Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  Birth sends us to a house of shadows,

  And at the end, to Night.

  KEPSTROI

  The verse spoken between the dances

  CONTENTMENT MAKES NO STORY, as they say in every land, even here, in the Moon City. Tales of heroes end with bliss, or with death. But for me it was as if death had died. Or, it was the lot of others. For Klyton and for myself there stretched forward the pathway of destiny. And we were young. There was to be more than a year, much less than two. In memory this time floats, a lucent bubble shot with colors. Who would not ask, after, was it for this I paid in my heart’s blood? Was it then worth its price? The gods were kind, hiding the future behind a veil. Or they laughed at us, thinking, how high they fly these mortal things, up into the Sun which will destroy them. Unless such gods as those do not exist, and random chance rules all. Chance which is blind and deaf and crushes worlds under its feet, unseen, unheard.

  That summer, I was crowned Klyton’s consort in the Temple of the Sun, some days after he had been diademed as the Great Sun. Udrombis, the most important woman in Akhemony, far more than I would ever be, stood for my mother. This honor did not go unheeded. I was garbed in gold on gold, and the heavy golden crown, with its dazzles of ruby and diamond, made me dizzy, but I did not care.

  The King wore robes of lions’ skins, fringed with silk stained red from the marroi. His golden diadem masked over his eyes also in gold. That he was a stranger in these moments did not count against us. The god had filled him. I knew him also as the stranger.

  Could I see anything aside from Klyton?

  We went about Akhemony, greeted everywhere with flowers and songs. I recall a landscape made of precious metals, gems and dyes, scented with summer blooms, like Paradise. The edges of Bulos received us, and three hundred pearls as large as the paws of my white dog were heaped before me. From Oriali they brought us gums, ointments, and silks. Later we went north into Ipyra, and the old Karrad, my unknown grandfather, greeted me, once Klyton had carried me in his arms up the awkward stair of his fort. In a raftered cavern baked primrose with sulphur, and mostly floored by fire, two ancient women, with the faces of lizards, told Klyton he was a true-born King. They did not prophecy, I remember. He did not ask it of them. He knew, and doubted nothing. Besides, they were always ambiguous.

  I recollect nights with stars so thick the sky itself was like a fretted lamp. Great windows which opened on these skies, the sound of rivers, acres of wheat sighing, and a coast where Uarian ships lay in reptilian lines, sailors bringing the homage of copper ingots, coral and aquamarines, and horses whose manes had been made green, like the scales of the water.

  But all these sights, this jewelry of the earth, has become one with Klyton. It is he that is their center, like the Sun, holding them out to me, pouring them down on me. The taste of the delicious peach is not more yearned for than his mouth. He is my temple, larger than any country, the golden pillars of his body, the altar of sex, the sword of pleasure with which he cleaves me. In a torrent of sights, I watch only his eyes sea-green. Or the faultless choreography of his limbs at exercise and riding. He seems tall, to me as the sky, and at night, his hair rays through all the lamped stars as he possesses me, I am obliterated and reborn.

  No longer do I make any songs to him. I have become the song itself.

  I suppose he was not continuously with me. He was the King. He moved in the sphere of the male universe. Yet I was at anchor, held to him even in absence, lost in the daydream of him, until he returned to me, and the wonder of reality brought back the perfect light.

  Nor was it solely with me, this abundance. From the land itself richness teemed out. The harvests overflowed the ending of that first year. Beasts bore two-fold, or three. And so I see a tapestry of sheaves and fruit, young animals, the beaded grapes on malachite vines, the honey dripping amber from the comb.

  Stabia, his mother, did not stay for the harvests. She had died that summer, in her sleep, before we came back to Oceaxis. For a queen, even a Daystar, the mother of the Great Sun, the priests did not bring flames from heaven. Embalmed, she lay in one of the granite tombs, her hands folded, on every inch of her the precious stones of her royalty and her years with Akreon. Udrombis had mourned her, in the ordained manner.

  Klyton told me of his mother’s death in three sentences. “How I regret I wasn’t here, but she knew her days were done. She had courage. She’ll be glad to be with my father.”

