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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “You don’t have good tidings,” Letitia said, watching him pace before the fireplace.

  The wizard shook his head. “It did not go well. I wasn’t able to learn our enemy’s name—clever bastard laid a very effective trap in that crystal, and I was lucky to get out of it with my mind. I’ve got a bitch of a headache as things stand,” he confessed.

  A collective sigh went up from the Tanaan.

  “What’s worse, there’s no question our enemy now knows my name—not that that’s a game-changer, since my name is well known to wizards everywhere, but he is now operating under no doubts that I am with you,” Amien said to Letitia. “Worst of all, he knows we’re in Dromineer. He can easily deduce we’ll be on the ferry in the morning.”

  Letitia gasped. “We should leave now!”

  “And go where?” I said. “The city gates are locked.”

  She looked at Amien again. “Then are you going to work wards?”

  He shook his head, then winced. “It’s tempting—but I think it would be the wrong move.”

  “But he knows where we are already!”

  “He knows we’re in this city,” the wizard said. “The likelihood that the Bard sent only one assassin looking for you is small. Wards would allow him to pinpoint us precisely; unwarded, we’re harder to find. And it will take time for him to find out which assassin discovered us, more time yet to find out where. Ellion?” He looked at me.

  “I agree,” I said. “It goes against every instinct I’ve got, but it’s the best strategy. For tonight, Mora, I recommend we sit. There is really no place to go tonight; better to post watches and wait for the sun and the tide.”

  Letitia pursed her lips, staring at me. She wore a composed expression, but the vulnerability in her eyes made my hands itch for a weapon. Finally she nodded.

  “What about tomorrow?” she said to Amien. “He’ll know we’re on the ferry, you said. What do we do instead?”

  I met Amien’s gaze; he gave me a quizzical look and a little, one-handed gesture of offering. I nodded.

  “I think we get on the ferry,” I said.

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “There’s no good solution, Mora. He expects us to be on the ferry; he can be expected to attack the ferry. Which, actually, means it’s the thing we’re least likely to do. Especially when you consider the full history of this campaign, and the fact that we have always tried to avoid the traps we could anticipate.”

  Her regard shifted; sudden, impulsive faith warred in her eyes with a resolve not to trust me, and I felt as if her gaze quested all the way into my soul for some fact that would settle the matter. I fought off the feeling of nakedness her glance could raise, submitting to her examination. I shouldn’t be trusted: we both knew it. And I so wanted to be worthy of trust, especially hers.

  “There is really no usable road between here and Ballarona,” I said. “The tide reshapes these coasts every year, and we’d need a local to guide us safely through. I haven’t seen anything here that made me inclined to trust the locals.” I glanced at Amien. “I only wonder whether it’s just these two cities, or all of Mumhan that is already as good as in the Bard’s hands.”

  Amien grimaced and gave a careful nod.

  “Taking evasive action would require time we can’t afford,” I continued, looking at Letitia again. “Had we time, I’d take the Tellnemed ferry instead, and continue through Ilesia. But Amien will never make it to the Moot if we do. Riding upriver on the Saone only takes us farther from our goal. What we need—” I looked at Amien. “Is something to cover our movements in the morning, so the enemy must guess what we do.”

  “A fog,” Amien said, smiling a little. He looked at Letitia. “We’re not just talking about weather here, but an arcane fog.”

  I nodded. “One that obscures a healthy distance around the city, so he can’t be sure what route we took until too late. Is there sufficient power here?”

  Humiliation flared in Amien’s eyes: not at the question, I knew, but at the fact that it was valid. His jaw hardened. “Even if I spend so much that you carry me onto the ferry, I’ll make it happen.”

  I nodded and returned my attention to the Tanaan. “Under that cover, the moment they open the gates on the ferry ramp, we cross—and hide below until we sail.”

  “And you think that because he’s not sure we’re on the ferry, he won’t attack it?” Letitia said.

  So the brehons had not yet ruled on me. As well they should not.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Even he has only so many resources. Each attack costs him. In his seat, I would wait until I knew where my quarry was, and spend my forces where they mattered. If he knows you travel with Amien, he knows you are bound for Aballo. He has only so many days left before he’d have to sacrifice everything else to reach you—but that day has not yet come. He will marshal his resources.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “Are you sure?” she said finally.

  I sighed. “No. But so far, every decision he’s made was the one I would have made myself. I don’t think he’ll start making mistakes now.”

  Letitia stared at me further. After a moment I saw the decision in her eyes.

  “As you advise, my lord,” she said. “In the morning we take the ferry to Ballarona.”

  Map: The Aerona Basin and Ruillin River

  Ilnemedon: Royal Map Collection no. 886

  22. Everything Has Its Price

  Tuiri woke me and Amien an hour before dawn. We dressed without lighting a lamp and, under cover of the deep, moonlight-blocking dark granted by the mountains to the west of the city, crept on foot the little distance to the city wall. We found one of the small stairways leading to the wall’s top, which are the sort of breach of sound military practices that cities accustomed to peace eventually indulge in—in this case, for the benefit of the ship captains—and walked the narrow parapet until we found a spot from which we could see all the way across the city.

