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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  Finally I sheathed my sword and looked around, taking in the situation. The circle of knights around Letitia loosened; she slipped from the saddle and headed straight for the area in which the noncombatants fell. A group of Essuvians converged on a Básghil corpse at the edge of the road, dismounting and staring down. I glanced at Rohini, who sat white-faced in the saddle a little distance away.

  “What?” I said.

  She shook her head and glanced at me, the black eyes that always seemed so judgmental looking haunted now. “His name was Navar. He—” She swallowed. “We lost him right around the time Macol fell.”

  I looked at the Essuvians clustered at the edge of the road again, finally understanding. “You… knew him?”

  In my peripheral vision I saw her nod.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and actually meant it. My throat felt tight; I looked at her again. “There are no words.”

  Her narrow jaw stiffened. “Whatever’s necessary.” She met my gaze. “Whatever’s necessary to end this, we must do it. No matter the cost.”

  I wanted to agree, but I feared part of the cost would be Letitia. And I would give up a thousand Essuvians to keep her alive. It would accomplish nothing to say this: I nodded instead, glancing around again to assess the damage.

  Two dozen noncombatants dead; half again as many Básghilae destroyed; one Essuvian injured by a Básghilae blade. His bleeding was minimal: it had been a glancing touch with the tip of a blade in the little gap between greaves and mail. But I saw the death-energy swirling into him, trickling in like water through a crack in a dam. This was the energy I’d failed to identify in the dead man earlier, the piece of the puzzle of Nechton’s working I hadn’t yet unraveled: the death-spell the Básghilae wore and carried on their blades. My earlier curiosity about the power vanished; only the pain of another brave man’s death and disgust at so low a tactic remained.

  “Your man Luxin,” I said quietly to Rohini. “He’s been hit.”

  “Ah, fouzh,” she moaned, and cued her horse towards him. She drew up beside him, looking into his face, and astonished me by leaning across the intervening space to wordlessly embrace him. Pain gathered in my throat; Manannan’s handsome face flitted across my mind. After a moment’s silent embracing Rohini sat straight in the saddle again—then in a single motion drew her sword and took Luxin’s head.

  “Fouzhir hell!” I blurted. I’d almost forgotten how hideous it is to decapitate a living man. Rohini turned her blood-spattered face towards me, hell in her eyes.

  “What did you—He had days yet!” I barked, knowing the line separating my prerogative from hers lay far behind me.

  “Days?” she retorted, voice raw. “Days of his body charring itself from the inside? Days of fighting the need to kill and eat his companions, knowing he’ll lose in the end?”

  “What?” I breathed. “That’s not how the Tanaan—”

  “Pheh,” Rohini said, and turned back to the man she’d beheaded. Busadi drew up on his other side; together they extracted his body from the saddle. It took me a long time to figure out what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. All the resonance had gone from my voice.

  Rohini glanced at me, meeting my eyes for a moment. “Different for the Danaan?” she said in a more composed voice.

  “Much.” My voice still didn’t sound like it should.

  “Next time we’ll send them to the front,” she said, as if the matter had been decided.

  I couldn’t work out whether that should be interpreted as a compliment. After a moment of silent staring I crossed the battle-space to the spot in which Letitia knelt among human corpses. She looked up at me as my shadow fell across the bodies, devastation and crushing guilt in her face. I slid from the saddle, stood gazing at her. Amien and the rest of the Tanaan gathered nearby.

  “Why can’t we stop this?” Letitia said to me, in a raw voice that warned of tears.

  “Letitia,” I said gently.

  She shook her head vigorously, warding off words I hadn’t yet formed with an outflung arm.

  “No!” she said, half a sob. “There’s no answer I can accept! This is my fault!”

  “Letitia,” Iminor said.

  She glanced at him, sudden decision in her face, and turned her gaze on Amien. “Get me off this road. I won’t ride it anymore.”

  Hope sprang in me that she meant something broader than that simple statement: she would turn aside, make for Aballo. Something inside me unclenched: we could have her safe in days. Strike out overland now, and we would leave the Fair traffic behind, reaching the river Sabrin in less than a day. From there we could sail on natural currents all the way to Aballo. With favorable winds we might reach the isle by Bealtan.

