Mortal Suns (25 page)

The chief said stiffly, “You shine brightly upon us.”

“When I was here before, I was a youth. Now, as you see.” He held out his right arm, showing the old white scar. “Your women washed my wound clean. I recall a little maid. She was about six or seven then. My heart warmed to her, her gentleness.”

The dog-grey brows of the chief went slowly up. He pursed his mouth.

“My brother had many daughters.”

“She was, as I say, very young. She’d be about thirteen, fourteen, now …” Klyton waited. It was a gamble for he did not remember any such thing, some dear little veiled female child. There might almost certainly have been one, however. Or one near enough in age they could fob off on him.

The biggest of the chief’s sons spoke.

“Father, Bachis was in the house after the battle. She was a child then.”

“Is she unwed?” asked Klyton, looking radiantly at them. If she was, his luck—the luck he played he must hope for—was in. For they married them early here, earlier even than Akhemony.

They were not beyond, maybe, disposing of another husband, presented instead with a prince from Oceaxis. Or they might refuse. If they refused, then they had war very much on their minds. Marriage was surely better. A tie like this did not come their way every hour —a free asking, not a war-taking. And if they wanted it, they were bound. They would be his kin, and their daughter a princess. They could not, under any ordinary provocation, raise swords any more against Akhemony, which meant that probably neither would any other town of the region.

Glardor had not
properly seen to it. The wife he took, though from Sirma, had been from another town. Unbedded, so disgraced, she had any way died inside a year of homesickness or overindulgence, in which a lover may have played some part. No new alliance with Sirma had been fashioned. But then, who would ever have thought a season like this would occur, without a Great Sun.

“Unwed. Yes. She’s timid,” said the chief.

“I’m charmed. I shall be very gentle. But, also I must have her today. I’m sorry the wedding has to be so canteringly done. That’s possible?”

The chief gnawed his moustache.

“Customs are to be observed.”

“Of course. Everything. But I must ask, quickly.”

They were all scowling. But they knew what was offered. Besides, perhaps they were sick of skirmishes they could not win, the flower of their men cut down, their women weeping.

“Let me present a handful of tokens, poor things,” said Klyton. He nodded to the two slaves, who undid the saddle-chests. Some attractive silks from Melmia were got out, some carved boxes, and a jewel or two. He explained there were wine casks outside, leathers, some weapons they could delight him by accepting. It seemed quite lavish, on the spur of the moment. Klyton had ransacked the captain’s hoard, much to his distress.

As they picked over the barter, the chief moved close to Klyton. He looked long into Klyton’s face, and one had the impression of a dog again, which sniffs to scent the vigor and nature of a man.

“You have to come to our temple. We worship Perpi here, the marriage-maker. And someone must go to the womens side and tell the girl.”

Klyton felt sorry for her. But not very much. He would not harm her, and she would have a glorious time in Oceaxis, out of this dung-hill.

The temple of Perpi seemed made of dung, its color, and slight tang, overlaid by the incense.

Once the
offerings had been seen to, and they had garlanded him, and requested he utter various religious sentences, the bride was brought. She was small and slight, reaching only to his breastbone. Under the veil, he glimpsed a darkish fall of hair. Her hand trembled when they put it in his, but she had been staring at him, off and on. Perhaps it was not from fear.

It was a proper up-country marriage. After the wedding, he must go around the town with her, in a rickety chariot drawn by two white oxen with gilded horns. The crowd gaped and gurgled, and threw flowers, looking astonished. They wanted their money’s worth of him. It was their right. He stayed good-humored, and when one stone dropped in the cart with the half-dead flowers, only drew in his escort a little.

He refused to spend his honey-night in the town. He sorrowfully explained he had business elsewhere and had indulged his whim too long. They had some tradition of a bride being carried off to her husband’s house, so allowed him to do so.

She brought with her an entourage of one thin slave girl, and the slightest baggage. They had not bothered with a dowry, for peace with Sirma was that, and they had no reticence about showing him they guessed.

Klyton did not see her unveiled, his wife, until they had rejoined the camp. Then in his tent, when he suggested it, she instantly put off the covering. She was not pretty, but neither displeasing, with a white skin and pale tawny eyes. Her hair was brown, and had been washed and braided with mauve beads. Around her neck was a necklace of rough silver discs, and these were all the riches she brought.

