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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “Well, then,” I said to no one in particular, “clearly the sensible thing to do is camp on this side, and make the crossing in the morning.”

  Even more heads whipped around in my direction.

  “What?” Amien snapped. “We need to get across the river! Everyone needs shelter, and rest; in the village we’ll be able to find an inn—”

  “Really?” I said to Easca; she grimaced and shook her head.

  Amien’s mouth twisted. “And over on that side of the river I’ll have at least a chance of building decent wards! That place—” Amien gestured at the city behind us. “Is evil.”

  “No,” I said. “There’s no evil there, just sadness. We should be able to find a building that’s safe enough to camp in; if the Bard’s Wizard attacks again, we won’t be endangering noncombatants—”

  “If he attacks again, I want to be standing on magically-usable ground!”

  “The party is tired!” I retorted. “This would be a treacherous crossing for fresh—”

  “I know you don’t care how difficult the arcane work is—”

  He stopped suddenly, staring at me; I stared back. This time, I knew, everyone in the party was certain that the person who should be eliminated was me. Oddly, I couldn’t even care about that, only about the anger—and fear—in Amien’s gaze.

  Fear of what? Of me? Of all the things I couldn’t allow myself to do—or all the things I might?

  I glanced away.

  “You’re right,” I said finally to the air behind his right shoulder. “I am more concerned with the safety of the party, and of the noncombatants in that village, than I am with arcane convenience. But the decision is the mora’s.”

  I glanced at her: now, finally, she met my gaze, something in her eyes that would have destroyed entire cities if it only had the power.

  “We go forward,” she said, low-voiced.

  I inclined my head, throat clenching.

  “Easca,” Nuad said peremptorily.

  Without a word she rode past me, threaded her way through the party without responding to the cold stare Letitia turned on her, and cued her horse down the steep bank. The gelding plunged into the water, which broke over the saddle bow and beat the creature disconcertingly sideways—and then the horse surged forward through the water, and my impulse to charge in after Easca subsided. A moment later the horse scrambled onto a submerged section of the span. Nuad followed Easca into the water; Letitia glanced at Iminor, but he just stared at her, frost in his blue gaze. She shrugged and cued her horse forward.

  Her delicate white mare had not been conceived for such a challenge: I drew in an involuntary, hissing breath as it slipped down the steep banks and plunged into the water. For a moment it seemed Letitia would be swept away by the current. Iminor cued his horse as if by reflex, then sensibly reined and gave Letitia room to maneuver in the narrow crossing. Finally the mare found some purchase or reserve of strength and began to beat her way across the water to the bridge. By the time her rear hooves were scrambling for a foothold Iminor was already in the river.

  The rest of us followed them across, one by one. I unlashed my harp from the saddle and slung it across the center of my back, hoping it might remain dry. It was a strange, balance-wrecking encumbrance; I wondered how harpists who can’t afford to maintain horses are able to tolerate the annoyance day after day. All at once I realized I was tired, too: far more worn than a day’s ride warranted.

  Finally there were only two of us left on the near bank. Manannan, the old man of the contingent—which meant he might have seen anywhere from fifty to two hundred years in the mora’s service—gestured courteously for me to precede him. When I wasn’t riding at the back of the contingent, he always seemed to be: clearly he was accustomed to that place of responsibility and took pride in upholding it. Nevertheless I was about to decline when Letitia and a horse screamed in unison.

  I looked out to the center of the river: Letitia had missed the connection at the far end of a broken span and clung to the back of her desperately-swimming mare as the horse was swept helplessly downstream. On the span behind her, Iminor wrenched his horse’s head sideways and charged directly into the water. Farther ahead, redheaded Rathacht had been dragged into some underwater hazard in another missing section. For one horrifying moment horse and rider hung, obviously impaled on whatever had snared them; then the water wrested them free. Without further thought I cued my horse into the torrent, as if I could catch up to them and do something of use from here.

  I gained the first section of the bridge; across the river I saw Iminor submerge briefly as his horse neared Letitia—and then his head reappeared beside her just as her horse foundered. He hauled her from the saddle into the water; I hurried my horse across the span to the next place we must swim, hardly aware of the water in my boots and the cold of the wet silk plastered across my middle. By the time I had reached the next span, Iminor had Letitia clinging to his saddle as they swam towards the far bank, but her bedraggled mare was nowhere to be seen. I passed through one of the little bastions, hurrying my horse towards a spot from which I could see what was happening—and the beast stumbled as we came out the other end, dropping suddenly onto another section that lay a few feet below the surface. Fierce, chaotic currents dragged us sideways; once again cold water swirled into my boots. This was the spot where Rathacht had been swept off the span, I realized. I glanced into the darkening water at my left hand, spotting a wicked-looking tangle of stone and metal.

  “Courage, old man,” I murmured to the horse, and did what I could to throw my weight against the force of the current. After a few moments of struggle the horse scrambled onto a section of the bridge whose surface lay above the water, and I glanced at the far bank. Just a little farther now. Most of the party had already gathered at the far end of the span; Letitia and Iminor were scrambling up the bank less than half a mile away, and Nuad led a group towards them at a gallop. By the time I reached the far bank, Letitia and Iminor lay amid the bracken at the verge, a cluster of knights dismounted around them.

