Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  “Where this place?” the creature finally asked.

  The men stupidly shook their heads. The boy shook away the sheep. The dogs lay belly-flat, and one, the mightiest, had urinated from fear. This sharp smell mixed with the stink of the holy and unholy figure, which other stench later they named as being like the reek of a butchered fowl-yard.

  In a few moments more, the thing shambled away, as it had come, but going on now towards the south, and downwards in the direction of the fields and farms. When it was almost out of sight among the violet shadow of the lower woods, the men thought they had better follow it. There were women about below at their usual domestic chores, and cattle, and the vines.

  They did not ask themselves why they had not answered the thing that this was Airis, under the mountain. It did not occur to them that they too, in that instant, had mislaid the country, and were lost, as if in alien climes.

  Only seventy men made up the garrison now, in the Sword House at Airis.

  It was a fort of ochre-plastered stone, built up into the rock. On one side, the sweep over to Ipyra, and its jade green river, from which came recently, of course, only friends. On the other side, rustic Akhemony.

  The young captain had been bored enough that day, holding the fort while others went off hunting. King Klyton did not come up much to Airis now. He preferred to keep the summer months for battle training, or for inspections of his outer empire. Even Udrombis the Widow had not yet visited this year. Later there would be the Sun Race and games, but that was not yet. The captain found Airis fairly dull.

  When he heard the commotion below, he went down because it was his duty to look into such matters. He expected the same as it had been the last two times, a feud between drunken farmers, an Ipyran sheep-stealer.

  “Well?” he said, walking into the courtyard. There were two peasants who had ridden here pell-mell on ponies, animals and men steaming from their speed.

  The soldiers looked bemused, or tickled.

  “They say, sir, some—ah—demon has walked into the town.”

  “A demon? That’s quaint. Of what sort?”

  One of the soldiers laughed.

  The shaggier of the peasants said firmly, “He came down from the hills under the mountain. Just appeared there in the meadows—”

  “In a smoke-cloud?”

  The peasant scowled. “It was like he’d come from the Ipyran country, but no one saw him come.”

  “That’s a fact,” said the captain amiably. “None of us saw anyone cross, since herders yesterday.”

  “He’s no demon. Not like a man, but—a man,” went on the peasant, brazening it out.

  The captain nodded, and made a brisk gesture to a couple of sniggering soldiers to be quiet. The captain had recalled suddenly that, although he himself had seen the light in Oceaxis, and fought in the ranks under such Suns as Amdysos and Adargon, the captain’s granddad, whom he had liked, was not much different from this hairy peasant here. “What trouble is he giving you?”

  “We’re afraid,” said the peasant simply.

  That sobered the captain properly.

  He could see this man was no fool, nor a coward, he had the courage-badge of scars on his arm, plainly written by a mountain leopard. Despite his garments and sweat, he stood straight and had not lost his temper, or his nerve, before the soldiers’ mockery.

  “Why fear?” asked the captain.

  “His body is broken all out of shape, but he still walks. His teeth are broken, and his nails long, like the dead. He’s strong. He threw Gol down, and that’s the first Gol was ever bested. The dogs and other beasts act oddly around him. Even the cocks started to crow when he came up, as they do for fire or an earthshake.”

  “All right, a cripple. What’s he done?”

  “He went up the path to the gate of the summer palace. There’s no guard there now, only the steward, and a dozen men, and slave women. He stood about there, then sat down.”

  The captain said quietly, “Someone should feed the poor devil. Give him some slops and beer, and send him on his way.”

  “One did,” said the talking peasant. He stood more straight with his news. “We’d put the women inside the houses, but old Thistle came out, and brought him a dish of softened bread in honey. He took it and sat looking at it with his one eye, which has no proper upper lid. He didn’t eat, and Thistle—someone’s trying to pull her off, but she struggles and squeals. And then she kneels down in the road and sobs.”

  “And you should be kinder to your women.”

  “It wasn’t that, sir. She was crying over and over about the Sun—”

  “Wait. I don’t understand you.”

