Mortal Suns (24 page)

“Don’t be so sad,” she said. “He’ll be back.”

“No,” I said. “Everything has altered.”

“
That
doesn’t alter. That undone thing between a man and a girl.”

She took to oiling the turtle, and made me rub the shell to a mirror’s gleam.

Ermias accepted a new lover. He was a youngish noble and gave her outrageous gifts she should not perhaps openly have worn, a gold necklace with a polished diamond, a ring with a rare black pearl. He had heard she had belonged to a Sun Prince.

Glardor hurried away again to his estates.

They had sacrificed a white horse to the Sun, as they regularly did in Ipyra. Here it was, like Elakti’s rites, not usual.

I did not see the sacrifice, I am glad to say. It was performed at night, under the moon invoked as Anki, so Phaidix also should take note.

In my little garden, rogue roots and fierce weeds had almost obscured her altar. Brown ruined apples lay in the grass, devoured by wasps and flies. Nimi had found a dead cat among the trees.

A curious sense of
waiting, as if for the sunset sounding of gongs, lay with the boiling dregs of summer on the land.

Like any sensible farmer, Glardor spent all day now, sunrise to set, tending to his scorching fields and vine stocks.

A large, bronzed man in a sleeveless tunic and straw hat, he was as ever most at home there, working among his freedmen and slaves. It had been related they called him only Father, as servants did with the master on the farms of nobodies in the back hills.

His Sun-Consort had also absented herself from the court to go with him. That big, blonde, greedy woman, who seemed to find no fault with anyone, had had enough of Oceaxis. She had no time for the extended ceremonies, the gossip and games. She preferred her loom. The outcome of the Race had upset her, too—someone reported she had exclaimed such things did not happen to ordinary people.

Some cows had got loose and in among the grain. It was an old story. Glardor and three of his freedmen went into the field and ushered them out. The grass was so burnt up now, they were already bringing the cattle fodder, but the blackened corn had enticed them.

As they got through, the cows and men, into the pasture, four or five bees flew up from a bush by the gate.

No one thought anything of it until Glardor clapped a hand to his neck. A dead bee tumbled away in a powder of saffron and black.

The senior freedman came to look, but Glardor waved him off. “It’s nothing. Poor bee, she lost her life for that.”

Five minutes later, Glardor said his throat was sore. He breathed very quickly, and the freedman saw his neck had swollen abnormally on the right side.

Glardor climbed on his donkey to ride back up to the house, but presently he turned very red and began to gasp for breath. They held him up and beat the donkey till it trotted. By the time they reached the farm, he had lost consciousness.

Glardor’s wife had been singing with her woman at the hearth, cooking the midday meal. Now she rushed out, and kneeling in the dust on the track, where they had laid him, she held her husband’s hand. A physician was brought from the village, and said the beesting had swollen up Glardor’s windpipe, and it must be pierced with a reed to let Glardor breathe. Glardor opened his eyes and somehow whispered the man might try. Then he indicated to the freedman the physician must not be harmed if he failed.

The reed
went in, but either it was too late or missed the vital spot. A few minutes after, Glardor went into convulsions and died.

Only when he was quite dead did the Sun-Consort begin to weep. She had stayed dry-eyed not to inconvenience her dying husband nor alarm him further.

In Oceaxis she was, until then, generally sneered at behind the hand. Silly tales were told of her stupidity and bucolic preferences. Now they said she rose up stonily weeping, like an ancient queen, and spoke over the King at once a prayer of farewell, commending him to the god Below, binding herself with a vow that she would never love or turn to any other man, until she and Glardor should meet again, beyond the River.

Because he was swimming under the coolish water, for a while he did not understand there was a commotion up above. He took it for the water drumming in his ears.

When he surfaced, he thought the fat captain had been chastising—unfairly and again—a slave: the dropped tray, spilled wine, and nuts rolling on the green marble perimeter of the bathhouse pool. Then he saw the faces.

Klyton gripped hold of the rim and pulled himself out. He was naked, but most of them were. All but the messenger.

“What’s the trouble?”

