by Tanith Lee
Some of my women were grouped about the room, rustling and chattering, playing board-games, embroidering. I was so used to them now, I barely noticed them.
I wore white sewn with green. The golden earrings in the shape of kissing birds tapped my cheeks and neck as I leant to the book.
These words meant nothing.
The white dog got up, and turned to stare across the room—Klyton?
But the door opened and my Chief Maiden entered. Her shut-lipped correctness now almost pleased me. At her arrival, the women grew quieter, as they seldom did for me, the Sun Wife. Yet the Chief Maiden had no urgency at all, which indicated this, whatever it was, had nothing to do with my husband.
The Chief Maiden—her name was Hylis—bent to my chair. “Madam, a person has been escorted to the palace. She has begged an audience with you.”
I said, careless, “No, she should plead with Queen Udrombis.”
“Madam, the woman is a priestess, From the Temple of Thon.”
Sinking, the four bright gulls turned black on the sequined sea. Thon’s number was four. I saw at once the four black pillars in place of mine, the bone capitals, and the drearily smoking bowl of ancient bronze.
Coldness sluiced down me, and as I rose, my legs felt leaden, attached by silver shackles to the floor.
“No one must ever leave the temple—”
But I myself had left it, rescued by order of Udrombis, twelve years back. Demonstrably there were special circumstances, on occasion.
“No, madam. But it seems they allowed it. She’s gone blind, has some wasting illness.”
“What does she want with me?”
“She says she was helpful to you and was a favorite of yours at that time—when your mother left you for safekeeping … in the temple.”
It was not that I had any terror or any real premonition. I had been taught superstition along with everything else, here in these palace-houses of Sun and air and light.
But I recalled the old priestess, vaguely enough, like a sort of fleshly ghost. Now, it is a fact, I remember her far better. A dim memory came that she had held me that day when the Heart stopped beating and all things quaked in fear and horror. Afterwards she had given me sweet porridge, and then the soldier came to take me away forever.
Had I thought of her since? I believed I had not. And taken up into the Sun, nothing had been further from my mind than she.
I looked round at the women. “All of you go out.” They obeyed, chattering again, offended, questioning. Perhaps they did not grasp I meant not to be embarrassed before them.
I told Hylis to fetch the woman.
Quite quickly, Hylis returned with her. The priestess was muffled up in her black, but unmasked now. Her eyes had a film over them, and she lent heavily, despite her thinness, on the shoulder of a thinner girl, a child about ten, also, evidently, from Thon’s Temple. As her black sleeve slipped, I saw on the child’s arm, the marks of a rod. And could imagine her back.
That House—that Death in life. I smelled it on them. I was glad that Hylis stood near me, immaculate and scented with perfume.
Using the child for leverage, the old priestess got down on her knees.
“Oh, shining lady, it does me good to find you in your high place. I have dared to entreat a kindness for a kindness. Pardon me.”
I had not recalled her, but even so. I had seen her in the temple, that moment when her mask had slipped. Those twelve years had passed, and she had been elderly then.
Not from arrogance, only from bewilderment, I failed to speak. She filled up the gap like an anxious spring.
“Have you forgotten how I sheltered you, after the terrible hour when the Heart Drum paused at King Akreon’s death?”
Her voice came to me. I knew it suddenly.
“I remember,” I said. “And then you gave me a salty soup to warm me.”
“Yes, yes,” she cried, grinning, clutching the child’s shoulder in a wrenching grip. The child’s uncovered face—should it not have been covered for traveling?—was white and sodden, the eyes downcast, hoping for nothing.
“You were so kind.” I said. “you allowed me to call you in secret by your name, though it was forbidden.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “what else. You were only a poor little scared girl.”
“I regret, I’ve forgotten your name.”
She told me promptly. I forget it now. In her case, I have expunged it.
“Well,” I said.
