Arrows of the Sun

by Judith Tarr

  Iburan answered her slowly, as if Estarion had never spoken: that too a goad to his temper. “He slew with power. He was slow to recover.”

  “So simple,” she said. “So easy an escape. If you failed, or if you left his training half done—why then, it was never your fault, but his.”

  “We taught him all that we knew,” Iburan said. Growling it. “And who are you, old woman, to cast reproach on me?”

  “I am no one,” said Sidani. “No one reproaches you. But one might wonder if you knew what you were doing. He was—he is—no common mageborn child. And yet you raised him as one.”

  “How else was I to raise him?”

  “As his father’s son.”

  “So,” grated Iburan, “we did.”

  “Has he entered the Tower in Endros?”

  Iburan looked ready to spit at her. “No one enters that Tower.”

  “Sun-blood do.”

  “I am not Sun-blood.”

  “So,” Sidani said. She sighed. “One never allows for these things. If Ganiman had not died—if he had had time to tell the child what he must know—”

  “And how do you know?” Estarion broke in.

  She laughed. “Dear child, sweet child, I was old when your grandfather was born. I know what all the dead know.”

  “Mad,” said Iburan.

  Estarion’s temper set in pure contrariness. If she knew—if, O impossible, it could be true— “Is she mad, priest? Or does she know something that none of us has known?”

  “The Tower is halfway to the other side of the world,” she said. “And that’s a pity. You’re half a Sunlord now, and half a Sunlord you remain, until you pass that door.”

  “It has no door,” Iburan rumbled, but they took no notice of him.

  “And what will I gain,” Estarion asked, “when I come there?”

  “Maybe nothing,” she said. “Maybe all the power you think you’ve lost.”

  Estarion drew a knife-edged breath. All his power. All his magic. All his strength—to kill again. To slaughter souls. “I don’t know if I want it,” he said.

  “Then you are an idiot,” she said. She kicked her gelding into a gallop.

  He watched her go. She was safe enough, he thought distantly: the scouts were well ahead, and the road was straight and clear.

  “Sometimes,” mused Iburan, “I wonder . . .”

  “What?” Estarion snapped. Shock made him vicious; shock, and hope turned to gall. The woman knew nothing. No one, no power, even the Sunborn’s own, could make him a mage again.

  The priest shook off Estarion’s temper. “She’s no danger to you, whatever nonsense she babbles.”

  Estarion turned his back on all thought of Iburan or Sidani, hope or magic or the Tower that his firstfather had made. This was Asanion. Such things were nothing here.

  The sun was dazzling on the snow. He narrowed his eyes against it. The others rode with heads down, trusting their mounts’ sure feet, or wrapped veils about their eyes. They looked stiff with cold.

  He felt it, but dimly. Half a Sunlord, was he? Then the whole of a Sunlord must burn like a torch.

  “Quick now !” he called to the rest of them. “The faster we ride, the sooner we’re in the warm.”

  “Warmer than any of us needs, maybe,” Iburan muttered.

  Estarion laughed at him. Somewhat to Estarion’s surprise, he laughed in return. For a moment they were easy, as if there were no walls between them.

  But even before this quarrel, there was the matter of the secret that Iburan had kept, worse betrayal than any trespass in an emperor’s bed.

  “If you had told me,” Estarion said, “I could have forgiven you.”

  “Could you?”

  “All of you,” said Estarion with sudden heat, “every one of you—priests, princes, madwomen, all—never a one of you sees me as anything but a child or a ruined mage. When will I be a man? When my beard is grey? When I’m dead?”

  “When you learn to forgive the unforgivable,” said Iburan.

  “Then there are no men,” said Estarion. “Only saints and children.”

  “Even saints can err,” said Iburan, “and I’m no saint. What I did, I did for love of you.”

  “No, priest. You did it for love of my mother.”

  “That too,” Iburan said willingly. “But you were first. When your father brought you to me, and you hardly higher than his knee and hardly old enough to leave your mother’s breast—all eyes and questions, and power shining out of you like light from a lamp—I knew that I would love you. Him I served gladly, for he was my emperor, but you I served with my heart.”