The fat captain, who was pallid under his tan, said, “By the gods—by the Sun—”

It was the messenger who spoke. “Sir, the King is dead.”

Klyton felt something fall from him in a wave. It was not water. Perhaps it was all his days, until this instant.

“The King. You mean Glardor, the Great Sun.”

“Yes, prince.”

Klyton said, reasonably, “The Heart still beats.”

“Yes, sir. It took some while for the news to reach Oceaxis. The Heart will pause at Sunset tonight.”

Klyton
experienced a ringing in his head. But it went off at once. He stretched out his right hand over the marble, an antique gesture. As the blonde Queen had done, he said, “Thon, receive well and with honor, a mighty King.”

Glardor had sent Klyton to Melmia with a few hundred men, part of the battle command which had belonged to Amdysos. In this there seemed some muddle-headed patriachal hope to find them all something to do to take their minds off what had happened at Airis. But Melmia, with its pleasure gardens and hot springs, lay against Sirma, from which, as elsewhere, notions of unrest floated like the geyser smokes.

Klyton had had the men drawn up for him. He addressed them from horseback, smartly but not showily attired, his cloak a washed-out grey for mourning.

He told them they had lost with Amdysos what could not be replaced, and he had lost that too, a peerless battle leader and a true friend. He now would do his best for them if they would do as much for him. They were his brothers, and he knew they would understand his pain was also great, for Amdysos had been his brother in blood.

What they had been watching for he was not sure, but they cheered him, rapping spear-butts on the earth and clacking on their shields.

Klyton did not predict much for Sirma, and in Melmia, which also had wineshops and prostitutes, whose high standards were matched only by their numbers, the difficulty would be in not letting his loaned troops go soft.

The garrison there proved the point. The last big skirmish, in which Klyton had participated, his first war, was long over. The garrison captain bulged with food. And by night, the stairs were busy with boys and girls going up to his apartment. Klyton organized drills, parades, hunts. Once or twice, Amdysos’s men came to him, as he had told them to, with their worries. They liked him, as Amdysos had always said, and as he himself had seen. Now, they began to be proud of him. Klyton had wondered if Glardor would have the sense to gift him, at last, a command, preferably this one. But he did not think about Amdysos, save in a ritualistic way. The soldier who visited Klyton, detailing a dream of Amdysos, a golden prince in the Lands Below, Klyton rewarded with a golden coin. But in Klyton’s heart, now, it was all a blank. Too much hurt, the too-swift passing of guilt—and that other omission—which he would not think of either, his sister. As if, by the sin of lusting after Calistra, he had betrayed them all and brought down the death of flaming feathers. He bolted the door of his thoughts against them both.

The morning
the messenger arrived had been nothing special. Klyton swam every day, for the bathing arrangements were primitive and the pool electric. Sometimes after it you wanted a girl, and now and then he let himself have one. He selected black-haired girls currently, tall and laughing, with strong, sandaled feet.

When he had dressed, he called the captain in. A combination of the overly sophisticated and the superstitious, the man declaimed at length.

“… It’s a catastrophe. Is the God trying to destroy us? The mighty Akreon—then all his sons—”

“Not quite,” interrupted Klyton.

“Excuse me, sir. Pardon me. I meant, of course, by her Majesty Udrombis, the Consort. There are countless others.”

“Yes, we’re like a plague of rats, aren’t we.”

The captain again apologized, and bit his nails.

“The awkward thing is,” said Klyton, “they must go to the God now, to elect the King’s successor.”

“Indeed,” said the captain. “Will you wish to hurry back?”

“Hardly, Captain. You seem to miss the mark.”

The captain looked at him uncertainly. He admired, perhaps fancied Klyton, but did not like him. Klyton was not of the same breed. Having some royal blood, the captain would have favored being familiar, but a Sun was a Sun, and in these circumstances, who knew what he might ascend to.

“You see,” said Klyton, “those places which are somewhat unquiet may grow boisterous after this. For a while there’ll be no Great King in Akhemony. Some may try to—grab.”

“Sirma,” said the captain, intelligently at last. “Or—Charchis— Ipyra—everywhere, by God’s Knife.”

“Everywhere perhaps,” said Klyton. “But I am
here
.”

