Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  “Is he. Has he the web-silk from Bulos?”

  “Oh yes, madam.”

  “And the riverine pearls?”

  “I’m sure.” Ermias wondered uneasily if she would need to have a tooth pulled in point of fact. Hetsa remembered, curious things, and might in two months’ time, demand to look in her mouth. But no, Errnias would say she had sought out old Crow Claw. The witch was not so often seen about now, but one could always pretend. Crow Claw’s magic would easily put right one of Ermias’s perfectly sound molars.

  “Send him in to me. His slave may stay outside. And shut the door. I don’t want them all running to other maids, with stories of what I’ve bought. That happened last time. No sooner had I got my dress made up, than that cunning one, that serpent Stabia, appeared in just the same embroidered stuff. She’s too old to wear it and too fat, and should have known better.”

  “Yes, madam.” Ermias thought that Hetsa should also recollect leaning at her mirror of burnished silver, and sighing, while Ermias dressed her hair, over the little poem Mokpor had sent her. “His eyes are like stars,” Hetsa had exclaimed. Perhaps they were, they needed to be, when his poetry was so bad.

  Ermias went to the middle door and waved Mokpor peremptorily forward. As he modestly obeyed, she saw him give her a look, her slender form and darkly curling tresses, probably her gold earrings too. Not an utter fool, Mokpor. When the queen was done with him, Ermias might be available. He smiled. Ermias tossed her head, letting him admire her supple neck that was three years younger than Hetsa’s.

  “Radiant Sun!”

  Mokpor knelt gracefully on one knee, as the middle door closed at his back. Kneeling was the manner of Oriali, the Eastern Towns, from which he had come. It also displayed his fine legs, in pale leather boots and firm leggings. Deliberately, he always misnamed the queens, not as Daystars, but as Suns, an honorific allowed only princes, and the Sun-Consort.

  “Well, you’re late.”

  “I was delayed.”

  “You dawdled.”

  “How could I, my glamorous and gleaming one? How would I, when I was to come here?” His starry eyes flashed. His fair hair sparkled with attention, thickly curled, like the narrow Eastern beard around his jaw. She had said, she liked his trace of accent.

  He was exceedingly well-dressed. Hetsa’s patronage had decidedly helped him. That first evening, when he had come with an example of the new liquid flame-red dye from Artepta, he had seen at once, his luck was in.

  Now Hetsa signalled languidly to his box. Oh. She was in a mood.

  “What have you got to show me?”

  Mokpor took another chance. He rose, strode to her, and lifted her to her feet as easily as if she were a doll, squeezing her close. “My blazing need for you, my queen. Can you feel it?”

  Hetsa turned her face. Mokpor chased her mouth with his own, and caught it. After a moment she responded to his kiss.

  He knew better than to question her. She was often out of temper. But then, she was a woman. She had lost a child years ago, they said, and it had spoilt her looks. But she was still toothsome enough, and when he had pinned her as she liked, and was racing within her, bending now and then to beard-tickle and suck her breasts, Mokpor was not unhappy.

  Outside, at the command of Ermias—that minx—some musicians were playing loudly with gourd-harps, drums, and bells. A good thing. Mokpor was aware not everyone could get noises like that out of a queen.

  She would buy the spangled cloth, too. He would tell her it was the color of her eyes.

  Beyond the wide window, open to the passage of spring day …

  Hetsa contemplated, at first dreamily, the constant sounds of the palace. A noise of trotting horses, a rift of distant laughter. Birds singing in the gardens that ran down to the lip of the shore. The soft lap and whisper of the Lakesea, nearly calm today as water in a cup.

  From the outer room, Ermias had taken the other girls, and the green turtle, probably, away. But the guardsman would stand at the outer doors, and some ready, serviceable slave would be there in a corner, waiting stoically.

  All was peace, smooth as if combed. Why then, this sense of a problem, stealing near?

