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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  My bones hummed to the song of the darkness; a tree grew up through my spine, pinning my flesh in a place that was neither mundane nor arcane; stars sparked in my fingertips and tangled in my hair. Gradually the torment of human emotion receded to a manageable distance, and I gazed dispassionately at the contents of my own mind: fitting facts together like the puzzle pieces they were, seeking a solution to the intertwined and mutually antagonistic problems of Nechton and the Bard on one hand and Letitia’s safety on the other. Every solution I found hinged on breaking my vow. It seemed likely that my vow was self-indulgent foolishness: that I was damned already, had been damned before I was born; that the only way I could truly protect Letitia was to accept that fact and do what was necessary. That honor in this case arose not from doing the bidding of the gods but rather Their Will, and accepting the role my stars had long since assigned. The cold, clear-eyed awareness that had overtaken me turned its attention on the part that clung to human emotions and futile illusions of honor, and tried once again to pry it free. But then another presence brushed against a distant tendril of awareness—and that recalcitrant, emotion-ridden part of me woke up and swept everything else aside.

  The world tumbled into place. I wrenched myself free of a tree to which I might or might not be bound. Nuad slept the sleep of long exhaustion beside me. On his other side, Letitia stirred as if in a dream, pain in her face. The glow of the wards we’d crafted still hung around her; through the spidersilk of her mail shirt I sensed the spark of her talisman, grown oddly bright in the darkness. Nechton hovered nearby. I felt him reaching towards her: not physically, but aetherically—as if he might slip in through a dream.

  I was moving before the things I had decided fully manifested in the conscious part of my mind: encompassing Letitia with my awareness, simultaneously scrambling to my feet and scooping her up into my arms as Iminor woke and stared at me, peripherally cognizant of his affront fading into fear. She was present inside me at least as much as in my grasp, her nighttime logic transforming our entanglement into my presence in her dream. That was true enough: I might not allow myself to draw power, but it was no impediment to the psychic defenses I needed to create, and I spun them around us like a wall of flames in a shared nightmare, casting blinds and mines in that circle’s wake as I pushed it outward and locked it down tight. Nechton crashed into that border, spent some interminable time staring across it: penetrating grey eyes and sardonic smile meeting my own as if we stood separated by a mirror rather than an aetheric minefield.

  I itched to push him away, to send his awareness blasting backwards through the aether; but so far, I knew, he had only glimpses of me, not arcane signatures. I should hold onto what meager tactical advantages I had. Instead I set Letitia down behind me in that dream-space, let my hand settle on the hilt of my sword. Nechton smiled as if that, too, fell into some tactical plan I wouldn’t understand until too late—and then he was gone.

  Letitia woke, crying out; drew back far enough to look into my eyes; and buried her face in my mail shirt. Wave after wave of trembling wracked her delicate frame. I grasped her more tightly, whispering nonsense into the top of her head, reluctantly meeting Iminor’s gaze. Fear competed with a barely-checked jealousy in his depthless eyes; I realized part of the reason I still grasped Letitia was for my own comfort, settled her feet to the deck and unwound myself from her. No sooner had I stepped back than Iminor grasped her, soothing her terror with a gentle embrace.

  “That was Nechton,” he said to me.

  I nodded; he nodded, too.

  “I thought I was dreaming,” he said after a moment.

  “Yes,” I said gently. “When it’s aetheric, that’s often how it is.”

  “Next time I dream him, I’ll wake up,” he said. Letitia laughed weakly against his mail shirt. “We should ask Amien to work wards.”

  I shook my head. “Not on the water. He needs contact with the earth.”

  Iminor sighed. “All we get to do is name our poison.”

  “Tomorrow night we sleep at Sucello,” I said, trying to sound certain. “She will be safe.”

  For a night. There was no need to say it; the grim awareness passed among us without words. My mind rolled forward to the days separating Sucello from Teamair and the twelvenight separating Teamair from Macol; and I wondered how long it would be before no possibilities remained but breaking my vow.

