Arrows of the Sun

by Judith Tarr

  She burrowed into the warmth of him. The dream was fading in his brightness, the horror shrinking to insignificance. She had forgotten to eat after her vigil in the temple, that was all, and the oddity in the Gate had come back to haunt her empty stomach. No mage alive knew all the secrets of Gates. Maybe the Guild had, that in its prime had made them and used them and ruled them with fabled power.

  The Guild was long since fallen. Vanyi was not supposed to regret that, or to wish that it had survived long enough to teach her what she yearned to know, of Gates, of magic, of the worlds beyond the world. But it was gone; only memory remained, embodied in the Gates.

  Pride had laid it low. It had set empire against empire, Keruvarion against Asanion, striving to fell them both and set a puppet of its own making upon the doubled throne. But the puppet it had made had turned against it—and, wise cruelty, done nothing to destroy the Guild. Only let it be known what the Guild had done and intended, and offered a newer way to those who would be mages: the priesthood of god or goddess, and training in the temples of Sun or Dark. The Guild had withered, its twinned pairs of mages dead or lost. The robes that once had won such awe, lightmage grey and darkmage violet, were all faded, gone to the dim no-color of hedge-witches and hired sorcerers.

  But the Gates endured. That one of them had gone briefly strange—it meant nothing. The priest who came to relieve Vanyi had said as much; and he was a mage and a master. She was initiate merely, priestess on Journey, mage in training. She was making nightmares of hunger and sleeplessness and a lover who might be taken from her.

  Estarion did not know of this, nor would he. He had troubles enough.

  She attacked him suddenly with kisses. That made him laugh, reluctant at first, then more freely.

  Yes, she thought. Laughter drove away the dark. Laughter, and love; and that they had in plenty.

  5

  The City of the Sun lay in the arms of deep-running Suvien, where the river curved round a great prow of crag. To north and east the walls rose sheer. Southward they eased to a long level of windswept land and, half a day’s journey down a smooth straight road, the white gates of its mother and its servant, Han-Gilen of the princes.

  Westward was no wall but the river and the quays of ships and, black to its white beauty, that crag from which the city took its name, Endros Avaryan, Throne of the Sun.

  The sunrise bank teemed with men and beasts and boats. On the sunset side nothing walked, and no bird flew. The crag stood alone, dark against the sky, and on its crown a Tower.

  No window broke that wall, no gate marred its smoothness. Blind, eyeless, doorless, it clawed its way toward heaven.

  Estarion stood atop the highest tower of his palace, on the northern promontory of his city, and glared across the river. He was nearly level with the summit of the black Tower, with the globe of crystal that, catching the sun, blazed blinding. But he was the Sun’s heir: he could look unflinching on the face of his forefather. This, mere magewrought crystal, barely narrowed his eyes.

  That whole Tower was a work of three mages conjoined, Sunborn king and Gileni empress and northern warrior, and they had wrought it in a night. “And why?” Estarion asked aloud. “Except to keep men off the crag, since any man who walked there must come down mad.”

  The cat Ulyai yawned vastly and stretched. She propped her forepaws on the parapet, leaning into Estarion. He wrapped an arm about her neck. “Have you ever seen a more useless braggart thing? Caves like lacework through that whole great rock, and tombs enough for a thousand years of kings, and he witches a Tower on top of it. And no way in or out, either, unless there’s a Gate somewhere, or a key I haven’t found.”

  Ulyai was not interested in the Tower across the river. There were ringdoves in the lower reaches of this lesser tower; she watched them with fierce intentness.

  Estarion sighed. She would not care either that the Sunborn had left his bones there, and a story that he lacked the grace to die before he did it, but had himself ensorceled into sleep, because his empire was won, and there were no more battles to fight. He would rise again, the talespinners said, when the god called him back to his wars.

