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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  We tumbled to the hard dirt floor in a breathless heap; I had barely enough time to form a quick impression of yet another assassin’s hood before the man squirmed to right himself and instinct sent my hands scrambling for his throat. My fingers found no purchase on the slick fabric of the hood; he came at me again, knife gleaming in the muted light; we grappled and rolled amid the straw while the horse continued to whinny, buck and carry on above us. On my back again, I nearly got my fingers around the hilt; at the last second the assassin shifted his grip and drove the tip into my palm. Instinct took over again: the only thing more useless than a harpist with a severed tendon in the hand is a warrior who can’t grip his weapon. The assassin drew back just enough for a killing blow to the heart—and the horse’s hoof connected with the back of his head. His eyes rolled back; I grabbed the knife and drove it between his ribs. I was a fool; I was lucky; I rolled the assassin off my body and scrambled to my feet, cast the knife into the dirt at the other end of the stall, grabbed the reins and showered the horse with soothing touches and reassuring lies until he finally subsided into quivering, as far away from the assassin as possible.

  Finally I turned back to the man, closed the distance between us and yanked the hood from his head. He bore an intriguing superficial resemblance to the assassin at Tyra; but that blond battle-bound hair and warrior’s build could have belonged to half the men in the Order of the Hidden Sun. Or whatever organization or noble house had managed to spawn this insanity.

  But the resemblance wasn’t superficial. Once I walked around to stand in front of the assassin, it was easy to see: the man looked exactly the same as the assassin at Tyra. It was the same man.

  It couldn’t be, and yet here he was: the same face, the same scar on his right cheekbone, the same half-conscious grey eyes. Twins are nearly always exposed at birth, but a few survive: it was possible this man was a twin. But both twins wouldn’t develop a scar when one was injured. And no human, living or dead, could survive a pyre like the one whose smoke sailed up from Tyra almost a twelvenight ago.

  “Who the fouzh are you?” I blurted. Of course the assassin said nothing. I wasn’t sure I would have believed any answer he’d give, anyway—and then I realized I shouldn’t have expected any answer at all. The undead do not speak. They are incapable. Revulsion swept over me: I’d been dancing with a corpse.

  But inevitably my mind seized on the puzzle he presented. The Básghilae we’d been fighting since that night on the Crearu: they were exactly what I would have expected, had I ever taken the time to consider how such a working would turn out. In fact I had taken them to be the best possible outcome: though obviously dead, they exhibited no signs of decay. But if that were the best possible outcome for reanimated dead, then what the hell was this? This man was warm; he bled; his muscles felt strong. Deep effort or sudden pain could surprise a grunt from him. It would never have occurred to me that he might be dead, until I realized he couldn’t be alive.

  I stared down at the assassin, watching blood flow and eyes glaze, and tried to catch my breath. What about the damage I inflicted at Tyra? I slit this man’s throat; I watched this man die. Surely the undead cannot die again—and if, against all logic, they do, then wouldn’t it slow them down? How would they heal? And how could it have happened this quickly?

  Someone not among the initiate might have said simply, magic, and left it at that—but of course I knew better. Magic has consistency and logic, even if that logic is not of the everyday sort. One must work with physical reality, unless one is dealing with exclusively spiritual matters. And here was physical reality, staring me in the face and breaking every rule I knew. Finally I had to know: I pulled back the assassin’s collar, trying to see what had been done to him.

  The assassin’s neck was clean. As if the broad slit I opened across his throat had never been. Again horror gripped me. I straightened up and walked away.

  If the Bard’s Wizard were the author of the Básghilae we’d been fighting for the past seven days—and that was the only reasonable conclusion—then who was doing this? Whoever had crafted this working was operating at a level beyond even the wildest hopes of the Order. He needed no infectious death-spell to accomplish his aim: this was a precision strike. And it was directed at me. Suddenly I was freezing, despite the warm air around me.

