Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  He turned his mind back to the ritual.

  The young men, Suns, and nobles of the House, and this year princelings from other lands, had been cleansed. They had watched since last night’s sunfall until the mid of night. Then they slept. They were cautioned. No women must be even in their thoughts, or anything else.

  Breakfast was hearty, the meat of a boar, the Sun animal, with summer greens and barley bread. So much wine, no more.

  After that, another bath, and the oils and unguents. Dressing in their finest—each looked more gorgeous than the morning. Like a bride on her wedding day, no man who rode the Sun’s Race seemed less than beautiful.

  In the caverns, it was possible to die. It did not happen often, but it might. Those who perished there went to the Sun Below, to serve, him through the region of darkness under the world.

  The man who won was, for the next three days, the Sun himself.

  Torca thought it might well be Klyton. Though Amdysos had triumphed before, he was too steady, too wise. A race needed fire. Especially a race to honor the Sun.

  Across from Torca, the other chosen Priest of the Doors, face masked in gold, and in the black robe fringed by red that marked the Sunset-like descent into the caverns. Torca, beneath his mask, had cut and shaved off his beard. It grew quickly, and in two or three months would be as good as the old one.

  In the sunlight, the torches were transparent, but bright from the terraces of the stadium. Yet it was the chariots were made of fire.

  The caverns, a system of wide caves, had been fashioned with walks and drives, in the time of Aiton. Earlier it had been more dangerous. Even so, the workings of the old mine kept it treacherous enough, and on the walls, the arcane paintings, which it was blasphemy to speak of, could startle a newcomer, and even shy the horses.

  Nevertheless his money would have been on Klyton, if it had not been sacriligious to bet.

  The sky was very clear, and the Daystar showed, following after the Sun like a gold-white hole in heaven.

  The chariots were turning now, coming around to where the slope began.

  Everyone in the stadium was on their feet.

  He must direct his mind inward, to clandestine, holy things. But Torca thought, Have I forgotten something?

  It was as if someone had whispered to him, during the night. He had heard, and meant to remember, but forgot. There was now no help for it, for time moved onwards like the Sun.

  His chariot was of red marroi, the sacred wood, and inlaid by gold-skinned bronze. He had had it built last year, for this. Sympathetic magic—by making ready for a thing, you caused it to happen. But Klyton had not been drawn to race last year.

  Now it was refurbished, polished, like a red, silken mirror. He wore its color, and ornaments of gold. Every man there wore the Sun colors, even the Charchite prince, who wore a color like colcai.

  Klyton had slept only two hours. But he felt light and strong, his head as clear as the sky, and like the sky, with the two bright thoughts in it, the Race that was the Sun, and—the Daystar thought—the girl on the terraces of the stadium.

  He had made her out. She wore the cloth he had had them send her. Not gold, but silver for her eyes. She shone like the moon amid the crimsons and ochres. But he had sent her a token too, a necklace of heavy golden disks. Ermias stood by her in dark yellow, which did not suit her. She looked better in her skin. But so Calistra would, and he must think of neither.

  Klyton had lain with three women two days before the Race, to empty himself. Only one had been Ermias. All three had been … Calistra.

  The thirteen chariots moved in the traditional manner, one rank five abreast, the next three, and the next three. In the last rank, as drawn by the lots, only two cars. Two was the moon number, given by Phaidix, the five and two threes being the Sun’s. It was not that the two was an unlucky place, but those who drew it made the moon goddess an offering at her little outdoor altar beyond the shrine. She liked the open air.

  As Klyton, who with the Charchite, had drawn the rank of two, poured honey and white wine, the white cat came and jumped to lick the drops. By the time the Charchite walked up, she had run away.

  Amdysos was in the first rank of three.

  They had not spoken beyond a few civilities. It had been hard on them. All their lives, since boyhood, they had grown used to speaking.

  But Amdysos would not budge and Klyton would not shift.

