Mortal Suns (30 page)

Probably it needed no more. But there was more.

As his allies grouped in about Uros, ganging to him, shouting out to him to triumph and save them, the wonder was worked that ended everything.

No doubt the sun had slushed the snow. The valley in winter was known to be treacherous.

Even from the air, as I wait now with the circling, optimistic crows, I see the huge, invisible hand punch downward. The sight is so curious, it makes at first no sense.

It is the snow, packed under the horses and men of Uros’s massed battalions, which has given way.

As it caves inwards, slowly, more swiftly, too fast, like children at sport the little figures slither down, and are gone into purple dimness. Sixty or seventy sword lengths, the measure of the Sun Lands, the funnel in the earth has opened. The waving arms, the sunny splash of falling spears, all these are part of the game. The game of children, flies, or gods—

The ground roared as it took them in. Uros, bellowing again as he had in the Karrad’s hall, Melendor, too astonished to cry out, went down with it, and after them, the snows rushed, and washed over, to bury everything in pillows of white death.

When the roaring stopped, a silvery column of ice-spray rose high from the place, like a beacon.

The battle—faltered.
It was finished. Half the Ipyran force was gone. Akhemony gathered itself, watching, as the Ipyrans scratched for their dead, piled one on another seventy sword lengths down, under a bank of snow once more pristine, but for the marks of their digging.

Having unveiled himself, the Sun burned on. The sky was fantastically clear now, pastel as the youngest violets. From the mountains round about, slips of snow gracefully sailed down with the noise of mild sighs, booming in the gorges.

Nexor had accepted the surrender of the Ipyrans. He allowed them to continue digging out their dead.

The priests of Akhemony were making offerings now, on a make-shift altar in the valley. The smoke rose white on the colored sky.

The Great King’s army, tranquilized by its uncanny and abrupt victory, waited in silence, watching the smoke.

Nexor was ruddy and merry. He turned red-handed from the sacrifice. And made out, as his commanders did, a line of chariots and men moving carefully along the valley. They came from where the Karrad’s fort would be, Uros’s grandfather’s hold, but there were too few of them to suggest aggression.

The Great King raised his arms at his soldiers.

“The old dotard’s coming. To make peace. We’ll hang him here, from that handy tree.”

The men of Akhemony murmured. Nexor, as always, had misjudged their mood. When he should have courted them, he had stayed aloof. Now he was familiar. A rousing win against dire odds would have left them rowdy and still thirsty for blood. But what had occurred in Two Mile Valley had laid on them the shadow of an ultimate respect. In the prescence of gods, they had had the wit to lower their voices. But here was their High King, bawling and showing off like a nasty boy.

Adargon said, his voice carrying outward to the men, who repeated his words among themselves, “My lord, the Karrad’s old, and his son’s a child. He won’t have wanted to go against Prince Uros, who brought his own troops with him.”

“Yes?” said Nexor. He did not grasp what Adargon was saying. He turned and volleyed at the men, “Sack the town, eh, lads?”

Again
the men murmured, and stepped from foot to foot. Someone called out, “They’ve paid their dues.”

And a grumble of agreement sounded.

“What? I give you a town to sack and you don’t want it?” Nexor chided them, ridiculous and inappropriate. He was like some uncle joshing with a squeamish infant. The army did not like this.

Then Klyton was standing by the King. There was a spray of blood like rubies on his breastplate, and a thin cut which bled across his cheek. Nexor had been somewhere in the fight. Where, they wondered. He was very neat and clean.

Klyton said, so they could hear, “My lord, let it go. There’s not much worth taking in Ipyra.”

Someone else called from the crowd, “I’d like to take a yellow-haired girl.”

Klyton glanced. He said, “But you don’t need to
take
her, soldier. You can charm her, surely?”

At that, the crowd went up in laughter. You could see them slapping the caller on the back, tipping his helmet forward over his eyes, since the Sun Prince had got the better of him, and quite right.

Klyton let the mirth die off. They had needed it. Then he said, “Show mercy, my lord King, to the Karrad. Even the God spared him.”

The two or three chariots, and the men who had entered the valley with them, had now been taken possession of by Akhemonians. They were being brought towards Nexor, on his high place, by the smoking altar.

Nexor pushed Klyton aside.

