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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “The Bard is here!” I called, raising my voice just enough to be heard over the hoofbeats.

  Amien and several of the knights swore; finally we reached the Bormo Way, and I turned down that street. I could see from here that the gate at the end of the street was already locked.

  But the Orchid looked the same as ever, right down to the orchid-and-teapot plaque beside the front door and the warm light behind the tall second-floor windows that looked out, over the city wall, to the confluence of the Ruillin and the Aerona. I led us around to the back, to the little covered carriageway between the rear entrance and the stable behind it. A couple young boys raced out to meet us, eyes widening at the presence of the Tanaan.

  I slid out of the saddle. “Tell Marla it’s Ellion Tellan,” I said to the taller, redheaded boy; he nodded and raced inside.

  “Ellion, of all the places in Ballarona…” Amien groused.

  “What is this place?” Letitia said.

  The back door of the tea-house flew open; Marla stood in the lamplight of the doorway, looking at me. She looked fine, maybe even better than five years ago; the years that stood between us were visible only in a few tiny lines around her eyes, and her black hair seemed untouched by grey. In typical perspicacious fashion she took in the whole situation at a glance.

  “Let’s get them in quickly,” she said to the boys, and covered the distance between us. Her subtle, exotic perfume brought a number of distracting memories to mind.

  “Ellion Tellan,” she said, eyes shining.

  “You’re looking well,” I answered warmly.

  She reached for my hand, glanced around again, and made the politic decision to only kiss me on the cheek. I returned it; her face was as silken-soft and warm under my lips as I remembered. She smiled and glanced around again, gaze settling on the Tana.

  “Oh, my dears, you and I can get very rich,” she began.

  “Marla,” I said gently.

  Nothing got past Marla, ever; she performed a fluid curtsy, gaze on Letitia, and I realized she had already suspected who I traveled with.

  “Welcome, Lady,” she said. “You honor us.”

  Letitia shook her head, still visibly puzzled. “All the thanks are yours, Lady. We’re in—a difficult spot.”

  “So I see,” Marla said, her habitual composure very nearly covering her amazement at the Lady of Finias addressing her so. “Will you come in?”

  “Thank you,” Letitia said, and let Marla lead her inside; the rest of us followed. We climbed the paneled stairs to the second floor and walked out to the main salon; and the familiar feeling came over me that time simply does not pass inside the Orchid. My old friend the standing four-octave harp, which I suspected Marla had purchased for me, stood in the far corner; the rugs underfoot and the drapes covering the walls between the windows were as fresh and richly-toned as ever, the seats at the pristine tables as welcoming. The place was empty of patrons, but I recognized several of the girls—and evidently they remembered me. We smiled at one another, but I pushed aside the impulse to exchange pleasantries as if there were nothing more urgent afoot than a visit to a friend with whom sensual play was only the first of the things shared.

  “My dear friend, we’ve put you in a tight spot,” I said to Marla.

  She waved dismissively. “I knew when I invited you in—”

  I shook my head. “I may have brought the battle to your door. The Lady has many enemies, and today I’ve managed to gain her a few more; you want us out of sight.”

  Marla paled, but just a little. “The cellar or the attic?”

  “Cellar,” I said, relieved she hadn’t offered us one of the girls’ play rooms. It would have been too strange and distracting to see Letitia in such a place.

  But Amien said, “The attic,” with a firm shake of his head.

  I looked at him. “There are windows up there.”

  “Exactly. The higher I am above what’s going on in that square, the more effective—”

  “The easier we are to find, and—”

  “Have you seen that storm coming in?” Amien snapped. Involuntarily I glanced out the windows at the mass of purple and black clouds racing north on the Ruillin and the waves crashing up, out of the river’s steep banks, to splash across the River Road. “I’ve got to gather up a counterattack, and I’m not sure who hasn’t already left for the Moot!”

  “He’s not here!” I retorted. “Only the Bard! They hold Esunertos!”

