Arrows of the Sun (23 page)

Fine way to drive
oneself mad
, thought Vanyi sourly.
I
hear nothing, therefore I fear everything
.

The Gate and the temple were at peace. The sky was readying
to burst, but that was nothing to fear under this roof, in walls of stone and
magecraft.

Guildcraft.

She got up abruptly, paced from end to end of the sanctuary.
Her companion watched her wide-eyed. She tried to smile. It only drove the
child back into her shyness.

This house was built by mages of the Guild. This Gate was
their Gate. These stones were imbued with their power, however thickly overlaid
with the power of the priests. If they truly had not vanished, if they chose to
come through, they would be idiots to emerge here, into the Guardians’ arms.

Such Guardians. One a year from full priesthood, the other
little more than a novice.

“I’m losing my mind,” Vanyi said aloud. The little priestess
did not understand her broad Seiun dialect. She said in Asanian, “I wish this
heat would break.”

“Soon,” the priestess managed to say, great boldness in one
so shy.

“Now,” said Vanyi. The word had no power in it, nothing but
hope approaching desperation, but she could make it happen. She could shatter
this heat, these clouds, this terrible, breathless waiting.

Magery was not for compelling the sky to do one woman’s
will. Such threatened the balance that sustained the world. If she broke the
storm too soon, one domain’s crops could wash away, another’s wither in
drought. She was no god, to make such choices.

She felt the power building above her. The Gate’s shifting
was quicker now, its edges sharper. Vanyi’s power firmed itself, weaving more
tightly with the Asanian’s.

“This is a mother of storms,” the child said. “Watch for the
winds. They’re treacherous. They like to spin and roar, and then they eat
anything they find. But don’t be afraid. If one comes near us, we can coax it
away.”

And if one would not be coaxed? If it were driven by living
will, by the malice of an enemy?

It was only a storm. When it had passed, the heat would have
broken, the air would be clean and cool and blessedly sweet. Vanyi would get
her temper back again, and she would stop vexing herself with shadows.

Break
, she willed
it.
Damn you, break
.

The Gate was pulsing like a heart. Vanyi sent out a summons.
Three would serve better here than two.

She did not wait to see who answered, but began to match her
breaths to the pattern of the Gate. When they pulsed together, she shaped the
notes of the breaking-chant.

Beat, pause. Beat,
beat, pause. Beat, pause, beat
. Breaking that perilous rhythm which,
sustained, could shatter the Gate.

It fought her. The storm was in it, lending it strength. The
little priestess chimed a descant.

The Gate wavered. Had it been a living thing, Vanyi would
have reckoned it confused.

That too was dangerous. Confusion could shatter more easily
even than that relentless
beat-beat-beat
.

A third voice entered the weaving, a third power like a
pillar of light. It shored them up; it mastered the Gate.

Iburan
. The name
was pure power.

All at once, with a roar like armies charging, the storm
broke.

It was glorious. Freed of fear for the Gate, secure in the
threefold weaving, Vanyi rode the lightnings. Winds raged; she laughed at them.
Rain lashed the roofs of the city, scoured the dust from its streets, churned
its lanes to mud. The river roared in its bed.

The heat was gone, shattered. The land heaved a mighty sigh.
The lightnings ran away eastward, drawing the winds in their wake. The rain
came down more gently.

o0o

Vanyi slipped back into her body. She was kneeling before
the Gate, the little priestess on one side of her, Iburan on the other, all
three clinging together. The Gate was restless still, but growing quiet as she
watched.

All of itself, her voice soared up, chanting the god’s
praises. Iburan’s wove into it, drum-deep; and the little priestess’ like the
call of a bird. They sang the storm away and brought back the sun, bright in
the blue heaven.

But the Gate remained the Gate. And Vanyi’s heart was not at
ease, however much she willed it to be so.

“That one is strong,” a darkmage said.

The Guildmaster raised his eyes from the scrying-glass. They
were red-rimmed; the lines of his face were slack with weariness. “Which? The
black priest? We knew that long ago.”

