Arrows of the Sun (59 page)

He ran. Four legs were swifter far than two. Wings, he had
lost or forgotten; no time now to win them back again. The burden he bore was
light, though there were three of it; the fourth ran at his heels, darkness
golden-eyed. It had been born amid the worldwinds, in the silence between
Gates. It had come from Gates with the child of the Sunborn, to bind its soul
to the Sunborn’s heir. Here it was not so young as it seemed in the world
beyond the Gates, nor so small, but it remained an ul-cat, with magic in its
blood.

He stretched his stride. The ul-cub matched it; danced,
even, laughing as a cat will, batting at his heels with half-sheathed claws. He
started, bucked, learned at last what swiftness was.

o0o

Vanyi clung for dear life to an impossibility: a senel who
was Estarion, and a shifting shape that was indubitably Sarevadin. The Olenyas
clung to her with the rigidity of perfect terror. The worlds whirled past. Some
were dark and some were light, some green and some bleakly brown, some full of
water and some full of air, and all strange, all alien.

She had lost control of this venture before it was fairly
begun. It was different to be in a Gate than to be outside of it, standing
guard on it. Here all laws were broken, all sureties undone.

Yet, once she had looked fear in the face and given it its
name, she knew a strange delight. She was here, riding the mageroad. She was
alive to know it, and strong in her power, and the Gate that had brought them
here was hers.

Pursuit was gaining, though Estarion outran the worldwind.
The watchers wore any shape they chose, but now, as if to honor Estarion’s own
choice of shape, they ran as direwolves. Magelore had it that they were empty
of intelligence; they existed simply to catch trespassers on the worldroad and
dispose of them. But the eyes in the lean grey heads were bright with malice,
and the teeth were bared in wide wolf-grins. They were hungry for manflesh,
senelflesh, even—maybe—catflesh.

The first of the watchers drew level with the ul-cub. He
slashed sidewise with dagger-fangs, and raked with claws. The watcher howled
and tumbled from the road, bleeding fire. The others neither wavered nor
slowed.

One of the arms deathlocked about Vanyi’s waist let go.
Steel hissed from sheath. Korusan held the longer of his swords poised along
his thigh.

She undertook not to shrink from that keen-honed blade
hovering a handspan from her leg. If he was truly a traitor, he would plunge it
into Estarion’s straining flank and kill them all. And she would not be able to
stop him.

A watcher sprang. The sword swept down.

Sarevadin bent forward over Estarion’s neck, pulling Vanyi
with her—him—both, neither. Hair the color of new copper lashed Vanyi’s face.

She gasped, blinded, and felt teeth close on her foot. There
was no pain at first, simply the knowledge that pain would come, and the
thought, dim and almost wry, that if Estarion bucked at the slash of teeth in
his heels, Korusan’s sword might cut off her foot. Would she bleed power then,
or plain blood?

She kicked as hard as she could. The teeth tore free.

She would not feel the pain. She must focus on holding to
her rocking, heaving seat and keeping out of the way of the Olenyas’ sword.

He was an artist with it. He wasted no movement, indulged in
no flourishes. Every cut found flesh, or what passed for flesh.

If these had been true wolves, they would have given up the
chase long ago, even if they were starving. These would not pause until they
downed their prey. Were there more of them? Or did each that fell give space to
another, so that their number never varied?

Sarevadin muttered a curse. There was a long rent in the
trousers, blood bright against dark skin. The face that half-turned was as male
as Estarion’s when Estarion was not wearing a stallion’s horns, and as keenly
carved, red-bearded, black-eyed, furious.

“This will get us killed,” he said. She. Shifting again,
impervious to her own strangeness. She flung herself from Estarion’s back, so
sudden that Vanyi toppled bruisingly forward, locking arms about the straining
neck.

She struggled to look back. The watchers had paused, but not
to devour Sarevadin. She—he—ran in the midst of them, slapping them with a bare
and burning hand, kicking those that lunged to snap at his unprotected throat.

Vanyi hauled back on the reins. Estarion jibbed. “I’ll be
polite later,” she snapped at him. “Slow down, damn you!”

He plunged to a halt that nearly flung her over his head.
Before she was properly settled, he wheeled. And changed.