“You’ll take your troops, make a show of force, the crush of conquest,” declared the captain, happy now to have the turn of things.

Klyton smiled.
It was the first time anything had amused him since Airis.

“Less a conqueror than a bridegroom.”

He took, nevertheless, all of his command out of the town. They were on the road south by midday. When the sky started to flush, they had already made camp among the dry woods.

Klyton walked round the tent lanes. He spoke to the soldiers. They were tense as bow-strings. He had wanted them out of the town when the Heart stopped.

The west deepened beyond the hill slopes. The older, wiser ones planted their spears and leaned on them. Some knelt. It was so quiet, the sound of a bird in the trees, oblivious to the themes and duties of men, shrilled loud as a bugle.

Klyton could hear the Heart. It was faint, almost supernatural, as he recalled from other journeys away from Akhemony. Some, he knew, could not hear it now, with their ears. It was in the bones.

The sky was like wine mixed with sulphur from the springs. Then a darkening came, like a veil across the land. And the Heart— was gone.

Klyton leaned a little to one side. That was all. Righted himself. Some of the soldiers sent up a noise, and their officers quietened them, like babies, these courageous and war-heeled men. The bird called again in the wood, and someone cursed it, then wept.

Klyton thought,
I wonder what she
—and pulled himself back from the thought as he had from the leaning of his balance.

His sister, forewarned, would be well enough. It was Ermias, doubtless, who would palpitate and swoon. But he would not think of any of that.

Up from the void that was death, the beating suddenly came again. For a moment, you were not sure. But it always came back, as nothing else could be relied on to do.

Red shadows crept down from the hills.

He thought abruptly of Amdysos by the stream, the first time they went to war, in Sirma. How they had jeered at Pherox, who had died. Klyton turned the eye of his mind away.

He went round the
camp again, congratulating the men. The Heart beat, life went on.

It was afternoon, when they reached the Sirmian town. When he looked at it, it did not seem as he recalled, but that had been in heavy rain and the onslaught of battle. And they had repaired the walls.

He had brought only forty men with him, polished up, with a few fall flowers tucked into helmets and bridles. The rest were left above, where the town scouts could see them quite clearly, if they chose.

Sirma shared a union, in a half civilized way. What one town did, the rest would concur with. They had no high king, but called a council of their chiefs, when necessary. Their fealty, any way, was supposed to lie with Akhemony.

Glardor had not let the army raze these towns. Klyton acknowledged now that had been a fine and useful thing.

Nevertheless, it was nearly seven years ago. He would have to hope his luck was in. But when he thought this, it was as if he only played a part. Luck was not his to question.

The Sirmians let in the little force from Akhemony, the polished, apparently jaunty men, who acted well. The Sirmians looked sullen, and maybe disturbed.

At the house of the chief, Klyton and his officer were welcomed by a steward. Without a word said, the, steward brought forward a boy to taste the wine.

“That’s all right,” said Klyton. “I know you wouldn’t so offend the Great King.”

The steward’s eyes flickered. They had heard here the stopping of the Heart, or been told of it. But nothing else was said, until the chief walked in with his sons.

The former chief had died seven years back, along with that son whom Klyton had sliced, almost his first kill.

Klyton made sure they knew his title and worth. As the officer recited, he stood, looking the Sirmians over. The men wore embroidered tunics, and were barelegged for the heat. ‘The young ones had their long hair braided in side-plaits and twined with silver wire and ribbons.

The seven-year chief
was about forty, lean and grisled, and with a moustache. He let the officer finish and then said, “Are you here to make war?”

“Nothing like that.”

“I remember you from the last war,” said the chief. Klyton had learned, these outland places reckoned a hundred years ago like yesterday. Ipyra was the same.

“You do me honor to remember.”

“You killed the chief’s Spear Tall Son.”

“I regret that, but it was in the fight. He died nobly.” And Klyton had a vision of the man, his cheek off, falling down to be trodden to death in the mud.

But the chief only grunted. “Akhemony rules us. Say what you wish.”

“I am a Sun,” reminded Klyton, “my father was the Great King, Akreon.”