  “It’s only a story,” Estarion said. “Or if it’s true, it’s so far away it doesn’t matter. I’m all the Sun-blood there is, until I get myself an heir. I’m all the emperor this world will have.” He shivered in the bright sunlight. “There’s no Tower in Kundri’j Asan. He never came there, did the Sunborn. They stopped him before he marched so far. He was a madman, they say. I say he was saner than anyone else who came near him. He hated Asanion with all his heart.”

  “He was a fool,” his mother said behind him.

  He did not turn to face her. He had been aware of her coming, but he had chosen to take no notice.

  He had not spoken to her since the day of his enthronement, nor had she sought him out. A pleasant enough arrangement, he had been thinking.

  “An emperor cannot hate the full half of his empire,” she said. “Not and remain emperor.”

  “Is that what they hope for?” he asked, light, barely bitter. “That I’ll hate them so much, I let them go of my own free will?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  His lips stretched back from his teeth. “Maybe I should do it, then. Give up Asanion. Leave it to rot in peace.”

  “It will hardly do that. More likely it will rise up and overwhelm the east, and rule us as it ruled us long ago, under an iron heel.”

  Estarion spun to face her. “Listen to yourself! Even you think of us and them. It’s we in Keruvarion, they in Asanion. There’s never been one empire. There never will be. Only irreconcilable opposites.”

  “If you think so,” she said calmly, “you make it so. You have that power, Meruvan Estarion.”

  “I have too much power. Everyone has always said that. Too much power was never enough to save my father. Only to twist me and break me, and mend me awry.” He laughed at her frown: laughter that tore his throat. “Yes, that’s wallowing! I wallow extraordinarily well.”

  “You are too clever by half,” his mother said. She was not smiling.

  There was a silence. They had quarreled before—they could hardly help it: he had her temper, and that was as quick as her wits. But never for so long. Never for so much.

  He would not be the one to end this. She asked of him what she had not had the strength to demand of herself. She could hardly fault him for seeing the flaw in it.

  After a while she spoke, shaping the words carefully, as she did when she was holding anger at bay. “I am told that I am not to accompany you to Asanion. That I remain as regent in Keruvarion.”

  “There is a regent in Asanion,” he said with equal care, but no more anger than she deserved.

  “An Asanian,” she said. “A great lord and prince, and loyal to the Blood of the Lion. But Asanian.”

  “Wasn’t it you who said that I have to learn to face the rest of my empire?”

  “The scars are deep. They will not heal in a day.”

  “Now you say it,” he said.

  “I have never failed to know it.” She paused for breath, perhaps to nerve herself, perhaps simply to let him simmer. “Will you take me with you?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at her. He loved her, he could hardly deny that. But love and hate were womb-kin. Someone had said that once, long ago. One of his ancestors, very likely. It was something they would understand.

  “So,” he said, pitching his voice light, easy, purposely exasperating. “You would come, then? And hold my hand? And pimp for me in the harems of the Golden Empire?”

  She did not answer that. “The Red Prince is wise, and the people love him. He would do well as regent in your absence.”

  “Hal is barely older than I am.”

  “And you are emperor.”

  He accorded her a swordsman’s salute. “Well struck! And suppose he forgives me for leaving him behind—what then, Mother? Do you th
ink I’m not to be trusted, where I’m going?”

  “I think that you will need me. Even,” she said, “if you hate me for it.”

  She stood as straight as ever, her face as still, its beauty unmarred. But she was fighting back tears. He felt them burning in his own eyes.

  Tricks. She was a master of woman-sleights as of the wiles of courts. And she had magery: she wielded it on him, and no matter the cost to his aching head.

  He was softening. Fool that he was. He knew what she was doing; knew what she would do if she rode with him, if she had leisure to work on him through the long leagues to Asanion.

  Maybe he needed the challenge. And it was true enough: he would need her wits, and her skill in bending men’s wills. Especially in Asanion, where deception was a game of princes, and murder their pastime.

  “Come, then,” he said, “and do as you please. What I do, in the end, I’ll do because I will it. And for no other reason.”

  “Have you ever done otherwise?” she asked.