  Estarion drew a breath that caught on pain. “When I saw you I was terrified. You were the largest man I had ever seen. Mother’s father was taller, and some of my uncles; but you were like a mountain looming over me. Then you smiled. And I loved you. Father was my father, soul and body both. You were my teacher, and my heart’s friend.”

  “So am I still,” said Iburan. “So shall I always be.”

  “Why, then? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Cowardice,” Iburan said. “You never ask why I did it at all.”

  “What’s to ask? She was beautiful and young, and widowed untimely; and you were thrown together in my incapacity. You’d be more than man if you hadn’t warmed to her.”

  “I did try to resist,” Iburan said. “For your father’s honor. For your sake.”

  “And she?”

  Iburan glanced back. Maybe he met the empress’ glance; maybe he had no need.

  “She wore you down,” Estarion answered for him. “She’s wise, and cold when she has to be. Her goddess isn’t the bright burning god we worship, you and I. She would keep the secret, for her own purposes. But you should have told me.”

  “I feel,” said Iburan after a pause, “quite properly rebuked.” His expression was rueful, but there was something new in his eyes. Something, Estarion thought, like respect.

  “I misread you,” Iburan said. “And I misjudged you.”

  He had not. But Estarion was not about to confess to it. He bent his head stiffly. He did not say anything.

  Iburan bowed and wheeled his mount, returning to his place. It was not, Estarion took note, at the empress’ side, but farther back, rearmost of the circle of mages.

  Estarion’s mind shifted itself away from little troubles; and it was little, this fret of his over his mother’s choice of lovers in her widowhood. He was aware of Pri’nai like an ache in his own body, a wound that festered deep and would not heal. Whether it was that he was coming closer to it, or that his land-sense was growing keener, he did not know.

  He was well in the lead now, with no memory of parting from his escort. Sidani waited ahead of him with Ulyai at her gelding’s heels and the young ones tumbling over one another in the snow. When he came level, the two she-cubs sprang into their panniers on the gelding’s saddle.

  The he-cub leaped, aiming for Umizan’s rump. Estarion swept him out of the air. He settled purring on Estarion’s saddlebow.

  Sidani did not speak as they rode on side by side. Only a lingering shred of prudence kept Estarion from kicking Umizan into a flat gallop.

  o0o

  Pri’nai stood at a meeting of roads, where the great southward way met the traders’ route into Keruvarion. Yet there was no one on the road. No travelers, no traders, no farmfolk walking to market. The houses they passed were silent, but not empty: they were full of eyes.

  “They know we’re coming,” Sidani said.

  Her voice was startling after so long a silence. There was no other human sound, only the cold clash of metal in mail-ring or harness, the thudding of hooves, the snort of a senel. No one was singing or talking. Hands were tensed on weapons; vanguard and rearguard had drawn in, wary.

  One of the scouts came back from beyond the hill. “Gates are open,” he said. “Guarded, and heavily, and they’re stopping people who come in or out. But there’s no fighting.”

  “
It’s inside the city, then,” Estarion said.

  “I think, sire,” the scout said, “maybe. There’s a feel to it I don’t like. Nobody out, and nothing moving outside the walls. It’s brooding on something.”

  “I’ll go in,” said Estarion.

  “Sire—”

  “I’m going in.”

  o0o

  He went in. Not slowly, not quickly after all his haste to come so far. He led his escort down from the hill toward the city of the crossroads. It stood in a ring of gardens, orchards and vineyards bleak in the snow, and the white mounds of tombs amid the bare branches.

  The northward gate was open. Guards filled it. Troopers’ bronze and officers’ steel gleamed above it. If all the gates were so guarded, then Pri’nai was ringed with an army, and all of them in the black and bronze of the lord of Ansavaar.

  And if Ansavaar itself was in revolt, then Estarion was well and truly destroyed; for this was the army which he had come to command.

  He might have sent men ahead to prepare his coming, as he had done in every city he had entered since Induverran. But in this he had chosen to come unheralded. He knew better than to think that he was unexpected.

