Arrows of the Sun (47 page)

“Sun-blood do.”

“I am not Sun-blood.”

“So,” Sidani said. She sighed. “One never allows for these
things. If Ganiman had not died—if he had had time to tell the child what he
must know—”

“And how do you know?” Estarion broke in.

She laughed. “Dear child, sweet child, I was old when your
grandfather was born. I know what all the dead know.”

“Mad,” said Iburan.

Estarion’s temper set in pure contrariness. If she knew—if,
O impossible, it could be true— “Is she mad, priest? Or does she know something
that none of us has known?”

“The Tower is halfway to the other side of the world,” she
said. “And that’s a pity. You’re half a Sunlord now, and half a Sunlord you
remain, until you pass that door.”

“It has no door,” Iburan rumbled, but they took no notice of
him.

“And what will I gain,” Estarion asked, “when I come there?”

“Maybe nothing,” she said. “Maybe all the power you think
you’ve lost.”

Estarion drew a knife-edged breath. All his power. All his
magic. All his strength—to kill again. To slaughter souls. “I don’t know if I
want it,” he said.

“Then you are an idiot,” she said. She kicked her gelding
into a gallop.

He watched her go. She was safe enough, he thought
distantly: the scouts were well ahead, and the road was straight and clear.

“Sometimes,” mused Iburan, “I wonder . . .”

“What?” Estarion snapped. Shock made him vicious; shock, and
hope turned to gall. The woman knew nothing. No one, no power, even the
Sunborn’s own, could make him a mage again.

The priest shook off Estarion’s temper. “She’s no danger to
you, whatever nonsense she babbles.”

Estarion turned his back on all thought of Iburan or Sidani,
hope or magic or the Tower that his firstfather had made. This was Asanion.
Such things were nothing here.

The sun was dazzling on the snow. He narrowed his eyes
against it. The others rode with heads down, trusting their mounts’ sure feet,
or wrapped veils about their eyes. They looked stiff with cold.

He felt it, but dimly. Half a Sunlord, was he? Then the
whole of a Sunlord must burn like a torch.

“Quick now !” he called to the rest of them. “The faster we
ride, the sooner we’re in the warm.”

“Warmer than any of us needs, maybe,” Iburan muttered.

Estarion laughed at him. Somewhat to Estarion’s surprise, he
laughed in return. For a moment they were easy, as if there were no walls
between them.

But even before this quarrel, there was the matter of the
secret that Iburan had kept, worse betrayal than any trespass in an emperor’s
bed.

“If you had told me,” Estarion said, “I could have forgiven
you.”

“Could you?”

“All of you,” said Estarion with sudden heat, “every one of
you—priests, princes, madwomen, all—never a one of you sees me as anything but
a child or a ruined mage. When will I be a man? When my beard is grey? When I’m
dead?”

“When you learn to forgive the unforgivable,” said Iburan.

“Then there are no men,” said Estarion. “Only saints and
children.”

“Even saints can err,” said Iburan, “and I’m no saint. What
I did, I did for love of you.”

“No, priest. You did it for love of my mother.”

“That too,” Iburan said willingly. “But you were first. When
your father brought you to me, and you hardly higher than his knee and hardly
old enough to leave your mother’s breast—all eyes and questions, and power
shining out of you like light from a lamp—I knew that I would love you. Him I
served gladly, for he was my emperor, but you I served with my heart.”

Estarion drew a breath that caught on pain. “When I saw you
I was terrified. You were the largest man I had ever seen. Mother’s father was
taller, and some of my uncles; but you were like a mountain looming over me.
Then you smiled. And I loved you. Father was my father, soul and body both. You
were my teacher, and my heart’s friend.”

“So am I still,” said Iburan. “So shall I always be.”

“Why, then? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Cowardice,” Iburan said. “You never ask why I did it at
all.”

“What’s to ask? She was beautiful and young, and widowed
untimely; and you were thrown together in my incapacity. You’d be more than man
if you hadn’t warmed to her.”

“I did try to resist,” Iburan said. “For your father’s
honor. For your sake.”

“And she?”

Iburan glanced back. Maybe he met the empress’ glance; maybe
he had no need.

