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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  The wizard grunted, nodding. “Haven’t been there in years, myself. Rohini can brief us.”

  “That’s a start,” I allowed. “But we’ll still need current intelligence.”

  Amien nodded again. “The Moot.”

  “Gods, not that long, I hope.”

  The wizard sighed. “Are you familiar with Esunertos?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve seen it from across the river. You?”

  “The same.”

  “We’ll need intelligence there, too,” I said, and glanced at him. Now I saw he misinterpreted my thinking about the campaign as willingness to assume the role he wanted. Ire flared in me again.

  One battle at a time. First I must secure Letitia.

  “I talked to Letitia,” Amien said, looking out over the river again. “She’s willing.”

  This time I failed to contain my anger. “No, she feels bound by the honor of her clan!”

  Amien’s mouth thinned; I remembered we stood on the open deck, and the wind might not cover all my words.

  “She expects to die in the attempt. I think she’s right,” I continued, voice quieter but words growing increasingly clipped, beyond my control. “And if you could look past your feelings for Carina, you’d see it too!”

  So much for persuasion. The words bubbling up behind that outburst were even less diplomatic, and he looked ready to unload a few choice phrases himself; I turned away and strode down the deck, to the rear of the boat. Letitia still sat with her back to the charthouse. The talisman dangled between her hands, winking in the sunlight; her eyes fixed on the sun, but the delicious glow I knew she could generate was absent. The boat rocked under my feet; suddenly I wanted to vomit. I swallowed hard and walked forward again.

  The hours and the river unrolled with agonizing slowness; my nausea ebbed and flowed as fiercely as the Ruillin, but I clung to my scant remaining dignity and swallowed against the too-bright sun, the surprising heat, and the persistent rocking of the boat. The sun climbed overhead and dropped down to stare into my aching eyes. By the time the boat reached the confluence with the Aban and the town of Nemetona, I had realized Rohini was traveling without her House Healer. I had never met the man, but I still counted it a blow: we could have used one more competent swordsman, one more Talent for Letitia’s defense. I would have to find out what the situation was, once I was sure I could hold a civil conversation.

  At Nemetona, Amien and I accompanied the Tanaan towards the city gate, while Rohini and her men forded the river to camp on the Deceang side. Their political situation must be at least as bad as I had suspected, the situation of the Nemetona loyalists as precarious as the young harpist Marten had said. I wondered whether upriver traffic for the Moot and Fair was shifting Nemetona’s balance in favor of the loyalists, at least temporarily, or I had once again failed to understand.

  Amien stood looking after Rohini and her men, deep worry in his face: I realized he hadn’t truly believed me about the plight of the Essuvians until now. I found no pleasure in being right where he had been wrong: just signaled Nuad to wait while Amien stared across the ford and offered the wizard half a smile when he finally returned his attention to our party and mounted. The final hour of daylight softened the spare terrain we rode, shadowing the blank spaces and hard edges among the rocks and scrub grass, casting the sparse cottonwoods in red-golden light that made them look more substantial than they were.

  I’d heard and read about the region between the northern bank of the Aerona and the upthrust to the piedmont that loomed in the distance: in this cold, arid zone thrives the hardy silkspider, cousin to the desert silkspider that produces the fantastically fine and expensive fabrics so desired by the upper classes across the southlands. Here on the Aerona they harvest and spin the heavier spidersilk that goes into the making of mail like Letitia, Amien, and I wore, and from which rope makers craft the nearly-indestructible spidersilk ropes and cables that are indispensable to siege engines and overland campaigns. The spidersilk growers who live in these lowlands trace their ancestry to the upper tiers of Uxellian society displaced after Nechton’s first would-be conquest: predecessors in a sense to Rohini’s people, pushed aside when the victorious ard-righ granted the Essuvians dominion over Uxellia after Nechton’s defeat. The silk growers of the Aerona lowlands share ties I had never taken the time to examine with the fine-spidersilk weavers in Ballarona and Ilnemedon, and presumably with the growers of spidersilk in Uxellia: comprising a strange, nearly separate society whose spare enclaves and dour manners repel everyone who lives outside their walls. I had never done more than skirt the edges of the Weavers’ Enclave in Ilnemedon: there is no entertainment to be had within, and the place always felt strangely hostile. But the Aerona lowlands stretched quiet and still to the northeast, as if no one lived here at all.

