Arrows of the Sun Page 32

Asadi sighed, gazing into his emptied cup. Korusan wondered if he had magery after all; if he could scry in the dregs of his tisane.

  Absurd. Insulting, to look on the Master of the Olenyai as a village soothsayer. “It will come to a crux, my prince. Then you will be forced to choose.”

  “What choice is there?” Korusan demanded with a flash of heat. “I am not a traitor. I do not forget what I am.”

  “But how will you prove it, my prince?” asked Asadi. His voice was gentle. “Our allies will force you to a conclusion. I hold them off as best I may, but my strength is hardly infinite. They wish this Sunlord dead. They will kill him, or break his mind, unless you move before them.”

  Korusan’s stomach knotted and cramped.

  He should have known it would do that. But he was master of it, just. “All of you have plans and purposes, plottings that you labor to bring to fruition. So too do I. Are you as a great a fool as the mages are, to think me a brainless child, incapable of choosing my own times and places?”

  “Hardly,” said Asadi, “or we would never have yielded to you in this. And now the quarry leaves the lair. It will be more difficult for the spells to bind him while he rides under the sky.”

  “But also easier for death to take him,” Korusan said, “where his defenses are dissipated, and any man may come at him. And he goes straight into the rebellion that the mages have fomented.”

  “So I argued,” said Asadi, “and so I was permitted to conclude. But our allies are not well pleased.”

  “Let them be displeased,” said Korusan, not without pleasure in the thought, “if only they grant me my will. Bid them loose their spells. We have no need of them.”

  “They will call it arrogance,” said Asadi.

  “And you?”

  Asadi shrugged, one-sided. “I think that you may have more power over him than they believe, but less than you might hope. He goes where his whim moves him. Can you guide him?”

  “I have no need,” said Korusan. “He goes where I wish him to go.”

  “Into the fire, aye. And then, my prince?”

  “And then,” said Korusan, “we take him.”

  Asadi inclined his head. He did not quite believe it, Korusan could see. And if he was doubtful, the mages must be reckoning Korusan a traitor to all their cause.

  Korusan lifted his chin and hardened his heart. So be it. Hate was older than love, blood stronger than the bond of flesh to flesh. He would do as he had always meant to do. Whatever it cost him.

  o0o

  The escort was waiting at sunrise. The emperor must be the last of them, for when he came, they would ride.

  Estarion did not find it difficult to drag his feet. Maybe he should wear the mail. Or the corselet. Or the full parade armor. Maybe his hair should be plaited, or knotted for the helmet, or—and at that his servants howled—cropped to the skull. Maybe he should go back to his bed and rise for morning Court, and forget that he had ever dreamed of escape.

  In the end he wore mail, a glimmering gold-washed coat over supple leather, and he wore his hair in a priest’s plait, with his torque for a gorget. He had a cloak for the people to wonder at if they ever looked up so high, white plainsbuck leather lined with golden fur—not lion, it was too clear a gold. Sandcat, the servant said: a lithe sharp-nosed creature the length and breadth of an Asanian’s forearm, that lived in cities like a man.

  Estarion doubted that it went to war. Only men did that.

  He pretended to break his fast. He drank the honeyed wine, picked at something that maybe had been roast plowbeast before they spiced and stewed it and wrapped it in thin unleavened bread. When it was well dismembered, he reached for the winejar to fill his cup again.

  There was a hand on it before him, and eyes above that. Golden eyes.

  The breath left him in a long sigh, even as Korusan said, “You grow too fond of the wine. If you will not eat, then drink this.” He poured out warm thornfruit nectar, thinning it with water and a fistful of berries from a bowl.

  Estarion eyed it with great mistrust, but he essayed a sip. “This is good!”

  Korusan did not dignify that with an answer. He spread a napkin and began to fill it with the less fragile of the delicacies.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You must eat,” said Korusan, “but you must ride, and the sun is rising. Will you keep your escort waiting?”

  “My escort will wait as long as it must.”

  Korusan knotted the napkin and slipped it into his robes. Estarion wondered, brief and absurd, if the razors from the bath were still there somewhere, in a hidden fold.

