The Shadow of the Sun (The Way of the Gods)

by Barbara Friend Ish

  Table of Contents

  The Shadow Working

  Map: The Human and Tanaan Realms

  1. Long Live the Righ

  2. Stranger in a Strange Land

  3. Journey of a Thousand Miles

  4. Who Treads Here

  5. Into the Mystery

  6. This Sort of Thing Never Happens at Home

  7. Goodbye, Hello

  8. News from Elsewhere

  Map: Northern Fíana and the Devadore

  9. Leading the Blind

  10. Tuned to a Dark Mood

  11. Beyond Death

  12. The Deluge

  13. Crossing Over

  14. A Draft of Remembrance

  15. In the Abode of Immortals

  16. Living with the Loss

  17. Blood-Price

  Map: The Ruillin

  18. The Last Time

  19. A Night for Strong Drink

  20. Ship of the Water, Ship of the Air

  21. The Dance

  Map: The Aerona Basin and Ruillin River

  22. Everything Has Its Price

  23. A Name Written on the Wind

  24. The Shadow of the Sun

  25. All Her Secrets

  26. Hidden in Broad Daylight

  27. Seeing in the Dark

  28. The Silence of the Circle

  29. Beneath the Surface

  30. View of the Abyss

  31. Dark Water

  Map: The Royal Precinct and Central Realms

  32. Abu al-righ

  33. Darkness Incandescent

  34. Season of Change

  35. The Promise of the Stars

  36. Bealtan

  Glossary

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Mercury Retrograde Press.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Friend Ish

  Interior maps by Ari Warner Copyright © 2010

  Sigil Copyright © 2010 by Rachael Murasaki Ish

  Cover design Copyright © 2010 by Wynette A. Hoffman

  First Kindle Edition – published 2011

  Printed in the United States and the United Kingdom

  ISBN 978-1-936427-05-5

  MERCURY RETROGRADE PRESS

  6025 Sandy Springs Circle

  Suite 320

  Atlanta, Georgia 30328

  www.MercuryRetrogradePress.com

  Dedication

  For Mark, fellow dreamer and love of my life, partner in all things. Your belief and support buttress my feet on the ground and lift my wings on the air.

  An céad mile buíochas

  A hundred thousand thanks

  I am grateful each day for the people who let me share my dreams with them: who make writing and publishing and becoming fully human possible. First credit must go to my husband Mark: nasclethéan, patient first reader, and insightful critiquer, who gives me the space in which to dream and a reason to return to consensual reality; who adopts my dreams as his own and helps me bring them to fruition; who welcomes me into his dreams as well. He makes the journey a joy. So too I treasure the support of my children, Daniel and Rachael, who have become in adulthood two of the friends I am most proud to have. Thank you for having the grace to see my utter geekishness as cool and for your patience with the exigencies of living with an artist for a mother.

  Thanks also are due the family of my birth: my parents, Patric and Thresa Friend, who named me for a paradox and then had to live with the consequences; my siblings Jen, Chris, Sean, and Mike, who welcome me into the wondrous mayhem of their lives. My mother introduced me to some of the SFF authors who shaped the writer I have become; my father taught me to love language, and showed me where my brain was and how to engage it despite the consequences. To them are due a certain amount of the credit for my good points and none of the blame for my many failings.

  Another thousand thanks are due my dear friend Sonja Benjamin, healer of bodies and souls, sister in the dreaming hut. Without her, none of the things I do would be possible, and her friendship enriches my life.

  No book goes to press without a robust support team; this one has had an embarrassment of riches in that regard. First thanks and last go to my friend, dream editor, and personal armsmaster Brett Shanley, who sees all the way to the center of the earth and who gave me the tools I needed to crack open the parts of this tale I hadn’t yet brought to fruition. Thank you for your unending patience, your insight, and your willingness to talk endlessly about punctuation—and most of all for helping me dream my dream.

