Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  Copyright

  First published in the United States in 2003 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  Woodstock & New York

  NEW YORK:

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  Copyright © 2003 by Tanith Lee

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-46830-447-3

  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Akhemony & The Sun Lands

  Note on Pronunciation

  Dedication

  QERAB

  1st Stroia: Birth: The House of Death

  2nd Stroia: The Snake, the Eagle

  3rd Stroia: The Eagle Grips the Sun

  KEPSTROI

  4th Stroia: Thunder, and Night

  5th Stroia: Sun’s Isle: The Last March

  TELESTROION

  QUTM

  PRAISE FOR Tanith Lee

  AKHEMONY & THE SUN LANDS

  NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

  In the Sun Lands, the letter C is always pronounced as K,

  Although CH is pronounced as in the word charge.

  The letter Y is always hard, as in try, except at the end of a word: Ak–hem–onee.

  The letters AI are pronounced as in the word rain.

  Conversely, among the Pesh, the letters AI rhyme with the word sigh.

  Into the Hand of the gods

  I give myself. And lie still.

  QERAB

  The words that are spoken

  before the dance begins

  IN TEN YEARS, I shall be younger than I am tonight. And since I am now one hundred years of age, this prospect pleases and inspires me.

  At Sin Dhul, City of the Moon, I am called the Poetess, and by some, the Seer. They say to me that, through all the Empire-Continent of Pesh Sandu, I have been given these titles. My name is Sirai. But in my youth, I had another name. Indeed, I had two names.

  Today, Prince Shajhima visited me, here in my sequestered tower in the desert. He brought a great baggage of gifts, much of it food, which my few servants eyed gladly, I will not say greedily. Our diet is often simple, and visitors seldom come, but for the owls and ravens that alight on the tower top, and the nightingale which sometimes sings in the garden. Even the nightingale has been absent some time.

  The Prince and I sat talking for an hour or so on the roof, under the awning. The sky was dressed in its afternoon blue, but later it was the richer blue of night, and stars appeared like the lighted windows of an upper world. I enjoy the Prince’s company. Now over fifty, he reminds me of his father—the Battle-Prince, also called Shajhima—when he had reached this age. Now and then, not thinking, I search for the sword scar his father had upon the left hand and, not seeing it, I am for a moment puzzled. So old age is.

  I told the Prince I had decided to write down something about my life, my early life, before his father carried me here, a captive barbarian slave, unable to walk, and chained—not with iron, but with despair.

  Prince Shajhima assured me he would like to read such a book. At first I feared he would be the only one unwise enough to do so. Then my chosen scribe, Dobzah, who even now pens these words, came up and said she too was eager for the narrative.

  She must put down now that all this, which will be written, shall be by my voice and her hand. I am unable to write so much. But Dobzah is younger than I, and strong. I trust her, and will trust her with my life in these pages.

  To picture Sirai, you need only visualize a very old woman, unveiled, thin and pale, her grey hair still long though less abundant, piled on her head. To picture Dobzah, think of the clever, bright-eyed sparrow, whose wings, in the story, outmatch the storm.

  After the Prince had left us for the City, which lies five miles away over the desert. Dobzah and I played a game with silver pieces on a fine bone board.

  I told Dobzah that I would use, as a heading for the various parts of my life, a word from my own continent, the Sun Lands, the word Stroia. Which indicates those phrases that are spoken during the dance, to give meaning to it. For my life has been a sort of dance, and I value dancing highly, for it taught me how to walk over the world.

  Because I am so old, I know soon I must die. But I have no fear, for I have learned something of the ways of God. After death I will wander, I believe, ten or so years about the earth, to expiate my sins, to learn and teach the final lessons. Then, a young girl again, I will go on to Paradise—that heaven beyond all heavens, which all men hope for and many deny. Never doubt. Heaven is there.

  But perhaps already I am embarking on that purgatory wandering which precedes delight. For this book will be for me a tortuous return into the past. At my age, I find, I can look back and behold my own self, more clearly than I see others now, just as one may see oneself in dreams. That girl, that child I was, I view half remotely, but also with tenderness, as if I had given birth to her. But I bore only one child, a son, and him I never knew. My own self, I know as I know not one other. Strangely, too, it seems to me now, gazing back into the amber darkness of the past, I can see and divine events which, at the time, were hidden from me. And I can become, almost at a wish, the spectator at scenes which, while I lived adjacent to them, I had no knowledge of. Yet there are things too I may not look at, and perhaps God conceals them, lest I die before this task is done.

  Tonight we listen, Dobzah and I, for the nightingale. But she does not sing. The upper pool, with the tree that is her throne, are glimmering both, mystical with night. At the lower pool, where the washing is done and the women sing, someone has left a jar, which shines dim white, a moon in a cloud.

  Shall I begin my history tonight? After supper, and before moonrise.

  Dobzah says to me, Yes.

  And now, for a second, I feel afraid. I, so old I have outlived, as they say here, a thousand roses. Old Sirai in her tower, fears her journey back into her golden youth. But it is to be done. It shall be done.

