Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  So, the sound of Ermias, weeping, was only that other sound brought indoors for me. I sat in my chair, listening, wondering if I too must weep, if his soul might be lost if I did not. Though insignificant in myself, I had heard legends where such things happened.

  But he was not Klyton. If Klyton had been slain, I would have died at once. For any unknown other, there could only be regret.

  At last the weeping stopped or, as it turned out, paused.

  The door opened, and Ermias came through.

  In the lamplight, her eyes seemed bruised and the whites were red. Her puffy face was worse than ever, blotched with crying.

  It was nearly my supper-time, and I thought she had come to say I must have my bath, now. Instead, she stared at me, stared on and on.

  “Look at you,” she said, eventually.

  I shifted a little. She was not my friend.

  “Oh the gods!” cried Ermias, “why have they done this to me? Why? Why?”

  In that moment I thought she too had lost someone in the war. Truthfully, I was not yet pleased to see her unhappy, she who was always so unkind, merely perplexed.

  I said nothing.

  Ermias said, “You filthy little monster, crouching there. Why aren’t you all a mass of fishy blubber, like me? It should be you, you little beast.” The tears came again, bursting out of her, sparkling like jewels in the light. “I’m so ugly. So ugly. But you—you—do you know what the women say about you, Calistra? Because they never see your legs, your feet? Eh?”

  Now the full force of her malevolence bore in on me. I must give her some tribute or it was war.

  I shook my head.

  Loudly, she cried: “Snake. That’s it. They say you’ve got a snake’s tail under your skirt. Or you are a fish.”

  The horror of this was dull. I was frightened of her, her vehemence, the strength of her emnity so massively displayed. There is too that terror which comes when civilized barriers, however flimsy, break down—perhaps children recognize this more swiftly than adults. Besides, fish, snakes—were beautiful, those I had been shown.

  Ermias was drunk, I think, from a lot of wine.

  “It’s you—you’re unlucky—you’re a curse on me—”

  She spun heavily about, and ran from the room, lumbering, knocking over as she went a small table.

  The door between the rooms stood open. I saw her throw herself on her couch, the place where for years she had slept, and frequently done with her lovers that incomprehensible thing which made noises.

  Now she noisily cried, in an awful manner. She choked and struggled for breath. It was a real agony, this, for her. One should never dismiss pain of whatever sort. The child who cries for a lost toy, the woman who weeps at the loss of her loveliness, they have their station, beside the greater tragedies of this world. If you have been brought down to tears, who may say you have no right to shed them.

  Then I was mostly frightened in a new way. I wanted her to stop. To stop her. Yet I felt a wave of satisfaction, too. She had made me cry often enough. Let her suffer now.

  But she kept on and on.

  In one corner of the outer room, the water-clock dripped the seconds. The little silver galley had risen a handspan up the bowl, and still she wept.

  A window curtain was drawn for night, not yet the shutters for winter. I heard the Lakesea, and beyond that, the Drum of the Heart, hearing it as one seldom did, and like a fresh sound.

  I was, as I have said, trained to be very agile, and I wriggled around and down from my chair, something I never normally assayed. When I was on the floor, I began to crawl on hands and knees.

  Probably my intention was only to shut the door, shut out her cacophony. But then, as I moved, it seemed I was not going to do that, but something else.

  Just then, I saw the table, which Ermias had knocked over, was again standing upright. The warm lamplight lit, upon its top, a goblet, one I used, rather small and made for a child, of gilded bronze. It had not, I thought, been there before. But maybe it had.

  Behind the table stood Crow Claw, who was a ghost. She looked solid enough, in her dark things, her dark gems shining, and her old eyes. She out one finger to her lips, and I glanced towards the outer room. Ermias was aware of nothing but her own wretchedness.

  I looked back. Crow Claw indicated the cup with her forefinger, and nodded.

  Did she mean I should drink from it?

  She shook her head. She pointed now into the outer room.

  I cannot say that I debated any of this. I suppose I did not quite believe in Crow Claw now; I had not seen her since that time in the garden. She could not be actual. Then again, she had done me no harm. She would not seek to poison me, or even Ermias, since that would be a murder at my hands. I trusted Crow Claw, that is the riddle, and its answer.

