by Tanith Lee
I was taught the ways of lawless, obscure Phaidix, the moon, who at certain seasons might be invoked by women, under the name of Phaidix Anki, as a sorceress.
I learned that these two gods, with Thon, the Death Lord, were current in all lands of the continent, and most of its islands. But that there was also a pantheon of slighter gods in Akhemony, some immigrants from Artepta, Bulos, Ipyra, and elsewhere. All had their places.
It was Kelbalba who told me of Lut, the Arteptan dwarf god, whose part it was to watch over any who came into the world at a disadvantage, or later fell to one, the very poor, the sick, those smitten in brain or body. “Those the other gods forget,” said Kelbalba. I was nearly six then, when she spoke of Lut. She did not make anything much of the story, no more than of a hundred others. But when I said, curiously, that I supposed he would know about me, she said that she supposed he might. She had a charm of Lut, in blackened silver, and showed me it. She said, proudly, she had always been very ugly, and so adopted the god, although he lived in Artepta.
I marveled at that. I did not think her ugly at all.
Never, any more, was I allowed to walk, that is to use canes and swing about on them. At five or six, I often got in a temper at this. I had waited so long, perhaps expecting to get them back as another of my rewards for diligence at all my lessons.
It was explained to me all over again, that constant recourse to the sticks would deform my body utterly, because I had not finished growing, had scarcely begun.
So I had to be content, since they were adamant, with my chair with the golden clasps, which, as I grew, grew also, or rather was replaced always with a larger one.
The female slaves bore me to the cell of easement, even sitting me on the pot. I did not any more find this humiliating. They were, after all, slaves only, and lessons in my rights and worth as a princess of the Sun, had already taken hold. To move about, however, requiring always one other, and presently two, to bear me in the chair, was a cause of annoyance and frustration.
I would sit looking at the far end of the room, or the door to the room with the pool and my turtle—now she was mine—and chafe because I could not merely go there.
Dependency of any sort will rankle. A child any way is so dependent. It remembers worse. To be born helpless without language or any ability, surely we are all, at the commencement, the creatures of Lut, and at the end, with age, may go back towards him again.
Sometimes I was carried to a garden that ran under my apartment, reached by a small door. It was completely wild now, having been left untended since the time of Okos, for the moon goddess, who loves things untamed. Her shrine was there, black stone, and her statue, quite coarsely cut, but showing a lynx crouched at her side.
Once when they had put me there, near the outer wall under the vine, I saw a fox come through and a cub after her. They were in their summer colors, with a sheen like that on the Lakesea below.
I watched them gambol, and fight mock combats, springing at each other, hoping no one would come to frighten them. Then they were gone, away into some secret place of the garden, where the wild fruit trees had netted together and the grass stood high as I would have done, had I been able to stand.
Overhead, the Daystar was clearly visible, though it was almost noon, the hour when she is often shy of her appearance, so close to the Sun.
Looking up, I noticed, too, an old woman. She was dressed very darkly, but had heavy, dull-gleaming ornaments, a necklace of big somber stones, and a dozen bracelets. Although it was morning, she seemed to have offered something on the altar of the shrine. I could not see what.
Then she turned. I recalled her at once, she was the old woman who had soothed me that second night at Oceaxis, a century ago, when I was four.
She said, “Udrombis goes up to Airis for the hot months. But not you.” I shook my head. I did not query why she put my deeds together with the Great Queen’s. “They run the Sun Race soon. Have you heard?”
“To honor the god,” I said obediently, “through the caves under the mountain.”
“Yes, just so. Where have you been but Oceaxis?”
I shook my head again. Though a King might make military diplomatic progresses, and other portions of the court break off to travel, most of the household remained constant, in time of peace, by the Lakesea.
“You were once in the Temple of Death,” said the old woman.
When she said it, I did not feel afraid or threatened, as when, say, Ermias spitefully mentioned my awful beginning.
The old woman pointed away, over the wall.
