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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “You damn fool!” I blurted, barely noticing her dishabille. Amien flushed. “How could you not tell me! It’s not so difficult—”

  “What,” Rohini said ponderously. “Is. Going. On. Now.”

  “I should have known,” I said. And I should have. Gods, what a fool I was. “Did anyone wonder what happened to the death spell on the sword that hit you, Chief? Your wards deflected it. Guess where it went!”

  “Oh, gods,” Rohini moaned, sitting down abruptly. “But you can undo it—right?”

  “He can rechannel it,” Amien said. “Leaving Aballo with a Prince who is a permanent sink for dark magic.”

  “Better than a dead one!” I blurted, immediately regretting it.

  Amien’s mouth twisted. “Really? The law says a man with a physical defect may not be a righ. How can a man with a permanent attachment to dark power be Prince?”

  I shook my head. “All magic is an affliction.”

  Amien hissed.

  “My lord, it’s true! You’ve said it yourself, although differently: when They give a man a Talent, the gods set him apart. They take from him any hope of a normal life, reserving him to Their own ends. This magic isn’t changing you; until a moment ago I didn’t even know—”

  “It’s changing me,” Amien said. “I’ll spare you the details of the things I think I sense today, but I know they aren’t things of the gods…”

  Like a god and goddess Whose names no wizard knew holding sway over Uisneach? I couldn’t ask the question in front of Rohini, not even in a room where secrets went to die.

  “When Nuad of the Silver Hand lost his arm, he stepped down from the throne and let Eochaid Bres take his place,” I said. “No one suggested he should die. Please, my lord, if you need to step down, I won’t fight you—but let me rechannel this spell!”

  Amien gave me a long look. He swallowed, the apple of his throat bobbing visibly beneath the skin.

  “Let me think on this,” he said finally. “We will talk more tonight. Meanwhile—Ro, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize until we talked about this that my working wards for you would only do you harm, with this spell in me. Let me call Sanglin.”

  Rohini shook her head. “I’ll wait. Let me know what you decide.”

  Amien shook his head, too. “Ro, one way or another this spell will always be with me.”

  “I’ll wait,” Rohini said. “This secret does not leave this room.”

  Rohini and I stepped into the little corridor again. I pulled the door shut—and discovered Sanglin staring at me. I felt a blush creep up from my neck, though I couldn’t have named any one thing that caused it. There were far too many reasons for me to choose just one.

  “He needs rest,” Rohini said to Sanglin, as peremptory as if he were an initiate and not Amien’s designated heir. “See that he gets it. Ellion—” She surprised me with an embrace; I returned it as gently as I could. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  I nodded, empty of words, and watched as she strode down the corridor with a swift strength that almost made me doubt her injury. I looked back to discover Sanglin’s brown eyes still on me.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, anger crackling in his voice.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” I replied.

  For a moment that seemed much longer he just stared at me. A hundred memories of workshop experiences and moments of the goddess’s Presence that we had shared fought for access to my conscious mind; I wrestled them back down.

  “Hurt him again… and I will personally see you experience things that would make a devotee of Par weep in fear,” Sanglin said.

  I should beg his forgiveness right here, whether or not he would grant it. But if I opened that vein I’d never staunch it, and I must endure not only tonight but tomorrow; not only the wizards but all the righthe, and Ilnemedon’s and Tellan’s societies. I drew the habit of irony around myself instead.

  “Missed you, too,” I said, and went back outside to see to my horse.

  He at least was pleased to see me. We went to the stable and tended his needs, including a thorough brushing and the long-overdue pleasure of a bath. After a good meal I took him to the area behind the stable, turned him out in a respectably-sized, sunny paddock to relax with his friends. Finally I carried my bags and the corpse of my harp inside, found the room I’d been assigned, and located the bath.

