Mortal Suns (6 page)

She was sorry for the cow. She had fed it yesterday. They had told her in the kitchen it need not be killed for another month, and that was for food, which would have been better, because the butcher’s yard was kept quite clean, and there it might not have noticed the odor of blood—

Nearby, another child, adrift in the adult crowd, threw up from terror on the floor.

A priestess turned, quickly, and slapped it.

Yes, yes, let the world end now.

I see myself as if from above. I see myself standing there, as I had then to stand, on my canes. Almost mindless I was with lack of life and knowledge. I weep for her, that little child I was.

Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

I wish to say that, at this point of her narrative, tears ran from the eyes of Sirai. But only for a moment. I have never seen her weep before except for another, but it is always very swift. I tried to catch one tear once in a bottle. When she saw what I did, she burst out laughing at me. And her tears stopped.

Up on
the peak of the Heart, it was possible to see, across the earth, the initial trace of light that must be a messenger of the Sun.

The riders had reached the lower platform. They might go no further. Perhaps, they could not have done, for here the Drumbeat juddered them, made them dizzy and half faint. The land—seemed to dance. One man staggered down from his horse. His torch fell. He lay full-length on the ground, clutching at the rocks.

All about, the gathered height, still, in disturbed darkness, spring-dashed with the most silver, or the most dirty snow. But above, the pinnacle-peak, its round, dim disk of cave, was garbed gleaming in clandestine virgin white. And where the stream darted over and down, not long unfrozen, catching torchlight, the magical greenish flowers grew.

The priest who had ridden with them, the Sun priest from Oceaxis, had come to the boulder where the horn hung on its chain.

The chain was rusty. He must scrape and scrabble to reach the instrument. Having it, he did not wipe the filthy lip, that would be sacrilege. Since boyhood, one of four, he had been trained to sound such a horn, against this hour. He lifted the horn to his mouth, drew breath into his mighty lungs, that a diver for pearls in the Bulote rivers might have envied. He kissed the horn lip. Tang of age and bitterness—

Even over the rampage of the Drum, that thundered and blasted down at them, turning the mountain in a cauldron of sound, the horn was audible. A lost and appalling lowing had come from it, and went on, like the cry of the world herself.

Then the priest, breath exhausted, let go the note, which hung a moment more above the thunder of the Drum, swilled between cliffs of stone and air, paled like dye in water, vanished.

Shivering, the priest got up again. His life had been, partly, for this. It was unthinkable he would ever have to do it again.

He, and the soldiers of the King, stood, agonized and one-dimensional, between land and heaven.

Then—

Then.

The Drum, the Heart—

Stopped
.

One of the
soldiers screamed. He clapped his hands to his head. A fellow caught him and threw him down before he plunged to his death over the ledge of the mountain.

And now, only this …

The wind whined, curled over, and came back, whining. They heard the tinselly crinkle of the waterfall.

The horses shook their heads, the bridles jingling.

The priest spoke softly, not to bruise the Heart-stopped air: “The Great Sun is dead.”

In his youth he had known this, once, at the death of Akreon’s father. He had not been on the mountain then, he had been younger, then. He buried his face in his hands, and stood motionless, as the soldiers swayed or reeled, or crawled around him.

The temple was built of shrieking. In the midst of it, as they ran against her, as they fell and tumbled on the floor, Cemira hung on her canes, and saw the throat of the cow slashed by a howling priest, her outcry tangled in all the rest.

After that the world spun over and Cemira sprawled, just as the thin priestess had wished to see.

Cemira lay on the floor, kicked and stumbled on by others with feet.

Her head tolled an abysm of emptiness. It was as if she had gone deaf. Or, had died.

The blackness covered her, and yet, still conscious, she bobbed on the sea of it. This
must
be death. And death was as horrible as living.

But someone now snatched her up. She was borne, whirling, through the whirling world, away and away. She clung with all her might. Did she wish after all to survive, then? This curtailed body, did it have the temerity to long for life?

“Ssh. It’s the worst moment. In a second—it will be over. Hush. My baby. I know, I know. Hold me. Yes. Oh, let the gods make it end!”