  “I mean a Sun Prince, sir. One of King Akreon’s sons.”

  Heat, then chill, passed over the captain’s shoulders and spine like swiftly tossed water. The yard was silent as a grave, and high up he heard a hawk scream in the iris of the light-clear sky. A hawk, but not an eagle.

  “You tell me she was confused,” was all he said.

  “Sir, she was crying like a little child. She’s old, but not silly. She sees to the womens’ ailments, and they get well.”

  “So she was calling for protection from the Sun House. And you came here.”

  “Sir, she wasn’t calling for help. She said this one—this thing—the broke ruin that slouched there over the honey-bread—she called him Amdysos, son of Akreon. The Sun come back from under the world.”

  He left fifty-five men at the fort, and left them alert. Astonished, the captain had even had some notion Ipyra, forgetting her radiant marriage to Akhemony, had somehow staged these antics to draw off watch from the pass.

  With fourteen of the soldiers, therefore, and the two peasants trailing after on their weary ponies, the captain went down to see for himself.

  As they went, the road through the fields curled round above the descent to the lower plains, where the games were held, and so to the caves under the mountain where was run the Sun Race. The captain reined in, and gazed to that direction. Among his men, other heads were turning.

  The spot was defined somberly in the end of afternoon, for the sun was going over beyond the mountain, the Daystar cool as a zircon. A pool of bright shadow, the Stadium lay below, where the chariots paraded before each Race. The holed rocks above were dark, mysterious, and shifting, against the mountain and the deepening sky. There was a marker on the mountainside, quite new. The gold showed redly at this hour. King Klyton had had it put there. Before the Race, a boy would go and pour wine over the mark. That was all.

  Who could ever forget why. Who could ever forget that Race not two years gone? Even if you had not witnessed the event, in your mind you had seen it, not once, but many times.

  The golden charioteer, the gem-work of team and chariot, bursting free of the caves—the thunderhead of gold which axed down to meet them—

  And then the sparkling vision borne high, the prince of men caught in the talons of the god—a Sun god who was also the god of Death.

  Some of the soldiers were right now making religious signs, ward signs against the power of Thon. If a man had escaped from Thon, would the god not be enraged? But no one came back from there, save in songs and stories.

  When they reached the town, the Sun was still fingering sidelong the red columns of the palace. As they climbed up the road to it, they found the people from the deserted streets, the women at the crowd’s edges, children clinging in their skirts.

  He was standing in the street now, with the palace looming up into the rock behind him, its face the color of warm curds, and the pillars bleeding. Even up there, were a handful of people on the terrace, servants from the house, and probably more were looking from the old war tower.

  A crone—who must be Thistle—sat peacefully now in the dust.

  The captain realized he had been avoiding looking at the crippled man. Now he must do so.

  Though he stood upright, his posture was of one asleep, the torso slumped forward rather, over the l
egs, which were of unequal lengths, the arms hanging, also unequally, and the head drooping, with what there was of its hair frayed forward over the face.

  A soldier cursed softly. Another let out a bitten-up cry. The captain did not know if this man believed he saw anything recognizable before him, or if he cried only at the idea of such a recognition.

  One must be unheated and still, as water in a deep well. One must take one’s time, over this.

  Yes, it was, or had been, a man. And he had been badly injured. You might see, in the outer lands, sometimes, victims of private or ritual tortures, who ended in such an approximate form. But generally they did not survive long enough to be gaped at.

  The right leg was a good five inches more in length than the left, the right arm about the same in relation to the left arm. From the look, both had been broken in several places, and healed without benefit of doctors, or any assistant correction. The gods only knew how.

  The body, where it showed through a patchwork of ragged stuff, that might well be ancient skins, was sunburned like mahogany, and demonstrated scars so awesome and vile, one did not expect to see them, save occasionally in war, and then not normally all together. The ribs had evidently been broken, mostly on the left side. There the body was like a stairway of loose jagged stones, just covered by the thinnest flesh. The feet were splayed and strange. The hands had lost fingers.

