by Tanith Lee
The thing came blazing down, sizzling, and shattered on the paving. Red fire ran like dye and glittered out.
“A thunder-stone—a bolt from heaven—” Adargon blurted.
Klyton’s eyes had cleared somewhat. He was back inside them. “Look. More of them.”
The soldiers and the slaves, the Sun Prince and the King, stood with their heads tipped back, as if at some scenic instruction.
From the thunder-riven dark, the stars had sped away, or else they were dashing down to the earth. A rain of shrieking fires was falling like hail. As they hit the ground they smashed, each a vessel of seething matter that burst. On the palace roof, rattling, glittering. Through the garden trees they rushed. A blow of fire ignited, and there were black silhouettes before a curtain of red. Everywhere, the thunderbolts were cascading. The sky was birthing them. And on and on they came.
Klyton ran to his horse, mounted it, and held it wheeling, neighing, as the groom tumbled away. Seeing this, those who had held back, also mounted up, while their servants ran for cover.
The band of men raced from the palace, a stream of bronze and steel, along the shore road towards the town of Oceaxis, while the rain of fire-coals plunged all about them, lighting their path with kicks of fire, and from the sea crashed waterspouts of the form and heat of smelted swords.
The wild gardens, and the groves that led towards the. sea, were burning. I stood transfixed on my terrace, watching the deluge of the thunderbolts, and seeing the trees flare up to cups of gold. Birds swarmed from the conflagration, black, like bees, on the red cloud of the smoke. They blew between the shards of fire. Their cries and wings sounded like the cries in the palace, and my women’s commotion and rushing. Slaves rushed too, below, with vessels of water, which they spilled in their terror.
The sound—the sound—beyond the screaming and the outcry of the birds—notes like the missiles of a million miniature catapults, the air unseamed—
But down there, twelve years old, I had sat while the women danced. The sky so tranquil that evening, and the lucid sea silken on the shore. And Klyton came to me the first.
The tamarinds cooked with an appetizing smell. The air smelled, too, of metals, and a yeasty fermentation. And of lightning.
I wished the women would die to stop their noise. Where was Hylis? Even the white dog had run away, and in their cage the doves huddled all together, trembling like the firelit leaves.
By the time Klyton and his men reached the town, several houses were on fire there. The streets were full of scurrying slaves, the town guard called out, drays with water-barrels pulled by half-petrified donkeys, men and women who cried and milled about, their heads muffled from the fiery storm. The thunder-stones seemed less, but as Klyton climbed above the town to the Sun Temple, whose building had been begun, it was said, by eagles, Oceaxis spread away like a map, and was a scene of punishment, and nightmare. The ruddy pall of the fires, the smolders, the constant abstracted human movement, one great house that had gone to a pillar of flame, and sent up a tower of pitchy smoke. And through it all, the livid bolts which still intermittantly fell. On the temple hill, the crying sank back to a rumble, but now and then the gongs were beaten in the town, to warn, perhaps of a new conflagration. Beyond the harbor, the sea looked bubbling, and not like water. Klyton turned his face to the temple and rode on. And the pines and cedars, the huge oaks and marroi, draped the town from view.
Lektos had come out and positioned himself at the stairs’ top, on the uppermost terrace. Behind him, the temple burned yellow from the torches and the lamps, and two hundred of his five hundred men, stood in ordered ranks, their shields in front of them. In Lektos’s hand was yet that naked sword.
Klyton dismounted. Adargon and ten others walked behind him up the steps. It was enough. Klyton was the Great Sun.
Lektos, though, did not give way. He waited, the shields at his back.
The smell of smoke was acrid in the groves and on the stair. But the thunderbolts seemed not to have fallen here at all, or if they had, they had done no damage.
Klyton reached the terrace, and Lektos. They faced each other, and Lektos said, “My lord, the Queen-Widow—”
“Yes.” said Klyton. “Why do you think I’m here?”
Lektos faltered, but did not falter sufficiently. He did not shift. And at his back his men were like icons of soldiers, unseeing, shields locked.
