Hidden Sun

by Jaine Fenn

  “It was,” said the skykin.

  Wonder and horror warred in her. “Is it gone?”

  “It is.”

  “Then will someone help me find my sightglass?”

  The shock cut in as Rhia walked back to the camp. Her legs went boneless, and she stumbled. When Breen offered his arm, she was happy to put the hand not clutching her recovered sightglass on it.

  The skykin took the incident in their stride. The warrior returned his swords to a bandolier on one of the rhinobeasts, then he and his companion walked over to the fire without a backward glance.

  The worshippers had finished their devotions, and most of the travellers eyed her up, expressions ranging from shocked to fascinated. Rhia let go of Breen’s arm and approached Sorne.

  Before he could speak she said, “I’m sorry. I should not have gone off like that.”

  “You shouldn’t, no.” He looked her in the face. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I just need to sit down.”

  He moved aside. She sat, and stared at the comforting play of flames.

  “You should eat.”

  Rhia started to see Breen holding out a bowl of stew. She took it. “Ah, yes. Thank you. And thank you for what you did.”

  “I could hardly let you die out there.” He grinned across at Sorne, who was tucking into his own meal. “He’d’ve fed me to the nightwings himself.”

  Sorne growled over the rim of his bowl. “Damn right I would.”

  Despite the soldiers’ attempts at levity, Rhia felt shaky. Just shock, she told herself.

  Perhaps she could try and find the House of the Ancients on the way back. Assuming Sorne let her. Then again, perhaps it was just an oddly shaped rock, talked up into something of significance by Wanderer of Prin – or, given how far away his shadowland was from here, by some other traveller who he had got the tale from third or fourth hand.

  But she had seen a nightwing. They were a true wonder. Strange even by skyland standards, they were myriad beings which somehow managed to fly and hunt as one.

  And they were quite capable of killing a man. She knew they were found on the high plateau, yet she had not considered the danger. Never mind disappointments and tall tales: she could have died tonight.

  What am I doing out here?

  The reasons came back at once. I’m here to see the world and save my brother. She only hoped she had the strength to survive the first and the wits to achieve the second.

  Chapter 23

  Sadakh had done it again. Or rather, his ghost reminded him as he watched the sleeping girl, he had let it happen again.

  Her name was Akbet. Her father was a rice merchant and she had no intention of getting married and raising babies like her older sister. He liked her contrary, questioning nature. He disliked her tendency to fill any silence with speech, no matter how trivial.

  The relationship was following the usual path. All new initiates were granted time alone with the eparch to discuss their future spiritual development. During their initial meeting, Akbet had spent more time flirting than listening.

  When he first became eparch of the First Light, Sadakh had ignored such behaviour. Power drew adoration but he would not abuse his position by encouraging it. When this did not work, and some of the female (and once, male) initiates sought an intimacy beyond the spiritual, he had taken them aside and suggested they should spend less time in his company, to keep themselves focused.

  In most cases, they had been hurt and offended. A couple left the Order as a result.

  So, he had reconsidered. Sex was a primal urge. It drove, confounded, even defined. If he wanted to understand people and their relationship to divinity, he had to understand that urge, which often eclipsed other, higher drives. But he made the rules clear to potential partners in advance: entering into a physical relationship would not result in special treatment, and either party could end the relationship without consequence at any time.

  This worked, usually. Several of the women who had passed through his bed became trusted members of the Order; one had become a bodyguard. With others the relationship had soured or withered, and the disengagement had been less pleasant. Some stayed in the Order, some left.

  This one won’t last.

  He ignored his ghost: she always said that. Anyone would think she was jealous. Akbet was a skilled and experienced lover, eager to impress. He had let himself enjoy her. Now, as she lay asleep amongst the covers of his bed, he felt the usual shame and sorrow. Shame that he had given in to temptation and justified it, yet again, as the free choice of the other party; sorrow that she had only one currency to trade, a currency most men wanted but few valued.

  He eased away from her, and her eyes opened. She smiled and said, playfully, “Holiness.” His lovers often toyed with that word, imbuing it with lower meanings. He never gave them permission to use his name.

  “Good morning, Akbet.”

  “Morning already?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I have scripture lessons after prayers, and should bathe first.”

  “Quite so.”

  “May I… come back this evening?”

  Sadakh had given this inevitable request some thought. Certain experiences could only be explored with a lover, such as how identities blurred at the moment of orgasm and how being so close to another person could nourish and illuminate one’s soul. With some of his partners, the shared experience had verged on the mystical. But those had been women who went to bed with a man to find themselves rather than to prove their worth. And even in those cases it never lasted. At some point every woman sensed the part of himself he held back.

  Sensed me, his ghost would claim.

  He wondered if Akbet would stay long enough – and be sensitive enough – to run up against this inevitable barrier. There was only one way to find out, and for now they both got something they wanted from the relationship.

  He smiled. “If you wish.”

  Chapter 24

  In some ways the descent was worse. After a morning rolling across relatively flat land the caravan halted. The rhinobeasts were unhitched and moved to the back of the wagon to act as brakes, an activity achieved with a degree of huffing and lowing, and the occasional call from their normally silent handlers.

