Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  She had put on me, too, my most elegant dress, the dark green web-silk with lines of silver in it, from Oriali, and borders of rosy pomegranates. From my ears hung the greenish pearls of the Bulos rivers, where men dive down for the quarter of an hour, or more, searching, sometimes dying.

  For a year, since my menstruation began, my face was painted. I was a woman. There had been queens as young, younger, than I.

  I watched them dance, the steady rhythm that wended in time to the always heard, unheard Heart, then quickened to play between the Heartbeats.

  The women were laughing, had been drinking wine, crowned with myrtle and leaves of the holy marroi. There were faint flowers too on the tamarinds, filling the air with scent. The dresses brightened, saffron, orange, white, as they passed. Every face was the same—alight with amusement, excitement. Mine, too. I leaned forward from my chair, and clapped my hands in time to the little drum.

  “Look—over there—do you see? We are being watched!”

  This was the tradition of the groves by the sea. In the legend, the goddesses were dancing on a shore. Night came down, and Clello wore a dress of starlight, but Daia had kept the red of sunset for her gown.

  Two mortal men, the sons of a king, and very comely, heard their music. Intrigued, and then aroused, the men spied upon the goddesses, who, seeing them, kept up some while the pretense, before drawing them in among the trees. The finish of the story is apt to their natures. Clello inspired a lasting noble love, and in the end took pity and gave the youth a human wife exactly in her own image. But Daia’s swain went mad, and when she refused again to lie with him, hanged himself on the tree which took his name—the Saberon—which to this day has pendant blossoms in the shape of a hanging man. Unlucky, this tree—ironically—was uprooted in the groves.

  Having caught the whispering, I looked in my turn.

  Indeed, there was a group of men, perhaps seven of them, standing a little way back from the dancing ground. The torchlight found their faces under the hoods of their cloaks, and glints on their ornaments. One did this courting in one’s best.

  The women went on dancing, but now the line of them broke apart. They turned, showing their bodies in the thin summer dresses, their upheld arms with bracelets of gold.

  A man laughed now, warm, and demanding.

  It was a signal. Giggling, flaunting, the women left off the dance altogether. They fell away into groups, like flower-heads, waiting.

  Who the suitors were, I have no reason to recall. Only one. Amdysos had been too tactful to come. A friend or two, I think. Others. Those who had walked to the shore on previous nights.

  It was full dark now, the correct time. Fireflies winked in the bushes. I saw Ermias, big and luscious, tossing her curls, move out to greet one man who seized her silver-corded waist in both his hands, catching her, pulling her at once to his mouth.

  He was standing back, but the torchlight described him, brazen upon his face that was a mask of metal. He did not look uneasy, bashful. I wonder what it cost him,, to be bold, there in that arena, taxing as any combat, to a man. At the time, I did not know.

  It was a miracle to me. That Klyton was there, under the trees, the torches showing him to me.

  But he did not look at me.

  He crossed straight over to a girl with long, silky, lemony hair, like Clello on the slope above. He held out his hand, and she, blushing now, breathing fast, with bright eyes, went to him.

  I had known pain, pain of many kinds. One reasons, it will pass, and then all will be as before, before the pain, kind days of nectar. But pain, once it has found you, will return. So life is.

  What should I do? I could not even run away.

  I sat in my chair, and in the centre of me, heart and viscera, the unrealized bud of my loins, the blackest agony and despair dredged down.

  It was in this moment that one of the musicians, rising, carried his torch across the grove. Klyton looked up to see the light, and saw instead myself.

  My dress—the color of his eyes by night.

  Though I was stifled by my heart, I would not look away.

  He glanced at the girl he had selected, said something soft, put a kiss into her open palm. When he came from her, she only bridled a little. He had promised her he would not be gone for long. She knew him a Sun Prince, the glamorous Klyton who, they said, was a virgin still. She would wait.

  But he walked over the clover-grass to me, and when he was by me, he halted, looking down and on and on, into my face.

