Mortal Suns (44 page)

That night he appeared again the beautiful young god I had married. He pushed me backwards on the stale bed, and mounted me as an animal does. But, I was all his, my sex at least knew him well. We struggled to the Paradise of the flesh, and then he slept exhausted at my side. And once two tears ran from his sleeping eyes. I saw, for that night I did not sleep at all.

Next day, the
old slave, Sarnom, came alone and told me with a gentle courtesy I should select what I must have. His face was like a mourning carving. But old men and women, I thought, often looked sad, as sometimes they looked wicked.

I chose what I predicted I should require for the trek to Sirma. Here, I had been, told, we would go—to find friendly loyalty, and an army, whereby to persuade mistaken Akhemony.

What did I hold inside myself? Only a heavy dread that was not completely real. For I, too, had been led into the Sunlight, and gained what I should never have had. Surely, surely, the gods who helped me, would not leave me in this plight?

Outside, the gardens smoked still on the shore. What I had seen there so often, removed in an hour.

I offered to Gemli and to Lut. Both seemed like little made things of stone and wood. Not gods at all. But did the air hear? The moon-glow on the floor? The gods were presently engaged. Soon they would recollect us.

That night. The night when I had chosen what I should need and want, finding only later I had picked out usually nothing of any use, leaving behind me the dearest and the best. Alone on the bed, the covers thrown away, the hearing air so hot, so merciless, and the crack of moonlight streaming through the outer room and under the door.

The moonlight had blackened over in one spot.

Waking, I saw, and then that a woman stood up straight there, in her black robe, the gems lit like dark moons on her wrists, fingers, at her throat. It was Crow Claw. Now I imagine that she spent some of the ten years of her earthly wandering, prescribed by God after death, there in the palace at Oceaxis. This accounts for her ghost, the intrusions she made on us

“What do you want?” I said. And sitting up, “Have you brought some better tidings?”

The dog saw her, too. He did not seem alarmed, his tail even quivered, as he watched her, head on long paws.

“What’s your name?” said the witch, as long ago, in my childhood.

“You know
my name. Calistra.”

“Sun Queen Calistra. No. Now you’re Cemira again.”

I started violently, and made the circle.

She shook her head. “Remember, the Cemira is one of the Secret Beasts of Phaidix. Both names are yours. Shun neither.”

She had sung me to sleep in that long ago.

Not now.

I said. “Why are you here?”

“To bid you farewell, Great Queen. I’ll see you no more.” The mooolight caught the side of her crone’s face, as with a living thing it would. But she looked younger tonight. Not any older than thirty years. This was curious. No one had ever seen her young, since her death. “Nothing ends with death,” said Crow Claw. “Even the unborn don’t end there.” She pointed at me. Involuntarily I glanced down, to look where her ivory claw indicated. But nothing was there, beyond my own slender shape, the dirty pillow.

“Crow Claw,” I whispered, “do you speak with the gods? Do you see them walking? Beg them for me to give back to him what he’s lost.”

“But,” she said, “he has lost nothing at all.”

I cursed her, and she was gone.

We behold and cling to the rock, but the rock is a vapor. We tumble through space, shrieking, and in the night that is All-Night, open our wings. But the promise we are born with, in the land of illusions we forget.

The dog licked my tears, disliked them, and moved away. I held myself firmly and pushed off the weeping. Tomorrow we would go to Sirma. I was a Queen, and must act as a Queen would, even in exile.

Under the mud-brown sail the rowers sang and the oars churned and the sea had a flat poisonous iridescence. We had been two days on the water, and one night between.

The Sun’s Isle.

Here the thunder-stone had rushed from the Sun. A priesthood, it was said, had tended the place for centuries, and always they died, the young, the vital, died on Sun’s Isle. Animals there were monster-like, mythical. Few came there now. The force of that chip of the living Sun sucked out the life of men. And we were rowed towards it. It was the hub of the universe.

I sat under an awning,
looking at the Lakesea. I had never before crossed it. The atmosphere had by now a peculiar glimmering film. Last night the stars had seemed of a thousand altering colors. The fish they had caught today was unnatural. It was the size of a calf, and almost snapped the line. It had three eyes and two mouths each packed with pearly teeth, that the pearl-loving men of Bulos pulled from the jaws.

