Mortal Suns Read online

  Amdysos glanced at him, curious. He had already started with girls, and had been at pains to make little of it, in case Klyton should feel left behind. Klyton was only twelve, though one tended to forget. What was this, now?

  “A child? Do you mean marriageable, or what?”

  “Sun’s Light, no. Only a brat. Our half sister presumably, anyway. But pretty as pain.”

  Amdysos offhandedly made the circle. This expression, meant to placate skittish gods of toothache and minor injury, had never appealed to him.

  “Whose was she?”

  “How do I know? Do you think I pounded about asking? I just noticed her. She was worth a glance. Of course, sometimes when they have it so young, they lose their looks at ten.”

  “Oh. Indeed.”

  “But it was odd. In the responses, she didn’t get up. They had to lift her by her elbows. And put her back. She was carried in a chair.”

  “She’s crippled then,” said Amdysos. He scowled. “Such children used to be given to Thon.”

  “That’s the old ways. What they do in the back hills. That’s if they don’t just leave them on the ground for lynxes and wolves.”

  “It might be better. Would you want to live disadvantaged like that? It would be like going to battle with your hands tied together.”

  Klyton said, slowly, “I’d rather have the chance at life.”

  The dogs barked madly, and fell dumb.

  Both boys looked up, and in their turn, changed to granite.

  Up on the slope, a huge whitish shape had come out of the trees.

  Through the year after Akreon’s death, there had been many portents. The moon was seen to be red, or steel. Stars rained into the Lakesea. And a spotless scarlet bull was born in the pens at Artepta, with a white sun-flash on its brow, a tuft from whose tail was sent to Akhemony, to gift the new King.

  Maybe the pig was a remnant of these things.

  She was not as mighty as they had said, but still, she was extraordinarily big, and though clearly female, her tusks extended the length of a man’s forearm.

  She swung her head, looking at the two dogs, which had flattened themselves down now as though in homage. She did not seem angry.

  Klyton’s hand twitched over the boar spears. His eyes glowed at her. If she was not enraged, he was. Half the day searching, and now this.

  “No—wait—” Amdysos caught his wrist. “Look.”

  Behind the pig trotted two little ones, the shade of pinkish amber, young as a morning, scarcely on their feet.

  “She is a murderess,” said Klyton, very low.

  “And a mother. She’s not going to run at us. The gods would curse us if we took her unprovoked, seeing the litter.”

  “She’s sloughed out of season,” said Klyton.

  “Yes, but she’s not a normal pig.”

  The creature bent her head, snuffing at something. The leveling sun picked out in gold the lethal dainty bristles of her snout. Her tusks were white as snow, as if she had never done more with them than gore a tree.

  She looked peaceful, grazing like a ewe.

  Klyton rose, and rising, raised the spear. The action was fluid. A streak like one of the meteors tore down his arm, the spear stem—and then Amdysos shouted out.

  The pig started. She jerked aside, as the spear, its cast interrupted, dropped well short. Rather than brace herself for a charge now, she shook herself, and swinging abruptly around, nudged the little pink pig-children away, over the rocks, and back into the green shadows of the wood. She might only have found the bare mountain too warm.

  “By the Knife! Why did you—”

  “I’d said. A mother.”

  “Damn it, Amdysos. You’d give a cripple child to Thon. What does a bloody pig matter?”

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t right.”

  Klyton flamed. In his fury he might himself have fallen straight from heaven. Amdysos, who was fearless in everything, turned his head, as if from a blow.

  A wind rustled down the glades with the sound of sly laughter.

  I had seen him too, my half brother, Klyton. I had seen them all, as I always did, those beautiful metallic princes, the Suns who were the inheritors of the Great Sun.

  Taken out as I was, only for important events or festivals, this visual treat had assumed enchanted proportions. I craved it. I longed to gaze on them, the male gods I had been assured were my kindred. I saw few other than royal men there. Seldom men of any sort, anywhere.

  The Demayia, the first celebration of summer, was marked by the carriage of the summer goddess, from her little house on the shore, to the Temple of the Sun.

  I also had been ported to the temple, in my chair with golden clasps. I was dressed in saffron, for the goddess.

  Truthfully, I do remember—oh, far more clearly than yesterday—that I looked across the vast space of the temple, into which, on these occasions, now clad as a princess, I might go. Through the curtains of incense and the rain of flowers falling from the solar chimney to the altar, I saw one of the Suns, golden, with eyes like dark emerald, and these fixed on me. I was seared to my bones, and looked at once away.

  Never before had any of them, these lions, met my eyes. But I had not forgotten my first man, my glorious soldier, who had seemed despite everything I was told, to have rescued me of his own volition, from Death. He, it was a fact, had looked deep into my eyes on the road home, wrapping me in a fur against the coolness of spring, telling me I was pretty, and I would have liked his daughter. I had wanted to be his daughter. I had wanted to be his wife.

  But Klyton—to my seven-year-old eyes, he at twelve years—was also a man. A hero, a deity, stepped from the paintings on the walls of the palace. And beside, him, my long-ago rescuer was only a flame to the Sun.

  When Klyton looked, had he seen me?