  I am grateful beyond measure to Wynette Hoffman, not only for her magnificent work on the cover but for all the years of friendship and companionship in the wild places of publishing; a steadfast writing partner, she showed me the possibility of living the dream and offered me tough love when I needed it.

  So too I am thankful for the contributions of Ari Warner, whose maps bring this story to life—and look beautiful doing it—and of Rachael Murasaki Ish, who developed the sigil that graces the cover and the scene-breaks of the Trade edition.

  My early readers, including Wayne Fishell, Thresa Friend, Wynette Hoffman, Edward Morris, Leona Wisoker, and of course Mark and Rachael Ish, made this book a better tale than it would have been. I am grateful for their insights and patience with my process.

  I am indebted to James Kempf and Anthony Thomas of Cliché Studios for the creative genius and many pleasant hours that went into the development of games and other expansive ideas for my world. Thank you for much fun and learning, and for helping me stretch my ideas in directions that would never have occurred to me otherwise.

  Thanks also are due all the Mercury Retrograde authors and staff who work and play and dream with me: Zachary Steele, Edward Morris, Danielle Parker, Larissa Niec, and Leona Wisoker, who reminded me to drink my own Kool-Aid and was patient with me while I did it; in this regard Mark and Rachael Ish and Brett Shanley must be mentioned again, as must James Kempf. Mercury Retrograde would be nothing without them.

  The Shadow Working

  Aballo Grimoires Collection no. 1012: Aechering, Grimoire no. 22

  Map: The Human and Tanaan Realms

  Ilnemedon: Harpist Gorsedd Map Collection no. 135

  1. Long Live the Righ

  The smell of magic woke me. Immediately my heart was hammering, my throat tight; the terrible delight of raw arcane power washed over me like frankincense on mountain air. Scents and colors I hadn’t tasted in a decade teased open parts of me long held closed, telling me things mundane senses never could. Death rode on tones of crystal from secret velvet darkness between the stars, wrapped in the purple-gold caress of spidersilk and aromas of peach and shocking blue. The magic hadn’t originated with the ard-righ’s wizard Athramail, whose signatures and workings regularly peppered the air of Ilnemedon; it wasn’t the doing of any of the small-time charms dealers who haunt the back rooms of Ilnemedon’s taverns and the ships that ride the winds up and down the Ruillin. This was a power blacker than any of those men could imagine and a thousand times more seductive; I struggled to wrench my awareness closed, to wrap a thick blanket around my senses, above all not to let my mind stray to the place where that intoxicating song originated. Just before I retreated into my mental cocoon, I felt the arcane circuit complete and felt the ard-righ die.

  Intoxication fled; revulsion and guilt raced through me in its wake. My own harsh breathing echoed against the dark ceiling a
nd unlit walls. The memory of a sunlit glade threatened to breach the surface of my mind; my palms itched. The place in which I’d slept for the past five years shrank into a prison cell. I threw myself out of bed and dressed, then sat before the dying fire and waited for the cannonade that would mark the ard-righ’s death.

  Poor Athramail. Not even the Prince of the Aballo Order of wizards could have warded off that attack. But that wouldn’t stop the old man from flaying himself half to death with guilt, nor would it necessarily spare his life.

  And poor Coran: for the next three minutes, or maybe five, a son—and then, forever, an orphan and righ. It is the gravest of cruelties that for a man to ascend the throne, his father must die.

  Frigid wind beat against my back as I rode up the mountain to Mourne Palace: making outrageous lies of the Ardan-eve garlands that lay trampled all over the road, sending the tail of my hair forward to flutter like crows’ wings in my peripheral vision. Spring never comes kindly to Ilnemedon; the cold wet wind off the Ruillin persists well into summer, seemingly until the moment when the city turns into a sauna. In ten years I’d grown accustomed to this, but this afternoon the lowering clouds and biting air felt like a portent.

  Who would choose this holiday for an arcane assault? The first light of spring is a time that favors growth and the seeding of great beginnings, a time so steeped in women’s energy that only emergent need would persuade most wizards to draw power. The death of the ard-righ and the chaos that would ensue couldn’t serve the beginning of anything. Even did one of the other righthe delude himself that he could win the ard-righ’s throne, no Aballo wizard would wield that black power.