  So I took the cup off the table—there was only, apparently, some more wine in it—and crawled on with urgent difficulty, through into the outer room, all the long way to the knees of Ermias.

  When I touched her she sat up with a start.

  “Keep away! How did you come out here?”

  “I only crawled. I do it for exercise in the morning.”

  “Keep off. I don’t want you—you’re a curse on me.” She reared up her head on its flabby column. “You snake.”

  “Don’t cry,” I said. “You’re pretty.”

  Why did I say it? I loathed her by now. And yet, she broke my heart.

  She gaped at me, and I held out the cup.

  “Look, this is nice.”

  “What is it—what have you put in it?”

  “Nothing.” I took the cup back, and drank a mouthful. It was undiluted and went directly to my head. I felt soothed, consoled. No wonder people liked it. I held it out again.

  Ermias took the cup and held it, not drinking. She looked at me, and her face peculiarly began to change. It was as if her true face was looking through, out through the fat, the spitefulness, the cruelty. Her true face, her true eyes, curious, considering.

  After a long while, she spoke softly, her voice cracked and nasal from her tears.

  “What I said—I didn’t mean that. About a snake.”

  Then she raised the cup and drank it off.

  She appeared very odd now, the true face fading back, but its knowledge still in her bloodshot eyes. She was exhausted, older, wiser.

  “Come and sit here, by me,” she said. She helped me pull myself on to the couch. Then she put her arm around me. It was as if suddenly she found how much simpler it was to like rather than to hate me. And I, after a moment, rested my head on her side. Her fat was warm and fragrant. She was comfortable. Her hair smelled of tears, like the sea.

  “I know a rhyme,” said Ermias presently.

  She told me. It was a funny one about a monkey. We laughed. Then we lay back. There was no one in the inner room. We slept against each other until the slave brought my supper. Then Ermias got up and went away.

  When she returned it was bedtime. She brought me a monkey made of confectionery.

  “Don’t eat it all now. Save some for tomorrow.”

  “I won’t eat him.”

  She looked disappointed. I explained I thought him too nice to eat. I laid him on my pillow, which he made very sticky. I kept him for years, until at last he fell all to bits, hard and dry and tasteless as pieces of gravel.

  By the time the army came back in victory from Sirma, with two hostage chiefs, and the mourning for Pherox, and a bride for Glardor who, they said, he treated with courtesy and never bedded, Ermias had lost a vast amount of weight. She was never to be again a slender girl, but became instead curvaceous and voluptuous, and light as a feather in the dancing on the shore, which I shall come to.

  I have no notion, not one idea, of what if anything was in the cup.

  To me, Ermias was never again seriously harsh. If she did snap, she presently followed it with a kiss. As a child I did not interest her, yet even so, she spent with me more time, if rather impatientl
y, seeing to my clothing, so I grew splendid at the festivals. Sometimes she took me with her, privately from the rooms, the slaves carrying my chair, to visit her friends, the Maidens of the court.

  In this way, my world enlarged. And seeing myself, as I slowly altered under her guidance, had a fuss—perhaps false—made of me, and absorbed their chatter, I determined that, by the age of twelve, I must have found a way to be wed to Klyton. Although, of course, I could only be one of several wives, and although I did not think he could ever love me, or expect him to, I believed I would be content. I did not even fear for my cherished privacy. I imagined that, in the household of a prince, I could keep it just as well. Meanwhile I told no one my obsessional secret. It was magical. I held it near.

  Before my attendances at the temple now I was cold and rigid. Sometimes I did not even see him there. Then I was sick of loss. He never looked at me again—had forgotten me. But I asked the gods to remind him. I had become aware I was not quite worthless. The praises of the women convinced me.

  If there were any talk of war, I asked for news, though naming none. I named him at night. I prayed for his life every evening before closing my eyes—to visualize him better.

  Otherwise, I studied more vigilently with my harp, learned to sing many songs, excelled in my exercises, offered to Gemli on the wall, and reminded the green turtle—with the gods, my sole confidante in this matter—that only four years, three, two years, now, lay between us and an almost perfect joy. But, how to manage it.