  Come, Dobzah. Let us go and eat the beautiful foods that Prince Shajhima brought, then light the lamp and fill the silent air the nightingale disdains, with this song of words, this dance of life.

  Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

  Here I set my vow. I will be faithful to the words of my mistress, Sirai, Moon-Poetess of Sin Dhul.

  Sharash J’um.

  1ST STROIA

  BIRTH: THE HOUSE OF DEATH

  1

  DARKNESS, WHICH AT SUNFALL had come down like black lions to the shore, stood foursquare now on the night hours of earliest morning. But above, Phaidix had lit the cold stars with her arrows. And in the palace below, as always, many lights were burning bright.

  From the amphitheater of the hills, the whole chamber of the night lay quiet, sounding—faintly, steadily—only with the Heart of the Land of Akhemony. In the mysterious folds of night’s garment, nothing seemed to stir. Perhaps a fox was running through the winter grass. Perhaps an owl, or some even more supernatural creature, floated between earth and heaven.

  Then, thin and sure as a razor, piercing everything, there flew out one high torn note: a scream of pain and fury—and terror.

  Things without name or form raised their heads and stared. The stars stared down, and Phaidix’s cruel moon stared as it rose out of the Lakesea.

  While among the courts of the palace came a sudden fluttering of the light, like wings

  Th
e Daystar, Queen Hetsa, sat upright on the birthing couch, supported by her attendants. All were crying and shuddering in fright, all but the queen. She had spent her first panic and horror in her scream. Now, cleared of it, she pointed at the midwife with one hard, crystal forefinger.

  “What have you done?”

  “I? I, madam? Nothing—it’s not—”

  “Your potions. Some witchcraft.”

  “No, madam. How could I possibly—”

  “You shall be flayed alive, do you hear?”

  The midwife shrank, and turning with thoughtless distress, slapped her assistant across the cheek. This woman staggered back, still clutching the awful burden to her breast.

  But Hetsa was sinking in a faint. Her labor had lasted over ten hours, and down the couch, all down the white linen, ran scarlet evidence of the cost.

  The room was full of shadows, also turning red as the lamps burned low, so that everything seemed at last awash with the blood of birth, not least the tall crimson pillars with their capitals of coiling serpents. In one corner, cool clear light flickered alone at the shrine of the Arteptan birth goddess, Bandri.

  On some impulse, the assistant of the midwife scuttled there, and putting the bundle on the altar, began herself to sob.

  Bandri, of big-bellied black marble, watched impassively behind her veil of offering smoke. All things may occur, she seemed to say. Even this, in the apartment of a queen.

  Hetsa was reviving.

  She pushed the herbal cup away, and raised herself again. She had been beautiful a month ago, her long, gilded hair and pure skin blossoming from the culmination of a healthy pregnancy. Now she was a hag, a rag. But she spoke finally very low.

  “All you in this room—not a word, not a word. Don’t touch me. Take that thing—one of you—anyone of you—and carry it where it must go. I don’t want to be told. I don’t want to hear a word. It’s dead.”

  From the red shadow then, the old woman came out, the old nurse that they called Crow Claw.

  She must have been lurking there, by the curtains. No one knew how she got in, but you could not keep her out, not if she wished otherwise.

  She stood upright and thin as a stick in her black, her heavy ornaments, with her colorless cracked plate of a face flushed by the lamps.

  “The child came too fast, was too eager, that’s why.”

  Hetsa looked as if she would spit like a cat. “What do I care? Why—why— she’s dead to me.”

  “I know what you mean to do,” said Crow Claw. Her countenance had no expression whatsoever, and yet, when the light dipped and lifted, many visible thoughts seemed to pass up and down like birds, crows perhaps, across a wall. “I can’t stop you.”

  “Be silent, you insolent old bitch—”

  “I will say what I must.”

  In the fire, a log burst. One more bloody reflected flame shot to the ceiling.

  “Please … let her speak, madam,” said the midwife.

  Hetsa snarled. She saw the midwife respected the witch more than a Daystar queen, but Hetsa had already known this. Her loins were leaden and cold, and perhaps she would bleed to death now, in the aftermath of this travesty. She might need a witch.

  “Before you are rid of your child,” said Crow Claw, “you must name her.”

  “Name her! Are you mad?”

  “Madam,” said the midwife. She was bolder now she had understood she had nothing to fear. Witnesses could attest to her skills. It was the queen’s womb that was at fault. And there were too many well-born women in this room to kill. They would have to be bribed instead. “If you send her—there, she must have her name. She can’t go down into that place without it. You must take pity. It would be—a blasphemy.”

  Hetsa buried her face in her hands, and tore her hair. The women were too unnerved to stop her. Besides, in this mood, she was very dangerous.

  “Then I’ll name her,” said Hetsa at last. Sweat and powder had dried in lines on her face. Her mouth was red from biting. She looked hideous. “She shall be Cemira.”

  One or two exclaimed, shocked despite everything.

  “Madam—that’s the name of a monster—”

  “And so she is!” screamed Hetsa. She reared up from the couch like a snake, shrieking, howling, until once again her body abandoned her to her emotions, and dropped senseless and silent.

