Arrows of the Sun (54 page)

“You said you loved me more.”

That was unworthy, but Iburan did not say so. He smiled, a
stretching of cracked and bleeding lips. “Ah, child: that’s why I leave you.
The god never granted me a son of my body; and yet I never felt the lack.”

Estarion’s throat locked shut. He forced the words through
it. “The god granted me a father twice over. Now he takes you from me as he
took the other. Exactly—as—”

“That’s merely justice,” Iburan said. His fingers slipped
from Estarion’s wrist.

Estarion caught them, cradled them. “Foster-father—”

Iburan was still smiling.

So easily, after all, he went. Between one breath and the
next: he lived, and then he did not. He slipped the flesh and all its torments
as lightly as a lady sheds her garment, dropped it and rose winged, leaping
into the light.

So could he have done at any time since he knew that he was
dying. He had waited for Estarion. And Estarion had indulged himself in trifles.
In sleep. In ramping about. In being a great roaring idiot.

So let him be for yet a while. He looked down at the empty,
stinking thing that had been the greatest mage and priest in this age of the
world. He kissed its brow, which already had begun to cool. He smoothed the
beard, still beautiful on the ravaged breast, and folded the hands over it.

He straightened. The priests—his priests—returned his stare.
Some were weeping. Some were angry. Some were both.

“I give him the Sun,” he said. “By your leave.”

“You have no need of that, Sunlord,” said the proud one.

Shaiyel, that was his name. He had not put himself forward
before. In the clarity of grief, Estarion knew why. Anyone of Asanian blood in Keruvarion
learned to walk softly round the emperor.

The taste in his mouth was bitter. He smiled through it.
“And yet I ask your leave.”

“Then you have it,” said Shaiyel.

Estarion inclined his head. Shaiyel was not forsaking
contempt for anything as simple as this, but he could grant justice where justice
was due.

Estarion drew a breath. His power beat like a heart. He
spread his hands above Iburan’s body. The fire tried to bleed out of them; he
held it back, though it burned and blistered.

The priests began to chant. It was not the death-chant but
the sunrise-hymn, the song of praise to the god at his coming.

A shiver ran down Estarion’s spine. The god was in him.
Never so close before this, never so strong. It would master him; it would burn
him to ash.

Then so be it.

He laid himself before the god.
As you will
, he thought, sang, was.
All, and only, as you will
.

He was the fountain and the source. He was the burning brand.
He was the fire in the corn; he was the light on the spear. He was bright day
in the dark land.

They were with him, all of them, not only the few who
wrought the circle here. Priests and mages, servants in the temples, initiates
on the world’s roads, guardians at the Gates, attendants upon lords and
princes—all gathered in the bright blaze that was his power. All knew what he
wrought here; all wove themselves within it.

He, their heart and their crown, took the body of the god’s
servant. He lifted it up, and it weighed no more than a breath. He filled it
with light.

It burned like a lamp made of straw. Like a lamp it was
beautiful, and like straw it was consumed.

The shape of it lingered yet a while, a body of light. Then
it too crumbled and sank into ash.

The light died. The circle withered and fell away. There was
a great stillness.

Estarion looked down upon an empty bed. The impress of the
body was in it still. “Great bear of the north,” he said. “Great mage and
priest. Dear god in heaven, dread goddess below, how I loved you.”

The god’s departing left him cold and ill and bleakly,
grimly content. He did not remember what he said to the priests. He supposed
that he had said something; they seemed a little comforted. One, the priestess
who looked rather like Ziana, wept in his arms. He left her folded in
Shaiyel’s. They would all grieve together, once he had freed them from the
vexation of his presence.

o0o

When he noticed again where he was, he was far from them,
surrounded by strangers. He blinked, clearing his sight to a frightened face, a
voice babbling of something: “My lord, if you will eat, you have not touched a
bite since yesterday, you should—”

Lord Shurichan, solicitous to silliness, transparently
terrified lest he be found guilty of the empress’ murder. He was guilty of
much—Estarion could hardly approve of an agreement or three that he had made in
the event of the emperor’s death—but in that he had taken no part.

