by Judith Tarr
In Kundri’j Asan she did not see him. He was shut up in the palace behind the gates and walls of gold, where no woman walked and no commoner might go.
She had her place in the temple of the Two Powers within the wall of lapis, in the third circle of the city. Its Worldgate was as potent as that in Endros, with holiness on it beyond its simple power, for it had been made by the Mageguild itself.
This had been the guildhall, this house like any other in this circle of the city, neither the richest nor the poorest of those about it. Priests of god and goddess had kept it so after the Guild died out, altering it little save to set an altar in its central court.
Common people did not know, maybe, what power dwelt here. Some came to worship, and the priests did turn and turn about in the rites, but most chose other temples.
It was a quiet place, for all its weight of memory. Vanyi could have been happy there, searching out its secrets, prowling its library that had been left when the mages went away. Her old fascination with the Guild was whetted here, tantalized with glimpses into their lore and their magics.
Iburan refused the place of chief priest although he far outranked the mistress of the temple; he was content to serve where he was needed, to stand guard on the Gate in his turn, and to go rarely to the upper city and the high temple of Avaryan and Uveryen. He never said, nor indicated by glance or strayed thought, but Vanyi suspected that he was not fond of the high priestess. She was a proud cold creature of princely Asanian blood, such as raised steadier hackles than Estarion’s; nor did she make a secret of her dislike for Iburan. Great northern bear, she called him, and other things less flattering.
Thus he did service like penance in the least of the temples in Kundri’j, and bowed his head and was humble, and made no move to put himself forward.
o0o
“She has no power,” he said to Vanyi not long after they came to Kundri’j. She remembered it afterward as the day the lightning fell. In that hour it was simply another breathless, airless, hideously hot day, its only distinction that its sky was the color not of brass but of lead. She could feel the heat building, hammer on the anvil of the earth.
This temple had a garden of strange flowers—fruit of Magegates, Iburan said, and as secret as the rest of it. Vanyi plucked a blood-red bloom with a scent that both dizzied and steadied her, like her lover’s kiss. She almost cast it away, thinking of him, but tucked it in her hair instead and sat on the rim of a fountain. The spray of water was cool on her hand.
Iburan plucked a fruit the color of a maiden’s cheek in Asanion, and bit into it. “She’s no mage, my lady Himazia,” he said when he had chewed and swallowed. “She knows this temple only as a nuisance, a tendril of my jurisdiction in the heart of her domain.”
“They don’t have priest-mages here,” Vanyi observed. “Not as they do in the east.”
“They don’t like to believe in magery.” He spat out the fruit-pit, knelt, buried it carefully in a bit of open earth, watering it with handfuls from the fountain. “There now,” he said to it. “Sleep well; grow strong, and bear fruit.”
“It’s not that there are no mages,” Vanyi said after a pause, due respect to his invocation. “They have too many, maybe. Every lord has his sorcerer in grey. Do you wonder, sometimes, if the Guild didn’t die out after all, or subsume itself into our priesthood? What if it survived in secret, in Asanion? A mage killed Ganiman the emperor. Maybe he wasn’t alone when he did it.”
“We never found an accomplice,” Iburan said. He sat on the fountain’s rim a little distance from her, and washed the fruit’s sweetness from his beard. “The Guild died a natural death. Anyone will tell you so. After it failed to raise a puppet emperor on the throne of the two lands, and was subjugated to the will of Sarevadin and her consort, it withered into nothing. Mages had no desire to join a guild of traitors. Those who were willing or able to bear discipline accepted the torque. The rest took teaching from the priests and went their ways, sworn and bound to work no harm.”
“All of which I know,” said Vanyi sharply. “I heard it the first day I went to our priestess in Seiun and told her I wanted to learn. What if she was wrong? Consider what Hirel did to the army of his brothers, any one of whom could have supplanted him or his half-bred son. He shut them in the palace, gave them all that they could ask for—but no women. No children. If the palace galled them, they could leave freely, on one small condition. They must leave their manhood behind and go out as eunuchs. His sisters were free to do as they pleased, but they could never marry, never bear children to challenge his heir. It was a brilliant solution. Merciful, even. What if he did the same to the Guild?”
