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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “We’ve got enough rope that we might get the knights across,” I said quietly. “But the horses…”

  Amien nodded again. “Then let’s do the whole thing magically.”

  The shift in the head that precedes magic was ready, beckoning. But for all the ways I’d endangered the party since leaving Irisa, I had still managed to avoid violating my vow not to draw power. My sharp, indrawn breath was as involuntary as it was evidently infuriating.

  “Fine!” Amien snapped. “Fouzhir fine! It wasn’t as if I asked you to—” He expelled a huge gust of air, then looked out across the rockslide below us. After a second he raised his chin, still not looking at me.

  “If you could step off the ledge,” he said icily, “I’m going to need room to work.”

  For half a second I actually thought he meant I should do it the short way. Belatedly I understood. I nodded wordlessly, collected my horse, and climbed onto the green grass of the pass.

  Map: The Ruillin

  Ilnemedon: Royal Map Collection no. 886 (detail):

  18. The Last Time

  Two days later, we rode into Nemetona, on the northern shore of the Black. The place is named for the shrine to Lady Tella there, which Owain Mourne raised to mark his conquest of all the Ruillin basin in Her name. I had looked forward to this arrival, not only for the irrational sense of civilization providing some measure of safety, but also because I had the sense that human cities and villages would feel like a return home. I was surprised to discover how strange Nemetona looked, how small and mean; something in the back of my head knew even Ilnemedon would seem pale and uninspired after the wonders of the Four Realms, diminished though they might be.

  The weather turned sultry as we rode down from the mountains: strange for so early in the year, this far north. The spidersilk mail that had seemed a useful layer against the cold only yesterday had become my own personal sauna. Under other circumstances I would have taken arrival in the Ruillin basin as a cue to pull off my mailshirt: the cities of the northern Ruillin in particular may be a bit rough-and-tumble, and it is an agreed-upon fact that any sin committed on a Ruillin ferry short of murder or theft is left on board after one returns to land; but while I wouldn’t consider wandering the Ruillin unarmed, neither would I expect to draw either sword or knife. On the Ruillin, mail is the mark of someone who makes his living by the sword, and most men find it simpler to keep their wits about them than to live with others leaping to conclusions. Most men are not trying to keep a Tana under a death-vendetta alive, however. I would rather sweat and give extra attention to courtesies than hope I could pull the mail shirt back on in time to cope with an attack.

  At the outskirts of the town, Amien reined and turned to face Letitia.

  “Mora,” he said gravely. “The time has come for you to take off the torc.”

  “What?” she said, hand moving to her throat.

  The wizard sighed. “We are about to be among people again. And by now everyone on the Ruillin knows about the bounty on the neck of the Lady of Finias. Your neck can’t afford a torc just now.”

  “Are you taking yours off?” she snapped.

  He frowned. “There’s no need.”

  She glanced around. Her gaze rested on Easca, then returned to Amien.

  “Lord Amien,” she said. “For more than a twelvenight I have done everything you asked, whether it was necessary or not. I have come halfway across the world at your insistence rather than defend my own home, at the cost of dozens of lives. I have required my knights to put aside the dignity and standard of equipage they have every right to expect. Now you ask me to dishonor my clan?”

  “Mora—”

  She shook her head vigorously, drawing herself up to her full height. “I would ask you where it stops, but clearly that question is mine to answer. Lord Amien, it stops here!”

  He shook his head, too. “That torc—”

  “—is the pride and dignity of the Ériu clan, and not mine—”

  “—says only one thing in the Ruillin basin this month—”

  “—not mine to shed because it’s inconvenient!”

  “—and that is Here is your bounty!” Amien finished.

  They stared at one another for several long seconds while the rest of us shifted uncomfortably in the saddles. Something in me ached for this apparent blow to Letitia’s honor, incomprehensible though it was; but I knew Amien was right. Wasn’t it just a torc, after all?

  Then I remembered how I had felt the day I laid mine aside; and perhaps I understood, a little.