  But just the same, the wizard in me had to know more. I walked back to the dying—dead?—man and opened his blood-soaked shirt. His body looked like any professional warrior’s except for the wound in the chest. The chest wound didn’t look as if it would heal on its own: it pumped furiously, bubbling blood down the man’s side like a scarlet spring.

  Fully functioning undead. How was this even possible?

  The assassin’s body was also decked with old battle scars. Some were fresher than others; a few were more recent than a month, including an impressive one across the assassin’s midsection that looked as if it should have killed him. And there were bruises on the man’s body, no more than a twelvenight old.

  How could he have bruises from a few days ago and no signs of the mortal injury I’d inflicted—not to mention the pyre? My head shifted; a ripple of unreality echoed through me into the hard dirt floor. This must be how Cúchulainn felt, when he accepted the green god’s challenge and sliced off the god’s head—and the god got up and put it right back on.

  I realized I was pacing towards the door of the stall again, before I knew where I was going; within three steps I knew what I must do. I’d thought this man defeated at Tyra. But seeing him die hadn’t been surety enough. Clearly even immolation on a pyre wouldn’t do more than slow him down. The one thing I could think to do now was to follow the prescribed course of action for defeating the undead: decapitation.

  It would be a gory job, but I was already covered in blood. A single swift stroke with the sword would do it. Then my biggest problem would be the body. A wizard with this level of ability bent on my elimination was a clear signal that my blood-price was astronomical—and someone was prepared to pay. Public knowledge of it would guarantee my death. I had to dispose of both the body and the head.

  How? The river seemed the likeliest option, if I could manage it. Once the body was in the river, the current would carry it in the opposite direction from the route I would take. A sudden, ludicrous image of the assassin’s body floating all the way downriver to Irisa, Rishan spotting it and recognizing my handiwork, flashed across my mind; I surprised myself with a short bark of laughter. But first I had to get it to the river: across the kitchen gardens undetected, up the ladder carrying both a body and a head—and either hope I could fling both far enough to reach the river or come up with some explanation that would get me back inside the gate after I climbed down. Assuming none of the Tans on the wall saw what I was about.

  First things first: the decapitation. I turned back towards the assassin, reaching for my sword and swallowing my distaste—and then realized he was gone.

  Gone. Again. How? I looked across the stall: the hilt of the assassin’s knife still protruded from the dirt. My clothes were still covered in blood; the cut on my palm still oozed. It was just the same as that night at Ériu House, except this time I’d been conscious the entire while.

  A shaky sigh escaped me. The assassin wasn’t going into the river: I was. There was no choice but to wash off all this blood, to try to act as if nothing unusual had happened this morning. And I had damned well better figure out who was capable of this and why they would bother. But I had no idea where to begin.

  I was still thoroughly, embarrassingly soaked when Letitia’s contingent assembled in the yard at the front of the house, with nothing to do for it but fall back on a decade’s experience of practicing bravado in untenable situations. Gathered on the steps of the portico, Letitia’s knights greeted me with a variety of expressions ranging from nonplussed to fascinated; Tiaran, who, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, had decided to observe our training exercise, addressed me with a thoughtful gaze and a relucta
nt quirk to her lips. Letitia met my gaze in a smoldering regard that brought this morning’s Bealtan dream roaring to life in my head. For a moment I forgot how I’d intended to begin, even forgot the way the silk of my shirt stuck to me. With an effort I dragged my mind back to the lesson.

  “We don’t have time,” I began, looking around at them, “for you to learn what you should. This morning you will learn what you must. All the knights here this morning are competent warriors; the fact that you’re standing here proves that. This morning you must learn to fight as a unit. As of now, there is no such thing as individual glory—not even individual glory in death. The only glory will come when the mora arrives at Aballo alive. Distinguish yourself before then, and most likely you’re compromising the mora’s safety and that of your fellows.”

  There was restless, disgruntled shifting among the contingent. Iminor shot a few targeted, quelling glances; Letitia wisely kept her attention on me, as if the lesson were the only thing worthy of notice.

