Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  Then going to the altar at the room’s center, he lit, with the tinder, the single lamp.

  Coppery light rose up, and touched the ceiling, which was only a foot above him.

  Klyton spoke softly, wondering if any listened. Whatever else, the god would do so.

  “My fourth time to be drawn for the Sun Race. Your holy number is five. But now I must have it. I ask it of you. Or tell me why not.”

  The flame curled over in the lamp. Klyton smelled a powdery, fermented smell. It was some drug in the oil. Well, the god spoke through a dream. If you did not sleep, how could he reach you?

  Klyton went to the pallet and lay down.

  For a moment, it was the cell, and dark but for the lamp. And then a gleaming copper column stood up through it, and through the room the priests were passing in their white robes, through the very walls, and next right through each other. And as this happened, sparks were struck body upon body, and hovered unextinguished in the air.

  Klyton, Klyton, said a voice.

  “I am here.”

  But it said nothing else.

  Instead the ceiling dissolved, and he saw the sky of night, sequined with too many stars, each brilliant as a jewel, as the Daystar herself.

  Klyton felt himself leaving his body. For a moment he fought this—and then he went up, and a power coarsed through him like nothing of the earth. And opening great wings, he soared out into the highest air, up among the stars, that were now each large as a queen’s silver mirror, hanging, turning and chiming about him.

  He knew himself. He was the great eagle above the peak of the mountain. He felt his goldenness, the wings like flame, the beak of metal, and the eyes that were suns by night.

  He flew.

  Below, Akhemony, but more—the other lands that lay about her skirts, Ipyra, Uaria, and islands that drifted out like pebbles on the glittering darkness of the sea.

  The world was his subject. It was his.

  Again the voice spoke to him.

  Not before, since then it was not yours. Now is the time for you.

  He turned, wheeling, and saw his shadow skim over the earth in the shape of a sweeping sword.

  Fire buoyed him up. And then he felt the silken rope which hung from his claws.

  He looked. Though free to fly through the roof of the gods, he was secured safely to the mountains and the land. A being that was partly a woman and partly a serpent, held him, her slim white hands gripped in and gripping his claws, her face upturned, stretched and exquisite, like the face of a girl in sexual ecstasy, which first he had seen at Oceaxis.

  Her mirroring silver tail coiled down and down.

  He might fly as he wished, and she would anchor him. Though he might touch the gods, become the Sun, she would keep for him the citadel of the mortal ground.

  Fire and air. Earth and water.

  A paean of glory and gladness roared in him and seemed to burst him asunder, just as orgasm had seemed to, that first time. But it was life, not Death. And the god had answered all.

  Riding to Oceaxis, Klyton’s two attendants found him unusually quiet. Normally he would speak, and joke with them, from time to time. He was one of those princes who, from his height, stayed gracious, even amiable and entertaining, when things went well. Upset or angry, he was seldom unfair, but often terse. They thought now this was the case, and let him be.

  The road was excellent, and they only stopped once, for an hour, at noon. They reached the town at Oceaxis after midnight, skirted it, and went on to the palace.

  They then expected he would lie in a little the next day, but he was awake before dawn. He went up to see the Dawn Offering on the East Terrace.

  After breakfasting, he was gone, with only the slave boy, who carried, in a roll of parchment, the astonishing thing the old woman had found, on the threshold of the shrine at Airis.

  A slave opened the double doors, and Klyton entered the outer room. It was not so very large, this former apartment of one of the lesser Daystars, but pleasant enough, with a pool, a tiled floor, and a big turtle lying dozing there.

  From the inner room came a faint noise of a slow drum, playing between the Heartbeat.

  “Tell her,” he said, “her brother, Prince Klyton, is here.”

  The slave bowed again, very low. Then she folded her hands, eyes lowered, and said, “You can’t go in, my lord. None of her ladies is here.”

  “Then fetch one. Go on, hurry up.”

  He did not speak roughly; the slave was pretty and had behaved correctly. She ran out, and he sat down on one of the chairs to wait.

