Mortal Suns (16 page)

The Sun shrine at Airis stood—perhaps still stands, for strangely, I do not know—above the town, but away, facing the mountain across the vineyards, grain fields and orchards of the plain. It is an hour’s ride from the palace-fort, by a good road.

Steps cut white in the hillside lead there, to the sacred groves of marroi and pine. The cedar of the god’s shade leans through yellow Maiden willows to a spring, which is reckoned healing.

The shrine is foursquare, a roof of gilded tiles on pale walls, with deep ruby pillars. The priests’ house, with its guest quarters and rooms of meditation, stretches down the slope behind, through the trees. You are meant not to see it, for the Sun, in his aspect of hunter and priest, likes solitude.

Red grapes wound around the lintel in summer and fall. No one stops them, they are the god’s bounty, like all things that grow and live. You see, I cannot give up speaking as if the shrine remains. Like all things of a god, of course, even if brought down, it does.

Klyton tied his horse by the cedar, where a trough was filled up daily for animals to take refreshment. He drew out the bronze cup and drank from the spring. It was a day of heat. He was nineteen, soon to be twenty.

Going into the porch of the shrine, he saw it cool, and smoky with shadow within. You could just see the glimmer of the god at his altar. Klyton touched the bell that hung outside.

After a minute, a priest came up the hill, and surprised Klyton, jogging his memory out of place.

“Are you here, Torca?”

“My lord,” said black Torca, approaching with his dragging walk, but a man of power now, in a white robe, the palms of his hands painted red, and a gold round for the Sun on his forehead. “Please be aware, sir, my service is here. However much I take joy in serving you elsewhere, when I may.”

Klyton nodded.
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to insult your vocation, Torca. It was any way a priest I wanted to speak to. But—since it’s you—can you tell me how my sister does?” Torca stood. Below, the spring sounded its ruffling rilling music. A harsh bird called in the sky, and Klyton glanced up. “They said there was a giant eagle spotted over Airis. Is it true?”

“Perhaps, my lord. I’ve not seen it. Meanwhile, your sister has no need of me. I believe she’s written you a letter.”

“Has she? I haven’t had it. Or—perhaps. The last fighting—you’ll have heard. A horde of bandits under Koi. I’ve been busy.”

“No doubt. No doubt your sister will have expected no reply.”

“But you say she doesn’t need you. What is it? Did she give it up?”

Torca stood on. Then he looked past Klyton, who was if anything an image of the Sun, into the plain below.

“No, my lord. She doesn’t need me now because she’s learned all I can teach. Kelbalba stays for her massage, that’s all.”

“Then—can she walk?”

“Didn’t you suppose, sir, she’d learn? You were so full of hope and passion at first, when you persuaded me to go.”

Klyton stared into Torca’s black eyes. “Are you chiding me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. I’ve been remiss. It isn’t I hadn’t thought of her at all. Is she as pretty as—what is it—two years ago?”

“My lord, there are no women of the line of Akreon less than lovely.”

Klyton raised his brows. “And she
walks
?”

“Like a goddess. I don’t lie. I never expected it, but I’m used to rough and ready men in the wars. She was trained like a dancer. She moves—like a dance. Slowly, you understand. She can never run, or hurry. She’ll never climb a stair without her cane. But on level ground, on the floors of a palace, my lord—well. You should go and see.”

“Is she in the life of the court?”

“No.”

“Udrombis, then, knows nothing of it?”

Torca said no word.

Klyton, feeling
himself to be a boy again, drew himself up, royal and tall and hard with Sun. “I’ll see you’re rewarded properly, Torca, beyond the fee. And the woman—Kelbalba, was it? She must have something, too.”

Torca unnervingly bowed. He showed Klyton that Klyton was sacrilegious, reducing a priest of the Sun to a servant who had done a service.

Klyton worked a ring off his finger. It was heavy gold with a green beryl. “I’ll give this to the god. To thank him. After that, can I talk to you, as a priest?”

“I should guess so, my lord.”

“It’s about the Race.”