  But she pressed on: “The north bank is quiet. And the distance must be the same. I won’t—”

  Suddenly Rohini was there. “Mora, the north bank is in enemy hands.”

  “This one isn’t?” Letitia retorted.

  Rohini shook her head, lips thinning.

  “Fine!” Letitia said. “You keep to this road; put me and my knights on a boat. I don’t care if I reach the Moot by Bealtan! We’ll catch up to you when we can. At least no more noncombatants—”

  “Do you see any boats here?” Rohini rejoined. “There’s no choice but to ride!”

  “So let’s cross!”

  Rohini shook her head again. “I can’t guarantee your safety up there. This road is bad, but that one’s worse.”

  Letitia glanced at me, a desperation in her eyes that left me powerless against the need to act.

  “One’s as bad as the other,” I said quietly, knowing the mistake even as I made it. Rohini’s head snapped around to stare at me.

  Too late to back out now. “If Nechton has ties to the Weavers, he’s also tapped in to every old power site dedicated to Esus.”

  Amien turned an incredulous gaze on me. Immediately everyone else was staring at me, too.

  “I—” Amien began. He shook his head, visibly swallowed words, and said, in tones that bespoke careful control, “Nechton has ties to the Weavers. Not the Bard. Nechton.”

  “Well, the Bard does, too,” I said just as carefully.

  “You’re short on straight talk lately,” Amien said in a neutral voice.

  I sighed. “Yes. It’s all of a piece: Nechton and the Weavers, the Bard and the Weavers—Have you managed not to notice that they’re all worshiping Esus? Or how live those sites are?”

  The wizard was still staring at me, increasing dismay in his long face.

  “The change in the Básghilae?” I pursued. “How about the fact that the power’s running against you again?”

  Amien shook his head slowly. “This was the problem at the inn last night.”

  I shrugged. “Not that I could have slept through it anyway.”

  The wizard gave me a long look, and I knew he hadn’t been aware of anything except the backwards flow of arcane energy in the last half hour. I had the sinking sense that he guessed I’d been consorting with Powers no man sworn to the true gods should even know.

  “If there is no difference,” Letitia said reasonably, “there is no reason not to ride away from the crowd, and take the danger with us.”

  Rohini flung her hands into the air, shaking her head.

  “You don’t ride with banners, Chief,” Letitia pursued.

  “We don’t need them,” Rohini said. “Our enemies know—”

  “Your enemies don’t kill noncombatants! Mine do! Do what you will; I go no farther on this road!”

  Rohini cast a wild glance at Amien, but the wizard just sighed. The glance she turned on me was as ill-disposed as all the looks I’d received from her yesterday.

  “If you would, sian,” she said to me, voice cold. “Take your knights and find us a crossing.” Iminor gave voice to a strangled noise. “See whether you can find a place isolated enough to camp undisturbed for the night.”

  I nodded and glanced at Iminor: a horror I didn�
��t understand lay in his eyes.

  “Give us a sense of the lie of the road going west, and whether it is sufficiently—” Rohini swallowed, what words I didn’t know. “—quiet for us to pass without dragging the mora into our battles.”

  “I seem to be dragging you into mine,” Letitia said, sounding like a mora again. Rohini just cast her a cold-eyed stare.

  “I may be a few hours, sian,” I said to Rohini.

  She nodded, but Iminor shook his head. “All the knights? Surely that’s not—”

  Rohini turned an affronted stare on him. “Ouirr? I’ve given my word to protect the mora! We’ve already lost a man! What do you want—”

  Iminor flushed, shaking his head, and held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Ouirr, I mean no disrespect—”

  “That’s funny!” Rohini snapped.

  Amien laid a hand on her arm. “My friend, he is—” The wizard shook his head, casting Iminor an apologetic glance. The Tan flushed more deeply.

  The wizard shrugged. “None of us measure up to his standards where the mora is concerned. I pray you, don’t take it personally.”

