Arrows of the Sun (61 page)

“Korusan,” Estarion said. His voice caught, for all that he
could do. “Yelloweyes. It’s I. Wake; see. I’ve healing for you.”

“You do not.” Korusan arched his back. The pain tore at
Estarion’s bones. “Let me die,” Korusan said.

Estarion’s eyes blurred. He was not seeing with them, not
truly, nor feeling with the heart that beat in his body.

No.

“If you do not kill me,” Korusan said, “I will wake him.”

Estarion tossed his head from side to side. It ached, ah, it
ached. He was breaking, mind, heart, power, all at once. “Wake yourself. You’re
dreaming, youngling. Wake and let me heal you.”

“Will you let me kill you?”

“Would it comfort you?”

“No,” Korusan said. He twisted, thrust sidewise, broke free.
He had drawn his swords. One flew gleaming from his hand. Estarion caught it
unthinking. It was the longer, the right-hand sword.

He dropped it at his feet. “Come here, Yelloweyes.”

Korusan lunged.

Estarion did not believe it, even seeing it, even knowing
the track of that blade. Even with the sting of the older wound, even in the
face of all that he had seen, heard, suffered, he could not believe that this
of all men intended his death.

Straight to the heart. No pause. No wavering. And worst and
most terrible, no regret.

Unarmed, unable to move, Estarion looked into the face of
his death.

And knew himself a coward. He dropped. The sword flashed
over his head. He surged up. His hands locked about Korusan’s throat. “Yield,”
he pleaded. “My dear love, give it up.”

The sword shortened, stabbing. It slid on the toughened
leather of Estarion’s coat. He pressed his thumbs against Korusan’s windpipe.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t make me do this.”

The golden eyes neither wavered nor fell. Korusan was
smiling. He let go the sword. It clattered to the floor. His hands fell to his
sides. Estarion began to ease his grip.

A claw raked his side. He gasped.

Korusan’s smile was wide and sweet and quite empty of
reason. He struck again with the dagger that had been hidden in his sleeve. His
lips shaped words.
Hate you
, he said.
Love
—

Blood trickled down Estarion’s ribs. If there was poison on
that blade . . .

He was sobbing.

For breath. Of course. His cheeks were wet. With sweat:
naught else.

“Stop it,” he whispered. “Oh, my love, stop it.”

Korusan slashed, caught Estarion’s cheek so swift there was
no pain at all, stabbed downward.
Die
with me. Beloved, die— with
—

Estarion’s fingers flexed on the boy’s throat. He could not,
oh, merciless goddess, he could not.

Korusan thrashed. One hand dropped. Estarion felt—could not
see, had no need to see—the narrow deadly blade like a needle, angled to pierce
his heart.

And it would. So much Korusan loved, so much he hated, that
he would die, and take his lover with him.

“No,” Estarion wept.

They were body to body as they had been so often, locked
like the lovers they had been, would always be.

Korusan tensed against Estarion. His smile widened. His
blade thrust again for the heart.

Estarion’s body chose for him. It twisted, arched, took the
needle in the meat of the breast—pain no greater than any that had come before,
and no less. His thumbs thrust inward with terrible ease. And snapped the boy’s
neck.

Vanyi stood alone in the Heart of the World. She was
thirsty. That was so small a thing, and so absurd, that she laughed, a bark in
her dry throat.

The Gate that Estarion had made had closed when he passed
it. The Heartfire burned like simple fire, with even the illusion of wood
beneath it. The worldwalls had returned to their slow cycling, shifting now
one, now another, in a stately dance.

She could walk through any or all of them and find herself
anywhere. She was tempted. To forget duty, honor, pain, priesthood, to become
nothing and no one in a world empty of humanity . . . there was
a dream for a black night.

She should have been prostrate with exhaustion from the
raising of the Gate and the running of the worldroad. In any other place
perhaps she might have been. Here, where all power had its center, she felt as
she might in the midst of a long day’s working, with much completed, but much
still to do.

The way to the Tower was shut but not barred. It should have
been locked against any but Sun-blood. Had the Olenyas done that? Or had
Estarion left it so, to let her through?