  The Olenyas tugged his robes into place, settled his swords in their sheaths, and said, “Your majesty is ready to ride.”

  His majesty was ready to upbraid him for an insolent child. He found himself, one way and another, striding through the maze of rooms. He gained followers as he went: guards, servants, people who not quite stared and not quite muttered and were, for Asanians, open in their curiosity.

  He hoped that he obliged them. He walked as tall as he knew how, and put on a swagger that was half despair.

  Dank air struck his face. There was no sun. The sky was grey, with rain in its belly, or possibly sleet. He halted under it. If it rained—if there would be sun tomorrow—

  The escort was drawn up in ranks, waiting for him. The black mass of the Olenyai, separate and haughty. The scarlet blaze of his Guard. His mother’s strong women in their green livery, and she in front of them, warded in mail, armed with bow and knife and sword. Iburan was at her right hand in the plain robe he affected in Asanion, and his priests behind him.

  Some of them were women. One was Vanyi.

  Estarion’s jaw tightened. There was someone else in the empress’ following, a small figure on a sand-colored mare. She had no escort that he could see. She had a mail-coat: where in the hells had she found that? The bow in its case he knew, and the arrows. He had given them to her. She had found a knife somewhere. No sword. He would have to find her one.

  A groom held a mount for him. It was not Umizan: there had been no time to bring him from Induverran. Estarion paused to make this new beast’s acquaintance.

  It was not one he knew, and not, he was pleased to observe, the golden plowbeast he had been forced to ride into Kundri’j. This was a tall striped dun with ell-long horns.

  Estarion smoothed the mane on the stallion’s neck. It was striped like the rest of him, golden dun and glossy black. His eyes were amber, bright yet quiet. He breathed sweet breath into Estarion’s palm.

  Estarion mounted in a smooth long leap. The senel was steady under him. “Has he a name?” Estarion asked the groom.

  The man dipped his head. “Chirai, majesty,” he said.

  “Chirai,” said Estarion. The black-rimmed ears tilted back. Estarion gathered the reins. He could turn still, ride out of this court and into the stableyard, dismount, pull his walls about him.

  Or he could urge the dun stallion toward the gate. His breath was coming in gasps. His hands were cold, even the one that burned and throbbed.

  Idiocy. He was Estarion of Endros. He hated walls; he craved the open sky.

  His senel settled it for him. As if he had given the command and not sat like a stone, Chirai moved softly forward. The rest fell in behind them.

  The Regent of Asanion waited under the Golden Gate. There were men with him, lords of the High Court, and guards armed and armored. Estarion knew, looking at them, that they would stop him. They would offer battle; they would hold him captive until he died.

  Chirai kept his steady pace. Firaz waited in silence. A spearlength from his mount’s lowered horns, Estarion halted. “The emperor will pass,” he said.

  Firaz bowed his head. “Will the emperor reconsider?”

  “The emperor must do as he will do.”

  Estarion barely breathed. Firaz looked full in his face, which was boldness beyond belief, had Estarion been Asanian. But he was not. He smiled a sword-edged smile.<
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  “You are,” said Firaz at last, “the emperor.” It was a capitulation, and a challenge.

  Estarion acknowledged them both. “Guard my palace,” he said.

  “Fight well,” said Firaz, “and return well to that place which is yours.”

  “So I do intend,” Estarion said. He touched heel to Chirai’s side.

  Firaz bent his own senel aside. As Estarion passed man and mount, he said, “Take comfort, lord Regent. If I’m killed, the next emperor can only be more proper than I am. And if I live—why then, maybe I’ll have learned decent manners.”

  “One does not learn propriety in battle,” said Firaz, “my lord.” He bowed lower than he ever had, down to his stallion’s neck. “May your riding prosper, my lord emperor. Believe that I speak truly; that I wish you well.”

  “I never doubted it,” said Estarion. “Believe that, too, my lord Regent.”

  o0o

  Estarion emerged from Kundri’j Asan like a snake from its skin. Slow at first once he passed the Golden Gate and the lord who held it, with a tearing that was like pain. Then swifter, winding down the Way of Princes, rising from walk to trot to smooth rocking canter.

