Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  Someone would have to come back for the Ipyran. The priests would see to it.

  The remaining chariots curved round them.

  Now Melendor was whipping up his team. He had raced the Race before—it must be safe to do so. Yet Amdysos kept firm, his horses going only at a pouncing trot.

  As Klyton went by the Ipyran in his ecstasy of madness, he saw the man had clawed his face, the way women did there for a loss.

  And from behind now too, the nameless man, his name truly left behind, for Klyton could not again recapture it, was all at once thundering up again, with others at his back.

  The echoes rolled about in Klyton’s skull. It would be easy to fall down, to lie there, in the green dark-light.

  Although Amdysos, the guide, trailed a little, Klyton cracked the whip again, lightly, over the backs of his team.

  The chaotic route was leveling, and ahead another cavern loomed, its lights rising from night.

  But the bats as always were coming out again, as if signalled.

  One huge red bat, with eyes as white as those of the hellish things on the walls, hurtled straight at him. Klyton swung himself aside, and the horses bundled together, unwieldy as a pair of carter’s ponies. And then the red bat was by, and Klyton heard behind him an exclamation, not even loud, after which there was the unmistakable crunch of a chariot wheel going over a dip.

  The unnamed lord fell with a cold call that was not even properly that, and quickly over. The chariot, wheel-lodged and tilted, stayed sideways on the track, the horses still as statues, washed by torch-green sweat. Vague as ghosts, other chariots rammed together, trying to steer aside. A shambles. The cursing and grinding faded like a dream.

  For here again came breaking light, and the next cavern—Melendor and Amdysos spilled over in to it, and now Klyton, who flung up his head, while the horses reared in terror, nearly jerking from his control.

  From the ceiling of the rock hung down the robes of Night, the long, black, rusty chains of Night, and caught in them, the masks of a thousand grimacing skulls. Jangling and clattering, and the bats swooping, and the sound of laughter—but whose?—and along the walls the unhuman priests, garbed at last as they said that Thon was garbed in his crypt, white faces and red manes and purple lips and disks of metal on the eyes—

  Melendor, who had done this before, had even so lost the mastery of his team. They circled, jounced, bucked around the space, setting the chains ringing worse, and Amdysos pulled hard back, and Klyton saw the chance before him, the long, up-swollen sweep that sprinted for a hole of jet black ahead. The priests ahead would light the darkness as he came up. They had done so every time, hearing the riders come on. And the other two could be got by here.

  Anything might be beyond, this had been here, something worse than this—but Klyton did not pause. He had been patient. Now in the lines of Amdysos’s body he had seen a sort of answer. The Race of the Sun was won not necessarily by speed, but by endurance. But one must have more than that.

  Here, here, the chance; Klyton knew himself in the hand of the gods, who, however many they might be, had one hand only, and that larger than worlds.

  And so he raked with the whip across the air, and his horses bounded forward. There must always come at last a time to take the risk, and to jump the chasm of fate. After all, they had shown him. He was the eagle, and had wings.

  Passing Melendor and Amdysos, they ran.

  13

  Each time they lit the torches, Ermias cried out. She clutched my arm, as if I might not have bothered to see.

  “Look: The first cavern’s passed. Look: The second cavern!”

  The passage of the leading chariots in the mountain was communicated to the priests on the rock outside by some unknown method. As torches illuminated the stages within, so they did outside.

  Now at each spangle of white light on Airis, the crowd shouted. Its noise was growing. They were dancing on their feet, clapping, crying out names and prayers, and the people below, from the town, were bawling like one huge bull with several thousand throats. Though to bet was blasphemous, no doubt there had been a few.

  I think, at the third lighting, I began to turn cold. It grew in me as if from a seed. I blossomed with ice, and thought it only fear for him.

  The torches had lit up far along, I cannot recall the number of them, when the shriek sounded above, deep into the sky, and between us all and the Sun was brandished a flail of cavorting, awesome shadows.

