Arrows of the Sun (29 page)

With sunlight, maybe, it might have been more. There was no
moonlight tonight, and no stars. Rain fell like tears.

Estarion gathered up the limp body. It was still breathing.
He was sure that it was. It could not have stopped so soon.

“Well for him,” the Olenyas said, “that it was quick poison
and not a slow. He had no pain.”

No doubt, for an Olenyas, that was compassion. Estarion
found himself on his feet, hands fisted in Olenyai robes, shaking the man
within as if he had been a child’s doll. The Olenyas made no move to resist. “Don’t,”
Estarion said. “Don’t—ever—”

“I am not to tell the truth?”

“My friend is dead!”

It was a howl. The Olenyas heard it calmly, dangling in
Estarion’s grasp. “That is truth,” he said.

Estarion dropped him. He landed lightly, hardly ruffled, no
malice in the steady golden stare.

“My friend is dead,” Estarion said more softly, “and I could
not make him live. My friend . . . died . . . for
me.”

“He died for idiocy. And,” said the Olenyas, “for you.”

“I could kill you,” said Estarion. He was quite calm. “You
could have come before. You came too late.”

“I came with the speed I had.”

“You were supposed to guard me.”

“You sent us all away.”

Estarion gasped for breath. He should weep. He could not
remember how. “You shouldn’t—have— I’ll kill you. You’ll let me. You’ll all die
for me.”

“I will not.”

That stopped Estarion. “You exist to serve me.”

“I exist to serve the throne. That one,” said the Olenyas,
tilting his shrouded head toward Godri’s body, “lived and died for you.”

Estarion had him by the robe again. He was not as small as
some, Estarion noticed. Maybe he was young. His voice was so dispassionate that
it seemed ageless, but it was light, as if it had not long been broken from
child’s into man’s.

The skin round the eyes was smooth, unlined, and white as
ivory. The brows under the veil were dark gold. Maybe Estarion could see
something of the face: straight long line of nose, smooth curve of cheek and
chin.

Asanian. Estarion’s belly knotted with disgust. He thrust
the creature away, stumbled past Godri, half-fell where the assassin lay.

The man’s bowels had let go in death; he stank. Estarion
swallowed bile, and stripped the veils from the face. Round unremarkable
Asanian face, nothing to distinguish it from a hundred others.

“He was not of us,” said the Olenyas.

It seemed to matter to him. Estarion stripped the body
grimly, quelling the hot surge of hate. Calm, he must be calm. Later he could
break. Later he could weep.

The dead man was plump and hairless—so that was true, they
grew none save under the arms and between the legs, and shaved or plucked that.
Full male; half unexpected, to find him no eunuch. No brands or marks or sigils
but the knife that was in Godri’s hand still. Nothing to name him or place him
or bind him to anyone but himself.

“How do you know he’s not Olenyai?” Estarion demanded of the
one behind.

“No scars,” the Olenyas said.

Estarion did not see how that could matter. He had scars
himself. Anyone did, who trained at all for war. “Then what is he?”

“A fool,” said the Olenyas.

“He was clever enough to come into my bedchamber, ensorcel
me, and kill—” Estarion’s voice caught. He must be calm. He must. Or he would
be no use at all. “And kill my squire. That’s not a fool. That’s a mage, or a
man who knows mages.”

“Still,” said the Olenyas, “a fool. He feigned to be of us.
He is not. Those who sent him will be dealt with. You can be sure of that.”

“You know—”

“We will.”

Estarion rose. He was shaking again. “You will please,” he
said, “dispose of that carrion. And send for—send for Iburan. The priest from
Endros. You know him?”

“We know him,” said the Olenyas.

“I’d rather my mother didn’t know. And the ladies. Until
tomorrow. Unless . . .” Horror smote him. “If there are more—if
they’ve struck at her—”

“I shall see to it,” said the Olenyas.

He was comforting in a strange fashion: so cold and so
evidently unmoved, whatever Estarion said or did to him. When he had gone on
his errands, the room was suddenly very dark, full of the stench of death.

Estarion went back to Godri. He was growing cold, his body
shrunken, all the quick grace gone out of him.

He did not look as if he slept. He looked dead. Cold; empty.
Lifeless.