  Klyton thought, primed now with the flame of the Race, Whoever gets this, we’ll talk after. Magnanimous now, because excited, unnerved, ready, Klyton wanted to be friends again. It occurred to him, too late, it would have been better to exchange warmer words before setting off. But after all, if there had been fresh anger … anger was as bad for this as sex.

  Klyton thought, He’s almost unflawed. I have to teach him this. It’s the Queen, it’s Udrombis. Her codes. She’d sweep away a rock, why not a man. If I hadn’t seen Calistra, I might have thought as he does. She isn’t like the rest. That child in the market-fair, with two heads—not like that.

  Klyton’s horses were close to the tint of the chariot. Groomed, they gleamed like water, more like red wine.

  He thought, Why does my pulse race for this, and not for a war? He had felt no true fear, no elation in any battle. The notion came now, sudden, electrifying, as they turned up on to the slope, Did I know then the god had me in his hand, and I was safe, for he wouldn’t let me die?

  And then, as they stopped, the huge doors rearing, shut stone, carved with a terrible beast, all jaws, to swallow them, Klyton, his head singing, thought, It’s no use saying Amdysos may win. Or any man, but me. This is mine. It is all to be mine. All. All! I am the eagle. What I see belongs to me by right. From land’s edge to edge of sky. The Race and the world.

  “Who stands before the Gate of Night?”

  “We, the children of the Sun.”

  “Beyond this place, the way leads into darkness.”

  “We shall take that way.”

  The ancient words echoed over the slopes of the mountain, and around them, in the stillness, sounded the faintly beating Heart. The hollow of the mountain carried everything to the stadium below. A cough could be heard from here.

  The priest to the left—it was Torca—leaned and touched with his light the offering bowl on its golden stand. A comber of madder-red purled up.

  “The Sun descends. You who descend, do not forget us, for the dark enjoins you to remain. But day awaits. Rise up. Return.”

  Each man said, singly now, one after another, “I pledge. I will return.”

  Klyton heard his own words, like another man’s.

  Two accolytes lifted the offering bowl away, and from the higher slope, boys sang in piping voices.

  The song was old as universal memory. It spoke of the Sun beneath the earth. It was a dirge, but at the end, rose into a shining shout of joy.

  As it ended, the doors of stone grated on their runners, and the mouth of the monster split slowly into two.

  Beyond, within the mountain, Night awaited them, for an instant black as the waters of Death River.

  But then the priests who stood along the upper ledges there inside, the first group of five, dipped their torches to the cups of oil.

  There was a mumbled gush of combustion, and flame sprang out, showing, rocked by fantastic shadows, the vaulted intestines of Airis, ribbed purple and black, and with the fangs of stalactites depending, scarlet at their ends, as if recently fed on blood.

  The girl stands on the terrace, among the women. The silver dress is cool, blood-heat only, the heavy necklace of gold is hot. She knows she must stand some time. Already this pains her, but she does not notice.

  She watches, and sees the long slope to the stone mouth, and the chariots going up. She watches them halt, and hears, as does all the attentive crowd, the prayer and its responses. While some of the audience, soft as docile praying infants, speak them too.

  Across the face of the mountain’s lowest bulkhead, wher
e for centuries they have cleared all but scrub away, she can see too, the figures of the waiting priests, and finally very clearly another great cave-mouth. From this the victor of the Race will, at last, emerge, his passage through secret night and death completed. And after him, the others, though not all still in their chariots, and seldom all the horses. Over the mouth of this blind-dark, wild and uncanny cave, goes a curious twinkling of the sunlight, caught there as if on strands of impossible dew.

  No one talks of what lies between the two mouths in the rock. Or, if ever they have, never to a woman.

  Calistra watches as Klyton goes into the maw of the mountain.

  Ermias is breathing like a small scented hog at her ear. The little slave, Nimi, is still, as if changed to salt.

  The dark has swallowed him, Calistra’s beloved.

  She believes it conceivable, she will never see him again, but over there too she hears the steady respiration of Stabia, her friend. He will return. But if he does not win—

  Men of an era before time had come into this place. For these evidently, it had symbolized the same, the fall and return of the Sun. For in that way they had painted on the rock. Probably not sophisticated enough for chariots, if they had even had the wheel, they had run the whole route. It would be safer running, then.

