The Shadow of the Sun (The Way of the Gods)

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “Today it’s a much less dramatic business—though the argument can be made that subtlety requires more skill. Contemporary arcane warfare includes tampering with an enemy’s chariots, ships, fortresses, weapons—while enhancing the patron’s… in certain cases, destroying the enemy’s fortifications altogether—though, as usual, magical noncombatants can’t be harmed… gathering intelligence about enemy movements and positions and more—clandestine—things… Protecting one’s patron psychically, with ward-spells… warding a place so it becomes completely impenetrable, both physically and, we hope, magically.”

  If I hadn’t vowed to give up the practice altogether, would I have chafed against the restrictions placed on modern wizards? No doubt I would have. I had never overcome my hunger for the thrill; in the end it was the thing that undid me. Today the thought of even the watered-down arcane warfare my contemporaries practiced raised an ache of unfulfilled need in me.

  All the songs I’d learned that touched on arcane battles; all the grimoires and histories between whose lines I’d read, teasing out the details of the magical engagements: they roared to life in my head, as they had so many times before. I was still talking, but hardly aware of what I was saying: magical imagining had commandeered my brain.

  “But that’s only the opening phase of a really expert battle. Among wizards with a real—flair for this sort of thing, the game shifts into a canter with protecting the patron against other wizards’ workings and intelligence-gathering efforts, and countering the spells that have already been laid. Some of the best workings involve undermining the other wizard’s work in ways that are not immediately apparent, so all looks secure and people depend on it.

  “This is where the real artistry begins. Seeking out the structure of the spell, learning its heart, changing it—without leaving your name on what you’ve done, if you’re very good. The other man thinks his illusion holds, but all that remains is the sort of spurious visual effect that those on the inside expect to see. Or the network of a righ’s personal wards may appear to be intact, but now there are places that can be penetrated, and the assassin who knows where and how to strike the righ will find the job a simple one. Counter-spells and counter-counter-workings, so subtle and complex that even wizards who aren’t party to the conflict can’t follow their internal mazes…”

  I returned to myself, unsure what magical zone I’d occupied, and discovered I was smiling, my eyes fixed on nothing. I had the uneasy sense that I had forgotten the language issue altogether, and had slipped into Ilesian—or even, gods forbid, the Tellan language. I manufactured a little self-deprecating laugh, shaking my head, and glanced around the table. Most of the faces reflected various flavors of puzzlement—except Rishan’s, which was a mask of barely-contained horror.

  “Have I seen that sort of thing before?” I said finally. “No. I didn’t realize the—” I nearly said Tanaan, but caught my lapse into Ilesian just in time. “Danaan had a similar system.”

  “We don’t,” Rishan said.

  “Oh?” said Tiaran, her moon-pale gaze as challenging as any man’s. “Then what are they doing, out in Banbagor?”

  Sweet Endeáril, how did those two wind up on the same end of the table?

  I startled. At the other end of the table, both Rishan and Tiaran turned swift astonished glances on the young mora. The old Tana barked an apparently genuine laugh.

  “Your pardon, young ouirr,” she said to me. “Typically we are a better behaved people.”

  “You mean, typically we aspire to be,” Letitia said, casting a withering glance at Tiaran.

  Tiaran grinned, showcasing the place in which a new tooth was growing. My uncertainty about the right course of action evaporated: I might be violating Rishan’s taboos, but Letitia cared not at all. And there were puzzles to solve.

  Old women grew new teeth here. Magic had gone the way of the old gods, but my hostess wore an enchanted gem. Competent warriors were unaccustomed to wearing swords. It was going to take far, far longer than Bealtan to make any sort of sense out of all this, and were I serious about pursuing Letitia, I might need the time anyway. Watching Rishan seethe while I did it would only add spice to the chase.

  Was there really any reason to hurry back to Ilnemedon? I would only find myself dealing with assassins and uncomfortable political situations, and regretting opportunities ignored.

  I grinned at Tiaran. “No blood lost.”