Estarion smoothed the many plaits of his hair and
straightened his limbs, as if he could care how he lay. The assassin’s knife
was locked in his hand. Estarion left it. Godri would have won the battle, if
there had not been poison. He would have taken the small wound, bound it up,
gone on unheeding as a warrior should.

“Asanion,” Estarion said. “Asanion killed you. Asanion with
its sleights and its poisons. Oh, how I hate this place!”

There were only the dead to hear. No guards. No servants. He
had sent the guards away. The servants—and were they dead as well? Or spelled?

He sat on his heels beside Godri. “They should not have been
able to do this to me,” he said. “I should have known. My walls should have
defended me.”

Maybe they had. Maybe the dreams had been his walls
breaking, his power resisting.

And what mage could do it? What mage would dare?

It was a drug, it must have been. A subtle thing, and slow,
mixed in his wine or wafted in the air. Then it was a matter for the guards to
discover: intrigue of the court perhaps, or a lord with a grudge. Asanion was
full of grudges, and not the least of them that Estarion was lord of it and not
an emperor of the pure blood.

Estarion’s mind whirled and spun. It was better than weeping.
Better than facing himself, and knowing that a man had died for him. A man who
was his friend; whom he had loved.

The Olenyas came back alone. Estarion half-rose, braced for battle,
and barely eased to recognize the eyes in the veil. “Where is Iburan?” he
demanded.

“Coming,” said the Olenyas. “As are the rest. I bade them
hold back until I had given you warning.”

“Send them in,” said Estarion. But as the Olenyas turned:
“No. Wait. Do you have a name?”

The Olenyas paused. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

The Olenyas turned back to face him. The golden eyes were
level. Lion-eyes. So, Estarion thought: the Olenyai bred them, too. Was he a
prince of them, maybe? Or simply an accident of nature?

“They call me Koru-Asan,” the Olenyas said. “Korusan.”

Estarion laughed, sharp and short. “Yelloweyes?”

“Golden,” said Korusan. “If you please.”

“They call me that, too, you know,” Estarion said. “I’ve
heard them talking.”

“Your ears are keen,” Korusan said.

“And my eyes,” said Estarion with bleak lightness, “are as
yellow as butter.”

“As gold,” said Korusan. He bent his head, which was Olenyai
obeisance, or subtle mockery, and opened the door to the deluge.

Iburan’s presence, massive and quiet, wrought order out of
chaos. Estarion could happily have fallen into his arms and howled. But that
was not given to a man and an emperor.

He sat wrapped in a robe while guards and servants and a
scattering of lordlings fussed and fretted. He watched them bear the assassin
away to be hung from the wall with spikes, and Godri to be laid out with honor
in the Hall of Glories.

It all went on without him. That was a wisdom he had come to
long since. The emperor was necessary. He was the empire in his own person, his
strength its strength, his progeny its hope of continuance. But for the workings
of its days he was not needed at all, except to set his name to the greater
ones, and to suffer the rest to go on as it would.

Iburan loomed over him. “Starion?” the deep voice said.

Estarion stiffened. He had wanted just this; now that he had
it, he wanted to wound it, tear it, cast it away. “Godri is dead,” he said.

“I grieve for that,” said Iburan.

“Do you?”

Iburan sat at Estarion’s feet. Easily, lightly, he laid his
arm across Estarion’s knees.

Estarion could not escape him without oversetting him. There
were shocked expressions among the servants; the lords whispered to one
another. An emperor in Asanion was touched by no one but his bodyservants and
his women, and by them only as he gave them leave.

Iburan, who knew that very well, looked long into Estarion’s
face. “No,” he said at last. “You’re not well at all.”

“Should I be?” Estarion inquired. “Consider where I am.”

“Where we forced you to go.” Iburan sighed. “It would have
been worse if you had never come here.”

“Not for Godri.”

“Is one young man, however beloved, worth the breaking of an
empire?”

“Tonight,” said Estarion very quietly, very carefully, “I
can’t answer that as you wish me to. I can only see that he is dead.”

“You are not,” said Iburan.

“That too I can’t answer as you would like. I’m changing
here, Iburan. I don’t like what I’m changing into.”

“What you were in Keruvarion, that was half of you. This is
the rest of it.”

“Then the half of me is a cold, hard, cruel thing, and it
would gladly see whole ranks of men rent with hooks, if but one of them knew
what was to pass this night.”

