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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  “Ahhh…” He favored me with a disturbingly toothy grin, fleshy eyes gleaming. “What is your definition of evil?”

  “What?” I said. “I thought we were supposed to discuss my greatest transgression.”

  The ghoul gave voice to a dismissive noise that should have been impossible to produce without lips. “That’s apprentice-grade stuff. Let’s dig in. Come on, what makes something evil?”

  Déjà vu reeled in me. Why did I remember sitting around a campfire arguing philosophy? Where had I seen those eyes? For one wild moment those questions seemed more important than the definition of evil, even though my eternal fate might well hang in the balance. Oh, to be doomed to the Abyss because of an inability to lay the unanswered question aside.

  I didn’t think that constituted my greatest fault.

  “Who are you?” I blurted.

  “Hah! Who are you?”

  Neither of us shifted form. For what might have been a moment or an hour I just sat there staring at him; he returned my stare. I discovered I couldn’t answer that question, either. I looked at my hands.

  “Well, there’s your problem, then,” the ghoul said, in a sympathetic tone. “If you’ve been taught to define yourself in terms of who you are to others, and then those definitions get ripped away, what do you have left? Only questions and doubts.”

  I glanced away, swallowing against pain.

  “But none of those things is an excuse to refuse to do the things for which you are designed, to withhold the things the people around you need. If we can’t say why you have a Talent, we can say without doubt that it is being wasted. And that may well be evil. At least when considered in context.”

  “I have a taste for things that harm others. That is evil.”

  The ghoul waved the statement away. “You have a taste for power. To a starving man even rotten food has a certain appeal.”

  “Oh dear gods.”

  “No, listen. There’s an old story about a party that was trying to cross the mountains in winter when a terrible storm came in. They got lost—as it happened, less than a mile from the pass, but in that weather who could tell?—and they had no choice but to camp and wait it out. They managed to build themselves shelter, but after a time they ran out of food.”

  Old story? I’d never heard or read it.

  “And when some of them died, the others did what was necessary to survive.”

  I swallowed against nausea. “They ate their friends.”

  “Does that make them evil? Or survivors? What if their religion taught them it was an expression of respect to consume their friends’ flesh—reverently, and with remembrance? Would it be evil then? What if your gods didn’t tell you that they must be your only source of sustenance, but rather that any power used in honor and mercy was as good? When you sleep with the river goddess in the hold of a boat, how is that different from lying with the goddess at Bealtan?”

  I found myself on my feet. Now, finally, the dread I should have felt at his arrival had me by the throat. Was this even Who I thought?

  “Are you some kind of demon?” I demanded. I couldn’t imagine a being who judges mortals speaking such blasphemy.

  He actually laughed. “No more than you are. Tell me this: When you perform the sacred marriage, who does it serve? Are you even sure with whom you lie?”

  Oh, that was unfair. The goddess—the priestess—is masked at Bealtan. To penetrate that mystery would be to render the ceremony into nothing more than sex. Or into something Dark.

  Join the Sun and the Moon in Darkness

  Thus results the Union of Silver and Gold

  Blend the Essences in the vessel of life

  In these contexts, the Moon is the goddess—or, sometimes, simply the female. If the operator who performed the working took Essences to mean the magical sexual essences with which a man and woman might conceive a child, was the vessel of life the goddess Herself? Or might it be the operator’s assistant, the woman who might or might not wear the Bealtan mask?

  What was the purpose of it, anyway? Why did I have this Talent?

  “Yes,” the ghoul said, as if he’d heard everything I hadn’t said, every line of Aechering’s I couldn’t eradicate from my mind. “You have honor, Ellion. No matter what meanings you assign to things. If you know a definition of evil that includes honor, you get to call yourself by that name. Otherwise your greatest transgression lies in refusing to give the rest of us the benefit of who you are.”

