The Changing of the Sun

by Lesley Smith

  “True.”

  “Senna?” Jeiana asked, voice suddenly seeming muddled. “Did I tell you where I came from? I don’t remember…there was a man and a boy, but I don’t remember their names anymore.

  “You came from Caerim, love,” Senna said gently. “Those would be your beloved and your son, but you never told me their names. Chelle, your sister, will know. We can ask her tomorrow, if you’ve not remembered.”

  “Why can’t I remember, Senna?” Jeiana seemed befuddled, as the elderly sometimes got. She sounded panicked, scared, and Senna listened as she tried to describe the confusion. “It’s like smoke in my head.”

  “Sh, it’s all right. I’m here and it will pass.”

  “It scares me.”

  “I know,” Senna soothed her and took her hand, squeezing it tightly in her own. “Feel that? I’m real. I’m here for you, I will love you even if you forget me as well.”

  “I won’t forget you,” Jeiana said, sounding only half convinced. “Only who I was, before I was Jeiana.”

  “So breathe, and tell me what you remember,” Senna said, sitting on the edge of the bath, her legs still in the water, and began to knead Jeiana’s shoulders. “You wrote things down in that little book of yours?”

  “What I can,” she said, remembering a story about a woman who had unleashed death on the universe, all in the same of love. “I see him, a man, he walks in my dreams. He showed me another world where our love is remembered. I don’t know his name though, not his real one, and I can’t remember what I called myself either.”

  “We called you Jaisenthia.”

  “I never used that name…” she trailed off. “I can taste the syllables on my tongue but whenever I try to speak the names they fly from me.”

  “Is it important? The memory?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Then why worry?”

  “Because it’s the wall that holds back a river. Once it breaks, everything will go.”

  “Then let it. You’ve achieved so much.” Senna kissed her temple. “If you were supposed to remember it all you would have walked among us as Ishvei and Arvan did, with all your powers and faculties. You chose to borrow this form for an important reason, a purpose.”

  Jeiana calmed, her breathing long and deep rather than fast and panicked. “I’m so lucky to have you to remind me.”

  “Something links us, I don’t know what. Maybe it is the shard of the same soul split as the old stories say,” Senna said, standing and offering her hand. “And now we’re clean, you’re calm, and the world spins around us.”

  Smiling, Jeiana took her lover’s hand. Senna passed her a towel as water dripped around her. Both were suddenly, painfully aware that this would be their last night of normality, a night which needed to be treasured and remembered in the dark days to follow. “Come on, we have one night in your pallet. Let’s not waste it, eh?”

  Senara agreed and the two women padded through the ruins of Kodia’s temple to conduct their own kind of worship.

  Ash was waiting for her in her dreams or whatever this place between the River and the waking world might be. They were in the forest again, but in a part she had not yet visited. She found herself glad of his presence, her waking days expectant and excited as she wondered when he would next join her while the mortal part of her slumbered, even if she only remembered this while dreaming.

  “So the dawn comes?” He asked.

  “Slowly,” Jeiana said. “I lie with my beloved, and that’s all that matters.”

  “I’m glad mortality is not such a hardship.”

  “Wait, are you mocking me?”

  Ash glanced at her with mirth and much amusement, but didn’t answer.

  She rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. A change in topic seemed a wise choice. “What is this then, a tour of what is to come?”

  “What is to come, what has been,” he shrugged. “I like walking this world as your companion. I might have wanted to skip ahead a few chapters, but considering my occupation as Ferryman, patience has never been my strongest suit.”

  “So what is this place? It’s beautiful.”

  “Ah yes, this is the jewel of Canhei: Ishvei’s Rest.”

  The name resonated in her mind even as she looked around at the clearing. Two trees stood in front of her and the first looked as if a Kashinai woman in long skirts or temple robes, perhaps, was bending down from a pedestal to take the hand of another, as if to raise her up. The red leaves made it look like she had red hair and the green moss gave her the illusion of the gown, and Jeiana understood why this place was sacred to Ishvei. It was as if nature had endeavoured to recreate an homage to their creation myth, and both colours were associated with the ‘green-eyed and red-haired’ creator of the Kashinai.