Unknown to Cemira, known to the priestess who held her, the kind priestess who had sought her in the maelstrom, up in the peak of Heart Mountain the drummer was already taking up again his Drumsticks. To him, maybe worse than to any other, this abysmal hesitation in the rhythm of his days. He craned into the gloom of the sanctified cave, his flaming madman’s eyes straining upon the reefs of time, seeking the new moment in which—to
resume
.

It came.

The sticks
flared high, struck down.

From his body of bronze, the Drum of brass and bullshide, the savage crescendo bellowed, and the earth tilted and crashed back upon its axis.

Cemira raised her head. Her hair was soaked with her tears and those of the priestess, whose mask was also wet, and askew. For the flick of an eye, Cemira saw the old white face, a stranger’s, gathered in seams, the sad visible eye, quite human. But the priestess adjusted her mask.

“There now. All over.”

“What was—what was—” Cemira had been deprived temporarily of the power of language.

“The Great King has died. Probably at Oceaxis. The Heart must stop, to show the heart of the King has stopped. Do you see?” Cemira shook her head, and was giddy. “Well, it’s over now. And there’s a new King. So the Drum beats on.”

In fact, in Akhemony, the new King had only just learned his status. The messengers had not reached his estates quite in time. So he had been out before sunup, looking at the vine-stocks, making offerings for their spring growth, when the lesion of the Drum smashed down through the land.

He, too, fell on his knees, trembling, most of his balance gone. This happened to many, or worse. You often heard it, so and so died when the King died. One’s heart could not beat in time to the Drum from birth, and stay unmoved at its hiatus. The two slaves were facedown.

Yet when the Drum recommenced, knowing it was now beating for him, Akreon’s heir, born thirty-four years in the past to the Sun-Consort, Udrombis, lurched to his feet, and held himself frowning in his own arms. He had always known it would come, but, as with the cow in Thon’s temple, Glardor had thought it would not come so soon.

Because of the turmoil that persisted in the House of Thon, the priestess was able to take Cemira away with her, to her cell. She should not have done this. Later she would have to make a confession of her error, though it would be forgiven her, seeing what happened next. In the cramped stony space, the priestess lit her brazier, and took the child on her lap. She fed her cold porridge and honey, a treat she had been saving for herself.

Cemira could
only eat a little.

“Will it happen again?”

“The Sun keep us from it. No. No, not for years. Not until you’re a grown woman. Perhaps not until you’re old.”

Cemira knew she would be old here, in Thon’s House. She could not imagine this, but neither could she imagine anything else. Except, to fly with eagles in the sky.

A long time after, there were footsteps outside. A man’s voice called, “Are you here?”

There was no choice in the matter of replying. “Yes.”

The priest came in around the black leather curtain. He stood looking at the priestess and the little girl, dark and pale, from his flat-faced mask.

“Is this the child from Oceaxis?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Can she walk?”

“No. She hasn’t any feet.”

“Good,” said the priest. This ironic comment indicated only that he had found the one he sought. “Are those her canes? Bring her.”

They went up through the temple to a bleak room behind the Death Altar, the room where supplicants came, if they ever did, to pay the priesthood and have their details entered on a tablet.

Here the soldier stood, upright and steady as he had not been, five hours earlier, on the shaking, soundless platform under the peak of the Heart.

To Cemira, he was of a frightening magnificent hardness. His insectile carapace of bronze, his helm with its snow-plume. The gems in the pommel of his sword. His cloak was the scarlet of the god’s blood-hair, and he wore over it the insignia of Queen Udrombis, a lion, stitched out in gold.

“Does she speak?”

“…Yes.”

“Child—is your given name Cemira?”

Cemira stared. Personal names were not to be spoken, only one, the name of Death.

“You said she could talk.” He was impatient, but more with himself than with the child. He had been ashamed, nearly fainting when the Drum stopped. He was an athlete, an accomplished charioteer, a champion. He had fought the battles of the King and, at twenty years of age, had killed more than fifty men, and sired more than ten. After his shame, her deformity meant little.

To the child,
the gorgeousness of his
seen
, unmasked face, in its frame of metal and metallic hair, his tall male body, so clean and strong, so blameless of anything but slaughter and sex, were beautiful, and nearly sorcerous. She had quite forgotten the priestess.