  5

  Seated on her terrace, Udrombis, the Widow-Consort, looked down into her summer garden.

  There, her youngest son, Amdysos, a tall, golden nineteen, was arguing quietly, concentratedly, with his friend, Stabia’s son, Klyton.

  On a second couch, Stabia sat, embroidering slowly, with great care, golden wool the color of the hair of both these Sun sons, into a mantle of dark orange.

  Stabia’s eyes were not so strong now. She made her way from practiced skill, and every so often, would hold the cloth her arm’s length away, to be sure of the effect.

  “He is very angry.”

  “Yes,” said Stabia, “so he is. It’s his impatience. He was angry last year, too. Next year—Sun protect us!”

  She laughed low, and Udrombis, also smiling a little, took a sip of the tawny Ipyran wine.

  Only royal kindred, the highest nobles, or princes of high stock from other lands, might compete in the Sun Race at Airis, through the caverns under the mountain. It symbolized, this race, the going down of the Sun into the Sleep of Night under the world, and his return in glory. To compete was a crucial and sanctified honor, and there were always many who wished to be considered. There might be only thirteen racers. They were chosen in the temple by lot.

  At sixteen, eligible, Klyton had waited his turn—and got nothing. Neither, that year, had Amdysos.

  This year—yesterday, to be precise—Amdysos had been chosen. Klyton, who had offered three white pigeons to the god beforehand, had nothing.

  “I tell you, it’s not luck,” Klyton was saying, standing pale and set under the stone figure with the urn of flowers. “They doctor the lots. Didn’t you know?”

  “I didn’t. Don’t. It has to be random—the god chooses—or it would be a blasphemy.”

  “It is one, damn it.”

  ‘I know you wanted it. It’s a chance to shine. You deserved it. It should have been you, not me.”

  Klyton checked. His face changed. “No, of course not. You. You had to be chosen. You’ll win. Amdysos—it isn’t I grudge you. I just wanted—” He stopped. His face of seventeen years, and several centuries of pure-bred beauty, broke into a boy’s grin—became human. “Oh, there’s always next year. You’ll win any way. So I’d rather not make a fool of myself, coming in second.”

  “Second place is quite honorable.”

  “It’s for mice.

  Amdysos laughed, and on the terrace, Stabia sighed. “There,” she said. “It’s all over. That’s how my son is. Like a summer storm. Frowns thunder. Then the sky clears. Mind you, Amdysos calms him. He has your trick of that.”

  “My trick?” Udrombis raised her brows.

  “Yes. Remember, when I used to call you the Sorceress.”

  “That was long ago.”

  Both women paused, looking out through the garden now, seeing other times.

  “I recollect when I could climb the stairs without stopping,” said Stabia. “And I didn’t need to hold my embroidery a mile from my face, or stand back a mile from the frame, to see it. And I was a pretty girl. But you. You don’t change.”

  “I’ve changed.”

  Stabia glanced at her Queen. Udrombis still wore mourning, the most pastel brown. It became her very well. They had, these women, been lovers once. Those caresses had melted from them with the years, leaving them still each a little holding the other’s inward shape. Stabia had no fear of Udrombis, although she knew, without a doubt, was it ever necessary, Udrombis would kill her. She admired Udrombis, had faith in her. Nothing would ever be done without good reason, or uncouthly.

  Klyton turned now. He called up to Stabia, “Which flower shall I bring you, Mother?”

  “Oh, something yellow, dearest,” said Stabia, noting the convenient yellow flowers framing his head like a festal wreath.

  “And for you, my Queen?” he said.

  Udrombis said, “The smallest flower that’s in my garden.”

  He bowed low, and went off, Amdysos laughing still at his shoulder.

  Klyton, too, had been in love with Udrombis, when a child. Stabia had told her, not artless, nor untruthful.

  Udrombis said, “May I be frank, Stabia?”

  “With me, what else.”

  “Your handsome, valorous son. He is everything one hopes for. He has courage, and wit and brains. He shirks nothing. But these moods—tell me. Women. Has he … let me use the charming Orialian expression, slaked his thirst?”

