Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

“I’m well, prince.”

  “Let me speak to your lady alone.”

  Ermias said, flat as a slate, “That’s not proper, sir.”

  “Oh, isn’t it?” He glanced at her. I wondered how she could bear his gaze. She could not. She stepped away and out into the other room.

  Kelbalba said, “We’ll wait by the pool. That does.” And strode past him. She shut the door, and he and I were alone in the red-pillared chamber, which had only the fire and the brazier to light it, and chestnuts scattered on the floor.

  “Calistra,” he said.

  Though his clothing was dark, every gold thing on him glimmered. And his hair, which was already growing long again. His face looked no more unreal and far off. It shocked me by its humanness. In his lustre he was almost ordinary, come down from the height to earth. And it seemed he remembered my name.

  He told me later I was pale as the ice. He said I stared at him, and he had met such eyes across a shield. But I did not know what I did. I had ceased to be, and drifted there, an atom, in the air.

  “You’re displeased at my neglect. I deserve that. And now I can’t even stay, only a few minutes. Nexor wants to march on Ipyra before the spring. It’s original. And there are things to be done. He’s given me Amdysos’s command, at least. But I don’t know if any of that interests you.”

  I moved my head. I said, foolishly, “I’ll pray for your safety, my lord.”

  “Yes. I’d value your prayers.” With no prelude he walked across and took hold of me, not by my shoulders, but his hot, hard hands on my waist. “You’re taller,” he said. Then he raised one of his hands and ran it behind my neck, up into my hair, cupping my skull. He bent his head and put his mouth on mine. I had not expected it, yet from all my dreams of long ago, it was familiar to me, this second, as my own body. His lips were warm, they parted mine. As his mouth possessed mine, my flesh, the room, the world gave way, and I hung from his hands and mouth in whirling space. I had never known such fear or divine delight. Had never, in my most profound dreaming, imagined it.

  When he lifted his head, I lay against him, folded into his body, safe for ever and for ever lost. I heard him breathing, and felt as once before the thud of his heart which had become my own.

  “Calistra,” he said. My name was a star. I had no thoughts, had forgotten all things and might have been dead, so extreme had become my life. “Listen to me,” he said, “my brother said you loved me. Is it the truth?”

  Somewhere I found a voice which whispered that love was the truth.

  “Oh, the God, Calistra—I’ve wanted you I think from the first, when you were that child in your chair. But now this woman made all of silver with hair like a sigh out of the Sun—”

  “You have a wife—”

  “I have Sirma, not a wife.”

  He kissed me again. He held me pressed close, and bent me in his arms, and on my breasts his lips and hand came knowingly and known, and through me a river of ice melted away into the wine-hot torrent of desire. It was so sweet, tears ran from my eyes. He kissed them up, drank them.

  As he held me again inside him then, grown into his body, he said, “It can’t be, Calistra. Only just this once. The gods aren’t unreasonable. Just this one time.”

  And then he put me back from him and let me go, and now I was alone in space, and round me howled the cold of empty millennia, and the whine of broken stars.

  “Do you understand?” he said.

  “No.”

  “You’re a woman. A creature of the wood. Phaidix rules you. Lawless. But there are laws, Calistra. This isn’t for us. Do you blame me for touching you, now?”

  “I love you,” I said, very low.

  “Your love is sacred to me. That’s all it must ever be.”

  I felt the old vertigo of standing, but stayed rigid, upright. There was nothing I could say. I was fifteen, and he a prince, and a man.

  But he had wanted me.

  At the door, Kelbalba struck with the palm of her hand. “Someone has come, prince, from the King.”

  “The King,” said Klyton. He laughed shortly. With no other farewell, he turned and left me. In the outer room, I heard him pass like fire. The slam of the outer doors.

  When Kelbalba entered, I said, “Not now, Kelbalba,” and she went away.

  6

  That night, Elakti, the spear-wife-widow of Amdysos, ascended into the hills above Oceaxis. She too was Ipyran, all Ipyran, and any alliance value in her was gone with Amdysos. Moody and snappish and discontented always, there had been some notion, since she wished to leave the court, that the back of her might be the best side.