“He did, in his way,” Iburan said.
“And if the Guild saw it, and saw through it? What then? Mightn’t they have pretended to dwindle and vanish, but only gone into hiding?”
“It would be difficult,” said Iburan, “to conceal such powers as they would need to raise, simply to train their young mages. We would know. We’d have sensed them long ago, and disposed of them.”
“Not if they used Gates,” Vanyi said.
Iburan sighed, but not with temper. “So. You’ve thought of that, too? We’ve found nothing. You know that. You’re a Guardian.”
“I don’t think,” said Vanyi, “that we should grow lazy simply because we haven’t found anything. They’d be expecting it, you know. The last Guildmage who would admit to it died when Varuyan was emperor. It’s been a solid generation since. Time enough to dig in deep and build the walls high.”
“Have you had a Seeing?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. She was irritable: that surprised her. “You know that’s not one of my talents. I’m just thinking. Maybe it’s this place. It remembers. It doesn’t like us much.”
“That it doesn’t.” He was smiling. His beard hid the curve of his lips, but his eyes were warm, even wicked. “You are marvelously gifted with power; more, one might think, than you have any right to be.”
That did not help Vanyi’s temper at all. “I’m not too badly trained, and I have Gate-sense. I’m nothing more than that.”
“But you are,” said Avaryan’s high priest in Endros. “It’s time you admitted it.”
“Why now?” she demanded. “Why here?”
“Because it pleases me,” he said, “and because you’ve made a study of the Guild and its Gates, and your bones tell you to be uneasy. None of the rest of us is so troubled.”
“Not even you?”
She had not meant her voice to sound as hard and mocking as it did. Iburan did not take umbrage at it. “Not even I. I’m jealous, I confess. If I were a shade less wise, I’d even be angry. Who are you, after all, but a priestess on Journey, and a commoner at that?”
Her own frequent words, spoken with exquisite irony. She blushed and glowered, and bit her tongue before she said something even more unfortunate than she had already said.
“Priestess,” he said, wholly grave for once, “never let your lack of rank or lineage shield you from the truth. If your power tells you that you should be wary, listen to it. Heed it. Act as it bids you. And if you have need of me, wherever you or I may be, call on me, and I will come.”
Vanyi shifted on the fountain’s rim. Her body was as reluctant as her mind to accept what he was telling her. That she was not a priestess-mage like any other. That she was—could be—more than that. Maybe much more. More even than an empress.
Her body knew how to stop that thought before it ran wild. It had been long cycles since she had had a man, and would be longer yet, unless she let the priests restore the bindings. Her womb was open still, unspelled. It made a useful refuge from a harder truth.
Useful; and safe, which her body well knew. Even if she had not risked breaking her vows again, she would do no more than fidget under Iburan’s splendid black eye. Everyone knew whose bed he went to when the temple did not keep him for itself.
Everyone, that is, but Estarion. One way and another he had fail
ed to notice, and people had failed to enlighten him.
Wise of them. He would not be pleased to know how his mother found comfort in her widowhood. Sons could be odd that way. Every man’s mother a saint, and every man’s sister a maiden.
She stood up abruptly. “I have duties,” she said; or something like it. She did not look to see if Iburan’s smile turned mocking; or if he knew all of the reasons why she fled.
o0o
The Gate was at rest as Gates went, wandering with dream- slowness through its manifold worlds. This one could, if one but asked, come to the center and focus of the Gates’ power, the Heart of the World.
That stronghold stood amid bare and barren mountains under a moonless sky, on a world that had no name. Its center was a blaze like a hearthfire, but it was pure power. It had made the Gates in the beginning, and it had made an empress of a Varyani high prince, and in the end it had betrayed the mages who made it.
