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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “The fog,” Nuad gasped.

  “Hold your breath,” Rishan mumbled from the portico.

  “It’s not that kind of fog!” Amien snapped, and rattled off a counter-spell. The air cleared; reflexively I shook my head. But by the time I’d drawn another breath the fog was back, falling like a thick cloak over the entire yard.

  “Fouzh!” Amien drew himself into the crane position: left boot balanced against right knee, left hand tucked into the back of his belt and left eye closed; all power trained up from the earth through his right eye and hand.

  Here it was: the attack I’d wished for only last night. Drawing those energies into myself and dismantling the spell from the inside would be easier than drawing my sword; arcane awareness settled over me, and for half a second Letitia and Amien, the fog, and the horses and stableboys who occupied the end of the train were all I could see. Merely breathe that power into me, and I could begin to engage Letitia’s enemy. The madness of magic would make everything permissible. Only later would I awaken to what I’d done.

  Amien shouted out a second briocht; I shook off arcane awareness and reached for my sword as the fog wavered and then resolved into something both thicker and brighter. Several Tana cried out in panicked voices, no longer visible among the haze; I heard people begin running, towards what I couldn’t tell. But it didn’t matter; within seconds I heard them hit the dirt, doubtless asleep. My head whirled with the onset of a valerian slumber.

  I groaned: there was no sane choice here. Stave off arcane awareness and succumb to the spell; or allow the shift in consciousness to overtake me and try to control the madness it would cause. At least I might be marginally effective while awake.

  Amien shouted again: the incantation that would raise protective wards around the yard. As if that would help, when the conduit Letitia’s enemy was using must be right here with us. My head whirled faster; I breathed in the fog, feeling it dissolve in light against the back of my throat, and as my head shifted into magic it suddenly became possible to see through the all-encompassing sparkle around me. Once again Amien and Letitia, a couple of stable hands, and the last seven horses in the train sprang to vibrant life in my vision, while everything else faded to grey mundanity. I tingled with the need to grasp and rechannel the energy, to seek out arcane awareness of my enemy; instead I drew my sword, raced across the yard, and beheaded the closest stable hand. Why hadn’t I noticed his pallor and blue-purple lips the moment I entered this space? Letitia shrieked; but no blood followed my sword.

  “What the hell?” Amien shouted.

  “Básghilae!” I shouted back. “The last seven in the train!”

  “So you kill a stable hand?”

  I swept my blade through the throat of the second stable hand who smelled of enchantment, finally unsurprised at the lack of blood. This time Flidais, whose supposed horse he’d been holding, shrieked in chorus with Letitia, put out a hand to steady herself against the being she thought was a horse, and collapsed.

  “Fouzh!” I barked. “You’ve got a better idea?”

  Iminor and Nuad staggered towards me, swords bared; Amien cast a bright green flare of arcane power at the horse in front of me, and it went down. The bolt passed within inches of me; my throat burned with need. I could take both Tans, even without the spell that had stripped them of all but the last shreds of consciousness; it would be ten times more satisfying to end the encounter magically. But Nuad just grabbed Letitia’s arm and stumble-pushed her towards the house, and Iminor planted himself beside me, leaning against my off side without seeming aware. The horse began climbing to its feet, wisps of smoke curling from its hide.

  “The heads,” Iminor said with remote sagacity, just as the remaining horses broke ranks. Amien cast at each of them in turn, and they all went down: coats black and smoking, the muscle beneath their hides partially exposed. But most of them began climbing to their feet again. Nuad and Cainte stumbled in to strike at the two closest to the house; Iminor chopped at the neck of the first Amien had struck. Amien swore and rushed in with sword raised while I raced to waylay one that attempted to slip around the outside.

  How does one fight a horse? If a man is unhorsed in battle he can easily find himself on the ground trying to defend against a mounted enemy; a battle-trained destrier will kick and bite a man on foot as readily as he will another horse, and the most effective defense is a sword to the horse’s neck. I buried my blade in the correct spot for such a slaughter; but of course the blood that should have sprayed across my body didn’t come. The animal turned a gaze of detached recognition on me—but beneath that detachment, I thought I saw both intelligence and despair.