  Several travellers settled on the floor, braced against the benches. Rhia kept her seat but threaded a hand through a strap. They set off again. The first skid had her grabbing for the seat-edge with her other hand. The wagon stopped with a jolt, though it took a moment for her stomach to catch up.

  If the traces break…

  Think about something else, anything else. Like the morning after the argument with Etyan. No. Instead, she went over her mental notes on the journey so far, ready to write them up as soon as she had the chance.

  When a jerk or skid set her heart tripping she reminded herself that the caravan went this way every couple of weeks without mishap.

  The ground evened out around late afternoon. Zekt was higher than Shen, so at least the descent was shorter than the ascent. While the rhinobeasts were repositioned people climbed back onto benches, sat back, relaxed. As siesta had been impossible, some slept. Mella dozed with her head on Preut’s shoulder; the familial resemblance was obvious. Rhia looked away.

  When they stopped for the night the sky was cloudy, although ambient moonlight and the inherent glow of the land showed an abundance of life on this side of the mountains. Away from the road – which was surfaced with gravel here – the ground was covered in fronds and stalks and hairlike tangles, along with regular clusters of solid spheres which looked artificial; these latter had a two-toned glow, brighter, and bluer, at the top. A wall of noise – chirrups and hums and buzzes and clicks – pressed in from the darkness. Odd scents drifted on the light breeze: nutmeg, lilac, something she had no name for.

  Last night she had been too wrung out after the nightwing encounter to do more than curl up in her hammock. Tonight there was something she needed
to do, before it was too late.

  She strode round the fire and up to the seer, who sat staring into the flames.

  “I did it,” she said.

  As the skykin seer looked away from the fire, the membranes protecting her eyes slid back.

  “To yourself.” The seer’s tone gave nothing away.

  “That’s right. I did this to myself.” She half raised a hand to touch her mask.

  A shadowkin might show shock, or murmur some apologetic deflection. The skykin did neither. She shuffled round so she no longer faced the fire, and pointed to the ground in front of her.

  As she had hoped when she made her bold admission, Rhia was being invited to join the seer. She lowered herself to sit cross-legged.

  Still the skykin said nothing. Just stared at her, eyes glistening in the firelight.

  Rhia collected her thoughts, then asked, “Is it true that you can tell when people lie by their smell?” It appeared the “smell” of deception on Rhia had been strong enough to interest this Yrif from afar.

  “Yes. Though not as you smell. It is above the nose.”

  Whatever that meant. “Right.” Rhia took a deep breath. Having decided to own up to the lie she had lived with for thirteen years in order to gain the seer’s trust, she had better get on with it, and not keep anything back. “I am actually a noblewoman of Shen.”

  The seer showed no reaction to this revelation.

  Rhia carried on. “When I was a girl, I was pledged to a noble in another shadowland.” The skykin did not ask which shadowland. Rhia doubted it mattered to her.

  “I didn’t want the marriage to happen. I wanted to stay in Shen. I had everything I needed there.” A tolerant and loving father, her books and papers, even – though she winced to think of it now – the boy she thought was her true love. At the time it had been so simple. Sacrifice appearances to keep the life she wanted. “I had access to substances that burn selectively, so I used one. On myself. Which was stupid. Even being careful I could have damaged my eye. But it worked. The wedding was called off.”

  She had wanted to confess her terrible act to Father as he lay raving on his deathbed. She had told herself at the time it would only cause him more distress. In the decade since his death, she had buried it deep. And now she had spoken the truth. She had expected to feel unburdened but the seer’s lack of reaction gave her conscience no purchase. No matter. She had crossed the fire seeking knowledge, not absolution. She blinked and said, “Now I want to ask you something.” It may as well be personal, given the nature of her own admission. “Are you married?”

  “No.” The seer looked at her. “Are you?”

  “No, I’m not, but… will you marry?”

  “It is unlikely.”

  “But not impossible? I mean, do skykin marry, at all?” The accepted wisdom was that most skykin lived in large clans deep in the skyland, with a few choosing, or being chosen, to run the caravans between shadowlands. How the clans worked was a mystery no enquirer had addressed.

  “Some make vows. Some do not. Those that do, keep them.”

  “And is it true they took your name from you when were a child? Because you’re an Yrif, that is.”

  “Just Yrif. That is my name.” For a moment Rhia thought that was all she would get. Then the seer continued, “Once able to walk and talk, children who have been chosen as seers are removed from the crèche. Names are taken, though parting-gifts are not.” Rhia had not come across parting-gifts in her reading: she made a mental note to ask about those later. “The seer-to-be lives alone in a cave, provided with the necessities of life and visited by clan members of every calling.”

  “So, healers and trackers and hunters? Everyone who has a… function?”

  “All members of the clan have a function. And the wisdom of every function is shared with the growing seer.”

  Rhia smiled at the thought of so much valued knowledge being passed on so reverently.

  “When the seer is mature, ze is bonded.”

