Arrows of the Sun
Page 48
She hurled them back at him, reckless, in a blind fury, as if all of it were seething out of her—grief, rage, guilt, fear, hate, love that had bent awry and turned to pain.
The mage seized on that pain and twisted. She lunged into the Gate and went for his throat.
He laughed in his bonds. He had trapped her.
He caught her in midleap. She kicked and flailed. He held her just out of reach of eyes and throat, and while she raged, forgetful of power, he smote her with his magery.
She sagged. He drew her in. He would kill her with his hands, bind her with his power, seal her to his will—any or all of them. Estarion, helpless on the far side of the Gate, barred from it by magewalls, could only watch and rage.
The mage clasped her tightly. His power uncoiled.
She erupted, body and power. He toppled astonished. She bound him as he lay, her movements swift, furious, and heaved him up.
He hung again in the void of power that was the Gate, wound in cords like a spider’s prey. And like a spider’s prey, he looked living on the face of his death. Shadows gathered about him. Watchers: dim shapes like wolves, grinning wide wolf-grins.
The ul-cub yowled and sprang. The watchers scattered.
The cub in the Gate was larger than they, black beast sun-eyed. He bared his fangs at the mage. The mage began to struggle.
Vanyi stood back, watching, saying nothing.
The mage spoke with remarkable steadiness under the circumstances, but there was no mistaking the desperation in his voice. “Let me go,” he said. “Lady, priestess, whatever you wish, whatever I can give—”
“What have you given us,” she asked him coldly, “but death and betrayal?”
“I erred, I confess it. I’ll serve you faithfully. Only let me go.”
“No,” said Vanyi.
He offered her gold. He offered her slaves. He offered her empires—and what right, Estarion wondered, had he to do that? She ignored him.
He offered her magic. She clapped hands over her ears. He offered her the Gates and all that was in them, if she would set him free.
“Take him,” she said to the ul-cub.
The cat flowed toward him. He began to scream.
“Goddess,” she said in disgust. “Nothing’s even touched him.”
Nothing, Estarion thought, but terror.
The ul-cub circled the mage, tail tip twitching. He fought harder against his bonds.
They snapped. He dropped, still screaming. The ul-cub sprang.
It was a clean kill. One spring, one snap of jaws in the neck. The ul-cub stood atop the body, treading it with half-flexed claws, as if to ask it why it jerked and twitched.
Slowly it stilled. He sniffed it. His nose wrinkled. He stepped away fastidiously, shaking a paw that had drawn blood, pausing to lick it clean.
The watchers had stood back in respect, but once he had retreated they closed in, surrounding the body. Their chieftain sniffed the blood on it, tasted it. He barked once. The pack fell yelping on the feast.
The ul-cub ignored them. He sprang out of the Gate and flung himself at Estarion’s feet, and set to washing himself thoroughly, with much snarling and sneezing at the stink of mageblood.
Vanyi followed the cat, walking steadily. Only Estarion, maybe, saw how pale she was, how pinched her face. He yearned to clasp her to him, to stroke her pain away. But he had grown wise: he did not touch her.
When she turned again to the Gate, she was calm. She said to the Olenyai, “By your emperor’s leave, take the prisoners back to Pri’nai. He will follow when he is finished here.”
The Olenyai glanced at Estarion. He hesitated. The Gate sang faintly to itself. The watchers were still feeding.
Below the Tower was the crag of Endros and the river, and his own city. He had but to find the door to that doorless place, and walk out of it, into his palace.
Or he could pass the Gate, enter the Heart of the World, walk from it to Pri’nai and Asanion and rebellion that was not ended for that its prophet was dead.
His heart shrank from facing Asanion again. Even Haliya, even his ladies in Kundri’j—he was duty to them, no more. Asanion would never be his, would never learn to love an outland conqueror.
He knelt beside Korusan’s body. He had straightened it when he laid it down, so that the head did not hang awry on its broken neck.
The face was quieter than it had ever been in life. Not at peace, no. Peace was alien to emperors, or to princes of the Lion’s brood.
Estarion was the last of that blood, but for the child in Haliya’s womb: he with his dark hands, his alien face. He was the Son of the Lion.
He kissed the cold lips. “I loved you,” he said. “Not enough. Not as you loved me. No one can love like that and live. But as a Sunlord can love—so I loved you.” He lifted the body, cradling it. Already it had begun to stiffen.
He could not lay it on the bier. It was not fitting. Yet he did not wish to take it from the Tower.
His power was in him, filling him like wine in a cup. It flexed a tendril of itself.
The Tower responded. Where had been blank luminous wall, a niche stood open, like the tombs of the kings in the crag below. Estarion laid Korusan in it. It fit him precisely.
As Estarion drew back, the wall closed again. Through it as in a glass he could see the shadow that had been his lover, his enemy, his kinsman.