  I was all in all to him of womankind. I did not hear any murmur which said, What will he say of you? Because I did not remember I could ever die.

  The winter was mild, the air so clear Koi and the Heart were usually visible, touched only with two wreaths of white.

  Klyton had drawn the lands together. No longer a game-board for war, a challenge and testing ground.

  Nevertheless, the army of Akhemony trained, turning a field of spears like silver corn in the wind. Sirma had added her battalions, and Ipyra. A corps from Uaria cantered on their ocean-maned horses. Embassies marched in from Charchis. And from everywhere came men, scholars, poets, any who would speak of the other land, which lay across the Endless Sea, the legend which now seemed to be coming into life, far out beyond the Benighted Isles. How curious it is. I remember the harpers now began to sing of it. And I recall not one word.

  Through the dark, between lovemaking and brief sleep, he would talk to me. I learned all his plans. I heard of the past, of the years of pause, and of Amdysos, brother and friend—everything of him.

  Klyton had had made a portable shrine to Amdysos. It went with us wherever we journeyed. It was of white crystal, plaited with gold, and within stood a polished marble statuette of the man, handsome and proportioned as he had been when alive. But the statue also was winged. Being now in the Place Below, Amdysos had forgone most human limitations, and might be thought of as a lesser god, since he had almost been a King. Klyton offered to him, giving him wine and incense, even portions of a kill when he had been hunting. Memory brings me the image of a beautiful bird, lying on the shrine, with turquoise feathers slowly growing dull. My husband told me he had consulted and spoken always with Amdysos, until their quarrel—the quarrel which had foretold, as does the dusk the night, Amdysos’s end. Now, still, Klyton spoke to Amdysos. In those separate kingly rooms, once or twice, I had heard Klyton conversing with Amdysos. There were silences too, as of listening to Amdysos’s answers.

  “If he had ruled Akhemony, I would have stood beside him. All this I do—I believe he showed me the way of it. It’s only right, to keep him informed.”

  Love is unreasonable, therefore was I jealous? I think I was not. The male universe, I had always seen, was separate from my own. That Klyton spoke also to me was joy enough.

  Of course, it was he who talked. What had I to tell? Sometimes the charming dog did some trick and amused us both. Klyton would stroke the turtle under her chin. He called her Old Lady. She had become remote from me as he drew always near. I was sorry for it, but had not time, every second filled by him, to rectify or lament. I could see nothing but him, I have said.

  In the fall of the first year, amid the harvests, Bachis, his little spear-wife from Sirma, gave birth to Klyton’s son. This was a fine boy, with hair like the gold plaiting on Amdysos’s shrine. Again, I had no jealousy. Klyton visited Bachis prudently, once in every month. As the mild winter stepped on, I knew that he must also, then, lie in her bed. That was merely propriety. Similarly he had made her uncle a commander in the Sirmian military ranks. Now and then, though not often, I would meet with Bachis. She was always obsequious, bowing very very low. Udrombis had ascertained, she posed no threat. After all, Bachis had been lucky. She was a Daystar. And I—I was the Sun-Consort.

  For Calistra, no idea of pregnancy interposed, for sexual delirium seemed everything in itself. No one chivied me. I was just sixteen years, and had, no doubt, time to prove myself. Even Udrombis, as she brooded on the edifice of our dynasty, must have thought so, for she left me to my idy
ll in peace.

  I swear I felt nothing of my temporal power. The Widow ruled, and I had no wish to assume her mantle. I wanted only what I had. And very few petitioners sought me, most deduced where they must try, for favors, justice or advancement. Nor was I jealous of Udrombis.

  Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.

  But in Oceaxis that winter, among my now colossal train, I caught sight of Ermias.

  I had forgotten her, as I had forgotten everything. Even Kelbalba I had mislaid. She had lessoned another girl in her work, got me accustomed to her, then gone away to the hills. I had tried a little vague dissuasion. She jokingly refused me. I let her go. Sometimes I wonder, if Kelbalba had still been by me—but I shall never know.