  Even if they would, none of them could master it.

  A flock of ragged crows haunted the palace as I rode up the final, steep ascent to the gate: perching on the lichen-spotted bastions, wheeling between the parapets and the steel-grey sky. Men on the bastions threw stones at the crows, trying to drive off the ill omen. It was too late for that, of course; and the crows were far from the only thing out of sorts here this afternoon. I didn’t recognize either of the men standing guard at the gate—which I should have expected, as palace security is the responsibility of the tanist, and yesterday’s tanist had become today’s righ. But this afternoon the usual swordsmen at the gate were augmented by flashmen on the wall.

  Strange days indeed when a royal will stoop to using flash-weapons, even if it’s not his own hand wielding them. Worry for Athramail raced through me again; but a second look at the wall showed me the emerald sparkle of Athramail’s power between the stones, occluded by shadow and invisible to the uninitiated eye. Usually I did my best to ignore the wards, but this afternoon they were a minor comfort: Athramail yet lived, yet held the post of House Healer to Ilesia, despite his failure last night.

  The new guards challenged me, skittish as a pair of two-year-old racers on their first track.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, showing them two empty hands but not dismounting. I refused to acknowledge the flashmen on the wall. “I’m Ellion Tellan.”

  The guards at the gate exchanged nervous glances. Ilnemedon is not a city in which it is wise to offend a stranger, particularly not an armed stranger who is a head taller and several handsbreadths broader in the shoulder than most men of the warrior class. But today, their first day on duty outside an unfamiliar gate, the guards were more afraid of letting the wrong man pass.

  I could guess at the tallies being conducted behind those nervous eyes: a warrior knows another at a glance, and in this case the problem was complicated by sufficient evidence of wealth that there might be unpleasant consequences for them if they refused me entry in error. The one on the right had the look of a horse about to spook: I kept my hands still, my eyes steady, my attention on the men at the gate rather than the ones on the wall. If one of these two startled, it might well be the flash discharge that reached me first, and in this wind the telltale smell of ozone might not hit me before the bolt did. And I didn’t want to find out whether I’d violate my vow and draw the power necessary to raise an arcane shield, not with the memory of the working that had killed the ard-righ so damnably fresh.

  “Er—your name’s not on the list…” ventured the guard on the left.

  “Truly?” I retorted. “A list? Where is this thing? The names of all the people who come and go from this place every day would make too long a list for anyone but a bard or a harpist to memorize. So it must be in your pocket. Look again.”

  Spooked Horse twitched in a way that bespoke a hand about to reach for a sword; reflex sent mine to my own hilt. Immediately Spooked Horse’s partner, a redhead whose nose had suffered more than one encounter with someone’s fist or the pommel of a sword, rushed forward to grasp my horse’s headstall. The beast reared, nervous as usual. Ire flared in me; a senseless hope that one of the flashmen above us would fire came on its heels.

  “Back away!” I snapped. “I am Ellion Tellan. I am on my way to visit the righ. If you can’t remember your list, go get someone who can.”

  “What is your business in Ilnemedon?” Spooked Horse rejoined.

  “My business?”

  “Tellan’s clear on the other side o’ the world.”

  I cast him a withering glance. “I live here. For five years now. Unless I miss my guess, you’ve been standing on a wall in Carrickfergus until quite recently. At this rate you’ll be on your way back by nightfall. Open the fouzhir gate!”

  Spooked Horse half-drew his sword, striding towards me; the redhead reached for my horse’s headstall again. I smelled ozone. Terrible anticipation crackled through me.

  “Fools!”

  I glanced towards the voice, through the bars of the gate. Den Donard, who had gone to bed last night as leader of a royal son’s personal contingent and been awakened as First Armsmaster to Ilesia, stood there now, scowling at the guards. I knew I should be relieved, but need tingled in waves across my skin. I willed myself to a semblance of calm.