  She had wished too to practice certain rites of her homeland for her husband. They were not smiled on in Akhemony, where the priests stood before the people with the gods. Already there had been some talk that Elakti had summoned a crone into her apartment, where they slaughtered a black dog. Phaidix, in her witch form of Anki, would sometimes accept blood.

  The pavilion in the low hills was meant for summer, but slaves had been sent ahead to make it useable.

  Elakti rode there in a litter between two mules, uncharacteristically not once complaining at the day-long, bitter journey. Her Maiden, her two women, and the pair of female slaves, shivered and wept at leaving the comforts of the palace behind. The Maiden had, by nightfall, a dripping cold, and went about the new domicile voiding her nose and sneezing dolefully. Even to this Elakti returned slight heed. She was changed.

  When presented to Amdysos, and conscious he did not want her, Elakti had given vent to all her sense of misuse. She had had recourse to the crone quite early on, wanting love-potions to bind Amdysos to her. They did not work. Elakti knew she had no beauty, but she had a curious pride, and a great awareness of wrong done to her. The awareness of wrong had caused her to nag, to censure, and to blame. The pride made her fierce and vicious, and in her own way, brave.

  The first child she bore was a girl, an ugly, skinny infant, with her own sallow complexion and dark, unshining hair. It had no look of the Sun House. To no one was it a wonder Amdysos did not like it. Nor did Elakti. Leaving for the hills, she had presented it for keeping to its nurse at Oceaxis.

  The second child, within her now, sown on a short night visit of her reluctant polite husband’s, had been slow in showing. Now Elakti evidenced some signs. Unlike the first pregnancy, and most pregnancies Elakti had seen, her belly had not swollen particularly outward, in the normal, apple-like roundness. Rather, her body seemed to have been filled, like a loose sack, with fluid, from just below her breasts to the mound of her sex. She appeared more fat than fecund.

  In early summer, she would bear the child. It would be a son, this time, the crone had assured her, a son like the Sun, metal-fine as his father.

  When they came from Airis and told her Amdysos had been carried away by the giant eagle, she had fallen on the floor and screamed, tearing at her hair and cheeks. In Ipyra, this was what a woman did, on losing her lord; Elakti saw no reason to adapt. And because she was so often overlooked, she made her outcry especially loud, she keened on and on, although forbidden to do so, to remind them all she had been a prince’s wife. She had not even seen the dreadful event, since they had also left her behind in Oceaxis.

  Now Elakti glanced about at the pavilion. Shutters were attached to its many summer windows, heavy wool curtains hung for warmth, braziers and fires were everywhere, giving not much heat. There were only three rooms, and a kitchen across a yard. The cells of easement were also outside. Only Elakti and the Maiden could have an indoor pot.

  Everyone but Elakti was in despair. She alone seemed not to mind the cold, the snow across the hills, the three dead rats lifted from the frozen cistern.

  They ate a makeshift meal, Elakti, the crone and the Maiden, before the one central hearth, while smoke puffed up to a ceiling hole above, through which, in return, snowflakes drizzled down.

  The Maiden sneezed. “I’ll be glad of my bed, madam. Though it’s a hard one.”
r />   “Not yet,” said Elakti.

  The Maiden gazed at her lady in dread. Phelia had royal blood, but only a drop. So they had sent her to wait on this unjust and insane barbarian. Already Phelia carried two thin scars on her arm from Elakti’s former tantrums. Elakti did not strike out now very much. Maybe this was worse.

  The women huddled at the brazier had also caught Elakti’s two words. They did not look at her.

  Elakti said, “The moon is full tonight. There’s an altar here, isn’t there, Mother?”

  “Yes, yes, altar, altar,” mumbled the crone, her wizened old toothless face buried in her gruel. She alone found this service better than the back alleys of the town.

  “Tonight, madam—?” questioned Phelia, her heart a stone.

  “You must understand,” said Elakti, straightening herself suddenly, and raising her right hand in an uncouth and primal gesture, some religious signal of Ipyra, “Amdysos is not dead.”

  None of them spoke.

  Whatever her craziness before, she had never gone so far to the brink as this.