He had had them bring some things from Melmia he thought she would like, some decent fruit, and a cake in the shape of a ring. She picked at the food, and gazed about her and at him, in rushes, then looking down at the floor. In the coppery lamplight, he began to note she was very frightened, worse than he had suspected.

Klyton saw it might be difficult to reassure her. She was not one of the free girls who yielded to him from desire. They had said she was timid.

Eventually, he lowered the lamp, and led her to the bed of rugs. He could not spare her, because to have her was all part of the treaty he had made. Not to penetrate her would be the worst insult of all, and could leave the union invalid.

He made love
to her as tenderly as if he had genuinely yearned for her all those seven years. But in the end, finding she would not or could not soften her nerves, he parted her body and sought her out. Then he found what the impediment was—or rather, that there was none. She was not a virgin. She had been properly deflowered, and in Sirma, it seemed, they knew none of the herbal arts of court women.

At once, she burst into tears. He stroked her hair, tried to recall her name, recalled it.

“Bachis, it’s all right. I’m not angry.”

“Yes, yes, you’ll strangle me now.”

“Why would I? Only you must tell me when it happened. Does your father know of it?”

“No—no—oh, no—he would have strangled me.”

So much strangling for such a little matter. Despite what he had said, however, he was raging, and held the rage away from her, as he would a feral beast. If the Sirmians had thought to cheat him—make a laughing-stock of him—for what pact could hold on this?

“Calmly, Bachis. See. I won’t hurt you. Tell me who knows.”

“Nursey,” said Bachis, childishly, clasping her hands, “but she died.”

“No one else?” Of course, they had not bothered to check her virginity, there had been no time for such age-old barbarisms. And he had made no demands.

“No one else.”

“But the man? Bachis, that I do insist on knowing.”

“He died, too.”

“How?”

“There were bandits and he fought and his horse threw him down.”

“And who was he, Bachis?”

She buried her face in her hands. Then, through her fingers, told him. “Arpon.”

Klyton sat back from her. “Who was Arpon?”

She said, only a rustle in her throat, “My brother.”

After a time, when he did not speak, the bride sprinkled her story on the air, in quick, tiny drops. She was a simple girl, not much above a child, even in her fifteenth year. If she had been given to Klyton in the expected condition, she would have lain here wild with joy. His beauty daunted her, but then all men were meant to daunt her, and he was like the god.

Since she was
ten, Arpon had discovered a way of sneaking in to her. At first, he had only caressed, invading her mouth with his tongue. When she was twelve, he commenced to use her as a woman. She had stretched in fear beneath him. She had wished him dead. But when the death-spell she and Nursey had, years before, concocted, seemed at last to work, Bachis was stricken by fresh terrors. Would the gods punish her?

“No. Your virginity was sacred to Phaidix. You were raped. She’ll protect you.”

Bachis relaxed somewhat. All at once she sank back on the rugs and drew up her skirt with an awful, sly, placating, false lasciviousness, just what she must have employed for her brother.

“It’s all right, Bachis. I won’t bother you tonight. We’ll pretend we have, shall we.”

And down in the wells of her pale brown eyes, he saw a slither of disappointment, which now disgusted him.

He left her to sleep, and went to sit in the other end of the tent. Quite soon he heard her softly snoring. She had had a busy day.

When he slept himself, he did not know it. He stood in a dark place, and said over and over, “Her brother, her brother.” Stars glittered and shot by, tipped on Phaidix’s arrows.

Had he been shown the mirror, himself and Calistra?

Was he in some hell, sent there to atone?

The stars flashed past and on, and were no more, and then he saw he had immovably reached the bank of a river, which was black and very still.

On a rock which jutted from the water, a static flare of gold, which was a man, stood waiting for him.

Amdysos carried no mark of any mishap. He wore the clothes from the Race, gleaming and perfect. But his face—his face was closed behind a golden priestly mask.

Then he spoke. His voice was recognizable, though pure and far off, as when he had officiated sometimes in some religious rite.

“Klyton,” he said, “don’t you remember the bees at Airis, in the shrine?”

“The bees …” Klyton said.

“Glardor,” said
Amdysos through the priest’s mask.

