Mortal Suns

by Tanith Lee

  “I greet you, once Mirror of the Sun, Wife-Widow and Mother of Kings. Your messenger informed us you wish to regard him, the man who is your son.”

  “Who is claimed to be,” she corrected.

  “Great lady. The testing is done. Though not as you recall, this is Amdysos.”

  Torca, now this one. Soon all Akhemony would hear it. And that toy warrior in the temple above, pale, inflammable Lektos.

  She had been driven here, as the Sun was driven, to meet an enemy who was—perhaps—part of herself. For she dreaded it might be a fact, as Torca had told her. This thing—Amdysos. The parody, the crumbled effigy.

  She meant that it should be put to death quite soon. She would have herself the power to see to it, without defacing any other god. And if it were the remnant of her son she was to kill, she was determined now to know her sin. How else could she wrestle with it? How else be absolved?

  Udrombis said, “Then you have decided. I have yet to do so.” She had served a King. These priests were only men. “But let me see him, certainly.” And the priest bowed to her once more.

  She sensed conspiracy among them, but it was the plot of those who thought themselves right. Torca had written to Klyton. She guessed Klyton had refused to come here, look for himself, and this might well be fear, not aesthetics. She could forgive Klyton this. He had wished to retain the other picture of his friend. There had been times, too, when she had assisted Akreon, sparing him. A King must not bear all.

  Given this creature’s physical condition, what she had been told of it, not only by Torca, it would be simple enough to remove—though all the priesthood, all the little Lektoses, stood against her. It was the woman god, Phaidix, who had made shadows.

  They walked on through the labyrinth. Udrombis made no special note of the way. She did not need to. Some priest would guide her back to the great stair.

  And she saw no portent either in her descent to the Underworld, which this domain symbolized, her descent that anticipated a going up again.

  Actually she recognized the vaulted passage, the swoop of the vast door-mouth and the cavern of chamber beyond. She had come here once, to make her coronation vows.

  Thus, Calistra, too, had seen this room, which was hardly like a room. The walls were lost behind the streamers of rusty smoke, rising out of silvered tripods. Above, the ceiling curved up, held, it seemed, almost randomly by groups of pillars, whose capitals were the heads of horned beasts. In the uneven dome of the ceiling, stars sparkled, hard as daggers. They had been set in constellations resembling those visible in the lands overhead, but thicker, and more luminous, as the dead were said to see them, though far, far below and under ground.

  The priesthood of the Precinct was stationed everywhere here. They tended the braziers, and the several altars, all of which dripped black.

  The air was very dense, breathless and cloying. It smelled of dark aromatics, and entrails from the immolations.

  There was no sound but for the high singing that the ears supplied.

  Udrombis stopped when the priest indicated that she should. He spoke low to her, his temple-trained voice resonant and theatrical, not touching her at all.

  “I ask, madam, you don’t speak to him, as yet. Recall, in spirit he has come up from the country prefigured here. Therefore, he rests. There is some way to go towards the light.”

  “Very well,” she said. She was impatient, but did not reveal it.

  He went in front of her now, and led her on, and she saw there was a curtain, a sparse silvery net, which went gliding up. What was then displayed did check her.

  A travesty. In a tall, ebony chair, a man was sitting. And at his side, in a chair of ivory, a woman. Who held on her lap a child.

  The red-grey light, the coins from the lamps, the blast of the torches, gave them over strangely to be seen. But they were like the murals of Kings. Friezes that showed Kings, with their Consorts and foremost heirs. Just so Akreon had been depicted, and she beside him, Udrombis, holding the infant Glardor.

  She was affronted, but she said and did nothing.

  The priest said to her, “You may go to that marker on the floor, madam. The golden line.”

  She thought how arrogant they were, and that their power was too big. If Akreon had lived, this one would not dare say any of this. But if Akreon had lived, there would be no need. Or Glardor even. Or Pherox. Or … Amdysos.

  Was it Amdysos in the ebony chair?

  Udrombis went forward to the golden chain they had stretched across the black marble of the floor. She was perhaps eight sword lengths from the group of King, Consort, heir. She focused her eyes, which were acute, upon them.

