Arrows of the Sun

by Judith Tarr

  “I thought the grooms made a mistake and saddled her for one of the guards.”

  “A mistake they’ve made every day since,” he said.

  She hovered above him. Her hair streamed down, bright gold. It, like her eyes, like her breasts and her hips and her sweet rounded thighs, was beautiful. “I can be an idiot sometimes,” she said. “Did you know that your eyes tilt up at the corners when you smile? And your tongue isn’t pink. It’s the same color as the rest of you.

  “Isn’t yours?”

  She presented it for his inspection.

  “Pink,” he said. “How odd.”

  “You are odd. You aren’t all black, like a shadow. You’re like glass. I can see underneath. What happens when you faint? Do you go blue?”

  “My lips go grey,” he said.

  “We go green. And try to fall gracefully. It’s an art.”

  He tangled his hands in her hair. “Is everything an art with you?”

  “Everything.” She swooped down to set a kiss on his cheek. “Oh, I do like you. Do you like me?”

  “Very much,” he said.

  She did not say the next thing, the thing he dreaded. Maybe Asanians did not know about it. She wriggled down the length of him, doing things that he had not known a woman could do, with such delight in discovery that he could not help but laugh.

  He had begun the night in grief and rage. He ended it in laughter. That was a gift. He had the wits to cherish it, and the one who gave it.

  o0o

  Estarion started awake. The bed under him felt strange, over-soft, scented with perfumes. He was alone in it.

  He lay for a while, piecing together memory. Godri— Vanyi—Haliya—

  He had dreamed that last. Surely he had. But this was not his bed, this billowing mound of cushions, and this was not his chamber, with its sweeps and swathes of curtains. He was naked in it, his body loosed, eased as only a woman could ease it.

  The anger was still in him, the tight, hurting thing that thrust out guilt. Regret, he had none. They wanted him to choose. He had chosen.

  Haliya would do. She might even do well. As for the nonsense of love, that was forbidden him. Vanyi had made that very clear, clearest of all who undertook to teach him his duty.

  He had been slow to learn it, but now he had it. He would be the emperor they wished him to be. And since this was Asanion, he would be emperor as emperors were in the Golden Empire. Cold. Devious. Ruling as spiders ruled, from the heart of the web.

  Servants appeared, knowing by some art of theirs that the emperor was awake. They bathed him, dressed him, brought him food and drink.

  He had little appetite, but the wine was welcome. When he had drunk the flagon dry, Haliya was brought in to him.

  The laughing wanton lover of the night was gone. In her place stood an Asanian lady in a furlong of silk, painted and scented and jeweled and refusing adamantly to meet his glance. Even when he rose and went to her and tilted up her chin. “Haliya,” he said. “Whatever has come over you?”

  Her face was tight, her voice stretched thin. “I am not a maiden now. I must be a woman.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It is custom,” she said.

  “Custom be damned.” Her eyelids were gilded. His finger, brushing them, came away tipped with gold. “I liked you as you were before. Surely you won’t be living your whole life now in all that silk? And paint—you can’t ride a senel with your face covered with gilt.”

  “A woman never rides a senel.”

  “Even if her lord commands her to?”

  Her eyes flashed up then, as bright as they ever were. “Does my lord command?”

  “Your lord commands,” he said.

  She grinned, brief but brilliant. She smoothed a fold of her outer gown. “I do look ridiculous, don’t I?”

  “You look splendid,” he said, “and very uncomfortable. I much prefer you in trousers on your mare.”

  She blushed scarlet under the gilt, startled him by pulling his head down and kissing him soundly, and left him with a lightness in her step that looked fair to turn into a dance.

  Her gladness warmed him. Too much, maybe. He sent for another flagon of wine. It settled him, cooled his heart again, steeled him to be emperor.

  o0o

  Korusan stood guard on his proper chambers. Estarion did not know how to read the glance the Olenyas shot him, nor did he care. Much. It was not admiration, he did not think. Envy? Amusement? He was not about to ask. An emperor did not take notice of his servants, except to command them.

