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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing yet,” I said. “But we need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Care to explain?”

  I’d rather have a nail pried off. “When we’re secure.”

  The escort assembled in short order. This morning the energies and unexpressed emotions running beneath their surfaces came through more clearly than their words or physical aspects. Tru and Easca glowed with the approach of Bealtan estrus and the mounting pressure of needs that surpassed the sexual; the male knights radiated surging will to be the first and last to drink at those wells; Iminor spun those energies up to a blinding intensity overlaid with a flavor of animosity that I hadn’t seen in a decade and couldn’t have found less compelling. Amien’s long-familiar energies jarred against the background of wild, diverse, oddly harmonious powers surrounding this place; his wards hung on Letitia again, smudging her delightful energy until it was practically undetectable.

  I bit back my annoyance at the way it dimmed her glow, put a little extra effort into the problem and found, for a moment, the alien priestess staring back at me in the clear morning light. Now, finally, her physical beauty came into focus, her succulent mouth and long white neck and the spare curves against which the spidersilk mail shimmered and slid. Knowing the flavors of her mouth and the feel of her lean body beneath me did nothing to diminish the fascination she always roused.

  I could eat you, I thought. I felt rather than saw the tremor that passed through her.

  *Feeling’s mutual,* she sent, on a targeted transmission for my mind alone. The smolder of her regard ignited something inside me; I wrapped my hands around the reins to keep them from developing other agendas. I knew our mutual gaze had gone on too long, long enough that it was becoming noticeable, but it took me a while longer yet to tear myself away.

  “Let’s go,” I said and cued my horse. Amien shot me a look but fell in beside me, and we rode down, through the lower levels of the city, out to the ford and across the river. Already the road on the south bank was busy with Fair traffic on carts, donkeys, and the occasional plodding horse, the river surprisingly full of rich men’s boats dawdling west against the tide.

  Rohini and her contingent were ready and waiting when we arrived. We remained mounted as they climbed into the saddles, and then we all headed up to the river road. Rohini distributed her men to the fore and rear again. It was the proper strategy, but riding in the center of such a large group felt strange, as if I had somehow become a noncombatant; I nudged my horse forward until I could settle in beside Rohini.

  “Good morning, sian,” I said. I could not recall ever having addressed a woman as sian, but I had the sense that Rohini would interpret Lady as the throwing down of a gauntlet. I would find enough ways to offend her without succumbing to the obvious.

  She shot me a quizzical, suspicious look, but replied with a civil nod. “Good morning.”

  Amien slipped into position on my other side, squeezing whatever lieutenant had been riding at Rohini’s right hand to the edge of the narrow road. He dropped back behind us; Rohini spared him a glance but returned her attention to me.

  “What’s your plan today, sian?” I continued.

  She raised her dark-auburn brows. “Hard to say. Were my men and I alone on this urgent a journey, I’d be aiming for Laetrif tonight: the days are running long. Will your crew last that far?”

  “Hard to say,” I answered. Most travelers to the Fair would make the journey between Nemetona and Laetrif a three-day trip; I was confident Letitia would last two-thirds of the distance, but the final third was a gamble. “It’s not the knights who concern me…”

  Rohini nodded, absorbing the things I hadn’t said. “Let’s just see how the day unfolds.”

  I nodded, too. “Just so. I haven’t really met your men yet, sian…”

  “Feel free,” she said: permission to circulate among them and introduce myself, given from one commander to another; a pleasant surprise after all the dark and assessing looks I’d received from her.

  “Thank you,” I replied. “But I can’t help noticing one particular absence.”

  She cast me a look of surprise, which faded into one of understanding. Amien gave a half-amused grunt.

  “His name is Brinner?” I said: her House Healer, a man I had never met but who I was certain Amien must have hand-picked for her.

  Rohini nodded, glancing briefly at Amien before returning her attention to me.