  Give them time, someone else thought. Rishan scowled again, but Letitia’s mouth twisted with suppressed laughter. She moved abruptly, as if kicking someone under the table. That someone could only be Iminor: I looked across the table with renewed interest. How many telepaths were in this room? Now I suspected it was as common among the Tanaan as the tales suggest.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Letitia said, with the deliberate casualness of someone steering a discussion back into safer waters. “About the work they’re doing with the city windmills. Iminor, you said before we left that Budd thought the problem lay in smithcraft?”

  Iminor nodded. “There’s knowledge they’ve lost, as usual. There are days when I wonder why the ancients didn’t just write things down…”

  “In the early days after the Transition—and in Hy-Breasaíl as well… the great smiths were also great mages,” Rishan said thoughtfully. “Budd’s problem may have less to do with smithcraft than magecraft.”

  Iminor grimaced. “In which case the knowledge is lost for good. That would certainly explain why they just can’t seem to get the forge temperatures right.”

  “I wonder if they still have the craft in Banbagor,” Letitia said, too casual.

  Banbagor? Why all the sudden talk of Banbagor around this table? Was it possible they had intelligence that suggested Letitia’s mysterious enemy lurked across their southern border? I tried and failed to remember which Tanaan nation Deaclan had called home, and wondered whether the one Tanaan ever to take training at Aballo had returned to this side of the mountains after everything fell apart. He had been as unafraid of the dark corners of magic as I had, back then. What if he had continued his explorations rather than withdrawing in horror of what we’d done?

  The room felt suddenly cold. But the Tanaan still seemed to be talking about windmills. Iminor raised a pale eyebrow at Letitia, meeting her eyes.

  “Indeed,” he said. “I wonder.”

  Among human nobility, a dinner to which guests are invited is considered incomplete until the men have retired to a sitting room for brandy. But Tanaan dining requires far less ceremony. After the last course had been completed and everyone sat toying with wine glasses or bits of dessert, Letitia stood and stepped away from the table. The rest of them rose as if they had been waiting for the signal.

  Little knots of conversation gathered; Tiaran was busily organizing some clan-leaders-only gathering that must take place without delay. Macha met my glance for an instant, and then her eyes slipped away, and she remembered some errand that propelled her from the room. I sighed: I’d been on both sides of that transaction in the past, but I’d hoped only for an opportunity to learn another song or two. Now I didn’t know how I’d fill the time before sleep. I joined the trickling exodus from the chamber and wandered through the elegant corridors until I found my room.

  Someone had lit a lamp and turned down the bed. A book lay on the table beside the lamp: I crossed the room to pick it up.

  As soon as it was in my hands, I knew: this was the book that had belonged to Carina, the Cullinn volume of philosophy Letitia read to me on the barge. Each moment holds the opportunity to step back onto the path of the gods, to choose the gifts with which the gods created us. Redemption may lie in great acts, but the possibility of harmony with the gods is inherent in each breath. The words had been echoing in my head for two nights. My need to discover the next point of Cullinn’s argument was a hunger in my chest.

  I laid the book down. The last taboo volume I’d read was Aechering’s grimoire. Hadn’t that gotten me exactly whe
re I was tonight? The room felt suddenly stuffy, my throat tight; but I was on the first floor again. There was no way I could open a window. I would go for a walk instead.

  Lamps like pale bubbles illuminated the paths of Eriu House’s garden. Once out of reach of the lamplight spilling from the house’s windows, the etheral globes were the only source of light: Telliyn had already passed her third quarter and wouldn’t rise until later, while Arliyn was too early in her cycle to appear in the evening. I walked with my feet on a softly-lit path and my head in darkness, the Cullinn quote rolling around in my brain. Each moment holds the opportunity to step back onto the path of the gods. That moment on the barge returned to me: Cullinn’s words raising a feeling almost like the Touch of the goddess in me; my sudden sense of having stumbled into destiny. It was tempting to conclude that Letitia was sufficiently important to Lady Tella that I should take whatever action was necessary to discover Her Will. That I should read that contraband book and seek understanding.