  “Damn your empty heads!” Den snapped. “I don’t know how you did things out at Carrickfergus, but if you’re to stand guard duty in Ilnemedon you’ve got to learn to recognize people! That’s the ard-harpist!”

  The redhead blanched, withdrawing his hand; Spooked Horse flushed and unlocked the gate.

  “Your pardon, Lord Ellion,” Den said. “The—the righ will be pleased to see you.”

  I nodded and rode through. “Even Lugh Lámfhada had difficulties getting inside the gate on at least one occasion. But those men are a waste of perfectly good arms.”

  Den shot them another dark look.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” I said.

  Den grinned. “Thanks.”

  “This doesn’t mean I’ve seen the last of you on the sparring grounds, does it?”

  “Tell me when you’ll be there, and I’ll strap on my ugliest armor, just for you.”

  The seneschal showed me to a sitting room in the royal residence, a space as grey and black as the city outside. No lamps were lit, despite the gloom. Coran Mourne, new righ of Ilesia, ard-righ-apparent, stalked along the curve of the room’s outer wall, crushing a visible path in the intricately woven rug and chewing on a thumbnail. He was already dressed in white, his usually luxurious fall of blond hair cut short in mourning and the righ’s torc with its gleaming eagle-head finials looking uncomfortably tight around his bull neck. He glanced up as I ducked into the doorway, fixing me with eyes that spoke of strategic wheels turning behind them and a need for blood. After a second the tension and grief in his broad face eased.

  “Ellion!” Coran said, crossing the room to embrace me. “Great Lord Ilesan—” He touched his fingertips rapidly to his lips and heart: an atypical prayerful gesture. “It was good of you to come!”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I clasped Coran tightly. A man’s transition from tanist to righ seems to be even more confusing for the people around him, as if that could be possible. Everyone else would be tentative and withdrawn with Coran for the bette
r part of a twelvenight; I would not be a part of that sudden emptiness. “What happened?”

  “Cuill—wine. The ard-harpist and I will have wine,” Coran said to the seneschal. The man bowed and withdrew.

  Coran stepped away and resumed his course around the edge of the room, periodically glancing through the slits at the crows wheeling outside.

  “The kharr,” he growled. “Naturally, the fouzhir kharr. Athramail thinks it was the Bard’s Wizard who opened the breach.”

  I nodded. The man called the Bard of Arcadia, the leader of the rebel kharr, had recruited a renegade wizard to his cause. No one knew who the renegade was: the appellation Bard’s Wizard had been inevitable.

  “It wasn’t—The breach wasn’t in the outer wall,” Coran said, still pacing.

  “Where, then?”

  “Here. The residence.”

  “Fouzh,” I said. The arcane part of the job had been very subtle, unless the Bard’s Wizard were here himself. To work inside another man’s arcane defenses without disrupting them is next to impossible.

  “Was he captured?”

  “The assassin? The spy?” Coran shook his head. “The gods granted me no such pleasure. For all I know, the man still walks within these walls.”

  Coran turned and retraced his steps to the far end of the chamber, his face a map of the methods he would have used to extract every possible scrap of information from his father’s murderer. Suddenly he stopped, looking at me.

  “Damn it all, where is my head? Ellion, will you sit?”

  “It’s not necessary—”

  “Yes.” Coran stared as if his enemy’s name might be written on my forehead. Some decision manifested in his eyes. “I have need of you today, my friend. Let’s sit.”

  Coran’s footman brought wine: a Vellabori red, unwatered as the new righ preferred it. Its familiar woodsmoke-and-cherries aroma wafted past me as he poured. Coran settled, with exquisite gentleness born of countless broken articles of furniture, into a chair that would have swallowed most men whole; his immense muscular frame made the chair look in perfect proportion to the room. I took up the seat opposite. One of the pleasures of our friendship was time spent in the company of a man with whom it was easy to feel the world was too small, rather than my own size that was amiss: a small moment of rightness in a day that seemed in danger of spinning out of control. I offered the righ a little salute with the glass.