  Rohini turned her dark eyes on him. After a moment the intensity in her face softened.

  “I apologize, Chief,” Iminor said quietly. “Lord Amien is right; I… I fear I am sometimes too vigilant.”

  Rohini addressed him with a silent, dark stare that stretched so long I grew uneasy. Finally she gave a tight nod and turned her attention on me again.

  “In the meantime, we will prepare pyres,” Letitia said.

  “What?” Rohini snapped.

  Letitia cast her a glance that said it was perfectly obvious. “I just got two dozen people killed! I’ve got to—”

  Rohini shook her head. “Lady, you have—with respect, Letitia, you have no idea what you’re asking! Just to prepare enough wood will take more time—”

  “We have a wizard,” Letitia said reasonably, looking at Amien.

  “No!” I said. “Do you think his magic is free? All the energy he’s got must be reserved for your defense! Assuming he can be effective in this zone at all! Did—”

  “But you can,” she said silkily, eyes on mine and a smolder in her gaze that sent my immediate, defensive rage tumbling into confusion.

  I stared at her, heart thudding in my ears. I could neither admit she was right nor discuss why it was impossible; to say anything was to open a vein I’d never staunch. Instead I turned and mounted again, cast my glance across the gathered knights and said, “Let’s go.”

  A strangled noise escaped Iminor. He swallowed and said, “Nuad, you’re with us, please.”

  Rohini shook her head and stalked away; the rest of the Tanaan climbed into their saddles and followed me back down the road, in search of some track leading to the riverbank below.

  Our shadows stretched out before us; the road grew quiet. Periodically the smoldering glance Letitia cast me while suggesting I might work with Esus’s Power flitted through my mind. Before long we were the only people within sight.

  “Where is everybody?” Mattiaci muttered.

  “Setting up camp for the night,” I said in a calm voice. “Bealla don’t see as well as Danaan at night; for us the travel day is shorter.”

  “But you see in the dark,” Tru said reasonably.

  I heard myself laugh; the terrible truth of it tore more laughter from me. This time I heard the edge of madness in it and forced myself to stop.

  “Not as well as you,” I said, trying to sound composed.

  After a couple miles we found a steep, narrow track leading down the face of the bluff to the river bank below. Over the course of the day I’d seen the space between the bluff and the water widen and narrow, ranging from a few feet to half a mile or more. This was a wider area, and from the top of the bluff I saw the glint of water among the grasses and cottonwoods that bespoke marshland. But there was no time to be choosy: we slipped out of the saddles and led our horses down the precarious trail in the fading light.

  At the base of the bluff, we mounted again. I pushed aside my sense that I should put one of the Tans and his superior night-vision at the front of the line and took that spot myself: were someone to step into quicksand or an ambush, it should be me. We picked our ways, single file, through deepening shadows and twisting, uncertain paths as the sunset faded and will-o-the-wisps blossomed all around.

  “Ehh,” Tuiri rasped.

  “Sweet Lord, why does it have to be marsh demons?” Ogma groaned, evidently by way of agreement.

  But I would take any light I could get in this place, even light that made the hair on my neck stand up. There would be no choice but to let one of the Tanaan take the lead on the way back. Probably with a torch.

  We pressed on, through deepening streamlets and burgeoning marshlight, until we reached a little bar of dry land topped by a hillock, on which a lone willow stood illumined by so many will-o-the-wisps that they seemed to merge into a single entity. The Tanaan shifted nervously in the saddles; a strange sense of foreboding closed a cold hand on the back of my neck, too. It was nothing more than the aftermath of too many tales of demons in the marsh, of echoes of the stories that make marsh-lights into the souls of the recently dead. Another commander might have tried to mock the group out of their fear; but if I didn’t believe the folk-tales, I still felt the wandering energies that give rise to will-o-the-wisps against my skin: better to let the Tanaan master the things their senses told them in their own ways. From the hillock I spotted the broader expanse of the river a short distance ahead: we were nearly there, and a precarious-looking cairn on the narrow flat beside the shore suggested I’d guessed correctly: the trail down the bluff had led to a ford.