  30. View of the Abyss

  I woke when the boat began to move again. Morning spread clear blue and cloudless across the sky; Amien’s summoned wind blew forward across the deck, sending the tail of my hair fluttering ahead of me as I rose. I saw to my horse, dug some jerky out of the supplies, and gnawed on it as I crossed the deck to the prow, where Rohini and the Tanaan already stood gathered around Amien.

  Yesterday’s flotilla preceded us again, the gay silks of rich men’s pleasure boats easy to spot amid the utilitarian sails of the more practical vessels. I couldn’t imagine why a man would want to sail for pleasure, particularly not so much so that he would buy a boat for the purpose, but today I envied those men the food I smelled cooking on their yachts. I was pleased to discover that I couldn’t hear any of them talking this morning, however, and silently blessed the wind that filled all those sails. At least I wouldn’t have to hear them enjoying it.

  I stepped into the little cluster of people at the prow, exchanging greetings. Letitia looked calm again, exhibiting no ill effects of last night’s encounter except a hollowness around her eyes. Iminor met my gaze evenly, no hostility in his manner, though he edged closer to Letitia without seeming aware of it.

  “A quiet watch, my lord?” I said to Amien.

  He nodded, glancing at me. His eyes held the half-abstracted look that bespoke a sector of his mind still engaged in the wind he was crafting, and fatigue weighted his brow; but he addressed me with focused attention. “We were just discussing tactics that encompass psychic defense.”

  I nodded, including the rest of them with my gaze. “What I did last night was fairly basic. Letitia should be able to learn much of it.”

  Letitia stiffened. “Ellion—”

  I shook my head, manufacturing a smile. “There’s no arcane power involved in crafting psychic defenses; it’s all…” I groped uselessly after words that didn’t exist. “Mental?” I shrugged. “That’s not the word. Anyway. What I did last night was no violation of my vow, and there should be no reason why you can’t learn it. It’s not—” I hesitated again. “Magic. Not really.”

  Letitia frowned thoughtfully at me, silent for quite some time. “I see.”

  “Meanwhile, Amien was saying that the fewer nights Letitia spends in places he can’t ward, the better,” Iminor said.

  “Agreed,” I said, and glanced at Amien again. “Though I’d include the places in which Esus has strong followings on that list.”

  The wizard sighed. “Can you chart a path to Macol that avoids all of them?”

  “I’m not convinced I know where all of them are. Do you? The terrain continues to surprise me in that regard.”

  Amien nodded ruefully.

  “I suspect that, should Letitia go to Macol, we might actually be well advised to sail her there,” I continued.

  “What?” Iminor said. “After last night—”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’ll require constant arcane watches, but even with nothing but natural winds the trip will take considerably less time. Armies travel at half the speed we’ve been making on our slowest days; a twelvenight from Teamair to Macol is optimistic by half, and that doesn’t even take the time required for musters and rendezvous into account. And I’m still not convinced her presence there is a tactical necessity at all.”

  Amien’s patience thinned visibly. Rohini groaned and looked away.

  “I thought we were agreed about the Shadow of the Sun,” he said in a calm voice.

  “Really?” I said. “I’d agree it should be captured. I won’t agree it should be destroyed. And given the number of wiz
ards and swordsmen who would be required to ensure Letitia’s safety during the operation, I have yet to be convinced Letitia can do anything that team couldn’t do in her absence.”

  Anger flashed in Amien’s face, but Iminor held up a hand.

  “Wait,” the Tan said. “What sort of an operation do you have in mind?”

  “One made under cover of a much larger military assault on the city. We’ll need much more concrete intelligence before we can solidify things.” I glanced at Rohini.

  She treated me to a dark, skeptical look, then glanced at Amien. “What sort of intelligence are you looking for?”

  “Well,” Amien said. “We agree about the objective.” His inflection made the statement into a question.

  Rohini nodded. “Recapture the city, and take the Shadow of the Sun.”

  “So what we really need to know,” I said, “is how to infiltrate the palace.”

  Rohini froze, staring at me.

