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

by Barbara Friend Ish

  What if hakaid meant to free?

  I pushed the question away; I walked faster, though I still wasn’t sure where I was going. The path wove a route it was too dark to apprehend: across the northern face of the hill, climbing over the protruding roots of trees, skirting outcrops of stone that buzzed with a name it took all my will not to learn. Still Her awareness hovered around me. I struggled to hold myself separate, to fix my mind on the path.

  Hakaid the shadow of the Sun

  At last the trail spilled into a surprisingly level, regular clearing surrounded by ancient oaks and illuminated by torches: the sacred grove. I rushed in as if claiming sanctuary, senseless relief bursting through me. If I found Lady Tella here, I had a decade’s worth of explaining to do, and I was far from certain She would accept any of it. Still that prospect seemed easier to face than the Presences outside this little circle of firelight.

  I knelt in the center, looking around. I couldn’t see who might have kindled those torches, couldn’t imagine who would prepare this place for sacred ceremony and then leave; finally I set the issue aside. Everything happening tonight defied mortal comprehension. My task here was clear; I dragged myself towards a state in which I might hear the goddess if She chose to speak, opened my heart and mind. Beal and the goddess Whose name I worked so hard not to hear crowded around my periphery. I tried to ignore Them, tried instead to reach into that place in which it had once been possible to hear Her words.

  Lady, I have no right to ask anything of You. But if You will grant this sad excuse for a servant the insight to understand what You require, I will strive to do Your Will.

  The mundane world slipped away from me again. Time spread out into endless, breathless space waiting for someone to quicken it; my mind diffused into darkness and longing, for what I couldn’t name. She had nothing to say to me, or else the Presences beating like moths against my edges drowned out Her Words.

  Was that it, then? Was I already doomed to the Abyss? Or, as is so often the case with men not yet claimed by the gods, would She require more effort of me before She spoke? I wished I still possessed the grace to beg Her, if not for words, then for a sign.

  Something changed. I looked up, into Letitia’s mesmerizing eyes; the last of my boundaries fell away. The dark glow between the stars tumbled into me; Beal fit Himself into the spaces that remained; I realized there was only one thing in all the universe that mattered. I stood, caressing the face and savoring the silken hair I had no right to touch, mouth trespassing upon lips long since promised to another. Maybe I had been doomed before I was born; maybe only the Abyss awaited me. But before it claimed me I would give everything I was or could muster to see her safe. Even if what I could muster were gods so terrible They must be locked away. Even if I were the most dreadful of Them all.

  Hakaid the shadow of the Sun

  And open the Abyss

  Letitia tangled her hands in my hair and devoured me as if I were not a form of poison. She trailed her lips along my jaw and sank her teeth into my neck: marking me for her own, raising such terrible need in me that I lost track of everything else, that I must clasp and press her against me. The heat and softness of her drove me wilder yet; within seconds I was trying to touch all of her at once, trying to beat a way past all our clothing and possess her utterly. But then she drew back, and I fell into her eyes, and I remembered.

  It was Bealtan. Everything I was must be hers. It didn’t matter that I had no idea what hakaid meant: all that mattered was that I dedicate myself to her. She was everything I would never again have: legitimacy, clear right and rulership, magic whose only outcome was Light. This was the goddess I must worship. There was no room in the Bealtan mystery for anything less, nothing to do but surrender my darkness to her.

  Let the heir of Tílimya

  Woo the Virgin Star

  I unlaced her dress, trailing worshiping fingers and rapturous mouth across each silken bit of exposed skin; I let her peel me bare, the cool air on my flesh and the touch of her delicate hands echoing the caress of the dark power flooding through me; I knelt at her feet and unwrapped her like the mystery she was, breathing in her textures and flavors and wondrous sounds, fastening them upon my memory. When she settled across my lap, an instant of déjà vu raced through me; but then she took me, and conscious thought drowned. The delicious glow that hung on her annihilated the darkness in which I’d been tangled, crashing over me until I lost track of where I ended and she began.