Adargon said, “Stand aside, Lektos. The King is here. Can’t you see?”
Lektos said, “My lord the King—the King is behind me. The priests say so. In the temple. The King—is Amdysos.”
Klyton bellowed. His voice smote the trees and rang like a hammer on an anvil. “Your King came up from a pit—your King has killed my mother—your King—Get from the way!”
“Not—not Amdysos,” Lektos warbled, backing a step, firming himself and standing still again, “the child—it rent her and ran off into the passages—they closed the doors to keep it in and hunt it—but it was the instrument of the God—”
“Udrombis!” Klyton bellowed. In a movement like that of some machine, his hand loosed the sword with the eagle in its pommel. In one smooth stroke, he cut the weapon from Lektos’s hand. Lektos was open-mouthed, foolish now. And in the silence they heard again the outcry of the town, and the whistling of another of the bolts falling somewhere near, but below the trees. Klyton said gently, “Move yourself.”
Lektos planted himself more steadfastly.
“Someone shall fetch a pr—”
Klyton’s sword stripped through the light: a flare, a dart of color. It had taken Lektos, who was generally armored, between throat and collarbone, where the throat-piece and helm had been dispensed with. Lektos hiccuped, face splashed with his own blood, and turned slowly around, crashing face-down before his men.
The shield wall disbanded. The soldiers leaned at angles, staring. A young handsome man, with a scarred chin, made one stride forward. He was a son of Lektos’s earliest youth, by a woman of the palace. Neither Klyton nor Adargon knew his name, but Lektos had been reasonably good to him.
He said, blatantly and loudly, “You killed him, but you’re not the King anymore. Amdysos is. Can’t you see all the gods are raging at you, throwing fire down from heaven? They chastised the old witch—” incredibly he meant Udrombis—“for her poisonings and plots. It’s you, Klyton, who must step down.”
And Klyton looked at him, at the sword the boy had drawn and the baleful libertine eyes. Klyton cut sideways now, and took off the hand with the sword, and as this adversary also slumped away, sightless with surprise, the other soldiers on the terrace came trampling forward, swearing and yelling, their eyes not blind at all but bulging with horror and anger.
The world truly gave way. They fought Klyton, there on the terrace. The army of a King, clashing against a King’s sword their own. And others now were pounding through the trees, not knowing who it was they must war with, but knowing it was war.
Adargon dragged Klyton back down the stair, both men hacking away the attack as they went. All but two of their ten were gone. Adargon howled for the rest of the escort, forty men, and as these cleared the area below, forced Klyton towards his horse. “Leave it, my lord—Klyton, leave it—they’re too many and they’re out of their minds—”
Klyton remounted. His face was bloodless and empty. He allowed Adargon to push him from the riot. Those of the escort that could, extricated themselves from Lektos’s battalion in the sacred groves, and galloped after, killing, as they went, men in armor and on foot—who were only shouting to know what had gone on.
All the women had vanished, as if they had felt and taken exception to my fear of their fright. As the gardens by the shore faded to a blackened wasteland, little birds that had flown into the trees beneath my terrace, fluttered anxiously, piping, unable to settle. Slaves called to each other in the gloom. They had not, before, needed lamps, and now everything was dark, even though the cruel moon had risen on the Lakesea. The smoke had veil
ed her and colored her like a hyacinth. I thought I saw the drawing of the face of Phaidix there, a profile with one indifferent and unlooking eye.
In the room with the pool, the turtle would not come out of her shell. She had ceased to be an animal and become instead a cold slab of onyx. The doves continued to huddle together. I spoke softly to them, but they paid no heed. Did they blame me? To the beast, men seem like gods, able to do and cause so much. Therefore, are not all things in their power? And when the lamp goes out or the plate is bare, or the snow comes, that too must be their fault. I pondered, wandering my hollow rooms, if we then misjudged the gods, who were able to do and cause so much that we could not, and yet perhaps, like us, must sometimes wait helpless on the whim of other, mightier beings.