  Nemetona itself reminded me of Dromineer: the first tier of the city, situated outside the wall on the riverbank, is filled with smithies and smelters and other low temples of the smith-god, Whose power rumbled beneath the rough streets and wafted on the smoke of the forges. The energies slipped into the crevices of my still-aching head with a disturbing familiarity, troubling me further when their soft rumble eased away the pain in my skull. I couldn’t find it in myself to want the headache back, nauseating as it had been, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the lack of pain was wrong.

  Once I stopped my unconscious clenching of all the muscles in my head and neck, the gentle power of Goibniu’s Consort, understood in Nemetona to be the goddess of the local river, bubbled through me as well. Suddenly I recognized how deeply I thirsted: a real thirst of the body, the quenching of which would revive me. We passed a little well, just outside the city gate, and I felt its restorative power even without drawing near. But I was ready neither for the humiliation of stopping the party and admitting that I needed to drink nor for the more private admission of the benevolence that had touched me, here and last night. I rode with the group through the gate.

  Inside, the little neighborhood shrines we passed as we climbed towards the more refined districts at the top of the bluff bore dedications to the true gods—though I sensed that the local river goddess was simply wearing Ara’s face and going right on with Her relationships with the locals, accommodating the Presence of the true gods but not sparing Them much concern. Was the Aerona the frontier for the true gods? Was Their worship only lip service, north of the line? I had lived in Ballarona for five years without noticing anything amiss: had something changed, or had I been simply too enmeshed in Lady Tella, even after Her rejection, to see? There was no way to answer the question.

  The inns along the street leading up to the city center buzzed with activity: traffic for the Moot and Fair, I assumed; probably more Fair than Moot down in this area. Presumably the tiarna, the righthe, and the people who followed them in hopes of making sales or securing patronage headed for the top of the bluff. Street vendors and buskers narrowed the way; meandering people clogged the traffic further. Even on horseback, we encountered spots in which we had to slow to accommodate the mayhem. I didn’t see Loeg or any of his crew, and wondered whether we had finally outpaced them. Any sane person would have rested at Presatyn after last night.

  In the city center at the top of the bluff, the atmosphere shifted again. This circle felt comfortable and right: suffused with accustomed energies and the aromas of foods I understood. The streets here seemed calm after the commotion in the roads below, but we still had to try three inns before we found one with sufficient space for all of us: the Brown Bull, a sprawling solidly-constructed edifice of three stories with an honest-to-the-gods portico rather than the sort of haphazard porch typical of garden-variety inns. That exterior and the richly appointed receiving room told me all I needed to know: we would pay far too much for everything tonight. I couldn’t have cared less. The walls were solid wood; the fireplaces in the rooms would be decently-sized, ready for the merest beckoning of a wizard or strike of a tinderbox for fire to set them alight;
two beds stood prepared to accommodate four men. I would have a glass of brandy tonight: not because I needed it, just because I could. I gratefully gave over the care of my horse to the busy but more-than-competent stable staff and carried my possessions up to the room.

  Somehow I had managed to beat Tuiri and Fiacha here: the utter peace of the room enveloped me. For a moment I just stood, drinking in the quiet; then the door opened behind me and Amien entered.

  “Civilization,” I sighed.

  “Too little of that lately,” he agreed, depositing his burdens. He turned and shut the door, and stood staring at me as if gathering his thoughts. I’d seen that look enough times that dread of what he would finally say erupted, surprising me. I maintained a calm face.

  “You would do well,” he said at last, in the controlled tones that any Aballo apprentice knew to presage serious consequences, “to leave my personal history out of our strategic discussions. Whatever relationship you imagine I had with Carina a Ériu—”

  The door opened; Tuiri and Fiacha walked in, engaged in some lighthearted conversation that immediately stopped.