Idiot. She called in her power to secure the Gate. It
flooded her, nearly drowned her. She gasped and struggled.

It slowed. She shut herself off from it, willing her heart
to stop pounding, her hands to stop trembling. Everything was stronger here,
with the Heartfire to feed it. Even a mage sure to arrogance of her own mastery
could be taken by surprise.

She opened a sliver of gate to let the power trickle in.
With it came awareness, and widening of senses that had focused on herself and
her troubles.

Watchers. Not the wolves of the worldroad that had proved
themselves loyal to the Sunchild. These were wolves of another sort, two-legged,
skilled in magery. They were eager, like wolves on the hunt; hungry, yearning
toward sweetness. What that sweetness was . . .

They were swift to shield, but not swift enough. Sealed
behind her own strong walls, she studied what she had brought in with her,
snatched swift and secret from the mages who watched: a web of greed woven with
malice and old ranklings, and in it surety. The emperor had taken the Olenyas
with him into the Tower. Through that one they would enter, slay the Sunlord,
gain mastery over the one who slept.

Even enspelled, Mirain was a mighty power. The mage who
mastered him would be master of aught that he desired. And if that desire was
the Mageguild’s power, its strength reborn, its puppet on the throne—then so
might it be.

“You do lack imagination,” Vanyi said. She did not trouble
to keep it to herself. “You tried that once, and failed resoundingly. What
makes you think you’ll win it now?”

The Heartfire flared. Power beat on her shields. She rocked
before it but did not fall.

“You are cowards,” she said, “and always were: working
through slaves and servants, hiding behind walls, lurking in Gates. Now you
leave everything to a dying child, while you shiver in shadows.”

They beat harder. She would crack, but not, she prayed, too
soon.

“You’re afraid of the Tower and the sleeper. You think that
you can rule both—but no one can do that, unless he bears the
Kasar
. You haven’t found a way to
counterfeit that, have you? And you never will. You are small men, cravens and
fools. True bravura would have attacked the Tower long ago. Maybe no mortal man
can master it, but who’s to say it can’t be broken, and the sleeper taken in
its fall? He may be a mage and he may be mad beyond recovery, but he’s no more
than a man.”

“Would you do better?”

He came out of a Gate, one that had shown a mountain against
stars and a constellation of moons, blood-red, sea-green, foam-white. He looked
like a merchant grown discontented with prosperity. He fostered that
impression: well-fed, well-clad, sleek, yet petulant about the eyes. There was
a new and livid scar on his brow.

To a mage who could see, he was both more and less than his
body’s seeming. He walked in power as in a cloak, as one who is master of it,
and certain of that mastery. Yet he was not content with it. He was one who
wanted. It almost did not matter what, or why, only that what he did not have,
he wished to possess.

That too might be a mask, a temptation to contempt. Vanyi
armored herself as she might. She would not be anything to incite the admiration
of an Asanian with pretensions to rank: undersized Islander woman in clothes
that, though serviceable, were near enough to rags. Of her power, little showed
itself that might not be reflected glory of the Sun’s blood.

Behind the mage who must have been the Guildmaster came
others robed in violet or in grey. They were all Asanian. She did not find that
surprising. The Guild had been born in the Nine Cities, but those had given
themselves to the temple. Asanion never had.

They spread in a circle about her, but not, she noticed,
between her and the fire. Maybe they feared it. Maybe they thought she did.

She did indeed. But she feared more what they might do if
they seized the Tower and the king who slept in it.

She was a very poor guardian of this Gate. Her strength was
not for battle. Her knowledge was in making, not in breaking.

She remembered the tale as it had been sung in Shon’ai by a
eunuch singer. His clear voice rang in her memory. Mages in the Heart of the
World, battle of power that turned to battle of steel and fist, and ended in
the Tower of the Sun.

This was the same battle. They had won a truce only, Sarevadin
and her lion’s cub. Now it was broken. Now it would end.

