Tides of Darkness

by Judith Tarr

  “Are you telling me that I should marry you?”

  “I am telling you that I will not take a lover,” she said with what little breath was left in her.

  Two days, she thought. Two lifetimes.

  “Will your people be appalled if I say yes? Will you?”

  “Why would you—”

  “Life is short,” he said, “and the night is long. And from the moment I saw you, I have loved you.”

  “I—She could feel the water closing over her head, hear the rush and roar of the cataract. “Life is short,” she said faintly.

  “Will your people be horrified?”

  “If their queen takes a god for a consort? They’ll reckon it a great good omen. The nobles and the priests will be less than amused.”

  “Nobles and priests can be managed,” he said.

  She met his eyes as firmly as she could. “If this is a jest, my lord, or a mockery, then may the greater gods repay you as you deserve.”

  There was no mirth in his gaze, no mockery or contempt. “I never jest in matters of the heart,” he said.

  She laid her hand over it. It was not beating as hard as hers, but neither was it as strong and slow as she knew it could be. Once more she found that she could see beneath the veil of him. The light was as clear as ever. He was a pure spirit. The beauty of him, within even more than without, made her catch her breath.

  “You will be consort and not king,” she said. “Can you endure that?”

  “I would expect nothing else,” he said. And with a flicker of lightness: “It’s still a fair step up from shepherd.”

  “And a long step down from king of kings.”

  “Ah,” he said, shrugging. “I gave that up.”

  “You are a very odd man,” she said, “but for a god, not so strange at all.”

  He laughed at that. He took her hands and pressed them to his lips and said, “I’ll see that this goes easily.”

  “No spells,” she said. “Promise.”

  “May I smile? Wheedle? Be charming?”

  “No magic,” she said. Then added: “Except the magic that is yourself.”

  “That will be enough,” he said.

  THIRTEEN

  TANIT WENT TO SETI AS SOON AS SHE COULD, WHICH WAS NEAR evening. The day had passed in a blur. She supposed that she had held audience, met in council, overseen the servants, and performed the myriad other duties of her office. She also supposed that the Lord Seramon disposed of himself in some useful fashion. He was seen round about in the city and in one or two of the nearer villages, and down by the river in the evening.

  Her heart would have taken her there and begged him not to risk himself again by night, but her colder spirit bade her let him be. He could look after himself. This that she had determined to do was not at all as simple as she had led him to think.

  Seti was preoccupied with the evening rite and sacrifice. She waited for him in a bare cell of a room outside the temple proper. A young priest waited on her; she wanted nothing, but he seemed content to amuse himself in conversation with her maid. She half-drowsed, sitting upright, spinning in her mind the things that she meant to say to Seti.

  When he came, it was as if it had all been said, and she could pay her respects and go away. But she was not quite as foolish as that. He greeted her gladly, and opened his arms for an embrace and the kiss of kin. His cheek was dry yet oddly soft under her lips, like age-worn leather. “Granddaughter,” he said. “It warms my heart to see you.”

  “Grandfather,” she said to her mother’s father. She insisted that he sit in the one chair the room afforded. She could be at ease on the floor, curled at his feet, as she had done when she was small.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She laughed a little. “Am I so obvious?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “And maybe it will be night soon, and time’s flying. What’s in your heart, child?”

  “Too much,” she murmured. She lifted her eyes to him, though he could not see; she suspected that he knew, somehow, or felt in the air what movements she made. “I am going to do a thing that will shock every priest and noble in this city. Except, I think, you.”

  “Oh, I’m not past shock,” he said. “What is it? Are you going to take the god to your bed?”

  She started and flushed. Even knowing how perceptive Seti could be, she had not expected him to see direct to the truth.

  “I knew the moment you met,” Seti said. “There are stars that dance twinned in heaven, and souls that are matched, each to each. Even the walls of worlds and time, mortality and divinity, simple human and great magic, matter nothing to them.”

  “That is very beautiful,” she said, “but we live in daylight, and the court and the temples will be outraged.”

  “So they will,” Seti said. “Does it matter?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “But—”

  “What do you think I can do? Command them all to accept what none of them can change?”

  It sounded absurd when he said it, but she said, “Yes. Yes, I had rather thought that.”

  “I can command respect,” he said. “Once I might have commanded more. You would do better to win over your uncle.”

  “Seti-re will never listen to me,” she said. She was not excessively bitter. It was fact, that was all. “But he will still listen to you. If he says the words that unite us, no one else will dare object.”

  “You are set on this? It’s not simple enough to take a lover?”

  “A lover would give them a weapon against me,” she said, “and weaken us when we need most to be strong. A consort proves before the gods that this is no decision taken lightly.”

  “You are stubborn,” said Seti, “and determined to make matters as difficult as possible.”

  “If I don’t do it,” she said, “the court will—or my uncle, who has never been my dearest friend.”

  “Indeed,” he sighed. “Tell me, child. What do you truly hope to gain? Is this your revenge on us all for expecting so much but giving so little in return?”

  “That would be the taking of a lover,” she said. “This begs the gods to be merciful to our city.”