  That resolution lasted exactly as long as it took him to endure his hour in the hall, and to hold audience with a company of princes, and—great wonder and rarity—to ride for a few brief moments in his garden.

  Umizan was more fractious even than usual. Estarion had to rebuke him, which was unheard of. “Brother,” he said to the flattened ears. “Do you want me to set you free?”

  The ears flattened to invisibility, and the stallion bucked, sharp and short.

  “Yes,” Estarion said, “and I don’t want to lose you, either. But you’re going mad here.”

  A blue eye rolled back.

  “I can’t escape it,” said Estarion. “You can. Ulyai is long gone. I lay no blame on her: she only did what was wise. You can do the same.”

  Umizan half-reared, curvetted, lashed his tail as if he had been a cat. But when he had done that, he went still. His skin shuddered. He snorted.

  Tears pricked in Estarion’s eyes, the first in long seasons. “Yes, brother. It’s wise. In the morning I’ll send you away.”

  Umizan’s head drooped. Estarion stroked his neck, trying to comfort him. “It won’t be forever, brother. Only as long as I’m pent up in Kundri’j.”

  “He understands your speech?”

  Estarion regarded Korusan in surprise. The Olenyas had been watching here as he did everywhere else. Estarion slid from the saddle, keeping his arm about Umizan’s neck, smoothing the long mane. “He is my hooved brother,” he said, “and he comes of the Mad One’s line.”

  Korusan walked round the senel. Umizan’s ear followed him, but did not go flat.

  That interested Estarion. Umizan did not like strangers, and he detested Asanians. This one he suffered even to touch him, to run a hand down his neck and flank, to exchange senel-courtesies, nose to shrouded nose.

  “He is very beautiful,” said the Olenyas.

  “You may ride him if you like,” said Estarion, out of nowhere that he could think of.

  “He will suffer me?”

  “Ask him,” Estarion said.

  Korusan stroked the stallion’s muzzle, taking his time about it. He did not speak. Umizan blew gently into his palm. He took reins, wound fingers in mane, vaulted lightly astride.

  He rode well. Asanians often did. His hands were light, which was not common. He put Umizan through the dance of his paces. There was no telling behind the veils, but Estarion thought he might be smiling.

  He brought the stallion to a halt in front of Estarion. His eyes were bright but his voice was cool. “Yes, you should send him away. He does not thrive in this confinement.”

  “So. He talks to you, too,” Estarion said. He did not know that he was jealous. Interested, rather. Wary.

  “He is not difficult to understand.” Korusan swung down, stepped away, leaving the senel to his master. He did not do it easily: there was a drag in the movement, quick though it was.

  Estarion had won in hard battle the right to tend his own senel. Korusan lent a hand, capable in that as in everything else he did. They were almost companionable, walking up from the stable, man and shadow, emperor and Olenyas.

  28

  Vanyi stood unmoving for a long while after Estarion went away. The trembling began in her center and spread swiftly outward, till it buckled her knees and toppled her to the floor, gasping, fighting the tears that she would not, must not shed.

  But she had fought them too long. She had no defenses le
ft. She wept hard and she wept long, till her throat was raw and her ribs ached. And when she had no tears left, she lay where her fit had cast her, and she began to laugh. Weak laughter, laughter that, in its way, both sobered and steadied her.

  She went down to the Gate. It was not yet her time to stand guard, but one of the priests there was pleased to gain an early escape, and the others did not vex her with questions. There had been nothing, no sign, no suspicion, either before or after the attempt on the emperor’s life. It must be as rumor said: an assassin hired by rebels, with a warding on him, a common enough magic, within the powers even of a streetcorner mage. It had nothing to do with Gates or with the great magics.

  There were no mages strong enough to oppose the priests of the temple. Those who served lords and princes in Asanion were trained often enough in Endros or in the Nine Cities, or trained one another under the eye of the temples. The wild ones, the herb-healers and wisewomen and purveyors of village curses, could do no harm beyond their narrow reach. What harm they did was punished swiftly by priests passing through on Journey, or by hunters sent out from the temples, or by lords’ mages who did not suffer rivals.

