Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  But I had a fever from my wounds. I lay, and feebly cried for my beloved, who had brought me to this pass.

  “The prince? Your Klyton? What does he care? He’s off at Melmia, with half the court. He’s forgotten you. You must make him remember.”

  Later, when drugs and possets had washed me quiet, she told me the story of how Phaidix kills with pleasure, her lethal arrows tipped with sweetness. But life is bitter. To live one must put up with it. Then, taking my sithra, she strummed a gentle air of the hills. She sang to my feet, which she said I had, although they were not visible. She said they must make friends with the feet of silver. Then all would be well.

  She had a hoarse voice, but it calmed me. I slept better than for months, and in the morning, stiff as a board from only a day without moving, got up and called for the silver feet, and put them on.

  Then I walked the length of the room, using only the walking sticks, and not complaining once, though rivets of ice and fire were driven from my groin to my eyes.

  It would be almost another year before I could walk unassisted. And rather more before I would walk in the halls of ordinary men.

  She brought the god Lut to my rooms that winter I was thirteen, and garlanded him herself for the festival, with red berries from the marroi, the Sun’s promise of summer’s returning.

  “Tell him you hurt,” said Kelbalba, folding her big arms, the scar on her cheek wriggling like a snake. “You can say anything to him. He won’t mind you whining or crying. He understands all that. And that you’re more than that. He forgives weakness and despair, yet values courage.”

  He was in the form of a hunchback, with bandy legs and a bulbous nose. But his mouth smiled grotesquely. It was sharing a joke with his own, those such as I. He was made only of greyish wood, but they had polished him, and he was half a foot high.

  I made my ruinous way, in the hollow feet, with one cane, and put him on Gemli’s altar. The flame dipped, as if she were offended, but I meant to offend her. I said, “Give joy, Gemli, goddess of joy, to his kind.” But then I poured her wine and sprinkled perfume. I asked Kelbalba what Lut would like.

  “In my village, the dwarf girl put him between her legs. He likes that.” She could be coarse enough, and I had heard plenty from her, which no longer made me start. “From a princess, just a kiss.”

  So I kissed Lut’s brow. I gave him some raisins, too. The winter fruit that year was very succulent. Perhaps he was truly pleased, because before spring, I was doing rather better, though I had a great way to go.

  It seemed to me I had certainly been forgotten by all the palace. Udrombis had spent no time on me after the first interview, and I scarcely remembered her, only her important name. Ermias was much away. For Klyton—well, I had no word at all. One day I took off the colcai bracelet which, till then, I had worn every hour, even in my pain. It left a green mark on my wrist.

  Torca noticed quickly.

  “Where is your bangle?”

  I said nothing. Ermias, who sometimes attended me in the evenings when I was in my right mind, had tutored me too, in the hauteur of my rank.

  Torca said, “You should wear his gift. “He gave it you to bolster your endurance and your spirit.”

  I shook my head. The cord had been dispensed with by then. But still, when I did such a thing when standing, a wave of vertigo might take me, and did so now.

  As I stood at the floor’s middle, on the tilting sea of pain, I heard Torca say, “It came from his first battle honors. The metal was taken from a foe’s armor. A man the prince killed in war. Melted down and refashioned, for you.”

  Men killed each other in war. I had been told so. It was correct for them. Klyton was a hero, could be nothing else. I said, “I honor his present. I won’t wear it again until I see him.”

  Torca, black and bulky, shrugged, and limped about. He did not dress as a priest away from the sanctuary, but in a gentleman’s leather and linen. His wooden leg lunged like a cane, having no bending parts, as my feet did not. I had been shown I could only ever hope to shuffle.

  I stood discouraged. The pretty bracelet had come from a man in death. Klyton, who sent me no word, had meant to help, but had no real interest in me. Doubtless, this was not unreasonable.

  Across the room, Lut leered at Gemli. And she, royal and unflawed, her head poised high, looked away.