  “Should you be here, little girl?” he said.

  I said, “Ermias brought me.”

  “Who is Ermias? Your Maiden?”

  “My guardian.”

  “Yes, you’re very young.”

  Tears flooded my eyes at once. He thought me a child. And what was that girl’s waiting to mine? I had waited for five years.

  “You’re a princess of the house,” he said. “That’s right, isn’t it? Daughter of a Daystar.”

  He did not, unlike the waking dream, know my name.

  “I am Calistra, daughter of Akreon.”

  “Good,” he said. He nodded. “Be proud of that. I’m Klyton.”

  “I know.”

  He did not ask me how—all my furtive questions, not to stir unwelcome interest in my curiosity. Probably he thought we were born with knowledge of him, as such men—the beautiful, the brave, the god-inspired, the innocent—do.

  “Well,” he said. He was still looking in my eyes. He said, “Your eyes are like silver, Calistra. She shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  I said, to protect her, “She wanted me to have the air. She takes care. No one insults me.” I drew in breath. “It’s because I can’t walk.”

  His eyes left mine. They travelled down me, my slim girl’s body with its breasts, that I had had almost two years, to my skirt’s end, the pomegranate border.

  I shut my eyes. I felt a wave of tingling and terrible unhappiness, such as I had never had, not even in the House of Thon.

  I said, “I haven’t any feet, my lord.”

  To my surprise, perhaps my horror, I was not certain, he said, “Yes, I’d heard of it.” He added, “I asked someone, once.”

  I could not look at him now. Before, it had seemed we might go by my disadvantage. Now I felt the utter weight of it like stone tied to me. How could he not mind? He, this god, this Sun. I wished I was dead.

  His eyes were on my face again. I felt them, like lights or heat, but I did not look now.

  “You must miss it, not walking. Or to dance.”

  Of course I had missed it, but nothing was of any importance any more. I would die in the night of misery.

  Then his hand came down and brushed my hair. It was like a healing touch. Flame flooded through me. I raised my eyes. My heart beat now so much I could not speak or breathe. I hung from him as the Daystar hung from the Sun, they said, by a chain of gold invisible to the eye.

  “You shouldn’t have been left this way,” he said, firmly. “What were they thinking of?” I thought he meant the grove, Ermias again. I did not care. Could not answer, any way. “Calistra, leave it with me. I’ll do what I can. Didn’t they see, you’re like—” he stopped. He said, “Akreon would have brought you out. You’re not only a night–flower. You must be seen in daylight, too.”

  I understood none of it. I wanted him to stay, looking down at me, for ever. But my physical response to him, so close, so real, was overwhelming, nearly devastating. Also, I wished that he would go away. For a little while. Only a little. So I could breathe again.

  And he did go away then. He smiled, and mildly tapped the earring in my left ear, so it swung. “Leave it with me,” he said again. Then he turned and went back to the glowing girl, who walked away with him into the shadows, on two slender, arching feet.

  Strangely, I did not die that night. Nor did I sleep until the dawn began.

  Ermias thought I had a fever. I did not want to eat, to be got up. I did not want anything. Did n
ot know anything to want. Only Klyton, who had gone away.

  Three or four or five days passed like this, I forget how many. She was threatening me with the physician. She had not seen the prince talk to me, and those that had, had their own concerns. He was my brother. It had been courteous of him, to greet me, and either proper or improper, depending on how one viewed the scene.

  A slave brought me his present. It was wrapped in silk, and when undone, found to be a bracelet, marvelously made, a dancing girl twisting about a ball of green pearl. The metal was colcai. It fitted perfectly.

  He had written the message himself.

  My sister, who has the name of Calistra.

  Have you forgotten me? I hope you have not. I am sending someone to you. Do what he says. When we meet again, you will stand before me. We will walk together through the palace. Do your part, and I vow this to you.

  Yours under the Sun.