He kissed his burning palm and laid it against the stone. He did not speak. All that he could say was said. There was nothing left but silence.
o0o
They were waiting still, Olenyai and mages beyond the Gate, Vanyi and the cat on this side of it.
He spoke to the Olenyai. “Let your prisoners go.”
The Olenyai did not wish to obey, but he was their emperor. The mages responded variously to freedom. Some stood still, as if they did not dare to move. Some shook themselves like ruffled birds. A few stepped apart from their erstwhile jailers and faced Estarion through the Gate. Those would be the strongest of them, or the most determined in rebellion.
“The battle is mine,” he said to them.
“But the war may not be,” said a woman in grey. Her shadow-brother stood behind her, hands on her shoulders, and fixed Estarion with a cold stare.
He gave them fire-heat. “You have a custom, yes? Whoever defeats your master in battle of magecraft becomes master in his stead.”
The lightmage was not pleased to answer, but answer she did. “That is so.”
“Then by your law,” said Estarion, sweeping his hand toward Vanyi, “this woman is your master.”
Vanyi opened her mouth. The lightmage spoke before she could begin. “That is none of ours. She belongs to the temple.”
“She is a mage,” said Estarion, “and a master of Gates.”
“Estarion—” said Vanyi. She sounded as if she could not decide whether to kill him quickly or let him die slowly, in the most exquisite agony she could devise.
“She defeated your master in combat,” Estarion said to the mages. “Fair, I would hardly call it, but there is no question as to the victor.”
Some of the mages looked as if they would have argued, but the lightmage, who seemed to hold rank among them, silenced them with a slash of the hand. “What are you proposing, Sunlord?”
Another merchant, this one, and settling in to haggle. He was in no mood to indulge her. “This is your trial, mage. I judge you guilty. You have earned death, but I am weary of killing. I give you all to this priestess-mage. Your Guild is hers, to break or to keep. But if she breaks it, then you die.”
“And if I won’t kill them?” Vanyi demanded.
“Then I will.” There was iron in his voice, the taste of it in his throat like blood. “Let them live, and be master of them. Refuse to master them, and they die.”
She looked long at him, studying him as if he were a stranger.
Maybe he was. He was not the fragile young thing that had come to this place. He was not whole, either, not surely,
not yet. But he was beginning to be what he was born to be: mage, priest, emperor.
“If I do this,” she said, “you’ll lose all hope of making me your empress.”
His belly knotted. He had been going to command her in that, too; to name her empress in despite of the woman in Pri’nai. No one else was more fit to rule.
“Haliya might surprise you,” she said, reading his thoughts as she always could, even when he was shielded; as he had been able to read hers even when he had no power to speak of.
It was not magery. It was love.
“Yes, I love you,” she said. “I always have. I always will.”
“And your price is the Guild—the deaths of its mages?”
She flinched. He had not meant to say that. It had come out of him, out of the high cold thing that he was becoming, here in the Tower of his fathers.
She seized his hands. “You won’t let them live? Even for me?”
He looked down at her. He never remembered how small she was. Not much taller than Haliya, but tall in the soul, and great in power. Very great. She made so little of it that even mages failed to see the truth.
“You don’t want me,” he said, reading it in the eyes that lifted to meet his. “Not except for yourself; not for what I am or the titles I bear. You were never made for empire. But power and the Gates—there you are mistress and queen.”
“Not queen,” she said.
“No,” he said. “But Master of the Guild, yes. It won’t be easy. There are more mages, maybe, than any of us imagines. I wager you’ll find them on all the worlds of the Gates, or near enough. And they’re mostly Asanians. They hate foreigners, and they despise the lowborn.”
She was shaking as if with cold. She was no fool, to be fearless of what he wished on her.
Wished, no. He wanted her at his side, sharing his throne, his bed, his heart.
Wisdom was a bitter thing.
“If you don’t lead them,” he said, “and keep them rigidly in hand, they have to die. I can’t trust them. They contrived the death of my father; they nearly killed me. I won’t leave them free to destroy my son.”
He had startled the mages and brought the Olenyai quivering to attention. He would have laughed, if he had remembered how.
Vanyi took no notice. Her eyes were full of tears, but they were as hard as his own, and as clear. “You’ve changed,” she said.
“For the worse, I’m sure.” She caught his irony; her lips twitched. She still held his hands. He turned them to clasp hers. “I envy you. I have my empire, and my power is mine again. You have the high magic. The Gates are yours, and all the worlds they command.”
“If I can master them.”
“You doubt it?”
Her lip curled. “I’m not a prince’s get. I don’t know what I can do until I do it.”
“Nor do I,” he said, “and I’m a Sunlord’s get.”
“You don’t leave me much choice, do you? Empress or Guildmaster. What if I want to be a simple priestess on Journey?”
“The mages die,” he said.
