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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “Me working magic is the last thing—” I clamped my jaws around the rest. However I might desire it, I couldn’t be trusted to do right if I drew power. I couldn’t be relied on to recognize the difference between good and evil: how ravenously I hungered for all the flavors of illicit power, how perilously close Nechton’s workings came to seducing me proved that.

  “I know it’s been a long time for you,” Amien was on his feet now, too, sounding bizarrely reasonable. “I’m not asking you to go duel the man—”

  But that was what he wanted, and it was what it would eventually come down to. Suddenly my hands itched for the draw of power; a thrill of black arcane lust swept up my spine. I thrust out my hands between us, as if my outspread fingers would stop his words.

  But he pressed on. “I’m not a complete fool: we need a full-on arcane offensive, not some honor-duel. And we need—I need you to be my War-Lord.”

  “What?” I said, too stunned to even argue.

  Amien cast me a look that said the point was perfectly obvious. “I felt it when you let me lean on you this morning. How deep your Talent has become, even while—” He shook his head; I reeled further. “I need you to order the battles. I need your strength.”

  “Don’t you—How can you not understand?” I said. “You of all people? I made a vow. I can’t—”

  “Surely She will overlook it, if the power you draw is for the defense of others.”

  “It’s not that simple!”

  “Explain it to me!”

  Words piled up in my throat; I choked them back down. First explain to me the difference between me and Nechton, I wanted to say. Tell me who will point out when something I desire is wrong. Who will stop me when I am too mad to understand?

  “No,” I said.

  Amien frowned. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no!” Sudden, desperate fury swept over me. I needed to run, but I had promised Letitia I would not abandon her again. “I mean do not ask me to work magic! Do not send an untried, untrained woman to do the work of a whole team of wizards! Do what you promised, and keep her safe! Gods, Amien, if for once you could think about the person rather than about how they fit into your damned plan—”

  “How many cities have to fall before it’s enough?” Amien retorted. “You tell me: how long will it be before they hold both Uisneach and Ilnemedon, if things go on as they are?”

  Two months. No more. I could neither entertain the possibility nor concede the point. I shook my head again. “So let the armies fight containment. Let the wizards go in against Esunertos, and then Macol!” Amien was already formulating his next objection; I talked louder and faster: “Let Letitia be safe—”

  “As long as he holds the Shadow of the Sun, nothing else we do matters! As long as we cannot defeat him directly—”

  “If you send her in there, without preparation—”

  Amien waved the objection away. “Of course not now! It’ll be more than a twelvenight after Bealtan before we can put even an advance force in Macol. Meanwhile we—”

  “Carina was born before the Deluge,” I said, struggling for calm. “Magic was not just in her blood, it was in her life every day. How long did she take to master Iliria?”

  He shrugged. “It was quick. It seemed entirely intuitive for her.”

  “Because she knew what she was doing!” Letitia said. We both looked at her. “Ellion’s right, I haven’t the faintest idea how or even whether it’s possible—”

  “If the mora Carina did it, it’s possible,” Iminor said flatly. He glanced from her to me, gaze shifting into pure loathing, then looked at her again. “The fact that—All the things he has done to try to ward you off—means Nechton knows it, too.”

  Letitia shook her head. “I don’t think we know—”

  “You have a responsibility!” Iminor said. “You are royal because the goddess put you there! We are given responsibilities when She sets us apart!”

  Terror and betrayal warred in Letitia’s face. “How can you—”

  “We are needed; we must serve!” Iminor said. “Of course you’re afraid; I am too! But we don’t get to choose how we will be needed, and we don’t get to refuse because we’re scared!”