  “This morning, we’ll be learning and practicing the things experienced companies do to protect one another and execute their strategic objectives,” I continued. “We’ll be learning to form and move in close, serried ranks—so close that a glove tossed into the air in the midst of an engagement couldn’t find its way to the ground. We’ll learn to use the crown formation and to make the terrain work for us in an engagement. We will work together. Effectively. At every moment, we will remember the only thing that matters is the safety of the unit and the mora.

  “Meanwhile—” I looked at Letitia again; immediately my concentration began to waver. Focus. “The mora will be learning her role—which involves not trying to behave as if she is a member of this contingent, and allowing her knights to do their work.”

  Now Letitia looked outraged; Tiaran was frankly amused.

  “This is no tourney-game, and the sword in her hand is a contingency plan only.” Her eyes met mine unwaveringly, but now her smolder was of a completely different sort. “When she disrupts the operation of the contingent in a battle, she only endangers her knights. It is her job to stay behind the lines, or at the center of the formation, and let them do their jobs.”

  Letitia opened her mouth as if to protest. I just raised an eyebrow; Iminor shot her a look even more forbidding than the ones he’d turned on Semeon and Ogma a moment ago. Renewed pique flashed in her green eyes, but she nodded.

  “Well, then,” I said, looking around at all of them again. “If everyone is ready, let’s mount up. We’ll start with the serried line.”

  I climbed into the saddle; the contingent stepped down to the dirt and crossed the yard towards their horses. At the far end of the compound, someone pulled the gate wide, and a horseman rode through. I recognized the face of Letitia’s kinsman Neide immediately; this time, finally, I wasn’t fooled. Behind me, Iminor said, “No”, very quietly; Tiaran’s hand snaked out with astonishing speed to grasp Letitia’s wrist. I spurred my horse into an immediate canter, racing towards the horseman: drawing my sword and removing the Básghil’s head as Letitia’s cry of joy gave way to a bone-freezing scream. This time the lack of blood made my stomach turn.

  I reined and leapt from the saddle just in time to see the horseman topple to the dirt and the riderless horse wheel and bolt back out the gate. By the time I had formed the thought of shouting for the Tans at the gate to close it, the horse was out and Easca was on me, sword bared and bloody vengeance in her shrieks.

  “Easca—” I began, but she was beyond hearing. I parried her first two strokes, reached out with my sword and caught her hilt with the tip of my blade, flipping it from her grasp. I grabbed her, hugging her against me; she thrashed in my grip.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Easca. Look. Listen. No.”

  She stilled for a moment, then started again. I grasped her more tightly and glanced over her head, across the yard. Letitia stared at me, betrayal in her emerald eyes, and extracted her wrist from Tiaran’s bony fist. Tiaran sank to the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Letitia. “I know—” I swallowed against another wave of nausea. “I know how it looked. But that was not your kinsman.”

  Letitia sat down abruptly, there in the center of the yard. A shudder wracked Easca, and finally she stilled; she pulled out of my grasp without speaking, wiping tears from her face, and crossed the yard to retrieve her sword. I walked past the knot of horrified Tanaan gathered around the decapitated Básghil corpse, towards Letitia.

  “Sweet Lord of Light,” Iminor croaked suddenly. “Everybody back up!”

  The knot loosened; I glanced back at them, already knowing what I would see: the headless body that had seemed to be Letitia’s kinsman wavered, shifting into the form of a dead human. Suddenly Letitia was on hands and knees, crawling towards a bed of lady’s fingers at the portico’s edge. The morae of Fíana do not vomit in public, she thought, and contradicted it.

  I dropped to my knees beside her; she sat back on her heels, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Without thinking I reached out to embrace her, to do and say whatever I must to erase the betrayal in her gaze—and then remembered: I was soaking wet; more than two dozen pairs of eyes were on us; and I wasn’t sure where the line of propriety fell on this side of the mountains. I let my arms drop again; further disappointment registered in her gaze, and she looked away.

  Amien bolted from the house to the portico, clothing rumpled and the tail of his hair askew. “What the hell is going on?”