  That much good the Sunborn had done. Magic was a known thing now. Dark magic and death-magic were forbidden or carefully circumscribed. The mageborn need not suffer the sins of ignorance; the sorcerers, those who came to power through the word and the work and not through the gift of birth, had leave to learn their arts in peace.

  Vanyi, mageborn and temple-trained, let her power bathe in the shimmer of the Gate. Its fire was cold and clean, its strength unwearied.

  She had been in the Heart of the World, that place like a fortress, where all guardians of Gates must go before they took up their charge. She had seen the flame in the hearth, walked in it and through it as part of her testing.

  She wondered now as she did then, that human creatures should have wrought such a thing, and made it everlasting. Not all or even most that was of the Guild was evil. It had striven to take power in the world, which was its downfall. In its day it had been a great and glorious thing, each mage a master of one of the faces of power, dark or light, and each paired with his opposite.

  That, the temples had lost. Some priest-mages served the god, some the goddess; they did not work together save in great need.

  She was distracting herself from her folly, and from the lover she had driven away. And why not? This was hers, this duty and this calling.

  As she stood her watch, a shadow paced through the door. It had been barred and warded; but the shadow took no notice of it. It wore a cat’s shape, a cat’s lambent eyes, its belly heavy with young.

  Vanyi had been kneeling by the Gate. She rose slowly. The other Guardians were mute and motionless, as if enspelled. “Ulyai,” she said, or willed to say.

  Estarion’s sister-in-fur heard: her ear cocked. She took no other notice. She approached the Gate as calmly as if it had been a door. It shifted, shimmered. She sat on her haunches to watch.

  “Ulyai,” said Vanyi. “How did you get in here?”

  Ulyai set to work washing her paws. Where she had been, how she had hunted, there was no telling. She was no more magical than she ever had been, and no less.

  The ul-cats of Endros’ palace were a law unto themselves. They had their own courtyard and their own garden, lived and bred and hunted as they chose, came and went at will, and answered to none but the emperor or their chosen kin-without-fur. Ulyai had been Estarion’s companion since he came back from his first sojourn in the west.

  She had not followed him into Kundri’j. Wise cat. Yet now she was here, magical unmagical beast, watching the dance of the worlds.

  Vanyi made no move to touch her. It was only prudence. She was as large as a child’s pony, with fangs as long as knives.

  She washed herself all over, meticulous as a lady’s lapcat. Then she rose, stretched each separate muscle—was that where Estarion had learned it, or had she learned it from him?—and yawned enormously.

  The world-dance had slowed as it sometimes did. Ulyai’s ears pricked. These were green worlds now, fields and plains and forests.

  She crouched. Vanyi goggled like an idiot as the cat leaped long and high and light, into the Gate.

  She caught herself the instant before she sprang in pursuit. The Gate pulsed and began to sing, a deep musical humming. Vanyi’s magery uncoiled of its own accord, to slow the pulse, to damp the power.

  Something.

  Something watching.

  Something flitting, shadow-quick, shadow-subtle.

  Something in the Gate.

  Not Ulyai. The cat was gone. Vanyi stalked the shadow through the flicker and shimmer of the Gate. Unwise, unwise, her training yattered at her, to do this alone, unwarded, unwatched—the priests with her worse than useless, rapt in a dream of Gatesong.

  Nothing.

  There had been something. Vanyi was sure of it. Something—someone—some power in the Gate, using it, passing through it.

  All those worlds—might not they too have mages, guardians, wielders of Gates?

  So they might. But this had a feel of this world, and not a beast, not a cat or a senel or a lesser creature stumbling into an ill-warded Gate. This shadow had moved with will and purpose, with intelligence, as a man would. A mage.

  Priest-mages used Gates—rarely, with great caution, and never alone, for Gates were dangerous. But there had been none such since the emperor left Endros, no need and no occasion. If there had, she would have known; and likewise every other Guardian in the twofold empire.