How simple to see the truth; how blinding the pain that came
after it, the power swelling and pulsing, struggling to break free of
encumbering flesh.

He was growing stronger, or more skilled. He swayed, but
caught himself before anyone could wake to alarm.

There was no mage near to recognize the hesitation for what
it was. Only simple men, Asanians, who determined that he was weak with
fasting, and herded him to a chamber and saw him plied with dainties until he
ate simply to be rid of them.

He drank considerably more than he ate. Korusan would have
had something to say of that, but Korusan was nowhere about.

Dizzy with wine and wrath but steady on his feet, Estarion
went in search of his guardsman.

He found the boy where he belonged, standing guard over
Estarion’s chambers. The sight of him woke something. It might have been rage.
It might have been joy—black joy, that cried to Iburan’s bright spirit:
See, he is mine. He loves me!

Estarion pulled him within, shut the door on goggling faces,
got rid of veils and robes and encumbrances and flung him down on the floor, as
if he were the whole empire of Asanion and Estarion an army arrayed against it.

Korusan was not acquiescent. That weakness was not in his
nature. But he allowed it. He did not struggle, though he could have fought
free and felled Estarion if he had been so minded. He yielded because it was
wise to yield, but, great dancer that he was, he yielded as it best pleased
him, guiding where he seemed to be guided, leading where he might have been
led.

And when they lay breathless, tangled in robes and rugs and
one another, Estarion raised his head from Korusan’s sweat-slicked breast.
“Only you,” he said, “could give me this.”

“A fight?” asked Korusan.

“I’d have raped a woman,” Estarion said.

“You would not.” Korusan pulled him up and kissed him. “You
are royally drunk. Who fed you so much wine? I will have his ballocks for it.”

“You can’t have them,” Estarion said. “I need them. If
not—for raping women—”

“You are incapable of any such thing. Now will you stop it
before you grow maudlin? Tears are shameful enough. Tears soaked in wine are a
disgrace.”

“That too you give me,” said Estarion, “brisk as a slap in
the face. What would I be without you?”

“Dead,” said Korusan. He wriggled free, sprang to his feet.
But he did not move once he was up, standing half turned away, as if he did not
know what to do next.

He had grown since first Estarion saw his face. He was a little
taller, his shoulders visibly wider. He was less a boy, more the man that he
was meant to be. But beautiful still. That would not change, however old he
grew.

Estarion rose behind him, folded arms about him. “There now.
I’m not going to die just yet.”

Korusan was rigid. “And if I am? What will you do, my lord?”

“You aren’t, either,” Estarion said through the cold
clenching in his middle. Not this one. Not this one, too. “See, you don’t even
have a fever. You’re as well as I’ve ever seen you.”

“Ask your priestess how that is. Ask her how much it cost
her magic, to make me so.”

Estarion started. “You went to Vanyi?”

He had not seen her with those about Iburan. She should have
been there. She would tear herself with grief, that she had not.

“She came to me.” Korusan’s breath caught. It might have been
laughter. “Or I fell at her feet. I shall have to kill her, my lord. She saw my
face.”

“Kill her,” said Estarion with deadly lightness, “and I kill
you.”

“And then, no doubt, yourself.” Korusan sighed. His
stiffness eased a little; he leaned back against Estarion. “She would almost be
worthy of you, if she had any lineage to speak of.”

“How perfectly Asanian,” Estarion said.

“I am perfect Asanian,” said Korusan.

The sun set in a sky as lucent and as brittle as ice. The
city was quiet, but it was the quiet of exhaustion. Where the rebellion would
flare again, or when, no one knew. Not even Estarion.

He had begun that bleak day beside his mother’s bier. He
chose to end it there. In the morning he must sing her death-rite. Then she
would go to the embalmers, who would prepare her for the long journey to her
tomb.

Tonight she lay in peace. He dismissed the guards, who
granted him that right, to keep the last vigil alone.

His tears were all shed. He was as still as she was, and
nigh as cold. His flesh felt little enough of it; the Sun’s fire warmed it. But
his heart was as hard as her cheek beneath his hand, and as icily chill.

