Arrows of the Sun (14 page)

“You have not.” The giddiness was gone. Estarion was
Estarion again, and ready for battle.

She forestalled him. “No, Starion. No fights. Not now. I
came—” Her voice died. “I came as your priestess. As your servant. Will you
listen?”

He did not want to: it was transparent in his face. But he
had his training. “I will listen,” he said, so tight that she could barely hear
him.

She told him. The temple; the voices. The prophet they spoke
of.

“Nonsense,” he said as the old man had, in very nearly the
same tone. “People are always talking. And the boy was drugged, you say.
Demented. It’s nothing but Asanion, being Asanion.”

“No,” said Vanyi. The power moved in her. She opened it to
him, willing him to see as she saw, fear as she feared.

He would not. “Even if there is substance in it, what
difference can it make? I’m guarded day and night. I’m watched over like an
infant. I can’t even visit the privy without someone peering over my shoulder.”

“You still don’t believe,” she said. “No one does. Your
guards let me in with cries of delight. What if I’d been got at by someone with
a gift for sorcery? I could have sunk a knife in you while you whirled me round
the room, or poisoned you with my kiss.”

“Not you,” he said, so sure of her and of himself that she
wanted to shake him. “You do love me still. In spite of everything.”

“I’ll never
stop
loving you!”

She clamped her mouth shut. He had enough sense, for once,
not to reach for her. Maybe he was too stunned by the force of her outcry.

“Estarion,” she said after a long moment, in the steadiest
voice she could manage. “Do this one thing for me. Trust what I see. Trust
nothing else, not even yourself.”

“I can do that without your bidding. Asanion does it to me.”

“Then let it. You aren’t loved here, Estarion. Maybe you can
witch them into it—you’ve the gift, I won’t deny it. But the hate runs deep,
and it runs strong. They’ll have their prophet if they have to make him
themselves. They’ll do all they can to destroy you.”

“I knew that when I was in my cradle. You’re forgetting,
dear love. I’ve seen what they can do to me and mine.”

She shut her eyes and pressed her fists against them. Tears
burned, too hot to shed. “Damn you, Starion. Why can’t you be as easy to hate
as they think you are?”

“They don’t know me.”

Her fists dropped. She glared. “You arrogant—”

He seemed not to have heard her. “What can any of them do to
me that I haven’t suffered already? Kill me? Then the god will take me.”

“They can leave this empire without its emperor, destroy
your kin and everything you love, roll over Keruvarion and crush it with bitter
steel.”

She heard the rasp of his breath, but his voice was light.
“There is that,” he granted her. “I’m guarded, Vanyi. I’m warned. What more can
I do?”

“Show a little sense. Stop entertaining every whore in
Asanion.”

“Gladly!” His agreement was so heartfelt that she almost—
perilously—smiled. “And?”

“And—” She stopped. He was seducing her. Keeping her there,
tricking her with temper, leading to the inevitable, inescapable conclusion.
Where was he safest? Under watchful guard. Who could guard him best?

“Not I.” She hugged herself, trying not to shiver. “I’ll
speak to the guards,” she said, “send one of them in to watch over you.”

“I don’t want to sleep with a guard.”

“Then summon Ulyai, wherever she is. She’s better for that
than a dozen armed men.”

“Ulyai hates cities in Asanion. She won’t come inside the
walls.”

“She will if I tell her why.”

“Vanyi—”

She would not hear him. She sent a messenger on the mageroads,
a summons and a command.
The bright one
has need. Come!
It touched the mind it sought, fierce cat-mind in the
afterglow of a hunt, the rich taste of blood, the memory of the chase.

Some lord’s park was less a deer. Vanyi felt her lips
stretch in a grin as feral as Ulyai’s own. This hunt was better, she told the
cat. This was a mage-hunt, a man-hunt, ward and guard against the death that
came out of the dark.

“She comes,” Vanyi said. No matter that he knew. The words
gave it substance.

Leaving him was as hard as anything she had ever done, and
as purely necessary. He could not understand. She felt his anger swelling as
she passed the door. She locked her mind against it.