  Behind a screen of sea-ivory and oak, stood the bed of the chief lady, his sister’s Maiden, who should be here. Probably, if she was absent at this hour, she was in another bed entirely.

  Did everyone treat Calistra so carelessly? Only the slave had had decorum, and she was a child.

  Then the outer doors opened and a short but massive woman entered. She had rings of copper on her bulging arms, worn quite bare like a man’s, and a scarred cheek. She glared at him, making him want to laugh, to charm her.

  He rose, as if for a queen.

  “Lady, I’m Calistra’s brother.”

  Kelbalba glared on. “Honor to you, prince, Son of the Sun. Which brother?”

  He did laugh now. And through her eyes then flicked a glint of disapproving approval—a look he was used to from all sexes.

  “The brother who sent Torca to her. Klyton.”

  “Ah,” said Kelbalba. “My paymaster.”

  “I stand reproved,” he said. “I gather I haven’t paid you enough. But I heard you were any way beyond price, Kelbalba.”

  At her name, evidence he had recalled it, and once meeting her, she seemed slightly mollified, and stopped pretending she herself did not recall.

  “The Maiden Ermias is away,” she said. He noted, she did not gossip or imply anything bad. “But I can be your chaperone, if you wish to go in. My lady’s at her exercise, but everything’s quite in order. No harm.” She moved towards the doors. “She glad will be you come here.”

  From the lapse of her syntax, he sensed a genuine feeling. Klyton said, “Wait. Would it distress her, do you think—not to announce me. I’d like—to see her.”

  Kelbalba frowned. “Spy on her, prince? Catch her out?”

  “No. I fear she’ll be angry with me, or cold. Or she’ll cry. I’ve not been as attentive as I should. I’d like to look at her, once, before anything else starts.”

  “Oh, she isn’t that way,” said Kelbalba. “Still. Let me look first. Then, if I say, you can.”

  “Thank you, lady.” He was mischievous. He glowed like the Sun outside.

  “Who is this lady?” snapped Kelbalba. “I was born a slave and freed for the stadium, like a horse.”

  Then she went to the middle door, and undid it a crack. She peered in, and now he heard the notes of a shell-harp with the drum, and a soft, rhythmic whispering, as of a heavy silken gown.

  After a moment, she removed her face and showed it to him, blank. She stepped back, and gestured him to do what she had done.

  She said after, “Another, I’d have thought he only wanted to check his money well spent. But he was like a bridegroom with a chance to see the bride before they meet. A heat came off him. He smelled good, like new bread and oil of cedar. Who wants to say no to beauty?”

  Klyton did as Kelbalba had, what women did, peeping round the door. But his self-irony at this was gone in one moment. Because, in this way, unseen, he saw Calistra dancing.

  The inner room was finer. Akreon had always been generous, and Hetsa, who was Calistra’s mother, was a stupid woman by all accounts. She would have thought to have the best in her privacy, not make an impressive show outside to visitors.

  Snake-topped red pillars held the ceiling, and on the walls was a delightful sensuous mural, of girls and young animals, and Gemli in her golden shrine with something grey crouched before her, a sort of dwarf. They were sharing a peach and a cup of wine
, it seemed.

  On the smooth reflective floor, the harper sat with the great white shell, flushed pink and strung with red-washed strings, which fell out in tassels over his knee. The female drummer drummed, a black musician, from Artepta, probably. The harper must be sworn to Daia Donis, that is, proven aroused only by his own gender, or he would never have been permitted unwatched in the room of a young Akhemonian princess. Customs elsewhere, of course, were more slack, as if male artists had no weapons.

  The girl moved over the floor, and light fell on her from the wide window, the flame of sunlight rising up on the Lakesea.

  She had her back to him, and her hair was a sheet of quivering, glistening blond-whiteness shot with threads of gold, a substance that, if it could have been woven on a loom, would make rich the one who sold it. It fell to her thighs, glimmering and swinging, heavy yet weightless, flaring out a little at her movements, like frayed silk, or crystal foam from the morning sea.

  Her white arms, sleeved in open pastel ribbons, were like snakes … turning, boneless.