  Stabia frowned her brow worse than over the needle. “The gods know. I’d say not. He likes them. He isn’t one for men that way. But if he’s done anything—now, I’d be the last to know.”

  “From what little Amdysos has said of their adventures,” said Udrombis, “I think, as you do, he hasn’t, perhaps. My own sons were forward in that. Even Glardor.” Here, a tinge of faintest distaste colored her tone. Glardor did not appeal to her. To her, he was not a King, not the material of which Kings were formed. Though who, in any case, could have followed Akreon?

  “I suppose,” said Stabia, “I’ve been lax. I should have put more of the tastier slaves his way. They all coo over him. I’d have thought one of them might have managed it any way.”

  “He may prefer free women. Your son is very fastidious.”

  “There are opportunities there, too.”

  “Possibly, concerned as he is with male enterprises, he may have missed them.”

  Stabia put down her embroidery. She saw, longsightedly, Klyton returning, with a yellow lily from a lower terrace, and a tiny white daisy—impudent, obedient, loving—for Udrombis.

  “There are the summer dances in the groves, for the goddesses. Amdysos … knows.” Stabia clasped her hands. “Men go there and spy. It’s the tradition. The women are bound to accept only the most decorous overtures, but we know it goes further than that. In my day—it was different.”

  “I am older than you,” said Udrombis. “In my day, it was exactly the same as it is now.”

  Klyton came and kneeled before her.

  The Widow-Queen looked into his face.

  “Is that the very smallest flower?”

  “Yes, madam. I nearly missed it. A snail showed me.”

  “What reward will you have?”

  “A kiss.”

  Udrombis beckoned him, and as he stood on the Stair, kissed his cheekbone. He smelled of Sun and health, male aromatics from the bath, of sexuality too. On his arm, the narrow white scar from Sirma. Four years ago the, gods had given him that badge, and
to her another scar, all hidden, the death of a son.

  But perhaps she loved Stabia’s son, also Akreon’s seed, as her own. And for this reason, Glardor had been sent to try her, and Pherox killed, and only her golden Amdysos left, the recognizable child of her womb.

  The kitri, the honey-bird, often came to sing in the groves by the Lakesea. Even at night, she made music. Sometimes, there was other music too.

  The shore below the palace had been planted with gardens in Okos’s time, but then let go wild. The salt wind altered the grass. But the trees, cedar, myrtle, tamarind, the red marroi of the god, held fast.

  By night, women of the court stole out there like the kitri.

  There were the two altars on a rise, side by side. Clello, the goddess of love, white marble with lemon hair. And Daia, the goddess of love-desire, black-haired, ruby-lipped.

  They held hands, these goddesses. The statues were quite recent. Everyone knew the women sought them, even slaves from the palace, or low wives from the town along the shore. Only the girls and Maidens of the queens danced there after dark, in long lines, their hands joined like the hands of the goddesses, to the notes of flute and sithra, and tiny shaken bells.

  It was exquisite, the sight of it. The Sun had gone down inland about an hour ago, the Daystar was sinking. A lilac glow lingered through the sky.

  But in the groves torches, the shade of electrum, burned ever more redly, picking out the lines and curves of things, the gathers and pleats of dresses, the flames of eyes and jewels, the small sand-flowers that had rooted in the salty turf. The leaves on the trees were black, then sudden brilliant jade as torchlight shone through. Between, in the shadows, might be anything, demons, spirits, or gods come down to see.

  Beyond, a glimpse, here, there, the luminous near-tideless wash of the murmuring water, the slender waves folding over and over, rimmed with silver yet from the sinking star.

  A certain light has still the power, near dusk, to bring me back again to that place, that hour, when I was twelve years old in Oceaxis.

  I had never been invited before. A princess, I should not have been there. Had I known, this was how lowly they reckoned me, one of their own. Of course, I could not go off with any man, even if one had wanted me, a cripple, the girl with the tail of a snake or a sea fish, under her skirt. It was safe enough. She meant it kindly, Ermias; she had said I did not get enough fresh air.