  Winter passed like the moon. Spring spangle-veiled Oceaxis. I was steadier and walked with less pain. But I moved like a deformed old woman. I moved like a monstrosity. I had remembered my earlier name. Cemira—the thing. The bracelet lay in a box.

  Late summer brought another small war, with the tribesmen in Ipyra, now. They said Glardor had refused to take another “spear-bride wife.” Amdysos, Glardor’s direct heir, was to have the treat.

  Ermias went to watch the troops ride back into Oceaxis, I had declined to go. I would have to leave off my unmanagable silver feet, and be carried in my chair. I had torn my hair and wept, again. Lut crouched in the sunset, watching me, and from the town, once or twice, I heard the far notes of trumpets.

  What can there be for me? My thought, in darkness. Whatever I do, there is nothing for me.

  Still sometimes, my stumps sloughed off the wrecked skin. But for the rinses of Kelbalba, I would have stunk, to add to my horrors. Instead, the room smelled of medicine, as if for someone chronically sick.

  If this is my portion now, how shall I live?

  I thought I would die soon, and did not care.

  Then in the night, I woke to silence but for the rasping of crickets beyond the window. Somewhere a kitri sang, as it had in the groves, but fitfully, a broken song.

  A shadow bent over me.

  I was afraid, as never before.

  “What do you want, old woman?” And then—how cruel, how terrible these words: “Don’t you know, old crow, you’re dead?”

  “Am I?” she said, indifferently, Crow Claw, who was a ghost. “Well, never mind it.”

  Then she painted something cool on to my legs, and—just as if Kelbalba had told her—all over my nonexistent feet, following their shape exactly.

  The lamp before Gemli had burned very low. I could scarcely see Crow Claw, but yet I could not make a mistake.

  “No one loves me,” I said. It was not the cry of a child. I said it, in a way, to excuse myself. The rotting of my skin, my loneliness and inability.

  Crow Claw said, “Then you must love yourself enough for two, or three.”

  When I woke in the morning, the light shone like silver all over the room—for someone who had not been there had pulled back the drape. The silver feet seemed to be dancing a little, in their corner, as if they had been skipping about all night, and only now settled to pretend they were still.

  I had heard the whispers—Ermias—of how my own unattached feet were glimpsed in these rooms. Hetsa, my mother, who had not wanted me, appalled by such sightings, had grown ill and died suddenly.

  As I looked at the silver feet I thought, Not I, but they know how.

  Presently, after the morning rituals, I was put into them and I myself laced the ribbons, which were new again that day. I have heard of something like this in trying to master another tongue—though I did not myself find it so. All at once—it is in your hands, and under your heart.

  I took my honey cup, half full, and walked over to make an offering to ugly, grinning, sensible Lut.

  Kelbalba gasped.

  She said, “Done!” And then, “Do you know? Can you do it again? For when Blackie comes? He’s too clever, that one. I’d like to see his face.”

  “You lost your bet any way,” I said.

  “Never had bet. What do you think me? I was trying to make you spit fire, girl. But now you’re walking.”

  I was. It would need much burnishing. It would need great pains, of care not hurt, to get it right. I have heard them say, years later, that Calistra did not take steps, but glided, as if on runners, and pulled by some invisible uncanny creature to which she
had harnessed them.

  The feet slid along the floor. One could not raise them, or barely. They knew their way, my body followed, easy, in the dance. They made a faint ssh-ssh, the leather soles over the metal. So yet, I was a snake.

  8

  Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

  Seeing it is one of my tasks to lace on to my mistress Sirai, every morning, her Feet, I will repeat now that they are no longer of bright silver. She lets them stay tarnished black, though clean within, and refilled at intervals with down. Of course, her lowest legs are scarred quite massively, she calls these marks her “hoofs,” and laughs at them.

  I believe that if it cost many in the beginning such work to walk, they would crawl about till the end of their days.

  She has seen what I write and says I must strike it out. She tells me all men, all women, are different from each other, what is simple to one may be a severe penance to another, and conversely. She says that in her walking she was motivated by her love, and since love has always motivated her, and is the gift of God, she cannot be judged, nor any other less fortunate.