  “By binding one of their own to it?”

  She bent her head.

  “He consents? Freely?”

  “It seems so,” she said.

  Seti sighed. “Child,” he said, “I will see what I can do.”

  She kissed him, less formally this time, and smiled. “Thank you, Grandfather,” she said.

  Estarion had found that day astonishing and disconcerting and in parts delightful, like the lady who had issued so remarkable an ultimatum. Of marriage he had no fear—he had done it nine times over. But that was long ago, and he had not lain with a woman in years out of count. It was the only thing that had made him think that he might, after all, be old.

  Now it seemed he was not old but perhaps merely rebellious. He had had one great love in his life, and she had denied herself to him, because she was a commoner and a priestess and a mage of Gates, and he must marry where his empire required. When that duty was done, when those ladies had grown old and died, he had wanted nothing more to do with any of it.

  He was a man for one woman. He had always known that. She was long dead—she had lived an ample span, but she was mortal after all, and aged and died as mortals did. He still mourned her, though her death had had no grief in it. She had gone not into darkness but into light, soaring up like a bird into the luminous heaven.

  There was a doctrine in the Isles from which she had come, and in the lands beyond the sea: that souls did not live only once; that they came back again and again, striving to perfect this life which they had been given. He wondered, even as he passed through palace and city and to the nearer villages, whether this was she, after all, with her bright spirit and her strong will, and her solid common sense. Or maybe it was only that he was made for such a woman, and when he met her like again, his spirit called to her and wanted her for its own.

&
nbsp; For he did want her. He had turned his mind away from the harder truth: that he was not of this world. If he could escape from it, he would do so. She could not bind him, not against that.

  That would come when it came. As the day waned toward evening, he knew that she went to Seti; he could imagine what she said to him. For his own part, he went to the one who could make matters most difficult. It was reckless, perhaps, and she would not be pleased to hear of it, but he was in no mood for prudence. That was a lost virtue in this world under the shadow.

  Seti-re was at dinner. He dined alone tonight, but he dined well. He had a roast fowl and a platter of fish and the inevitable bread and beer. The priests who guarded him never saw the shadow that passed among them. Nor, while he savored his dinner, did Seti-re. It was only as he picked at the last of the bones and sipped his third cup of beer, that Estarion let himself take shape out of shadows.

  Seti-re started so violently that his cup flew out of his hand and shattered. Estarion made it new again, raising the shards and knitting them together, and set it gently on the table.

  The priest stared at it. He seemed unable to take his eyes from it, or unwilling to look into Estarion’s face. He was afraid; and fear filled him with rancor.

  “My lord,” Estarion said, “whatever our differences, may we not work together for the preservation of this city?”

  “Is that truly what you are doing? You have the others well ensorcelled, but the gods protect me. I see you for what you are.”

  “Indeed?” said Estarion. “What am I?”

  “Do I need to say it?”

  Estarion raised a shoulder in a shrug. “Truly I mean you no harm. I was sent here to help; I will do everything I can, for the gods who sent me, but also for love of those to whom I was sent.”

  “Love?” said Seti-re. “How can you love what you barely know?”

  “Some would say that love is easiest then—that only the best is apparent, until time dulls the sheen. As for me,” said Estarion, “I have found much here to admire, and no little to love.”

  “Words are easy,” Seti-re said. “Actions prove them.”

  “Indeed,” said Estarion. “Will you say the words that join me to your queen as her consort?”

  He had caught the priest utterly off guard. Seti-re stared, speechless. Just as Estarion began to wonder if he had any wits left, he said faintly, hardly more than a gasp, “If that is a jest, it is in extremely poor taste.”

  “No jest,” Estarion said. “This too I was sent for; this I do in all joy.”

  “You want … me … to say the words.” Seti-re looked as if he had bitten into bitter herbs. “You honestly imagine that I would consent?”

  Estarion smiled. “Yes, sir priest. In fact I do. You are not a fool, and you have honest care for the city, whatever you may think of its queen. Or,” he added, “of me. I frighten you. I am sorry for that. I would wish us, if not friends, at least to be allies; to make common cause against this enemy that threatens us all. My world, too, sir priest, and all worlds in its path.”

  “I believe that you are part of it,” Seti-re said. “That you came not to save us but to destroy us.”

  “There is a thing that I can do,” Estarion said, “which would place me utterly in your power if I break my word to the queen and the city. If I do that, will you lay aside your enmity?”

  Seti-re eyed him narrowly. “What can you do? Offer your throat to my knife?”

  “Better than that,” Estarion said. “I will give you a part of myself to keep. If I betray my oath, that part will be snuffed out, and I will be gone.”

  “Dead?”

  “And gone,” said Estarion.

  Seti-re drew a slow breath. Estarion resisted the temptation to discover what he was thinking. That was part of his good faith: to force no magic on this or any man.

  At length the priest said, “I would have complete power over you. Or is this a trick? Will it be I who will suffer, and you who will laugh me into scorn?”