  She could not go to Iburan, even if he had been in the temple and not in the empress’ bed. Not until she knew certainly what she had sensed. They had alarms enough, with the attempt on the emperor’s life. They did not need this, which came to no more than a passage of shadows.

  And maybe, she thought, she had dreamed it all. Her companions, who had seemed bewitched, were awake now and on watch; they remembered nothing, no ul-cat coming out of the night, no disturbance in the Gate. Both were her elders, and more skilled in magecraft than she; and she had had night-terrors of Gates before, eyes in the dark, presences on the edge of her senses. Nothing had ever come of them.

  She had too much magery, she always had. It made her see shadows where no shadows were.

  Tonight in particular she was not the best of judges. She would wait and watch and see. If another shadow passed, another power betrayed itself, she would be ready. She would discover what it was that wielded Gates, and took no heed of wards or guards. And if it was not dream or delusion, was the Guild as she had feared for so long, feared and yes, hoped . . .

  Then she would go to Iburan and the others. Then they would do what they must do.

  29

  Korusan sat in the shadow of a pillar, glowering at the door to the emperor’s harem. He could pass it easily, if he were minded. Neither eunuch nor armored woman could stop him.

  At the moment it did not suit his fancy to walk where, of men entire, only the emperor should walk. His majesty was within, doing what a man did in his own harem. He had taken an unconscionable while to work himself up to it, but since the night he went to the priestess in the Mages’ temple, he had visited his concubines every evening and often nightlong.

  Concubine. It was only the one, the Vinicharyas, and not the beauty of the pair either. A fair number of wagers had been won and lost over that. Korusan had a fine new sword and a string of firestones, for opining that a barbarian would more likely choose a woman who could ride and shoot than one whose only skill was to please her lord in the inner room.

  They said that the barbarian was not unskilled in pleasing his lady and servant. For a barbarian. The lady was looking well satisfied.

  Korusan had seen her. She rode her hammer-headed mare without a veil, thinking herself safe from scrutiny. Her hair was the true gold and her eyes were like the beaten metal, but her face was a little better than plain, and her mouth was too wide, and where the sun touched her,
she freckled.

  He did not think, from what he saw of her in tunic and trousers, that she was very much more remarkable beneath them. A good depth of breast, yes, and ample hips, but no more than any woman should have if she was to breed strong sons.

  His scowl deepened. If he had been a mage, he could have burned down the door with his glare. His majesty was going about it with a good will, to be sure. And it was no secret where Korusan walked and listened, that the emperor had succeeded already in breaking the mage-bonds laid on his priestess. They had been strong enough to lose her the child, but she should never have conceived at all.

  There were no bonds on the lady in the harem. She was young, hale, of good fertile stock—her father had a dozen sons and daughters innumerable, and four of the sons were born of her mother. Wages now turned not on whether, but on when.

  Korusan would get no sons. The pain of that was old now, the wound scarred over. It still ached when the soul’s wind blew cold.

  And that one, that upstart, that mongrel, could not fail even when he wished to. Such irony, thought Korusan. The Sun’s whelp was getting sons behind that door, not even knowing that his shadow waited alone, nor troubling himself to care.

  It would be a nuisance to dispose of the woman and the infant, if any of them lived so long. And suppose that there was no child. It was possible. Even Sun-bolts were not unerring to every target.

  Suppose that the Varyani emperor went back to his priestess. She had driven him away ruthlessly—strong-willed as an Olenyas, and prickly proud. But suppose that she softened. She would not allow herself to bear a child until she was initiate; she wanted that, for a surety, and now that she had warning, she could guard herself against it.

  She was besotted with the emperor. That was obvious even when she drove him out with curses. He was besotted with her. He talked about her endlessly, pacing and prowling, till Korusan knew every word she had ever spoken, every move she had ever made. He did not speak of his concubine at all, except to mutter that she was a sensible woman, she did not scream and strike at him for daring to breathe in her presence.