“No,” said the darkmage. “The young one, the Island woman. I
should fear her, I think.”

“She is nothing,” said the Guildmaster.

The darkmage looked as if he would have argued, but they had
by then taken notice of the stranger at the door. Korusan suppressed an
unbecoming stab of malice that even the great Master of mages had failed to
mark his coming. They had been preoccupied—pressingly so, from the look of
them.

He did not let his eyes wander to the scrying-glass, sorely
though it might tempt them. He had yielded to one like it before, and been ill
for days after. There was too much magic in him, he had been given to
understand, and yet too little. Too much to be impervious to the lure of the
visions in the glass, too little to defend him when they sucked at his soul.

“My prince,” the Guildmaster said. “You are welcome in
Kundri’j Asan.”

No word of disapproval that Korusan should have come to this
city. No suggestion of anger that he had dared it.

“Is it not my city?” Korusan said. “Am I not to be lord of
it?”

“In time,” the Guildmaster said, “you shall.”

Korusan circled the room and the gathering of mages, keeping
his distance from the glass on its frame. “How marvelous,” he said, “that you
lair here, deep in the enemy’s palace. And none of them suspects that you
exist.”

“One does,” said the darkmage who had spoken before: stubbornly,
Korusan thought, and not at all prudently. “She pries into the library we so
unwisely left intact. She questions what none of her kind should question.”

“She is no danger to us,” the Guildmaster said. “What can
she know but that we were once strong?”

“She knows Gates,” the darkmage persisted. “She could almost
be one of us.”

“Had she been one of us,” said the lightmage who stood
beside him, gently enough but with an edge of impatience, “she would have been
known, found, brought among us before ever the Sun-cult had her.”

“There are few of our order in the Isles, and those hard
pressed by Sun-magic and sea-magic. She could easily have escaped them. As,”
the darkmage said, “she has escaped you even yet.”

“Hush,” the lightmage said, with a glance at Korusan. The
darkmage looked stubborn but held his tongue. He would take up the battle again
later, his expression promised.

Korusan wondered if this one would go the way of the
lightmage who had been too honest in the face of his questioning. “Who is this
woman you speak of? Is it anyone whom I should fear?”

“No, no one,” the Guildmaster said, even as the darkmage
said, “A priestess, a mage—she was the emperor’s lover, they say she is that no
longer, she—”

Mages closed in on him, silencing him, easing him out of the
circle and the room. It was smoothly done. Korusan observed it with interest
and a glimmer of pity. Outspokenness was never a virtue in an Asanian, whether
he be mage or prince.

“My prince,” said the Guildmaster when the importunate one
was gone, “you are welcome here as always, but perhaps you would choose to rest
from your journey in greater quiet than we can offer.”

“I have rested,” Korusan said. “My Master bids you attend
him.”

The master of the mages did not look pleased to be so
summoned, even by the Lion’s cub. Korusan was prepared for his resistance, and
mildly disappointed when he acquiesced. “I will come,” he said, “when I am done
here.”

Korusan inclined his head, all courtesy. “I wait upon your
pleasure.”

“You may go,” the mage said, “my prince.”

“I am bidden to accompany you,” Korusan said.

“You accept a master’s bidding?”

Korusan smiled in his veil. “I choose to accept it.”

He took the stance of the guard at rest, hands resting
lightly on swordhilts, and set himself to wait. He was precisely in the path of
any mage who wished to leave the room—fools, they, for trapping themselves
where was but a single door. They must brush past him or walk around him if
they would go about their duties.

They made no more workings while he watched, nor spoke
unless it were from mind to mind. One of them covered the terrible beauty of
the glass. Others cleared away the tools of their trade, odd small things that
made Korusan’s skin quiver.

Their master watched and said nothing. When the last of it
was done and its doer had departed past Korusan, the Guildmaster still did not
move.

Korusan was in comfort, now that the glass was hidden. He
could fight patience with patience.

The mage spoke abruptly. “Have you looked upon your enemy?”

“No,” said Korusan. His voice was sharper than he liked.

“He is here. You know that, surely. They enthroned him these
three days past.”