  I looked at him again. I couldn’t think of anything to say. He rose, golden eyes inescapable, and drew the voluminous black cloak about his bony frame. He turned until I could see only the black expanses of his hat and cloak; they flared impossibly wide, blurring into nonexistence—and then I stood there alone, surrounded by sleeping people. The wind lifted the tail of my hair, sent it forward to flutter in my peripheral vision. I felt far colder than its temperature warranted.

  The reach of the shadow of the Sun is infinite.

  34. Season of Change

  Are you some kind of demon?

  No more than you are.

  If that had been Ankou, he was not at all what I expected of a being who sat in judgment over mortals—whether or not he really was a god. The more I thought about it, the less certain I became of who or what I had seen.

  It is easy enough, for a wizard or a god or a demon, to throw on an illusion; my failure to penetrate it meant only that my visitor, whoever he might be, was better at the game of glamours than I. He might well be a demon.

  That would mean I was one, too, and no one had ever bothered to call my attention to it: for all the horrifying things he’d said, not once had I heard the telltale notes of untruth in his voice. And those are impossible to mask.

  Are you some kind of demon?

  No more than you are.

  Wise men don’t take advice from demons. Even when demons tell the truth, they shape it to their own ends. And evil men who would do good must be twice as wary: especially when the things demons say resonate with their own instincts. Nevertheless the ghoul’s words echoed against the inside of my skull for the rest of the night, plying counterpoint to the seduction of all the powers gathering around the edges of my awareness.

  Why did I have this Talent? I turned the question over and over in my mind, but failed to come up with any satisfactory answer. The stars wheeled past; the waning moons rose and faded into morning light; my companions shook off sleep and began preparing for the day. Amien still looked grey; his natural energies lay under dark clouds, and I couldn’t be certain without touching him that those clouds were not still gathering, couldn’t even scan him psychically without him being aware. And he had not granted permission. One of the hits he’d taken last night had been in Rohini’s defense, but one had been for me, and the weight of it turned painfully in my chest. I crossed the campsite to stand before him.

  “My lord—” Once again I’d failed to work out what I should say in advance. He frowned a little, puzzled; I cleared my throat.

  “No more shielding for me, eh?” I said, pitching my voice so it wouldn’t carry beyond his ears.

  He laughed: a tired sound that made pain condense in my throat.

  “I am grateful to you, my lord, but—”

  “Are you going to start working your own, then?” Amien’s gaze was a dare. Or a prayer, maybe.

  I sighed. “My lord—”

  The wizard shook his head. “I’m not losing you. Not after everything I went through to get you here. Gods know I had to go all the way to Fíana to find you.”

  An unwilling laugh escaped me. “I promise I’ll attend the Moot, my lord.”

  Amien smiled. “In what capacity?”

  “Fouzh,” I growled, and went to check on Rohini. She was pale, her eyes too bright, the contrast between the deep red of her hair and the translucence of her skin contradicting her efforts to behave as if she were well. As I approached, she bent to gather her cloak from the horse blanket on which Amien had instal
led her last night, containing the impulse to voice the pain that suddenly flared around her. I understood: any righ or commander must mask his illnesses and injuries from the people he leads, so they may rely on his strength.

  “How are you this morning, sian?” I asked, picking up the blanket and folding it so she wouldn’t need to bend again.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Almost ready.”

  “Did Amien stitch you up?” I pitched my voice for her ears only, but she glanced around nevertheless.

  “Wasn’t necessary,” she said, busy with folding and stowing her cloak.

  “Chief,” I said.

  “Leave it,” she hissed.

  I nodded but wrapped stealthy tendrils around her: she was still unwarded, which meant Amien hadn’t recovered sufficient strength for the working; pain that would have sent most men into whimpering huddles coursed through her midsection, radiating from a long rift that had opened when a heavy blade drove the wiry spidersilk of her mail into her flesh. It hadn’t been stitched, and it should be. But no taint of magic lay on her anywhere: Amien’s wards might not have done more than slow the blow, but they had turned aside the spell. Could we keep infection at bay, her pain would be temporary, and she would live.

  “We’ll be able to find privacy at Teamair,” I said quietly. “You and I have an engagement.”