  But that was just wishful thinking: a wish for Lady Tella’s attention, and a wish to read yet another blasphemous text. I was only seeking an excuse to do what I knew I should not.

  I followed the twisting paths around the house and down the hill behind it, a restless itch beneath my skin driving me farther and farther from the summit. At the bottom of the hill, a gate stood open: so much for Rishan’s admonitions regarding Letitia’s security. Beyond the gate, a bridge stretched across the water and out of reach of the lamps. The span looked no more substantial than the ones I’d seen from the barge this afternoon. I stepped through the open gate and onto the bridge, trailing my hand along the cold smooth marble of the rail. Water burbled and murmured beneath me; wind blew my hair back from my face.

  Beyond the reach of lamplight, stars sprang to life across the reaches of the sky. With Telliyn still below the horizon, even the faintest of the stars were easy to see, and the thick-clustered stars of the Way of the Gods stretched like a moonlit highway across the vault. I paused in the middle of the span, looking up. The constellations here occupied nearly the same positions as in Tellan, but my mind leapt to the hill outside the observatory at Aballo, to the night Deaclan and I spent sharing a skin of wine, staring up at the stars, swapping night-sky stories from our homelands. There had been so few moments of peace between us; but that night, I could imagine us partnered as nasclethéana. He had never failed to challenge my ideas, never deferred to what everyone imagined the stars said about me. That night it felt like the possibility of true honesty.

  To the north, Cúchulainn did battle with the Dragon. On the other side of the bridge, the Descending Goddess spread her arms high above the horizon, while the Hound ran away to the west. The Eagle hid behind the trees on the opposite shore. What stories would Deaclan have told about those constellations? I couldn’t remember anymore. What pattern would he have seen in the strange parallel occurrence of renegade wizards on both sides of the mountains? What if one of those renegades were Deaclan himself?

  At least he would still be practicing. An untoward spark of jealousy ignited in my depths. That was the wrong response: I should be horrified by the idea of someone with whom I had shared workshop experiences, someone I knew, being capable of what I’d seen in that meadow. But all I could feel was anger at the idea of him still practicing after all these years, while I had laid it aside: of course he was capable of it. I was, too. I followed the bridge across.

  Was this island Apilio, where they grew silk to trade with other Fíana clans? Or Zephyr, where conversations I’d overheard suggested cattle were pastured? It was hard to see evidence of either occupation: the trees blocked what little light the stars provided, and I could barely discern the path, let alone the breed of the trees around me. How do mulberry trees smell?

  I was about to turn back rather than lose myself in the darkness when I spotted light through the trees. Torchlight, almost certainly. Unfamiliar energies teased at my edges. In the human lands, I would have filed the seductive energetic aroma as magic; but the Tanaan no longer practiced sorcery. So what did I smell? I walked closer until light and shadow resolved into a clearing illuminated by seeming moonlight, in which a group of Tana were… dancing? I wasn’t sure; I stepped closer again. Tendrils of pale green and lavender wrapped themselves around me; aromas of strawberries and rain-soaked air filled my lungs. Power sparkled up my arms and across my scalp, unlike anything I’d ever tasted: subtle rather than strong, a charge that might linger on the skin. Pure delight shivered through me, overlaying the fascination of the scene.

  The Tana in the clearing were dancing, moving in a circle like a group of wizards at a working: hands joined, hair unbound, and absolutely naked, bathed in a light reminiscent of the glamour Tanaan cast in old songs. Their chant sounded like something I ought to remember; if the words weren’t clear, the purpose was: protection. Whether one called it prayer or a working, the intent was the same.

  I recognized several of the Tana from dinner: was this Tiaran’s urgent meeting? In the center, obscured from the shoulders down by forest growth and moving Tana, stood Letitia: at once tantalizing and shockingly vulnerable. She needed protection, but prayer to some Tanaan god or goddess who might or might not exist wasn’t the answer: she needed a wizard of her own to stand against the renegade.

  Each moment holds the opportunity to step back onto the path of the gods, to choose the gifts with which the gods created us. Why shouldn’t that wizard be me?