  “What?” Amien breathed. “How—”

  “I found out this afternoon. Right around the time I understood everyone on the Ruillin knows exactly where we are today. Let’s not make her that easy to find.”

  “Esunertos,” Amien said, mostly to himself. “We have got to get the hell out of here.” He looked at me again. “I need the attic.”

  I glanced away: I knew he was right. I was choosing between Letitia’s safety and Marla’s; a better man would have hesitated over the answer, but for me it was no choice at all. Whatever the name for the flavor of affection I carried for Marla, whatever pain and guilt it might cost me to do so, I would sacrifice her for Letitia. I had done it already.

  “All right,” I said. Cold fingers closed around my heart. “Let’s go.”

  Marla nodded and led us upstairs; I could barely look at her. We passed up another softly-lit, paneled staircase hung with a series of erotic engravings, to the third floor; followed her down the long corridor of private rooms, where rugs muffled the sound of our boots on the wood; and paused to watch Marla unlock a door at the end that opened to reveal another stair. The walls here were unfinished: the stones and mortar stood exposed. Faint, purple-tinged light trickled down from the windows on the level above. I hung back as Amien and the Tanaan mounted the stair, reached out to lay a hand on Marla’s cheek and meet her solemn grey eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Thank you.”

  She smiled, just a little. “Even were you not here, I would have opened the door for her.”

  I swallowed, suddenly out of words, and kissed her softly. It was wrong, but my lips thought otherwise.

  “It is good to see you, too, though,” she said. She picked up my hand, laid the key she’d used to unlock the attic on the palm, and folded it shut. Then with a final, wistful smile, she stepped into the corridor again.

  “Is it too—? Could you—?”

  “What do you need?” she said gently.

  “A messenger, to the Knight Inn.” It was not a safe mission, not with the Bard of Arcadia in the city today. But we needed a force augmentation, and Rohini was supposed to be there waiting.

  She nodded. “I’ll send one of the boys up,” she said, and shut the door.

  23. A Name Written on the Wind

  The attic had only two windows: one looking east, over the Ruillin, and one looking south over the Aerona. Both showed roiling black clouds lit by streaks and sheets of lightning. Every few seconds, the blue-white glare illuminated crashing waters and windswept banks, cast the people in the attic in stark eerie light, and exposed the trunks, old furniture, and things less readily identified that Marla’s staff had stored up here. Between flashes, the attic was nearly dark. Amien and the Tanaan had stacked their gear in a corner, but no one removed arms or mail; even Letitia had buckled on her sword again. Several of the knights moved cautiously through the narrow spaces of unoccupied floor as if looking for something. After a few seconds, Mattiaci crowed, “Aha!” and held up an object that the next flash of lightning revealed as a glass lamp with as much as an hour’s worth of oil left in the reservoir.

  Amien called fire with a little gesture; the lamp flared into light, casting a pool of illumination around Mattiaci that moved towards the broader space at the top of the stairs as he did. He set it on a table near the window; Amien picked it up and moved it to the surface of a low trunk near the stairs. Beside the trunk stood an upholstered bench.

  “Ah,” Letitia sighed, and sank onto it, wincing as she settled. Horror, grie
f and rage chased one another around inside me: I saw now that she had endured more than the realization she’d made a mistake in the captain’s cabin. I wished I could kill him again, more slowly.

  But her face reflected anger and disgust rather than the despair I would have expected of a human woman or man who had been raped. I couldn’t decide whether my sense that the assault hadn’t progressed that far was hope or wishful thinking, but her glance invited no discussion: I swallowed all the things I wanted to say and watched the knights settle in a loose circle on the floor. Finally I added my gear to the heap in the corner and sat. Amien still stood behind me, staring morosely out the window.

  “They hold Esunertos,” the wizard said.

  “Yes,” I said. “And by morning, Ballarona.”

  “And therefore all of Mumhan,” Amien said thoughtfully.