She drew her breath in sharply. “And you? What are you going to do? Hide in Endros? Hope your troubles go away?”
She thought she had him. It was fair, he supposed. “I . . . thought I might rest. For a while.”
“While your empire falls about your ears? That’s wise, yes.”
“Of course,” he said, “before I can rest, there’s a little matter of civil war. And a pair of empires that must be one. And two cities that will submit to the mastery of another that is neither Asanian nor Varyani, but both. Once that’s built, then I’ll sleep for a cycle, and go hunting for a season, and forget that I was ever born to rule this monstrosity of an empire.”
She gaped. She would never forgive him, he thought, for mocking her. Then she laughed.
There was pain in it, but it was real enough for that. “Confess, Estarion. You didn’t know you’d say that until you said it.”
“I didn’t,” he said.
“We know each other well,” she said. She let go his hands, ran hers up his arms, stroking them, as if she could not help herself. “If I take the Guild, you’ve lost me. I won’t come to your bed. I won’t be your lover. What I will be . . . I’ll be your friend, Meruvan Estarion, but not your servant. I’ll serve you as I can, as the needs of the Guild allow. But if I see that your commands will serve the Guild ill, I’ll oppose you.”
“Even to death?” he asked her.
“If I must.”
Her hands rose to his shoulders, crossed his breast, came to rest over his heart. It was beating hard. “I can’t promise you,” he said, “that I’ll always do what’s best for the Guild. If breaking the Guild will serve my empire, I’ll do it. Even if it kills you.”
She bowed her head, raised it again. This was no easier for her than it was for him. But she had courage at least to match his, and will as strong. She took his face in her hands, pulled it down and kissed him. “For remembrance,” she said.
If he had had tears left, he would have wept. She let him go, turned, walked toward the Gate. She stepped through it.
The watchers watched but did not move. She stood before the mages. “You heard,” she said. “Now heed. You saw what came of your Master. Remember it.”
They would remember. Estarion would never forget.
The ul-cub rose from his crouch by Estarion’s feet, stretched from nose to tail, and eyed the Gate. He was thinking of his mother and his sisters, of milk and meat and sleep.
Yes, Estarion thought. Sleep. The long night was past; the dawn had come. He looked about, to remember: black bier, bright walls, shadow in the stone.
Beyond the walls the sun was rising. It brought light into this place of all places, great tides and torrents of it, flowing over him, singing in his blood. He filled his hands with it, and bore it with him through the Gate, and in that cold hall of all suns and none, poured it out upon the stone.
The mages did not understand. The Olenyai, maybe, did. Vanyi looked ready to strike him. “This is not your place,” she said.
“All places are mine,” he said, “and none, as they are for any man. I’m lord of a world. May I not bear tribute from it to the Heart of all worlds that are?”
She did not trust him. That was pain, but it was just. She was his equal now; and that both pricked and pleased his pride.
He met her glare with the flicker of a smile. “Welcome me to the heart of your realm, mistress of mages.”
Her glare did not abate. He would not have been surprised if she had flung him back where he came from, cat and guards and all. “You have nerve,” she said as if to herself, and not kindly either.
His smile widened. He did not mean it to. With all the grief on him, the guilt, the blood on his hands, he should never smile again. But there was a pool of sunlight between them, here where sunlight never came, and she was wonderful to watch, mantled in her magic, wrestling with her temper.
She mastered it. Sparks still flew from it, but when she spoke she was civil, if not precisely gracious. “Welcome,” she said, “to the Heart of the World.” And after a pause, in which no one seemed to breathe: “My lord emperor.”
That would do. For a beginning.
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Copyright & Credits
Arrows of the Sun
Avaryan Resplendent Volume I
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Edition August 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-283-9
Copyright © 1993 Judith Tarr
First published: Tor Books, 1993
Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Production team: Julianne Lee, Vonda N. McIntyre
v20130801vnm
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About the Author
Judith Tarr holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award
for The Isle of Glass and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.
Other Titles by Judith Tarr
Novels
Ars Magica
Alamut
The Dagger and the Cross
Living in Threes
Lord of the Two Lands
A Wind in Cairo
His Majesty’s Elephant
Series
Avaryan Rising
The Hall of the Mountain King
The Lady of Han-Gilen
A Fall of Princes
Avaryan Resplendent
Arrows of the Sun
Spear of Heaven
Tides of Darkness
The Hound and the Falcon
The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn
The Hounds of God
Nonfiction
Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right
BVC Anthologies
Beyond Grimm
Breaking Waves
Brewing Fine Fiction
Ways to Trash Your Writing Career
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy II
About Book View Café
Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.
Book View Café is good for readers because you can enjoy high-quality DRM-free ebooks from your favorite authors at a reasonable price.
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Book View Café authors include New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.
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Sample Chapter: A Fall of Princes