  My imagination leapt ahead of my judgment: I could visualize a counter-working that would turn the renegade’s undead warriors against him, redirect his every intention in ways impossible to recognize until too late. All I would need to begin to learn and grasp those energies I’d sensed in the meadow, to prepare to directly engage my enemy, was a second attack on Letitia. Anticipation raced through me: the reasons for the conflict between Letitia and her unseen enemy didn’t matter; neither did the inevitable casualties. It would all come down to the final engagement with the renegade, to the test of my power against his. If that wizard really were Deaclan, it would be no more than the resumption of a duel that had been suspended rather than decisively won.

  Finally, late as usual, the horror of what I was contemplating caught up with my conscious mind. My breath lost its way in my chest. Letitia needed arcane protection, but that wasn’t what she would get from me. I needed to get the hell out of Fíana. Right now.

  Letitia had been in the bath: this must be the reason Etan made me wait to see her. Her hair trailed dark gold down her back, red-touched by firelight, dampening the silk of her dressing gown until the line of her back was visible through it.

  “Good evening, ouirr.” Letitia smiled, gesturing for me to sit.

  The stories of men driven mad by the love of Tana: finally, I glimpsed the slim ray of truth that myths always harbor. It would be easy for a man to make himself crazy around these women. Half a dozen times since we met, I would have sworn I could have made an advance and been well received—but Letitia was Tanaan, and committed, and I was too old for romantic fantasy. It would be easy for a man possessed of less reason to trip and fall.

  “I know you’ve a great deal on your plate,” I said, ignoring the chair she offered. “But I haven’t forgotten the business for which I came, and I hope you won’t either. I’ll be leaving in the morning, with thanks for your gracious hospitality. But I’ll be back next spring, and we will try this conversation again.”

  “Really?” Letitia said. I wasn’t sure whether I saw disappointment in her face. “I’ll be leaving in the morning, too: for Banbagor.”

  “What?” I blurted. “You should be under guard in this house with the walls buttoned up, not riding across the countryside!”

  I’d forgotten courtly manners again, damn it. It would be a relief to rediscover equilibrium, someplace beyond Fíana’s borders. I cleared my throat.

  “Mora,” I finished lamely.

  Letitia smiled away the lapse. “It turns out—My new herald
explained this to me, once we were back in the city… Evidently there is a very old tradition of settling grievances among royal houses, by provocation to war before a mora’s investiture.”

  I sat down. “Settling a grievance.”

  “Evidently Banbagor was the source of the attack two nights ago.”

  “But I thought the Danaan had no means for such an attack.”

  Letitia shrugged. “So had I, but things are strange out in Banbagor. The tradition is clear: I must go to them to settle the dispute.”

  “That’s insanity! Ride out and offer yourself to your enemy?”

  “No, the rules for this transaction are dressed with steel. I should be absolutely safe en route—though we’re likely to be monitored. I assume you’re on your way to Banbagor anyway; I’d be pleased if you’d travel with me.” She met my eyes.

  Was she creating an opening for me, then? Or was I over-interpreting? Damn it, why had I bedded Macha? I’d been through this before: bedding a member of household staff makes it impossible to pursue the Lady without things getting ugly. Now my only hope lay in obviating the gossip by confessing my crime—and praying the Tanaan’s famously lax expectations regarding sexual fidelity weren’t just another myth.

  Looking embarrassed was easier than I’d expected. The hesitation with which the confession must be delivered came just as readily.

  “Mora, I would relish the opportunity to travel with you again. But I—Mora, before you make that invitation, you should know… This evening, I had—an encounter with… a member of your staff.”

  I pursed my lips and turned my face to the fire, to give her time to arrange hers in the appropriate expression. Through my lashes, I saw disappointment: she hadn’t been sure of the rumor, after all. Then she smiled, every inch the mora.

  “How sweet you are, sian,” she said. I looked at her again, accepting her generosity with a small smile. “Whatever pleasure a member of my staff may have had of you is a blessing, not a crime to be confessed. It changes nothing.”