But, they did not eat the fish and threw it back. By then it was dead. Things were done too late, or not at all. Nimi had had a terrible dream. The sky was torn open and a flaming creature dropped to the deck.

The Heart Drum of Akhemony had been audible at Belba, yet on the ocean it grew muffled, unknown, more distracting in its change.

Klyton talked to the captain. He had charmed them all, even in their superstition and unwillingness. We would sight the Island by Sunfall, or with the dawn. Ancient maps described it. It had the shape of a huge lizard lying in the sea.

In Bulos, they drive out the Scapegoat every year at winter. They mark a ram, or other animal, or even a criminal, and tie him with little tokens written by the priests, notes of various sins and omissions. Then they thrust him away into the river marshes among the man-high reeds. Possibly the Scapegoat dies then, of cold or hunger, or eaten by wild dogs, or large water reptiles. If a man survives, he never goes back. Ten years after, if they knew him, they would kill him, for bringing home their transgressions.

Perhaps the Bulotes no longer do any of this.

But I was thinking of it in the Bulote ship.

Did I say to myself that Klyton was the Scapegoat of Akhemony? A council of old men and priests had asked of him that he go away, perhaps to an estate at Airis, or better, to Sirma, where the Sirmians had given him land before even he was crowned King. Nexor, when unwanted, had been disposed of in just this way, into Ipyra. Klyton called his men, such as would go, and left. And around his neck were hung the stooping eagle, and the flight of firebolts, the drought that was beginning, and any other unlucky thing.

The second
vessel had dropped behind yesterday but now, as the Sun began to rise at our back, we saw her again. The ships hailed each other with horns. A dismal mooing.

It had not occurred to me that Klyton could have resisted his dethronement and expulsion more vigorously than he had. Even there, on the ship, it did not. I saw Akhemony had closed to him like a door. He knocked and shouted, he raved. There was no answer so he came away to find a battering-ram.

During all the short voyage, the sea had been odd, so very flat, the waves scarcely stirring. No birds were seen once we were an hour out.

The dawn Sun looked very red, but as it lifted into the sky, it metamorphosed. The sailors started to cry out and call prayers. The Sun—behind us, reflected before us on the flat and half-dead sea—was an emerald. Its path was the shade of fresh grass. This lasted for some twenty heartbeats, the Heartbeats of the Mountain. After that the greenness dissolved and the Sun was the Sun, only dull, the track on the water faint as if under a skim of oil.

In silence, when we turned again, we saw the Island, the Sun’s Isle, pushing from the sea before us.

To me it seemed to have no particular shape, despite what had been said, only a dark scoop of land, with night still caught around its skirts.

Soon I could make out the sluggish waves dragging up on its rocky beaches, with hardly any frill of foam. Big stones stood out into the ocean, shapeless, or weathered into low arches. Even now there were no birds. But a scent sighed off the Island. It was rich and heady, as of perfumes and citrus fruit, and then like burning incense mixed with alcohol. And then it grew sweetly rotten, like decayed flowers.

A natural harbor had been shown on the maps. Here the sea was deep enough for the ships to stand close in.

The maps also stated that a hale man could walk round the entire scope of the Isle in a day. To reach its center where the Sunstone had fallen, took half a day. The ancient temple was planted there, and even in quite recent times, less than fifty years before, one man had dared the Isle and seen it, the Stone lying in its cradle. But the country was unsafe. They said three-headed beasts roamed the Island with snakes for tails, and womanlike things with snakes for hair, and a white lioness that had leapt down from the Daystar after the Stone.

Klyton left
all but fifteen of his men on the ships. We heard later, aside from their captain, the soldiers had drawn lots, to see who must go. This was allowed.

After Sun’s Isle we would sail down the great river to Bulos, and so press on, marching overland to Artepta. But Klyton wanted his omens first.

Sarnom went ashore with Klyton. The slave had declared he would go. But Partho, the Sirmian boy, who seemed at all other times in love with Klyton, had become sick and was left on the galley.

Klyton sat down with me under the awning.