  “Almost there,” I said, and climbed back down to mount again.

  “Praise Endeáril,” Mattiaci said.

  I cued my horse and started forward; some odd, half-familiar shift occurred, and for a fraction of time a blue haze competed with the green glow of marshlight at the edges of my vision. Something fell to the ground behind me. The mud beneath my horse’s feet opened into nothingness; the sound and concussion of an explosion rocked through me and were gone; the world vanished, replaced by limitless, empty darkness in which the only sound was Lady Tella’s voice speaking words I didn’t understand.

  The world crashed into being around me: I was in the saddle, the horse bolting through darkness and afterimages of incomprehensible brilliance, cold water splashing up to dampen my pants and gloves and hair. I yanked on the reins, but the horse was having none of it, and I couldn’t see anything: there was nothing to do but to hang on, to crouch behind his neck and hope he didn’t do anything too stupid.

  Suddenly, in a place my ears suggested was the middle of the river, he stopped: standing in the water trembling, sides heaving. I leaned forward to murmur lies in his ears and try to calm myself enough to persuade him things were all right.

  They weren’t. I knew they weren’t. But I would have to convince the beast to turn around, to go back and face whatever had just happened.

  Gradually sight resumed. As the haze in my eyes rolled back, I saw: we stood in the middle of the river, water rushing past us. The water flowed from left to right, which meant we were facing north. My boots were full of water. The opposite bank lay dark and quiet; both moons hung nearly overhead, casting everything in pale terrible light. I twisted around in the saddle to look back, seeing a fire on the marsh I’d left behind. None of the Tanaan were in evidence.

  A moan forced its way up from my chest. I knew what I would find, but I persuaded the horse to turn, coaxed him back across the river to the shore. Once we were out of the water I reined, as if I could somehow prepare myself, then nudged him forward. I forced my throat sufficiently open to call the knights’ names, dragged us towards the things I didn’t want to see. Again and again I shouted, but no one answered.

  After a time I found a blasted hillock with the remains of an old willow lying in pieces on the smoldering ground
, trailing branches into the water below. Here, finally, I discovered the answers I hadn’t wanted, in terrible pieces of people whose lives had been my responsibility, whose deaths were my fault in a way not even Manannan’s had been. Tru’s sword, with a scrap of belt yet attached to the scabbard; Easca’s strong delicate hand, still clutching a length of the reins; a head with face turned into the water, as if Ogma were bobbing for apples at a midwinter fest: these things burned themselves into the backs of my eyes, inciting a howl that lay inexplicably trapped in my chest.

  Marsh gases can knock a man out, and they can ignite in the presence of a torch. But they don’t just explode for no reason: there must be a cause. Tonight’s cause was the same as that of the ledge collapse at the top of the Muir Pass: someone who knew how to craft the sort of precise explosions one generally sees only in mining and sieges. The reason why this place had exploded was me, and the only reason I sat here shaking was that Lady Tella had intervened to spare my life, somehow plucking me out of the midst of the disaster. Why She would remove me and allow all those far worthier people to die I had no idea. I wished She had let me join them, wished She would grant me understanding or at least give me some indication of why my continued existence had any merit at all.

  How could I have allowed this to happen? I had known there was a price on my neck since Tyra, had known my enemy didn’t care who else he harmed since the pass. I had allowed my emotional entanglement with Letitia to persuade me to ignore the things I knew to be true. If my failures as a commander had killed Manannan, it was my failure as a human that had killed all these people. I should have let them escape me at Goibniu.

  Something shifted and dropped; the fire surged, in a great bloom that suddenly occupied the clearing the way the will-o-the-wisps had. The horse whinnied and turned to run, and I let him. I should have leapt to the ground and gone with my friends, at least as far as the place where the worthy and unworthy part ways for the last time; instead I hung on as he ran, turning him back towards the path we had climbed from the top of the bluff, telling myself that if I didn’t return, Letitia would sit exposed far longer than necessary. But I knew the truth, and I could find no real reason why I should return: only some binding I had cast over myself without noticing, which I was powerless to resist or dissolve.