The road was hard. She got up stiffly, nursing a bruised
tailbone. Estarion took no notice of her. He was running in his own shape
toward the pack of direwolves, dagger in hand, shouting something indistinct.

Sarevadin shouted back. In man-form he was a little smaller
than Estarion, a little narrower, and no less hot-tempered.

“Gods,” said the Olenyas. “How like they are.”

So they were, even when, again, Sarevadin was a woman,
shoulder-high to Estarion, glaring down her nose at him. The watchers crouched
whining at her feet. She laid her hand on the head of the one that had led the
pack, and said distinctly, echoing in that eerie place, “What did you stop for?
We’re almost there.”

“What in the hells did
you
stop for?” Estarion shot back.

Her direwolf leered at Estarion’s ul-cat. The cub crouched
low and snarled.

Sarevadin quelled them both with a glance. “This was getting
out of hand. It’s one thing to teach you how to run. It’s entirely another to
kill more watchers than can restore themselves.”

“But these—things—the mages—”

“These are watchers,” she said with taut-strung patience.
“They won’t harm you; they’re only here to guard the road.”

“But—”

“Watchers watch and guard, and keep young idiots moving.
Guildmages close in ahead and behind, from the thresholds of their Gates. You
have to be in control of yourself when you meet them, or they’ll devour you
whole.”

“You’ve led us into a trap,” Estarion said, flat and cold.

“It’s easy to think so, isn’t it? You can’t stay here. You
can’t go back—the watchers will stop you. Now will you run?”

Estarion looked as if he would have argued, but the ul-cub
had his wrist in its jaws and was pulling him about. One of the watchers nipped
at his heels. He kicked like the senel he had briefly been, spat a curse, and
bolted.

He swept Vanyi in his wake, and Korusan with not-blood
dripping still from his sword. The pack ran behind, and Sarevadin among them.

They were warding, Vanyi realized almost too late.
Protecting their erstwhile prey from enemies behind and, as some of them edged
ahead, from danger before.

The worlds spun faster. Too fast. She struggled to stop, but
the road had her. She could not slow or turn, or alter any moment of it.

Estarion veered. She cried out. And fell.

o0o

Quiet.

She half-sat, half-lay on stone. Stone arched over her. Fire
burned, blessed warmth after cold she had not even known she suffered.

“The Heart of the World.” Sarevadin’s voice, no longer
shifting, and her face as Vanyi had known it in Asanion, pared clean with age.
She stood by the fire that seemed so simple and was so great a mystery, for it
was no mortal dame but the light of power that ruled the worlds. She warmed her
hands above it.

Estarion circled the wide bare hall with its walls that
seemed painted or hung with tapestries, until they shifted and changed and
showed themselves for Worldgates. They, like the fire, were simplicity to the
eye, mystery to the mind.

He made as if to touch one that showed a place of water and
green things; it changed to a hell of fire. He drew back carefully and turned.
“Why are we here? Is this a betrayal?”

“All who would master the Gates must begin here,” said
Sarevadin. “All roads of the Gates lead to this place.”

“That may be true,” said a cool bitter voice, “but I smell
death here.”

The Olenyas had found himself a shadow to be part of, and
the ul-cub to share it. He had sheathed his sword but kept his hand on it.

He moved from his chosen shadow into Estarion’s. “If you
have led us ill, you will answer to my sword.”

“Gladly,” said Sarevadin. She beckoned with her scarred
hand. “Come, children. We’re dead if we linger. They know we’re here; they’ll
be moving to close the Gates.”

Vanyi, stretching her bruised power, gasped. The quiet here
was illusion, the stillness a mask. Below that frail semblance was naked chaos.

The Heart of the World, that core of magic in all the myriad
worlds, hung on the thin edge of ruin. Was it their coming that had done it?

Even as she shaped the thought, the Heartfire roared to the
ceiling, then sank almost to embers; blinding bright, then blind dark.

“Swiftly!” cried Sarevadin. “Take my hands!”

Estarion had her right hand, the Olenyas her left. Vanyi,
slowest to move, hesitated between Estarion and his guardsman, yearning toward
the one, shrinking from the other. Hating herself for both.

That moment cost her dearly. The fire roared up again. The
worldwalls throbbed, flickering dizzily from world to world.

