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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  Through her eyes I looked up to the sky, watching the approach of a dragon. Even on the passive perch I occupied, the wonder of it blasted through me. Much as I might have wanted to believe otherwise, I had never apprehended such creatures as real. But here it was, and it was even more magnificent than I had imagined: powerful black wings, a dozen times broader than an eagle’s, gleaming in brilliant late-afternoon sunlight; black scales reflecting green-purple-blue-gold; sinuous neck turning as its long deadly head fixed a cold gaze on her.

  She raised the Spear, taking aim; warring emotions pounded through her and resonated in me, sending the casting of power the Spear issued wide of the mark. She knew she must kill the dragon or all should be lost: this came through to me with blinding clarity as she cursed herself for missing, ran again through the complex preparatory procedure I couldn’t understand and prepared to fire once more. But her reluctance and regret mounted yet more strongly, dragging her hands as if through deep water, sending the casting that should have obliterated the dragon into a standing stone instead. The stone exploded, scattering fragments across the circle and into the air beyond the summit.

  The dragon settled, wings blasting the astonishingly misplaced aroma of amnivaren across the circle, giving me only a glimpse of the luminous scales of its chest before it blurred and took on the shape of a man. He stood beside the Tuaoh, incandescently naked and rampant, so beautiful it was impossible for the eye to avoid assessing his proud erect flesh. He pinned Carina with the gaze I’d seen behind the eyes of countless Básghilae, his familiar fearless power and unmistakable dark energies amplified by passion. This was Nechton: grey eyes so intense most men would mistake the regard for coldness; a long cloud of black hair and the broad facial structures of an Essuvian or a Weaver; a well-proportioned body whose musculature bespoke long training.

  Gods, he was gorgeous, in the way a sword or a killing storm can be. In the way only a wizard can be in the full mad glory of his power. Even when my lover is a man, I prefer to bestow, but for him I would have made an exception, trading places as often as necessary. The pounding desire that erupted in Carina seemed the only appropriate response; the preparatory sequence evaporated from her attention, and she stood staring, resignation and terror spiraling through her inevitable arousal until there was no way to separate the strands. When Nechton drew on the power of the Tuaoh, I felt it through Carina’s awareness, though she didn’t recognize exactly what he’d done; his eyes never left hers, and only a negligent gesture of his right hand indicated the forces at work when he used the power of the Tuaoh to break the Spear in her hand, sending fragments scattering and Carina herself into oblivion.

  Like to like, I thought, finding my face full of fragments of a Spear and the part I had thought of as a hilt wearing a hole in my chest. I rolled away from the jumbled pile. Stone and orichalus shifted and clanked around me; the strap tangled around my wrist.

  “Sweet Lord of Light!” Letitia blurted, somewhere behind me. I heard the door slam shut; she raced to the bed and crawled towards me. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” I said automatically, gazing at her. She was fully dressed again, though her hair still hung unbound.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “Where were you going?” I said simultaneously.

  We both smiled. Her face held a surprising, hesitant relief mixed with embarrassment, and I realized she hadn’t truly grasped what I was doing.

  “Going to get Amien,” she admitted. “You—you just collapsed, and you wouldn’t answer me, and—” She glanced away. “I heard the knights talking about what Amien did with the assassin’s weapon at Dromineer, about how he got stuck and—”

  I nodded, understanding now. “I’m fine,” I said again.

  Belatedly the true import of her actions caught up to me. She would have revealed the evidently damning truth about the Spear, as well as my state of semi-dress and its obvious implications, to Amien—for me. My throat tightened.

  “Thank you,” I said, meeting her solemn gaze. The worry around her eyes tugged painfully at my heart. “Amien would have told you not to worry, that this is common—”

  Now I realized my mistakes; frustration with my own foolishness welled in me.

  “I should have told you. I shouldn’t have been standing. I’m sorry, all this sleeplessness is catching up with me. You were right; it was Nechton.”

  “What?” Letitia said softly.