  I sighed. “We were just having a graphic lesson in what it means to be Básghilae.”

  Amien grimaced, nodding. “My lady?” he said to Tiaran.

  “What it means to be—? What?” Letitia shrilled.

  Tiaran shrugged, still on the ground. “You would think that, after all this time, it wouldn’t knock me from my feet to see a vision come into daylight.”

  Letitia craned her long neck to stare up at the wizard. “Lord Amien, I keep hearing this word, but I get no explanation!”

  I turned to look at her, surprised: the Tanaan had understood readily enough the concept of a renegade wizard attacking with undead warriors; but none of them seemed to want more than the bare facts. Magic might be part of their history, but now it was sufficiently taboo that they grew visibly uneasy each time the topic was raised. Even Letitia had seemed content to know no more than tactically necessary. Until this morning.

  “Mora,” Amien began in a distracted tone, crossing the yard towards Tiaran. “You need to—”

  Letitia’s hand sliced through the air. “I need to understand!”

  Amien stopped. For several seconds they stared at one another. No one moved.

  “My lord,” I said. “I believe the mora is right. She does need to understand. Her knights do, too.”

  Amien looked from me to Letitia, pursed his lips, and nodded. Now, finally, the gaze Letitia turned on me was warm.

  “You may recall,” Amien said to the group gathered around the table in Tiaran’s dining hall, “the story of the Breasaílian god Dian Cecht and His well of rebirth.”

  “Yes,” Letitia said, sounding oddly relieved. “An ancestor of mine, in fact.”

  My head snapped around for a look at her before I could control it.

  “Truly?” I said. I had known the Tanaan were the descendants of gods, of course; but the idea of Letitia being able to trace her line to one in specific made my head swim. Suddenly the idea of a nation merely chartered by a goddess seemed small.

  “Oh, yes,” Letitia said, actually smiling now. The warriors around us settled more deeply into their chairs, tension lifting from their faces. “Dian Cecht was the father of Ernmas, who became the mother of the goddesses Ériu, Banba, and Fodla. It is from Ériu that Clan Ériu takes its name.”

  I found myself smiling as well. “And—”

  “If I may continue,” Amien snapped.

  I inclined my head; but I knew I was still smiling, amazed. “Your pardon, my lord. Every so often I am remi
nded that I am a harpist.”

  Amien’s mouth twisted. “I was raised with the expectation of inheriting vining estates, and you see how that has turned out for me.”

  “Please continue,” Letitia sighed.

  With one final squint at me, Amien turned back to her. “Well, then. Dian Cecht and His well of rebirth. At the second battle of Maige Tuireadh, when the Danaan were doing battle against the Fomor, Dian Cecht laid spells on the well of Slane—and after each night of the battle, the Danaan brought their dead to the well, and Dian Cecht restored them to life. Wizards have been trying to recreate that working for centuries—mostly with very little success. No one has ever succeeded in truly restoring the dead to life.”

  Except whoever was trying to earn my blood-price, apparently. Where had he learned to do what even the Bard’s Wizard couldn’t?

  “All mortals can do, it seems, is create undead,” Amien said.

  All the Tanaan nodded, waiting.

  “The Básghilae we’ve been fighting,” Amien continued. Some troubling thought crossed his face; he interrupted himself: “The name originates with the most successful worker of undead, the renegade Nechton, who was the first to develop undead that were in any way sustainable.”

  Affront mounted in me; I’d seen this sort of misdirection before, indeed been coached in it, like every student at Aballo: Don’t allow yourself to be forced into giving your patron too much information. Those outside the initiate are better off without knowledge that might be used unwisely. When cornered, obfuscate. I suppose many wizards believe the philosophy, but it is clearly just one of a hundred methods of keeping power in the hands of the Order: I’d seen that even before I left. And it wasn’t even relevant here: either Amien was operating from sheer force of habit or it was his intent to teach the Tanaan that trying to get information he wasn’t prepared to volunteer would only end in headaches.