  Crow Claw went to the shrine of Bandri and lifted up the bundle in its robe of rich silk that had been laid ready, but certainly not for it.

  The faces of the very old and of the utterly young sometimes resemble one another, and did so now.

  “If it was a daughter, it was to have been called Calistra,” muttered the midwife.

  Crow Claw looked down at the child. It gazed back blindly, moving a little, not crying. It was alive, and if one had not seen all, perfect.

  “Well. She is Cemira now. You are named.”

  “May we be forgiven,” someone whispered.

  Two lamps, another and another, trembled, faded, went out.

  His House had been built west in Akhemony, under Mt. Koi, many hundreds of years before, where the first black terrace of the mountain was laid by the gods. Above Koi, the Mountain of the Heart ascended. Here, of all places, the Heartbeat of the Land sounded most loudly.

  It was a three-day journey, but in winter might take five, or seven days, depending on the roads.

  The two soldiers rode blank-faced, in the black livery of the temple. Their swords and knives were honed, and their eyes sharp. Bandits grew more shy in the hills at wintertime, but were not unheard of, and although this mission was sanctified, now and then cutthroats and outcasts might chance the wrath of heaven. After all, there was the small casket of gold to be considered, a Daystar’s gift to Thon.

  The person of the child was holy, and for this reason an ugly sallow priestess accompanied them, in her black-curtained litter slung between two ponies, and attended by an outrider. She fed the child at the infrequent stipulated times, with the watered milk of a black ewe. Almost continuously, already, the child might be heard wailing from hunger, and once the milk curdled, there would be no more. Lucky for it, the cold had kept the milk four days. And, although the peaks that rose above them were chalked with white, no snow had fallen here; there were making good time and would reach the House tonight.

  Late in the afternoon, the road slanted upward again, the enclosing rocks drew away, and the slopes of Koi were fully and awesomely revealed, half darkly dense, half transparently drifting on the settling mist. Behind, Heart Mountain was itself an iron ghost. Ethereal, it rested its white skull in the dome of the sky, its base quite lost.

  The temple guard drew rein. They, and the outrider, bowed to their horses’ necks, touching their own hearts that echoed the beating from the mountain core so exactly.

  She too, the sullen and unlovely priestess, peered from the litter, touched her heart, and bowed. She did not bother to show the baby, only leaving it to wail on from hunger and cold and desolation, amid the cushions of the litter.

  The great Sun was down, on their left hand now, and the lesser sun, the Daystar, was herself setting, when the party reached the Phaidix Rock. At the spot where the pale marble Phaidix rode her mountain lion, her bow raised and tarnished silver arrow poised to catch, at some point of the night, the moon on its tip, the soldiers halted, and the priestess got out, with the pain-singing child in her grip.

  Up the road, straight now as a rule, stood the oblong portico of the Temple of Thon, the House of Death.

  Two pairs of black pillars—four, Thon’s sacred number—with carved whitish capitals of bone, and the ancient black-bronze bowl between them, the height of a man just before full growth, was sending up its never-ending stream of smoke.

  Leftwards, the road tumbled gradually away. Far down there, the decayed sunset of the greater Sun still hung a cloud-caught drift of frigid, mauvish red, into which the Daystar was vanishing with only a silvery streak. Up the flanks of both mountains ran a single,
deathly, colorless ribbon, Koi’s the brighter.

  In the House of Death, an eye was always watching.

  Now, out of the impenetrable black of the doorway, two black figures came. Within their hoods, a black void was to be seen, as with the door.

  Although the soldiers were Thon’s, and had been so, each of them, for ten years or more, they were not immune. Their features pointed, hollowed. One was sweating in the bitter air.

  It was the priestess who spoke up.

  “I bring a daughter for Thon.”

  The two black figures stood immobile. All light drained from Koi, from the Heart. On the road, dusk gathered and swelled. The Phaidix shone strangely for a moment, like ice, and was extinguished.

  “Enter then.”

  The voice, disembodied, did not come from the beings on the track, but out of some vast mouth-chamber of the temple itself.

  Boldly, perhaps only because her ugliness had made her a fool, the priestess went quickly forward, up the road, towards the temple.

  As she did this, the two faceless figures turned about, and moved ahead of her.

  Soldiers and outrider followed. They knew quite well that for them there would be austere comforts in this place: mulled wine, and roasted meat, of a hare perhaps, a creature sacred to Thon; beds warm enough, if not luxurious and no one to share them. Nothing then, to fear. Even so, they hung back as they rode, on their very bones, these men, making towards that doorway of high, impenetrable black, beyond the smoking bowl that smelled of storms and wormwood.

  For the child, it gave one last lost squeal, and grew as still, quite properly, as death.

  My first memory.

  Of the earliest memories, only one, which is composed of dozens, one image repeated and repeated, perhaps changeable, ever the same. The memory of Death.

  It is the Arteptans who are black. A mysterious and scholarly race, their cities, tombs, and monuments of polished stone, tower beyond the ground, touching sky, as elsewhere, usually, only the landscape does, the architecture of gods.