  “Amdysos,” said Elakti, “my husband, will return to me. They’re all in error. Those fools. He lives. He will come back. But I must assist him.”

  The altar, which was dedicated to Phaidix, stood in a grove of pines. The snow was thin on them, but thick on the ground, in places slippery as a glass goblet.

  In itself, the altar was not much. A rough hewn slab, without carving. The moon fell full there, however, like a spill of milk, and beyond, above, the hills lifted up and up, and the height of the air was bordered by the white teeth of the two mountains.

  In the pristine quiet; the Heart Drum sounded shakingly loud.

  Elakti stood some time in her furs, listening to this. The Heart did not sound for her, but for Amdysos it did, and so eventually she matched her chanting to it.

  To Phelia, and the young women of Akhemony, Elakti’s wails and screeches were like the awful noises of a savage animal. She did not feel the cold, and threw up her bare arms out of her wrappings. Soon her face was mad and blind in a sort of ecstasy, the eyes rolled back. They had never thought her genteel, or fair, but now, through all their unease and wretchedness, they began to be awkwardly impressed by her. Unconfined by foreign walls, she grew dominant.

  Surely she had loved him. Decidedly, from her, streamed a sort of ragged power.

  The crone scampered about the altar, strewing herbs, and liquids from vials. At length, out of her robes, she pulled a dead and bloody rabbit—the god knew where she had procured it—and slung it down.

  “Anki!” screamed the crone, to match the howling of Elakti.

  No wonder they did not take cold, the two of them, so bustling were they.

  Phelia thought she would perish. She closed her eyes. Shut in this way inside her head, she started to hear a dreadful extra noise. Above the beat of the Heart, the crackling of the winter night, the slender whistle of the stars—a rhythmic, appalling booming—

  Thinking she was fainting, Phelia opened her eyes. She saw Elakti’s women, the slaves, the crone, all but Elakti herself, staring upward, to the tops of the pine trees.

  Phelia looked too.

  The moon was enormous and searingly pale, freckled with uncanny faint blemishes. Now across its face there flew a gigantic bird, firstly black, next flaming white as it cleared the lunar disc. From the unbelievable wings spread out a booming gush of sound, like waves from the core of the ocean. Phelia thought she saw a flash of eyes, each circular and blanched as the moon itself. Snow blew from the trees at the downsweep of the bird’s passage. Its shadow covered them in darkness, and slid away.

  “A big owl,” muttered one of the women. She made the circle sign for protection, the circle like the circle eyes of the bird.

  But the crone shrilled from the altar: “It was eagle! The ghost of eagle. Anki sent it! To show, to show.”

  Elakti lowered her arms.

  “My lord,” she said, “Amdysos, the Dead Sun.”

  Phelia drew in her breath too sharply and began to cough. The phrase was blasphemous, yet almost holy. The Sun descended under the world to regions of sleep and umbra. The Sun could not die.

  The sky, but for the scalding moon, the stars, was vacant now. The moon also had moved a fraction to the west.

  Elakti went to the altar and stood over it, oblivious. They would have to wait for her, however long she dawdled. It had been, had it, an owl?

  Before a hearth fire at Oceaxis, Stabia raised her eyelids. She was drowsy. Now and then, she had started to have a little pain, and Udrombis, her Queen, made a draught for her, that took it away. Udrombis. She sat like a lioness in her chair. When did her hair go so white? Was it only the firelight? How terrible old age was, to dare to mark even her.

  “Rest, my dear,” said Udrombis. And when Stabia slept again, Udrombis said, more softly than the ash shifting on the coals, “Your son will be a King.”

  7

  “Who heard of a campaign in winter? Apart from in a book—or in extremity?”

  “Perhaps he thinks this is extremity.”

  “Ipyra isn’t that eager. She’d have waited for spring to start.”

  “That’s the plan then. To take her unprepared.”

  Klyton shook his head, and woke. He would not have needed to question and discuss this with Amdysos, as he had just been doing, in the dream. But in the dream they were boys still. They had been hunting, and were cleaning their knives. Even so, Amdysos had been masked in gold. It seemed quite natural in the dream. Probably the charitable dead always partly concealed themselves; they would have changed so much—

  He sat up. Outside the tent, a wind yowled, its voice thick with cold and rage. Through the leather walls came the wind-flickering grey gloom of predawn.