  At first, a channel went through, with the five priests, two on one side, three the other, standing by the bowls of fire, upright, masked in gold, like icons. The chariots folded into a huddle here, you could not ride more than three abreast.

  Then the light flared up again, in a darkness ahead, and they came out into the first great cave.

  On the high ledges, more than thirty priests were poised. The bowls they had lit had started up the bats which lived there, and which wheeled and flapped, dipping down low above the heads of men and the ears of the horses. But you trained your team to such things, with flags on cords, or tame birds. Not a secret betrayed; most caves had bats. The horses stood it, with lashing tails and jinking. Then the men were spreading them out neck and neck across the platform.

  The floor was level, and a hundred yards ahead, a new mouth of blackness waited. Its lighting was the signal to start off.

  There was no further ritual, and no jockeying for position. You waited where you were able, here. No advantage in it. And for many, no knowledge of what lay ahead.

  The horses stamped, the bats swirled up towards their nooks above.

  A trumpet sounded, deep in the mountain.

  The entrance ahead burst to golden light.

  New tumults of bats rushed instantly out of it, and to meet this streaming mouth of light and dark, between the shadows’ leaping, every chariot tried to fling itself.

  Klyton saw the Charchite slip back at once. A prince of Ipyra on his left went next. Lords of Akhemony, several known to him for years, were all around him then suddenly gone.

  No one warned you. None must say. There was an old story of a prince who won by wringing knowledge of the Race from a Sun priest. But after his success a disease fastened on and killed him, and the priest was slain by a bolt from heaven. You did not ask. You did not tell. Perhaps, there might be a hint … but there had been none.

  And so, whether to run fast or slow was a matter of choice, knowing nothing of what lay ahead. Except, there was this, you might study those who had raced here before. There were five. Only one had done it twice and been once the winner: Amdysos.

  Klyton came in behind Amdysos’s chariot. It was dark cypress and inlaid with cinnabar. He wore white and gold, himself like one of the priests.

  They had been friends. Amdysos was his guide, going quite fast. After this, all would be well. After this, brothers again.

  Beyond the first cavern, the way was narrow once more. Presently, two chariots struck together, collided, and Klyton heard the cacophony, rage, frustration, and the shrill of horses. But that was behind, and he, Amdysos, and five more, kept on. Those other six, left behind, must do the best they could.

  Down the narrow way they galloped, the second Ipyran princeling now in the lead, after him, two together, Akreon’s byblow, Uros, and stocky Melendor, and then Ogon, who was a boaster, and who had raced here last year. Then Amdysos, and a man whose name Klyton could not summon. Last, Klyton himself. As they went, one more chariot came rumbling up. It was the Charchite, broken through the muddle of the collision. He gave a scream as he passed Klyton, careering next between Amdysos and the nameless one. The four forward chariots parted for him, crushed to the walls, and then the Charchite and the Ipyran were gone into the fading of the light ahead.

  The bats, which had withdrawn, dived again. They ripped through Klyton’s aura, the nerves of his body now stretched beyond the flesh, through the physical strands of hair that had come loose from their clubbing. One bat brushed his temple, another settled a moment on the left-side horse, fluttering like a black ribbon in its mane. Klyton saw the wink of red eyes in its rat mask. He sprung the whip and cracked it just clear of the bat. You were not permitted to kill them, they were the creatures of Thon, allowed here by the Sun god as a reminder. But the bat dashed up and was gone.

  Amdysos, though far enough back, was checking his team.

  Guided, Klyton checked too.

  Away behind there was a crash. A man’s voice raised in grief, perhaps in pain.

  Behind, too, the lights were dimming down.

  Ahead, new light—a new entry—the channel opened abruptly wide.

  Klyton heard the leading Charchite scream again, not from triumph now. And hauled harder on the reins.

  Even so, erupting out into the second cavern, he was not prepared.