  No goddess ever had lips this sweet, hair this soft, skin this silken warm. Never before had a goddess given Herself to Her Consort with such abandon. This was no re-enactment, no ritual repetition: this was the real Bealtan, the one timeless night from which all imitations and legends would spread like ripples on a lake. Nothing less than absolute perfection would do; and I must remember all of it, because after tonight it would never come again.

  Join the Sun and the Moon in Darkness

  Thus results the Union of Silver and Gold

  Nothing existed but her pleasure and the ways I might raise it; nothing mattered but all the inadmissible things I saw in her eyes. She diffused through me, raising tremors of delight and waves of brilliance throughout my being; I was powerless against the tenderness that swept through me and the sudden redoubling of desire that crashed in its wake. And in the midst of that naked insanity, I saw all the way down to her core, and she saw all of me. Through her I saw myself: a limitless well of passion and power, a bastion against danger—but also a wildness that could turn devouring at any second, against which there would be no defense. Her terror flashed through me—and transmuted into deeper desire.

  Now I saw the truth of her, and it had nothing to do with the rules and rituals of Bealtan. Her position of control was not what she wanted; she needed me to possess her, dismantle her, set all the rules and pathways and absolve her of conscious thought. Rule and ritual be damned; the idea tore a growl from me, lit me with a deeper wildness than any power I’d yet known; there was no room in me for the surprising tinge of shame the desire for domination roused in her. It was what I had been born to do.

  I grasped her and rolled, spreading her across the cool grass and claiming control; she cried out, trembling, and surrendered into my arms. I opened myself wider and deeper, encompassing all of her, finding other things infiltrating me as well: the light in her talisman lancing my eyes like too much summer sun; the ring of fire surrounding the summit and the Bealtan bonfires outside Teamair’s city gate, flames guttering almost to nothing as their energies raced through me; Amien meeting my eyes across that sudden connection and giving voice to a laugh of pure, triumphant joy; the drunken boisterous half-aware crowd dancing their ways between the bonfires, their disparate thoughts and words and desires chattering through me as if an entire Ruillin ferry had manifested somewhere inside. Their energy poured through me, stretching me wider yet, infusing me with a flavor of pleasure unlike anything I’d yet tasted. I sent a little of it into Letitia, directing it into the places where it would please her most, stopping her rapturous wail with a kiss. Whether I was lost, whether I might yet be the goddess’s man again: tonight I was only hers. This time, I would hold nothing back.

  Blend the Essences in the vessel of life

  The Elixir cythe

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

  Source after source of power raced into me; there in the midst of the sacred and timeless I welcomed them all. All of them would be for Letitia. The elemental energies no mortal may command laughed through me and bloomed all around, wind swirling and the ground beneath us trembling in their wake. Stars tangled in my hair, tingled in the ends of my fingers, sparked ripples of delight that sent a not-quite human laughter bubbling up from my Abyss-dark core. Fear and need twined in Letitia again, sending me beyond the edge of reason; more minds skittered through my ever-expanding awareness, most of them unaware but Iminor meeting my eyes as he crackled through me, his sudden rage and anguish pouring the dea
th-spell into me in a delicious rush.

  Passion condensed into a wave of impending climax; I sank my teeth into her neck, the taste of blood on my lips and her shriek of pleasured pain catapulting me past inevitability into a place from which the universe spread out in raucous glory and Letitia’s tastes and textures infused all of it, blending with the delicious light of the stars and the glory of the darkness between them. All the universe waited for my command.

  In the Crucible pain is ecstasy and Death is Life

  Hidden is plain

  It was Bealtan: a dark Bealtan with the goddess beyond apprehension and Beal blanketing the world in darkness, a night on which the priestess surrendered to the priest. But still I must give her everything. Let it be an everything that surpassed anyone’s darkest wildest dreams. The moment was on me; I let it happen, shiver trembling up into tingle, pounding towards rapture, cascading past unreason until only my pleasure and Letitia and the magic pouring between us existed. She cried out her ecstasy again; my insanity spun faster yet, and I let everything in my awareness, all the stars and Elements and human energies, tumble through me into her. I gave her my own magical essence; it shuddered out of me, taking something deep inside me with it. The universe crashed around me, but a void had opened inside.