  She need do nothing. There, on that rail, her excuse if any were required, hung the lovely, half-transparent, honeyish web-silk, with its threads and stipples of brightness. And Mokpor had left her, as a tribute a flagon of Bulote perfume, the kind that had esoteric ingredients and was mixed in the temples of the love goddess. This had flattered Hetsa. That he should gift her, so for a moment she had become his beloved mistress, rather than his queen. The cloth, of course, was expensive, but then, she did not often overspend—unlike others.

  Her body was warm, sated. He had told her he had gone mad almost, during his month away from her. And he had possessed her vigorously twice, and a third time done things to her with tongue and fingers and a wicked little wand, until her shriek set the vessels on her mirror-table ringing.

  And yet, now, this. What was it? What?

  She raised herself on one elbow and glanced about the room. The day was stilly mellow there, the shadows under furniture, drifting in curtains, tiles, lucent and lengthening only somewhat.

  Two hours surely, before the sunset of the great Sun, and then another until the smaller sun, the Daystar, had followed him into the mountains behind Oceaxis.

  Yet this—was a night-foreboding, was it not? She had heard it spoken of. The little fear that came with the breeze of evening, something old women felt. The promise of death.

  It was … it was that sound. That sound of a drum she could hear, not music, not the hoofs of horses—a drum out of time with the other Drum, the Heart of the Land.

  Any music played in Akhemony might only be partnered to that tempo, the rhythm of the Heart on Heart Mountain. That was easy to do, for one no longer heard the Heart Drum, without conscious effort. Men’s hearts simply beat with it, in their breasts, so they said. She had not found it quite like that, when first she came here.

  And now this—this did not keep time at all.

  Knock knock-knock. Tap-tap. Tap.

  Hetsa gave a cry. Her face was rigid and hard with fright.

  It was not a sound. It was—a pummeling, like something jumping, twitching—in her belly.

  She started to her feet and her gown, undone, half on, slid off her body.

  She stared down at her stomach, that, four years ago, with massage and diet, had regained, mostly, its firmness. Even the pale feathers on its surface, where the skin had been stretched, were hardly visible.

  Drum-skin stretched—

  Drum-skin. Knock. Tap, tap.

  Kick. Kick-kick.

  Something inside her, something inside her womb. Kicking.

  Hetsa snatched a garment. Like a terrified child she ran to the outer doors.

  The guard turned in astonishment.

  “Fetch my women! Fetch Ermias!”

  The stoical slave rose up, and ran.

  He had an instant’s unease, when the pompous official stopped him. In his golden collars, with the attendant walking behind, the man’s summons to the Hall might have meant trouble. Just out of Hetsa’s apartment, however, Mokpor learned he was only to attend the Sunset Offering, a notable honor. Apparently, the Sun-Consort herself wished to see his wares.

  Mokpor made time to visit the public rooms of the palace and bathe the scent of Queen Hetsa from his body. One never knew. If the King were closely to pass him, Akreon might catch that heady smell, and, who knew, maybe remember it belonged solely to him.

  Never before had this merchant had the priviledge of entering the Great Hall at Oceaxis.

  He had been told it was the length of twenty-six tall men, lying head to foot, and more than half that across. In construction it was an oblong; but within the oblong, the gigantic pillars, which were apparently each one, plated with gold one inch thick, formed an oval. At the sea end, which faced east, the Sun and the Daystar would be visible at their rising, and here, on
the East Terrace, the priests made an offering with every dawn. In his youth, a king would normally participate in this. Akreon, at fifty-six years, did so no longer.

  West, which faced towards the mountains, where, on clearer days Koi might be made out, and behind Koi, on the clearest, the Heart, another terrace extended. And here, the priests, and still, Akreon, saluted the fall of both Suns into the mountains inland, and so into the Sea of Sleep that lay under the world.

  The way into the Hall was up a steep precipice of steps—one hundred and seventy, or one hundred and seventy-three, or -four of them, depending on who told you, or your own mathematics. The Hall was the highest point of Oceaxis, and from far off, the gold glint of the roof of it might be picked out, so one might say, offhand, to a caravan, See that? The palace.