“Calistra, I know you can’t walk far over this terrain. But will you come ashore? I’ll leave you ten guard. And the others will be near enough on the ships.”

I replied, “Yes,” not considering. We were adrift wherever we went. And I have said, I did not want to cross him.

“You’re brave,” he said. “You always have been. But if they see it in a girl, their Queen, it will give them courage. And besides, besides … We’re far away from the Heart.” He looked out to the crinkled water, the Island beach where, as we could now make out, the mass of a forest descended. “I dreamed once that I flew with wings—did I ever tell you? I should not have done. But you anchored me to the earth. It was you. I don’t want moving water between us. If you will.”

His tone was thin and wooden. He smiled, as if he had said something mundane.

“Whatever you want, my lord.”

“Dulcet Calistra, like the dove. Look, do you see the shrine there, and the path like silver for your silver feet?”

I stared. There was a sort of building above the beach. A sort of path. Would I be able to manage it, even with my cane?

He read my mind. “No, of course. One of the men will carry you over the pebbles.”

Nimi approached when he had got up. I told her she must stay on the ship. But she shook her head. She put her chin back and said, sternly, I was the Queen and must have an attendant. I realize now her bravery made any of mine into a grain of dust. I was bemused. And she had heard, in her short life, all the stories of the Isle, which I never had.

A boat rowed
us over, and went back.

By now the Sun was much higher, ambered, a huge smothered spark. The Daystar could just be seen, mauve and opaque.

There were no clouds. A kind of shivering luminescence hung on everything, and seemed to slide through the stony beach, and drip down off the clustered forest.

A few moments after we had got from the boat, a bird began to sing.

Nimi exclaimed, and two of the men made warding signs.

At first the song seemed exquisite, resembling the notes of the kitri. But then it sharpened, splintered. As with the odors of the Island, it was firstly pleasing and next disgusting. It scratched the nerves with needles. Then the song ended and did not resume.

Klyton walked at once away and up the path, which had originally been paved, and was now quilled by slivers of rock that must have shot up, perhaps, in a tremor. The ground was woven with brambles and creepers.

Five pillars were at the entrance of the shrine, and were black from age, with horrible shafts in them that showed out yellowish white —protuberant bones. The creepers had gone round and round like serpents. The roof was gone, smashed in on the floor below. This floor had had mosaic, a picture of a Sun with cat-animals running about it, but no colors remained in it, and something, maybe only the years, had pulled fragments out and thrown them everywhere.

Klyton told his men to clear an area in the shrine and put down for me some rugs, and the chair which had been brought.

I had after all managed the beach, and was now on the path, but going very slow, Nimi and one guard assisting me.

As I ascended, I studied the trees of the forest. They were twisted in extraordinary shapes, some like open hands stretching out cupped, clawing fingers, and some lying sidelong against each other, then bending back to run another way. There was one like a great ball, the branches thrust out as spines do from a hedgehog. All the bark greasily shone, and unlike the mosaic had deep, throbbing colors, a syrupy green, orichalc, and magenta. While out of some of the trees strange slender trickles of moisture flowed, red like magma, or greenish like sap.

The canopy
of the forest had dark leaves at least larger than a man’s hand, and in places as big as a shield. These flags hung motionless, but as we climbed, we saw, threading through and through, a type of snake thing, pallid and scaled, long, rope-like, yet seeming to have a head also at the tail’s end. But it was blind, it had no eyes. It paid no attention to us or the men heaving out the rubbish from the shrine. When it vanished, we climbed on.

The creepers and brambles were also curious. They had the highlight of silk, black wizened berries.

In the shrine’s back, the altar had been split by the roof coming down.

Nevertheless, Klyton there offered wine, and some meal from the store on the ship. Only when the incense was lighted, it stank.

There had been a tale King Okos had had grapes brought from the Isle, to make a wine. He gifted it to an enemy, who died.

The bird began to sing again. With strands of burning liquid glass it webbed together the tree tops, then tore its web in splinters.

Klyton drew me aside. He kissed my mouth. He tasted of the char of the offering, but I did not recoil. Had I started to be afraid? Had I? Oh, yes, surely. But then, I loved him.