“Down there is the sea. Go far enough, you will come to the Sun’s Isle. Have they told you?”
“Yes. Where the piece from the Sun broke off and crashed down. When the First King conquered.”
“Who,” she said, “do you think is the more powerful? Not a King? The Sun then, or the moon? Or Death?”
I puzzled. Such questions—not quite such questions—were put to me in the hours of schooling. But I did not know. The Sun gave life. The moon and Death took it away. A King could do both, but was also subject to both. She seemed not to want an answer any way.
She said, “Glardor is off again,” like an elderly market-wife speaking of some nephew.
Even I had heard how Akreon’s heir, the new Great Sun, was still, very often, on his estates. He liked the things of the earth. He planted, and tied vines. He would even take a turn with the plow. Glardor the Farmer they called him, out as far as Uaria and Charchis. For this reason perhaps, now and then, little eddies of trouble would stir, in Uaria and Charchis, in Ipyra, in Sirma. … What could a farmer know of ruling or war?
There was a silence then, but for the crickets in the grass. The Sun was lifting up high, and soon they would come to take me into the shade, for royal women had complexions like milk, unless they were ebony, as in Artepta.
“Did you come before?” I asked the old woman. I had forgotten the substance of our previous chat.
“Did I? When was that?”
“Years ago. I was a child.”
She did not laugh. She said, “We are all children. Oh look, now. That butterfly.”
I looked of course. And saw the butterfly, mint-green, with black eyes on its wings. And when I looked again for her, the woman, she was gone.
When the slave came, I said to her, “Who is that who comes in our garden and the rooms?” She stared blankly. “An old woman—like a queen.”
The slave did not know. But slaves, I then thought, knew very little, not understanding they are like the mice in the walls of an ancient house, going everywhere, privy to all things.
In the afternoon though, Kelbalba entered, and when I had finished my exercises, and we were sitting with the turtle, I told her of the woman I had seen.
Kelbalba said, gravely, without any attempt to alarm or deny, “That would be the old witch, Crow Claw. She died in the snow months.”
“Which snow months?” I gabbled.
“The last ones. They found her inside the door of the High Queen’s chambers, lying on the floor, as if asleep.”
“Then—it was a ghost.” Stunned, I did not argue.
“She was happy here,” said Kelbalba. “She doesn’t want to go away.”
“But Death takes—makes … Is there a choice?”
“Yes, if you’re strong enough.”
I dreamed that night I saw Crow Claw sacrificing a white hare to Phaidix, to whom no blood sacrifice was ever made. It was Phaidix who stole in by night and drank the life from the bodies of men and women, babies and beasts, but they died in a joy greater than any to be found on earth.
When Crow Claw had killed the hare, its soul jumped out of it, white as the moonlight, and she and it went away together, directly through the wall of the garden.
What was I, then, as a child? In wartime once, the pherom-steel, when hammered in the fire, was cooled by plunging into the blood of a living enemy. How had I been tempered? First miseries, then terrors, and so to a l
ife which, if not in any way wholly carefree, was yet full of pleasures, and of boredoms, too. From that lesson, what was I learning?
At my seventh year, they began to teach me to sing, as Udrombis had promised, and to play the sithra, the little female harp which, being so light, was easily rested on my knees. I was not inept, but preferred to improvise, myself creating songs and melodies, not doing as they said I must. I made my songs from the history of the Sun Lands now being taught me, the stories of heroism and romance that caught my fancy. And I composed odes to geographical regions I had never seen, trying I think to bring them to me, since I could not go to them. When Mt. Airis was spoken of I longed to see it. I longed to sail across the Lakesea in a galley. I longed to sail the narrow winding straits at Artepta, and behold the monuments of smooth and shining stone rising out of the water, and the statues of strange beings, which spoke—a thing I did not know, even having lived there, sometimes happened at the Temple of Thon. In my head I went traveling, making up for myself these places and lands, reinventing them from what I knew, as they had told me the gods had done, at the very first.
For my arrogance I was reprimanded. Which helped me, for it made me worse.