  There were three landings on the stairs which led to the East Terrace. On each landing were small gold statues, on plinths of gilded bronze, images of the god, the Sun, in his various nonhuman guises—the horse with chariot, ram and bull, the eagle, the boar. Death liked the ram, too, Mokpor remembered. While in Oriali the ram meant benign fortune, so he would bow to it. Being the second landing, he was slightly winded, any way, and glad of a reason to pause.

  The terrace that looked east to the Lakesea was, beyond the house shadow, glowing and windblown, for a stiff breeze was coming off the water in the westering light. Its waves, too, were frisky now, and gilded, like the plinths, and the mosaic underfoot. The gods thought of everything.

  Over the big altar, flawless snowy marble, stood the image of the true Great Sun, the solar deity as a young man, prince and hunter, with bow and knife. He was naked, his member sheathed in a Sunburst, and there was gold in his marble hair.

  The altar was clean as a diligent wife’s kitchen.

  Various people were straying or standing on the Terrace. Mokpor beheld their jewelry with artistic esteem. Their wind-shaken clothes were estimable in other ways.

  He avoided their eyes, in the correct underling mode. And once, when some noble turned on him a relentless flaring glare, Mokpor dipped his knee and bowed his curly head. No, not a fool.

  Beyond the east doors, with their inlay of enamel, bronze, and copper, the gargantuan Hall.

  “Stay close,” he said to his slave.

  He had noticed before, a slave did not always have a sensible dismay and awe at the great works of the civilized world. Obviously, a slave could attempt so very little, possibly there was to him—since no chance of gain—no logic in reverence.

  If the gold on the pillars was an inch thick, one could not be sure. But the pillars were massive, dark yellow, and the gold ringed them, around and around, until the eyes slipped off in a swoon. The ceiling was flat and very high, resting on pillar-tops of black and gold. Painted figures showed a battle on the walls. And, near the roof, was the giant skull of a lion, large as a man’s torso, they said killed by King Okos in his boyhood.

  There were carved benches about the room and tables, chairs, and the high seats reached by steps, these set with colored stones. But more urgent than anything was the central Hearth.

  One had heard of the Hearth, too.

  It was the Sun, in his two aspects of a king, the young man and the old. They kneeled back to back. They were of solid brass, much blackened from many hundred years, and worn and softened also, the features and muscles rubbed too silken, and the raging manes of hair, the old man’s pouring beard, planed down by time from standing fires to the plaiting contours of sheepswool.

  They were fearsome though. And had in their heads optical diamonds. Refracting now, the diamond eyes of the old king, turned to the West Terrace.

  These two aspects of the god held on their knees the fire pits. And the Hearth fires burned there, low, the flames the bounty of the Sun, which must never, even in the midnight of death, be let go out.

  Instinctively almost, Mokpor glanced up.

  Around the smoke hole in the roof, were the two corresponding icons of the Daystar, girl and hag. Each arched over, holding out her hands to receive above the semen-smoke of the fires from the loins of the Sun. The buttery electrum of these figures had become almost entirely black. If they had ever had eyes, they were no longer to be seen.

  Such was the fate of women. Subservient, smirched, blinded. Mokpor, irresistibly, recollected his mother, a woman of seventeen, who had disappeared in his ninth year.

  Akreon, the Great Sun on earth, had spent the fine day hunting in the hilly forests just northwest of Oceaxis.

  Returning, possibly he had looked out from the higher ground, it was an inevitable view. The pristine thriving town, wreathed by its wintered orchards and olive groves, its farms, spearcast east its port, fixed solidly into the inland sea called a lake. Birds and smokes rose from the shining roofs, and on the good, common road below, perhaps a score of carts passed, with the early produce of the land, and cattle maybe were driven in for the market tomorrow.

  Or else, he paid no particular heed. He had seen these sights often, for he had spent many winters at Oceaxis, and summers too. It was a choice spot.

  Besides, how could he assess this treasury of his possessions here, this king who ruled, as his father and grandfather had ruled, from Ipyra and distant Uaria in the north and west, through all Akhemony, to the remotest isles beyond Artepta and Charchis. To feel this kingship over in his hands or mind, he would do what men generally do, with such personal enormity of ownership. It must be reduced to the workable and everyday, the subject of inspections and reports. And, too, it must be magnified far, far beyond the everyday, into the unearthly power of a god: the subject of prayer.