“I’ll do what I think proper.”

A cloud went over the Sun.

An impossible dark bloomed, muffling the valley. It was like that phenomenon which is known in Pesh as an eclipse.

The soldiers made sounds, staring up, gesturing signs for protection. Nexor, too, put back his head to see.

It was not a cloud, but a bank—of birds. The crows of Ipyra, jet black, hundred on hundred of them, and in the midst of them another bird, far larger, which seemed to pull on the rest by the storm of his wings.

“Nexor,” Klyton’s voice rang out, speaking the King’s name without title, “pay attention to that. If you won’t hear me or any man,
listen to the sky.
”

He said
to me that as he uttered these words, the hair stood up on his head. In the deep cold of the mountains, no longer warmed by supernatural Sun, a comb of ice passed through the hair, the nerves and bones, of almost every man present.

The edge of the Sun tipped free of the bank of flying birds. But the light of the solar orb was lax now. And the colossal shade sank in over the Akhemonians, clustered to the altar; over the Ipyrans, who had ceased scraping out their dead.

It was a moment for stillness, but Nexor shouted again. He shouted those words of his he should not have had, ever, to use. “I am the
King!
”

The giant within the raft of crows was an eagle, they said. It was very large in size, though nothing like the monster at Airis. Nevertheless, seeing it, the soldiers began to cry oaths and prayers. Many fell on their knees.

And the eagle dropped from the cloud of crows. It beat downwards, and on its wings came all the dark heart of the sky.

Now must be given the answer, for Nexor had proclaimed himself what he was, the chosen of the god.

The Sun disc was all free now. Light broke over them. They saw, every man who dared to look, something pure white burst away from the eagle, and descend.

Shining bright as a pail of milk emptied from heaven, it dashed directly upon Nexor’s head, bared for the sacrifice, over his face and shoulders, down all his unsoiled armor. Anointed, he stood, spluttering, blinded, wildly wiping at his eyes and mouth, while his priests and servants, horrified, stayed rooted to the ground.

But from the army of the Great King another music began to rise, low at first, then boiling up and over.

The eagle lifted away. The birds of omen flew northward. The army rocked in its lines, squalling with joy, telling itself through its tears of ultimate amusement, the news, until several thousand voices took up those words as a lawless, bronzen chant. “The God—the God—the God has shat on Nexor.”

When the old Karrad had his interview with Akhemony, on the cold road, Nexor was not to be seen. It was Klyton who spoke to the Karrad, with Adargon at his side.

The Karrad
had dignity. With dignity he held out his hands, in the traditional manner, to be bound.

Klyton said there was no need for that. He understood the Karrad had been threatened by Prince Uros, his grandson, and had had no choice.

With these sentences, the Karrad concurred.

All this while, his comely, deep-breasted wife stood in the chariot with him. She had put on her priestess’s black but, around her neck was a copper ring set with milky green agates. She gazed at Klyton without insolence or modesty, from her two smoky eyes and the third eye embroidered on her brow.

Finally Klyton spoke also to her. “You can bring back your son, lady. There’s nothing to fear now.”

She said, straight out, “Make sure alliance with Ipyra, lord. Then we shall be safe.”

Klyton nodded. “I think so. But there are no daughters in your house.

Just then from across the valley, the soldiers’ chant, which they were still lovingly indulging in, drifted. Adargon grimaced, but Evonissa turned her head, listening.

After a minute, she looked again at Klyton. She addressed him clearly.

“The gods disdain to bring down a little man. They like to make him tall before they break him, as we make beautiful the beast for sacrifice.”

Klyton added to me, when he detailed her words, “I wasn’t certain, whether she spoke of Nexor, or of Uros.”

Of course, he could not know, as now I know too well. It was of Klyton himself that Evonissa spoke. Her third eye had seen through his shining day fires, to the greater spire of night beyond.

In the following month, most of the lords and Karrads of Ipyra came in, wrestling with the winter passes, to give homage to Akhemony, in the person of Klyton. Nexor had been put away like a poor knife in need of mending.

Among thc Karrads, there was one who brought a small army with him, declaring them as loyal to the Sun Kings as the Akhemoian troops. This man was, like dead Uros’s kindred, old, yet he rode by horse to the meeting, and had walked over the passes. Though his hair was white, it had been golden, and the beard he kept showed this still.