  The wind caught his standard and unfurled it. Golden sun flamed on scarlet, the war-banner that had not flown in the twofold empire since Varuyan was emperor.

  One of the Olenyai bore it. Not Korusan. The boy would not leave Estarion’s shadow, or speak, or lift hands from swordhilts.

  He was ill, Estarion thought, or beset with some trouble. Estarion would put him to the question. Later.

  Estarion wore mail and the scarlet war-cloak taken hastily out of the baggage, but his helmet rested on his knee. He did not intend to need it. He kept Umizan to a sedate canter, advancing lightly toward the gate and the guards. No one rode in front of him. He was a plain target, and so he meant to be.

  A spear’s length in front of the line of guards, he brought Umizan to a halt. They knew him: none would lift eyes to his face. “The emperor,” he said, making no effort to shout, but knowing that they could hear him all along the wall, “would enter Pri’nai. Will the lord of the city admit him?”

  There was a silence. Estarion sat calm in it. He heard behind him the soft snick of swords loosened in scabbards, and a seneldi snort. The cause of that came to stand at Umizan’s shoulder, tail twitching, inspecting the guards as if to choose the tenderest for her prey.

  “Every city,” said a voice at last above the gate, “is the emperor’s, and every lord is his servant.”

  Estarion looked up at the captain of the guards. The man did not look down. “Is it a quandary,” Estarion inquired, “to stand above your emperor?”

  He won no answer. Ulyai moved forward, growling at the nearness of the city, but unflinching. Umizan followed her. The guards melted before them.

  o0o

  After the quiet without, the clamor of the city was deafening. The walls contained it and sent it ringing back, a dance of echoes that made Ulyai snarl and the seneldi squeal and skitter.

  People fled the restless hooves. Those who could, dropped down in homage; the rest vanished into doorways or darted down passages. No one lingered to watch the emperor ride by.

  The clamor had a source, and Estarion sought it. Pri’nai’s center was a broad open space, a court of temples and of the lord’s palace, with a fountain in it, silent now in winter.

  Here were the people of the city, a milling, shouting, restless crowd, all turned to face the wide stair that mounted to the palace. Guards rimmed it. Further throngs filled the top of it and vanished through the open gates.

  Estarion halted on the edge of the square and beckoned. His trumpeter edged forward, wary of Ulyai, who pressed close against Umizan’s side. He passed Estarion with a glance half of boldness, half of panic. But boldness was stronger. He raised his trumpet to his lips and blew.

  The crowd parted. Slowly, with much jostling, it opened a path to the dais. Silence spread as people went down in homage.

  Estarion rode the length of that road of living bodies. His back tensed against an arrow that did not fly, a stone that was not flung. The desire was there, and the hostility, but it did not burst the bonds of fear, the power of a thousand years of emperors.

  Estarion dismounted at the foot of the stair. The guards parted as they had in Pri’nai’s gate. The press of people thrust and jostled and cursed itself aside.

  o0o

  The hall of the palace was dim after the brilliance of sun on snow, lamplit and windowlit, seething with lordly presences as the square had been with commoners. At the end of it stood a dais, and on the dais a tall chair, and in the chair, the lord of Ansavaar. There were others about him, a man before him with a scroll of the laws, and at his feet a huddle of men in chains.

  They all stood frozen at the emperor’s coming. He considered lingering in the doorway, but that was cruel. He did not pause or slow until he stood upon the dais and the lord of Ansavaar bowed down at his feet.

  “Up,” he said, “my lord Shurichan.”

  Shurichan of Ansavaar rose with practiced grace, shying from the ul-cat’s shadow. Ulyai ignored him, taking station at the dais’ foot.

  He was a young man, taller than some and broader, and a rarity in an Asanian lord: a man who not only knew how to fight but evinced a fondness for it. He wore armor over his fivefold robes, and his princely coronet circled a helmet. “My lord emperor,” he said. “Well come to Pri’nai.”

  “So one might think,” Estarion said. He leaned against the chair in which Shurichan had been sitting, and folded his arms. “Now, my lord. Go on with your justice.”