  The scalp was all scars, a ridged tumulous of white and purple and black, with, in one area, a little space that seemed even to reveal the grim nudity of the skull-plate. From this medley hung out irregular clumps of hair, very long. The hair was mostly grey, or thin white as skimmed milk. But here and there, as sometimes happened in the old, there ran a skein of bronzed gold, shining and harsh with strength.

  In his own chest, the heart turned, and thudded against the captain’s windpipe. He coughed, composed himself, and dismounted.

  Reaching the crone in the dust, the captain leaned down. “Has he hurt you?”

  “Oh no,” she said. She looked sad but not insane. “He wouldn’t.” “You can’t know that, mother.”

  “I can. He was always fair.”

  The captain did not argue. She was senile and fragile, and he, a young man with his wits.

  He went forward, and only stopped three sword lengths from the cripple.

  Here the horrible body-stink was enough to bring up his gorge. But the wheezing breath was worse, hitting him in gusts.

  Controlled, and ready, the captain spoke.

  “Old man, I won’t harm you. Look up.”

  For some reason, he did not think for an instant the crippled man would understand speech. Even though the peasants had also assured the captain that the prodigy uttered.

  But the torn and rendered head tipped slowly back, and the shoulders, unequal as all else, partly straightened.

  The captain saw the watered black eye, like scummy ink, shorn of its lid, fixed on him. He saw the decayed mask of the face, itself burnt almost black by a pitiless Sun. The nose had bent. Only the mouth, though the shade of dried blood, was whole over the wreckage of the teeth.

  The eye looked, and seemed to take in the armor, the metal and gilt, the white plume, the undrawn sword. The captain was aware, as seldom in battle, he had begun to tremble.

  A breath went in at the puce lips, down through the twisted throat to the ladder of twisted ribs, and the rib-pierced lungs.

  “Like,” said the crippled man, “an eagle.”

  And the captain felt the thongs of his sinews loosen. Felt the hand of a god push him. He was on his knees. Behind him came the sharp rattle of his troop, the low wails and whispers of the crowd.

  Somehow the captain spoke.

  “It is Amdysos.”

  2

  Daibi sat on the earth floor, grinding nuts with the smaller stone.

  The farm was, in a way, hers now. She was mistress. Her old father, who had been god-struck two winters back, and had the use only of his right side, and no use at all for his brain, she tended dutifully. But his decline had left her free to run over the hills to Elakti’s band. She had been entranced by the talk of magical elements, but also by liberty, women on their own without the tyranny of men, only the dead god—Amdysos—to watch out for.

  Daibi had spent all her former life in service to men. In the beginning there had been her father, and his two sons. But the sons were lost, one in a war, and one at a boar hunt under Koi. Meanwhile, Daibi watched her mother dwindle, ground away by hard work, like the very corn and nuts of the farm. The other daughters had been married off, but Daibi was the youngest, and finally evaded wedlock with some rough upland neighbor, being left to serve her rough father instead.

  A month after his stroke, she was away with Elakti’s girls. Mostly she had stayed with them, only returning to the farm when she must. At such times one or two went with her, to assist, strong girls like herself, with round arms and tawny hair.

  The father would have had something to say, if he had kept the use of his eyes and his speech. But then.

  Grinding the pine nuts to flour now, Daibi sang very low under her breath. She had been made conscious of the shadow side of the magic, and did not want to attract worse fortune.

  The morning mantled warm on her shoulders, and there was the aroma of the yellow peaches ripening over the door. But beyond the sun-rinsed yard, where the sacred marroi rose up, stem the color of red copper in its sheaf of vivid leaves, she could see the wall of the barn. And now and then, above the cluck of her hens, she would hear a funny little cry. The hens had become used to the noise, and resumed laying long before summer came again. But the half-wild cats, and the dog, avoided the barn. The dog sometimes snarled at anyone who came from there.