Probably I should have been, after my start, a timid child. In some ways, I was. But I was forever darting out of cover. I was forever angry, sitting in my golden chair, beating my legs that had no feet against the lion-claws, until my calves were bruised and I cried.
It was I who wanted ghost stories, and then lay rigid through half the night. Oddly, I was never afraid of Crow Claw. If she had come then, I think I would have debated with her quite boldly on her state.
Then again, with certain adults I was stricken almost silent. A crushing rebuke made me shake, made me sick to my stomach, as did the dread of things not reckoned by others onerous—for example, the excitement of going to the temple, where I should see my beauteous male kin—before all those excursions, I vomited, until I was given a little wine, which would steady me. Even so, I would have died rather than miss the trip.
I had, too, unreasonable fears, or so they were called. Of a spot behind a particular pillar, where they must always leave a light. Of the sound cats made outside, fighting at midnight to honor Phaidix. Or a certain innocent food or drink. Yet—thunderstorms I loved.
Snow, however, made me melancholy, which was not so surprising. The bedcovers, shutters, and drapes of the palace had not yet blotted up the icy times at Koi.
What can I say of her then, this child?
She was a child. As Crow Claw forewarned her, now she is old; she thinks herself one still.
After Klyton had met my eyes with his in the Sun Temple, when I was seven, the world about me altered.
I did not seek Ermias, who was, apparently, my necessary foe. Nor could I talk to Kelbalba, who had gone away to her father’s house in the hills.
Instead I discussed my life with the turtle.
“If you go that way after your ball, then it will be.”
The turtle went the way I desired.
It was settled. I must work hard upon myself.
Not knowing that, only in Artepta, Charchis sometimes, here and there, now and then, but seldom, did brothers wed their sisters, I had decided that, when I was of the proper age, I would marry the unnamed boy-man who had looked at me. It was not I thought myself worthy of him—how could I be. Besides he was a symbol—I see it now—of something unknown, dangerous and alluring as the edge of a cliff. But I had been carefully tutored. There were gods. Their blood ran in my family. They would assist me.
I wove new stories, about him. I made him songs, not knowing this was improper. He was the Sun as a youth, going out to hunt the Sunburned mountainsides. He lay sleeping in the shade, and the Daystar smiled upon him, and flowers grew into his hair to garland him.
Luckily, so solitary, wishing often to be private, I did not sing these songs in the presence of any but slaves. They were ciphers any way. Yet, when Ermias came, I fell simply to humming the tune.
“Twang, twang,” said Ermias. “What discords. What a dunce you are, Calistra.”
I put down the harp. My hands were cold.
Ermias seemed fatter by the day. How she hated it. There was a pouch under her chin, and a cushion at her waist. Despite her duties, she was infrequently, to my delight, in the apartment. Her lovers were liars, and she knew.
3
The year that Calistra was eight, and Sun Prince Klyton thirteen, war broke in Sirma. It was a matter of tribute to the Great Sun, which was refused. Conceivably they expected to be let off, having heard tales. But Farmer Glardor put down his pruning hook, and hefted his sword. With a thousand cavalry, many hundred foot, some siege engines and catapults, the troops marched south in bronze fall weather. Sirma was little. It would be a short campaign. Perhaps a farmer knew, weeds and tares must not be let come up, even in the onion patch.
“He swaggers too much. He doesn’t need to. He’s a prince. If Glardor stepped aside, it would be him. What does he need to show?”
Amdysos was watering his horse at the brook, downstream with the cavalry. At fifteen, he looked almost fully a man, magnificent enough, and he took his own advice, was modest and quiet-spoken where possible. His men liked him, and were not put out by his age.
Klyton looked less a man, more a wayward god in youth and armor. Something eccentric in the lines of him, something fantastic and magical, pleased. He was thought too young to be given a command, although Okos had apparently had one at thirteen, in the battles with Uaria. Some perverse idiocy had put Klyton too among the ranks of Pherox’s detachment. Amdysos had tried to change that. As Klyton said, it was like the school, where they split you from your friends to make you conscious of new ones, which had not worked.