“She wore you down,” Estarion answered for him. “She’s wise,
and cold when she has to be. Her goddess isn’t the bright burning god we
worship, you and I. She would keep the secret, for her own purposes. But you
should have told me.”

“I feel,” said Iburan after a pause, “quite properly
rebuked.” His expression was rueful, but there was something new in his eyes.
Something, Estarion thought, like respect.

“I misread you,” Iburan said. “And I misjudged you.”

He had not. But Estarion was not about to confess to it. He
bent his head stiffly. He did not say anything.

Iburan bowed and wheeled his mount, returning to his place.
It was not, Estarion took note, at the empress’ side, but farther back,
rearmost of the circle of mages.

Estarion’s mind shifted itself away from little troubles;
and it was little, this fret of his over his mother’s choice of lovers in her
widowhood. He was aware of Pri’nai like an ache in his own body, a wound that
festered deep and would not heal. Whether it was that he was coming closer to
it, or that his land-sense was growing keener, he did not know.

He was well in the lead now, with no memory of parting from
his escort. Sidani waited ahead of him with Ulyai at her gelding’s heels and
the young ones tumbling over one another in the snow. When he came level, the
two she-cubs sprang into their panniers on the gelding’s saddle.

The he-cub leaped, aiming for Umizan’s rump. Estarion swept
him out of the air. He settled purring on Estarion’s saddlebow.

Sidani did not speak as they rode on side by side. Only a
lingering shred of prudence kept Estarion from kicking Umizan into a flat
gallop.

o0o

Pri’nai stood at a meeting of roads, where the great
southward way met the traders’ route into Keruvarion. Yet there was no one on
the road. No travelers, no traders, no farmfolk walking to market. The houses
they passed were silent, but not empty: they were full of eyes.

“They know we’re coming,” Sidani said.

Her voice was startling after so long a silence. There was
no other human sound, only the cold clash of metal in mail-ring or harness, the
thudding of hooves, the snort of a senel. No one was singing or talking. Hands
were tensed on weapons; vanguard and rearguard had drawn in, wary.

One of the scouts came back from beyond the hill. “Gates are
open,” he said. “Guarded, and heavily, and they’re stopping people who come in
or out. But there’s no fighting.”

“It’s inside the city, then,” Estarion said.

“I think, sire,” the scout said, “maybe. There’s a feel to
it I don’t like. Nobody out, and nothing moving outside the walls. It’s brooding
on something.”

“I’ll go in,” said Estarion.

“Sire—”

“I’m going in.”

o0o

He went in. Not slowly, not quickly after all his haste to
come so far. He led his escort down from the hill toward the city of the
crossroads. It stood in a ring of gardens, orchards and vineyards bleak in the
snow, and the white mounds of tombs amid the bare branches.

The northward gate was open. Guards filled it. Troopers’
bronze and officers’ steel gleamed above it. If all the gates were so guarded,
then Pri’nai was ringed with an army, and all of them in the black and bronze
of the lord of Ansavaar.

And if Ansavaar itself was in revolt, then Estarion was well
and truly destroyed; for this was the army which he had come to command.

He might have sent men ahead to prepare his coming, as he
had done in every city he had entered since Induverran. But in this he had
chosen to come unheralded. He knew better than to think that he was unexpected.

The wind caught his standard and unfurled it. Golden sun
flamed on scarlet, the war-banner that had not flown in the twofold empire
since Varuyan was emperor.

One of the Olenyai bore it. Not Korusan. The boy would not
leave Estarion’s shadow, or speak, or lift hands from swordhilts.

He was ill, Estarion thought, or beset with some trouble. Estarion
would put him to the question. Later.

Estarion wore mail and the scarlet war-cloak taken hastily
out of the baggage, but his helmet rested on his knee. He did not intend to
need it. He kept Umizan to a sedate canter, advancing lightly toward the gate
and the guards. No one rode in front of him. He was a plain target, and so he
meant to be.

A spear’s length in front of the line of guards, he brought
Umizan to a halt. They knew him: none would lift eyes to his face. “The
emperor,” he said, making no effort to shout, but knowing that they could hear
him all along the wall, “would enter Pri’nai. Will the lord of the city admit
him?”