She lunged toward Estarion, just as he sprang into the fire.
Her hand caught his; tore loose.

She stumbled and fell to her knees. The floor heaved and
rocked. Worldwind howled over her.

Mages were in it. Watching. Waiting. Listening. They
wanted—something.

The Tower. The magic that was in it. The advantage that they
reckoned to gain, somehow, from Estarion’s healing. Or, and more likely, his
death.

She clung to stones that surged like the flesh of a living
thing. Shadows danced in the fire. One of them had a voice. “Can’t move us
through. Can’t—move—”

Sarevadin. And Estarion, breathless, tight with what might
have been pain. “Can’t move back, either. You may be made of fire, but I’m half
flesh. And my guardsman is all human. Get us out of here. It’s killing him!”

Vanyi crawled across a floor turned treacherous, clinging
where she could cling, slipping where it fluxed and slid. Her power was as
bruised as she, and as helpless. She set her teeth and struggled on.

The fire was a sheet of blinding heat from floor to heaving,
quivering vault of roof. Vanyi, well outside of it still, felt the heat of it
on her face, searing her hair, crisping the flesh on her bones.

She had walked into this fire when first she mastered Gates.
It held no power to harm a mage. Yet now it was worse than deadly, and they
were in it, trapped in it. She could just discern their shapes: Sarevadin still
unscathed but seeming helpless, Estarion clutching a writhing body to his
breast, crying,
“Get us out of here!”

Vanyi thrust a dart of power at the fire’s heart. It sprang
back, piercing her with agony.

“No one can get us out,” said Sarevadin to Estarion. “Except
you.”

“I can’t,” he gasped. “I don’t know how.”

“What does knowing have to do with it? Open the Gate!”

“What Gate?”

“This!” The shadow that was Sarevadin wrenched his
shadow-hand from the shadow-Olenyas and held it up. Vanyi shielded her eyes
against a blaze that made the fire seem a dim and lifeless thing. “This, that
opens all doors. That is itself a door.”

“Open your own!”

“Mine is broken.” She hauled him about within the fire.
“Open it!”

“I don’t—I can’t—”

Vanyi touched the fire. Her fingers blistered and charred.
She bit her lip until it bled, and pushed against the pain.

She could see them through the veil of it. Estarion held
Korusan as if he had been a child; the boy’s head was buried in the hollow of
his shoulder.

He raised his branded hand. His power flared more wildly
even than the fire in which he stood.

He must control it. Master it. And when he had done that,
walk through the Gate that he had made.

She could do nothing. The fire was too strong. He was bred
of it, and he could scarcely endure it. She could not imagine what torments
racked the Olenyas.

She raged until she wept, beat on the fire with fists of
power, gained nothing but blistered hands.

He raised the
Kasar
above his head. His hand trembled; he steadied it. He drew it down the fiery
air.

The fire parted, folded away before that fire which was
hotter than it could ever be, shrank and cooled and dimmed until it was simple
Heartfire once more. A Gate opened in the midst of it, and Sarevadin set foot
on the threshold.

Estarion paused. “Vanyi!”

“Go!”
she screamed
at him in anger that came from everywhere and nowhere. “You don’t need me now.
Go!”

“Vanyi—”

She would have plunged into the fire, whatever it did to
her, and pushed him through the Gate. But Sarevadin, poised in the Gate, caught
hold of him and flung him through.

Vanyi was lost. Korusan was unconscious or worse, a slack
weight on Estarion’s shoulder. And where they stood was nothing like the
worldroad. It seemed a perfect void, save that something held him up beneath
his feet, and something else tugged him onward.

Sight grew slowly. There was little to see but the shape
that led him. Its hair was copper-bright again, its gender indistinct. That
maybe was the truth of the Twiceborn; what she—he—was in the world of the flesh
was but a shadow.

Warmth pressed against his leg. The ul-cub had followed him
yet again, moving easily through these Gates that racked human flesh and drove
human minds mad. So led, so guided, he passed out of the darkness and into
light.

He stood inside a vast jewel: flat beneath his feet, faceted
about and above him, everywhere netted and veined with splendor. No lamp had
ever burned here, nor ever would. The stone burned with its own white light.