  Klyton’s servant brought him hot beer from the brazier, with a little spice mixed in.

  “That’s good, Partho.”

  The servant grinned, pleased at recognition. He was a Sirmian, a gift to Klyton from his father-in-law. At first the boy had been awkward, but Klyton was patient; goodwill, once won, was worth having, particularly in war.

  Father-in-law, and his other-town kin, had sent a thousand warriors, too, to bolster Klyton’s command. He had asked the chief graciously if it might be possible, he would understand if not. But his new relatives were still eager. Doubtless the men sent here with him were not of the absolute best, but Klyton’s drill captain had got them into some shape in the days before they marched.

  With Amdysos’s command, now his own, Klyton’s battalions numbered three thousand men. Nexor had said nothing to this. Klyton had anticipated some word, even of displeasure, but Nexor did not bother. He wanted, it seemed, only to go headlong at Ipyra.

  They crossed the border under Airis, in a blizzard. The river, that was so green in summer, became a different thing with the snow. The ice at first held up, a white table in places split by black and silver rock. But above, to the west, the rapids never entirely froze, there was always the chance of motion. Suddenly, with a warningless gush, an area of plates broke up in the ice. Men and horses slipped away into ink black water, in seconds too numbed even to shriek. Most were hauled out. The army began skidding in panic to the farther shore, or pushing back to the shore it had come from. Beasts bellowed, and men swore and screamed. A shambles.

  Klyton, already safely across, looked up and saw Nexor sitting his horse above, in the snow-clad forest, gazing back, not moving. Klyton went down the line. Finding a trumpeter, he got the signal sounded for standstill, then rode to the river’s edge. In the stampede, more plates had broken. A long crack, like a crack in a white dish, ran for twenty-five sword lengths. At the trumpet, most of the floundering had stopped. Klyton shouted the most distant men off the ice, and ordered the nearer sections to continue over. To show them it could be done, he took his horse back down, and stepped it out into the middle of the river. There was a rock there, and he knew well enough he could take hold of it if the worst happe
ned. But it put some sanity into the men, who then came on quietly, cheering him once they were safe on shore.

  Other commanders had come down by then. Soon the sun would set. It was agreed the rest of the army should stay on the far side of the river, make a bivouac and wait for night. An hour after sunset, the crumbled ice froze hard again, and men and beasts got across intact.

  Klyton had done no more than had been there to do. But it was effective, even showy. He saw this, mostly, later, when he heard how his own men were vaunting him round the camp. The Sirmians especially.

  When he went to the King’s tent at dinner, Nexor said nothing. The King did not seem put out, or even interested.

  Finally perhaps someone must have spoken. Nexor took Klyton aside as he was about to leave. The tent, hung with crimson, and heady with Orialian gums and wine fumes, seemed to have heightened Nexor’s reddish gold. Nexor spoke.

  “What you did: pretty fair.”

  Klyton said, “Anyone, my lord, could have done it.”

  This was so true, it was insulting. But Nexor, who had not bothered with any of Klyton’s titles, or his name, and maybe did not recollect it, only nodded. Insulting Klyton in turn.

  The early days of the march were uneventful. The weather shut down, white as sweetmeat, but not sweet. Within the vaulted forests, they progressed through an eerie pale shadow. Nothing else moved, as if all life had died, but for the black crows that came sometimes, and circled over gaps in the trees, watching them. The mountains jutted from the forests, blacker than the crows, with marble snow-scarps gleaming like mirrors. Into the null odor of winter cut sometimes a tindered sharpness. Soon enough, where the forest thinned, they looked up and saw a mountain that was awake, a pillar of brown smoke standing straight up from its cone. On the slopes below, a few maddened trees, nourished by the laval warmth, had broken into forward leaf and blossoms.

  They passed a handful of ruins. The first fortress town was due on the eleventh day. The night before, Nexor addressed them in a jovial and, offhand way.