  “I’ve no doubt you know all the ways that place is vulnerable, sian,” I continued. “It won’t be my objective to do damage or reveal those breaches to anyone not a part of the operation; I’m talking about a small party of wizards, whose discretion can be trusted. And, for the sake of argument, Letitia. We’ll be able to use arcane concealments on approach and in the outer reaches of the palace, but as we come within range of the man’s workshop those will be less than useless.”

  Rohini nodded slowly, something in her gaze I wasn’t certain how to quantify. “What is your plan?”

  I shrugged. “You know how these things go, sian; reality is always the death of our plans. We’ll plan this thing down to the last detail, and then we’ll get in there and things won’t go as expected.”

  Rohini gave a philosophical shrug.

  “I would take maybe six wizards.” I glanced at Amien, and he nodded, but it was a gesture indicating attention rather than consent. “Who those wizards would be depends on who survives Esunertos, who turns out to be required elsewhere, et cetera.”

  “But you have a preferred team in mind,” Rohini prompted.

  I glanced at Amien again. “Well. Amien will have considerable input, naturally. At first glance I’d say Sanglin and Dandem—Brinner if he’s available; he’s dealt with Nechton before. I’m thinking you’d take the lead of the arcana-military aspects of the mundane assault,” I said to Amien, who nodded.

  “Oregen’s in the service of the Deceang righ?”

  Amien nodded again.

  “Conwy’s not likely to give him up without a lot of fuss,” I mused.

  “Especially not if he’s elected ard-righ.”

  “Would you spare me Dáire?” The man had been armsmaster at Aballo during my tenure there. Evidently he’d held the post for more than two centuries, and there had yet to come a man to Aballo who could best him with a sword. I wondered idly how I’d fare against him now.

  Amien gave me a long look. “If we agree he comes in for that mission and goes straight back to Aballo afterward. It makes me feel naked to think of him away from the isle even that long.”

  I nodded—and realized I’d gotten tripped into a side issue. “We can discuss how to fill out the team later. Let’s come back to the palace at Macol. Did you mean to slip in quietly, Chief, how would you do it?”

  Rohini grimaced and glanced across the water. She sighed. “Your objective is the wizard’s… workshop.”

  I nodded.

  She sighed again. “You know there are two.”

  “What?” I said, but Amien nodded.

  “I’d forgotten that,” he said. “No man dedicated to the true gods could work in the space Nechton used for all those years. Berngal, who served Armoan’s son Conis—Armoan never did sleep in the palace, just pitched tents on the family lands—persuaded Conis to build an annex he could use. I suppose Nechton’s workshop stood sealed for all that time.”

  Rohini nodded. “It was the stuff of ghost stories when I was young.”

  “Too bad no one thought to burn the place,” Amien mused.

  A faint smile flickered across Rohini’s mouth. “It was not for lack of trying. Anyway, Nechton’s workshop stands at the western edge of the compound, in a separate tower. I’ve never gone beyond the ground floor.”

  The image blossomed in my mind: a round tower with a peaked roof, like the sun-towers of Hy-Breasaíl; like the sun-tower in which we’d camped at Uriah. The magic still hanging in the tower at Uriah after so many centuries raced across my mind again. Sudden, desperate curiosity about what I would find in Nechton’s workshop overtook me; I had to struggle to bring my mind back to the military issues.

  “A round structure?” I said. “Like a sun-tower?”

  “A sun-tower?” Rohini echoed.

  “You may have seen them in Banbagor? Tall, narrow, peaked roof? Since the Deluge they haven’t seen much use…”

  She gave me another long look. “You’ve been there?”

  “Banbagor?” I shrugged. “I rode through it on my way to Fíana. You know the place.”

  “Not as well as I would like,” Rohini admitted. “My mother and I visited periodically when I was a child.” She shrugged, one of those peculiar Tanaan one-shouldered gestures, and a wholly irrelevant line of reasoning crystallized in my mind: I stood looking at the issue of a marriage between human and Tanaan. If a man fathered a child on a Tana, this was essentially what would result: a person who stood with one foot in either place, whose eyes looked human but whose bone structure bespoke the Four Realms. Was Bealtan her one moment of fertility during the year? I fought down the temptation to look at Letitia, to consider the issue in terms more personal yet.