Korusan did not remember how long he had been lying on
this hard narrow bed that had been his since he rose to the second rank, in
this cell with its tall thin window and its scrap of curtain for a door. But he
remembered that he had been ill, memory that blurred into all the other
illnesses.

Most often it was fever, or a demon in lungs or heart or
bones. This time it was lassitude that would not lift, and an ache without a
source, that made his hands shake when he tried to curve them round a cup, and
set him reeling when he would have sat up.

There were, as always, mages. They patched him together with
threads of their magic, weaving over the other, older stitchings. He was as
threadbare as an old cloak, and as like to fall apart.

He said so to the mage who tended him, when he gained
strength enough to speak. It was the lightmage from the night by the gate, the
last night he remembered clearly. She did not smile at his bit of wit. “You’ll
last as long as you need to.”

“Am I your punishment?” he asked her.

She bent to the task of mixing a potion for him. It smelled
less vile than usual.

“I am,” he answered for her, since she would not. “Pity that
you should suffer for telling me the truth.”

“You knew it already,” she said. Or he thought she said. The
fall of her hair hid her face, and her voice was barely audible.

“Some things, one needs to be told.”

“Some things were better left alone.” She poured a measure
of her physic and set the cup to his lips.

He closed his hands over hers. She neither started nor
pulled away.

Her hands were cool. Her eyes met his. They did not pity
him, which he was glad of, but neither did they warm for him.

So it would be with the women of the Olenyai, once they knew
what this woman knew. “I would do very well among the wives of courtiers,” he
observed. “No fear of heirs who bear too faint a resemblance to their mothers’
husbands.”

“I suppose you are entitled to be bitter,” said the mage.
She wiped the cup with a cloth and laid it back among the jars of medicaments.

“You dislike me,” said Korusan. Weakness made him blunt, and
the potion made him bold. It was odd, to know both sides of that, and to know
how little it mattered.

“No,” said the mage.

“But I mean nothing to you, beyond the fact of my lineage.”

“That’s but a means to an end.” She smoothed the coverlet
over him. “Did you know that you are a legend to the people? They make a
promise of you, and call you prophet.”

He had not known. He was surprised that it could make him
angry. “Whose idiocy is that? Your Master’s?”

“You should be glad. The people are ripe for your coming.
They have no love for the black kings.”

“How can I be a prophet if no one sees my face or hears my
voice?”

“Your face is a mystery, as every emperor’s must be. Your
voice is the voice of your servants.”

“No servants of mine,” said Korusan.

“We all serve you, my lord, from our hearts’ center. You are
the Son of the Lion.”

He had taken joy in that name once, and swelled with pride
when it was spoken. “I am the sum of my lineage,” he said. “Which is nothing.
How close did I come to death this time, when the old sickness took me?”

“Not close at all,” she said, but she would not look at him
while she said it. “You overtaxed yourself, no more. And it was a shock to
discover . . . what you discovered.”

Odd that she could not say it, when she could say so much
else. “What greater shock will it be to mount the throne as emperor? Will I
fall dead upon the dais?”

“Of course not,” said the mage. “You are nowhere near as
weak as you imagine.”

“Oh, yes,” said Korusan, “and I am so strong that I faint as
easily as a girl, and rather more often.”

“Maybe it suits some people to have you think so. Maybe they
think it makes you more tractable.”

He stared at her, speechless.

“You didn’t ever think of that, did you? That maybe you
aren’t as feeble as that. An invalid could never be an Olenyas, or pass the
tests of wood and steel, or live as a warrior lives, without ease or comfort.
Keeping you slave to their mendings and magics—that keeps you slave to their
will as well.”

It could be true, he thought. And yet he knew his own blood,
his own bones. He knew how brief his years must be.

Whether she read his thoughts, which mages said they could
not do to a full Olenyas, or whether his eyes betrayed him, she said, “Oh, you
won’t live long. That’s true enough. But you’ll go all at once, not by these
slow degrees.”

“Why do you tell me this?”

She shrugged, a lift of a shoulder, a turn of a hand. “Maybe
I don’t dislike you. Maybe I feel sorry for you.”