There was a silence. Estarion sat calm in it. He heard
behind him the soft snick of swords loosened in scabbards, and a seneldi snort.
The cause of that came to stand at Umizan’s shoulder, tail twitching,
inspecting the guards as if to choose the tenderest for her prey.

“Every city,” said a voice at last above the gate, “is the
emperor’s, and every lord is his servant.”

Estarion looked up at the captain of the guards. The man did
not look down. “Is it a quandary,” Estarion inquired, “to stand above your
emperor?”

He won no answer. Ulyai moved forward, growling at the
nearness of the city, but unflinching. Umizan followed her. The guards melted
before them.

o0o

After the quiet without, the clamor of the city was
deafening. The walls contained it and sent it ringing back, a dance of echoes
that made Ulyai snarl and the seneldi squeal and skitter.

People fled the restless hooves. Those who could, dropped
down in homage; the rest vanished into doorways or darted down passages. No one
lingered to watch the emperor ride by.

The clamor had a source, and Estarion sought it. Pri’nai’s
center was a broad open space, a court of temples and of the lord’s palace,
with a fountain in it, silent now in winter.

Here were the people of the city, a milling, shouting,
restless crowd, all turned to face the wide stair that mounted to the palace.
Guards rimmed it. Further throngs filled the top of it and vanished through the
open gates.

Estarion halted on the edge of the square and beckoned. His
trumpeter edged forward, wary of Ulyai, who pressed close against Umizan’s
side. He passed Estarion with a glance half of boldness, half of panic. But
boldness was stronger. He raised his trumpet to his lips and blew.

The crowd parted. Slowly, with much jostling, it opened a
path to the dais. Silence spread as people went down in homage.

Estarion rode the length of that road of living bodies. His
back tensed against an arrow that did not fly, a stone that was not flung. The
desire was there, and the hostility, but it did not burst the bonds of fear,
the power of a thousand years of emperors.

Estarion dismounted at the foot of the stair. The guards
parted as they had in Pri’nai’s gate. The press of people thrust and jostled
and cursed itself aside.

o0o

The hall of the palace was dim after the brilliance of sun
on snow, lamplit and windowlit, seething with lordly presences as the square
had been with commoners. At the end of it stood a dais, and on the dais a tall
chair, and in the chair, the lord of Ansavaar. There were others about him, a
man before him with a scroll of the laws, and at his feet a huddle of men in
chains.

They all stood frozen at the emperor’s coming. He considered
lingering in the doorway, but that was cruel. He did not pause or slow until he
stood upon the dais and the lord of Ansavaar bowed down at his feet.

“Up,” he said, “my lord Shurichan.”

Shurichan of Ansavaar rose with practiced grace, shying from
the ul-cat’s shadow. Ulyai ignored him, taking station at the dais’ foot.

He was a young man, taller than some and broader, and a
rarity in an Asanian lord: a man who not only knew how to fight but evinced a
fondness for it. He wore armor over his fivefold robes, and his princely
coronet circled a helmet. “My lord emperor,” he said. “Well come to Pri’nai.”

“So one might think,” Estarion said. He leaned against the
chair in which Shurichan had been sitting, and folded his arms. “Now, my lord.
Go on with your justice.”

“Majesty,” said Shurichan. “I can hardly—in your presence—”

Estarion tilted his head. He eyed the chair, and the man who
had sat in it. Shurichan betrayed no expression.

Estarion looked about. There was a stool nearby, on which a
scribe might have been sitting: he was on his face now, rusty black robe, rusty
black hat. Estarion hooked the stool with a foot and drew it to him, and
perched on it. “Now,” he said. “Go on.”

Shurichan was nicely shocked. He fell rather than sat in his
high cushioned chair, and composed himself with visible effort.

Estarion watched him narrowly. Resentment, yes; his court of
justice had been disrupted, his office lessened by the insouciant presence on
the stool. But anger, no. And no move to protest.

Interesting. Estarion surveyed the men on the dais, the cat
at its foot, the guards returned to their vigilance, the crowd of lords rising
slowly from the edges inward but slow yet to resume their clamor.

His escort had spread among the guards, ringing the dais,
and his mages among them in a broad and broken circle. They were fully on
guard; the wards had been raised about him since he left the hill above
Pri’nai.