  Where the two trees touched, moss seeped through as if the second tree was stone being imbued with life. Jeiana was reminded of another piece of art from a far off world that had not yet been created, but that was to be expected: images of deities imbuing their creations with life, with a soul, were common all across the cosmos.

  Below the trees was a shallow pool. The clear water was coloured by the thousands of tiny glowing stones dropped into it over the millennia. This place was holy. A particular aura surrounded it that even quietened the birds and the other forest animals. Pilgrims, filled with faith, had come and wished for life; wished for the touch of their Goddess.

  “Is he angry with me?”

  “Who?” Ash asked, and then understanding dawned. She meant Uryen or whatever name the Healer was currently using. “Oh. No, no, he found it rather…inventive. You know him, well you did. He practically encourages the breaking of rules and the bending of them and seems to take it more as a personal challenge to find new ways to get around things which should be set in stone. He finally won a bet against your sister’s soulmate, which in itself is about the same as the deserts freezing over.”

  “I’m betting Arvan was angry,” she said, using the name simply because she couldn’t remember what the record-keeper preferred to be known as. She knew all the archetypes, the forms the gods took, they had dozens of them and there was no surprise she couldn’t keep track.

  “Frustrated, but more about losing his bet than anything else. He’s not a fan of anyone messing around with people’s allotted time, even when it’s you who does it. Not that he can stop you, of course. Death wins, even over a record-keeper’s love of order.”

  “He shouldn’t bet against me then.”

  “Quite true,” Ash agreed. “And that, my dearest, is precisely why I refused to take part in their wagers.”

  Jeiana laughed, not believing a word of it. “Well at least you wagered in my favor. What did you win? A world? A boon?”

  “A favour, nothing more.” He picked up one of the glowing stones and inspected it. “They come in handy and you need it more than I do.”

  Ash pressed the stone into her palm and she closed her hand around it. “Thank you. Actually there is one thing, not for me, you understand, but as I stand it’s not in my power to grant.”

  “Ah yes, the lovers who shouldn’t have met,” he replied. “You promised them a life together, properly. A sweetly selfless move which was not missed, I promise you.”

  “Did I overstep?”

  “No, it’s like saying it will rain…you can be sure it will, you just can’t pinpoint the hour or the day unless you look out of a window and see the storm clouds rolling in.”

  She pressed the stone back into his palm. “You can arrange it then?”

  “Arvan will do it. Begrudgingly, mind, he’s a sore loser. I can’t tell you when or where, what gender or species they might be but it will happen. It’s inevitable.”

  For a moment Jeiana had an image of a girl who looked the same species as Ash; they shared that pale pink skin, although she had dark hair that cascaded around her shoulders and highlighted impossibly old eyes. There was a twisted silver pendant sitting in the hollow
of her throat and a mischievous look on her face. Next to her stood a tall Kashinai woman with a long plait hanging over her ieshiya, freckles marking her skin as she rested her hand on the back of the strange girl’s neck. An intimate gesture which transferred across species even though the pink girl lacked an ieshiya.

  “Done.”

  “They look happy.”

  “I think they will be,” he agreed, and they sat down by one of the oldest trees, the trunk cool against their backs.

  Jeiana shivered as her ieshiya settled against the wood. “Ah, if this isn’t real then it should be.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Exceptional, in fact,” she replied, blissful. “I’m guessing your sexual organs aren’t on your back.”

  “No, they’re not,” he said. “In this species they’re between the thighs. It’s really not as fun and has led to an odd preoccupation with physical appearance. They share face to face and have more social, cultural, and religious hang ups about the act than seems possible.”

  “What a boring race yours must be.”

