than you.”

  “But younger,” said Sarevadin, “and completely without guile. I learned trickery from the greatest of masters.”

  “So do it,” Vanyi said. “What difference does it make whether he destroys himself now or later?”

  “There now,” said Sarevadin. “Where’s your insouciance? We’re going to win this game, priestess. Win it or lose it splendidly.”

  “I’m not a Sunlord’s get,” Vanyi said. “I don’t know about bravura. All I know is stubbornness.”

  “That will do,” said Sarevadin.

  o0o

  Korusan waited for Estarion. He seemed to do a great deal of that, some of it voluntary, some not.

  Korusan could not tell which this was. He could have been at the death-rite. Should have, perhaps. But he chose to stand guard on the empty chambers.

  They echoed without Estarion to fill them. He wandered through them, pausing to touch a vase that Estarion had liked, a cup that he had used, a cushion on which he had sat.

  When he had walked the circle of rooms, an Olenyas stood waiting for him. Marid.

  He was almost still. In him that was ominous. His eyes held no malice, his stance no danger; but no friendship, either. None of the warmth that should be between brothers. He said, “The Masters summon you.”

  “Do they?” Korusan almost laughed. It was not mirth. “Tell them that I shall come to them.”

  “Now?”

  “After sunset.”

  “They said now.”

  “I am in trouble, then?”

  Marid’s eyes widened in honest surprise. “Of course not. How can you be?”

  Easily, thought Korusan. Aloud he said, “I shall come to them after the sun has set.”

  He thought that Marid would protest. But his swordbrother sighed, shrugged. “He’s to die tonight. I heard them say it. With or without you, they said. Some are wondering if you really are the Lion’s cub.”

  “That,” said Korusan, “I am. Have no doubt of it.”

  “They say he has you bewitched. Is he such a master of the high art as that?”

  “No.” Korusan leaned against the wall. It was not that he had grown weaker; he was past that. He should sleep, maybe, if the pain would let him. “He has no art. He is all instinct.”

  “I had a northerner once, for curiosity. It was like coupling with a panther.”

  “So it is.” Korusan considered Marid slantwise; thought of killing him. Thought of dying, and of taking Estarion with him. “Tell them. After sunset.”

  “You’re ill again,” said Marid.

  “Go,” said Korusan, “or I drink your blood.”

  Marid stiffened. If he had reminded Korusan of the bond that had been between them, Korusan would indeed have slain him. But Marid was wise, or too angry to speak. He bowed with precision that came close to insult, and did as he was bidden.

  When he was gone, Korusan let himself slide down the wall until he crouched on the floor.

  His veils stifled him. He flung them off. The air was cold on his cheeks. The brands of his rank stung like fire. They had magic in them, maybe, to discern his treason.

  He was no longer Olenyas. Son of the Lion he was born, Son of the Lion he would die. The brotherhood of the sword that had bred and trained him, kept him alive when he should have died, shaped him for their ends—they had never been his, nor he theirs.

  He should have known it long ago. It was written in his face, branded in his eyes. His only kin was the one whom he was sworn to destroy. No one else bound him. No one else could command him.

  He drew a breath. It stabbed, but it would do, for a while. He felt light; free. He had no masters. He had no brothers but the one, who was his lover, whose life belonged to him. But for that one he was alone.

  He would keep the robes, because they were warm; and the swords, because he would have need of them. He moved to rend the veils to shreds, but paused. They too might serve a purpose. He thrust them into his belt and settled to wait.

  o0o

  The feast of the dead would go on till dawn, with wine and singing and merriment that increased as the feasters undertook to forget the death that had brought them here. Estarion left them long before the sun went down. If any noticed, he did not know of it. They would expect him to grieve in solitude. And so he had, and would again, if he came back a living man.

  They were building the Gate: Vanyi, the priests and priestesses who had been Iburan’s and were now, in default of another, hers, and a strangeness that he knew was Sarevadin. He felt their working in his bones, as he felt that his presence would be no help to them. His power burned too fiercely. It would seize them all and wield them, and in the end destroy them. Wiser to keep apart and bind his magery, and pray that it would not burst its bonds before he came to the Tower.

  Korusan waited for him with the patience of a child or an animal. The boy had taken off his veils. There was meaning in that; but he gave Estarion no chance to ask what it was.

  “Dance with me,” he said before Estarion was fairly past the door.

  Yes, thought Estarion. In the dance was forgetfulness. He should worry, maybe, that they danced with swords, and Korusan an Olenyas, a spy, possibly a traitor, against whom he had been warned. But Korusan was his, heart and soul. He knew that as he knew his own name.

  They danced as they always danced, without rest, without quarter. Estarion was stronger, and longer of arm. Korusan was swifter. Deadly swift now, with death in his eyes.