Iburan did not flinch. “The half of you weeps for the one
you loved, and longs to avenge his death. That’s no shame, Starion.”

“You have been a father to me,” Estarion said. “Can you give
me no more now than empty words?”

“I give what you will take. What have you done to your
magery, child?”

“Asanion has done it,” Estarion said.

“No,” said Iburan. “You do it to yourself. You’ve shut it
all away. If you had had your defenses laid properly, this murderer would not
have come. And if he had come, and eluded you, you would have known who he was,
and who sent him. Now he is dead. His soul is fled. There is nothing for a mage
to discover, except that he hated, not you yourself, but what he thought you
were.”

“His emperor,” said Estarion, tight and bitter.

“His conqueror. Still they call the Sun-blood that, after a
lifetime of years.”

“So I am,” said Estarion with a curl of the lip, “if
conquest it must be, to inflict myself upon an empire that does not love me.”

“They don’t hate you,” said Iburan, “who know you. And
that’s most of the High Court, these days, and much of the Middle Court.”

“But not the people, who dream of prophets and of conquests
undone, and conspire to be rid of me.”

“Self-pity ill becomes you, Starion.”

Estarion could not strike him. Not this man. Not that he was
Avaryan’s high priest in Endros, or that he had been a regent in Keruvarion, or
even that he had been, in all but name, foster-father. It was simpler than
that.

“I know full well,” Estarion said, “that you can break me
across your knee. But I will not hear that you find me wanting. I have enough
of that in myself.”

“Then what will you hear? Your mind is locked shut.”

“It always has been.” Estarion leaned forward, nose to
strong arched nose. “You left me here, Iburan. Why? You could have stayed; you
could have been my bulwark. Instead, you left me alone.”

“And how would it look,” asked Iburan, “for the High Court
to see me ever at your back, great black bear of a northerner, whispering in your
ear? What then would they call you?”

“Conqueror,” said Estarion. “Emperor.”

“I came when you called me,” Iburan said.

“Of course you did. There’s no heir in the offing yet.”

Iburan rose. The beard hid his expression, but his eyes were
hard. “I shall always come when you ask, sire. Now will you ask me to go?”

“Gladly,” said Estarion, all but spitting it.

o0o

Oh, well done, Estarion lauded himself. He had slain his
friend with his folly, and lost his lover, and now he had driven away his
foster-father. The faces about him now were all Asanian faces. All strangers.

And one that was no face, but a veil and a pair of golden
eyes. They watched him steadily, a little fixedly, as if fascinated.

When he drove the others out, that one stayed. “One must
guard you,” said the Olenyas.

“They won’t try again tonight,” said Estarion. But he did
not order the Olenyas to leave him.

Dawn was coming. He felt it in his bones, both ache and
pleasure.

He wandered the rooms with his golden-eyed shadow. No danger
hid there, no threat but memory. Here was Godri’s armor on its stand, there his
box of belongings, pitifully little to matter so much.

Estarion had no tears for him. He turned away from the
memory and the grief and walked swiftly, he cared not where. To the garden in
the end, because it had no roof, no barrier to the sky. Rain fell soft, hardly
more than mist.

Korusan was still behind him, cat-quiet. “You’ll get wet,”
Estarion said.

“I’ll not melt,” said Korusan.

Estarion turned, startled. Wit, in an Olenyas? There was no way
to tell. It was black dark, the Olenyas a shadow on shadow. “Why do you hide
your face?” Estarion demanded of him.

“Custom,” he answered with no reluctance that Estarion could
discern. “Modesty, once. And if one cannot see one’s enemy’s face . . .”

“One can’t tell what he’ll do next,” Estarion finished for
him. “That’s not so. It’s the eyes that give it away. And yours,” he added,
“more than most. Are you a prince of Olenyai?”

“Olenyai are warriors,” the cool voice said, “not princes.”
Then: “When we hunt an enemy to the death, we veil our eyes.”

“
Shiu’oth Olenyai
,”
said Estarion. “Yes, I’ve heard of those. They’re vowed, yes? And sworn to die
unless their enemy dies first.”

“Sworn to die with him,” said Korusan, “when they take the
great vow. Life is not worth living, you see, once the enemy is dead.”