Vanyi shook herself free of despair that was a working of
mages, even through her shields. The mages’ Master shrugged slightly. “Our
slave will do what must be done in the Tower,” he said. “Do you think that you
can stop him?”

“He’s not your slave,” she said.

“He serves us,” said the Master.

“I think not.” Her feet ached with standing. She sat cross-legged
in as much comfort as she could feign. “You shouldn’t trust the emperor’s
Olenyai. They serve the throne, and nothing less.”

“The throne belongs by right to the one who serves us.”

“The water-blooded offspring of a female line? A man whose
seed has failed, who will sire no sons? What, after him? The bastard of a
slave?”

She had pricked his temper. Good: it weakened his magery,
eased its grip on her. “He is the emperor.”

“Then he cannot serve you,” she said reasonably. “Quite the
opposite.”

They were closing in behind. No doubt they had knives. They
could not even live their own tale; they must thieve from another.

She had a dagger, but it was small, good for little but
cutting meat. She had her power, which was no greater than it should be. Her
best weapon, her tongue, would not be useful much longer. They would see that
she was delaying them, and ride over her.

Unless . . .

She rose slowly, with as much grace as she could muster. She
opened her mind by degrees, touching the Gates one by one. Her Gate-sense was
overwhelmed here, where all Gates began and ended. She thrust blindly with her
power.

The worldwalls stilled. The Heartfire burned steady.

The mages glanced at one another. She felt the leaping of
thoughts, the forging of the web that bound mage to mage.

Now, she thought, while the web was still half-woven. A
dart—there, where the web was not weakest but strongest. And in the instant of
confusion, mind and body gathered, leaped.

Pain.

She shut it out.

Agony.

She willed it away.

Torment.

She flung herself through it.

o0o

Estarion fell to his knees. Korusan writhed in his arms.
Death-throes; no life, no sense left, only the broken, witless shell. He
clutched it to him and wept.

A body tumbled out of air, spun, righted itself. It had come
through a Gate. The Gate slammed shut, bolted with power.

He stared blankly. The body had a name. Vanyi. And a voice,
grating in his ears. “What in the hells—”

She was not looking at him, or at the death that he had
made. He followed the line of her gaze, because it was less pain than that dead
face.

Sarevadin stood where Korusan had been standing, bent over
the body of her father. She seemed intent, almost curious, tracing the lines of
his face, murmuring something that had the cadence of a chant.

Vanyi’s breath hissed between her teeth. “He’s waking.”

And Sarevadin was singing him out of his sleep.

If a woman wanted to die so much that she did not care what
died with her own death—if she were years gone in madness—might she not turn on
all that she had been? Might she not undo the magics that she had wrought at
such great cost, and rouse the power that she had sung to sleep? Would she even
know what she did, save that she saw her death, and moved to embrace it?

The Tower healed the wounds of Sunchildren. If life was a
wound, and healing was death, and death came only through the sleeper’s waking,
then the Tower itself would feed Sarevadin’s will. It would do as it was
wrought to do—even if it destroyed itself in the doing.

Vanyi was moving, trailing tatters of light. She gathered it
in her hands, knotting swiftly.

Sarevadin’s hands lowered over the sleeper. If she touched,
if she spoke his name, he would wake. Wake angry. Wake in a torrent of fire.

Vanyi flung her net of magic.

It fell short and shattered on the floor. Its strands of
broken light blurred into the shifting, pulsing patterns of the stone.

Estarion laid Korusan aside gently, without haste but with
speed enough. He was moving as he moved in the dance, slow to his own senses,
swift to those of the world without.

The flames were rising. The sleeper breathed in time with
them. His fingers flexed on his breast. The faint line of a frown creased his
brow.

Estarion glided forward. Vanyi had fallen. She had put all
of herself into the net; she had no strength left to stand. She stirred, but
feebly.

Sarevadin swayed. Her face was rapt.

Estarion closed arms about her and gasped. She was wise, and
wily in her madness. She was shielded against his power.

He set his teeth. His body convulsed, but he held. His power
fluxed. His blood was boiling. His brain was like to burst from his skull.

And he held. She could not finish her working while he
killed himself on her shield.