  Every head must have gone up. Ermias was one of many women who screamed. Even little Nimi let out a yip of fright.

  Over our heads, three eagles fought. Two were very large, but one was a monster. It was the being that had let fall its feathers by the shrine.

  They were black against the high Sun. As they thrashed and soared, and dived and rent, between the claws and beaks the Daystar glittered on and off like a startled eye staring in heaven.

  All about me, men and women cowered. Most were crawling beneath the benches. On the stadium floor below, men had thrown themselves flat, and horses had slipped their tethers and were galloping away.

  It was Nimi who tugged at me, and made me kneel.

  “Before the gods—” she said.

  She put her arm round me. She was little more than a child, about ten. Ermias had curled up tight as a snail, moaning.

  But I could not help it. I continued to look up, abject, but caught in fascination. So one gazes at the drawn sword which comes to make an end—yes, I can swear to that, too.

  In this way, though, I noted Stabia had been put into cover by her women and that, some distance off, Udrombis sat like an effigy in her chair, not stirring, while her maidens were face-down on the terrace.

  The eagles ripped at each other. Some spots of blood splashed quite near me. It was almost black, and it smelled of fire, and of ordure.

  Their shadows shut together, and broke, and the interrupted sunlight splintered like lightnings everywhere.

  Suddenly one bird veered away. It slid sharply down the sky, as if along an invisible hill, then righted itself and flew raggedly off. A feather drifted from it, along the line of the air, bright as goldsmith’s work. But that was the smallest one. The other two fought on.

  Bronzen men were running up the terrace, the guards of the King’s House. I could not now, in the confusion, see the men’s side, nor Glardor; it was as if the very noises of alarm and avian war had blocked him away.

  A man had positioned himself with a bow.

  I heard Udrombis then, her smooth voice carrying, itself like a shaft.

  “Put that down. Are you mad? They have their own business, and belong to the Sun.”

  He did not know what she had been shown, at Oceaxis, but shaken by her censure, where he had been prepared to face the might of the eagle, the soldier put down the bow.

  After the green light of death, the witch shawls and chains and bones, Klyton plunged into utter blackness. He had expected momently the torches to light there as, in all other parts of the caverns they had. But no light came. He rode now, fast as in battle, and in pure Night.

  The horses were whinnying, and he called loudly to them, letting them have at least his strength on the reins, his known voice: “We’re with the God. Trust the God. In his hand.”

  And then the way sloped steeply up. Rushing, racing, all things, time and life and silence, they tore upwards on its back.

  When from the dark—came light.

  Now. Unlooked-for.

  Light like the levin-bolt that had slaughtered the blasphemous priest.

  Here on the last stretch, the priesthood awaited the novice, and all men, since to gods, all men are novices. And as he ran night-blind, they struck the tinder and flung it in the bowls of oil, as always they did. And outwards exploded brilliance, as for the child newborn, a dawn not kind but unbearable and searing, after blind-dark, the sheer killing white blindness of the Sun.

  Klyton half glimpsed those priests, only five again, in gold raiment, gold-fac
ed, but everything was one thing. For he could not see. Not even the exquisite woven net of silver and gold thread, which the women, the Spiders of Phaidix had spun quite unsecretively, to close the exit from the mountain in silk.

  As he reeled there, only twenty feet from it, and the horses, all to pieces, shrilling and bursting against each other, and the chariot crashing against the rock, hopeless—some merchant wagon on the road in the hands of an idiot—as his dream and his faith gave way, then came Amdysos, his brother. Pouring past like a wind of flame.

  And Amdysos laughed.

  Perhaps it was only delight that once again he would win the Race of the Sun. Or it was, for once, malice.

  “Damn you—curse you—” Klyton’s mouth let go the words—he had been betrayed by the gods, so what did kinship or mortal love matter? “You bloody trickster—you never told me—some hint would have done—damn you down to all Thon’s hells—”

  But Amdysos was gone. Like a golden vision, he rode his horses straight at and through the flimsy tinsel Web, out on to the flanks of Airis, in victory.