  Hooves rang on paving stones. The silence of Asanian homage was profound and for once undaunting. The great fear was before him: the last gate; the bridge over the river, and the broad wall-less plain.

  As he passed the gate and mounted the arch of the bridge, a thin rain began to fall. His cloak kept it out, but he was bareheaded, with nothing between him and the sky but a circlet of gold. He tipped his head back. He could fall, fall forever into the endless sea of cloud.

  Rain kissed his face. His mount carried him with unruffled calm, down from the bridge and the river, stride by stride away from the ninefold walls. He fell out of the sky to the vastness of the plain, grey as clouds itself, and no walls, no walls as far as he could see.

  His whole body shuddered. His mind shrank. It gathered all its force in its center; held, clenched in upon itself; and bloomed like a flower of fire.

  He had power. He had magic—he, the maimed one, the blinded fool. He had never known truly how much he had, nor known how much of it was blunted within the walls of Kundri’j Asan. He laughed with the shock of it, half in incredulous joy, half in terror.

  His escort spread behind him, Asanian, Varyani, divided as enemies must always be. But there was a yellow woman in the empress’ following and an Olenyas in his own shadow, black robe amid the scarlet of his Guard.

  His senel bucked lightly, startling him. He gave the stallion his head. The stallion swung from canter into gallop, and from gallop into flight.

  37

  Vanyi had no need to ask who was the stranger in the empress’ following. She was the only Asanian, and the only one mounted on a horn-browed mare out of Varag Suvien. The headdress was Suvieni too, the headcloth drawn up over the face and secured in a circlet. Vanyi knew who must have taught her that expedient.

  So much, Vanyi thought, for Iburan’s hope of wielding her in Estarion’s defense. This chit of a child would see to that.

  The first night out of Kundri’j, they stopped in Induverran. Estarion was reunited with his blue-eyed stallion: touching and unexpectedly amusing when Umizan met the senel whom Estarion had ridden from the city.

  The black charged upon the dun, ears flat, horns lowered, hooves pounding. The dun stood with head up, alert but unalarmed.

  As Umizan surged for the kill, Chirai pirouetted neatly out of his path. When Umizan came back, raging, Chirai snorted as if in exasperation and eluded him again, and yet again.

  They danced the full circle of the field, until Umizan thundered to a halt, blowing and foaming, and stamped. Chirai flicked an ear, lowered his head, began coolly to graze.

  Vanyi’s sides ached with laughter. Even the Olenyai were amused. Estarion walked over to his sweating, seething, baffled blue-eyed brother, wrapped arms about his neck, and leaned against him until he quieted.

  The rain had ended a little while since. Darts of sun broke free from the clouds, striking blue-black fire in Umizan’s coat and Estarion’s hair, turning Chirai’s striped hide to bars of black and gold. Vanyi sneezed.

  “Are you well?”

  Vanyi glanced at the one who had spoken. Not so small, standing next to her: a palm’s width the less, maybe, holding herself very straight in her desert tribesman’s veil. She did not seem to know who Vanyi was.

  “Do you have a name?” Vanyi demanded of her.

  She blinked at the sharpness, but she answered without hesitation. “Haliya. You?”

  “Vanyi.” It was not intended to be polite.

  The Asanian’s eyes widened. They were an improbable shade of gold, like coins. “Then you are—”

  “Yes, I was his bedmate. I’d have thought you’d know.”

  Haliya blinked. Vanyi sensed no enmity in her, nothing but interest, and puzzlement that might be for Vanyi’s rudeness. “Of course I knew,” she said. “But he didn’t say that you were beautiful. Your skin is like milk. Mine,” she said with evident regret, “is more like well-aged cheese.”

  Fine ivory, Vanyi would have said, from what she could see of it. “He likes a pale-skinned woman.”

  “I don’t think he cares,” said Haliya, “as long as he finds her interesting.”

  There were people about, but none of them was listening. They were all watching Estarion. He mounted Umizan, bareback and bridleless, and rode him bucking and curvetting across the field.