  “—rest assured it does not enter into what I do this month,” Amien finished, face still and eyes intent.

  I stood amazed, staring at the wizard. Behind him, our Tanaan roommates had frozen into utter stillness. Amien’s mouth twitched; he turned on his heel and stalked out to the corridor: closing the door behind him, leaving me staring at the place where he had been. I shook off the paralysis, sighed, and dumped my things in a different corner, standing and staring at them in the vain hope that coherent mental function would resume.

  “Are you… all right, Lord?” Tuiri said. “You’re looking a little green again.”

  I sighed. “I’m fine,” I said, walking to the window and looking out to the street. “Thank you.”

  “As you say, Lord,” Fiacha said, in tones that said I was completely transparent but they were prepared to accept the lie as not particularly relevant to them. I sighed again, nodded, and took myself to the bathing room.

  The place was more civilized than I had dared hope: it might have been Ilnemedon. An attendant greeted me as I entered. He ushered me to one of a dozen small private bathing chambers, mixed the water for me, and compensated for my forgetting my own razor with one from a long rank of gleaming implements on a shelf; he even worked some incomprehensible magic on my clothes while I bathed. I settled gratefully into the hot water and steam, soaking up civilization.

  Last night unfolded itself in my mind, moments and memories as disordered as if thrown into the air. Letitia awash in moonlight, her soft power casting a glow that caressed my skin and lit up my mind. Clinging to the pitching deck of the boat out of Ballarona, lightning and waves crashing across the deck and Nechton’s magnificent black spell enveloping me. Letitia’s gaze holding me fast as she pulled the thong from my hair. The world-disordering incandescent moment of slipping into her mystery. Amien watching me as if he’d already named me his War-Lord, as if the only details he couldn’t predict were the time and place of the duel with Nechton that he planned for me. Amien’s lips drawing back to bare his teeth when I uttered Aechering’s name.

  The Shadow Working. The Shadow of the Sun. How had the former created the latter? Memory bounced me into an ill-lit corner of Aballo’s library: the aromas of leather bindings and ancient parchment filling the air, Aechering’s ideas my mind. I could still see the page, Aechering’s spidery crabbed writing and his absentminded habits with the pen. And the words.

  Hakaid the shadow of the Sun

  And open the Abyss

  Let the heir of Tílimya

  Woo the Virgin Star

  Join the Sun and the Moon in Darkness

  Thus results the Union of Silver and Gold

  Blend the Essences in the vessel of life

  The Elixir cythe

  Earth, Fire, Water and Air to command or release at will

  In the Crucible where pain is ecstasy and Death is Life

  Hidden is plain

  The reach of the shadow of the Sun is infinite

  The imagery of it took me, as ever. How could a man trained to unravel the meanings of esoteric texts not adore Aechering? His puzzles are all but impenetrable, but the secrets he presents the persistent reader never fail to open the mind to previously-unsuspected wonders. The Sun has a shadow, and it may be the key to everything. Absent this working, how would anyone ever suspect?

  If only someone living knew what hakaid meant. I wondered how Nechton might have cracked open this working without the proper translation—or where he’d found the meaning.

  But it was only an intellectual exercise. It is one thing to read Aechering’s work, another to practice from it; even at my most immoderate I hadn’t done the latter. It was beyond contemplation now. I pushed the verses from my mind, shaved and washed, and pulled on blessedly fresh clothes. And at last I felt like myself, or the version of me who dwelled in Ilnemedon in peacetime: clean, presentable, hair hanging free, my hand comfortable without a blade; ready to face both my companions and whatever subset of polite society occupied the inn’s main room.

  A harpist was already playing as I entered: some original composition for the instrument alone that provided suitable background to dining. I didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t seem to notice me: I settled gratefully at the long table occupied by my companions, taking in the pristine cloths and fine crystal glasses on the table and the road-weary smiles of the people around me. Iminor shot me a glare as I sat, on general principle it seemed; but Letitia met my gaze with a calm mask and eyes that lit with recent memory, then answered my cordial smile with one of her own.