  I shrugged. “Were I Cuilean of Mumhan, I’d gather my tiarna at Presatyn after Bealtan and throw my vote at the Moot behind whichever man saw value in securing the upper Ruillin.”

  “That’s not Deneth Cooley,” the wizard observed.

  “No, it’s Fhergail Conwy, though he’d be a fool to throw his forces in that direction. We can only hope the rest of the righthe will see it. That’s what the Moot is for, ultimately.”

  He turned and looked at me for a long moment, thoughtful. “If they elected you, what would you do?”

  Something turned over in my chest; I found myself on my feet, pacing away. Outside, lightning struck so near that the house shook; the little flame in the lamp went out, and everything was dark.

  “I don’t have current intelligence,” I said.

  “Answer the damn question,” Amien said evenly.

  He was right: I knew what I would do. But I also knew it was beyond the combined resources of whatever armies might muster after the Moot.

  “Take back Esunertos,” I said. It was a battle only the wizards could win, and even for them the cost would be high. A fey desire to lead that fight ignited inside me; I pushed it aside.

  “Yes,” Amien said, as if the answer were both surprising and inevitable, and lit the lamp again.

  I turned to look at him. “And then go after Macol, where it started. And by that time, I would have true intelligence on our enemy, and his ultimate sanctum would be my final target.”

  Amien smiled, just a little. “So Cuilean shouldn’t vote for you, either,” he said lightly.

  I recognized the joke, but my throat clenched anyway. I produced what I knew to be an unconvincing smile. “Fear not.”

  For a moment the room was silent. Lightning flared again, not quite so near this time.

  “Well, what else did we learn this afternoon?” Amien said.

  “We learned that Ellion is a mindtalker,” Iminor said, falsely cheerful. Heads all around the room whipped around for better views of his sardonic smile, then shifted to stare at me.

  “Now all we have left to learn is how many private conversations he has listened to.”

  I glanced at Letitia; her beautiful face held a remote, brittle look, and her eyes were on something outside the window. I met Iminor’s eyes.

  “Where I come from, ouirr, if a conversation is private, we do not broadcast,” I said coolly. “If I have heard any of your conversations, it was because they were more or less shouted in my presence.”

  He scowled.

  “Not that I found any of them—” I began.

  “Gentlemen,” Amien said tiredly. “If you are going to kiss, get it over with.”

  Someone, probably Mattiaci, failed to contain a snicker. Iminor flushed absolutely crimson, but I remembered too many times when someone had said the same thing at Aballo, where the suggestion is neither an insult nor necessarily a misdirected arrow; where members of Amien’s workshop had said the same thing to Deaclan and me. I found it impossible to look at anyone; in my peripheral vision, I saw Amien glance out the window again.

  “What intelligence do we have?” he said to the window.

  I cleared my throat. “The tale spinning round the Ruillin today went like this: the Lady of Finias came to Dromineer on a magical fog and boarded the Ballarona ferry.” I sighed. “By now, of course, the tale is further embellished with her and her wizard killing nearly everyone on board. We’ve ridden our last ferry.”

  “Fouzh,” Amien said, sounding completely unsurprised. “I fouzhir hate the Ruillin.”

  I nodded. “Further, in addition to Esunertos—Taillte and Canoviu in Granniu, and Sulis in Nagnata, are now in kharr hands; and Nemetona and Slieve Mish are said to be under threat.”

  Amien grunted. “If I were Cuilean, I’d be wondering whether Presatyn were the place to hold my muster, after all.”

  “There is that,” I said.

  Someone knocked on the door at the base of the stairs; I rose and ran down to answer, drawing my sword at the bottom of the flight. The person on the other side of the door was the tall redheaded youngster who had announced me to Marla, and now his expression was pure terror.

  “Sorry,” I said, and sheathed the weapon. “Come in.”

  He swallowed, eyes huge in his white face, and carried a lamp inside. I shut the door behind him and gestured for him to precede me up the stairs.

  In the attic, he stopped and looked around, glanced back at me, and belatedly made room for me to step up to the floor.