  Haliya sighed. “I broke my arm the last time I tried that.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Haliya was difficult to offend. She laughed in her veil. “That’s what he said, too, when I told him. But I did. I was a terrible child. Of course,” she said, “when I went for that particular ride, it was my father’s herd stallion, and no one ever rode him at all. I should have known what he’d do.”

  “I begin to see,” Vanyi said slowly, and not without humor, “why he finds you interesting.”

  Haliya did a thing that left Vanyi speechless. She slipped her arm through Vanyi’s and said, “I’m glad he brought you. I was afraid I’d be the only one.”

  Vanyi could not break free as easily as she might have expected. Haliya was strong, and though her eyes smiled, her grip was steely hard.

  “He didn’t bring me,” Vanyi snapped. “I came with the priests.”

  “I made him take me,” said Haliya. “He didn’t want to. He thought I should stay with the others.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I wanted to ride,” Haliya said. She sounded very young and very determined. “So he did mean it. He wasn’t going to bring anyone for the nights. Is that a sickness, do you think? Or is it something they do in Keruvarion, to teach themselves about pain?”

  Sometimes Vanyi wondered if Asanians were human at all. They did not think like anyone else she knew of, even syndics in the Nine Cities, who were surpassingly strange.

  Haliya answered herself, since Vanyi was not going to. “He’ll be choosing ladies in the cities, then. He didn’t before, and he offended people. Now he understands what’s proper.”

  “Don’t you ever get jealous?” Vanyi demanded of her. “Can’t you conceive of wanting him for yourself?”

  “That’s selfish,” said Haliya.

  “And you’re a perfect saint?”

  Haliya drew herself up, still holding Vanyi’s arm, and said with dignity, “I do try to show a little honor.”

  “It’s not honor where I come from,” said Vanyi, “to let one’s man go without a fight.”

  “Are you going to fight me? I’m no good with a sword, but I can shoot.”

  Alien. Vanyi pulled free and stood rubbing her arm. “The usual method,” she said acidly, “is to exert oneself to gain the man’s complete and total favor.”

  “So that’s why he said he could only manage one at a time. He feared for his life.”

  Vanyi gaped at her.

  Haliya patted he
r hand. “I suppose you can’t help it. You’re foreigners. You don’t understand the right ways of doing things.”

  o0o

  “I see you’ve met the lady of the Vinicharyas.”

  Vanyi paused in folding the vestments from the sunset-rite. She would have liked to pretend that she did not know whom Iburan spoke of, but there could be no such simplicities among mages. “She’s very . . . original.”

  “I would call her interesting.”

  “So would his majesty.” Vanyi smoothed the last white robe and laid it in the traveling-chest, and turned to face him. “Were you expecting bloodshed?”

  “Asanian women don’t fight over men.”

  “So she told me.”

  Iburan closed and locked the box in which they kept the vessels of the rite. His fingers traced the inlay of its lid. “She brought no maid and no attendants. That’s shockingly improper for one of her station.”

  “Surely the empress is chaperone enough.”

  “The empress can’t be expected to wait on her.”

  Vanyi did not like where this was leading. “I may be a commoner, but I am not a servant.”

  “You serve the god,” said Iburan.

  “I do that.” Vanyi kept her eyes level on his face. He was not allowing her to read it, or the mind behind it.

  “I have been thinking,” he said, “that she’s very much alone. And Estarion isn’t keeping her with him.”

  Vanyi should not have felt that stab of vindictive pleasure. “She told me that. She seemed to think that he’d be warming his bed with a selection of provincial ladies.”

  “Not likely,” said Iburan. “Not on this riding, when he’s a clear target for any assassin who happens by. As, I’m thinking, is she. She’s Asanian; she rides like a man; she’s clearly been corrupted. She would be a potent object lesson, and a valuable hostage.”

  “He hasn’t thought to set guards on her?”

  “He’s set his mother on guard, and the whole company of her escort.”

  “But?” said Vanyi. “There is a ‘but,’ isn’t there?”

  “I think,” Iburan said, and he said it very calmly, “that she needs more than that. She needs someone who can ride with her, keep her company, ward her with magecraft.”