Sarevadin was part of it, wrought in it. She had mastered it and the Guild, and drew its claws; but not before it had killed her mother and her consort’s father, and driven her own father mad.
She never forgave the mages, never trusted them or granted them power in her empire. Therefore they dwindled and the priest-mages of Endros rose to take their place, but in subservience to the Sun’s blood, and not in power over them.
The strength of the Gate here was such that three priests watched by night, two by day when the sun’s power balanced that of the Gate. The other who watched now was a stranger, an Asanian girlchild, mute with shyness.
Vanyi let her be. She would warm in time, as young animals did. Her magery was a bright and singing thing, as splendid as her outer seeming was dull.
They sang the rites together, the child’s voice light, almost without substance, Vanyi’s darker, smokier. The meeting of voice and power bred a silent amity.
They settled to prayer, content in one another’s presence. Vanyi was aware in her body of the Gate at rest, the land under her, the air heavy with heat. The sky beyond the temple was like a roof, looming low, breeding thunder.
Well indeed, thought Vanyi. Please the god, the heat would break. She would be able to breathe again. People would stop snarling at one another; the city would retreat from its raw edge of violence. Nothing had erupted yet, perhaps for fear of the emperor’s presence, but it was there, smoldering like fire under ash.
Almost without her willing it, her power divided itself. Part went on warding the Gate. Part ranged over the city, testing its mood.
She glanced at the Asanian priestess. That one seemed unperturbed. It was always so, her manner said. Kundri’j was an angry city. It smoldered; sometimes it burst into flame. Then people rioted, and the soldiers came, or if affairs were desperate, the Olenyai—this with a shiver of fear and sharp dislike. Now the emperor was here. People did not love his outland self, but his rank comforted them, and his presence in the palace.
Vanyi had no reason to be uneasy. She was not a seer. Old tales were rankling in her, half-rotted fears, treason overheard in the temple in Induverran, strangeness in the Gate of Endros.
This Gate was at peace. Its stars, when they shimmered past, were simple stars. Its worlds were worlds without fear.
And suppose, she thought, the Guild survived. It had made the Gates. Suppose that it could wield them, shape them to show only what the Guardians wished to sec, while it drew in secret from their power.
There was an insect in the Isles. The male possessed a maddening incessant buzz, but did not bite. The female was silent; she drank blood, and left great itching welts where she had been. Silence was the warning, people said. When there was no sound, no evidence of the creature’s passing, then one did well to be wary.
Fine way to drive oneself mad, thought Vanyi sourly. I hear nothing, therefore I fear everything.
The Gate and the temple were at peace. The sky was readying to burst, but that was nothing to fear under this roof, in walls of stone and magecraft.
Guildcraft.
She got up abruptly, paced from end to end of the sanctuary. Her companion watched her wide-eyed. She tried to smile. It only drove the child back into her shyness.
This house was built by mages of the Guild. This Gate was their Gate. These stones were imbued with their power, however thickly overlaid with the power of the priests. If they truly had not vanished, if they chose to come through, they would be idiots to emerge here, into the Guardians’ arms.
Such Guardians. One a year from full priesthood, the other little more than a novice.
“I’m losing my mind,” Vanyi said aloud. The little priestess did not understand her broad Seiun dialect. She said in Asanian, “I wish this heat would break.”
“Soon,” the priestess managed to say, great boldness in one so shy.
“Now,” said Vanyi. The word had no power in it, nothing but hope approaching desperation, but she could make it happen. She could shatter this heat, these clouds, this terrible, breathless waiting.
Magery was not for compelling the sky to do one woman’s will. Such threatened the balance that sustained the world. If she broke the storm too soon, one domain’s crops could wash away, another’s wither in drought. She was no god, to make such choices.
She felt the power building above her. The Gate’s shifting was quicker now, its edges sharper. Vanyi’s power firmed itself, weaving more tightly with the Asanian’s.