  I scrambled backwards and chopped at the beast’s neck; the animal turned to advance on me again. I wished for a poleax. My blow jarred against vertebrae, knocking the horse over but not severing the head. The light blades the Tanaan carried must be even less effective.

  More bolts of power sang across the yard; Amien swore and swung his sword again. Smoke rose from several of the horses, but two were already regaining their feet. Across the yard, Letitia slipped down the steps of the portico and scurried to the back of the disintegrating train.

  “Mora!” Nuad shouted, voice raw with frustration and fatigue. A horse reared and kicked out at Cainte, clipping her in the chin and caving in her chest; she fell, sword clattering across the yard, succumbing to the death spell before her body hit the ground. I chopped at my horse’s neck as if it were a tree, finally severing it, then turned and bolted towards the one that had killed Cainte. But before I could reach it, Letitia was there, swinging a small cauldron by the handle and connecting with the horse’s skull. A hollow gong rang through the yard; the horse collapsed.

  “Fouzh!” I heard myself shout. “Letitia!”

  “Mora, inside!” Nuad barked; Letitia dropped the cauldron.

  I reached the downed horse and removed its head with a series of grisly chops, finally severing the head just as the beast began trying to regain its feet. When I looked up Nuad was wielding the discarded cauldron—and Letitia had picked up another. It bounced ringing from the head of a horse, which wobbled to its knees but began to right itself. Amien cast at the creature, the bolt flying within inches of Letitia’s face; Letitia leapt backwards with a little shriek as it fell.

  “Letitia, GO!” I shouted, running towards the horse she’d stunned. She shot me a look of frustration and ran towards the portico, tossing the cauldron to the ground. An immense black stallion raced past me and Iminor; nothing stood between the horse and the Tana. I shouted and threw my sword as if it were a spear and this insanity my pre-coronation horse sacrifice; I ran after it. The horse from which I had turned lunged to its feet.

  “Amien!” I shouted. The wizard cast at the horse charging in my wake. The bolt passed so close behind me that I could feel the energy against my back. My sword penetrated the neck of the stallion chasing Letitia, knocking the beast to its knees. Halfway between the horse and the house, Letitia tangled in a downed horse’s lead and fell.

  Things shifted into unnatural clarity, as they so often do on the field. Letitia disentangled her feet from the lead; I leapt onto the horse’s back—booted feet only; direct contact meant death—and yanked my sword free. The horse scrambled upright, catapulting me skyward. I was vaguely aware of Rishan’s slitted eyes on me, where he lay paralyzed by the briocht. I sailed through the air and tumbled into the horse’s path, crashed bruisingly to the ground and rolled to my feet, fighting for air and clutching the sword, as Letitia ran towards the door. My head began throbbing again. The horse closed in behind me: too close for either me or Letitia to outrun. There was no choice but to stand and face it. I spun towards the animal; Nuad shouted an oath.

  This was how it felt for a righ to stand against the stallion, to know that the balance between order and chaos rested on this one divinatory sacrifice; that failure would mean far more than the loss of one’s own life. Six hundred years ago, a man standing in this place
on the night before his coronation would have dedicated his next stroke to the god Esus, just as the spear-thrust would have been performed in the name of Turenn Thunderer. Today it was all for Letitia.

  After an interminable half-second, the moment of inevitability came: the stallion was committed to this path, too massive to change trajectories. And I was too great a fool to run. Its gaze locked onto my own, the rage of the goaded stallion tempered into something colder but no less singular. I raised my sword, and the horse charged into it, knocking us both to the ground. I rolled away, just in time to avoid contact, reaching for the knife in my boot. What I was going to do with it I had no idea.

  Amien’s blade sliced down through the horse’s neck, severing the spine. Iminor completed the job with a swift final stroke. Abruptly the yard was quiet; the fog sparkled into nonexistence.