  She cast me a look of surprise that faded into understanding. But her gaze held no concession. “We’ll see.”

  Finally Iminor turned up, outwardly calm but eyes full of things no mortal should ever know. He cast me a dispassionate glance; fear, hatred, and an uneasy sense of obligation warred beneath its surface. I slipped a tendril of awareness around him, observing the heady, constant flow of seductive power through his body and out through his crown—and the arcane bonds that lay between us now. The whole construct was stable; there was no reason to expect that the flow might cease while he lived. And in that moment of awareness-of-my-awareness, he saw it all as clearly as I did: whatever changes Nechton’s spell and my reworking of it had wrought, his Sight was undiminished. In fact the change he’d undergone had strengthened it.

  He looked at me through that augmented vision: a terrible understanding passed between us. All unthinking I had bound myself to both him and Letitia, with energies no one else could break and ties I had no idea how to undo. Even should we all survive this war, even did they return to Fíana and take up the lives they’d planned, this twisted thing would lie among us, undiminished by miles and time.

  “Zhev,” he growled, and turned away.

  We broke camp; we climbed into the saddles and rode to the place where the Precinct Road crosses the Riga. Halfway across the ford I spotted a train of horses and wagons riding north on the opposite shore, following the weedy trail that had once been the Ard-righ’s Road. At the front of the mass I saw the righ’s banner of Ilesia.

  Dread crashed in on me, just as fiercely as when that nameless ghoul cornered me with logic last night. The last time Coran and I spoke, I’d refused his offer to make me his ard-tiarn and War-Lord. I didn’t know whether we were still friends. I controlled the impulse to turn the horse around, right there in the middle of the river, and head back the way I’d come: we would reach Teamair before midday, even did we fall in with Coran’s train, and I’d given my word to see Letitia safely there. I’d promised to attend the Moot tomorrow—though this morning I’d somehow forgotten what that really meant: a commitment to watch Coran’s election to the throne that should have been mine.

  I realized I’d reined and was sitting stupidly in the middle of the ford. I cued the horse forward and rode up to the trail on the opposite side. Then there was nothing to do but wait while the slow train made up the distance. Sooner or later I would have to greet Coran and all the Ilesians who had made the trip in his company; I might as well salvage what grace I could.

  Within a minute a herald in Ilesia blue-and-gold raced forward to meet us. I knew how we looked, how few and tired and unbannered; I knew all the calls and answers protocol demanded we endure now. Suddenly I had no patience for any of it.

  “Good morning,” I said as he reined. “The Aballo Prince, the Lady of Finias and her consort, the Chief of the Essuvians, and the ard-harpist. Tell your lord we wait on his pleasure.” I might not be ard-righ tomorrow, but damned if I’d cede the road like some commoner.

  The herald opened his mouth, closed it again, finally swallowed and said, “My lord.” And with an appropriate dip of his banner towards us, he turned his horse and raced back. After a moment, Coran rode out from under his banner, spurred his horse to speed, and closed the distance between us. Never one for the dandyism of a dyed-coat mount, he had nevertheless allowed someone to tint his horse’s mane: the white destrier now sported a froth of blue between his eyes and down his broad neck. Coran himself looked the part of ard-righ-apparent, dressed with his usual rich unconcern—but also a too-perfect plumed hat. Evidently he’d found time to have the righ’s torc refitted. He made me acutely aware of my dishevelment.

  He reined and slipped from the saddle before the horse had stopped moving: appropriate respect for the Aballo Prince. I slid to the ground as well, because to do otherwise would be unseemly: hearing Nuad and Rohini’s men follow my lead, already thoroughly tired of protocol. When had I laid aside the habit of propriety? No doubt I had lost it somewhere in Fíana, along with the rest of the person who left Ilnemedon two months ago.

  “My lord,” Coran said to Amien, with an utterly proper bow. He glanced at me; the shift in his gaze said I looked even worse than I’d realized, and the change alarmed him. At least he didn’t seem to hate me.