  KLYTON

  Klyton, you brought me pain. So much pain. You took from me first the virginity of my soul. The omens were very clear, but I did not see them, as I ran upon the sword.

  6

  It was a month before my new teacher came. I had been expecting him daily, between trembling anxiety and overpowering anticipation. I was fearful too, afraid of failing in this. For if I failed, worse now than losing my own incredible chance, I would lose Klyton.

  Kelbalba had returned, four days after Klyton wrote to me. She had been summoned to the prince—oh, her luck, the blessing; she shone for me with his reflected light—and she explained what was to happen. She seemed dubious, and was careful how she spoke. She told me at once it might be no use.

  But I had only one verdict: Klyton had decreed it—it must answer. If it did not, I would bear all the black despair of unsuccess, the guilt of unworthiness. The utter loss of all.

  As the month waned away, she put me through my paces. At everything I had been taught, on my bar, in the exercises on the floor, I was, she said, splendid. She praised me. But then she said, “This is a wholly new thing you must learn now. You haven’t wasted, and that’s to the good. But your muscles will need to go another way. And, Calistra—will hurt.”

  I already knew.

  She had held me, and let me take most of my own slight weight on the stumps of my ankles. Presently the pain and vertigo made me cry out.

  “Worse than that,” said Kelbalba. “Much worse.”

  “I must,” I said. “I’ll bear it.”

  “You are all Sun children,” she said. “In my village, I’d have been ashamed to be so valiant. But we were only clay.” I do not know if she meant to imply her irony, or real awe. I think she only said what she thought.

  She began anyway to make me do fresh things, working always with my knees, my thighs, the calves of my legs, my spine, and had me standing upright, minutes together, gripping her hands. She rubbed the ends of my legs with a solution that smelled of vinegar-wine and burned me.

  The man, my tutor, arrived on a hot morning when the Lakesea was like a line of heated steel beyond the window, decorated above by two or three white gulls, and the red pillars of the room blazed as if also heated within.

  Everything smelled of life. Birds were singing, the gulls calling, and I was feeding the turtle a salad of her favorite herbs and weeds.

  Abruptly it had occurred to me, I do not know why, that I had been born in this very room, almost thirteen years ago.

  But rebirth was hurtling on.

  The door opened. Kelbalba walked through, and nodded to me. Then she let him come in. He was something to see, coal-black, with a black beard to his waist.

  Torca, though more than part Arteptan, had lived in Akhemony for twenty years. Before that he had roamed the outlands of Ipyra. He had been a doctor with the armies of the kings of Uaria and Charchis. He had fought with Akreon’s forces in several campaigns. He had a reputation as a man prized by the gods, having been nearly killed six or seven times, in war or by accidents, and survived.

  He had a leg made from the knee down of solid wood. He had fashioned it himself, strapped it on to replace an amputation, and learned to use it. Once the master of it, he made himself serviceable to others. I had never heard of him, for such things were not common chat among the high women at Oceaxis. But in Airis he was known, for he had become a priest there, who served the shrine, and assisted at the Race.

  Klyton had sought him out. If Torca took his time in coming, he announced afterwards, it was to test me. Speaking so many tongues, he was perfect in the accent of each land or region. So I could be in no doubt when he said he had left me the days in which to see that I was mad and in error, and for Kelbalba to frighten me into better sense. Finding me still insane, he scowled and said I should be sorry. How right he was.

  Looking back, my impulse is to hurry through this section of my history. Even now, the injury, the awful doubt and dismay, scratch at my heart. Though she has become another, that one I was, Calistra, perhaps for this very reason, I do not like to dwell on her suffering and her humiliation. We say here, in Sin Dhul, City of the Moon, sometimes the potter, seeing the pot is taking the wrong shape on the wheel, must crush it again, to reform it better.

  Probably I will be too quick, in my explaining.