  “Sláinte,” I muttered, rising. Amien stared at me for a moment, then laughed: a harsh, humorless sound.

  “There’s a hide in which you couldn’t pay me to dream,” the wizard said, in the ironic tone he used after something went terribly wrong in the workshop.

  “What?” Letitia shrilled.

  “The hide of the sacrifice,” Amien said, surveying the yard. “They use them for divinatory—Hello, what the hell?”

  The wizard strode past Letitia to the place in which the train had fractured into chaos. I swore and followed: I saw it now, too. The decapitated horses were no longer horses, properly speaking. Hides were disappearing; hooves had become hands and feet. A similar change was taking place where I had first engaged a horse: the headless animal had already taken on a distinctly human shape.

  “Oh, what hell is this?” Letitia moaned.

  “Everybody, don’t touch anything,” Amien said. “Let’s go slowly and get things sorted out.”

  8. News from Elsewhere

  Amien worked arcane wards around the house. They shimmered in every shade of green: an impenetrable circle of sliding hue that stretched upward from the ground, towards the sky and out of sight. I didn’t realize how deeply I’d been dreading the appearance of an assassin or some arcane onslaught until the wards closed and the tension in my back relaxed.

  There was no peace in the sitting room to which Etan conducted me and Amien and bade us wait for Letitia, however. Amien and I stood staring at one another from opposite sides of the room, while I cast about uselessly for some neutral topic of discussion that might drown out all the things I couldn’t allow myself to say. When Rishan entered the room a moment later, relief washed over me: Amien could take up a conversation with him, and I could fade into the hangings. But within seconds it was clear they had nothing civil to say to one another, either. I drew in breath to sigh, then had to release it slowly so it wouldn’t be audible. Silence hung in the room.

  Finally Letitia arrived: fresh-cream skin muddied by the green light pouring through the windows, emerald eyes glittering with pain. Her fingers twined around Iminor’s with visible intensity; she released him reluctantly and cast a tormented glance around the room.

  “Gentlemen, be at ease,”she said absently. I restrained a humorless laugh, watching as she crossed the room to sink into a chair.

  There was nothing for it, now: I followed the rest of them into the sitting area. Rishan and Amien beat me to the remaining chairs; I settled at the undesirable end of the settee, allowing Iminor the closer seat. Silence descended again.

  “Ouirr,” Letitia said finally to Amien. “Forgive me. In all the—” Her voice disappeared; she swallowed and went on. “I’m afraid I’ve lost track of your name. ”

  Amien looked astonished. “Amien Cughlin, La—Mora. Prince—”

  Sudden recollection flashed in Letitia’s face. “Of the Aballo Order of wizards,” she finished. “I’m sorry, I’m very—My head’s not working very well right now.”

  Amien nodded.

  “You came to bring me news.”

  Amien nodded again, preparing to speak.

  “And got far more than you bartered for,” Letitia continued, and astonished me with a frank glance. There she was again, suddenly: the alien priestess who required my defense. And this time the appreciation in her gaze was unmistakable. I offered her half a smile.

  “That seems to be happening a lot lately,” she said at length, gaze still on mine.

  “Yes?” the wizard said.

  “They tell me it’s Banbagor,” Letitia said, glancing at him again.

  Amien frowned.

  “The Mora of Banbagor,” Letitia continued. “A grievance? My heralds keep dying, but evidently an attack on the mora-in-waiting right before investiture…” She frowned. “But I was on my way to make formal answer. They’re not supposed to attack again if I do.”

  “Mora, this attack didn’t come from Banbagor,” Amien said.

  “What?” Letitia turned a look of incredulous bewilderment on him.

  “This is what I came to—This is why I’m here,” Amien said, his gruff voice turning to gravel again. “Truthfully I expected…”

  “You expected Carina, ” Rishan snarled.

  Amien glanced away. “Yes. But I—I see now that I… misinterpreted.”

  It was far more satisfying than it had any right to be to see Amien so discomfited. He looked at Letitia again, frowning. The room grew uncomfortably still.