  “No,” Letitia said finally, low-voiced.

  Amien’s reins crumpled in his fists. Still the staring continued.

  “Well, then, Mora,” he said, venom in his tone. “You’d better put that cloak back on. Because if anyone sees that thing on you, no amount of fast talking will change anything.”

  “Fine,” she said icily, and reached back, into her saddlebag. After a moment of fishing around, she produced the cloak, raised her chin to fasten it about her throat, and picked up the reins again, staring at Amien the while. The mere sight of the thick wool cloak on top of her spidersilk mail made sweat prickle across the back of my neck. “Proceed.”

  “As things stand, we’re going to need a cover story,” Amien said. “There must be some reason why two—Bealla—have ridden out of the Tanaan lands, in the company of half a dozen Tanaan guarding a woman of their own race.” He paused, anger dissolving towards thoughtfulness. “If she’s under guard, she’s of noble or at least wealthy family. So why is she here?”

  “Marriage,” I said.

  The wizard looked at me, gaze as chilly as it had been since the pass. He nodded.

  “Tied, as all such marriages are, to territory or trade,” he said. “I am in the employ of an influential trading family of Nagnata—No.”

  “No,” I said simultaneously. “They’re noble, of the tiarna, and they don’t want to be named.”

  “Right,” Amien said. “They’re paying me obscene money to travel to… Banbagor—Gorias…” Several of the Tanaan stirred; the wizard raised a hand. “Practically no one on this side of the mountains has the faintest notion of the geography of the Four Realms, and I don’t want the name Fíana to be part of this tale.”

  Letitia nodded slowly.

  “I traveled to Gorias, in the company of the unnamed tiarn’s wastrel son—”

  “Ah, that would be me,” I said lightly.

  “Indeed it would,” Amien replied, but his tone didn’t convey any humor. “To retrieve the bride and finalize the trade agreement between this noble family of Gorias and the tiarn in Nagnata.” The wizard paused, looking around at the Tanaan. “Her brother—” Amien looked at Iminor. “And several Gorias free-lances have accompanied the lady, to ensure that the agreement is properly honored once she reaches her destination.”

  “And that she arrives safely,” I interposed.

  “Yes,” Amien nodded. “Her brother is focused on her honor, the others more on safety.”

  “Milady, I look forward to our impending nuptials,” I said lightly to Letitia, then astonished myself by experiencing a ridiculous, lightning flash of something I couldn’t identify in my chest.

  She flushed; Iminor scowled at me.

  I tossed him a grin. “Perfect. Just keep that up.”

  “Where are the knights protecting you?” Iminor growled.

  I manufactured a laugh. “Ah, not only am I a wastrel and a rake, I’m an infamous duelist. Unless the knights get involved, I’m not worried.”

  Iminor’s mouth twisted. “You are a fool, then.”

  I offered him an ironic horseback bow. “Now you are getting it, ouirr.”

  “Let’s go,” Amien said tiredly, and cued his horse.

  The shrine at Nemetona stands in a small grove of cedars, near the shore—or, more properly, near the high-tide line. I sensed it didn’t see much traffic: the power-nexus on which it sits was perceptible but not compelling, and the stones themselv
es bore little evidence of the sorts of energies that lay on a place in which regular devotions take place. Nemetona might be named for the shrine to Lady Tella, but the farther north one travels on the Ruillin, the more the worship of the old goddess of the Ruillin persists; I suspected She was the one getting the attention at Nemetona, despite the shrine. Laverna, goddess of the river and patroness of whores, never goes hungry on the Ruillin: not in the towns, and not on the water itself. Standing in this little cedar grove, the surprising truth came to me: if the kharr won through to these places, they might find more sympathy here than we loyalists liked to believe.