  “He and my—” The word tanist hovered on the air, but at the last second she amended it. Difficult to have a tanist without a throne to which he might succeed. “—kinsman are moving the clan to the Precinct. He’ll meet us at the Fair.”

  Rumor placed most of the exiled Essuvian clans in the northern reaches of increasingly hostile Mumhan; the neutral ard-righ’s precincts would afford them safety for the duration of the Fair. A better ard-righ than Conary Mourne might finally offer them sanctuary after the Moot.

  “That must be taking the better part of a twelvenight,” I said, in a tone I hoped suggested sympathy for their plight: the overland trip to the ard-righ’s precinct would be slow going for a group so full of noncombatants, and they would need whatever protection, military and arcane, they could get. But all I really cared about was the fact that Letitia would have to do without that blade and extra measure of arcane support.

  “I appreciate your help more than I can say,” Amien added, obviously a repeat of words uttered earlier.

  Rohini smiled slightly, nodding to Amien. “And I yours.”

  The dusty road curved and climbed a short rise; a little distance ahead, a group of Fair travelers with donkeys eased their animals to the edge, making room for us to pass. In the midst of the fields beyond, an old spreading oak stood atop a mound with the unmistakable look of a long-forgotten tomb, rising from the early morning mist as if from a dream. Through the shimmering air I glimpsed myself hanging on that tree, felt the coiled power in and beneath the barrow into which the ancient roots tapped. The pull of that place rang in my head until I could hear nothing else, grabbed at my throat until I could barely breathe. Already I felt the morning sun fade into eternal starlight.

  I wrenched myself free. Amien and Rohini continued to speak earnestly about things of no consequence; something that wasn’t dust clogged my throat.

  “Well, then,” I said, apropos of nothing. “With your indulgence.” I reined, ignoring the annoyance in the glances they shot me as they rode forward, and tried to occupy my mind with meeting Rohini’s men.

  The man we had pushed back a rank was Busadi Ausc, Rohini’s second-in-command: a typically black-haired, broad-featured Essuvian with grey eyes and a sort of laconic grace. Mind still too broad, I read straight down to his core without meaning to, seeing through the hard layer of indifferent ethics imposed by the necessity of survival in hostile territory to the honor and multilayered devotion beneath. Given a cause he believed in, he could be trusted utterly—unless and until what was necessary interfered with Rohini’s well-being. I spoke with him for a few moments about irrelevant things, remembering none of the details of what he said: mind too full of truth for anything else to lodge there.

  Around him rode Magav, Luxin, Thurro, Olin, and Uxenti, each of whom hailed from a different Essuvian clan. Together with the men at the back of our strangely-large train, they had been Rohini’s personal guard before Macol fell. Their allegiance to the woman they served had survived the loss of her title; their native Essuvian reserve prevented them from admitting the truth I read: hand-picked by Rohini herself, they had been chosen not on the basis of rank or clan affiliations but for character and talent with arms. I managed to stretch a part of myself sufficiently close to the mundane world to offer them the observation that Letitia’s knights had been chosen in much the same way, representing the best Fíana had, and to relate a bit about the long mobile siege they had endured in her defense: remotely pleased at the shift I saw in their attitudes towards the Tanaan, remote
ly surprised at myself for caring.

  Finally I dropped back to ride with the Tanaan: answering Iminor’s civil nod and venomous stare with a disinterested nod of my own, settling in beside Nuad to contemplate all the reasons why Iminor was right to hold me in so little regard. I saw, with utter, emotionless clarity, the dangerous unanswered hungers in me, the way I had spent the past decade starving myself of things I needed as much as food and water and sleep; the ways in which my attempts to compensate for that missing nourishment with the empty thrills of sex and gambling and duels had drained me further still, had opened a gulf between me and all the people who would never understand even the most basic aspects of the truth at my core. How all of it had conspired to cut me off from the sustaining power of human affection until I walked as little more than a shadow among them. How little humanity was left to me, after all.