  “No,” he said finally. “The intelligence we’ve received remains what it is. And it has certainly been borne out this morning.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said before I thought better of it.

  The wizard met my eyes: grief, fear, and anger warring behind his practiced reserve. “About a month ago, a kharr spy was captured at Carricolig—the seat of the Ebdani righ,” he elaborated for Letitia, then glanced at me again. “Under torture he yielded intelligence of a plot… against the Lady of Finias.”

  My head snapped around for a look at Letitia before I could control it. The events of the past three days reshuffled themselves in my head, all of them showing Letitia to be even more defenseless than I’d imagined.

  “Against who?” Letitia said to Amien.

  “The Mora of Fíana, ” I said gently. “Our names for your lands are different…”

  She stared at me. Her lids fluttered. The morae of Fíana do not faint, she thought.

  “Are you telling me…?” she said in a thready voice. “The kharr. These are your rebels? You spoke about them at dinner last night?” It seemed a very long time ago.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why would your kharr want to kill me?” she asked: not wailing or whining, but simply, absolutely bewildered. My throat ached at her defenselessness; and I realized that was precisely the question.

  I shook my head and turned to Amien. “Sometimes torturers find things that don’t exist,” I reminded him.

  “At first I thought so, too,” the wizard said gravely. “But a few nights later, a herald in the service of a minor Ebdani tiarn was found murdered on the road to Tonagal. His pouch was damaged, but one of the remaining missives contained instructions for a tiarn in Ilesia… to do everything in his power to ensure that Ilesia offered Finias—Fíana—no succor… And promised rich rewards after Ilnemedon fell.”

  Anger sparked inside me. “The Bard of Arcadia. They’re threatening Ilnemedon, now, too?”

  “Where’s my herald, by the way?” Amien said, touching off an entirely new flavor of irritation in me.

  “Your what?” I said, with a passable attempt at innocence.

  “The one I sent to the Harpist Gorsedd Hall?”

  So he had known where to look. How much did he know about my last ten years? My irritation flared into anger.

  “How long ago was that?” I said, maintaining an innocent expression but surprisingly defenseless against the ire creeping into my voice. “I’ve been away from the city for a couple of twelvenights…”

  Amien’s mouth twisted. “No doubt they’ve been enjoying the peace.”

  I manufactured a laugh.
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br />   “Why do they want to kill me?” Letitia shrilled. I turned back to face her, abashed.

  “I don’t know yet,” Amien said gently. “I’d like to keep you safe until we figure it out.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” Letitia said. “The green wall’s pretty, but—”

  “It’s temporary,” Amien said. “This place is indefensible—”

  “We’ve got extensive history to the contrary!” Rishan snapped.

  “The power sources here are all wrong!” Amien retorted, frustration and something that might be fear boiling up in his tone. The Tanaan stared as if he had declared the moons built of glass, but I found myself nodding: it explained much about the encounter out in the house yard. Attempting to bank any serious working against the upside-down power in this place would be useless.

  “I can’t work with what you’ve got out here!” Amien continued. “Great—Dear gods, these energies are unusable! Didn’t you see, out there in the yard? None of those horses should have gotten up again, Básghilae or no!”

  “What?” Letitia said.

  “There is a reason I’ve held my position for four hundred years, and it isn’t because I can’t take some no-name druid from gods-only-know-where who can cobble together dead bodies and depletion spells! But what you can channel here just spreads out into… nothing!” He looked to me as if for confirmation; all I could do was nod. Letitia still looked completely bewildered.

  “Mora, we were talking about this, this morning…” I reminded her.

  “We were?”

  What had she thought we were talking about? “The energies in your sacred sites?”

  “Oh! Yes.” She met my gaze again, and abruptly the smolder that hung about her when we were alone was back. My mind skipped from that tantalizing moment at the sacred spring to the alien priestess who stood naked in a sacred grove—to Bealtan. Did Tanaan custom restrict a Tana to a single performance of the Bealtan rite—or was it reasonable to hope I might steal some of that magic for myself?