Pherox, at twenty, rode up and down the lines of men, mature man and warrior. He had fought before, small uprisings here and there, all called wars. Sufficient. His sword, as they said, had drunk.
Handsome, like them all, he had the darkness of his mother, black hair, black eyes, and an arrogance and coldness that made one bite the tongue.
It was a fact. If Glardor—not euphemistically “stepped aside,” but died—Pherox would be the Great Sun. Udrombis had borne him on a night of tempest. It had been a difficult birth. You could believe it of him.
Klyton let his gelding have the water. He watched it. He said, “Do you remember when Pherox took the apple—”
Amdysos roared with laughter.
Klyton did not turn. He felt the eyes of Pherox on them both. Pherox did not like their friendship. He had said openly that they were not only brothers but lovers, which had never been true, at least not true in the carnal sense. To Pherox, male love—of any sort—was shoddy. He should have read the legends. The Sun god’s many loves of every gender. But the strain that was, in Udrombis, burnished stone, and in Amdysos, pragmatism, was in Pherox—poison.
The incident of the apples had occurred when Klyton and Amdysos were boys, six and eight years old. Pherox was thirteen, Klyton’s age today.
Stabia had been given a gift of apples, some country present, nice enough, but too many. Klyton and Amdysos ate their fill, and then had a slave cast the apples in the air so they could try to split them flying, with arrows.
Pherox appeared. He lectured them on this waste of fruit. They were children. What did they know.
Then he picked an apple off the garden bench. It happened to be the showpiece of the gift, a fruit of green and red stained marble. They watched him, and at his unawareness, neither spoke out. When he took it directly to his mouth and champed on it in righteous fury, it broke a side tooth, which, to this hour, might be seen flashing its repaired cap of silver.
They had been friends from the beginning, from when Stabia and Udrombis had leaned together in the cool, scented rooms, and Klyton and Amdysos had fought and played like foxes on the floor.
Pherox did not think quickly enough, or look properly at things. About the look and feel of an apple, whether
it were flesh or stone, at friendship that had nothing to do with ambition. At his own stance on the black Arteptan horse.
He had two wives, and both had given him, already, sons. He called them, Pherox, his flocks and herds.
“The Sun’s going,” said Amdysos.
Far up the hill, thinly, the priest might be heard singing out the incantation. Arndysos tipped a few drops from his wineskin into the stream … “Do not forget us.”
Pherox was gone. He had not bothered, as several had not, to salute the dying Sun. Campaign was different. The gods were not unreasonable. Still, if one could.
“It should be the first Sirmian town tomorrow,” said Klyton.
“Yes. How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” Klyton said. “Keen, I suppose. Very, very brave.”
Brief but opaque, doubt drifted through both their eyes. Tomorrow they must, for the first time, kill a man. Or, they might—unbelievably—die.
Farmer Glardor gave a dinner for his captains, and for the Sun Princes who were in the camp.
Outside, the evening was gravid with storm. The thunder stumbled about the sky from north to south, east to west, banging against the winds that were rising. The trees bent, groaning, and dry leaves rattled between the tents like quills of thin metal. Those who claimed still to hear the beat of the Heart, mostly, now admitted they lost it.
When the strongest wine came, at the end of the food, Glardor gave a speech.
The younger men shifted uncomfortably, the eldest sat grim and unspeaking, drinking great quaffs. It was inappropriate, the speech. It concerned peace and the peaceful role of the Great Sun.
“He must bring life,” said Glardor, red-faced, expansive, his mantle loose, as one or two said later, as a whore’s dress. “Life to his fields. He must ripen the fruit and the vine.”
Pherox sat openly sneering. But he, too, kept silent.
Amdysos said, afterwards, when he and Klyton were sitting in Amdysos’s tent, “He wants his farm.”
“No, worse, he thinks Akhemony is his farm.”