  “It was Nechton who broke the Spear…” The memory washed through me again: the terrible beauty of the dragon, the equally troubling splendor of the wizard, the ease with which he drew on the Tuaoh. Desire I feared to quantify settled over me; I pushed it away.

  “Right in her hand,” I said, hearing the dreaminess in my own voice. “Gods, what a—” I banished that line of reasoning, fixed my attention on Letitia again.

  “Your mother was an amazing woman,” I said. “I wish I’d known her.”

  Letitia’s composure crumpled; she turned away, rose from the bed. I hauled myself up to sit; the world twirled around me. I hardened myself against what I must say.

  “But she was wholly unable to best Nechton.” My voice sounded cold, even to me; I felt my heart shrivel. “You must let me take you to Aballo. This battle is not for—”

  “No,” she choked, still with her back to me. “I must do what I can.”

  I flinched at my next words—and said them anyway. “And die trying.”

  A terrible sound escaped her; she put her head into her hands. “If I must.”

  “No!” I said, launched myself from the bed, wobbled and pulled her to me; she pushed against me and broke away. “What if we can find a way to repair the Spear at Aballo? Won’t that be enough?”

  “What if Amien’s right?” Letitia said, a sob in her voice. “What if I’m the one who can—?” She faltered.

  A flash of absolute self-loathing shot through me, rapidly overtaken by anger. “This is a mission for a wizard. For a whole team of wizards. There needs to be an organized assault, under cover of a military operation, and—”

  Letitia shook her head. “I have no doubt of that. But if there is a part I must play, then I will play it. We are all in the goddess’s Hands.”

  I’d seen the work of those Hands. But the terrible resignation in Letitia penetrated straight to my core. It is incumbent on a general to recognize a battle he cannot win, no matter how passionately he wishes he might.

  I sighed. “Then we must find a way to protect you.”

  “We must find a way to defeat him,” she answered.

  “That will be an integral part of it,” I agreed. I found my mind running over the problem again. The objective she’d been given was a sound one, at least in principle: we must remove the Shadow of the Sun from Nechton’s hands.

  Though it was becoming increasingly evident that was far from a complete solution. It is generally understood to be impossible to shapeshift into something larger or smaller than oneself: all of one’s matter must go somewhere after the transition, and one cannot become larger simply through Will. And yet Nechton had managed to manifest a dragon of enormous size and physical presence.

  Or had it been physical presence? What if it had been a Nechton-sized dragon wrapped in a truly persuasive illusion? I had seen through Carina’s eyes, after all: I had no way to be sure she had sufficient Talent to see through a glamour.

  “Was that—all?” Letitia said hesitantly, snapping me back into the present. “What else did you see?”

  It took me a moment to realize what she was asking. After another second of staring at her while waiting for my laggard mind to catch up, I realized she feared I had seen something dishonorable or humiliating. Again my curiosity about the contents of Carina’s grimoire surged.

  “There wasn’t much,” I said. “She was using the Spear to defend the Temple Mount at Ilunmore from Nechton.”

  Letitia gasped, suddenly pale.

  “It—didn’t go very well,” I said. “He
flew in, in dragon shape—” A small strangled noise escaped Letitia. “—and tapped the power of the Tuaoh to break the Spear. She… lost consciousness.”

  Letitia nodded solemnly. “But she didn’t die.”

  I nodded, too. “We can assume that she was the one who picked up the pieces and brought them back to Fíana. It’s an interesting question what Nechton might have accomplished afterward. His presence at Ilunmore suggests he probably had the opportunity to integrate the power sources there—which actually goes a long way towards explaining the success he had with remote operations in Fíana—”

  Another strangled noise escaped Letitia; I glanced at her, seeing grief and horror tipping towards despair. Belatedly I realized how disconnected from the realm of humanity I was growing: all my focus fell on the arcane and strategic, and Letitia’s feelings about Nechton in her homeland, natural though I recognized they must be, eluded me even now.