  I could be cured, if I chose it: I saw this, too. But I wasn’t sure who I would become if I were, or what path the cure would take. We climbed a steep rise and passed a sun-circle, complete and shot through with veins of gleaming schist, at the top of the ridge; the energy of the place infiltrated me until my bones hummed in sympathy. Compulsion to turn aside and enter that space competed with my awareness that I was already, perhaps irretrievably, more than a little bound to that energy and could reach it just as easily in mind as in body. I had to get Letitia to safety, and I might finally have enough men around me to do it. I slipped the bonds gathering about me and rode on.

  Hakaid the shadow of the Sun.

  Mile after mile the road stretched; group after group of travelers bound for the Fair ceded us the road, prompted by the compulsion to get out of the path of a horse of which humans are all but unaware and to which they are all utterly bound. Periodically we stopped to rest and water the horses, to eat and see to their care, and to stretch the muscles of legs and backs. I stared down at the river flowing at the base of the bluff and the boats plying patiently against the tide; I gazed across fields of wheat and flax at cairns and barrows and standing stones, wondering that no loyalist seemed to understand how much the old ways still held, even in Deceang; I participated absently in conversations I forgot as soon as they ended, seeing only the beautiful essences of my friends and the smudge of irritating energies that hung about Letitia.

  The reach of the shadow of the Sun is infinite.

  The knots of travelers through which we rode were even less present to me; their chatter and laughter and road-weary arguments drifted past me like smoke from a distant fire.But when Básghilae approached from some little site dedicated to Esus a mile or so distant, I felt them before I saw them, smelled the sudden surge of now-familiar energies cresting around us, saw the way the horses’ ears pinned back long before any of the riders noticed something amiss. I reined, and whistled: loudly enough to be heard over all the conversations threading through our train.

  “Básghilae,” I called, pitching my voice to carry all the way to the back. Rohini shouted out some command I half-understood, in the Essuvian language; Busadi took it up, embellishing her instruction with specifics that made even less sense. I sent the Tanaan into a half-crown around Letitia, with the sharp drop to the river at their backs. As the Básghilae crested the ridge of the road less than half a mile distant, the Essuvians at the front of the train raced out to meet them: alternately weaving among the traffic and trampling along the verge in a magnificent flying wedge, lances at the ready. Once they moved I realized how many noncombatants had frozen, trapped, between the approaching Básghilae and the place in which we stood.

  “Run!” Letitia shouted at them. “Run! Go back!” Her voice escalated towards a shriek; they swiveled panicked stares from her to the approaching Básghilae and back again, and stood as if rooted to the road. She gave voice to an inarticulate cry comprised of frustration and despair and cued her horse forward, nudging him between Tuiri and Ogma. All the knights began to shout at her; suddenly the world returned from the distance it had occupied all day, blasting me with brilliant westering sunlight and long shadows and the trampled-earth smell of a well-traveled road.

  “Letitia, no!” I shouted, banishing her back to the circle with an outflung arm. She met my gaze, and once again I saw the hopeless desperation that lay in her eyes at the Presatyn well. And I understood: if I wanted her to remain under protection, I had to give her cover in a way that also shielded as many noncombatants as possible.

  “Fine!” I snapped. “Forward!”

  I spurred my horse into motion; the Tanaan surged forward, circling around the frozen mass of humanity to stand between them and the approaching Básghilae, hurriedly re-forming against the ridge. I turned and walked my horse back in the direction we had all come, motioning the other travelers ahead of me.

  “Run!” I said to them, still moving. They moved reluctantly out of my way, but mostly towards the sides of the road.

  “That way!” I said, trying hopelessly to sound less frightening than the riders thundering towards us, casting shooing motions at them with both hands. “Run, you fools!”

  “RUN!” Amien bellowed, and finally they seemed to get the point and began scurrying—just as the second half of Rohini’s contingent surged towards the battle and the Básghilae closed in behind me. I turned again, drawing my sword, spurring my horse forward to meet the onslaught as the Essuvians tangled in the retreating noncombatants and pushed through to help.