  Amien looked around, turning in a complete circle, planning his working. The beginnings of dawn glimmered behind the mountains on the opposite shore. He glanced at me.

  “Time.”

  I nodded and extended my hand. “Lean on me as you will.”

  Astonishment flared in his eyes, though he managed to keep his face still. After a moment of silent staring, he nodded and grasped my hand.

  Lending one’s own native power to another is not the same as an arcane draw. This would not be my working, would be no violation of my vow, though I would experience everything he saw and did. I understood that is not how the sharing of power goes for men who aren’t telepaths; understood Amien would feel me only as a wellspring of power, like a sacred site or the power in his own core, that he might draw on. The one-sided intimacy raised in me a strange melancholy—which I could ill afford. I pushed it aside, trained my attention on the way Amien conceived the fog with which he would blanket Dromineer.

  He called up the power of the shrine to Par, which felt like the sort of charge that gathers in a wool blanket beside the illicit energies knocking against the edges of my awareness, then reached beyond the eastern wall and pulled on the mists beginning to rise from the river’s surface. With those mists he seeded a mental conception of a fog that rose from the river, stretched past the wall on which we stood, blanketed the city, and sent feathering fingers to the south and west and north. I found myself smiling, a deep pleasure stirring in my chest as thought transmuted into form and a cold wet fog settled all around. He pulled on me, spinning my energy into a delicious electric cloud that caught me up in tingling delight as it interwove the physical fog, building a fluid framework that slipped and gathered as pleasantly as the silken cloud of a lover’s hair: in the air, around the city, suffusing my consciousness. Through it the haze feathered down to the ground and up towards the sky, almost as high as the places where the thermals would soon begin to flow. It fluttered and glittered through me, not the grey and white of a typical morning river fog, but a shimmer th
at began with the hues of the rainbow and spiraled into colors mundane eyes will never see, blanketing everything in a deadening haze that even a clairvoyant could not penetrate. Droplets of mist clung to my hair and mail; sprinkles of invisible color caressed my skin. The sun rose and bounced from the fog, dazzling; rills of electric pleasure chased one another up my spine.

  Amien made a final, irrelevant gesture with his free hand, released me and smiled. “Thank you. Are you all right?”

  I grinned. I would have willingly lent him the power from my very bones, so long as I got to feel the working flow through me. “Fine. You?”

  His smile deepened; he shook his head as if amused. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Down on the ground, Dromineer lay under an eerie arcane quiet that made my black heart sing. The trill and chatter of the birds fell silent; the cocks in the yards held their morning calls. Even the wheels of wagons moving through the fog sounded muffled. We slipped into the inn, where people already stood clustered at the windows, and climbed the stairs. The looks on the faces I saw at the windows made me want to laugh; I didn’t even allow myself to smile. In short order the party stood ready, so we trooped back downstairs and out to the stable.

  “You’re not going out in that?” the ostler said.

  I held back a grin, shrugging. “In the fog? Sian, if I lay abed every time we had fog in the morning—” Now I did smile. “Let’s just say I’d need company in there, or I’d be bored half the month.”

  The ostler shook his head. “That’s not fog.”

  “Really?” I said. “What do you call it?”

  I left him trying to puzzle out an answer, mounted, and rode out.

  From the top of the ramp that led down to the ferry docks, I saw similar consternation on the deck of the Ballarona ferry. The boarding gate stood open, but the crew clustered on the deck, staring skyward. Amien’s fog stretched more than a mile out into the river; the demarcation between fog and morning sunlight shone as a fall of sunbeams out on the water. Beneath the fog, the air on the water lay as preternaturally still as within the city wall, and even the waves ran quiet.

  “The windcaller’s going to have quite the morning,” Amien observed.

  “The tide alone can get them under way,” I answered. “All the captain will need is a bit of courage.”

  We sat in the saddles a moment longer, watching. The fog muffled whatever was said on the deck, but hearing the words was hardly necessary. Everyone on board was spooked.

  “Everything has its price here, you said,” Letitia said thoughtfully. “I wonder what his courage will cost.”

  I turned and looked at her; she pulled the thong from the end of her braid and shook her hair free. It fell in ripples and spirals of gold across the spidersilk of her mail shirt, gleaming in the muted light. I wanted to bury my face in it.

  “Im,” she said. “Give me the purse.”

  “What?” he blurted, then seemed to remember himself. “My lady, I don’t—”

  She cast him a steady stare, holding out her hand until he put the purse into it. She nodded and fastened it to her own belt.

  “Ready?” she said to Amien.

  A wondering smile spread across the wizard’s face; he nodded and led us down the ramp.

  The entire crew turned to stare at us as we approached. Somebody whistled, long and low; I saw more than one hand fold into a gesture invoking Laverna’s protection.

  “Now I’ve seen everything,” one man said.

  I glanced around, reading the deference in the rest of the crew—and realized he was the captain. His dark-blond warrior’s tail and bristling mustache, well-groomed though they were, gave a strange impression of ferocity; but his face bespoke wonder.

  If I could read men, Letitia could read both her people and mine. She put on a smile and met the captain’s eyes.