  The brain of the giant eagle, carved by the gods from amber fury, burned, as he gouged out the eye of his adversary, and clawed through his wing.

  Seeing this one, like the first one, turn over, and, better, cascade in a storm of feathers and blood straight down, crumpling, spinning, to the mountain and the river beyond, the victorious eagle screamed his champion’s scorn.

  He, too, had won.

  Did he know then, that in that instant, another had won his race with life and death?

  Does destiny touch even birds and demons with jealousy?

  On his enormous pinnioned wings, the length of three tall men or more from brazen tip to tip, the eagle circled over, and bending his head, his lion’s eyes glared down and saw the glittering thing spring from the mountain’s belly in a spray of silver and gold.

  There can only be one king. All kings know this.

  The eagle gripped the day, gathered himself, and like a spear, he fell.

  All those who had got under the benches came struggling, scrambling out. Most were on their feet. Some were shrieking and some pointing. So many hands and voices, thrust towards that place upon Airis’s purple flank. Even the priests were moving, running.

  A great cry would always greet the victor. Not like this.

  As the thing of gold gushed, beating and roiling, in on him, like a wave spewed from the heart of the Sun, Amdysos dropped the reins of his chariot, tried to pull the knife from his belt.

  No sound came out of him, and even the knife did not come from its sheath.

  Next second, the eagle had hold of him.

  His hands smote it two or three times, as a baby’s fists smite the great arms and body of a full-grown man. Then it had him, and had lifted him straight up. Reins snapped, the horses, wailing, went pelting down the fair paved track that would return them, and the chariot, unharmed to the stadium floor.

  In the air, Amdysos shouted only once.

  None heard what it contained, the shout, an appeal to gods or to men, anger or despair or only human panic. It was already too little.

  The eagle rose as if weightless, and carrying what was weightless, up and up, into the peak of the dark violet sky.

  As they dwindled, they sparkled, beautiful, the gilded feathers, and the golden man.

  Udrombis, the Queen, had finally stood. Oddly, her body had shaped itself like a bow. Her veil had fallen from her hair. She did not raise her hands.

  No one now made any sound, not the tiniest murmur. Although from the Mountain of the Heart, the Heartbeat of Akhemony went ceaseless on, and on.

  3RD STROIA

  THE EAGLE GRIPS THE SUN

  I

  Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

  After her last dictation to me, my mistress Sirai was called from the tower. The Prince Shajhima, son of the Battle-Prince, took her to the bedside of his dying mother, Lady Chot. Sirai remained for the obsequies, which lasted seven days.

  When Sirai returned here, she was exhausted, and even once it seemed she was recovered, did not for some while feel able to resume her history.

  She said to me, sadly, that life is exacting. It is easy, she said, to forget this, when one is happy or secure.

  She sat long hours gazing out across the empty waste. The powder of the sand blew strangely, forming dancing demons, as sometimes it will. Sunsets of red, and purple on the wings of storms, these she observed, and the brilliant stars by night.

  “Dobzah,” she said, “perhaps I am meant to say no more. Perhaps I should not have begun.”

  But I laughed and said she had done enough that to go on was only sensible. I have seldom seen her cast so low, not since she was very old.

  At last she said, “Every word I speak will be like lead. But only for a while. Then the words lighten and become like stars. Yes, even when they turn in my hands and hurt me.”

  She has been eight elahls without working upon her book. That is, for any who do not know, eight periods of four days; in all, the thirty-two days of the month of Muur.

  As I took up my pen, she said, “The past seems strangely altered to me now. As if I saw it in a different way than ever I have. Even the palace at Oceaxis looks changed to me. Am I forgetting?”

  I said, “It has been, as you yourself say, and so it is. Who will mind if something is misplaced, if only the heart of it is true?”

  This was bold of me, but now and then, even with such a woman as Sirai, firmness and common sense are needed. She lives now half out of the world, and cannot therefore be expected to understand it.