  In front and above, caught in the fresh flush of light, a lowering wall seemed to bar the way. On it was the huge picture of a thing painted apparently in blood and night, which uncoiled its curling tongue to clasp the disk of a crimson Sun. Enormous, it seemed you must run into it all, and be lapped up too.

  The Charchite had clapped his hands across his face. His team bolted to the wall, and stopped there, the chariot swerving round and going over. He had been lucky. Two yards more, there was a drop of twenty feet.

  The Ipyran screeching prayers, rushed at the wall, and went in through a tiny hole below, which had also now come to light.

  The terror of the wall painting poured over.

  Klyton saw the priests who stood like stones along the walls. Here their faces were masked in black. How could you be sure they were only human?

  Amdysos was going faster, and Klyton too urged on his team. Coming to the opening, instinctively he ducked his head, and drove under the thing on the wall.

  Before him—far before—the Ipyran, sole leader now, ran howling still, his yellow horses snorting and prancing.

  Ogon, Uros, Melendor, Amdysos—the nameless one dropped back—Klyton passing him. Bizarre, the man’s name surfaced as he did so, but was left behind.

  The need to gain ground, as in any race, felt paramount, yet must be subdued by will. The Ipyran was maybe not clever, snatching first place so soon—this much already one saw.

  But others too were closing from behind, a roar of hoofs and wheels. No time to look. The bats had flown up again—you did glance there, and saw them clustered like black bunches of grapes with scarlet beads that were bunches of eyes. Venom dripped from their mouths. Echoes now went through the skull. The head spun. Clear it. Again, the way narrowed.

  More painted images—what now? On either side was the Sun’s disk, colored a dreadful dying red. It fell in stages, depicted always lower, behind the bars of the stalactites, seeming—as they ran—itself to fall. And then came a steeper slope ascending, and on the walls were the awful bulbous shapes of men who had lived once in the world, men with the heads of stags and foxes and lions, and over all the black clutching form of Night, whose mouth, like the bats’ mouths, slopped poison down. It stank here, of death, and the light faltered, and the echoes drowned—

  Klyton was cold inside his heat. The sweat felt thick on h
im, and the fine hairs stood along his spine, the strong hairs crawled on his scalp. Just so worms would feel, that went through and through if you were left, when dead. For this they burnt you, to save you such dishonor.

  But all men die. All men, high or low. Happy or accursed. Even the King, in his sleep, like a woman or a child—

  But not the eagle.

  Ogon had got a bat in his hair. It had flashed down on him as if called. He was shouting, cutting chunks from his locks with his knife, to get it out. His horses floundered; he went to the side, and trundled out of control down a mysterious side passage, some old working of the mine.

  Seeing it, Uros, his friend, set off after. Do friends do this? In battle I would, Amdysos. But not—here. This is nothing to do with life. It is the fight with Thon, knee to knee, for the Sun must rise, and to lose my brother and my friend is nothing to the safety of the world—

  Now, all at once, a swerve in the track—and chaos. Walls rushing in, or chopped away—

  The track was thin, in parts less than the width of two chariots. He saw the priests stand aloft, far spaced in groups of three, two on one side, one man another. They lit their fires as the riders approached, as before, but now the light was murky and greenish, and their faces were masked in silver, and their robes were grey, the color of mourning …

  Either side hung the ancient workings, crumbles of stone ballasted by poles and shafts of oak, with great pherom stays. Drops of a hundred, two hundred sword lengths. Veins of metal left alone, gleamed transparently, like tears or saliva.

  The paintings on the walls had in some areas disintegrated, flaked off. But one saw enough. Things with huge white eyes, the beasts of Night Below. They leaned to dead men, eating of them, pulling out the ropes of their viscera, and like flowers, their hearts.

  The Ipyran was slowing, he was weeping. There was madness in Ipyra. Their vaporous caves, where skeletal women sang of horrors—he should not have come here—all at once he stopped his chariot, drew rein, and got down as if on an avenue. He walked to the rockface, under the picture of a snake that had men in its teeth. Here he kneeled and wove to and fro, crying. While his horses stood champing, and shaking their feet and heads, spraying foam like cream.