  “Good morning, Captain,” she said. Amien reined, letting her ride ahead. I doubted anyone noticed: they were all busy goggling.

  “Good morning,” he managed; her smile deepened.

  “This is a beautiful ship,” Letitia continued as if he were the only other person present, riding across the gangway and dismounting within arm’s reach of the man. I was not the only person on shore who stiffened. “What is its name?”

  The impulse to correct her did no more than flicker in his eyes. The sailors of the Ruillin call their ships by the feminine pronouns, which seems to be a tribute to the goddess they all worship.

  “Rhian, Lady,” said the captain. “Her name is Rhian.”

  “Beautiful,” Letitia said again, nodding. “We’re bound for Ballarona this morning, sian. Are you sailing there?”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows, quizzical. “I hope so—but this fog…”

  She smiled and shrugged. “We see them like this at home all the time. Sail out to where the sun shines, and your windcaller will have no trouble at all.”

  Now he gave her a long look, eyes narrowed. “Do you know ships, Lady?”

  “Not as well as I’d like, sian.” This she delivered with a languorous look composed almost entirely of slow-sweeping eyelashes. She’d been watching the night butterflies too, I realized. The captain was entirely sunk.

  “Sail out to the sunlight, you say?” he said, a sudden rough edge to his voice.

  “I hope you’ll tell the other captains,” she said guilelessly. “I’d hate to see them miss a day of sailing just because of a little fog.”

  A smile I didn’t like at all crept across his lips. “Just so. And in return for your kind advice, let me show you around while we sail. There’s a lot to see.”

  Letitia smiled. “What is our fare, sian?”

  “Oh, only the pleasure of your—”

  “But my friends, sian, and our horses. Surely—”

  He glanced across the gangway as if he had forgotten the rest of us were here. “Ah. All of you, for Ballarona?”

  She nodded, reaching for the purse and opening it. His eyes lit at what he saw inside. Amien cued his horse and crossed the gangway, slipping out of the saddle even closer to the captain than Letitia stood.

  “Oh, annu, let me get that,” he said, folding her purse back into her hand, apparently oblivious to the captain’s annoyance. “The usual, I assume?” he said to the captain.

  “And another fifteen for the horses.”

  Amien nodded. “Just so.” He paid the fare and beckoned the rest of us across the gangway. Letitia stepped back to let us all pass. I cast her an inquiring glance as I threaded my way between her and the captain, but she just smiled and turned the full force of her charm on him again.

  “We’re going to go—downstairs?” she said.

  “Below,” the captain supplied, warmth creeping into his voice again.

  She smiled more broadly. “So much to learn. We’re going to go below until we sail, sian. We haven’t breakfasted yet. I’m sure you’re very busy during this time of the morning, but I’d be pleased to see you once we’re under way? If you like.” Again she employed the eyelashes.

  The captain bowed. “It will be my pleasure.”

  “Don’t forget to tell your friends about sailing into the sunlight,” she said, and caught up to the rest of us.

  “You are surely the wickedest woman I have ever seen,” I said in the Tanaan language, smiling at her.

  Her answering smile was modest. “We’re not under way yet, my lord.”

  By the time we had settled the horses, the captain had sent a man to share Letitia’s advice on sailing into the clear with the other captains docked at the wharf—and another man back into the city, to cry the news that the ferries would sail at the inns and in the street. We climbed down the narrow stair to the lower deck and occupied most of the chairs in the rear salon.

  On the other side of the room, a fortune-teller and a cards-dealer sat gossiping; they stared as if we were invading their territory, but we stuck to the Tanaan language and pretended we couldn’t understand either their words or the intent of their
stares. After a while I went out to wander among the stalls and salons of the lower deck until I found a food vendor who was already selling, then bought half of what she had on hand and brought it back to the group.

  Once we’d eaten, there was nothing to do but wait. It took considerable discipline to resist the urge to pace. Tuiri and Fiacha managed to draw the rest of the knights into a time-killing dice game; but I had no stomach for dice this morning. I had a prickly sense that the only dice that mattered had been cast long ago and were still tumbling all around us.

  Gradually people began to board: I heard footfalls and voices out in the corridors beyond the salon we occupied, heard the sounds of trunks and other heavy objects being loaded onto the deck above. Late in the morning the cards-dealer withdrew to her business in a neighboring salon, and the fortune-teller arranged her nest on the other side of the room. Again and again the dice skittered across the floor, until I was certain I’d be hearing the sound in my dreams.

  Finally the sound of the tide on the outside of the hull stilled; we all looked up, exchanging breathless glances. A few minutes later, the ship began to move.

  “Praise Endeáril,” Iminor breathed.

  “The question is whether the other ships will sail as well,” Letitia said quietly.

  Tuiri packed up the dice; the knights climbed back into chairs. We all sat and waited. After some interminable space of time, the ship scooted suddenly forward; the familiar tug of power against the base of my spine told me, even from below the waterline, what the windcaller was about.

  “There he goes,” Amien said. “The windcaller has the sails.”

  Smiles broke across Tanaan faces; I couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief myself. We rose and began gathering up our possessions; suddenly the captain stood in the doorway, predatory gaze on Letitia.