Klyton thought in the dream, how Glardor had died of the sting of a bee.

“And Pherox,” said Amdysos, “dying of the silver apple. And I of the eagle of gold.”

“I was afraid,” said Klyton, “to remember the bees.”

Yet through him, like a tempest of fires, some splendor came, returning. And in the dream he retraced the other dream, when he had been the eagle above Akhemony, and the world was his.

“What you felt before the Race,” said Amdysos.

“I—feel it now, again.”

“Your way,” said Amdysos, “is made certain.”

“But I thought that way was for both of us. For myself, and for
you
, as my King—”

“I was the sacrifice,” said Amdysos the priest. “I have gone down into the dark that you may soar up into the sunlight.”

“The God—is too harsh—”

“No prize is given for nothing. We are gone from your path. Take your trophy, Klyton, or you demean my death.”

At his table in the tent, Klyton woke with a leap of flame. Blazing, he stood, and all the space seemed swirling, burning, till it settled, and only the golden light poured on through his brain. He had become a ghost, but now the web tore from him.

And hearing the girl snore on the rugs, a million miles below the height of his fate, he laughed aloud.

He recounted this to me later, all this, as a true dream, sent by the god. But I do not think it was.

I, Calistra, was in Oceaxis that night, as I had been, night on night, day on day, left like a shell upon a shore.

The Heart had stopped, and begun again. Prepared, I had only waited out the interval. It felt of death, as in the whirlwind of Thon’s temple it had. But what had stunned me then seemed now far less. I had learned of other separations. And I did not die.

That night, this night. As Klyton dreamed his true dream, I lay awake.

The lamp does not show a circle of rose red on the ceiling, as once it did. They have changed its position. Lut crouches by Gemli.

They have an understanding now. Lut, like the others, has forgotten me, since I am no longer quite a creature of his band.

In
the morning I will wake, and day on day, night on night, time will pass. Kelbalba will scold me and make me dance and exercise before her. I will do it in a dream unlike the dream of Klyton.

And a morning will arrive, and Ermias will appear, wearing the jewelry her noble gave her, yet angry, scornful, showing her teeth like a cat.

“Well. He’s
wed
.”

Uninterested, I will glance.

Ermias will shake her curls. “The precious Prince Klyton. Some slut he’s wanted seven years in the flea pits of Sirma. Couldn’t wait, they say. What tastes he has, for a Sun. And she brought no dowry. He was so
eager
.”

And walking to the window, forgetting all the dictates of policy and alliance, how treaties are made to hold nation to nation, I will see him for one second in the arms of a lovely goddess-like girl. And the Lakesea will turn green before my eyes and stream into a narrow, fiery line, as I loudly weep my soul from my body, and Ermias, in horror, clutches me back from the brink where already I have tumbled down.

Winter came. I see again an early morning in Phaidix’s garden, when the last tall brassy flowers were black, burnt by frost to sugar, crumbling at a touch. Snow bloomed on the mountains and closed the higher roads. Hot stones put into my bed, and under my silver feet, to warm them before I should draw them on. And Ermias, she too I recall, very straight and still as she stood behind me, reflected in the electrum mirror Stabia had sent. Ermias and I said nothing to each other of that other morning when I, like a frost-burned flower crumbled into my tears of blazing glass. It was not like her, to be so reticent. And she was kind to me. She brushed my hair herself, sending Nimi away. What went through her mind? No doubt that I was simply a poor dolt, inevitable victim of unsuitable obsession. Yet she treated me with dignity.

For myself, I did not cry again where any could see me. And now there were no helpers, no one came to tell me it was Calistra he wanted, none other. Though Stabia had delivered the costly, promised mirror, she did not add any message.

I went
to the Hall one night in three or four. I stayed until the harpers were finished, or if there were no harpers, until the men’s singing began. I sat among the women, but not close to any of the queens. Of course, I must have seen them, Stabia with her amiable brisk ways, Udrombis, with the new tide of white breaking through her black hair. Even Elakti, who now was present, sitting with one hand pressed to her stomach, which still looked perfectly flat. But they were not real to me, as he had not seemed real. And if I saw him, he was less real than anything, now. I marvel at myself, partly for the remoteness I felt on seeing him. But this Klyton moved behind a pane of crystal. He was further from me than the sky.