  How long had it been since I’d eaten? How long since I’d slept? A wizard’s natural power gives him the ability to stretch beyond human limitations for a time, but not to take his humanity with him. In short order I would be nothing but cold Will and an unquenchable lust for power.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was, though only for the pain I’d caused: I knew everything I’d said was true. “I need to sleep and eat; you must, too.” I realized I was ravenous, carrying a wailing cavern in the place where my stomach should be. “Do you want to go downstairs and see what they’re cooking?”

  She gave me a long, solemn look I couldn’t interpret; finally she nodded.

  “Excellent,” I said, buttoned my shirt, and strode to the door. I opened it, gesturing for Letitia to precede me—and caught sight of Amien’s ward on the door. Abruptly I remembered the wards I’d wrecked this morning, the way I’d torn them from Letitia’s body with my hands. I felt myself blush and closed the door again.

  “What?” Letitia said, turning a look of astonishment on me.

  “Your wards. I—wrecked them, earlier.”

  “What?”

  I felt my face grow redder yet. I glanced down, at my bare feet. How many other little things was I forgetting?

  “When we were—Right after I came in, and we were kissing, I—When I touched the wards, Amien… was aware of me.”

  “Oh Sweet Lord,” Letitia groaned.

  “And I just—I didn’t think, I just… ripped them away.”

  She stared at me, the smolder in her gaze returning. “I didn’t think… That’s not supposed to…”

  I shrugged, torn between the need to squirm and the fire her eyes ignited in me.

  “So he knows,” Letitia said.

  “If we’re lucky, he thinks he dreamed it. He knew I was here, so he wouldn’t—”

  “What?”

  I chuckled. “I came in through his ward on the door. Of course he knows I was in here; he trusted me to watch over you.”

  Letitia nodded slowly. “So now what? Do I go back to him and ask him to do it again? How do I explain—?”

  “No. Then he’ll know it wasn’t a dream. I’ve got to…” Oh, dear gods.

  Building personal wards is a simple operation: one need only draw up the energies of the earth on which the subject stands and wrap them around his or her body. Even an initiate can do it. Naturally better wards have considerably more subtlety, and a good operator will customize his wards to the subject’s situation.

  But I had vowed not to draw power. How was I going to accomplish it?

  All at once I saw: use Letitia’s power, and I wouldn’t have to draw any of my own. The concept blossomed whole in my head, in the way a plan for a working so often will; my hands itched for the touch of power. A dangerous excitement began in my chest.

  “Get undressed.” A rough edge had developed in my voice.

  Immediately she was staring at me, the renewed smolder in her gaze making my heart beat faster yet.

  “This time we’ll use your power. All I will do is show you how.”

  She opened her mouth as if to speak, changed her mind, kicked off her boots and held my gaze while her fingers unfastened one button after another, until the shirt hung open. I controlled the impulse to reach out and snake my hands beneath it; my throat tightened as she pulled it off and let it fall to the floor.

  I didn’t understand why it should torque me so to watch her undress, when she’d been naked in my arms just a while ago; still need spun through me with increasing intensity as she peeled away the rest of her clothes. By the time she was fully undressed I could hardly breathe; I knelt at her feet, looked up the lean silken length of her, and said, “Ready?”

  She nodded; I encompassed her with my awareness, in much the same way I’d done with the Spear. She gasped. Immediately she was everywhere, a cloud of delight hanging around me and a compelling new set of layers and thoughts in my mind. A tremor rocked through her, echoing in my own body. I saw my own ardent face staring up at her with absolutely naked need; shifted my focus to the part of her awareness where thought and memory resided; then reached deeper, finding the dark spaces below the conscious mind, where it can be dangerous for a mindworker who would do no harm to touch. Below that, I found the path I sought: the conduit to the diamond.

  There, I thought.

  Joy and astonishment erupted in her and blazed through our shared mindspace. What! How did you find—?

  I smiled. Right there the whole time. Just draw that energy in…

  She tried to pull on it, but a fog of anxiety rose and the conduit grew suddenly elusive. Her frustration ripped through us.

  Zhev! she thought, fear rising in frustration’s wake. What’s the matter with me?

  I pushed the thought aside.