When the Sun declined and evening drew on, flocks of birds fluttered up from the plain, to feed by the spring, where the priests left grain and seeds. They were the creatures of heaven. One heard at this hour, over their twittering as they gorged, then settled in the groves, the voice of the white pet cat, sacred to Phaidix, meowing discontentedly, shut in the priests’ house. At other times she might do as she pleased, but this hour was given safe to the birds.

Klyton, having prayed, and presented a young buck deer to the god, watched out the evening offering to the Sunset.

Do not forget us
…

He frowned as he listened. What had he done that evening before Akreon died? He had been off somewhere with Amdysos, and later they had played the board game in Udrombis’ rooms. And neither won.

Amdysos was at Oceaxis with his unwanted wife, Elakti. She was the bony, sallow daughter of some chief-king at Ipyra. Amdysos had had her; despite Glardor’s performances, it would have been an insult to her and her clan not to have done so, and wars once had been founded on less. One year later, she had borne a girl, as skinny and ill-favored as she. Amdysos said she wailed at him, the mother, growing dangerously hysterical, something the women of Ipyra were famed for. He avoided her as much as honor allowed. Glardor the Farmer had been at fault here. For Glardor himself should have wed her. It would have been a greater honor for her kin, and the King would have more excuse to let her alone.

The problem was, any way, finding sufficient to do. By now some position should have come the way of Amdysos, the last King’s last son. But he was only
there
. The bandits of Koi, a task really beneath them, had been a divertion, for such Suns as Amdysos, Klyton, and those others, children of the lesser queens, who thought themselves worth more than a seat at the tables in the Hall.

Klyton had
put this by.

He wanted the Sun Race. For this he had come up here. Since sixteen three times he had been left out, while Amdysos had raced twice. And, once, had won. But it was more than that. You could not speak, even brother to brother, of what lay within the caves of the mountain. It was a passage into manhood, needful as war, and sex.

Now Klyton came to ask the god to relent, to select him, and if not, to tell him why.

Amdysos had said, “You take it to heart too much.”

“It’s my right.”

“If the god doesn’t choose—”

“Oh, and did the Sun choose Elakti for you?”

They had not parted friends.

Observing the priests, Torca as well, at their own measured life, and presently eating in the house at the long scrubbed table, with its earthenware bowls and cups, and he, a King’s son, in one of the five princely chairs reserved for princes and kings, Klyton reasoned with himself. He doubted that the lots were connived at. Where would be the sense or gain? And besides, it would be a blasphemy.

Even so, coming here, making a lavish offering of gold, incense, and meat, gifts to god and priests alike, Klyton felt quite strongly the answer could not be cold.

He ate sparingly, as they advised, and went after supper with the old slave woman, who served the altars, the only woman allowed to attend there.

As they crossed the woods on the hill, the dark had roosted like the birds, folding down its broad inky wings, and stars blazed in patterns. Only the spring sounded now. The Heartbeat, unheard. And though the white cat passed, and the old woman saluted her for Phaidix’s sake, the cat was silent as a ghost.

On the threshold of the guest cell where he was to commune with the god, through the night which was the shadow of his day, Klyton stopped still. The old woman pulled off his boots, strong as an ox, and looked into his eyes.

He had
thought she was probably senile, but now, in starlight, Phaidix’s moon not yet high, he saw the curious intelligence in her face.

“Ask him, and he will,” was all she said, the ritual words. Before she went, he pressed a silver coin into her hand. Then she said, “Thank you, lord master. May it be a good dream.” But then again, as she went up the hill to the house, he heard her laugh, short and sharp, like a fox’s bark.

When he had shut the door, he undid his belt and took it off with the sword and knife. He stripped in the windowless place, and laved all his body with the chilling water in the urn.

Then going to the altar at the room’s center, he lit, with the tinder, the single lamp.

Coppery light rose up, and touched the ceiling, which was only a foot above him.

Klyton spoke softly, wondering if any listened. Whatever else, the god would do so.

“My fourth time to be drawn for the Sun Race. Your holy number is five. But
now
I must have it. I
ask
it of you. Or tell me why not.”

The flame curled over in the lamp. Klyton smelled a powdery, fermented smell. It was some drug in the oil. Well, the god spoke through a dream. If you did not sleep, how could he reach you?