  I therefore pretended to erase what I had written, but have decided to let it alone. It is like her to say what she has said. But I would have no one think that she did not achieve a great thing. That would be to mislead and wrong those who read here, far more than my mistress.

  The Sun shrine at Airis stood—perhaps still stands, for strangely, I do not know—above the town, but away, facing the mountain across the vineyards, grain fields and orchards of the plain. It is an hour’s ride from the palace-fort, by a good road.

  Steps cut white in the hillside lead there, to the sacred groves of marroi and pine. The cedar of the god’s shade leans through yellow Maiden willows to a spring, which is reckoned healing.

  The shrine is foursquare, a roof of gilded tiles on pale walls, with deep ruby pillars. The priests’ house, with its guest quarters and rooms of meditation, stretches down the slope behind, through the trees. You are meant not to see it, for the Sun, in his aspect of hunter and priest, likes solitude.

  Red grapes wound around the lintel in summer and fall. No one stops them, they are the god’s bounty, like all things that grow and live. You see, I cannot give up speaking as if the shrine remains. Like all things of a god, of course, even if brought down, it does.

  Klyton tied his horse by the cedar, where a trough was filled up daily for animals to take refreshment. He drew out the bronze cup and drank from the spring. It was a day of heat. He was nineteen, soon to be twenty.

  Going into the porch of the shrine, he saw it cool, and smoky with shadow within. You could just see the glimmer of the god at his altar. Klyton touched the bell that hung outside.

  After a minute, a priest came up the hill, and surprised Klyton, jogging his memory out of place.

  “Are you here, Torca?”

  “My lord,” said black Torca, approaching with his dragging walk, but a man of power now, in a white robe, the palms of his hands painted red, and a gold round for the Sun on his forehead. “Please be aware, sir, my service is here. However much I take joy in serving you elsewhere, when I may.”

  Klyton nodded. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to insult your vocation, Torca. It was any way a priest I wanted to speak to. But—since it’s you—can you tell me how my sister does?” Torca stood. Below, the spring sounded its ruffling rilling music. A harsh bird called in the sky, and Klyton glanced up. “They said there was a giant eagle spotted over Airis. Is it true?”

  “Perhaps, my lord. I’ve not seen it. Meanwhile, your sister has no need of me. I believe she’s written you a letter.”

  “Has she? I haven’t had it. Or—perhaps. The last fighting—you’ll have heard. A horde of bandits under Koi. I’ve been busy.”

  “No doubt. No doubt your sister will have expected no reply.”

  “But you say she doesn’t need you. What is it? Did she give it up?”

  Torca stood on. Then he looked past Klyton, who was if anything an image of the Sun, into the plain below.

  “No, my lord. She doesn’t need me now because she’s learned all I can teach. Kelbalba stays for her massage, that’s all.”

  “Then—can she walk?”

  “Didn’t you suppose, sir, she’d learn? You were so full of hope and passion at first, when you persuaded me to go.”

  Klyton stared into Torca’s black eyes. “Are you chiding me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. I’ve been remiss. It isn’t I hadn’t thought of her at all. Is she as pretty as—what is it—two years ago?”

  “My lord, there are no women of the line of Akreon less than lovely.”

  Klyton raised his brows. “And she walks?”

  “Like a goddess. I don’t lie. I never expected it, but I’m used to rough and ready men in the wars. She was trained like a dancer. She moves—like a dance. Slowly, you understand. She can never run, or hurry. She’ll never climb a stair without her cane. But on level ground, on the floors of a palace, my lord—well. You should go and see.”

  “Is she in the life of the court?”

  “No.”

  “Udrombis, then, knows nothing of it?”

  Torca said no word.

  Klyton, feeling himself to be a boy again, drew himself up, royal and tall and hard with Sun. “I’ll see you’re rewarded properly, Torca, beyond the fee. And the woman—Kelbalba, was it? She must have something, too.”

  Torca unnervingly bowed. He showed Klyton that Klyton was sacrilegious, reducing a priest of the Sun to a servant who had done a service.