  I reined, dismounted, and patted my horse’s neck. “Good work, boyo,” I murmured to him, glancing around.

  The village huddled much closer to the banks of the river than I had realized. The houses, small weathered-looking dwellings, all stood on squat platforms of cobbled stone; there seemed no distinction between the village and the rice fields around it. Some houses were entirely surrounded by plots of rice and could only be reached by narrow, raised earthen walkways. Other homes occupied ground high enough to support small vegetable gardens. Sunset light shimmered on the water in the rice fields, made silhouettes of the women stealing a few last minutes in vegetable plots and the children playing on the walkways. From the southwest corner of the little village, men drove skinny cattle in from some range I was certain even they didn’t refer to as pasture.

  A group of riders swept in from the northern edge, hooves thundering against basalt and splashing through rice paddies—and as the Básghilae took their first victims, my head shifted into magic, whirling into ur-reality too fast for me to stop. Through the village they came, slowing as they took the lives of noncombatants but never really stopping. Once again the energy of the Tanaan on whom they fed tingled against my skin, kindled the invisible series of lights that traces a wizard’s spine, knotted my throat with warring pleasure and horror—and then, suddenly, the leader of the Básghilae contingent was close enough for me to see his dispassionate green-cast face, his hollow despairing eyes—and unexpected comprehension of the working required to create his kind blasted me open, beyond human reason. Half a second’s echo of the power their maker channeled shot through me; my apprehension of the cataclysmic fusing of their souls to life energies not their own sparked meteors in my mind. Fierce need raced through me; my throat grew so tight I could barely breathe, and the sounds of my own harsh breath rasped in my ears.

  Down the riverbank, Letitia gave an inarticulate cry of despair; Nuad called the
knights around him to arms. Revulsion swept through me; my sword was in my hand before I realized I was reaching for it, and I discovered myself in the saddle. I spurred the horse out to meet the onslaught.

  I knew better than to bring emotions to battle; I knew all the ways fury, fear, and despair reduce the effectiveness of a leader. But anger and the need to destroy blazed through me too powerfully to shunt aside: I heard myself roar, waded into the first engagement with a crashing impact of sword on sword that resonated in all my bones and knocked the Básghil from his stirrups. I leapt to the ground after him and separated head from body with a stroke that was satisfying for half a second. I wanted desperately to hack the corpse beyond recognition. But behind me I heard Letitia’s knights racing up the narrow swath between the bluff and the river, and I forced myself to set that satisfaction aside. Instead I scrambled back into the saddle and spurred the horse into the path of the next rider.

  He was still fresh, almost sparkling, with the lives he had just absorbed. I wondered whether I could pull those energies into myself: whether I would survive the contact with his undead flesh. Some saner part of my mind recognized the madness of the impulse, recognized the energies that drew me had cost any number of innocent lives; and suddenly I had to swallow against nausea. Again horror and revulsion drove my sword, made it almost impossible to resist the impulse to follow the defeated ghoul to the ground and hack the corpse to unbloody pieces.

  A different magic flared nearby, its flavor too bland for me to do more than recognize its presence. A bolt of green flew in my peripheral vision: Amien. I should have been surprised when it swerved away from its target at the last second, but I was already occupied with destroying the next Básghil. The wrongness of his existence drove my sword: the blade hummed satisfyingly through the air, bit rewardingly into flesh. When this one fell, I found breathing a little easier. I looked up, heart still pounding—and realized I had lost all awareness of the field.

  Oh, dear gods. If I couldn’t order the battles for the Tanaan, then what was I doing here? Hastily I swept a glance around: Nuad stood with six of the knights—all three women among them—in a tight, mounted half-crown pinning Iminor and Letitia against the riverbank while Básghilae swarmed all around, trying to create an opening. As I looked, Easca knocked a ghoul from the saddle—and Iminor slipped around the back of the formation, sword bared, running to take the Básghil on foot. I shouted, but it didn’t make sense even to me; nevertheless Iminor cast me a guilty glance as his first stroke hit home. Closer to the bridge, Amien engaged in an all-out melee with another group of Básghilae, aided by Manannan, Fiacha, and Greine. They were heavily outnumbered, and had allowed themselves to become trapped in a depression that was probably a streambed during the rainy season. Luachran, stocky Eber, and young Semeon, who had been Cainte the chef’s grand-nephew, lay dead nearby.

  There was no question where I was most needed: I spurred the horse towards Amien’s melee, taking the first Básghil from the higher ground at the rear. It wasn’t much of a rear-guard action, but it was enough to shift the balance of the engagement. The knights in the hollow attacked with renewed vigor; the Básghilae shifted focus to accommodate the new front. I still wanted to follow every Básghil I defeated to the ground.

  Eventually, we eliminated their numerical superiority, and they disengaged and withdrew. But there was no satisfaction in it: I knew the deaths of three knights were my fault; and I couldn’t stop remembering the unearthly, horrifying delight of the energies the attackers had released, feared to identify the character of the tremors that raced up my spine. As darkness closed in we gathered our dead, and the two groups converged in the zone between our engagements. It felt as if we should have embraced, should have congratulated one another on surviving; instead we all stood still for a moment, staring dumbly at one another. Letitia glanced at me, abject shame in her face, and looked away; my own humiliation made nausea gather in my throat again.