  All the while, she glided forward, away from him, glided as if on wheels—slowly, slowly, to the beat of the drum. And then, astonishing him—she slid her left foot to the side, her skirt rippling as it followed the silken action of her leg, and dipped over sideways from the waist down and down, almost touching the floor, brushing it with her luminous cloud of golden hair.

  He would have believed at that second this could not be Calistra. He understood as much. But in the very instant he must have doubted, the light struck off a flash. She wore—not silver shoes—but feet of silver, the very feet he, Klyton, had discussed with Torca, saying she was too fair to have anything less.

  And then, swimming through air, turning, her waist that swayed like a supple slender stem, the curve of hips, the line of her breasts, full for a girl’s, high and pointing so the mouth went dry, and, so around, facing now the door, gliding now towards the door. The whisper of a mysterious robe was the susurrous of her feet upon the floor.

  Serpents, her arms, her body, and her hair floating out behind her now. In the heart of the gold, a white throat, and poised upon it, a face so beautiful, so remote, lost in the dance—it was barely human.

  He had meant to push the door wide and surprise her. A young man’s trick.

  But instead, he drew back. He let out the breath he had been holding.

  It was this she heard.

  Through the door-crack, he saw her stop quite still. She held up her hand, and the music broke off.

  Then Klyton made out, as seldom consciously he did, the Heart beating from the mountain. And his own heart, going rather faster.

  “Who’s there?”

  It was a girl’s voice. Clear and musical. But from that alone, he could never have guessed. As he had not on the shore two years ago.

  Then he pushed the door, drawing himself together, upwards, swelling, swaggering, to display his glamour, trying to ignore that another part of him was also doing exactly this, upright as a rod of bronze, to greet his sister.

  Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

  She laughs at this point, my mistress, and says, “They will think it some silly old woman’s fancy that once she was young and beautiful. Never mind. It’s only as he told me, after. Unless he lied, which others might have, perhaps.”

  I will therefore say here, that since I am half the age of Sirai, I never saw her as a young woman, though as an older woman she was and is impressive enough. In my childhood though, I heard her spoken of by those who saw her, unveiled, in her youth. Women can be jealous, but she was seemingly too astonishing to inspire that. Instead, one likened her to a rose, and one to a star. The name he gave her, the Prince Shajhima—Sirai—means, as we know, The Risen Moon.

  I say no more.

  In the morning I rose early, because I would generally wake early. I bathed, and ate the fruit and drank the juices they brought me. Then they painted my face—only dark for my eyelids and around my eyes, some color for my mouth. It was the etiquette of a princess.

  I dressed in something light, and then did my exercises. In the midst of these, as I was going about to music, he arrived.

  When he threw open the door, it was if the Sun burst in through another window.

  He was all gold. I could hardly see him.

  I did not know who it was.

  Within my memory, where I had kept him, he had grown almost faceless. The glimpses, now and then, at the temple, had not restored him. He had lost his features, like a statue, to the weather of my emotions.

  In the middle of the floor I stood rooted. The musicians scrambled up, bowing low. He was a prince—a king—what did I know?

  I bowed, I think. Perhaps not.

  He walked forward, then he stopped.

  He said, “You come to me, Calistra.”

  For myself, I moved like a fool. But when I was close he caught my hands.

  “My beauty!” he exclaimed. “Oh, the God, oh Calistra. Best girl. If you weren’t my sister, I’d wed you.”

  His face was full of fire. I mean, high-colored and also incandescently glorious. I knew him now, because he was all I had dreamed of, and if you dream of leopards, you know one after all, as it tears out your soul.

  Presently he said, “Why are you crying? But I thought you might.”

  I said, taught by various rules, “I am glad you’ve come to see me.”

  “I was away too long. Forgive me. War—such things. But you, you’ve won all your battles.”

  I cried because he had said those words that damned me. From the women, in ordinary conversation, I had had my clues. Now he had told me. A girl did not marry her brother, here.

  But he drew me close. The top of my head was at his breastbone. I heard his heart. It was the Heart of the World. I felt his heat, too, but did not know it for the lust the leather under his tunic kept from me. I felt also such power on him, as he did. He knew already, he was the chosen Sun—and yet, did not know.