I had seen a red glow pulse above the hidden town, but that too had died away. The levinbolts had ended. At the edge of my terrace one lay that had burned only for an instant. It was merely a gritty ash now, that would be easy to sweep aside.
A hand scratched on a door. I gave admittance, and one of my women entered. I asked her where Hylis was, and the woman lowered her eyes. “I don’t know, madam, but I was sent to you. They say, keep to your rooms.” This was like before. Perhaps I knew, for what else had I done? “Bring me some juice, and water, please,” I said, for I had drunk dry the pitcher. She bowed and went, and when she had gone, I asked myself who “they” had been, that “sent” her. In any case, she did not come back.
The palace, after the commotion, was now deathly still. I had heard horses once, and men’s voices lifted, but that, too, ceased without explanation.
At last I walked to the outer doors and opened them. The guard there did not turn to look, and he was no man I knew, but then, when did I notice them?
“I wish to send word to the King,” I said.
“Pardon me, madam. I can’t leave my post here. One of your women …”
“My women have disappeared.”
His eyes then slid to me. I was young and a fool, the eyes seemed to say, no other Queen would let herself be abandoned so. And he, for his bad luck, must linger here to guard this imbecile.
“Some have gone away,” he remarked, enigmatic.
The lamps were failing, but another light crept in the corridor. It was the dawn beginning.
I left the guard and moved again into my chambers, to watch the harsh Sun appear, as the cruel moon had done, over the sea which was a lake.
Now I seem to picture those eyes, that face, repeated, the shuffling of their booted feet, between the torchlight and the rising of the Sun. Men urged and tugged away, uneasy at the gods, thinking of the riddle and the death in the temple, and hearing of Klyton’s deeds there. The soldiers of Akhemony, ordered that night to ring the palace round, slipping off in twos or threes, then by two hundreds and three thousands. Glancing back perhaps, to note that high golden roof, the landmark of Oceaxis—See that? The palace.
As the Daystar followed the Sun, both of them wan and soiled from the smokes, the King’s House, perched above the land, hollowed out as I had felt it to be.
An hour after Sunrise, someone came in not knocking, or else knocking so lightly I never heard.
I went into the outer room.
There stood my slave, pretty Nimi, and with her the child from the Temple of Thon, and on a leash they had the white dog, who seeing me, wagged his tail and smiled.
“Lady Calistra.” said Nimi. By this title she nearly always called me, though I had risen to be High Queen. I had never chided her. Had I never felt myself quite Queen enough? “Here we are. We found your dog. Choras caught him, he was afraid. But there was some food in the kitchens.”
Choras, the Thon-child, held up a silver platter they had piled, winningly, with little girl treats, sweets and small fruits, and some wine and milk, and a meat bone in a napkin for my dog.
I saw Choras had been made pretty too. Her black hair was curled, her lips rouged, and in her ears were two tiny colcai rings.
We sat in the inner room, for the terrace looked now out on to desolation. The dog gnawed at the bone without any seemliness. He had been used to having an amber dish. The girls ate their sweets, and I drank some of the wine. Nimi asked after the doves and the turtle. Then she went to see. When she returned, long silver threads of tears were on her face. The doves had escaped through the undone cage, the unwatched door, over the open terrace. They were in the living trees, ruffling and cooing, no longer nervous. The turtle, she said, had died inside her shell. She was so very old, Nimi reminded us, had Kelbalba not said so? And now, maybe she had lived more than she wanted.
But we were young, I not so much older than they, and our leaden dignity of sadness did not last. New iridescent fear rushed quickly in where loss had been.
The guard was gone from my door, so Nimi had already advised me. Soon, another guard arrived, twenty men fully armed, whose leader announced that Klyton would presently be here.
But the smoke-tinctured day yawned on, and Nimi and Choras played a board game on the floor, and I went away in my clothes to sleep on the bed. The white dog pounced up beside me, not to be my guard, but for comfort.
As I lay there dozing, Klyton was pacing out a floor, while Adargon and others watched like gazing blocks of earth.
“I was given this,” Klyton said. “All this.”