  “I don’t have a race. I am a creature of infinity, bound by nothing by my own sentience,” Ash said, his face straight but his eyes were smiling. “I can be anyone and anything, you just wanted me to be like this because it’s familiar and alien at the same time.”

  “Can you tell me something?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “It depends on what you ask. The rules, you know?”

  “Who is the boy? The one I remembered, briefly.”

  “Ah yes, he would be ours. Our son,” Ash said. “He’s a good child but he’s never been away from you for this long. I think it’s disconcerting for him. Poor lad.”

  “A son…”

  “You’re thinking like a Kashinai again,” he said, smirking from amusement. “You held him, carried him inside you, so your connection is deeper.”

  “Could you tell me about him?” She asked.

  “You won’t remember.”

  “I don’t care. I would rather hear it from your lips and forget than never have the knowledge at all.”

  “Then will you walk with me a while longer, until dawn? I suspect the days to come are going to be long, and if I can offer you this small measure of peace?”

  “I’d like that, if you promise to see me back by dawn.”

  “You bore him on a grey morning. The winter rains were in full swing and all we could hear was thunder and your cries as you tried so hard to bring him into the world. The Healer was kind, and careful to make sure you never lost hope of a safe delivery. Your sister held your hand and I paced a hole into the stone of the floor outside. The heir to a kingdom, to a reality, was a rare thing and ours…well…he was a very special child.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the Kashinai have stories about true love don’t they?”

  “Yes,” Jeiana suddenly found herself struggling to think of one besides the obvious parallel. “They say Jadias and Kaiene shared the same soul, that each contained a fragment of the other.”

  “We were like that. Amongst all the others who came after, we were the first. Just as your sister has Arvan, just as Kaiene had Jadias, so I had you. Children of such pairs are always special, the most innocent and pure things in all the universe…”

  Jeiana listened to his tale as the dawn sun rose, unable to remember but unwilling to completely forget.

  Darus scowled, Jashri had refused to see him. The guardians had stopped him at the tower. She no longer cared, it seemed, and was content to sleep until the end of days. She knew in her heart that the mantle was not hers anymore, and now that the burden was gone, there was nothing to do but wait.

  The temple seemed oddly empty. How many had used that illicit Ascension to escape? How many had pledged themselves to that little bitch of an oracle and her traitorous mentor? How many had simply used it as an excuse to escape their bondage? How many had run back to their families? How many had invited Jaisenthia to take them by the hand?

  Darus wondered if Hsia was still there. He didn’t have to wonder long. She was waiting for him in her room.

  “You didn’t run?”

  “My family are in Fenoi.” Her eyes were focused on the floor in front of his feet but it was a good enough answer.

  Darus accepted it. Fenoi was to the east, a good two week’s ride along the coast, and that was if you took a fast baelish and had a clever caravan of Edoi who knew how to survive the endless beach. “You’re a smart girl, for a bondservant.”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes and that was odd, Hsia still had a spark of defiance in her, it was what attracted him to her in the first place, that note of sheer idiocy anyone else might call bravery. Had he broken her spirit, finally, and missed the moment?

  “Hsia, you’re sullen this evening. Pray tell why?”

  “You killed them. Shaari,” There was no judgment in her voice, it was matter of fact. “Vashi.”

  “So that was what did it eh? Broke your spirit?”

  Her eyes focused on him now. “You thought years of rape, of abuse, would do it? Would shatter me?”

  “Everyone breaks eventually,” Darus said, pouring himself a cup of wine from the barrel Hsia was forbidden to touch. “The incident with Vashi, it broke Jashri too, but then killing your own blood, that’s the worst crime there is, regardless of clan and culture.”

  Hsia frowned, a minute thing that gave away something she had not been meaning to feel, surprise. “Vashi was her kin?”

  “Her niece, it seems. Even I didn’t know that.” Admitting it felt like losing a point in the great game, but even as her High Chamberlain, Jashri’s mind and soul had always been far from him. She had never trusted him with secrets.