  Hush, I thought, putting as much reassurance into it as I could. Stop. Don’t try to make it do anything.

  But you said—

  Never mind that now. Just relax. Watch the light. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

  I drew a deep breath and released it slowly, pushing aside my tingling eagerness for the energy she would manifest. Self-doubt is the direst possible killer of arcane success; letting her see how urgently I wanted her to continue would only serve to raise her anxiety. A better teacher would have sent feelings of calm and timelessness into her. No teacher, particularly not an initiator, should have any sort of emotional entanglement with either the student or the outcome of the process. I was a terrible failure in both regards. The best I could do was to let her breathe through the anxiety, hope she would take my closeness as calming support, wait while she found her center. Finally her nervous fluttering calmed; she slipped into the sort of entrancement of self that is the nearest most will ever come to arcane consciousness; and she began to float in the light of her own power. I met her gaze.

  That light is yours, annu. It is you. Let it be in you.

  Joy surged through her, spilling into me, carrying such tender admiration that my heart stumbled back into the realm of humanity. She met my eyes with the sort of regard that usually signaled the necessity of a swift retreat; this time I found myself sinking into it, emotion swelling inside me until my heart threatened to block my throat. Light rushed into her, spilling through me; my whole being begged for more. Absent the amplification of us bouncing it back and forth, her power was minor, gentle: a faint echo of what I might have carried, only a sip of the river-sized drink I craved.

  Yes! I thought. There.

  It would be far easier to channel the energy for the working than talk her through managing this small sparkle; the power I needed surged below me, waiting for my grasp and the opportunity to become something new. It was hard to remember why I shouldn’t open myself and let it in.

  Now all you need to is push it to the outside, draw it around…

  …?

  Letitia thought about pushing. But instead of moving the energy where it was needed, she only made it race faster inside, until the glow in her became visible. Her incandescence snared me, occupying the whole universe; her ga
ze captured me, irresistible as gravity. Joining with her was my only destiny, amplifying her power and spinning it back to her the only objective that mattered. I could barely breathe through the need. It took me far longer than it should have to remember why I’d started this and what I’d planned, longer yet to decide on a different approach.

  Well, then, I thought. I am going to put my hands where the wards should be; you just think about touching my hands with the light, and follow them wherever they go. I stretched out my hands to hover above her feet, feeling stray brilliance feather against my palms. Letitia reached towards my hair, and I felt her desire for the feel of warm silk sliding against her fingers and palms, then saw her remember her task and restrain the impulse.

  Touch me here, I thought. The thought resonated with my unruly, multilayered desire; I couldn’t care about the ways I was failing as a teacher. On the palms of my hands.

  Letitia shivered. The tremor raced across my skin like the memory of fire in the hands—and then the tingle was there, against my palms. All the air in my lungs left me in a rush; my head swam.

  “Yes,” I said, a rough edge in my voice again. Follow me.

  I traced the air around her body, describing her narrow feet and slender ankles, gliding up the lengths of her legs. The tingle of Letitia’s gentle power danced against my hands as I moved, trailing a prismatic, barely-visible sparkle through the air and echoing in pleasure along the length of my every nerve. Around the luscious curves of the moons great and small, I found myself augmenting her power with my own passion, allowed myself the transgression of trailing a finger beside the beautiful mound that occupied the center of the universe; the petal skin under my fingertip and Letitia’s mounting ardor spun my head past reason once more.

  I nearly split with competing desires, needing to cast the working aside and bury myself in her again, ravenous for the continued play of power against my skin. Necessity decided me, and as I continued I realized how right the choice had been: I traced my hands up the length of her spine, letting gentle ripples of power cavort against my fingers and palms, breathless at the glow they cast in my wake. She leaned in close enough to trace her lips with my own as I wrapped my hands around her head; the feathering of power between our mouths tingled in all the cells of my body. I circled and closed off above her crown, delighting in the delicious ripple of light that followed. The colorless glow danced all around her, spectral as sunlight through a waterfall. I settled my mouth against hers, butterfly-light, for a taste.