He had brought
a present for the King. Klyton received it. The gift was a book, a marvel, with pages of stone inscribed by a silver chisel, and polished with the dust of diamonds. The covers were also of stone, clasped in bands of electrum. It took two men to carry it with style. The contents, said the bearded Karrad, concerned legends of Phaidix Anki. In other words, here, it was a tome of sorcery.

Klyton was impressed by the book. He said the King would be given it, and would not quickly forget such a token. The bearded Karrad chuckled. He must have heard new-risen Nexor was having an early sunset.

“I never broke my faith with Akhemony,” the bearded Karrad announced. “In my mind, I’m bloodkin still to mighty Akreon.”

Klyton bowed. “I didn’t know it, sir. How is that?”

“My daughter was a jewel, a rare yellow-haired girl of Ipyra.” If Klyton considered the portent of the soldier’s called-out words, he put it by. “King Akreon beheld my daughter and wed her. She was some while a Daystar of the Great King, but her flowers withered of sorrow after his death. Her name was Hetsa.”

Happiness comes sometimes in dark disguise. As sorrow comes now and then hidden in a festive dress, with garlands in its hand.

I see, from time’s vantage, down that long cliff of my century, they walk together now, in my fifteenth year, and each is masked as the other.

Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

When Sirai had said these words, she paused some minutes then told me to set the paper by. Two days elapsed before she instructed me again to write.

* * *

From Oceaxis, winter withdrew itself. Moist days of cool Sun had tempted the buds on the trees, miniature flowers under dead leaves. The Lakesea was enamel smooth. Even the turtle roused herself, waddled from under my high bed, and sat in a gem of sunlight by the little pool.

I had heard of
the successes from Ipyra. Ermias had garnered too the story of Nexor’s disgrace. He had proved a ruffian and an idiot—and finally the god sent a sign of disapproval too exotic to ignore. She did not tell me what it had been.

Klyton and the Sun, Adargon, led the army now, though Adargon, it seemed, stepped back somewhat. He was nearly thirty, and had said, reportedly, everyone had seen in Glardor’s day what happened when men of his age took on leadership too late.

Had Nexor been full-crowned, all this might have been more difficult. But, as dead Melendor had declared, the time from winter to summer seemed to have left a space for trial. For Nexor himself, with a small entourage he had gone to consult the wisewomen in Ipyra’s most volcanic heights, far to the north. He knew now, at least and at last, when to be absent.

“The certainty is Klyton will be made Great Sun,” Ermias said. She looked straight at me. Then lowered her eyes.

“Yes,” I answered idly. Why would I care? He was my brother, one of many. He had never held me as a man holds a woman, lit fire in me with lips and hands. For was it not Klyton who taught me afresh that he and I might never be lovers, undoing all the house I had built upon my longing, tearing even my fantasies in pieces.

How had I lived since that night? God knows. I cannot remember. I lay deep in a sea of somber cold that made any winter midsummer noon. And in this hell, I had turned him about, my brother, my beloved. I had reviewed his thoughtless cruelty, his irrational and sudden strides towards me—then, forgetful, away. He had his life, where every second counted like a link in some endless gleaming chain. A woman was, as the saying went, a rose upon the way. Ornament, passtime, comfort—nothing of moment, ever. In my newborn cold, cold anger, I would not curse him. But I withheld my prayers. And see, he had done well enough without them.

Ermias reined her tongue, chose her words. She had often had to do it with my mother, Hetsa.

Nor did Kelbalba anymore broach the subject of my love. No one had had to inform her. She had seen my face that night he came to me and left me. She talked of other things, and sometimes told me her tales, but not very much. She knew I had far less tolerance now for dreams.

By her garments
and bearing alone, I knew the woman for one of Udrombis’s Maidens. She bowed slightly to me. She said, “The Queen-Widow of the Great Sun Akreon, wishes you to present yourself at the third hour of afternoon.”

In my inertia, I was not immediately very unnerved. But I thought, once the woman had gone, that I must have erred in some way. How?
I
had no scope to commit any crime. And then I thought perhaps Udrombis had discovered Klyton’s unchaperoned visit to me. This did frighten me. I had learned much of her. She was severe, ruthless, uncompromising. And I—was nothing, easily swept away.