  “By the god who begot my forefather,” Estarion said, “and by the Sun he set in my hand, this is no trick. I offer it in good faith. Will you accept it?”

  “You trust me as far as that?”

  “One must give trust in order to receive it,” Estarion said.

  “What will you do?” Seti-re asked after a long pause.

  Estarion realized that he had been forgetting to breathe. When there was air in his lungs again, he reached into the heart of his magic and drew forth a gem of fire. It was cool in his hand, hard and round like an earthly stone, but the center of it was living light. It pulsed with the beating of his heart.

  Seti-re’s eyes were wide. He trembled as he took the jewel that held the key to Estarion’s life and soul. And yet he said mistrustfully, “This is your great weapon?”

  “You know it is,” Estarion said gently. “You can feel it thrumming to the center of you. That much power you have, turn your back on it though you will.”

  “But what am I to—”

  Estarion wrought a chain of light, quickly, and strung the jewel from it, and presented it with a bow. It looked like a necklace of gold and fireopal, luminous and beautiful but perfectly solid and earthly. “Guard it well,” he said, “and beware. If you misuse it, it will repay you in kind.”

  Seti-re’s lip curled, but he did not argue the point. He held the jewel gingerly, staring past it at Estarion. “Why does a god want a woman of her age, who is barren? Even though she is a queen?”

  “Because she is herself,” Estarion said. “Will you say the words?”

  “Do you think you can compel me?”

  Estarion smiled with awful sweetness. He held up his hand. In it lay a pebble. It was nothing like the fiery jewel he had given Seti-re, but within its grey dullness was a faint shimmer. “Trust for trust,” he said, “and hostage for hostage. We bind one another, sir priest, and have each the power of life and death over the other.”

  Seti-re laughed suddenly. He was no more amiable than he had ever been, but in this laughter was genuine mirth. “Lord, you are devious! I almost begin to like you. What will you do with yonder stone? Swallow it? Fling it in the river?”

  “Keep it,” said Estarion, “against the time when our alliance is ended. Will you say the words?”

  “I will say the words,” Seti-re said. “On one condition.”

  Estarion raised a brow.

  “That my enemies are your enemies. That if I call on you, you will answer, and aid me against them.”

  “If I may do so without harm to the queen or the city,” said Estarion, “I will do it.”

  “Then I will say the words,” said Seti-re.

  FOURTEEN

  THE NEW GUARDIANS OF THE KINGDOM WENT OUT THAT EVENING with their small furred allies, and disposed themselves among villagers who were more often baffled and suspicious than glad to be so protected. Tanit would have preferred to go with them, but the queen belonged in the city. She walked its streets at evening, unable quite to suppress the shiver of fear as the shadows lengthened, and saw how the cats built their walls of air. She could see those walls, how they rose and joined to shield the houses and people within.

  “You have eyes to see,” the Lord Seramon said. He came up on the city’s walls, the walls of stone, not long after she had ascended there, and found her marveling at the intricacy of the wards.

  “I’m not needed at all,” she said. “This is entirely the cats’ doing.”

  “Your people need to see you,” said the Lord Seramon, “to know that you defend them.”

  “I think,” she said, “that you gave me this title to keep me from demanding one less noble but more useful.”

  “You were queen of Waset long before I came here,” he said with the flicker of a smile.

  She hissed at him, but without rancor. Her hand had slid into his, entirely of its own accord. They stood together while the sun sank ever closer to the horizon.

  Just when she was thinking that it would b
e wise to retreat to the palace, he said, “Seti-re will say the words that make me your consort.”

  “How in the gods’ name—”

  “We exchanged assurances,” he said, “and agreed on an alliance. He has great love for this city, however poorly he may express it.”

  “He is my mother’s brother,” she said. “He arranged my marriage to the king. He was never altogether satisfied with the outcome.”

  “Because he couldn’t control you?”

  “And because there was no son and heir for him to raise and train in the temple.”

  The pain of that was old, and worn smooth. He did not shame her with pity, but he nearly broke her with the tenderness of a gesture: the soft stroke of a finger down her cheek. “You are what, and where, the gods will.”

  She spoke past the ache in her throat. “It will be dark soon. You may choose to spend the night under the sky, but I in my cowardice prefer the safety of a roof.”

  “Tonight we shall be cowards together,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to see the wards go up across the kingdom?”

  “I see them,” he said in his deep purr of a voice.

  She remembered then, as already she tended to forget, that he was not of her world. The awareness shivered in her skin, but somewhat oddly, it did not frighten her.

  He followed her down from the walls, walking as a guard would, just behind her. They moved in a cloud of cats: his two, her two, a shifting circle of the city’s defenders. At the palace gate, most of them faded into the twilight.

  She had not been out so late since she was a reckless child. Even in the safety of the city, even knowing how well it was protected, she battled the urge to run through the gate and hide. She walked sedately as a queen should, pausing to greet the guards and to settle a matter brought to her by one of the servants, and to pray for a moment before the image of her husband’s ancestor, the first king of Waset. His worn stone face grew dim as she prayed, veiling itself in dusk.