  The slickness of the floor told me Letitia and Iminor had already been here, whether together or separately; the idea ran together in my mind with my bath in the grotto at Sucello, and inevitably to an all-too-vivid image of them sharing the water here. Sudden, terrible need and anger raged through me. I struggled to push them aside. All the rules for everything had been suspended while we rode across the world; now we were back in civilization, and the rules were closing in around us again. If I could be excused as much as any man for loving her, it was still incumbent upon me to step aside for her chosen consort, now that we had returned to reality.

  Besides, love wasn’t the right word for it. I tried and failed to imagine what word I should use for this madness instead.

  35. The Promise of the Stars

  During those months when it stands, the city of Teamair is constructed entirely of wood: in token of the impermanence of any ard-righ’s reign, which is subject to revocation not only by the gods but by his peers. Even the city wall is wrought entirely of logs. The place is occupied only during the month of a Moot, but during those days it is the center of the world: perennial, and yet temporary, like some bizarre wooden flower that blooms and dies in the space of a day. For the span of the Moot season there are more royal residences in Teamair than in the entire Ruillin basin: every royal family constructs a house there, and more than one puts up a separate residence for the tanist as well. Theoretically temporary shelters, they nevertheless strive to outdo one another in grandeur and density of carving, and each of them showcases its ornate exterior with live torches—the permanence of oil lamps being a violation of the requirement of temporary shelter—throughout every night of the season. Today I was acutely aware that the entire place was an even greater firetrap than Uisneach.

  If I were the Bard, fire would definitely be where I started with this place. It wouldn’t even require an arcane storm to bring it down. A mob of kharr with homemade incendiaries would be more than sufficient.

  I rode past the ard-righ’s palace on my way to Ilesia House. If the rest of the city was little more than half-familiar to me, that place lay etched upon my memory. I didn’t even need to close my eyes to see the Star Chamber in which the ard-righ would preside. Today it was vacant except for staff, I knew; tomorrow evening men would be packed like fish in a net in that place for the new ard-righ’s ascension. I found it impossible to imagine being among them.

  I couldn’t remember visiting Ilesia House last time I was here. I assumed I had: my father and I had attended all the parties on the night before the Moot. As a serious candidate for the throne, Conary Mourne must have hosted one. Nevertheless nothing about the place roused any sort of memory in me, and the aura of impending siege about the servants made me want to retreat to someplace much quieter.

  Coran waited for me in a private chamber, standing and staring at a collection of maps spread across a table. The door stood open; I glimpsed the familiar look of concentration he brought to a chessboard now being directed at the maps. But then the seneschal announced me, and his look of intensity slipped through some expression that flashed by too quickly for identification and into a welcoming smile.

  “Ellion!” he said, crossing the room to embrace me. “You’re looking better. Did you get some rest?”

  “A bit,” I allowed. “How are you?”

  Behind me, the seneschal shut the door; I let Coran lead me across the room, past the maps with their tactical markers, to settle in a pair of sumptuous chairs before the fire. The structure of this house might be impermanent, but everything else spoke of plans for an indefinite stay; the comfort about the room invi
ted me to relax. But some ineradicable tension held sway over my spine, and Coran turned his chair away from the fire, looking directly into my face.

  “What happened?” he said.

  This was the man I remembered, not the politician who played the part of ard-righ-apparent for the emotional comfort of a train full of fools. A strange, untoward peace settled over me. I made him wait while I sipped his wine.

  “Would you care to be more specific?” I parried.

  Frustration and unwilling amusement chased one another across his broad face. Finally he settled on a quelling stare that must freeze entire rooms full of advisors.

  “No, I don’t think I would,” he replied coolly. “You’ve a hell of a lot of talking to do. One day my father’s dead and I’m trying to secure the one man who might outwit the Bard as my War-Lord; when next I look up no one has seen you in a month, and there’s an Aballo herald cooling his heels on the steps of the Harpist Gorsedd Hall. What. Happened?”

  “I went to Fíana.”

  “I gathered that. Why?”