  Ermias wore clothes a princess would not have spurned. Her skirt border, which swept the earth, was a hand’s length thick and sewn with silver nuggets. Her face was haughty. I discovered she had another lover among the Suns. Something prompted me and I called her to me.

  She entered the room carefully, and glanced at me, sidelong. She knew as well as I that Udrombis wished her neither elevated nor cast down. Did she ponder what I had become?

  I asked her how she was. Ermias said she was well. I said I had been thinking she might like to own a small estate, one of several Klyton had given me to use as gifts.

  Ermias flushed. “You’re very generous, madam.”

  Did she ever think of that night, thousands of eons past, when she had wept and I had gone to her, and given her the drink Crow Claw seemed to have prepared. The night Ermias had ceased to hate me, and so taken me to the groves.

  I said, “Ermias, you’ve been a friend to me. I regret I can’t do more for you.”

  She put back her head and stared into my eyes. It was unnerving, suddenly to be conscious, in my gleaming exclusive happiness, of another life that was not his or mine.

  She was thirty or more by now. She kept her attractions, her curly hair prettily dressed, her form voluptuous and graceful. I recall, she wore earrings shaped like moons.

  “Another High Queen.” she said, “might have killed or banished me, because I went with him when she could not.”

  Astonished, I felt a blush of shame in turn rush up my throat and face. I lowered my eyes, and ran my finger over the head of the white dog.

  I said, diffidently, “Don’t you want anything? Ask me, perhaps I can see to it.”

  Ermias stared on at me.

  All at once she said. “You’re in the sunny mesh of fortune, madam. Oh—be careful.”

  I met again her eyes. They were wide and dark. I thought of her in the doorway announcing fatefully Klyton, and her yellow dress.

  “What are you saying?”

  “He—may not love you always,” she faltered.

  Until then, I had never thought of that. It had been a task of many struggling, frantic years, to reach him. Now we were one. Tales of heroes end in bliss. I did not think to chide her.

  “Why do you mention such a thing, Ermias?”

  “What’s come to you—it burns too bright—” she cried out.

  Had I called her in for this? I had learned with time a few forms of behavior, and now recalled them.

  “I shall forget you said it. Ermias. Now go away. It seems in fact I must banish you. Go to the estate I’ve given you. Remain there.”

  She fled me. She had cause. Another Queen, as she herself might have added, could have repaid her with much distress. Naively, I did not assume she had spoken from malice. I think she did not. She had done well, and might have done better, keeping my friendship. What then, oh what, seizes on us all, at such times, to make us speak what is not in us, like a bell struck by some unseen hand.

  The lamps had been lit, and far beyond the pillared terrace, when I parted the shutters, the Lakesea lay winter-dim. In the gardens mist had gathered like ghosts. All I considered, was how Klyton had climbed to me up this wall.

  I was young, I was young, and soon enough, marked as always by the flurry of our servants, he would be here, the trumpet note, the Sun’s rise.

  I folded Ermias away in my mind. Deep in that chest I buried her cry, It burns too bright. That cry the wisewomen in Ipyra had been too wise to utter.

  One scene does come to me, all at once, now, delineated more intensely than my coronation, than the first time even Klyton lay with me.

  It is my bedchamber, in the earliest of some summer morning. I see the sunlight, pink as a cat’s tongue, on the high blond bed with its frame of citroen wood, inset with ivory, its ivory stems and feet, its patterned linen, and gauze curtains drifting like thin glass become smoke. The designs on the floor I see, the tiny squares of russet, mauve and rose. Gemli’s little shrine, with an electrum bowl of straw-colored flowers, that have filled the air all night with the cool aroma of pale fruits. The small flame there flickers, and makes each flower seem to stir, as if about to flutter away. The dog lies stilly sleeping at the bedfoot, and the sunlight through the drape finds also pink in his alabaster coat. On the walls the never-moving women are gathering unfading tamarinds. But they are motionless and sleeping too, the man and girl. Their long hair has mingled in the night, his bronzy gold with her fairness, which he compares to topaz. Yet, in slumber, their bodies have dropped quietly apart, like two halves of a broken shell.

  And she has no feet.