  “Lords, Mistress Marla said you need a messenger?” he said, sounding surprisingly composed.

  “Yes,” Amien said, with the smile he used with new apprentices. “Thank you. We need you to take a message to the Knight.”

  “On High Street,” the boy said, nodding.

  “Yes,” Amien replied. “The message is for a woman named Aedrini.”

  “Like the month,” the boy said. I wondered what story lay behind Rohini’s choice of that particular cover-name and whether she knew the tales of the old goddess for whom that month is named.

  Amien nodded. “She’ll be dressed like—like a knight, like the ladies you see here. She’s very tall, hair as red as yours, done in a long braid down her back. Eyes that’ll freeze your balls right off.”

  The boy swallowed.

  “Not really,” I said, shooting a look at the wizard. It is men, not boys, who come to Aballo, young though they may be, and all of them aware of their own power. Clearly he’d forgotten the difference. “You’ll be all right. But she’s a little—” I glanced at Amien, guessing. “Intense?”

  The wizard nodded. “When you find her, tell her you have a message from Rinnal Ruthin. If she knows who that is, you’ve got the right person; ask her to come and meet us here.”

  The boy nodded thoughtfully. “The Knight. Aedrini. Rinnal Ruthin.”

  “Yes.”

  The boy handed me the lamp, sketched a bow, and fled back down the stairs. I set the lamp on the trunk beside Letitia and walked back down to lock the door behind him.

  “So how do we get out of Ballarona?” the wizard said when I reached the upper floor again.

  “Charter a ship, assuming we can,” I said.

  He nodded. “Were I a loyalist ship captain, I’d take any fare going south in the morning.”

  “Were I a loyalist ship captain, I would have gotten the hell out of here today,” I rejoined.

  Amien grunted. “And with this storm, no one is going anywhere.”

  “Not on the river,” I agreed.

  He looked at me as if I’d said something insightful. “Maybe we should ride out. It’s—what?—fifty or fifty-five miles of crow-flight to Dias Diorwig—call it a long day, maybe a little more in weather. And then another two or three days to Aballo, depending on tides… That puts us on Aballo on—” He frowned. “The nineteenth.”

  “Two days before Bealtan Eve,” I said.

  “It’s doable.”

  “Except,” I said.

  He cast me a look of despair; I raised my eyebrows.

  “The thing is, you don’t just ride across the Aerona here. The place where it sh
ould have been possible to ford, right before the drop to meet the Ruillin: they call Bormo’s Well. The tides there are insane. There’s a window of maybe twenty minutes every day when it’s possible to even sail through there, and only the captains who work the Aerona every twelvenight will chance it.”

  Amien cast a glance heavenward, as if for support he already knew wasn’t coming. “So where do you cross?”

  “Presatyn.”

  “Presatyn? That’s—what?”

  “Another day on the road, all told,” I said.

  Amien sagged. “If everything goes right, which it hasn’t yet, and if I fly from Aballo to the Moot.” He shook his head. “I’ve got to handle this storm. And we’ve got to charter a ship, here.”

  I rose, nodding. “I know a few—”

  “Yes, and how many know you?” Iminor interrupted.

  We both glanced at him.

  “What?” I said.

  “You obviously know this place pretty well,” he said. “You did more than pass through. How many people here know you? How many people will connect you with what happened this afternoon?”

  I sighed. “Ouirr, at this point I would say Ballarona is divided into two camps, only one of which we’ll get any traction with at all.”

  The Tan looked at Amien. “We should get your friend to charter the ship.”

  “I can promise you the kharr don’t like her any better than they like me,” I said. “If even half the stories of the Essuvians here in Mumhan are true—”

  “Fouzh,” Amien growled. He met my gaze, warning. Again I wondered about the nature of his relationship with Rohini: the Essuvians’ situation in Mumhan was public knowledge, but he seemed to think I was about to compromise her reputation.

  “I’m not saying it’s her fault,” I said evenly. “But the situation remains.”