  Rhia resisted the urge to interrupt; Sophist of Jhal had written that although the skykin and shadowkin shared a common language, both had words the other did not, and for skykin some of these related to an individual’s identity. Rhia extrapolated that “ze” meant “he or she”.

  “After bonding, ze is Yrif. That is all that is ever needed.”

  “And the bonding, I’m interested in that. What is it like, to be bonded?” To have another living creature inside you, changing how you view the world. Controlling you, if Wanderer of Prin was to be believed.

  “Ask the sightless what the Sun looks like, or one without hearing to describe the nightwing’s cry.”

  And to think some claimed the skykin lacked imagination! “I understand. You cannot describe it to me because I’m unbonded.” But there was so much the seer could tell her. Where to start? Remembering the outbreak of piety on restday she settled on something she would hesitate to discuss with her own people. “Are you aware that shadowkin believe that you, the skykin, are lesser, tainted beings? That you don’t have true souls.”

  To Rhia’s amazement and alarm the skykin bared her teeth – they were normal-looking, not pointed or discoloured, but the act, suddenly expressive after passive inactivity, was shocking. “Have you seen your soul?” For the first time there was emotion in the seer’s tone; amusement? anger? The seer put a finger in the centre of her forehead. “I saw my soul. Every day I feel my soul. I am bonded to my soul.”

  “The Church has a different idea of souls. A rather less… concrete one.”

  “It is not my Church.”

  “No, but it is mine. I lack faith but I am steeped in its beliefs and practices. They define my culture.”

  This time the pause was appraising. Rhia had an idea that she had, if not impressed the skykin, at least satisfied her. “The comparison of beliefs is rarely productive when cultures differ so greatly.”

  “You may be right.” Rhia smiled, delighted at such quick-minded conversation. “But I would like to know if you believe in heaven?”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m… not sure I do.”

  “Then I pity you.”

  “So skykin do believe in heaven, then?” Was the seer playing with her?

  “We do not need heaven. We have our animus: now, always; before, after. Your people need heaven because you are unhappy and discontented with the life you have – so much so that even one born into privilege will maim herself to control her fate. To take such actions yet not believe in continuance of mind after your body dies is contradictory at best, a sad waste at worst.”

  Rhia had no answer for that. Instead she countered with, “If you do not believe in heaven, does that also mean you do not believe in the First, and that his Children once walked the world?”

  “We acknowledge greater powers. As for the Children of the First, I do not know because we were not there.”

  “So your animus’s knowledge doesn’t reach back to the Separation?”

  “It does not.”

  It appeared an animus was not immortal.

  The rest of the evening passed in a joyous blur of shared information.

  Finally, the seer made a brushing motion down her body, and looked past Rhia. Following her gaze Rhia saw the fire had burned to embers, surrounded by sleeping cloak-wrapped skykin. “We rest now.”

  “Of course.”

  The seer was already standing up.

  Chapter 25

  “What’s that noise?”

  Rhia looked up at Breen’s question. She had spent the morning considering and ordering the information the seer had imparted, just as Father had taught her, prioritizing and cataloguing in her head. Much as she yearned to write some of it down, between Sorne’s disapproval and the wagon’s motion, this remained impractical.

  After Breen’s interruption, she listened, and heard a soft insistent drumming from above. “Rain,” she murmured.

  Breen nodded; he had realized it too. Lekem was praying, no do
ubt asking the First to send the life-giving rainclouds over the mountains to Shen.

  The rain became heavier in the afternoon, sometimes splashing through the vents. Rhia grew downright chilly.

  The sky was still cloud-locked when they camped for the night, though the rain had stopped.

  The landscape had changed again. The terrain reminded Rhia of Shen’s southern pastureland, softly undulating ground covered in what looked like close-bitten grass. Farther off, the diffuse moonlight picked out a dozen broad-headed beasts who appeared to be grazing on the “grass”, moving across it line abreast, dark against the glowing land. The creatures ignored the caravan; Rhia assumed that if they were a threat, the skykin would take action.

  The sounds this evening bore some resemblance to last night’s, though with more squeaks and sighs, and the breeze brought new scents, of parsley and lavender.

  Accompanied by Breen, she examined the “grass”. It was more like camomile or moss, a tangle of stems and filaments. Some filaments glowed more intensely than others, and when rubbed between two fingers the lavender smell intensified.

  As soon as dinner was over she went to see the seer. She took her notebook, and damn anyone who gave her looks for that.

  They talked widely, touching on various subjects, from what skykin did for leisure – “Some enjoy competition; others prefer contemplation.” – to how the caravan’s route was kept free of the febrile, mobile life of the skyland; by dint, Yrif said, of rhinobeast droppings spread along the edge of the road by the wheels of the wagons; even the thinnest smear repelled most creatures and plants. Rhia was glad now she had not touched the wagon’s wheels when she used them to rest her sightglass on.

  Rhia asked about the House of the Ancients. The seer confirmed its existence although, she said, there is “nothing of interest left now”. Rhia would still have welcomed the chance to see for herself.

  Some questions the seer would not answer, such as what happened at a bonding ceremony, or details of life in the clans. Rhia did not press her.