Forgotten Suns

by Judith Tarr

  “The Corps will laugh at your flag and your mission.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are we laying bets on it?”

  “I’ll win,” he said. “Consider that I know both the identity and the location of the trigger for Araceli’s worldwrecker. I also know that the free traders have no love whatsoever for the Corps. Nor do a remarkable number of scientists and academics. I don’t think Spaceforce is terribly fond of it, either.”

  “You’re talking about sedition,” she said. “Insurrection. Attacking U.P. from within and without.”

  “Isn’t it a lovely prospect?”

  “It’s a horrendous and chaotic prospect. I thought you’d gone sane after you dealt with the eater of souls. You’re crazier than ever.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “I’m not going with you. I’m staying here. There’s a whole new world to build and protect. Which considering what you’re plotting, may be the only one left by the time Aisha is old enough for university.”

  “All the more reason to protect the universities,” Rama said. “Would she want Beijing Nine, then? I’d have thought she’d be more interested in the university in Cairo.”

  “You’ve been talking to Marina.”

  “I’ve been talking to Dr. Ma. She’s taken an interest in a child so determined to solve an archaeological mystery that she’ll follow it into the next universe. That’s a born scholar, she says.”

  “Or a born insurrectionist.” Khalida stepped aside at last, to let him go.

  He stayed where he was.

  Understanding dawned. “You’re leaving today.”

  “Tonight.”

  Khalida surprised herself with the twist of pain in her center. She had no love for this living relic, but she was used to him. She would miss that particular focus for her temper. “Why? Is something coming?”

  “Not yet. When it does, it will follow me. This world will escape its notice for a while.”

  “Not a very long one. We’re already in U.P.’s sights. If they don’t get here first and shut us all down, the first tradeship that comes through, or the first shipload of tourists, will blast the news to the universe.”

  “News that, as far as the Corps knows, has nothing to do with the pirate who destroyed them on Araceli. They’ll be much too busy and much too far away, hunting a ghost.”

  “An angry one, I hope.”

  He showed her his teeth. He had too many, and they were too sharp to be strictly human. “None angrier.”

  If she had had any pity in her, she might have spared a drop or two for the Corps. This was a bad enemy. Now he had a world to defend, with his own people on it.

  She was almost tempted to throw in her lot with him again. Embark on the living ship. Commit herself to a life of adventure.

  She had that here, a thousand times over. She would travel in space again, but not for a while. There was too much to do.

  He bent his head to her: acknowledgment, respect.

  No love, no. But they understood one another.

  70

  Aisha didn’t need to eavesdrop to know what Rama was up to. She felt it inside, where he always was.

  She waited all day to catch him alone. That was hard: he was saying goodbye without telling anyone, wandering all over the tent city and the expedition’s compound. He spent a long time with the antelope, but the stable was full of mages asking endless questions about the horses, and interns trying to take care of the horses while that went on, and Malia half answering the questions and half translating the interns’ and Vikram’s answers. Malia had shown a talent for translating, and was well on her way to being indispensable.

  At about the time Aisha decided to grab him and drag him off into the nearest empty room, he slipped away. She almost missed it. One minute he was standing with his forehead against the antelope stallion’s. The next, he was gone.

  Then she saw him slipping around a corner, and darted after him.