  “Lord Coran,” Amien said warmly and hauled himself from the saddle. I resisted the temptation to rush across the space between us, to catch him if he fell; but he dismounted without mishap, and the rest of them climbed from their saddles.

  Suddenly Coran abandoned protocol, closed the distance between us, and embraced me. Through the contact I saw the way his clear, practical energies had been rechanneled into the necessity of managing far too many people and concerns, how heavily he drew on his natural constitutional strength in the face of too little sleep and too many cares. But the surprising depth of his affection came through just as clearly, sending regret and relief sweeping through me. My throat closed; I clasped him tightly in return.

  “Dear gods, are you all right?” he said, pitched for my ears alone.

  I nodded, stepping back to meet his eyes. “Thank you. Yes.”

  “We’ve talking to do,” he said, still in an undertone, and returned his gaze to the rest of the party.

  I made introductions: Coran greeted Letitia with a flavor of quiet wonder of which I had not realized him capable, met Rohini and Iminor with entirely sufficient respect, didn’t blink once at my introducing the few others remaining in our party. He nodded to each of them, one warrior to another, and somehow the plumed hat and blue mane didn’t undercut his warrior presence. He had truly expanded into the role of righ; I found myself pleased for him, as long as I didn’t think about the election.

  I realized the long train that followed him had caught up to us and now stood waiting; at least a hundred people watched us from carriages and horseback. At the front were Coran’s brother Niall, his armsmaster Den and the men of his personal contingent; behind them I recognized a significant subset of the tiarna who regularly haunted Ilnemedon and their wives. Appearing so disheveled before Ilnemedon society should have embarrassed me; I was surprised to discover how little I cared. Why hadn’t I realized they were not my people?

  I had known. I just hadn’t wanted to think about it.

  “Lords, Ladies, will you ride with us?” Coran said.

  I glanced at Amien: it would be inappropriate for the Aballo Prince to accompany any single righ through Teamair’s gate before an election. In a very real sense the ard-righ is the Aballo Prince’s War-Lord for mundane affairs, particularly in wartime: the Prince would be well within his rights to si
mply seat the man of his choice on the throne. The wizard met my eyes briefly, then turned his gaze on Coran.

  “It will be our pleasure to ride with you a while,” he said. “But we are bound for Uisneach.”

  Senseless shock raced through me: I barely felt ready to confront Teamair, let alone Uisneach. But it should have been obvious to me, and I didn’t know what other obvious conclusions I was failing to entertain: while the righthe reside in Fair houses at Teamair, the wizards occupy the sacred center during the Bealtan season. It was the only sensible destination, not only for the Aballo Prince but also for the neutral parties under his protection. I couldn’t consider whether I fell into that category.

  Coran bowed. “Of course, my lord. You honor us with your company.”

  Amien smiled and nodded; we all climbed into the saddles again, and we moved to the front of the train. Coran nodded to the standard bearer, who gave the signal; everyone moved out.

  I hadn’t ridden with a train approaching this size since Tellan; today it felt unwieldy, confining. Irrelevant thoughts and misdirected energies swirled all around, bashing themselves against my awareness. I wanted to spur my horse away from the crowd, wanted to shout at them to contain their petty idiocies. How was it possible I used to willingly join their fractious company? My horse pinned back his ears, nervous; I laid a hand on his neck but had little comfort to offer him. Coran spoke courteously with Letitia and Iminor, but he kept glancing at me, worry behind his smooth expression.

  Someone rode forward from the mass behind us, worked his way into the line beside me. I glanced at him, then failed to control the startle: at my right hand rode Caern Tirkeer, ollamh of the Harpist Gorsedd, the man I had defeated in the last election for ard-harpist. We had always been civil but never cordial. His reputation as a composer of the sort of works that men take to be significant was unexceeded, and as a teacher he had raised more men from the silver branch to the gold than any other two ollamh. He was the leader of the vocal contingent among the lords of the gorsedd who counted my election a political choice rather than one that would advance the state of music. Today I thought he might be right.