  Estarion matched him stroke for stroke. He laughed as he did it, because if he died it did not matter, and if he lived, he would die soon enough.

  They locked blades. Korusan’s eyes held fast on Estarion’s. His wrist wavered a fraction. Estarion’s sword sprang free, flashed round, halted a hair’s breadth from the boy’s throat.

&nb
sp; Korusan smiled. “Yes,” he said, a mere breath of sound. “Slay me now.”

  Estarion let fall the sword and pulled him in. “Idiot child,” he said. “I’ll never kill you. I’ll keep you alive till you grow old with me.”

  “That will never happen,” said Korusan against his breast. Estarion bent his head over the yellow curls. They were damp with exertion, scented with something faintly sweet: spices, or the ghosts of flowers. “You’re growing tall,” he said. “Look, your shoulders are nigh as wide as mine.”

  “Never,” said Korusan, “as tall as you.”

  “That’s the northerner in me. I’m small among my kin, as you are tall among yours. That makes us even.”

  Korusan tilted his head back. “Do you love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Do I?” Korusan looked hard into his eyes. Estarion did not look away. He had no shame to hide, no lie to dissemble. “Do I know that, my lord? You are all the world to me. To you I am an afternoon’s diversion. If I died, you would mourn, and raise your beautiful voice in the rite for me, and lay me in my tomb; and then you would forget me.”

  Estarion recoiled, wounded. “Do you think so little of me?”

  “I think that you are greater than I. My heart has room only for you. Yours contains a world.”

  “You’re calling me a whore,” Estarion said, lightly he thought, but Korusan lashed out with temper.

  “Always you laugh at me. Always you reckon me a child. If I were a man grown, would you cast me off as men do their boys who are boys no longer?”

  “Are you trying to make me hate you?” Estarion asked. “You can’t do that.”

  “No? Even if I told you that I have been sent to slay you?”

  “I knew that already,” Estarion said. “You haven’t killed me yet. I don’t think you will.”

  “I will,” said Korusan. “I have sworn it. I hate you, beloved. I scorn you. I spurn your name beneath my feet.”

  Yet as he said it he clung with fever-passion, pulling Estarion’s head down, kissing him until he gasped. Estarion laughed. “You’re eating me alive.”

  “I hate you,” said Korusan. “I hate you with all my heart. I will slay you, and mount my throne above your grave.”

  “I love you, too, dear lunatic,” said Estarion.

  Korusan thrust back, furious. “You do not believe me! I am your enemy. I am the Lion’s son. I was bred to destroy you.”

  “And I am the Sun’s child,” Estarion said, “and the other half of you. The throne is mine, and shall be till I die. Not even you can take it from me.”

  “Mad,” said Korusan in despair. “Mad, mad, mad.”

  “Hush,” said Estarion. “Love me.”

  He had not been certain that Korusan would obey. But the boy was his, whatever the blood he claimed. He yielded as all men must, to the will of the Sun’s son.

  49

  Sun and Greatmoon sat face to face on each horizon, winter-gold and blood-red, the sun its wonted fiery disk, the moon a shield of blood. One could, if one blurred one’s eyes just so, see how' the sun reached across the arc of heaven to embrace the moon, god embracing goddess, light bending to its will the power of the dark.

  There was none of that here where no windows were. Estarion’s power had taken flight of itself to look on sun and moon and open sky; he dragged it back to the walls and the wards and the circle of watchful faces. Vanyi had brought in everyone whom she thought she could trust, who had power to sustain her Gate.

  It was a surprising number. Her priests and priestesses, of course, and some from Estarion’s Guard, and a handful from the guard that had been his mother’s and must now be Haliya’s. But also the dark-robed priestesses who had walked soft in his mother’s shadow, and a pair of nervous, darting-eyed Asanians in Lord Shurichan’s livery.

  One wore the robe of a tame mage. He looked even less at ease than the other, who was a servant of rank, with a spark of magery that burned low but steady.

  When Estarion came to the circle, Vanyi had already begun to draw them together, to make them one mingled skein of magic. His coming nearly shattered it, but she seemed to have expected that; she pulled him into the center with hand and power and held him there, willing him to be still.

  He did not resist her. He had never stood beside her in a great working, or even in a lesser one. He had never been mage enough to venture it.

  Here, closed in the circle, he could see with both eyes and power, with no fear of losing the capacity for either. She had done as he had, dressed for comfort rather than for state; like him she had chosen well-worn riding garb and plaited her hair behind her, and worn no ornament but the torque of her priesthood.

  She seemed at ease in the midst of her magic, frowning slightly, oblivious to him except as a force to be constrained lest it shatter the circle. She was something more here than she was elsewhere, and something less, ageless, sexless, almost pure power.