  Who had put them out like this? Was it for her sake? No, surely not, some part of the ritual they had conducted.

  It was Elakti, the spear-wife, the insane woman, who had taken the place of the Consort. She wore a sable gown in keeping with the Precinct, and a ring of creamy stones held off her swarthy hair. Her eyes were large and brightly mirror-blind; some drug had been given her. The child was wrapped close in white. The silver border of the cloth sank heavily in, over its face. It sat, or maybe slept. Udrombis could not make out the horrible deformities Torca had spoken of. But the child was of no importance. Neither Elakti. As with the man, when needful, it would not be so taxing to be rid of them. If Torca had not lied, they were an offence upon the earth.

  Udrombis turned her eyes to the man who took the place of the King.

  She had made certain of the rest, before she did so, not from reluctance or dread, but in order she could dismiss everything else from her mind.

  What did she see?

  Seated, he did not look very unusual. They must have cleaned him, calmed him, drugged him too, no doubt. His hands lay on the arms of the chair, and it was not particularly apparent that they were unmatched. The legs, one foot supported on a footstool, gave a similar effect of the normal. His head drooped a fraction. But he was not disgraceful. Not even unregal, but like an actor taking the part of a king. A small king, of course. Not the Great Sun.

  The face was raddled, and as she studied it, through the freckle of the lamps, where the torch fire did not reach, gradually she made out the eye which had gone, and the dirty white leer of the other eye, shorn of a lid.

  In repose, the face was unfrightful, but sad. A poor creature, definitely mortal, but brought down, and with a broken nose.

  It was not Amdysos. Her womb had not carried it. Whatever woman had brought it forth, it had not been of the glorious seed of Akreon.

  But then—they were chanting, and nearby a gust of fire brushed up. All lights, all shadows altered. And for one moment she saw—she saw— a face she knew—a face of flame and gold, of judgment. And tenderness.

  She had made a sound. The priest turned to her. But next second there came another noise, across the distance.

  The child was wriggling, as young children do. It was struggling. And suddenly the mother, mad Elakti, had let it go.

  Straight to the floor it dropped, the child, and—not human, unhurt—righted itself at once, as an insect might. As it did so the shawl of white and silver unraveled from it.

  Udrombis stood, imperious. She gazed, not flinching, at the demon-beast which had somehow grown in Elakti’s curdled belly.

  It was the priest who drew away.

  The demon child began hopping forward. Hopping—yes, like an ungainly bird better at flight. But it had no wings, only the two stubby and unequal arms.

  Its legs were skewed. The head—the head was held forward also, pointing at Udrombis. The nose, if a nose it was, slanted downwards, and the chin angled steeply up. A beak. Between, a sort of squashed, lipless mouth, that now, again, let out a high, hoarse, meowing screech, and a black tongue like a worm.

  One eye was a slit, a slash of costive yellow. The other stared. Wide open, round, seeming lidless too, the color of a baked egg that burned.

  The skull was flat. Something grew on it. Fur, feathers—

&
nbsp; As it hopped on and on, Udrombis did not move.

  It hopped right up to her, and with a hand like a wooden claw, took fierce, almost pleading hold of her skirt.

  “Well,” she said clearly, “what do you want?”

  All her days since she had been a Queen, others had done, mostly, what she required of them. Where not, she had dealt with it. And always she had been guarded. That day the assassin leapt upon Akreon in Uaria, a circle of ten men had instantly thronged around her.

  But now the priesthood hung back, either in amazement or simple slowness, because their time was now different from her time, her time and that of the demon imp which was an eagle.

  And grasping her skirt in its claws, it climbed, it raced up the stone figure of Udrombis. Before she could push it away or hurl it from her, it had reached her waist, her breast.

  And then it stared up precisely into her, eyes, and in the stare was all the unreasonableness of utter chaos.

  As the claws went into her, they lurched it upward again, and it was face to face with her. Udrombis made an attempt at last to strike it down. But it was fixed, fixed in her flesh. She screamed spontaneously yet belatedly from pain, and then the claws thrashed up.