  The reach of the shadow of the Sun is infinite.

  I struggled for breath; I sought the flavors and textures of Letitia’s mouth, completing the physical circuit between us: a terrible, tender grief welling in me, the loss of all the things I would never possess a weight upon my soul.

  It was over. I had stolen this Bealtan, had known all along I had no right to it, knew all the ways I was betraying everyone involved. I would do it again, if I could. But now there was an abyss inside me that nothing would ever fill.

  Letitia clasped me tenderly, legs still tangled around mine; she caressed my face, eyes full of truths that could never be spoken. I had well and truly bound myself; hadn’t realized until now how deeply I’d bound her as well. Were I damned, would this binding survive my descent into the Abyss? A wholly new ache gathered to blockade my throat. I should apologize; but the depth of the things for which I owed apology would wreck me. I must still endure tomorrow.

  “I will not ascend the throne,” Letitia said softly, emerald eyes tender and inescapable. “I have so little to offer you.”

  She shook her head, solemn, while my mind scrabbled hopelessly for purchase.

  “Maybe this is the mark of what a true commitment should be, that you will come to me for no more than a heart’s command.”

  “Annu?” I ventured. Now I suspected we’d been proceeding from entirely different assumptions and contexts. Again. As usual. Had we ever held a conversation in which we understood one another? “I—annu, you came to me. I had no expectations of anything beyond this night.”

  “Oh, c’choiri,” she began, tender hand on my face again. Then comprehension snapped to life in her eyes. Hurt manifested in her face, the unmistakable ire of a righ who has been insulted on its heels. She pulled away, already reaching for her dress. “After—that night at Ilunmore, you said you didn’t care if you were ever mor!”

  “No, I said I didn’t want to be mor of Fíana. I can’t be a consort—”

  “It’s not as if you have prospects of your own!” It shouldn’t sting me, but it did.

  “Actually, Amien offered me the ard-righ’s throne.”

  Why the hell had I said that?

  She stared at me, dress still unlaced. “I thought you had to be a righ to be ard-righ.”

  I shook my head, mostly at my own idiocy. “Technically, no. I’m not sure I’m going to take it, anyway.”

  Letitia stared at me a moment more. She shook her head. “Sweet Lord, you’re a fool.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She flushed, narrow jaw suddenly taut; she jammed her feet into her slippers and stalked out of the grove. For a moment I could do no more than reel; then anger blossomed inside me. How was it possible that dedicating everything I was to her might be insufficient? I threw on my clothes without bothering to button my shirt, shoved my feet into my boots and raced after her. My love, my power, my devotion, my protection: these were sufficient so long as I stood one step below her? Demand equal status, and suddenly the rules changed? She had already gained the fields beyond the summit ridge by the time I caught up to her.

  “So it’s all right for me to lead the lovemaking, but otherwise you must be righ of the rise?” I snapped.

  She stopped and slapped me briskly. White-hot anger surged through me. A second’s terror flashed in her face—followed immediately by a storm of renewed ire, reluctant worship, and shame. I felt my mouth twist into something that was not a smile.

  “Really,” I said, remotely surprised at how cold I sounded. “As long as we’ve established what I am.”

  I should have understood. If human men think all Tana are wanton temptresses, Tanaan women have little more respect for men. Particularly foreign men. My royal status and military command had partially shielded me with the women of Letitia’s contingent. But to a Tanaan royal I must be little more than a courtesan who knew how to handle a blade. The wonder was not that she took me into her bed when she was already committed to marry: it was that she would have made me her consort, when a much more suitable candidate had already been promised her long ago. Bealtan must truly have gone to her head.

  “Fear not,” I said. “Tomorrow you will be sane again.”

  I turned and walked back the way we had come: up to the top of the ridge from which I had spotted Beal. This time I found Amien sitting there, watching me approach.

  “Well, then,” he said as I sat down beside him. “You’re back.”