  She would not lock stares. She was too canny for that. She set a kiss on his brow and left him there. The scent of her lingered for a long while after she was gone.

  o0o

  It was nearer nine days than three before the court could be ready for the long road into Asanion. Even at that, the chamberlains were beside themselves with the haste of it all.

  “Talk to the sergeants,” Estarion said to the chief of them. “They can move an army of twenty thousand inside of a day, and you can’t move a court of twenty score in a tenday?”

  Nuryan fluttered and squawked. Estarion did not trouble to listen. “I’m going,” he said. “In the morning. Anyone who can ride, will ride. Anyone who is late, is late.”

  “Sire!” his chamberlain shrieked. “The baggage—the wagons—your wardrobe—”

  Estarion said a word both brief and vulgar. It shocked Nuryan into silence. “I’ll wear what I can carry. There are cloth merchants in Asanion, no? And tailors. And, I trust, jewelers and hatters and cobblers—”

  “An emperor wears no shoes in his palace.” Nuryan truly was distraught: he had interrupted his emperor.

  “He rides, surely? And walks elsewhere?”

  “No,” said Nuryan, “sire. He never leaves his palace.”

  So Nuryan might think. Estarion was of another mind; but that was another battle. “He has to get to his palace,” he said. “And so he shall. I ride in the morning. The court may follow as it will.”

  o0o

  The emperor rode out on a fine bright morning, with the sun a dazzle in a flawless sky, and a brisk wind to set his banners flying. The slow and the litter-borne and the baggage would follow when they chose. These were the swift and the mounted. The emperor’s guard in its full ranks, blazing in scarlet and gold; the empress’ guard in gold and green; a battalion of high ones, lords and ladies both, and guards and grooms and servants; and a little company of priests and priestesses, bearing no emblem, affecting no great estate, but each marked by the torque at the throat and the plait down the back. Vanyi was with them, a white face amid the black and brown and gold.

  Estarion rode at their head. His senel was a black of the Mad One’s line, blue-eyed, dagger-horned, with a star on his forehead; young enough to be a little silly with all the tumult, but wise enough to keep his temper in hand.

  Umizan snorted at Ulyai who paced beside him, but not in fear: he had been foaled among the royal cats. She snarled amiably at him and paced just out of reach of the sharp cloven hooves, queenly oblivious to the crowds that lined the road. All of Endros seemed to have streamed outside the walls to watch their emperor ride away.

  Their cheering rolled over him. It was heartfelt, but there was darkness in it. They were losing him to the west. Not forever, that he had vowed to them, swearing it by the Tower on its crag. But the last emperor who had gone to Asanion had sworn that same vow; and he had come back, but never living.

  His bones lay under the Tower. Estarion could see it beyond the city’s white walls: black crag, black horns, crown of crystal that caught the sun’s light. He saluted it, flinging up his burning hand. The sun, escaping a wisp of cloud, struck the crystal and blazed.

  Estarion laughed at the glare of it. “Until I return,” he said, “watch well, old bones. Look after my city.”

  “You take that one too lightly,” said Iburan.

  Estarion slanted a glance at the priest, who had ridden up through the line and matched his mare’s pace to black Umizan’s. He was not smiling. “There is a power there,” he said, “that would make a god tremble.”

  “Isn’t that a heresy?” asked Estarion, bowing to the crowd, dazzling them with his white smile, giving Umizan leave to dance and flag his tasseled tail.

  Iburan said nothing. But neither did he leave Estarion’s side.

  The people followed them far out of the city, mounted and afoot, calling Estarion’s name. At length even the most determined of them grew weary or felt the distance of their city and the sun’s descent into the alien west.

  The last of them halted at the boundary-stone, the white pillar without adornment that marked the edge of Endros and the beginning of the Hundred Realms. It stood on a long hill cloven in two by the river, first outrider of the ridge-wall, and beyond it the land went up and up to a tree-clad height. It was nothing to the mountains of the north, but on that plain it stood high and haughty.

  Estarion paused by the stone. “Go,” he said to the rest. “I’ll follow.” Some hesitated, but he stared them down: even his mother. They rode on up the slope.