  Letitia leapt to her feet. “You don’t—”

  “Your knights have been steadfast in your defense!” Iminor snapped. “They are not the only ones—”

  She spun away and bolted up the narrow stair; he stopped, gawking. After a few seconds he jumped up and raced after her. When the hull bumped gently against a dock, I scrambled up the stairs, too—just in time to see Letitia leap across the narrow gap between the deck and the dock, stumble and catch herself, and race away, towards the lights of a town I assumed was Presatyn. After another second of staring Iminor leapt across the gap, too, landing neatly on the dock. Letitia paused, spinning to face him, and extended a long arm to point at him.

  “No!” she shouted. “You may not!” She spun away and ran again; Iminor stood where he was, hands sliding over his mouth.

  “Well, that was productive,” I said.

  Amien shot me a look. “If you had not gainsaid every fouzhir thing…”

  Fury swept over me again. My hands itched, and just drawing the sword wouldn’t do: I wouldn’t be satisfied until we had it out with raw power, right here; until I returned to something like sanity with yet another sin I would never balance on my soul. I leapt from the deck to the dock and started down the same path Letitia had followed.

  “The mora said no,” Iminor pointed out behind me.

  “Good thing I’m not Fíanan,” I grated, and broke into a run.

  25. All Her Secrets

  Letitia was fast. I hadn’t realized how fleet-footed she was. By the time I reached the end of the wharf, she seemed to have vanished on the night air. By the time I stumbled upon the site of Presatyn’s sacred well, she had been and gone: wet footprints led out of the little cherry-blossom-strewn enclave and vanished into the dust of the street, and I knew she’d dunked herself in the waters to kill Amien’s wards.

  I would have done the same thing, if Amien had some arcane tie to me. I would have done whatever was necessary to gain a little privacy tonight. Finally, there was something to be grateful for: Nechton might see me if he chose, but at least Amien didn’t. But it also meant that no one with the possible exception of Nechton knew where she was or whether she was safe; I hastened through the moonlit streets of the little town, looking for her.

  Presatyn was oddly active tonight, in the way a town will get during the dead hours when both moons are close to full. Some of the best nights I could recall in Ilnemedon began during these too-bright dead hours, when the nap that should have been merely the evening’s first sleep became all the slumber of an eventful night. But in an unfamiliar place, packed streets during the dead hours seem like harbingers of chaos.

  The taverns were still busy despite the hour, light spilling from their windows and the lamps beside their doors. Savvy street vendors had taken advantage of the opportunity and were doing brisk business in skewered meat, fried meat pies, and some drink made from winter apples and uisquebae. People bound for the Fair at Teamair crowded the streets, and wherever they went it was as if the Fair had expanded all the way to Presatyn: I passed buskers of every possible talent, groups of staggering men and women whose drunken laughter echoed on the night air, night butterflies and a couple of men staging an improbable, entirely insufficiently-moonlit bout with naked swords. The buskers’ competing musics and poems rang against the buildings and the trunks of the cherry trees, and pink-white blossoms rained down under the moonlight until the place looked like late-season snow.

  On the long porch of a tavern, lit by torches and the light of the moons, I found Loeg and his troupe performing the same damned satire I’d been seeing for the past two days. The crowd thought it far funnier than I did. I couldn’t figure out how the mummers had beaten us here. At least they weren’t performing the tale of the Lady of Finias on th
e Ruillin: I wondered whether Loeg or the young harpist Marten would be the first to work something up.

  At the edge of the porch, finally, I spotted Letitia: small and soaked, the sodden spidersilk of her mail clinging so seductively to her long delicate frame that I wondered she’d been able to reach this spot unmolested. That made me think of the captain of the Ballarona ferry again. The fury that simmered beneath my surface flared; I fought it back down. The man was dead; there was no one here who deserved the bite of my blade. I pulled off my jacket, stepped into an empty spot at Letitia’s back, and settled it about her shoulders.

  She startled—and came around swinging. I ducked beneath the blow, caught my jacket just as it touched the ground.

  “It’s you!” she breathed, green eyes shining as if I had somehow rescued her. The sweet, seductive energy that Amien’s wards always obscured hung around her again, surprising an odd hitch in my throat.