  Unremarkable though the shrine might be, the territory itself compelled not only attention but a certain amount of awe. Here was power, though not power of a sort wizards are trained to use. I had never been so far north in this part of the world; the ferocious tides and huge tidal spans of the Ruillin basin reach their peaks in the Black and the Grey, and I stood astonished at the shrine-site: staring across almost half a mile of wet mud-flats, past the high naked docks stretching out into thin air and the sad beached boats at their feet, to the low-tide line. Experience farther south on the Ruillin had taught me that the waters would rise to meet these docks, buoy these boats, lap at the base of the rise on which the shrine stood in a matter of hours; and it was far from the first time I’d seen a Ruillin port at low tide. But farther south, the tides rarely pull all the way back from the shore. In the five years I spent in Ballarona I never saw it happen, though in fairness I spent little time at the riverfront while I lived there.

  But at Nemetona, apparently, it is all in a day’s routine. Little wonder Laverna gets Her due here, while Lady Tella receives no more than lip service.

  The Tanaan stood similarly entranced, absently grasping their horses’ reins, while Amien set about contacting Sanglin. After some discussion, we’d decided not to ask for a message to be relayed to Rohini: if we managed to secure a ship for charter at Goibniu, the reinforcements we’d requested would no longer be necessary; but we’d miscalculated before the last message, and Rohini was probably waiting at Goibniu this very night—while we must wait for tide and daylight before we could travel there. If she continued to wait for us at Goibniu, however, we would reach her before the relayed message did.

  So tonight’s dream-sending was composed more of information for Sanglin than anything else: the presumably welcome news that we had managed to cross the mountains, though we were running late; and instructions to follow if we were delayed so long that Amien might miss the opening of the Bealtan Moot. Tonight the sending proceeded without mishap, but by the time Amien was done, my mind had shifted predictably from the wonders before me to the looming disaster at Teamair. I pushed aside the dismal imaginings, turned my mind to calculating the days between Letitia and safety. Sailing on a ship chartered at Goibniu, she could be at Aballo in six days—with practically no concerns for safety en route. Cautious optimism was probably in order. I felt less joy than I should.

  We rode to Nemetona’s lone inn. It turned out to have only two guest rooms, both of which were already let for the night. I was pleased to see freshly-drawn beer and hot food prepared in a kitchen for the first time since Dianann; but tonight our company in the inn’s main room was comprised of frankly-staring locals well into their cups—and the crews and captains of a couple of smallboats the tide had deposited at this end of the Black for the night, whose manners were no better. The men staring at the Tana in our party didn’t improve the taste of the food, which turned out to be stew no more inspired than the stuff we’d been cooking over campfires for the better part of a twelvenight. We made a hasty meal of it, Amien arranged passage on one of the boats heading south again in the morning, and we decamped to Nemetona’s boathouse.

  On the way, I tried to figure out whether I should explain the scene in that inn to the Tanaan: the ideas humans have about Tanaan in general and Tana in particular; the expectation human men have that Tana are wholly wanton and ripe for the picking. I finally decided to let the issue lie: the Tanaan would be shocked; humans everywhere would turn out looking like fools of the highest order; I would sound a paranoid idiot; most likely all of the above. Tru and Easca were more than capable of protecting themselves from drunks in taverns, I reasoned; and there were still more men than women in the party.

  Nemetona’s boathouse stood at the far end of the little marina, at the edge of the mud-flats: during high tide it must stand half-in, half-out of the water. A single door opened from the path that traced the shore, and on that side the building stood no taller than boathouses anywhere; but the entire waterward side stood open, and as it stretched towards the water the building expanded downward, twice as deep at the waterward edge as at the shore. Inside, a packed-earth floor afforded space for loading and unloading; a walkway wide enough for a single horse traced the interior of the western wall. The water within the boathouse stood empty, and still considerably lower than the loading spaces. I guessed the boats that regularly sheltered here must be at the other end of the Black tonight.

  Amien didn’t cast wards around the boathouse: they would be visible from half the village, would raise questions we wanted to avoid. Instead he worked a subtle binding over the door on the landward side, which would alert him even from sleep if someone tried to enter; and we divided the night into watches again. It was my turn for the first watch; I settled inside the boathouse with my back to the wall, my jacket once again a welcome ward against the chill. I situated myself so I could see the door but with my attention towards the water.