  Umizan lowered his head to graze. Ulyai dropped down just beyond him and rolled in the sweet grass, singing a soft yowling song. Her mind was full of sunlight. No sadness there; no regret to be forsaking the city of her birth. All her kind remembered the free air and the wild places, even those born within Endros’ walls: remembered it and yearned for it.

  Estarion looked down upon his city. He could have cupped it in his two hands, as small as it seemed and as perfect, like a carving in ivory and gold.

  He had left Endros often enough on journeys about his empire. But only in the east and the north. Never in the west. Never for so long or in such a mingling of anger and resentment, doubt and fear and piercing exhilaration.

  Free. For however brief a time, for however unwelcome a purpose, he was free of those walls. It was terrifying, that freedom, and wonderful. That he went to a worse prison than he had escaped—it mattered, and yet after he was not sorry for it.

  He touched heel to Umizan’s side. The stallion snatched a last mouthful of grass and wheeled, turning away from the city and the plain. The Wall of Han-Gilen rose ahead of them, and the last of the escort riding slowly over the crest. Estarion wound fingers in the long mane. “Go,” he said into the back-turned ear. “Brother, go!”

  6

  Estarion’s riding fell somewhere between an army’s march and a royal progress: soldier-speed where land or weather allowed it, but long slow meanders through rough country, and pauses in this castle and that town and yonder temple. Once free of Endros he knew less urgency, or more patience. The pace was his to set, and he allowed his mood to set it, or Umizan’s whim.

  He rode in the swelling spring, up the long roll of Suvien with the Wall of Han-Gilen fading into mist behind him, through the hills and woods of Iban and Sarios, into the forest-ridings of Kurion. There the towns were fewer, the castles more frequent: crowning cliffs above the river, or warding islands in its center. Their lords were not always delighted to find the emperor at their gates of an evening, but he knew well enough how to talk them round. It was as simple as a word and a smile.

  “The trouble with that,” he said to Vanyi of a morning as they rode down yet another steep and twisting track, “is that once they have me, they don’t want to let me go.”

  She had her hands full convincing her young idiot of a mare that she had come up this way; she could very well go down it. It was a while before Vanyi could answer. When she did,
she was breathless and her face was flushed. Her words were calm enough for that. “Of course they want to keep you. You settle all their impossible cases, and physic their ailments with a touch, and bless their women and their cows.”

  “While my swarm of courtiers eats them straight into poverty.”

  “That’s pride,” she said. Her flush was fading; she pushed her hair out of her face, where it would fall no matter how she bound it, and smoothed the mane on her mare’s sweating neck. Everyone else was waiting below, being patient and, in his mother’s case, subtly disapproving. Vanyi took no more notice than he did. “They’ll just expect the more from their vassals, or even from their equals, because they gave so much to you. Some will make a profit from it. You’re a very useful guest, taking all in all.”

  He looked down at the mill and muddle of his escort, and the smaller party that belonged to the lord of the castle. That one looked ready to ride back up and discover what was keeping his majesty, but Iburan held him in what looked like easy conversation. Easy for Avaryan’s high priest in Endros; excruciating, no doubt, for the lord of Inigal in Kurion.

  Estarion rubbed his chin. One way and another he had been neglecting to keep it shaven. Laziness, his squire muttered. Good sense, he reckoned it. The stubble was ripening into a surprising luxuriance of beard. It itched now and then, but not enough to be a nuisance. Nuisance was cold water and cold razor on warm chin in the morning.

  Vanyi liked to play with it. He grinned at her, touching the edge of her mind with a memory. She blushed gloriously and glared, but laughed through it. “I think,” he said, “tonight, we’ll make ourselves a camp. No towns a day’s ride upriver of here, they tell me, and no castle past the meeting of the waters.”

  “But a great one there,” she said, “and its lord waiting for you, like enough, if he’s heard you’re riding this way.”

  “So we’ll summon him to be our guest under the moons. He’ll reckon it a novelty.”