I watched again in memory, faintly yet surely, her sharp thin shape, poised like a pole, as she made the tiny boy lie down in the snow, while she counted slowly to four hundred
How desolate and shameful it seemed then to me that I recaptured her so completely, because she had been wicked, where the gentle priestess I had almost mislaid. Not quite entirely. I knew this face was not hers. I had never seen this face, for it had never been, till now, unmasked before me. It was porridge not soup, and I was never told any name. The gentle one would not have broken such a taboo, even with me.
“Wait outside now,” I said, “someone will see to you.”
Thinking she had won her prize, she gabbled on, but Hylis made an abrupt gesture and the child began to heft her up.
When they were out of my rooms, I said to Hylis, “Did they come with anyone?”
“One guardsman from the temple.”
“Have someone ask him the price I must pay for that child. Let him be paid the price. Give her into the charge of—” I thought and regained another human thing “—of Nimi. She will stay here, with my women.”
Hylis’s arched brows became octagonal. She did not often show surprise or disapproval.
“And the priestess?”
“She can go where she wishes, providing it is away from here. Whatever she wants and Thon allows.”
Hylis opened her lips. They stayed parted.
I said, “She was a liar. The one who helped me must have died. Udrombis would have this one flogged, but this is better. I’ll give her nothing, not even a punishment.”
My Chief Maiden drew her dignity back about herself like a fold of silk.
“Very well, madam.”
Cruelty summons cruelty, save in the weakest or the most strong.
Before that day there seemed to have been no rancor left in me, but now I had been made to glimpse again those wounds of early pain which never quite mend.
Thon’s Temple, bizarrely, had reckoned to please me, giving up to me this one friend. Well, I had saved the child. That was my answer to Thon, and conversely my gift to the gods of joy and safety.
I did not know they had already turned away their eyes.
As Hylis crossed the chamber, I began to hear a noise. Probably I had heard it already, and not considered it. Hylis, too. She halted and turned back.
“Is that shouting?” I said.
“I don’t know, madam—yes—it might be.”
“A crowd,” I said.
It was like the sound of certain festivals. And yet, not quite that sound. A mass of throats calling, demanding—
I walked on to the terrace. The gardens hid, with their wild arbors, the view of the town and the road. But something seemed to rise beyond them, some quiver in the air, smoke or dust, or maybe that disturbance which sometimes happens before a storm.
“Shall I go and ask, madam?”
How patient Hylis was with me. I instructed her to do so.
I stood then in the center of the room, and I felt as if for the first, its largeness the gleaming rarity of it, that had nothing to do with me. Had I not just been reminded thoroughly of what I was? Cemira, the serpent-beast. Cemira who had gone on the crutches of canes.
The sound was louder, but no more identifiable. Not anger—not fear—but neither gladness, nor praise.
Some momentous thing had occurred, and they had rushed to the palace to bring news of it. Perhaps the perfectly happy are above the sense of unease. I had believed myself perfectly happy, and invulnerable, too.
But the shouting, lessening and building, ebbing, swelling, like some chanted song—seemed buzzing upward through the feet of silver, into my vitals and my heart.
I dreaded nothing. Yet my hands trembled a little.
Hylis was gone half of one hour, so the water clock told me. She came back unimpaired, not hurrying, her head held high. On her slim cheeks, the soft powder stared. She was pale. In her hand was a paper. She brought it to me without a word.
Taking it, I thought it was from Klyton. But before all else I saw the Queen-Widow’s seal.
“Udrombis,” I said.
“The Queen’s messenger met me in the passage,” Hylis said.
I read quickly. The words refused their meaning to me—someone had made some error—a crowd of people—I must stay in my apartments.
“Why did you take so long?”
Hylis said, quite trenchantly, “I asked what was the matter. Not from her messenger, who wouldn’t have spoken.”
“What then?”
“Madam, they say a man came from Airis who claimed to be the Sun Prince Amdysos. The soldiers have brought him to Oceaxis. The King has been fetched.”
“That shouting—” I said.