  Everything outside the boathouse lay painted in pale colors by the light of two full moons. The roofs on the other side of Nemetona looked peaceful, almost pretty, across the water. Inside, the boathouse echoed with the pounding of surf as the tide raced towards its height; huge swells roared across the water and crashed against the boathouse walls. The sound was hypnotic: most of the party lay down in the dry area of the boathouse and seemed to fall instantly asleep. Soon only Letitia remained awake: swathed in her cloak at the limit of the boathouse’s interior walkway, face towards the water.

  The energies her meditation always raised were fainter here, zephyrs of pleasure against the edges of my awareness that I discovered I could enjoy without danger of being pulled into arcane consciousness. Moonlight made a faint halo of her golden hair. Time stretched into strange, limitless peace, and I found myself relaxing, as if this were the sort of pleasure-outing that can make a man contemplate leaving his daily life for the illusion of unending quiet. There could be far worse ways to spend a lifetime than sitting ward for Letitia and her companions.

  Abruptly I realized, with true and painful awareness of its immediacy, that tomorrow we would reach Goibniu. And there we must part company. I could not keep my promise to return to Fíana next spring, unless I dealt successfully with the price on my neck.

  Letitia stirred; she turned and looked at me, moonlight casting her face in a luminance that grabbed me by the throat.

  “These waters are amazing,” she said, barely audible above the noise of the surf.

  I might have lost the knack of wooing in the past two months, but I could still apprehend an oblique invitation: I rose and walked down the length of the narrow walkway, settling behind her on the weathered planks. From here the door was less visible, but the view of the lake was commanding: I told myself it constituted a reasonable compromise. For several minutes we just sat, watching the water race up to consume the land.

  “By this time tomorrow we’ll reach Goibniu,” I said, still looking at the water. In my peripheral vision I saw her nod. “If we’re able to charter a ship, the next morning you’ll be sailing to Aballo.”

  Her head snapped around; she stared at me again. This time I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “I’ll be sailing?”

  I swallowed. “You… will have no need of me, once you have a ship of your own. The undead cannot cross water; with a windcaller you can be out to sea in three days, at Aballo j
ust a few days later. And I—” My throat closed; I swallowed again. “I cannot go to Aballo.”

  “What? Why?”

  Oh, sweet Lady Tella. I could beat any man I knew at chess, but I hadn’t seen this question coming? If it had been necessary to introduce this topic, shouldn’t I at least have had a deflection ready? I cast about uselessly for something that was both true and admissible.

  “Ah… let us say it is another of the places where my welcome has worn out,” I managed finally.

  Now her look was analytical. “Having something to do with the reason why you’re so angry with Amien.”

  “What?” I blurted. “Letitia, you’ve got it perfectly backwards. He’s angry with me.”

  She gazed at me in pensive silence. Something in the way she held her mouth said I had probably lied. I hadn’t, about that; but I had, about so many other things, by omission and commission both. I looked away.

  “As you say,” she said at last, and looked out at the water again.

  Something inside me sank. On our last night together, I would leave things like this? A cloud passed before Telliyn’s face; will-o-the-wisps in the marshlands to the east and southwest leapt into pale green visibility. I longed to speak the truth, finally; but there was none I could tell about this issue without confessing everything.

  Maybe it no longer mattered. After all, she would most likely be on a ship little more than a day from now. But the necessity of caution snuffed out the impulse for truth, as usual. I could do nothing but gaze at her moonlit profile, trying to come up with some way to redirect the conversation, to keep her engaged with me. As if it mattered. As if it would go anywhere, even could I sail all the way to Aballo.

  “I wish—” Abruptly I realized truth was sneaking out of me anyway, and my voice faltered; she turned to look at me again. “I wish I could have known you under other circumstances. In peace.”