  Klyton worked a ring off his finger. It was heavy gold with a green beryl. “I’ll give this to the god. To thank him. After that, can I talk to you, as a priest?”

  “I should guess so, my lord.”

  “It’s about the Race.”

  When the Sun declined and evening drew on, flocks of birds fluttered up from the plain, to feed by the spring, where the priests left grain and seeds. They were the creatures of heaven. One heard at this hour, over their twittering as they gorged, then settled in the groves, the voice of the white pet cat, sacred to Phaidix, meowing discontentedly, shut in the priests’ house. At other times she might do as she pleased, but this hour was given safe to the birds.

  Klyton, having prayed, and presented a young buck deer to the god, watched out the evening offering to the Sunset.

  Do not forget us …

  He frowned as he listened. What had he done that evening before Akreon died? He had been off somewhere with Amdysos, and later they had played the board game in Udrombis’ rooms. And neither won.

  Amdysos was at Oceaxis with his unwanted wife, Elakti. She was the bony, sallow daughter of some chief-king at Ipyra. Amdysos had had her; despite Glardor’s performances, it would have been an insult to her and her clan not to have done so, and wars once had been founded on less. One year later, she had borne a girl, as skinny and ill-favored as she. Amdysos said she wailed at him, the mother, growing dangerously hysterical, something the women of Ipyra were famed for. He avoided her as much as honor allowed. Glardor the Farmer had been at fault here. For Glardor himself should have wed her. It would have been a greater honor for her kin, and the King would have more excuse to let her alone.

  The problem was, any way, finding sufficient to do. By now some position should have come the way of Amdysos, the last King’s last son. But he was only there. The bandits of Koi, a task really beneath them, had been a divertion, for such Suns as Amdysos, Klyton, and those others, children of the lesser queens, who thought themselves worth more than a seat at the tables in the Hall.

  Klyton had put this by.

  He wanted the Sun Race. For this he had come up here. Since sixteen three times he had been left out, while Amdysos had raced twice. And, once, had won. But it was more than that. You could not speak, even brother to brother, of what lay within the caves of the mountain. It was a passage into manhood, needful as war, and sex.

  Now Klyton ca
me to ask the god to relent, to select him, and if not, to tell him why.

  Amdysos had said, “You take it to heart too much.”

  “It’s my right.”

  “If the god doesn’t choose—”

  “Oh, and did the Sun choose Elakti for you?”

  They had not parted friends.

  Observing the priests, Torca as well, at their own measured life, and presently eating in the house at the long scrubbed table, with its earthenware bowls and cups, and he, a King’s son, in one of the five princely chairs reserved for princes and kings, Klyton reasoned with himself. He doubted that the lots were connived at. Where would be the sense or gain? And besides, it would be a blasphemy.

  Even so, coming here, making a lavish offering of gold, incense, and meat, gifts to god and priests alike, Klyton felt quite strongly the answer could not be cold.

  He ate sparingly, as they advised, and went after supper with the old slave woman, who served the altars, the only woman allowed to attend there.

  As they crossed the woods on the hill, the dark had roosted like the birds, folding down its broad inky wings, and stars blazed in patterns. Only the spring sounded now. The Heartbeat, unheard. And though the white cat passed, and the old woman saluted her for Phaidix’s sake, the cat was silent as a ghost.

  On the threshold of the guest cell where he was to commune with the god, through the night which was the shadow of his day, Klyton stopped still. The old woman pulled off his boots, strong as an ox, and looked into his eyes.

  He had thought she was probably senile, but now, in starlight, Phaidix’s moon not yet high, he saw the curious intelligence in her face.

  “Ask him, and he will,” was all she said, the ritual words. Before she went, he pressed a silver coin into her hand. Then she said, “Thank you, lord master. May it be a good dream.” But then again, as she went up the hill to the house, he heard her laugh, short and sharp, like a fox’s bark.

  When he had shut the door, he undid his belt and took it off with the sword and knife. He stripped in the windowless place, and laved all his body with the chilling water in the urn.