  Rain poured on Airis. It had come suddenly, turning the clear sky white. The mountain was glass in a cloud of smoking trees. In the fields, crops were flattened and the vines broke, the rain trampling the unready grapes so the air smelled strong of young and bitter wine.

  Night came like an unloved guest.

  There was a great silence. A priest had spoken, saying that there should be no mourning—the Sun had sent the eagle, and taken Amdysos to himself. Or so the whispered story ran on little dark feet about the fortress house, about its gloomy twists of corridors, its leaning stairs.

  In the silence between the rain and the night, human things huddled to their wavering lights. For summer, it was very cold.

  Either the god had chosen, or he had punished us. Best be still then, stoop low, speak softly or stay dumb.

  The Sun-Consort, Glardor’s blonde wife, had quite properly assumed the royal apartment at Airis. Udrombis, the King’s Mother, had therefore been given the second greatest of the womens rooms.

  It was a stone chamber, hung with heavy woven curtains to keep out draughts. In the fireplace, a brazier dully burned, but rain came in gusts down the chimney. Then the coals sizzled bright like angry eyes.

  The Maiden who bore his message in was frightened. Serving Udrombis, she almost hid it. When she came out, she bowed.

  “She says you may go in.”

  Her eyes were wide.

  But Klyton only went past her, off the bleak black stair into the chill and half-lit room.

  She was in her cedarwood chair, which had been brought to Airis for her, as always. She had changed her light robes from the Vigil and the Race, and now wore something else, something made of a dark grey silk. There was even a necklace of pale stones round her throat. She sat upright, her head raised. There was no mark on her face, though even stone will take a mark, if cut deeply enough. But the face of Udrombis was like iron.

  “What is it?” she said.

  She spoke as if to a boy, someone in her care, whom she would notice and do her best for, even in this insane extremity.

  Klyton shivered, and wrenched hold of his psyche not to cry out.

  Hard nearly as she was, he walked over the floor, and cast at her feet a thick, shining, brazen rope.

  “What—” she hesitated. She said, “I see. Your hair. An old custom. That is very generous. Won’t you save it and take it to t
he temple for him?”

  Klyton looked into her eyes. His own were stretched wide like those of the girl at the door. Like the eyes of an animal caught by lightning.

  His hair, untidily lopped off where the plait had been clubbed for the Race, reaching now only to his shoulders, had seemed to stand up on end. It was like a raft of Sun rays behind his face.

  Udrombis saw he had not changed his garments nor washed off the dust and dirt of the Race. He smelled of the sweat of it, unbathed, and under that an odor like metal in a fire. It did not offend her, it braced her. He was a man. The very best of the men of this house who remained, now all the best was gone.

  “Why are you here?” she said.

  “Madam… “

  She waited.

  Klyton at last looked down. He drew a knife from his belt. He held it up for her to see. It was new, the pherom blade incised with gold, the hilt—a golden eagle. Light caught all of it, stayed on its edge which had been honed like a razor.

  “What?” she said again.

  Klyton dropped to his knees before her.

  His voice burst out of him, rough and stumbling.

  “I cursed him. I cursed him. Your son. Amdysos. It was in the caves. The Race—I thought they meant it for me. And then he went by to win. And I cursed him.”

  She stirred. It was only like a coal settling in the brazier.

  “Here’s the knife,” he said. “Tell me to use it. I will. I would have seen to it any way, but I couldn’t go—without telling you what I’d done. So you’d spit on my name not weep for it. I don’t deserve—”

  “Wait,” she said. Her voice stayed his voice. He grew silent. She said, “When do you say you cursed him?”

  “In the caves—just before he broke the Web—”

  “Then your curse was nothing,” she said.

  He threw back his head and glared at her. If she had been any other, he would have ranted at her that she was a fool. He swallowed and said, quite flatly, “No, madam, I cursed him. And that came at him. It’s mine. An eagle—”