Korusan had known. He was being tested again as always, his
temper tried to see if it would break. “It is not the throne that makes the
king,” he said.

“There are many who would dispute you,” said the mage. “The
throne, the power, the backing of the courts and the armies—all those, he has.”

“But I,” said Korusan, “have you.”

“Do you, prince? You like us little, you trust us less. If
you could dispose of us, you would do so and be glad of it.”

“But I cannot, and I will not, while your purposes serve
mine. You have wagered all on this last cast of the bones—my bones, frail as
they are. Only remember: you have called me your prince. As your prince I may
command you. And I will look ill upon your disobedience.”

“We will obey you,” the Guildmaster said, “while you show
yourself our ally.”

That would do, thought Korusan. It must. He stepped aside,
and bowed slightly. “Come. The Master of the Olenyai waits.”

o0o

The two masters of their orders conspired at nothing that
Korusan had not heard before. It had chiefly to do with Olenyai deployed here,
mages deployed there, and rebellions fomented through the satrapies of Asanion.
Of the emperor in this palace they said nothing.

And yet it was the emperor who mattered. Korusan left them,
gaining a glance from the Olenyas and no apparent notice from the mage. Perhaps
they thought that he went to the cell that had been given him. He thought of
it, would have been glad of it, but his mind would not let him rest. It leaped
and spun, driving him through this stronghold within a stronghold, this chief
of the postings of the Olenyai.

Inevitably it drove him out into the palace. His robe and
his veils granted him passage wherever he wished to go, except perhaps the
harem; but that he did not approach. It was empty, he had been told, for the
Sunlord had no woman but the priestess who knew Magegates, and she had left his
bed.

The queen’s palace, which was occupied, tempted Korusan
slightly, but the guards there were women, and some had magic. He veered away
from them.

He was circling, he knew that. Round and round about,
narrowing slowly to a certain center.

The emperor of Asanion had lived for time out of mind like a
prisoner in his own palace. He had his chambers, and they were many; his
courts, and they were broad; his wonted ways and his expected duties. But he
did not pass the walls. He did not walk free in the world. That was the price
and the sacrifice with which he bought his power.

The outland savage was shut up as tightly as any son of the
Lion. Korusan half expected to hear him roaring somewhere deep within, but the
halls were quiet, the chambers cool in the heat of the day. There were
foreigners about, black men and brown men, even a few women; priests with their
torques, guards in alien livery, a lordling or two eyeing the splendors of the
palace as if he had a mind to buy.

None of them ventured to question the lone Olenyas. They
were afraid of him, he thought, catching their glances and watching them shrink
aside. Wise fools. It was not his robe that they needed to fear, or even his
swords. All his body was a weapon.

Of the Olenyai here, some were strangers. Many were not. One
greeted him with Olenyai effusion: eyes that smiled, voice that called softly
in battle-language for there was no one near to hear. “Brother! How did you
come here?”

Korusan moved smoothly into position on the other side of
the door that Marid guarded, and permitted a smile to creep into his voice. “I
rode,” he said. “And you?”

Marid slapped his right-hand swordhilt, half in mirth, half
in exasperation. “You know what I meant. I thought the mud-robes would never
let you loose.”

“I let myself loose,” said Korusan. “Whose door is this?”

“I think you know,” said Marid.

“He is within?”

Korusan must have sounded more eager than he meant to: Marid
raised a hand. “Down, lad! You can’t have his blood yet. We’re all under
orders. We’re to guard him as if he really were the emperor, and show ourselves
loyal, and not a thought out of line.”

“Have you seen him?” Korusan asked.

Marid’s answer was cut off before it began. Footsteps
approached them. They froze in the stillness of sentries, eyes schooled to
blankness. The one who passed wore scarlet and gold, and his face—Korusan
labored not to stare.

“What in the worlds—” he began when the creature had gone
within.

“That is the emperor’s body servant,” Marid said. “Lovely,
isn’t he? He’s a savage from the desert. He’s killed a dozen men, they say, and
he maimed a thirteenth to win his place by the emperor’s side.”