Perhaps he saw the fear melt from her eyes to fearful admiration. He had a little daughter too, in the hills below Mt. Airis. He crouched down and lightly put his firm young finger on the tip of her nose. “Can you give me a smile? It’s good news. Queen Udrombis has sent me to bring you home.”

The queens were in mourning, as was all Akhemony. And so, the Daystar Hetsa walked barefoot over the reflective floors of the palace, in a dull brown robe, without a jewel, to attend the summons of the Sun-Consort.

Only once before had Udrombis spoken to Hetsa. That had been on the festal evening Hetsa, then only sixteen, had gone up to the bedchamber of the King. Udrombis was then quite amiable. She did not seem jealous, but stern only in her words. She had made sure Hetsa, the daughter of a barbaric Karrad-king in Ipyra, knew the facts of congress, and inspected her clothes, and asked what perfumes had been used. Hetsa had been told she must be worthy of the honor of her role. She was to serve the mighty Sun. In this her own, Hetsa’s, honor lay. Hetsa had thought privately the Great Queen made a great to-do about it. Akreon had already had Hetsa, in her father’s house. What had honor to do with lust? It was riches that Hetsa wanted, standing, to be at Oceaxis. But she was outwardly timid and respectful. You did not cross the Consort. One had heard this and that, even in the wilds of Ipyra.

The huge room was exquisite, yet quite sparsely furnished. Udrombis did not care for clutter. On vast basalt paws, the two lions lay, holding up the writing table. She had scrolls, books, curiosities from many lands. She was as excellent, they said, as a temple scribe, and despite her age, her eyes were keen. Too keen, perhaps.

“Lady!” Hetsa bowed very low,
and remained bent over.

She had been told to leave her attendant at the door. There was no one to help her. Hetsa, unlike that first time, was shaking with anxiety.

Udrombis sat in her chair of carved cedar, looking at her, or not, making no sound. A minute passed, and Hetsa gave a gasp.

“Please, be comfortable, Daystar,” said the Sun-Consort, gently. “That chair should be quite pleasant. You haven’t been well.”

Hetsa straightened, found the seat, and sat.

She had attempted, before coming here, to make some plan, but obviously there was little she could do or say, now. The witch had forced her to write out the truth, the thing she had done previously, so long ago—the dreadful baby, undoubtedly long dead … How could it have been important? And yet, the beating in her womb had ceased, once the document, signed with Hetsa’s illiterate wiggle, had been carried off for the Consort’s attention.

Crow Claw sat watching her then, in the spent glare of the lamps. Old mischief-maker, old horror. It was her fault.

The following noon, waking from a dazed drugged sleep, Hetsa had learned other more vital things had occurred. Her petty crime was flung to second place.

“Madam,” said Hetsa now, in a breathless, crumbling voice, “our loss of the King—is terrible for everyone, and for all the lands. But for you—your anguish—my most humble condolences—”

“You are very tender, Daystar, to remember me, in your own misfortune.”

Hetsa shuddered. She broke out, “Oh, madam—I—was so young—I was frightened and foolish and wrongly advised. I thought only of the King’s honor—a deformed child—I—I—”

“You should then, as now,” said Udrombis, “have consulted with me.” She folded her white hands one over another. The gesture was implacable, like her smooth face. She had few lines. They said she was massaged daily—not for vanity, but to be worthy of her office. Even now, she would need to be worthy. No longer a King’s consort, even so, she remained a King’s mother.

As they talked together—if so you could call it—Glardor would be riding from his estates. The funeral of Akreon could not take place until the heir arrived.

Hetsa thought, oddly, in the depths of her unease, of Akreon’s firm, fierce, summer body, embalmed now, packed with spices, stiff and
dead.

The Sun declines
, said
the verse,
Kings go down also to their rest
.

He had foreseen it, had he not, standing on the terrace in the sun-fall, two suns descending together, the god, and the god-King, as one.

Did Udrombis mind it? Her keen eyes were dry. And yet, the black irises seemed veiled a little. She would continue with her duties, of which Hetsa’s sin was one. But within her heart, who could know?