But Torca stood before him in the white and gold of the priest, his black beard dividing him, his black lips pressed shut, parting only to say, “My lord, it wasn’t given, but loaned. Now you must give it up.”
“What to? That thing you have in your temple.”
And, “Yes, sir. To the Lord Amdysos.”
And Klyton shouts now. He reiterates, that is not Amdysos.
But Oceaxis is in ferment, and although the men of bronze still ring the palace, still hold the road, the burnt places scream with their own voices, and thousands of men are out on the land, also men of bronze, and with them two thirds of the Sun Princes of Akreon’s line. Lektos lies on a bier with his arms by him, a wronged hero, his son close by. Udrombis’s mutilated cadaver is kept concealed in the Vault of Night.
When Klyton finishes his tirade, his faction—for this is what they have become—observe him with eyes cast sidelong. Eyes that seem to regret he is so young, perhaps a fool, and they have served this imbecile.
He had been like the Sun itself, but now he is a ranting child. The toy was given him. The gods gave it. He will not—not—render it again to the other one, the mysterious and god-reborn, whose rightful thing it is.
“Damn him,” Klyton says. He has left off shouting. His color cools. His beauty is all they perceive, and there is a weird lesson in it, for Amdysos’s beauty was struck from him, and he has been brought back a monster. The gods have chosen what is not the best.
“All right,” Klyton says. “Call the council. I’ll debate it there.”
But like water from a surface of fine polish, the world and its chariot are slipping from him. Udrombis and her cleverness are dead. He seems to hear a rumbling, a whistling and turning in his head, the noise of the town as the firestones smote it.
No, of course he does not think of me. He is alone among his loyal men. His back is to a wall that has been shaken down. Clear as the writing in the book of stone, he sees it all.
5TH STROIA
SUN’S ISLE: THE LAST MARCH
I
Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah
The nightingale has come back, to the tree beside the pool under the tower. Sirai is pleased and sits listening as it trills in the blue dusk.
She reminded me that in Akhemony, they called it the kitri, the honey-bird. And of the song she made, which compares the nightingale to memory, flying as it wills, returning often to a particular tree, where sometimes it so sweetly sings. But shadows come also to the tree.
I REMEMBER HOW THE ROWERS sang on and on to the beat of a drum, louder than the heart of Akhemeny, working us through the hot, windless sea. They were Bulote men, the ship a Bu
lote ship, one of two he had taken at the little port of Belba. They had been turning for Oceaxis, but Klyton paid the men to put the cargo off, and board us instead. They did not know who he was, and took him for some Akhemonian noble. Their dialect is complex, and in it the word for king is like the word for lord. Only the title Great Sun has a separate meaning, and this was never used in front of them.
They did not want to go, either. But they were given gold.
A temple to Thon Appidax sat on the shore, facing out the way we would be making, to the Island. It was not like the houses of Thon elsewhere in the region. As Appidax, Thon is a youth, comely, with long black hair, a form the Death god assumed once, when he went, unusually, wooing. For the sake of that human lover, Thon Appidax may be placated, and asked to desist—or at least to wait. The dying often sought such shrines, to beg more days, or those on a dangerous journey bribed the god.
From the temple, which had four pillars dyed with cobalt, and a roof of red tile, our sailors and rowers came to the ships, laden with amulets and blessed bread for the voyage. The oracle, an old sightless woman masked only by her blindness, had assured them only one of the party would suffer immediate death. Though they were unnerved as to whom that would be, the felling of one among so many seemed worth the risk. Besides, the fatality might be in the ranks of the noble and his men, not theirs.
Adargon had said, “Klyton, my lord, no one goes there now. The Island is cursed.”
“Then it will suit me, won’t it. No, naturally I don’t mean that. The thunderbolts were my omen, Adargon. I must go where I am shown. That brought me the crown of the Sun Lands. I won’t believe the gods intended it to be snatched away.”
He had spoken very much in this vein. He would pace, or sit almost still twisting something—a knife, a fruit—in his hands. And he would say to us, those close about him, I was given the Kingship. This was never meant. There will be a way to put it right.