  “Majesty,” said Shurichan. “I can hardly—in your presence—”

  Estarion tilted his head. He eyed the chair, and the man who had sat in it. Shurichan betrayed no expression.

  Estarion looked about. There was a stool nearby, on which a scribe might have been sitting: he was on his face now, rusty black robe, rusty black hat. Estarion hooked the stool with a foot and drew it to him, and perched on it. “Now,” he said. “Go on.”

  Shurichan was nicely shocked. He fell rather than sat in his high cushioned chair, and composed himself with visible effort.

  Estarion watched him narrowly. Resentment, yes; his court of justice had been disrupted, his office lessened by the insouciant presence on the stool. But anger, no. And no move to protest.

  Interesting. Estarion surveyed the men on the dais, the cat at its foot, the guards returned to their vigilance, the crowd of lords rising slowly from the edges inward but slow yet to resume their clamor.

  His escort had spread among the guards, ringing the dais, and his mages among them in a broad and broken circle. They were fully on guard; the wards had been raised about him since he left the hill above Pri’nai.

  Within the wards, in the court of justice, men waited in chains. They were ragged, beaten and bruised, cowering in terror or glaring with defiance.

  Common malefactors, Asanians all, and nothing to mark them from any hundred of their like; and yet Estarion’s heart went still. Here, he thought. Here: not south of here, not in the siege of that lesser city, nor west where he had forborne to go. Here it came to the crux. He felt the force of it in his bones.

  The men about him, lords, scribes, judges, rose one by one in order of precedence and returned to their places. The scribe whose stool Estarion had taken settled without apparent discomfort on the dais, set his tablets on his knees and raised his stylus, and waited.

  The herald of the court glanced at his lord, and then swiftly, almost shyly, at Estarion. Estarion smiled. “Read the charges,” he said, “if you will.”

  The man looked flustered, but he obeyed.

  They were couched in the excess of Asanian ceremony, dense as weeds in a garden. Estarion was learning to find the flowers in the undergrowth, to pluck the essence of the charges from the knots of the law.

  These were rebels. They had conspired against the imperial majesty; they had raised ins
urrection in Pri’nai and the towns about it; they had named themselves followers of one they called prophet and prince, lord of the Golden Empire, son of the Lion. And the one they followed, their prophet, their prince—he huddled among them in the wall of their bodies.

  Estarion rose. The herald faltered, but Estarion’s gesture bade him continue. His voice rang clear in the stillness as Estarion stepped down among the prisoners.

  They shrank from him. None sprang, though one looked as if he thought of it: a young one with a split cheekbone and an arm that dangled useless, and the eyes of a slave to dreamsmoke.

  The one they sought even now to protect was a poor thing, a huddle of torn silk and tarnished cloth of gold, crouched with his arms over his head. Estarion lifted him by the wrists.

  He came as limply as a poppet made of rags, but once on his feet he stayed there, trembling. His hair was a brass-bright tangle, his face bruised ivory. His eyes were gold, and enormous.

  They were not lion-eyes, although to one who did not know, they might seem so, large-irised as they were. He was as beautiful as a girl, as delicate as girls in Asanion were supposed to be.

  He looked remarkably, uncannily like Korusan. But Korusan was steel. This was silvered glass, so brittle that a breath would shatter it.

  “Who are you?” Estarion asked him. His voice was gentle, and not through any will of his own; he should have been merciless. But it was difficult to be cruel to such a child.

  The boy trembled until he nearly fell. Estarion held him, shook him. “I know what they say you are. You know as well as I, that that is a lie.”

  “I am,” the boy whispered. “I am. Lion—prince—I prophesy—”

  “But I am the Lion’s heir,” Estarion said. “There is no other.”

  “I am,” the boy said. He was weeping, shuddering, sick with terror. “They said I was. They said!”

  “What were you before they told you the lie?”

  “I—” The boy swallowed. It must have hurt: his face twisted. “I was—he owned me. Kemuziran. He sold spices. And slaves. And—and—”

  “And you,” Estarion said. “You’re a purebred, aren’t you? The line they breed still, for the beauty and for the likeness to the Lion’s brood. No Lion, you. You were bred to be a lady’s lapcat.”