“This is a mother of storms,” the child said. “Watch for the winds. They’re treacherous. They like to spin and roar, and then they eat anything they find. But don’t be afraid. If one comes near us, we can coax it away.”
And if one would not be coaxed? If it were driven by living will, by the malice of an enemy?
It was only a storm. When it had passed, the heat would have broken, the air would be clean and cool and blessedly sweet. Vanyi would get her temper back again, and she would stop vexing herself with shadows.
Break, she willed it. Damn you, break.
The Gate was pulsing like a heart. Vanyi sent out a summons. Three would serve better here than two.
She did not wait to see who answered, but began to match her breaths to the pattern of the Gate. When they pulsed together, she shaped the notes of the breaking-chant.
Beat, pause. Beat, beat, pause. Beat, pause, beat. Breaking that perilous rhythm which, sustained, could shatter the Gate.
It fought her. The storm was in it, lending it strength. The little priestess chimed a descant.
The Gate wavered. Had it been a living thing, Vanyi would have reckoned it confused.
That too was dangerous. Confusion could shatter more easily even than that relentless beat-beat-beat.
A third voice entered the weaving, a third power like a pillar of light. It shored them up; it mastered the Gate.
Iburan. The name was pure power.
All at once, with a roar like armies charging, the storm broke.
It was glorious. Freed of fear for the Gate, secure in the threefold weaving, Vanyi rode the lightnings. Winds raged; she laughed at them. Rain lashed the roofs of the city, scoured the dust from its streets, churned its lanes to mud. The river roared in its bed.
The heat was gone, shattered. The land heaved a mighty sigh. The lightnings ran away eastward, drawing the winds in their wake. The rain came down more gently.
o0o
Vanyi slipped back into her body. She was kneeling before the Gate, the little priestess on one side of her, Iburan on the other, all three clinging together. The Gate was restless still, but growing quiet as she watched.
All of itself, her voice soared up, chanting the god’s praises. Iburan’s wove into it, drum-deep; and the little priestess’ like the call of a bird. They sang the storm away and brought back the sun, bright in the blue heaven.
But the Gate remained the Gate. And Vanyi’s heart was not at ease, however much she willed it to be so.
21
“That one is strong,” a darkmage said.
T
he Guildmaster raised his eyes from the scrying-glass. They were red-rimmed; the lines of his face were slack with weariness. “Which? The black priest? We knew that long ago.”
“No,” said the darkmage. “The young one, the Island woman. I should fear her, I think.”
“She is nothing,” said the Guildmaster.
The darkmage looked as if he would have argued, but they had by then taken notice of the stranger at the door. Korusan suppressed an unbecoming stab of malice that even the great Master of mages had failed to mark his coming. They had been preoccupied—pressingly so, from the look of them.
He did not let his eyes wander to the scrying-glass, sorely though it might tempt them. He had yielded to one like it before, and been ill for days after. There was too much magic in him, he had been given to understand, and yet too little. Too much to be impervious to the lure of the visions in the glass, too little to defend him when they sucked at his soul.
“My prince,” the Guildmaster said. “You are welcome in Kundri’j Asan.”
No word of disapproval that Korusan should have come to this city. No suggestion of anger that he had dared it.
“Is it not my city?” Korusan said. “Am I not to be lord of it?”
“In time,” the Guildmaster said, “you shall.”
Korusan circled the room and the gathering of mages, keeping his distance from the glass on its frame. “How marvelous,” he said, “that you lair here, deep in the enemy’s palace. And none of them suspects that you exist.”
“One does,” said the darkmage who had spoken before: stubbornly, Korusan thought, and not at all prudently. “She pries into the library we so unwisely left intact. She questions what none of her kind should question.”
“She is no danger to us,” the Guildmaster said. “What can she know but that we were once strong?”
“She knows Gates,” the darkmage persisted. “She could almost be one of us.”