“People from the villages, and some from the town. And some women are there calling out that the Sun has come up from under the world—the ritual call, as you know, madam, at the Dawn Offering. And some of them are saying Amdysos is the High King.”
“How could it be?” I said stupidly.
My white dog followed me as I paced to and fro. Hylis observed me gliding, accustomed to it.
She said, teaching me how to behave, “You should pay no attention, madam. The King will see to it.”
I sat in a chair and the dog moved to me, and put his head on my knee. I took hold of him softly, but not letting go.
Invisible, the shouting grew very rough. Then died choppily away.
Amdysos was dead. Even I had seen it happen. A tremendous mythical Death, supernatural and without chance. Who could come back from Death?
Yet I had had my omen. Thon would let go some.
I sent Hylis out. The scroll of poems had dropped on the floor. Klyton would come, at last, and then I should know it all.
The day was passing. Sometimes I heard the shouting chant come and go. It never now kept up for long. The soldiers must be stopping it.
Refreshment was brought me, though I had requested nothing. I drank some wine but did not touch the food. Later, a slave came to remove the dishes.
I slept a few minutes in a chair, and dreamed I was back at the base of Mt. Koi, going on my canes to drop blood in the noxious summer inner sanctum of Thon. The god reared on his column, but his face was only a skull, like all the skulls spread at his foot. I wondered when he had died, and if any other knew; whether I should speak of it or not.
Later still, Hylis came in with women to dress me for the evening. A gilded cast of light was on the sea, not a single gull.
“What is happening?”
“I can’t learn anything, madam. I did attempt to.” The palace was hushed, not in its usual late afternoon murmuring, fussing tone. Outside the birds sang as always, and flitted over the terrace space. Nothing had upset their kingdom, beyond the stalking of a cat or the passage of a slave.
But with evening came the Sunset Offering, and then the dinner in the Hall. A pang of revitalized blood shot through me. I thought that now I must hear and see. But I did not know what to expect.
Hylis brought me out a gown. It sparkled, a sky shade folded with rose red, the veins and tucks petalled by gold spangles. And the necklace of hammered gold, and the coronet of gold made like the spokes of the Sun.
“No, not those.” I said, as if they would scorch me. Hylis said to me quietly, “Queen Udrombis has expressed a preference.”
I was to be garbed then for display, and she had ordered it. One did not go against her, of course.
The women dressed me. On my left arm was clasped a coil of silver and electrum set with one turquoise the size of an ox eye.
As they were finishing my face, there was a flurry at the doors, and feet. Klyton had arrived, I thought, and stood up quickly. But it was not Klyton at all.
Udrombis surveyed me, and nodded her head. In turn, I must look at her. She had gone in mourning since Akreon. I could only recall her in such clothes. Nevertheless, she had not given up her superbity. The robe was of a grey dark almost to black, with borders of silver, and pearls stitched as lilies. Her jewels were the colors of suns and stars. Was she sixty? They said so. Her badger hair had been hidden away complete inside a headress of Artepta, a golden helmet set with chrysolitcs and jet, that had two scaled flaps falling down onto her breasts, each ending in the golden head of a lion with amethyst eyes. She had worn it at his coronation, Klyton’s, and to my coronation and wedding. The weight alone would have made another woman weep. But her eyes were smoothly dry and black as a summer night.
She raised one hand, and all the women flooded away, were gone.
She said, “Don’t ask me what I know, for I know nothing except what I have written to you, and your Hylis has discovered.”
No point in quibbling. Or asking. She would know if any did, and if she did but would not say, it must rest.
I said, “What shall I do, madam?”
“Sensible Calistra. Act as always. Nothing from the ordinary.”
Amdysos had been her son. But oh, one did not wonder if her heart beat.
“One thing,” she said, “show no dismay. Klyton won’t make the Offering. He is detained. Adargon will do it.”
“Yes, madam.”
My own heart, weighing like her helm-crown, wore down through my body, turning all of me to iron.