Someone breathed close by. He whipped about.

Ulyai padded out of the shadows beyond the candles’ light.
Her cubs followed in a wary line, and behind them the woman whose name, after
all, he did not know, nor anything of what she was. To his newborn mage-sight
she was a dark glass, clear to the bottom and yet revealing nothing but a
shadow of his own face.

The ul-queen stretched herself at the bier’s foot. Her she-cubs
pressed close. The he-cub sought the colder comfort of Estarion’s knee.

So high already. He would be tall, that one.

Sidani walked past Estarion as if he had not been there,
round the bier, to bend over the figure that lay on it. Estarion had ceased to
be astonished at anything she did, but this verged on impertinence. He opened
his mouth to say so.

“She had Asanian blood, you know,” the wanderer said, “and
royal at that. Hirel never knew that he had a daughter among the tribes. It
mattered little to them; it was carelessness in a chieftain’s daughter, or
willfulness, to bear the child of the one they called the little stallion.
That’s how you come by your eyes, youngling. She carried the Lion’s blood,
too—as much as your father did.”

“When did Hirel ever—”

“On a time,” she said, “when Sarevadin, proud idiot that he
was, had slain a mage with power, and lost his own in return. It should have
killed him. He found the Zhil’ari instead, and his companion found a diversion
to sweeten the evenings. In the end they came to Endros and the Sunborn, and
Sarevadin had healing, of a sort, though he hardly knew it then. He’d lost his
magery beyond retrieving. He’d gained something that, once known, was more by
far.”

Estarion looked at her and knew that she was mad. But it was
a seductive madness, of a most persuasive sort. It tempted a man to give
himself up to it as if it were true. “Is that a secret, lady? That those who
kill with magery become greater than mages?”

“Goddess forbid,” said Sidani. “We’d have a world full of
warring mages else, blasting one another to ash in the hope of becoming gods.”

“You make no sense,” Estarion said.

“I make perfect sense,” she said. “You’re a great killer of
mages. Has it made you hungry for more?”

He could have killed her for that. He held himself rigid;
smiled, even, wide and feral. “You can’t imagine what it’s made me.”

“Oh, but I can.” Her own smile was sweetly terrible. “You
are a menace, child. You think that you have yourself in hand; you imagine that
you can go on as you are now, a little colder maybe, a little harder, but
shouldn’t an emperor be cold and hard? That’s pride, too, and folly.”

“You know nothing,” he said, low in his throat. “You are a
nameless gangrel woman with more addlement than wits.”

“I had a name once,” she said. She laid her hand on the empress’
cheek. “So beautiful,” she said, “and so cold. How Mirain would have raged to see
a priestess of the goddess on the double throne, mother to its heir, regent of
its empire. He was madder than any of us, and blinder. He could never see the
dark for the blaze of the light.”

“You speak treason,” Estarion said.

She laughed long and free. “Oh, that word! So easy on the
tongue; so deadly on the neck. I’ve spoken worse than that in my day, and to
haughtier kings than you.”

“How can anyone—”

He caught himself. She grinned, reading him as easily as she
ever had. “You’re nothing to some I’ve seen. You’re a gentle one for all your
fierceness; you wear another’s skin too easily to be honestly cruel. Cruelty
takes a certain lack of imagination, you see.”

“I’d have thought it took the opposite.”

“No,” she said. “That’s mere cleverness. True wit needs
more.”

“I have little enough of any of that,” he said, neither wry
nor precisely angry. He was tired suddenly, tired of everything. Even of what
he knew she would say: that he was a master of self-pity.

But, being Sidani, she did not say it. “You were broken
young, and you mended crooked. Surgeons know what to do when they see the like.
They break again, then set anew, and this time set it straight.”

“You’ll break me?” Estarion asked. Humoring her, he told
himself. Passing the long night in this strange painful amusement.

“You’re broken already,” she said. “Are your hands bleeding
gold?”

He clenched them, pressing them to his thighs. “No!”

“You’re a dreadful liar, child.” She came round the bier
again and took his hands.

He mustered every scrap of will to resist her. None of it
mattered in the least.