  He was fast, but she knew the territory. She also knew where he was going—and how to go straight there while he took the long, wandering, goodbye tour.

  ~~~

  She was sitting on the top of the hill when he got there, watching a flock of plains doves swarm and swirl over the rubble of his tower. Something had flushed them: a raptor, probably.

  “Plains cat,” he said, dropping down beside her.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “That’s bad. We’d better tell Vikram before it gets wind of the horses. Or the interns.”

  “It won’t,” said Rama. “Though your father might not mind about the interns.”

  Aisha couldn’t help the snort of laughter at that. “You can talk to it?”

  “Plains cats are highly intelligent. One adopted my son when it and he were very young. It was never tame, exactly, but it was more loyal than any human guard. This one knows our people have come back. She’ll have her cubs up there, and send them to find companions among the mages.”

  “Not if Vikram shoots her first.”

  “Vikram will not be shooting anything without the mages’ leave. It’s their world now.”

  “Not yours?”

  “It will always be my world,” he said.

  “But you’re leaving it.”

  There. She’d said it. She glared across the plain and refused to look at him.

  “Aisha,” he said with tight-stretched patience. “I have to go. I’ve left too much undone. I have to finish it.”

  “What, getting yourself killed?”

  “I would hope not.”

  “So you do want to live? Then stay here. You’ll be safe.”

  “Nowhere is safe as long as the Corps keeps your people ignorant and stunted. I’m going to finish bringing them down.”

  “Nobody can do that. They’re everywhere. They’re like a virus in the system.”

  “So they are. What do you do, or Jamal, when you run into a virus? You kill it. You scour the system and wipe it out.”

  Finally she turned and strafed him with her glare. “I’m sorry we ever taught you what a computer was.”

  He grinned at her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him that lighthearted.

  Damn him. She wanted to cry. He was laughing. He couldn’t wait to get away from here—and from her.

  “Oh, no,” he said, reading her as easily as he ever had. “I’ll never be glad to leave you.”

  “You won’t. If you go, I go.”

  “No,” he said.

  She set her chin and her mind. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay here and learn all there was to learn; study everything she could study, and get ready for university. She had doctorates to get. Archaeology and xenoanthropology. Cosmology. Interuniversal physics. But—

  But.

  “You will get your doctorates,” Rama said. “That’s your path. Mine is out there, honoring my promises and atoning for my sins.”

  “My path is with you,” Aisha said out of the bottom of her self. “It’s always been with you. From life to life.”

  “Not yet,” he said. It was hard for him to say it. She could feel it in the pit of her own stomach. “Maybe not at all in this life. You have so much to do and be. You’ll find whole worlds to conquer. You’ll forget me.”

  “I will not.” She thought about hitting him, but that was too weak for what she was feeling. She wanted to blast him to ash.

  “Aisha,” he said, sealing her with her name in this world. Because names had power. “Meritamon. Beloved of the Sun. I’ll come back. I promise.”

  “Alive?”

  He blinked. He should have expected that. He knew her well enough. “Alive and as well as possible,” he said.

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “From life into life,” he said.

  “Oh, no. You don’t get to slither out from under. You’ll find me in this life, or I’ll find you. I won’t sit around waiting for you. Don’t you even think about me doing that.”

  “I wou
ldn’t dream of it,” he said.

  ~~~

  Ship hovered just above the grass, glimmering in the starlight. A storm was brewing, a last hard blow of winter, but the sky was clear overhead, and the air was still. The only sign of what was coming was a thin line of cloud along the northern horizon.

  The mages had protected their tender new crops with what looked like sheets of plastine. Dr. Ma was almost persuaded to stay after all, to find out what it was and how they made it, but she had a universe to study, and a grant that she didn’t want to lose.

  The scientists were on board and cradled in. So were six blackrobes from the tribes, who had appeared that afternoon with their kit and a message for Rama from the grandmother. “These you have earned. They’re to follow wherever you lead. Don’t waste them.”

  That was a gift Rama couldn’t refuse, even if he wanted to. He handed them over to one of the mages who would go with him, and made sure they were settled in the ship.

  Ship would jump as soon as it lifted above atmosphere. Rama hadn’t stayed for goodbyes. Aisha hadn’t wanted him to. She still wanted to be here, watching Ship power up for launch.

  Mother and Pater were there, too. Jamal, of course. And Vikram. And Khalida and Daiyan and a few other mages. Elti. Some of the tribes.

  None of them said anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

  Something blew warm breath on the back of Aisha’s neck. Something big.

  She turned very, very carefully. The antelope stallion butted her gently and lowered his head for her to scratch between his horns.

  She’d wondered, somewhat distantly, why he hadn’t galloped and screamed this time and raised holy hell because Rama was leaving. He’d been suspiciously quiet, now she thought about it.

  He leaned on her, not hard enough to knock her down, but he was definite about it. They would both sleep in in the morning, what with the late night and the snow. Tomorrow she had better be in the arena, and she had better be ready to work. He wasn’t spending another half a year waiting for someone to wake up and pay attention.

  “Did he put you up to his?” she asked him.

  He snorted wetly all over her clean shirt. He had to go and ride that outsized space fish. She was here. She knew how to ride, more or less. She would do perfectly well.

  “Until he comes back.”