  He meant back to practicing magic; I shook my head.

  “That was just Bealtan.”

  Amien frowned. “Not funny, Ellion.”

  “But true, my lord.”

  He sighed. For a moment we were both silent.

  “What the hell did She say?”

  Nothing, I wanted to say. But if I hadn’t heard Her words tonight, I had received signs aplenty. She had sent me the greatest of all possible gifts on Bealtan, and I had failed to accept it. All I had needed to do was submit, as the Bealtan priest should. Instead I had chosen wildness thrice over, proven myself unready to yield to Her Call. Instead I let illicit powers and old gods move my feet from the path.

  She hadn’t needed to answer. All She needed to do was show me myself.

  I sighed. “Neither yea nor nay.”

  But I wasn’t sure that was true: Her silence might well have been the answer. It was tempting to think of myself as an unbroken horse, as a being who must be shown the ways of righteousness before I was worthy to serve. But the truth was I had been trained, and by a master: I’d gone feral, like a lighthorse abandoned too long.

  And Whose fault was it that I’d been abandoned?

  Horror swept through me at the thought. Question Her distance in the face of my many transgressions, and there was no telling what I would find it in myself to question next. The ruin of Esunertos swam before my eyes; in my peripheral vision I glimpsed Beal recondensing overhead. I’d been right to turn aside from the Prince’s throne. Who could say how far I had to travel back towards Her before I would be worthy of that post—or whether I would ever cover that distance at all?

  “Ard-righ, then,” Amien sighed.

  That wasn’t right, either: a twelvenight from now I would be righ of nothing but a vacant hill. Or, worse yet, a city of empty wooden façades begging for the comeuppance of a torch. But it would give me the rank I needed to set strategy and tactics, and that might allow me to defeat Nechton. And protect Letitia.

  I would never be her consort. She would never be mine. But I had given both my word and my heart, and nothing would stand in the way of her safety. Not while I lived.

  “Yes,” I said, eyes on the ring of fire below us. “But don’t expect me to carry it like Coran; I don’t have time. I�
��ll send the Ilesians to support you and the wizards at Esunertos—” Amien stirred, restless; I ignored it. “—and Conwy of Deceang and the other eastern righthe to secure the Aerona and Nagnata. Then they should be able to re-take Ballarona. Meanwhile Rohini and Cooley of Ebdani will muster with whatever righthe still stand in the west, and they will re-take Liis and Regia and move on to Macol. Letitia and I will handle the Shadow of the Sun.”

  Now Amien turned to look at me. Even in my peripheral vision I could see him grin.

  “Don’t look at me like that. She has not released me from my vow. I’ll still need wizards.”

  Still Amien smiled as if in possession of a wonderful secret; I knew he believed it was only a matter of time before I secured that concession, as well.

  It was much more likely that what I secured would be a place in the Abyss. That Nechton and gods Whose names I didn’t even yet know would push me into a place in which I cast aside the last of my vows and succumbed to the lure of all the things I wouldn’t allow myself to touch. Already those things crowded around me, the crystalline song of the dark power between the stars, the tastes and colors of the stars themselves, the power in the earth beneath me, the Powers of all the gods waiting for me to unravel the Shadow working and turn the key. A ripple of intoxication fluttered through me; illicit delight lit my skin. I knew the truth: I didn’t need Them to push me. I only needed an excuse. The only real question was what would happen in the space between that final greatest transgression and my inevitable fall into endless empty darkness.

  Maybe that fall had already begun.

  “All right, then, my lord,” Amien said, amused. “Now let me tell you how it will be.”

  I had long since crossed the line separating my prerogative from his, I knew. Once again I couldn’t find it in myself to care: I just turned my head to look at him. His amusement deepened.

  “I’ve missed that look,” he said, laughter running beneath his words—then laughed aloud at whatever he saw in my gaze. “Well, then. I’m not a fool: your military strategy will stand. I give you absolute authority there. Meanwhile you will work to resolve matters with the goddess—I trust you know better than to argue like this with Her—”