  “Some centuries ago, the Mora of Fíana was a Harpist Gorsedd client. I thought it was time to renew that bond.”

  “Bollocks!” Coran snapped, a flush rising on his face. “How is it possible you don’t grasp the gravity of this situation?”

  “On the contrary, my lord, I’d say I’m just about the only person who does.”

  “Don’t you lord—What?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “While the righthe and the tiarna spend all their attention on the issue of who will be elected tomorrow, a much graver problem gathers around us. You know why those maps don’t make any damned sense? This isn’t a war for territory.”

  Coran frowned.

  “Oh, yes, of course, the kharr are seizing cities. They hold Mumhan in all but name, and Nagnata will fall within the month. Gavnon will be next, assuming it hasn’t already succumbed. But you’re standing in a midst of an arcane war, and our problem is not the Bard. Not really.”

  “What?”

  An unwilling smile overtook me. “Never let it be said that I am not your friend. Amien won’t make this announcement until tomorrow, and you’re getting it first. As we took our extended pleasure ride across the world, losing dozens of the best knights it’s ever been my privilege to know—” Silently I damned the roughness creeping into my voice; nothing to do but ignore it and press on. “We learned the name of the Bard’s Wizard, and you’ll recognize it too. It’s Nechton Glyndwr.”

  Coran sat back, gripping the arms of his chair. His face didn’t change. “He’s alive?”

  “That’s been a common question of late.”

  “I suppose you’re halfway to done with a sequel-song to the Ballad of Carina.”

  Trust Coran to swallow the matter whole: there would be no need to spell out the terrible fact of Letitia’s significance, nor to discuss how little we understood it.

  “I’ve been a bit preoccupied with trying to keep her alive.”

  “Fouzh,” Coran said thoughtfully, rose and began to pace. After a moment he stopped, looking at me. “Can you lay out the arcane war for me?”

  “Up to a point,” I said. “Without insult, sian, this is fairly heady stuff.”

  “Do you understand it?” His tone was rhetorical. Suddenly I remembered: he didn’t know.

  Dread sank fierce talons into my throat. “Yes.”

  Coran’s eyes narrowed. He stared at me along the full length of his aquiline nose. “Why do I get the sense that we have just stepped into unexplored territory.”

  I glanced away, had another mouthful of wine. “I may have neglected to mention… that I studied at Aballo for a couple years.”

  “You—” I could almost hear him sorting through possible words to complete the sentence. I suspected not every word he considered was a verb.

  “Really,” he said, voice cold. I glanced away again. “What the hell have you been doing—” Again I heard him struggle with possible paths of conversation. “—as ard-harpist? In Ilesia? Is that why they deposed you: because you are…?”

  I sighed. “A wizard? More or less.”

  “But you’re not a wizard… are you? Oh, fouzh, Ellion, give me something!”

  Labels. Men need them. Why hadn’t I understood? If you’ve been taught to define yourself in terms of who you are to others, and then those definitions get ripped away, what do you have left?

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Coran nodded, eyes suddenly distant. “You were right, weren’t you? You can’t be Tiarn of Louth. You can’t be Ilesia’s War-Lord. Why aren’t you at Aballo?”

  There was no answer I could give: I just sighed and had another mouthful of wine.

  “Because they can’t tolerate you, either,” Coran said, sounding as if he wished he were amused. He shook his head. “Have the harpists unseated you yet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  This time Coran laughed, but there wasn’t real humor in it. “Convey my condolences to them, will you? Tell them they’re not the only ones feeling betrayed.” He flung his empty wine glass past me to smash in the fireplace, turned and stalked out.

  I resisted the temptation to spend the evening glued to the companions with whom I’d traveled; but I wished, with an intensity that actually made me ache, that we were back on the road instead. That was insane: in this place Letitia stood surrounded by well-nigh all the worthy warriors and wizards in the world. She could not be safer anywhere. But I craved the company of people who knew me for what I was and accepted it, whether or not they approved the choices I made. I wanted to hold real conversations without dancing around the things that must not be said: in public, prematurely, or at all. Instead I watched my friends as they sailed around the building looking like heroes in a song—and held the same conversations with a hundred irrelevant people while a sector of my mind mapped avenues of escape.