  Hsia stood straight, and for the first time that evening, met his eye not as a slave to her master but on equal footing. “I have a secret, if you’d like to hear it.”

  He snarled at her, in no mood for games as he pushed her down onto the bed. She was going to regret that. “Or I could just make you tell me. You know what I’m capable of now, don’t you, Hsia?”

  “Come closer then,” she lowered her voice and her right hand vanished from view as she propped herself up with her left. “It’s not for another’s ears to hear.”

  “As if there’s anyone else to hear,” he muttered and slapped her just hard enough to remind this rebellious wench where the power lay. “Spill this precious secret or I’ll see you suffer for your insolence. I am still master in this temple until a rightful oracle is found and Jashri names her.”

  Darus never saw the knife. The blade didn’t glint and he was so busy contemplating taking her that he never paid attention to what Hsia’s other hand was doing. “Vashi.”

  “What about her? She’s dead and gone, and good riddance.”

  Hsia’s face made him shudder; only women could smile like that, like Aia had whispered in their ears and told them a universal truth men could never understand. Ishvei had created them. The Kashinai came from a woman’s mind, and that made all of Hsia’s sex closer to divinity. In that moment, she knew she was special, she knew something which would break him.

  The knife slashed through the space between them. It buried itself to the hilt and when Darus opened his mouth to cry out, more at the shock of it than the pain, a stream of blood leaked from his lips. The blade had dug deep into his chest, and into his heart, the one organ Hsia didn’t believe he possessed.

  Hsia’s gaze turned cold. “Vashi lives. The Lady of the River brought her back. I wonder if she will be so forgiving when she comes for you?”

  She wrenched the blade out with both hands, fingers slipping from the blood which had run down the blade and onto the hilt. That hurt, a hollow pain that shattered the last tethers between his soul and his body. Darus was already choking on his own blood, colour bleeding from his vision as he rolled onto his back and slid off the pallet.

  Jaisenthia was standing in the corner, against the darkness of the doorframe. Her eyes were
resigned, the lantern hanging from her staff shining, the only light in the unknown darkness. She didn’t look angry, Jaisenthia, only resigned, as if she had seen so many souls passing this day and never wanted to take another.

  “You would save her and not me?”

  The Lady of the River spoke and her voice was gentle, but filled with inevitability. “All who live must die, and you reap what you sow in life. Vashi’s part is still unfinished. Yours, however, is done.”

  “Take him, dearest.” The Ferryman moved across the room, clothed in shadow but for his white hair plaited into a queue. His silver-grey eyes rested on Hsia and his voice was gentle. There was no malice, just the inevitability of what must be done. “I’ll wait for her.”

  Hsia cried out next to him, blood streaming from her wrists as she slashed at the veins as if possessed. The blade was sharp and dug deep, as she ripped into the tendons, and her blood sprayed, filling his nostrils with death and painting the walls deep scarlet. No one would hear her screaming, the agony and breathlessness of it. They would lie here, into eternity, until doom came to Aiaea.

  Darus felt life flowing from him and it reassured him, just a little, to know he would not walk with the guides alone. Would he atone for his misdeeds? Only time would tell, but for now, there was only one thing he could do. Sensing his acceptance, Jaisenthia reached out her hand and he took it, knowing the inevitability of the action, and glad of it at the same time.

  Book III: Exodus

  After Ishvei and Arvan left us, my fever-dreams took me. I knew nothing, only that my mind filled with visions, with things I could never have known or seen, and yet I recognised them as if this lifetime was but the most recent part of an existence which had lasted longer than Thaeos had shone in the skies.

  I woke feeling as weak as a newborn, Jadias’ voice washing over me as he wiped the sweat from my skin. He was talking to someone as if I were still asleep, even though he knew when I was awake. He had long learned that skill, to hear my breath or see a change in my posture that betrayed me.