  “If I know the towers you mean, sian,” she said, wrenching my attention back to the matter at hand, “I’d say yes: that’s essentially what Nechton’s workshop looks like.”

  I nodded. A man might defend the upper floors of such a structure almost single-handed: a direct assault wouldn’t do. Letitia would need stealth—and eyes that could see through Nechton’s most persuasive glamours. Even did I hold to my vow, I could manage the latter. But stealth in such a place requires current intelligence.

  “Well, then, we’ll need insiders in the party. Men who know the secret inner ways and the security flaws.”

  “I’ll loan you one of my men,” Rohini said.

  I met her eyes. “Thank you. That will be invaluable. Who?”

  Rohini glanced from me to Letitia. “At this moment I’m thinking of Seihar. He’s fast enough to maybe keep up with a group of wizards, and he doesn’t spook at magic the way some do.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “I expect we’ll need to wait until we’re in the area to gather enough intelligence about Nechton’s operational routines to know how to time things. Assuming your man Seihar can get us inside—that’s where the real challenge begins. If we can get enough information to know when we can slip in and steal the orb without fighting, that’s only a trouble-free entrance: the real problems will start when it’s in our hands.”

  “What?” Iminor said.

  I gave him a rueful grimace. “Nechton has strong arcane connections with the orb. He’ll be aware when it’s disturbed, even if he isn’t present; he’s likely to be able to direct power through it, even at distance, which will put whoever carries it in considerable danger.”

  “And that is why Letitia is critical to the operation,” Amien said, sounding satisfied.

  “What?” I said.

  The wizard met my gaze, a grim smile spreading across his face. “Unless you’re contemplating taking him on in direct combat.”

  This time the suggestion didn’t shock me. I met Amien’s eyes, seeing the look a man gets when he thinks he’s achieved checkmate—and a glint that dared me to agree. And for just a moment I found myself contemplating it: imagining what it would be to stand inside a sun-tower that vibrated with centuries of dark energies, much of it power I could draw just as easily as Nechton might, and cast aside my bonds; to accept the fact that I had be
en damned before this all began, allow the fierce intoxication of power to overtake me, and see what would happen. It wouldn’t matter if I died, as long as I took him with me. We’d spend the rest of eternity together in Tílimya’s Abyss. Doubtless we’d suffer many of the same punishments. The fierce cold thing that kept overtaking me welled up again, and the itch of need began on my palms.

  I fought it down. Amien was still staring at me, but now the flavor of it was different. I suspected the thing that was different was hope; my throat knotted. I swallowed against the pain.

  “No,” I said in a calm voice. “That’s not what I intend.”

  “Then what you need is someone who can weather Nechton’s power. Who can manage Dark magic with Light.”

  “Oh, dear gods,” I groaned. “That’s your plan? Send Letitia in there equipped with a fairy tale? Just call on the faeries, Dear—”

  “Fouzh!” Amien snapped. “I’m suggesting that Letitia can learn to channel whatever Nechton may send through the orb to ground! That whatever immunity she has to the Dark magic, together with a discipline she’s already halfway to knowing—”

  “Oh, fouzh,” I said, suddenly understanding. He was probably right, loathe though I was to admit it: she already knew how to channel the power of the sun, a source far too broad for most wizards to manage. Whether she could accomplish anything with that channeled power wasn’t the issue: the fact that she could handle it without mishap was. The power she and I bounced back and forth when I touched her talisman sprang unbidden to my mind, mixing confusingly with the idea of her channeling a wizard’s power rather than the sun—and ignited a flare of multilayered desire that made it impossible for me to focus on the conversation, to see anything but her. She met my eyes frankly, gaze shifting into a smoldering regard that spun my brain into another orbit altogether. But abruptly I connected with the fact that it was Nechton’s power Amien meant for her to channel, and everything inside me ran cold.