  Wishing to die, between joy and despair, I sensed his destiny in the same half-hidden way, the gifts which he brought from the shrine at Airis.

  When he summoned his slave and gave me, out of the parchment, the eagle’s feather, I was not surprised.

  “There was a larger one, can you credit it? They kept that, of course, for the god. But Torca said this one must be mine. And I give it to you.”

  Set quill-down on the tiles, it reached to my breast. It was tawny, marked black at the root, with edges like raw saffron. The tendrils were like wire. When I touched them, they gave off a thrumming sound, like a ghost harp.

  “For you,” he said again. Then, “Calistra.”

  These silver feet were not the first he sent me. I had outgrown those. Kelbalba said my spirit-feet, those I had left behind, possessed each pair. Now as I stood before him, I felt them. They tensed and tingled.

  I wished to die. I longed to live.

  And I lived.

  Soon after that—I do not think we said much more—Ermias returned. She was flustered, but Klyton showed her at once he was not out to disgrace her for her absence.

  He said he would have people come to us after the noon meal, jewelers and those with cloth. He said she was to make me ready to visit the palace Hall tonight. And she must attend me.

  “You’re a lovely woman,” said Klyton, to Ermias, “You’re not only a guardian now, you’re also her Maiden. Choose as well for yourself. Something fine. And some jewels. I expect you to be expensive, or I’ll be angry.”

  Ermias was breathless. When he was going out, he caught her and kissed her mouth. I did not see this, although I heard her gasp.

  She was as full of him any way, through the afternoon, as if he had had her, electric as storms. And she talked as if privy to his thoughts.

  This would be a show of me, tonight. Even the Widow-Consort was still at Oceaxis. Only the Great Sun—Farmer Glardor—was missing, off, as so often in recent years, on his estates. Amdysos took the King’s place at th
e Dawn and Sunset rituals. And tonight, I too, should be there.

  She was also pleased with me, Ermias. Now I was bringing her to the Sun’s center, where she had been meant to be. She said, not describing it, because to tell me now that once I had had to crawl on hands and knees, did not seem fitting to her—that she had not mislaid my kindness to her when I was a child.

  I had no will to choose anything from the overwhelming display in the outer room. I sat stroking the turtle, properly indifferent, actually stunned. But Klyton had told Ermias she must try to match my garments to my hair, and so she took for me the white silk, and over that a skein of translucent Bulote web-gauze streaked with gold.

  Cunningly, she chose silver ornaments for my ears and wrists, but for my neck a snake of rolled gold, with eyes of emerald. In this I think she was only naive—I, the serpent, and he green-eyed. Or not. Who knows now, and I cannot ask her.

  For herself she selected a dark wine-red material. And for her jewels, only a necklace of copper flowers, set with tiny coins of garnet. It would be valuable enough to add to a dowry. She would assure him later, in the dark, she had wanted a token only, since it came from him.

  Women stitched all through the afternoon. Sometimes they sang as they worked, as rowers do.

  After they had bathed me and laved me with essences under Ermias’s eye, after I had been fitted and dressed, my waist and arms cinched with silver, my ears hung with it, gold on my neck, my hair plaited, piled up, let down, and woven everywhere with little bees of green lapis, I sat in my chair, nearly as sick as I had been when a child.

  “You must also wear this,” said Ermias, and brought me a bracelet, the dancer of colcai he had given me before.

  “No,” I said. “Put it away.”

  It was the past. I was afraid of it. I must not love him. Yet, living, I died of love.

  The strong wine of Uaria steadied me. Kelbalba, who stood by, told me a story to divert me, as they painted my face again, and put gold on my fingernails to match the gold nails of my silver feet.

  “The Sun’s Isle. There is a wine from there,” said Kelbalba. She held one of my hands, careful not to spoil the drying paste. “But it poisons. There are monsters on the Isle and only heroes go there. There were priests there once, who guarded the piece of the Sun which lies there, in its temple. But they died. The strength of it was too great for them. It takes a hero, to survive.”