  I nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Danger gathered in her face. “I’m not going back to the boat.”

  “Nothing could be further from my mind,” I said. “Give me a minute, and I’ll get us a skin of something. We need a holiday.”

  “Damn certain,” she said. It occurred to me that it was the first time I’d heard her swear. “Get uisquebae.”

  I nodded. “The very thing,” I said, and gently grasped her elbow. Her unique, tantalizing energy tingled delightfully against my fingertips and palm. I guided her past the edge of the performance and inside. Loeg caught my eye as we passed, with a wink I couldn’t decide how to interpret.

  Either everyone was suddenly packaging their uisquebae in bottles or I’d been had again: once more I paid too much, caring just as little as last time. I waited just long enough for the barmaid to open it and escorted Letitia back out to the street. We passed the laughing crowd; I paused and offered Letitia the first swig. She gave an odd little salute with the bottle, then raised the thing to her lips and drank, grimaced and handed it back. I tipped the bottle and let the blessed fire pour down my throat. My anger cooled a little; a zephyr roused from nowhere and carried Letitia’s exotic musk-rose-and-something-more scent into my core.

  This time I offered her my arm; a surprising little thrill skittered through me as she snuggled close, and for a while we just walked, passing the bottle back and forth, the dampness of her mail shirt gradually soaking into mine. When the bottle began to seem in danger of growing empty, we took it to the vendor with the apple-and-uisquebae drinks and got more. Eventually we reached the little grove in which the sacred well resided; I realized I’d been heading there all along. I paused, giving Letitia an inquiring look.

  “Yes,” she said, a sudden smile blossoming. “That will do.”

  We walked through the gate, into the midst of the circle of flowering cherry trees. Moonlight filtered through the petals and branches, glowed in the rippling waters of the spring; the subtle power of the well wrapped gentle tendrils around me. The sounds of the crowd in the street outside receded almost to nothing. I looked around, at the devotional ribbons tied to the trees and the little bundles of flowers around the well’s periphery: struck by the quiet, benevolent energy of this place, the present sense of a goddess Who would only do Her people good. I tipped my head back, looking at the branches and the stars above. The beauty of the place crashed through me; I stood transfixed.

  “I want to sit,” Letitia announced, with the abrupt certainty of the drunk, and settled on the grass beside the spring. Again she grimaced as she landed; my throat knotted.

  “Annu!” I said. “You’re hurt!”

  She shrugged. Belated anger crossed her angular face. “He bit me.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged again. “It’s not bad; it was through my clothes. I don’t think he broke—”

  It wasn’t my place to ask, but I couldn’t contain it. “What happened?”

  She reached for the bottle, had another swig of uisquebae. “Would you believe it was the wards that saved me? When he started—trying—and I fought him… and the dog was miles ahead of me; he’d already gotten me to take off the sword…”

  I hissed, remembering, and settled beside her. I hadn’t recognized the ploy, either, all my worry focused on her safety up on the rigging.

  Her mouth twisted. “He put a knife to my throat—”

  My hands clenched, beyond my control.

  “—but as soon as the blade touched…”

  “The wards flared,” I said.

  She nodded. “It scared him. He backed up and started cursing me, but of course when he tried again, there they still were. Finally he just backed off and locked me in.”

  I gathered her against me, kissed the top of her head. “Of all the things…”

  “I know.”

  I offered her the bottle again; she drank.

  “I’m glad you got out without anything worse.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  I kissed the top of her head again. “I was—glad to do it.”

  For a moment we were silent. I let the wondrous fog of uisquebae roll around in my brain, admired the moonlight in the cherry blossoms and the gentle fluttering of the ribbons tied to the branches.

  “This damn thing is soggy,” Letitia announced, and pushed herself to her knees. “I’m taking it off.”