  Maybe, the antelope said. Or felt. Or wanted her to feel.

  This psi thing was hard to put words to. Impossible, most of the time.

  She meant to make it easier. Some of the mages had promised to teach her. Daiyan especially. Aisha was half dreading it, and half beside herself with excitement.

  The stallion shifted until he was beside her, and leaned again, so that she had to drape her arm over his back or fall down. He was warm and his winter coat, though shedding, was still thick, and he smelled of dust and grass and clean animal.

  Ship lifted without warning, straight up. The sight of it blocking the stars brought a brief, fierce memory of the eater’s prison rising over the mountain on the rogue moon.

  This was no eater of souls. It was a swimmer of seas beyond human understanding.

  Unless that human was Rama. The humans on Ship were already drugged and dreaming, but he was wide awake.

  Aisha could see him in her mind, standing on the bridge with the screens around him, all showing stars and planets and moon. In her mind he met her stare and smiled.

  He would always be there, deep inside, wherever he went and however far away he was. Psi and spacetime—that was another study for Dr. Ma and her scientists.

  Maybe it would be Aisha who studied it. The best way to get a job done, Vikram always said, was to do it yourself.

  She stayed till Ship was long out of sight. The others had left by then, all but the antelope.

  When it was finally gone, diving into jumpspace with an eruption of joy like a whale’s tail slapping the sea, Aisha turned to go, and ran into the antelope.

  He knelt, inviting her. She was probably crazy, but the wind was picking up and it was a fair way home. She climbed onto his back and let him carry her toward the first faint light of dawn, and the warmth of the stable, and so much to do and learn and be that she could hardly get her mind around it.

  The stallion bucked under her, not enough to send her flying, but enough to make her pay attention. Be, yes. Be now. Later would come when it came.

  That was a good rule to live by.

  She crouched down over his neck and wound her fingers in his mane. He belled into the wind, loud clear antelope laughter, and stretched into a gallop, and carried her home.

  Copyright & Credits

  Forgotten Suns

  Judith Tarr

  Book View Café April 21, 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-477-2

  Copyright © 2015 Judith Tarr

  Production Team:

  Cover art Copyright © Rolffimages | Dreamstime.com — The Eternal Explorers

  Cover design Copyright © 2014 Knotted Road Press www.KnottedRoadPress.com

  Beta readers: Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge, Doranna Durgin

  Proofreader: Nancy Jane Moore

  Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Digital edition: 20141231vnm

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Publishing Cooperative

  P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624

  About the Author

  Judith Tarr’s first fantasy novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1986, and went on to win the Crawford Award. Her YA time-travel science fiction/fantasy/historical novel, Living in Threes, appeared as an ebook from Book View Café in 2012, and is now in print. In between, she has written historicals and historical fantasies—including World Fantasy Award nominee Lord of the Two Lands—and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café. A short story, “Fool’s Errand,” a prequel to Forgotten Suns, appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of Analog. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, two dogs, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

  Other Titles by Judith Tarr

  The Epona Sequence

  White Mare’s Daughter

  Lady of Horses

  Daughter of Lir

  Avaryan Rising Series

  The Hall of the Mountain King

  The Lady of Han-Gilen

  A Fall of Princes

  Avaryan Resplendent Series

  Arrows of the Sun

  Spear of Heaven

  The Hound and the Falcon Series

  The Isle of Glass

  The Golden Horn

  The Hounds of God

  Novels

  Ars Magica

  Alamut

  The Dagger and the Cross

  Forgotten Suns

  Living in Threes

  Lord of the Two Lands

  A Wind in Cairo

  His Majesty’s Elephant

  Collection

  Nine White Horses

  Nonfiction

  Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right

  BVC Anthologies

  Beyond Grimm

  Breaking Waves

  Brewing Fine Fiction

  Ways to Trash Your Writing Career

  Dragon Lords and Warrior Women

  Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

  The Shadow Conspiracy

  The Shadow Conspiracy

  The Shadow Conspiracy II

  About Book View Café

  Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.

&n
bsp; Book View Café is good for readers because you can enjoy high-quality DRM-free ebooks from your favorite authors at a reasonable price.

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  Book View Café authors include New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  I.

  Nevermore

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  II.

  Leda

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  III.

  Araceli

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31