  Some of the priests sprang forward now. Before they could reach her, the demon had torn her open. Amid a pandemonium of pummeling, ripping, flailing—her eyes vanished, her hair seemed to explode—blood spurted and hanks of gold-plated black rained down on carmine roots.

  Udrombis wore a butcher’s apron. Her face was a mask unlike any other, a torrent of red. This turned here and there, noiseless, sightless, seeking. But she fell heavily, the demon still attached, still busy. As the running priests surrounded her, the demon jumped aside. It darted out its tongue. And the chamber paused. It was so little, there among the sprawl of limbs and silk and sprinkled pearls, only the size of a child not much more than a year old.

  However, Phaidix’s shadows must have reached for it. It slid between robed legs and was reeled off into nothingness.

  Udrombis knew she must push off the agony and blindness, and rise. But Crow Claw was there, the old witch from the palace at Oceaxis. Udrombis remembered the vision of the eagle. After all, it had returned for her.

  She was angry. She was not prepared. But Crow Claw had always been insolent.

  The pain wafted to a distance. Lifting from it, she saw the pain lying on a floor as dark as a River by night.

  The priests stood over the body, knowing it only by its dress, what remained of the hair, the well-kept hands glittering with crimson blood and rubies.

  8

  Once more, events begin with a sound. It is the cry of grief common in Akhemony. I had heard it when Pherox was killed in Sirma, though with Glardor’s death I do not recapture it at all. Now it is loud and immediate, and the walls of the palace throb like a lamplit shell.

  Presently, Hylis came in.

  Her face was dusted white. She bowed.

  “The news is terrible, Great Queen.” I waited, suspended. She said. “Udrombis the Widow-Consort, is dead.”

  This was surely impossible. How many others must have reacted as I did? I shook my head. But I said, “When?”

  “At the temple. Something unspeakable occurred.” Hylis made a sign against evil or wrath. She said. “A creature—tore away her face.”

  I thought she meant the monster supposed to be Udrombis’s son. But I could not believe in her death, so colossal her presence and her status had been. And so the manner of her death was itself a myth.

  Something made me dispatch Hylis to Klyton’s rooms. I had been taught long ago, by the squeaky priest, that even I did not go to the King without first sending my courier.

  But Hylis came back and said Klyton was not there. He had gone at once to the temple.

  I visualized his courteous regrets at the death of Stabia, but Udrombis was perhaps much more to him.

  The wailing was dying off. They did not keep to it long, here, unlike Ipyra.

  I sent Hylis to her bed.

  The night was nearing its cusp, when it passes over into morning. I had been sitting in my retiring gown, but now I threw it off, and dressed myself again, not calling in the women, who would sob and chitter, their eyes glaring on me to see what I would do.

  It seemed I must be ready.

  The white dog followed me about. Finally I sat and took his head between my hands, but caressing him my mind was working oddly, as if before a journey, when things must be prepared.

  After the dinner, Klyton had left the Hall early, and he was in his rooms, the King’s Apartment. Perhaps a strange moment to describe them, but to me the image is intrusive. The walls were plastered the purest white, with white marble, and pillars of red marble that had Sun-ray tops of gold. On the walls were depictions of the Sun god hunting, the gold leopards and albino lions leaping joyfully to be speared. Around the ceiling were painted patterns in thick purple. In the floor was the mosaic of a procession of the god. The bed was of marroi wood inlaid with nacre, and the hangings were the Sunburnt yellow of apricots, the bedcover the purple-red of the flesh of grapes. What supported the hangings were six white marble horses, the height of two men together, carved rearing. There were other rooms for reception and bathing, and for study, with books and scrolls on shelves from the floor to the roof. But I remember this bedroom. I had slept with him in it now and then, and the horses had watched with unbridled mouths over our lovemaking. A lamp large as a six-year-old child hung from the ceiling. It was pure gold over a frame of pherom, and when it was refilled with oil., three slaves were needed to bring it down and raise it on its chain. I know it hangs there no longer. I saw it drop.