  “It should be easier,” Iminor croaked finally. “Knowing that you’re doing them a favor. Knowing that it’s not their fault. It should be easier to feel mercy.”

  “But I still just hate them,” Mattiaci agreed, eyes on something at the far end of the village.

  Everyone fell silent.

  “We should get inside, Lords,” Easca said after a moment. “Arian is not a place to be outdoors at night.”

  “Lead on, then,” Nuad said tiredly, and swung into the saddle without giving the order.

  The group mounted, Letitia on the black gelding that had been Luachran’s, and followed Easca northward on the riverbank. I hung back, taking up the rear again, mind full of things against which people should bar the night door.

  The village of Arian had more dead to mourn tonight than we. And of course their shock was far greater. For us, now, the only shocks of Básghilae attacks came from inside our own hearts and minds.

  The villagers had already scooped up their dead and scurried inside; only the horse-trampled fields and gardens showed that something had passed through. But as we followed Easca down the narrow, winding path through the village, I heard wailing from more than one house—and felt eyes on us behind the shutters of several others.

  The house to which Easca led us was her own: the home of the clan leader, Alba Arian. It was too small to accommodate even a dozen guests; and we weren’t many more than that now. Though it stood on a large enough patch of dry land to support what appeared in the fading light to be a vegetable garden, it could only be reached via an earthen walkway; and even Easca wasn’t certain how to accommodate so many horses or where we might build pyres in this waterlogged place. If Letitia had hoped for some sort of ceremonial welcome on her first visit here, she must surely be disappointed.

  Easca reined in front of the house, hesitated, then said quietly, “Lords, let me fetch the Arian. She’ll know what to do,” and slipped from the saddle. She raced across the narrow walkway and banged a fist against the door. Within seconds it opened, revealing a grief-stricken Tana whose age might be measured in decades or centuries, who wrapped Easca in an immediate embrace and began weeping in earnest.

  “Mama,” Easca said quietly, a note of protest in her voice. “We’ve the mora outside, with a—oh, Lord of Light, with a Beallan sorcerer and a group of—”

  “The mora?” the older Tana echoed. “Of what?”

  Easca gave voice to a humorless laugh. “Of Fíana, Mama.”

  Easca’s mama looked up, scanning the group without releasing her daughter; then abruptly she straightened.

  “Right, so,” she said, smoothing hair back from her face. “Let’s go.”

  Mother and daughter crossed the little walkway towards us, the elder sweeping the group with a gaze that missed little and romanticized less. We all slid from the saddles as if this were some sort of inspection drill; finally the clan leader stopped and, evidently unable to deduce which of the Tana the mora might be, dropped a swift, general-purpose curtsy to the group.

  “Welcome,” she said.

  “Mora Letitia Ériu a Fíana,” Easca said, manner flawless but a neutrality in her voice that suggested politics passing human understanding. “Allow me to present the Arian, my mother Alba Arian.”

  Letitia attempted a soggy curtsy; exhaustion and waterlogged spidersilk nearly pulled her to the ground. Just in time Iminor grasped her arm.

  “Lady, your hospitality is legend,” Letitia said.

  The Arian swallowed what I suspected was a laugh. “I’m sorry, we favor safety over protocol here these days. Please come in.”

  “Lady,” Iminor said smoothly.

  “The mora’s consort, Iminor a Dianann,” Easca murmured.

  The young Tan bowed, as perfectly courtly as if his clothes weren’t still dripping; the clan leader curtsied to him, but her growing impatience was evident.

  “Lady, with great respect—we’ve sixteen horses and three dead of our own. I assume you’d prefer we didn’t bring them all…?”

  “Lord
of Light,” the clan leader said. “Ouirr, you’re right. Easca—we should be able to make room for the horses in the barn. I’ll send Erc to run for Badra…” She paused, the strain of solving problems beyond her own village’s tragedy plain in her face. “I know you’ll want to prepare your dead. We can build cairns in the morning—” She frowned, as if she’d just apprehended another problem. “—but I don’t know—”

  Simultaneously the group gave a collective gasp of horrified understanding.

  “Cairns?” Letitia said. “Lady, we need to build pyres!”

  The clan leader nodded ruefully. “Lady, how many trees have you seen out here? Since the Deluge we have had to… find other ways.”

  “But we’re not storing vegetables!” Letitia protested.

  The clan leader sighed. “Lady, our wisewomen carry an unbroken tradition from Banba, who was priestess on Ilunmore. They all agree that the cairn stands in for the Great Barrow on Ilunmore and the Lady’s Underground Ways.”

  “Lady,” Easca said quietly to her mother. “You’re debating outdoors.”

  The clan leader glanced at Easca and sighed. “You’re right, Daughter. Lady, we can talk more about this inside; let’s get you in for the night. I’m afraid I don’t know where we can properly honor your dead tonight; you’ll be stepping on one another in here as it is.”