  * * *

  The previous summer, that spy Udrombis had positioned in Elakti’s makeshift household, had hurried back to the Lakesea, her pretext to fetch a physician for Elakti’s labor. So intent was the spy on her role as messenger that she left well before the birth.

  At Oceaxis, she was astounded and filled with trepidation, on being hurried by a back way into the apartments of her patron. Although the spy had guessed her information was passed at once to the Widow-Consort, the spy had cautiously pretended ignorance. Never before had she met a true Queen face to face.

  The storm which had wracked the hills was also here. Through high windows shone a deadly lilac glare, winged by darkness, cracked by flame. The room seemed lofty as a mountain cave, and in it there burned only the garnet mouths of a pair of braziers. To the tempo of the storm, filmy draperies crackled as if with sparks, the reflections and shades of furniture jostled. All the atoms of the chamber seemed alive and sinisterely changeable.

  But Udrombis stood nearly immobile, her pale gown of hazel silk massed about her, her jewels gleaming like ropes and bunches of eyes.

  “Tell me what you wish to say,” said Udrombis.

  The spy wished to say nothing. She had given her message below. But she said it again.

  “The spear-bride Elakti is in labor. It’s a difficult birth, and long.”

  “I believe the birth of her other child cost her much effort.”

  “Yes, madam. They said it was dangerous. And this is worse.”

  “And you were sent for a court physician.”

  “Yes, madam. The Lady Phelia sent me. I’d offered to go.”

  “You were diligent.” Udrombis turned, and the brazier light drew her profile in fire. She seemed made of polished granite. She said, quietly, looking aside, as if from some curious courtesy, “You will await the physician. But there will be a delay. If you discuss with another this delay, you will die. Do you believe me?”

  The spy hoped the storm and the darkness hid her, knew they did not. “Yes, Great Queen.”

  “Expect nothing. The gods favor modesty. Good things will come to you.”

  Outside the room, the spy’s bowel loosened, but luckily only let out a loud clap of gas. In the empty passage it echoed, ribald token of her mo
rtal terror, to the glassy walls of godlike Kings.

  She scurried away, and waited on Udrombis’s physician. She waited through the stormy night, the unsettled morning, until midday.

  The ride back to the pavilion in the hills took some while, also. Not all wrung out, the storm wavered and boomed. The physician, an elderly and irascible man, journeyed in his slow litter, with two guardsmen, and a boy assistant on a mule. Rainless clouds cast gouts of purple, lightning burst behind trees. And the mule shied constantly, and once threw the boy, so they had to stop and pick him up. Perhaps it had been elected for its temperament.

  A wine-red Sun was setting, dragging the storm away with it at last down into the Sea of Sleep: only then did they reach Elakti’s pavilion.

  The spy, becoming an attendant again, slipped from her mount, and raced up the hill ahead of the rest. She must now appear eager and distraught. But in the fluctuating madder Sunfall, the pavilion seemed odd to her, morosely unwelcoming, threatening even, a ghost-place she had betrayed, and so aroused its curse.

  Near the wall, the spy lessened her advance. She walked. There were no sounds but the herds of the storm wind, following the Sun downwards.

  She went round, and entered the building through its kitchen yard. No one was there. And now night ascended, and filled the court nearly black. There were no lamps burning in the pavilion.

  Frightened despite herself—since, after Udrombis, ordinary fright seemed redundant—the spy hesitated, for the physician and the guard to come up.

  So, in the end, they entered together, by a door which hung open.

  The rooms chimed hollowly with their voices, abrupt questions and calls. Then torches were lit, and, by the flare the pavilion was found to be deserted. They had gone in a rush. Here a lamp had burned, which had gone out. Here a bowl of soiled water stood. Here, there, crocks had fallen and been smashed. Clothes and hairpins lay scattered on the floor. Where the main bedplace was, they all saw plainly enough that something had gone on, a birth—or a murder. The mattress was daubed with blood. And twitching his nose, the physician declared he could scent the unique smells of parturition.