  Yes, I thought. We could do this. Discretion would be key.

  “They’re serving beef tonight,” Nuad said to me. “We thought you’d approve…?”

  “Dear gods, yes,” I sighed. “Thank you.”

  “Where’s Amien?” Letitia asked.

  I shrugged. “You haven’t seen him? He stalked off in a bit of a snit a while ago…” I shrugged again. “I’m sure he’ll turn up when he’s ready to look at me.”

  Letitia nodded pensively, glancing around the room again: I realized she must be waiting for him to rebuild the wards she’d wrecked last night. My imagination stood ready with a vision of what it would be to do the job myself; I fought it off, but found myself tingling anyway.

  Shortly dinner arrived, the beef accompanied by early spring greens that must have been brought in on ice from much farther south; mixed winter squash; fresh, hot, proper bread; and an entirely respectable Deceangi red. The flavors of properly cooked foods proved even more intoxicating than the wine; I was struck, as always after too long on the road, by wonder at the fact that I had taken such things for granted not too long ago. The Tanaan were somewhat more cautious in their enjoyment, but before long they ate with gusto as well.

  After dinner the harpist gave way to a group playing dance music; no sooner had they struck the first chord than Iminor stood at Letitia’s elbow, inviting her to dance. She allowed him to hand her up with a courtly smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Tru and Easca rose to dance with Mattiaci and Nuad. I ordered a glass of brandy and sat savoring it while I watched the dancers, Tanaan and human alike, step and twirl to the music. Eventually Amien arrived, settled in the empty spot remaining beside me, greeted me and our Tanaan roommates with a civil nod but no actual conversation, and ordered a brandy of his own. Tuiri and Fiacha rose and crossed the room to cut in for a turn at the dance.

  “I spoke to our friends,” Amien said, still not looking at me, and I knew he meant Rohini and the Essuvians. “They need to travel the south bank tomorrow; Mumhan is mostly closed to them, especially west of the Aban.”

  I nodded. “I imagine Granniu’s not much better.”

  “They didn’t get on with the Weavers before things got this bad.”

  It was only to be expected: the Essuvians had supplanted the Weavers in their own land. It would be
too great a mental gymnastic to assign the blame properly, to a group of frightened righthe four centuries removed. I thought about the silk-growing community in Uxellia, the nexus of the Weavers’ closed society, still living in the midst of lands that had once been theirs; and two seemingly-unrelated strands of events wove together in my mind.

  “What was the extent of their involvement in the fall of Macol? The Uxellian Weavers, I mean.”

  The wizard shrugged. “Ask Rohini.”

  “I wonder if she knows.”

  The wizard shot me a forbidding look and returned his attention to the dance.

  Tru and Tuiri crossed from the dance floor to the table, smiling. She kissed him on the cheek as he settled, then turned her bright gaze on me.

  “Lord, would you like to dance?”

  Unexpected emotion welled in me at her sweetness. I mustered a smile.

  “Thank you,” I said, rose and let her lead me across the room, her lean strong hand folded around my own as if she thought I might think better of it and bolt. I hadn’t danced since the death of the ard-righ: Ilnemedon had mourned his death for a full month; and during the days before I left I’d had no stomach for the tentatively-resuming social scene, where I knew speculation about the Moot and the election of the next ard-righ would be the twelvenight’s obsession.

  Tru was as lightfooted on the dance floor as on the battlefield, as lean and sinewy and surprisingly delightful in my arms as she looked; she met my gaze in an astonishing intimacy wholly unfraught with dangerous overtones as we danced, so honest in her regard that a knot formed in my throat. She didn’t let me lead so much as dance with me, which I surmised was a Tanaan peculiarity. I had never before considered how much of the way we dance arises from our roles off the dance floor, how the expectation that the man will set the tempo and choose the next steps would have a completely different meaning to a people of whom the women are in charge. I wondered if she expected me to let her lead.