  For Akreon knew himself divine—he was the Great Sun. In his veins ran the fires of eternity, the light of heaven. And he had grasped this, from his first awareness, over half a century before.

  Probably then, he did not give the region of Oceaxis a glance. He had had splendid exercise, and wanted the bath, some wine, and then, after the Sunset Offering, his dinner. He had brought down two bucks in the wood. King-killed meat was highly prized, not least by the King.

  It was a complacent god perhaps, then, whom Mokpor the merchant saw emerge on to the West Terrace, as the sun reached the edge of the day. A god in the form of a strong, muscular man, carrying only a modicum of extra flesh, and without any iron in the rays of his darkly golden hair. A high color intensified light grey eyes. His handsomeness was blurred only a little, less than the god of the fireplace.

  Women had been crazy for Akreon in his youth, one heard, and a few men also. But he was not incontinent, and only after his forty-fifth year did he turn fully from his consort, whom they said he loved, to other women, and to child-girls.

  He wore a crimson tunic appropriate to the occasion, floured with powdered gold, and with borders of gold bullion so heavy they dragged the material.

  All the higher court had migrated now, out on to the West Terrace. Over beyond the phantom slope of Koi, the sky was coagulating into a rich amethystine rose.

  Mokpor took in everything, carefully. One was questioned by the envious, and if one got things wrong in the telling, disbelieved.

  A mile away, in the town, the temple gongs were sounding. As they stopped, silence came sacredly down.

  Even the wind dropped.

  In stasis: the guardsmen in their bronze, glittering, the court in their silks and furs. The glow, carmine now, tinting the white crests of helmets, the pillars at the doorway, the cheeks of women like peaches, sparks in the drops of gems.

  In his metallic unbroken voice, the boy priest at the altar sang out through the bell of the air.

  Splendor of leaving,

  Beauty of going away,

  We stand powerless at the Gate of Night.

  Do not forget us, O Greatest God.

  Do not forget.

  An elder priest gave the cup of incense into the hand of the King. Akreon poured the gum forth in a glaucous stream. Smoke rose black on the carmine of the sinking Sun. And framed, adrift in fire, the Days
tar, hovering like a silver boat. She must always wait her hour alone above the world, offering her lantern of reassurance, before she might follow the God.

  This was mystic, holy.

  Mokpor’s throat closed with emotion. The ethic of these minutes was more valid than any description of appearances or jewels, of who stood where, any mortal glory.

  When the noise came, he jumped violently.

  A clang—the cup had dropped from Akreon’s ringed hand. It rolled along the terrace. Startled, a few small cries had answered it.

  Akreon pointed at the Sun. “Look! By the God’s Knife, two of them!”

  “My lord—” the priest, at Akreon’s side, not quite so tall as the King.

  “Do you see, priest? Two Suns.”

  A murmur rising now on the West Terrace, as the wind rose, coming back over the house from the Lakesea.

  Garments ruffled, fluttering of things.

  “Two Suns!”

  Akreon’s face was inflamed not by blood and sunfall, but with excitement. He shook the priest roughly. Akreon was known for his courtesy, his piety.

  “My lord—do you mean, the great Sun and the Daystar?”

  “No. In God’s Name—Are you blind?”

  Akreon stared about him. He seemed puzzled now.

  “My lord —”

  “The Sun is there twice over. Two Suns. Going down now over Koi and the Heart.”

  Akreon turned back to watch to the last this portent, which only he could make out.

  The single Sun—though he had struggled, Mokpor could only find one—sank suddenly. Was gone.

  Akreon shrugged. He turned again, nodded to the priest, who was very pale. Akreon spoke reasonably. “Forgive me, sir. I’d thought it would be visible to all.”

  The priest said, into the utter silence, into the rising of the twilight as the shadow ascended, “We must seek the response of the god, my lord. What you have seen—was granted only to you.”

  True luck. Mokpor grinned inwardly, in glee, pushing away the religious and superstitious terror he still kept clamped upon his diplomatic face.