  I would get up, eat a little, take my morning bath. Then Kelbalba would soak the stumps of my legs in a solution of acid fire. After my new exercises, Torca came in. I would be lifted up and put down into two pits of agony. And in this way, through the days, I would travel. Often I fell. They caught me, or let me go down. Their hands led me, or betrayed. Or there were two traitorous sticks grasped with my own terrified fingers. My eyes were always wide, like those of a rabbit that sees the snake. I lost my virginity during this time. Actually and physically, I do not speak now by allusion. It tore open in one of my many tumbles, my legs sprawling so violently that, had it not been for all my work on my body before, I think both would have been broken. Feeling the other tearing, I knew, but did not speak. I could not care.

  I was in pain, any way, from the first, all up my legs and into my crotch, into my very womb. Soon all of me hurt so much that, even after the bath and the massaging which came with evening, I lay weeping, unable to sleep unless hammered down into the dark with the strongest soporifics.

  Even up my neck and into my skull, I hurt. And there was, too, the aggravation of the scarlet cord, which had been tied up my body from both my legs, into my hair. Torca had said this was to instruct my brain that as my legs flexed, it must respond. The cord duly wrenched and pulled. I cannot describe fully the mass of agony I became, but it was the thunder-colored pain described by certain poets, shot through with notes of sheerest razor white. And all this, to keep my feet.

  My feet.

  When I first saw them, I felt a mixture of delight—and revulsion.

  They had been fashioned to Torca’s specification, but in the silversmith’s shop. I was no soldier, but a princess of the Sun House.

  They were of silver, mixed with iron and pherom at the sole, then padded here with leather which would, as time passed, be resoled as with any shoe.

  And, they were in the form of feet, slender and strong, the very ones I would have had if I had not left them behind in the chaos lands, in my rush to be born. They had toes, and every one a nail of gold. They had anklebones, slim and fine as a dancer’s. They rose a little above the ankle, and here, too, was a rim of rolled gold. Inside they were hollow, holding each a sack stuffed with layers of down, into which the stems of me were inserted. The filling would need constantly to be replaced. You would think such boots soft and supportive, putting your hand far into them. Who made them did their very best. Others have not fared so well.

  From the ankle-parts, four rods of silver rose to half the height of my calf. Between the rods, a mesh of silver wire. The lacings were silver ribbons, such as ladies had for their hair, or their most frivolous sandals.

  When the slave put them before me, Torca said at once I would need all this to be
done again, as I grew. There was a slight smile on his face. It did not occur to me then, the expense of such riches so often repeated.

  They were strapped on as I sat. When I rose, for a moment I felt my power. I was upright. I was supported. I stood—upon my own feet.

  Then I was dizzy. I remembered when the Heart had stopped—had mine? And beginning my first lesson despite that, sickened, bemused, I found the daggers in the softness.

  That first night, my legs ran with blood. And for weeks after. Beyond the times of blood, were worse things, when my own flesh sheared from me. The unguents of Kelbalba saved me from further mutilation. I heard Torca tell her, frankly before me, that he would have her recipe if she would sell it to him. He had seen men lose a whole limb to gangrene from such labor as mine.

  In my dreams, I was whirling through air, while beasts gnawed my legs night-long. They ate upward. They would have my center, they would rape me with teeth.

  I woke screaming from what little sleep I had.

  7

  Perhaps it was still summer …

  I think not—there had been leaves caught in russet webs across the garden trees—and now the leaves were gone.

  I lay shrieking. I refused them. I refused the feet. Instruments of torture, they stood in their silver purity, with their toenails of sunny gold. And by them, new silver laces, and the red cord.

  “No—no—I won’t—no—no—”

  Kelbalba lifted me. She held me hard, not the hug of friend or mother, but of the warrior in the thick of battle.

  “Come on, girl. Don’t you know how well you do? He says, old Black Beard, he says you are braver than any man he’s known. Braver than he was, with the wooden leg. Come on, come on. Or I’ll slap you. I have a bet on you with my sisters at the stadium. I said you’d walk unaided by Winter Festival. Do you want to make a mock of me?”