“Maybe you spy for the enemy.”

She laughed. “Maybe I do! He loves our kind, does the
emperor in Endros. He dotes so much on us of the Golden Empire that he won’t
suffer one of us in his presence.”

“And yet he comes to Asanion. Or is that too a lie?”

“He comes,” said the mage. “His mother drives him, they say,
because she knows he’ll lose us else. He loathes every step of the journey.”

“Someone could kill him,” Korusan murmured. “Then we would
be rid of him.”

The drug was taking effect. He wondered distantly if it was
meant as the mage said, to weaken and not to strengthen him.

But he was too tired to care. He heard her say, “Someone may
kill him yet. Or we’ll leave it for you.”

For me
, he
thought.
Yes. That would be proper
.

o0o

When he woke again, the lightmage was gone. He had another
nurse, a silent Olenyai woman who would not tell him what had become of her. He
did not see her again.

In darker moments he wondered if she had been set there to
say what no one should say, still less a mage of the Guild that would have
wielded him as its puppet. If she had died for it, or if they had stripped her
of her power and cast or out. Or if, after all, she had the reward of a gentler
posting, away from the terrors of this conspiracy.

The weakness passed—quickly, his nurses said; too slowly for
his patience. He was back almost to full duties when he was called from one of
them into the Master’s presence.

The Guildmaster was with the Master of the Olenyai as
Korusan had expected, and no one else but a lone veiled guard. He knew the eyes
above the veil, the fret of fingers on swordhilt, Marid’s presence a greater
comfort than he might have looked for. Was that friendship, then, this fancy
that one man at least was not hungry for his blood?

Before the Master of the Olenyai, Korusan lowered his veil
and stood in silence until he should be spoken to. The Master’s own veil was
down, his face a little gaunter than Korusan remembered, a little more weary;
but it was the weariness of a hard task well begun.

When he spoke, he spoke not to Korusan but to the master of
the mages. “He looks well. Will he continue so?”

“Now, I think, yes,” said the Guildmaster.

“Good,” said the Olenyas.

Korusan bit back words that would not have been wise. They
could not dispose of him as they had a young lightmage, but they could master
him with magic if they chose. Let them think him biddable, if reluctant; let
them imagine that he was cowed.

“Prince,” said the Olenyas, “we have somewhat that you
should see. Will you come?”

Korusan bent his head, assenting.

He felt their eyes on him, and the cold brush of magic. He
was still to them, empty of all but compliance.

The eyes left him. The magic lingered, but after a time that
too went away. Still, he kept up his guard and his veil, went where they led,
said no word and offered no resistance.

o0o

“This, prince,” said the Master of Mages, “is your
empire.”

Korusan regarded it as it lay on a table in a room somewhat
less bare than others in this stronghold: it had hangings on the walls, new
enough for the figures to be seen, and carpets on the floor, and a chair on a
low round dais. That last had been brought in late and in haste, he thought;
and likewise the table beside the chair, on which rested a single gleaming
thing.

It was a mask of gold. It could not be the one that reposed
in the palace treasury in Kundri’j Asan; that would be guarded incessantly.

By Olenyai. They were the trusted guards of emperors. They
kept the treasuries, warded the inmost chambers, defended the Son of the Lion
with their living bodies.

The mask was heavy as he lifted it. If it was not pure gold,
then it was gold sheeted thick over lead.

Its face he knew. It was his own. Its eyes were empty,
blank.

“This is the mask of the emperor,” the Guildmage said. “This
you are born to wear.”

They had had to remake it, he had heard, when the black
kings came. Those were taller men than Asanians, leaner, longer-headed: too
large by far to wear a thing made to Asanian measure. But this fit in his
hands, seemed shaped for his face.

“Then it is the mask of my ancestors,” he said in wonder.
“It is no makeshift or forgery. But how—”

“It was given to us to be destroyed,” said the Master of the
Olenyai. “We chose not to obey the commands of kings who were not ours.”

They would have called it treason, those bandit kings from
the east of the world. “Yet the first of them was Lion’s Cub himself.”