  The energy in which I’d been enmeshed all day bloomed across the road, wrapped itself around me again; I collided with the first ghoul, meeting his dead gaze as our blades crashed. The energy driving him was the same as the heady dark sparkle hanging all around, more potent than I had ever seen in the Básghilae: overlaid with the memories of human lives and the signatures I recognized as Nechton’s—and shot through with something deeper and subtler, which I didn’t recognize but discovered I could choose not to address. Now, finally, it was almost like doing battle with a living man; I still crafted all my tactics to create an opening that would allow me to take his head, still avoided touching him—though I was no longer certain that was necessary, at least for me. But the wild energies he carried didn’t distract me. I was full of them already.

  It should have horrified me. All I felt was relief. The patterns of the battle and the dispositions of the forces snapped into place in my mind, the way they always had; without effort I tallied successes and failures, ghouls defeated and noncombatants who fell to Básghilae, even in the midst of my own engagement. Traces of human lives splashed against me, lighting me up a little more each time but not spinning me beyond control; I felled the first dead man, moved on to the next, experienced no surprise when the power Amien cast at Básghilae began to fly astray again. I knew the energy he needed, could have drawn it more easily than a knife. It would have changed everything. Instead I poured more vigor into the mundane battle.

  “It’s too thick here,” I called across the road to the wizard, remotely aware that I should have made an effort to sound alarmed or at least surprised. “He owns this place!”

  Amien spared me a startled glance and returned to plying his sword. The engagement surged up and down the road as the Básghilae pressed towards Letitia and the massed Essuvians felled and drove them back, only to be pressed backwards again. Only the Tanaan stood firm in the midst of the chaos, breaking the Básghilae who came at them like a wall of jagged rock. Behind them, Letitia sat at the ready, sword in hand—but all her attention was on the noncombatants on whom the Básghilae fed, face a mask of despair.

  Finally, late as usual, the horror in which we were engaged snapped into focus in my mind. I saw, with terrible clarity, how monstrous I had become: how little troubled I was when people not under my protection became victims; how willingly I drank the blood of enemies myself; how my hunger had eaten up all my compassion. I was like some weapon forged of human blood and bone, like Nechton’s Shadow of the Sun: effective enough for its purpose, but crafted and fed on evil. The source is tainted, Amien had sai
d of the orb. And I hadn’t understood what he meant. I had long since absorbed the poison myself.

  Did vowing not to draw power and upholding that vow really make any difference? How could it, if I was damned already? A short distance away, one of Rohini’s men gave a despairing cry which was rapidly taken up by his countrymen; I finally maneuvered the dead man I fought into leaving enough space for my blade to pass through his neck. He fell, and I glanced towards the uproar, seeing nothing unusual—then wondered at myself for thinking this whole situation somehow normal, unsure whether I should laugh or fling myself off the bluff to crash on the rocks below. I could do neither now: another dead man was on me, a massive fellow with a sword most men would have wielded two-handed. He met my gaze across our clashing blades, and behind his eyes I saw Nechton. It was like looking into a mirror and remembering I was hideously deformed.

  Smashing the mirror wouldn’t change anything, but I needed to do it anyway. I waded in as if I might kill the evil in myself by besting one more ghoul, as if keeping Letitia alive might somehow restore my humanity or even my honor. I used craft and misdirection against the weight of the heavier blade, turning my opponent’s own momentum against him—and then, just as the opening I’d been developing in his defenses materialized, I felt Nechton pull all the remaining Básghilae back. The pull resonated against my spine, echoed in my mind; and with one final glance at me Nechton turned my opponent aside, sent them all racing across the fields and out of sight. For several seconds I just sat, sword still in mid-air, the shock of what I had experienced resonating through me. I had never felt a colleague’s arcane maneuvers so clearly outside a group working or shared circle. My throat ran suddenly dry; I swallowed, but it didn’t ease.