  Soon they will wake, turn thirstily together, and be one again. The dog will shake himself, and the birds sing. Akhemony will ring with sunshine.

  And when the second year sweeps in, we will gallop through its arch in our chariot of victory, behind the starry horses, the world running after with ribbons and music. Up, up, towards the scorching Sun.

  4TH STROIA

  THUNDER, AND NIGHT

  I

  UNDER THE SLOPES OF AIRIS, herders had pastured their flocks. They came up also from Ipyra now, to the thick summer grazing, and mingled mostly freely with the folk of northern Akhemony. Now and then there might be a spat, boys fighting over a patch of clover for their goats, or a ram that had mounted another man’s sheep. These things were put right usually before the Sun had set. It was becoming another lush summer, after quenching, full rains. There was more than enough for all.

  By afternoon, the land stretched beneath the sky’s warm bowl, showing slight movement, and purring with bees. Below, the fields were flushing to their green, and above, the trees that circled the lower mountain, had gained a green as dense in color as blood. The crag rose, cut clean as if carved from marble. Birds flashed down, and upwards. Sheep lazily grazed, or lay under the trees with thinking, watching faces.

  A boy, having eaten ewe’s cheese and raisins, sat with his pipe, making a tune. If he had any awareness beyond the tune, his flock, he did not know it. And so, as a shambling unhuman figure crested the slope, he viewed it a moment with apathy.

  The bright wall of the sky was at its back, undimmed by any cloud. The shape of the figure seemed all jagged edges, darkened, flattened, and uncouth, having no purpose in the day.

  The sheep nearby under the tree started, and got up, and came trotting towards their keeper. Rising then in his turn, the boy let out a warning yell. Though he had barely seen what this thing was, the hair now was lifting on his neck. He wanted others, the men from farther off, with the herd dogs.

  But the figure stopped quite some way from the boy. It had the semblance of a head, and used it, to look about, as if only just now had it evolved there, from some other country that was not like this one. Some country perhaps that had no sky, and no land.

  “Keep back!” shrilly shouted the boy, standing in the white huddle of the sheep.

  The figure in fact had not come on. Now it turned its head, such as the head was, in the direction of the boy. There sounded a breath like a punctured bellows. “What say?”

  It, too, could speak in a fashion. The voice on the wheeze of breath was rough, breaking across the words�
�oddly just as the boy’s voice sometimes broke at the approach of manhood.

  “Keep back—keep off—”

  “Is danger?” asked the thing, which possibly was a man. And then, gently, in those tones of crunched shale, “Don’t fear, will help.”

  At this moment two men dashed down from the higher pastures, with three big dogs. There were boar in the upper woods, and sometimes lions, one took no chances with a frightened call. Knives glinted. One man rushed straight at the creature, and the dogs bounded with him. All pulled up three feet or four feet away. But it was the dogs, bred for their fight, and who had tackled wolves only this winter gone, who went down belly-flat, showing their teeth, ears back, growling, not moving one inch closer.

  “Came over the hill—” cried the boy.

  The man who had got close to the figure backed off and the dogs backed off with him, slow, like stones moving.

  “What are you?” shouted the man. “What do you want?”

  The figure looked, as it seemed, aimlessly now. But the nearer man saw it had only one eye, a muddy watered black in a bloodshot and terrible, staring, bulging eyeball. Where the other eye had been was a pit, like the crater of a burned-out volcano.

  Braver, and impatient the second man strode up and struck the intruder across the head. The creature reeled, and then peculiarly whipped back. Taking hold of its aggressor as he tried another blow, it had him at once over, and down on the ground. The thing stood above him, watching him with the repulsive eye. Even at this the dogs did not fly for its throat.

  But it made no further attack, not pressing its advantage. The man presently struggled up, and limped aside.

  “Leave it be,” he gasped, no longer so valiant.

  The thing, unmoved, gazed up now at the sky. It would have been easy enough, as the herders said after, to have flung one of the knives, or a rock, at its big shape and so bring it down. But some new mood had begun to come over them, more than anger, or superstitious unease. Like the dogs at last, they felt themselves in the presence of something—not only uncanny, but crucial— something that had been seared by gods.