Then she said, “Once, when I was with Akreon the King, in Uaria, a madman broke through the guard and leapt against him. Akreon slew the man himself, with his own sword. After that we went on to the house where we were to dine. Neither of us spoke of it, either to our host, one of their little lords with a green moustache, or together. The danger wasn’t discussed, and so it withered. Do you understand me, Calistra?”
I said that I did.
For a moment I saw her, young then, slight, and more malleable, yet still unbreakable, stronger than a pherom spear.
Now even in her shadow on the floor, some of her jewels glimmered from the gathering sky.
Up the stairs to the East Terrace I climbed, my women behind me. I recalled Ermias, panting as she followed me. Ermias, exiled to her estate. And then I dwelled a second on Kelbalba, who had left the trained girl for my massage, and gone away, saying not much, wishing me well. I had not bothered with it. I was Klyton’s wife.
Tonight, not myself, the steps winded me somewhat. I paused on the landings, before the golden altars of the Sun in his disguises, the horse with chariot, ram and bull, the eagle—yes, the eagle. The boar. Behind me, a Lakesea like melted steel under a sky that kept the savor of brass.
The air was fragrant with flowers, with subtle smokes. I could hear music, a sithra down in the Garden of the Sun. No longer any shouting detectable …
On the East Terrace, the young god presided in his marble marvel, hiding his loins in a Sunburst. Though reverenced at daybreak, a trail of smoke simmered up from some gum left burning there. I had never seen this before, at Sunfall.
There were people on the Terrace, as on the landings. They bowed, greeting me with several of my titles.
Was there tension, like that of the string of the sithra, in their faces, their spines?
I did not offer to the god. She had forbidden anything abnormal. Besides, I felt it once again, and so deeply now, what, after all, was I?
Through the east doors I went, as so many times since my exaltation, a princess, a queen, a woman walking on two feet.
The Hall, with its oval of dark yellow stems, slid by me, the fighting walls of battle, the gigantic lion skull, large as a man’s torso, an animal killed by King Okos in his boyhood. At the Hearth, the god
kneeled twice, back to back with himself, black on a heart of fire. Smolders rose up to the waiting Daystars in the ceiling. Old King to Hag, Young King to Maiden. The Kings had eyes, the Queens none. But Mokpor told you this, long ago in my book. Did he inquire if women, then, should be made blind?
I stood on the women’s side of the West Terrace, my girls and Maidens about me. At Hylis’s order, two of them arranged the folds of my gown. Was I blind? I recall not a single face, only the blur of skin and hair and raiment and gems, in the Sun’s ending light.
He was low, the Sun, but not this evening spectacular, Amdysos had been seized by an eagle of gold and thunder, but this Sun would sink merely in drained afterglow. No mass of dyes was on the skyline, where Koi rose, and behind Koi, the phantom of the Mountain of the Heart of Akhemony.
The gongs were sounding in the town, a mile away.
I found I had braced my body and my mind—it was for the shouting to begin again below. But there was nothing other than the gongs. Even the sithra had been set aside.
Like diluted butter, the western sky.
The boy chosen tonight to sing the Sun down, piped up. His voice cracked a little on the first note. This had happened before. He was nervous, but at nothing more than his role. No one responded, and now his voice was pure as the light.
Splendor of leaving,
Beauty of going away,
We stand powerless at the Gate of Night.
I had heard these words on so many, many evenings, as I had often heard the welcoming ode of dawn, brought there with Klyton from our bed, where we had scarcely slumbered.
The words—meant nothing.
Do not forget us, O Greatest God.
Do not forget.
Adargon faultlessly offered to the Sun.
Incense was ignited, a drift of pinpoint lights, the musky steam rising as the pastel Sun sank down. The mild Sunset reminded us that death might be a simple matter.
Klyton came in late to the Hall, with Adargon and some of the other Suns. They were elegantly clothed, jeweled, fresh from the bath, laughing together. It might have been any evening when they had been kept behind on the business of war and Kingship. Save Klyton would have broken off, to make the Offering.