  Amien’s presence filled whatever room he occupied; he smiled and spoke with an endless succession of righthe and tiarna and lesser men with a grace that would have made me disbelieve anyone who told me about the spell gathering in his body, had I not seen it myself. His eyes met mine across the room, full of a pride and pleasure at my presence that I failed to understand. Iminor seemed completely unaware of the way the women admired his exotic warrior presence and the aura of mystery that lay around him, hanging on his few well-considered words. He had been competent when we met, if inexperienced; now I would match him against any champion and wager a nation’s riches on the result. He didn’t strut, but he finally knew his own worth. I wondered when he had stopped deferring to Letitia.

  And Letitia: for the first time in a twelvenight I truly saw how alien her beauty was, how magical her eyes, how everything about her outshone every woman in the building. She was no longer the naïve young would-be mora I’d met in the wilds of Fíana, but a woman who knew the look and scent of her own death and had resolved to wrest some honor from it. I had completely failed to appreciate the last time I was alone with Letitia. I had failed to realize it was the last time.

  Ilnemedon society swirled and crowded around me. They exchanged whispers about whose contents I couldn’t find it in myself to care, even when I knew they were about me; they tried to winnow my brain about Tanaan women, and an alarmingly high percentage seemed to consider it an established fact that I’d had Letitia. Those insinuations I put down with cold stares that ended conversation after conversation. When my hand began to itch for my sword, which perforce I had surrendered at the Ilesia House door, I took myself outside.

  The Precinct spread out beneath me. The Fair houses of righthe occupying the top of the hill gave way to those of tiarna at the edge of the plateau; the city spilled down towards rich commoners’ Fair houses lower on the slope. Beyond the wooden wall with its regularly-spaced torches, the campfires of thousands of travelers twinkled across the plain like a reflection of the sky. The great Bealtan bonfires would be just outside the city gate to the south; I couldn’t see them
from here, but I knew the wood stood stacked and ready, waiting only for Amien to come and perform the ceremony. The sounds of the revel in the streets and on the plain below carried on the night air. For the moment it all seemed to occupy a manageable distance.

  But even here there was no peace. In short order Findabhair stood beside me, looking as luscious and indiscreet as ever.

  “There you are!” she said. “I’ve missed you!”

  I ignored the opening and bowed instead. “You’re looking well.”

  She smiled. “Did you ride all the way from Finias with the Lady?”

  I would have given much for a different topic. Everyone asked the same questions.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I hardly recognized you this morning. You looked like a wild animal.” This was delivered in classic Findabhair form, intended as an invitation to demonstrate a flavor of wildness that would be the talk of the Moot season: mostly because she would insure it. She would revel in being the topic of the season’s most delectable item of gossip, and would fan the flames even while she denied the allegations. Suddenly everything I hated about Ilnemedon society coalesced in this conversation, pinned itself to her empty soul. I found myself poised between looking for a weapon and flight.

  “Madam, I am a wild animal,” I said. “You would do well to stay indoors.”

  She cast me a long, silent pout. “You’ve changed,” she sulked, and flounced back inside.

  I sighed and tilted my head back to take in the sky. Long northern sunset had faded into a moonless night; the stars swarming beyond the edges of the torchlight looked oddly familiar. I strode out into deeper darkness, still looking up: finally I recognized what I saw. The constellations and sky-positions of my youth shone down on me, raising a sudden, terrible ache. I had forgotten how close together Teamair and Tellan lie, and that realization roused such pain in me that for a moment I couldn’t see. I stood no more than a day’s ride from Stildin, the little town on the Tellan border where I made the sacred marriage the month I returned from Aballo. A day’s ride beyond that, I would reach the place I still dreamed as home.