Klyton went to the pallet and lay down.

For a moment, it was the cell, and dark but for the lamp. And then a gleaming copper column stood up through it, and through the room the priests were passing in their white robes, through the very walls, and next right through each other. And as this happened, sparks were struck body upon body, and hovered unextinguished in the air.

Klyton, Klyton
, said a voice.

“I am here.”

But it said nothing else.

Instead the ceiling dissolved, and he saw the sky of night, sequined with too many stars, each brilliant as a jewel, as the Daystar herself.

Klyton felt himself leaving his body. For a moment he fought this—and then he went up, and a power coarsed through him like nothing of the earth. And opening great wings, he soared out into the highest air, up among the stars, that were now each large as a queen’s silver mirror, hanging, turning and chiming about him.

He knew himself. He was the great eagle above the peak of the mountain. He felt his goldenness, the wings like flame, the beak of metal, and the eyes that were suns by night.

He flew.

Below, Akhemony,
but more—the other lands that lay about her skirts, Ipyra, Uaria, and islands that drifted out like pebbles on the glittering darkness of the sea.

The world was his subject. It was his.

Again the voice spoke to him.

Not before, since then it was not yours. Now is the time for you
.

He turned, wheeling, and saw his shadow skim over the earth in the shape of a sweeping sword.

Fire buoyed him up. And then he felt the silken rope which hung from his claws.

He looked. Though free to fly through the roof of the gods, he was secured safely to the mountains and the land. A being that was partly a woman and partly a serpent, held him, her slim white hands gripped in and gripping his claws, her face upturned, stretched and exquisite, like the face of a girl in sexual ecstasy, which first he had seen at Oceaxis.

Her mirroring silver tail coiled down and down.

He might fly as he wished, and she would anchor him. Though he might touch the gods, become the Sun, she would keep for him the citadel of the mortal ground.

Fire and air. Earth and water.

A paean of glory and gladness roared in him and seemed to burst him asunder, just as orgasm had seemed to, that first time. But it was life, not Death. And the god had answered all.

Riding to Oceaxis, Klyton’s two attendants found him unusually quiet. Normally he would speak, and joke with them, from time to time. He was one of those princes who, from his height, stayed gracious, even amiable and entertaining, when things went well. Upset or angry, he was seldom unfair, but often terse. They thought now this was the case, and let him be.

The road was excellent, and they only stopped once, for an hour, at noon. They reached the town at Oceaxis after midnight, skirted it, and went on to the palace.

They then expected he would lie in a little the next day, but he was awake before dawn. He went up to see the Dawn Offering on the East Terrace.

After breakfasting,
he was gone, with only the slave boy, who carried, in a roll of parchment, the astonishing thing the old woman had found, on the threshold of the shrine at Airis.

A slave opened the double doors, and Klyton entered the outer room. It was not so very large, this former apartment of one of the lesser Daystars, but pleasant enough, with a pool, a tiled floor, and a big turtle lying dozing there.

From the inner room came a faint noise of a slow drum, playing between the Heartbeat.

“Tell her,” he said, “her brother, Prince Klyton, is here.”

The slave bowed again, very low. Then she folded her hands, eyes lowered, and said, “You can’t go in, my lord. None of her ladies is here.”

“Then fetch one. Go on, hurry up.”

He did not speak roughly; the slave was pretty and had behaved correctly. She ran out, and he sat down on one of the chairs to wait.

Behind a screen of sea-ivory and oak, stood the bed of the chief lady, his sister’s Maiden, who should be here. Probably, if she was absent at this hour, she was in another bed entirely.

Did everyone treat Calistra so carelessly? Only the slave had had decorum, and she was a child.

Then the outer doors opened and a short but massive woman entered. She had rings of copper on her bulging arms, worn quite bare like a man’s, and a scarred cheek. She glared at him, making him want to laugh, to charm her.

He rose, as if for a queen.

“Lady, I’m Calistra’s brother.”

Kelbalba glared on. “Honor to you, prince, Son of the Sun. Which brother?”

He did laugh now. And through her eyes then flicked a glint of disapproving approval—a look he was used to from all sexes.