  She unfastened the clasps of her mail shirt. I had a formless sense that it was dangerous, but I helped her pull it over her head anyway. The way her sodden clothes clung to her body made it nearly impossible for me to keep my hands politely to myself. She snuggled against me again; this time, for the first time, I felt the angular softness of her body under my arm and hand. Desire pounded through me; for a moment my head whirled.

  “So,” she said thoughtfully, still nestled against me. “Who are you, Ellion Tellan?”

  I sighed and drank more uisquebae.

  “You’re a wizard.”

  I felt myself stiffen. “I don’t practice.”

  She gave voice to a strange, short laugh. “Well, are wizards born… or made?”

  Damn. “Born.”

  She nodded, hair tickling my neck. “You are a wizard.”

  The truth of that simple statement caught me. I had known since I vowed to stop—since before I made that vow—that nothing could change who I was at my core. I had long since discovered that no amount of ignoring all the things arcane senses told me did anything to blunt those senses: it just made me hunger at the slightest provocation. As if I had committed to total celibacy and then taken on a harping gig at a tea-house.

  “I am a fool,” I said.

  She chuckled. “Let’s have a contest. I’ve got you beat.”

  I found myself smiling. “I find that doubtful. I got started much earlier.”

  “Really,” she said, sounding intrigued. “When?”

  I had another drink, thinking. “When I decided to go to Aballo.”

  How great a fool had I been, after all? As heir to Tellan, already beginning to assume the tanist’s role, I had let myself be drawn away on a promise of which I had not the faintest understanding. Any sane man would have thought my life already more than enough.

  “Why did you go?” Letitia asked, and relieved me of the bottle. She no longer grimaced after each sip, and in fact she was no longer sipping. That might prove perilous; I reached for the bottle. Once it was in my hand, there was no choice but to drink again.

  “Why?” she repeated.

  I looked through the bottle, at the way everything on the other side grew foggy and bent. And for no reason I knew of, I told the truth. “Because the goddess Called me.”

  Letitia gave a quick, surprised little gasp and drew back to look at me. The dampness of her clothing had soaked right through my mail to touch my skin, and now I was cold.

  I shrugged. After a second, a slow smile started on her face, and she snuggled against me again.

  “You did understand,” she said, sounding satisfied. “About the Touch of the godd
ess. I knew it.”

  I nodded and leaned my cheek against the top of her head. “I understood.”

  “But instead of binding you to your land, She sent you away?”

  I shook my head, the silk of her hair sliding against my cheek and neck and tightening the screws on my desire again. “She Called me to Her. At Aballo I learned…”

  I hesitated, the enormity of what I needed to convey beyond my limited command of Tanaan. There was probably no way to explain it, even in Ilesian, and to try to do so would most likely end with me violating the vow of silence concerning Aballo practices I had taken.

  I sighed. “After I was done there, She sent me home.”

  Home. How simple a word, and how deceptive. I realized I still thought of Tellan as my home, even though I would never return. Melancholy welled in me; I reached for the bottle again.

  “And yet…” Letitia hesitated. “Even though you did Her Will, you lost the throne.”

  Anger burst through me again; I withdrew, rose, began to pace. It wasn’t fair, and I burned for revenge. But after a moment of seething, I remembered.

  “That was my doing,” I grated. “Not Hers.”

  “No,” Letitia said with utter, drunken sincerity.

  I nodded, throat tight, and waited for the questions. Of course she wanted to know what I had done; everyone wanted to know. The duel blasted through my memory again, the raw, angry glorious power of it, and instead of the guilt I should have felt, what hung on me was the mind-wrecking delight of powers no wizard sworn to the true gods should ever touch, the horribly seductive sense of the possibility of becoming just like Them. I couldn’t remember why it would be wrong.

  “It should take more than one mistake,” Letitia said. “True effort should count for something.”

  I found myself looking at her, surprised. Where were the prying questions, the prurient interest in my transgressions? How was it possible that she had already forgiven me, without even knowing what I had done? Something inside me eased open, just a little.