  Strange then to realize who, and what, stood a little apart from them though still within the circle. Sarevadin truly had no age, no sex; if Vanyi seemed made of power, this was the truth of it. She was calm, neither helping nor hindering, watching Vanyi with a flicker of amusement and a glimmer of approbation, as a mother watches a child, or a master her pupil.

  Estarion had had training, however Sarevadin disparaged it. He knew that this should be one mage’s working, that the rest were there simply to provide Vanyi with strength as she needed it. Therefore he did not do as he longed to do, seize the power that Vanyi had gathered and shape it more swiftly, and raise the Gate in his own time and not in hers, that seemed so crawling slow.

  He could have done it more quickly, and more enduringly, too. But this was not his working. He lacked Vanyi’s affinity for Gates, her sense of the moment when at last all the power was gathered, the wards at their strongest, and no force beyond them could know, or knowing hinder.

  That moment sang in his blood, when sun and moon poised in the last movement of their dance, before the sun sank beneath the rim of the world and the moon sprang into the sky. Greatmoon was a cry like trumpets, the sun a ringing of bronze upon bronze.

  Vanyi smote her hands together, and the earth shook. What had been raw shapeless power rose up taller than a man and broader, looming over the lone small woman who presumed to master it.

  She raised her hands joined palm to palm. Estarion moved on instinct, laid his branded hand upon her shoulder. In the same instant Sarevadin did the same.

  Vanyi buckled under the weight of twin suns, but she was stronger than they. Slowly, as if she parted the leaves of a door, she spread her hands apart.

  Wind howled. It rocked her, but the others held her, and her hands never wavered. Lightnings cracked. None of them touched her. The force of the Gate plucked at her. She braced against it, even when it strove to coil about her, grip her, suck her into itself.

  Estarion’s hand was white pain, her shoulder under it rigid. The Gate, half opened, was a cauldron of twisting, seething, boiling fires. It blinded him; it roiled in the pit of his stomach. His throat burned with bile.

  Her hands were at their farthest extent, flattened as if against the posts of a door. Her will snapped out. Help me!

  Estarion raised his free hand, fighting against sudden, leaden weight, and gripped what felt, as it looked, much like a doorpost. He set his teeth and pushed.

  It pushed back. It tempted him to let go her shoulder; but that, he must not do. Holding to her with his right hand, with his left he thrust the gate wider, past the stretch of her shorter arm.

  When his arm was straight, trembling with strain, he glanced at her. The Gatefires had died down a little. Her face was a shifting pattern of lights and colors, but it was discernibly a face, tight-lipped, intent. “Now,” she said.

  He hesitated a fraction of a breath. Then he let go.

  The Gate pulsed. His arm snapped up again, but stopped half-extended.

  Vanyi sagged briefly under his hand, leaning against him
, before she remembered to be prickly-proud. “It’s done,” she said. Her voice was crisp. “Best we move quickly. This is a warded Gate, and therefore secret, but even that may not be proof against the mages who first mastered Gates.”

  The circle shifted. One of them, the priest Shaiyel, came out of it to face Vanyi. “I’ll keep the watch. The others should rest. If you need them later . . .”

  “You’ll know.” She smiled. “You did well, all of you. Places are prepared for you, with wards to keep you safe until we come back.”

  Not if, Estarion noticed. Until. She had her own degree of arrogance, and no little penchant for acting the empress.

  She waited until the last of the circle, but for Shaiyel, had retreated slowly, with many glances back at the wards, at the Gate, at the three who stood before it. Shaiyel withdrew to the edge of the wards, shaping the words and the gesture that would seal them anew.

  A shadow slipped past him. Two shadows. One, feline, flung himself on Estarion, purring raucously. The other, robed but unveiled, turned a defiant face upon him.

  “Yelloweyes,” Estarion said, “you can’t—”

  “Wherever you go,” said Korusan, “I go.”

  “Even to my death?”

  “There above all else.”

  Estarion glanced at the women. Sarevadin had her blank blind look, as if she had forgotten where she was, or when, or why. Vanyi seemed merely interested; but that too was a mask.

  “I don’t trust him at all,” she said, “but he belongs to you. You bear the burden of him.”

  Estarion wondered where she had learned to be so hard and cold. Not, he prayed, from him.

  He brushed the boy’s cheek with a finger. It was fevered as it so often was, but the eyes were clear, unwavering. “Damn you,” Estarion said. “If you kill me, you’ll die a grimmer death than you ever dealt me.”

  “I would not wish to live if you were dead,” Korusan said.

  Estarion looked from him to the Gate. Death was in it. He saw the flicker and shift that was its shadow.

  Sudden joy filled him; a fierce, reckless, heedless delight. “Come, then,” he said. “Come with me and die.”