  Akreon had not used these rooms in his last years. Perhaps uncharacteristically, Glardor, when in Oceaxis, had taken them. They came to Klyton with their paint touched up, everything fresh and in order.

  At the far end of the bedroom was a screen of pierced sea-ivory. Behind this stood the shrine Klyton had made for his brother, Amdysos.

  The garland from the Hall, tamarind and ormis flowers, was on Klyton’s head still; he was a little flushed by the wine.

  He had made an offering to Amdysos with a priest to assist him, pouring shavings of a scented resin, an exquisite bird with tarnished feathers letting go its blood.

  The priest made no comment upon the living possibility of Amdysos. When he was gone, Klyton stayed, talking to his friend.

  The oil was low in the wonderful lamp and he had called no one to refill it. The flame at the shrine hung still and bright. The doors of the shrine were thrown back, and Amdysos gravely smiled and gleamed, his wings outspread.

  “I did give you those,” Klyton murmured. “The wings of the eagle. Do you remember, in Ipyra, I shot an eagle and dedicated it to you? What have I done wrong? I had my omens—the Sun, the cloud like a hand. The dream when you spoke to me. You don’t do that now. Have I offended you? What did you want me to do, sit by and let Nexor play at being a King? I don’t believe you grudge me this. Then why has this—this cretin been sent against me? For the sake of the God, Amdysos, why did that idiot at Airis think this was you? And that bitch Elakti, that you loathed, with a child so deformed, and in such a way—it makes a mockery of your death. A mockery, Amdysos. Give me some sign. Come in a dream if you won’t speak here. I’ve asked you to. I’ve begged you. What must she think, your mother, Udrombis. It must tear out her heart, all this. And there should be some method to be rid of it all, something quite easy. But as things stand—” Klyton raised his voice. “What are you meaning? That you’ve nothing to say to me? That would be like you, turning your back on me. Why do you think we quarreled that bloody day? Your silence, your stubbornness. Not now, Amdysos. Give me a sign—”

  There came the crash of a fist upon the outer doors.

  Klyton turned with a curse and left the shrine standing open, the sweet smoke going up. A slave met him at a doorway.

  To the news, Klyton listened. Reaching up, he took off the garland, and let
it go. To the slave he said only, “Get out.”

  From beyond the closed doors they heard his roar. They had never known at any other time, in triumph, in anger, in war even, Klyton to give out such a sound.

  Presently, he came like a flung stone through all the doors. He shouted for an escort of fifty men. Some of the younger slaves were crying in terror, at Klyton’s rage, at Udrombis’s death—not from any love, but as if the world had given way. An old slave man came and spoke quietly to them. At any other time, Klyton would have turned to him—“Thank you, Sarnom.”

  Klyton whirled them all off with violent gestures. He grasped a mantle round himself and buckled on his sword. As his hand met the pommel, a carnelian incised with an eagle, he gave a laugh. But his face was as they had never been shown it. It had no mind behind it, only this fury, and the green eyes were stretched wide, with a kind of blood-lust one sees in animals, as they take their prey.

  It was Adargon who came, armed and running, the fifty men gathered ready below.

  “My lord—God’s Heart—the Queen-Widow—”

  “Yes, I know,” said Klyton, so light it only floated on the boiling surface of him. “They told me.”

  “You’re going to the temple.”

  “It seems the priests have barred the inner door, the way into the Precinct. And Lektos has let them.

  “Lektos,” said Adargon.

  They ran down through the palace, which was making now its noises of shock and sorrow and panic.

  As they emerged into the court, thunder split the night above.

  Klyton tilted back his head. He shouted in a harsh male scream, up into the sky. “Yes! You’ve spoken. Yes.”

  Adargon put his hand on Klyton’s arm and Klyton turned, a snarling lunatic. Adargon who also had never beheld Klyton in this shape, faced him solidly. “My lord, don’t let them see. They’ll think hell gapes enough already.”

  Klyton’s eyes seemed to give off a shot of fire. Adargon, even Adargon, started. But then they heard the tearing shriek.

  They turned and stared, and in the courtyard, men called aloud, while the horses swerved and squealed.