  I wanted so much to dream of him, but all I had that night were my waking dreams. Imagining I should meet him—but where, and how? Would he mind, that I could not walk? She had said, the Queen, they might not mind, if everything else were beyond reproach.

  Fortunately, I had the sense to say nothing to my guardian. Ermias was fretful and snappish all that day. Mokpor was long gone by then, and her current lover had not appeared. She had gained some weight, which she did not like. She would even shout at her fat, as though it were some malign spirit which had attached itself to her without her consent or knowledge.

  She blamed me. I had restricted her. She must always stay with me, was not free to roam, to dance with the other women, had nothing to pleasure her but sweets. I had ruined her life.

  Curled in my bed, the luxury of which I now expected as a usual thing, I visualized meeting Klyton on a long stair. He paused and said, “Are you the one they call Calistra?”

  The inchoate sexual excitement that comes before unforced physical impetus is strictly possible, flooded my body. For in my mind, my inner eye, he stood as real as in the flesh, his hair like carven sunlight, and his body hard, spear straight, and utterly alien; a lord of a second race.

  So he stands still, my brother. In my inner eye. He will never change for me. Not a boy now, but a man. Thereafter ageless. For as long as I shall live.

  Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

  My mistress took up just now, her Muhzum. It is of hyacinthine enamel, bound with silver. She opened it, and regarded for some minutes the contents.

  She does not often do this now.

  When she was younger, in her seventies and eighties, she might do it even once every day, usually at twilight. And then the color of the keepsake blended with the color of the sky, and so she seemed to hold the very sky in her hands.

  Of course, the Muhzum contains all that is left of her brother, Klyton. The first Battle-Prince Shajhima gave it to her, but she has not yet told me when. It will be in the narrative, I expect.

  The relic used to make her sad and then contemplative. Now, she held it like a new and unknown object. I asked if I could bring her anything. She said she would h
ave the juice of a pomegranate. When I returned, the Muhzum had been put away.

  2

  A month and some days after I had first gone back to the palace at Oceaxis, I was carried into the presence of the Widow-Consort, Udrombis. I went in the arms of the same slave who took me about at the funeral. Even so, it drew some atteption; Ermias, walking by us, parried interrogation from those who approached. “I can’t say. You must wait and find out.” Doubtless that increased any speculation. I was only four, and felt bewildered, embarrassed even.

  Of the Great Queen, I was frightened. Ermias had said Udrombis would have me hurt if she did not like me, which was very foolish of Ermias. If I had thought to blurt this out, she would have lost her guardianship, then prized, and maybe worse. Any way, she was left outside at an inner door.

  Behind Udrombis’s apartments was a terrace. It looked down on the gardens and so to the inner sea. The day was rather warm, the almost tideless waters silky. In the gardens I could see a statue of a boy carrying an urn, from which burst a bush of yellow flowers.

  The Queen sat in one of her cedar chairs. She still wore mourning, as she was in fact to wear it all her life. But she had put on golden sandals, and fabulous glittering jewels. It interests me now, to consider that she must have meant me to be impressed, had known I would be—I, who was then four, and might mean nothing at all. Again, surely, not vainglory. My awe was thought to have use.

  The man set me on a stool, and left.

  There was no one else.

  She looked at me a long while, and when I lowered my eyes in fear, she said, “No, child. Look up.”

  She wanted to see. And presently she got up and came over. As they do in the better slave-markets, she felt my hair, my skin, smelled my breath, examined, gently but inexorably, teeth and eyes. Last of all she lifted the skirt away, and explored with her eyes and fingers, the stumps which ended my legs.

  Then she straightened. She clapped her hands, and a slave girl came out, graceful as a swan, which, then, I had never seen, and put a dish of little cakes by me, and a cup of the honeyed juice I preferred to milk.

  I had pleased Udrombis. And she had shown me, without a word.

  Being too scared still to try the cakes, which looked very appetizing, I slaked my nervous desert of a throat with juice.

  She watched this too.

  “You have learned some manners. Is that Ermias?”

  “Yes, madam.” Ermias had instructed me how to address the Queen. Only on state occasions did all her alarming and child-unrememberable titles have to be employed.

  “I must tell you, Calistra, the gods were unkind to you, but also generous.”

  I sat, speechless, confused. What had the gods to do with me? I was nothing.

  Udrombis rested her head on her hand, bending her eyes on me. They were black as night. And I must not look away. I trembled. Then she desisted. She looked instead out towards the boy with the flowers. This was her courtesy, her tact, and to a child of four.

  “You have been deprived of feet, Calistra. But you have great beauty. You’re sweet and wholesome. There is only this one flaw. Understand now and for all time, you are a princess. Your mother was a Daystar queen, and your father the greatest man in the world, the Great Sun, Akreon. Though he is dead, he will live for ever in memory, and, my child, through you, as through all his children.”

  Somewhere near, a bird began to sing in the garden.

  Udrombis smiled. She said, “Do you hear the kitri? You shall be taught to sing as prettily. You shall have every skill a princess should have.” She turned one quick yet lingering look on me. It was meant to impress me, and it did. Her eyes were like black rays of light. “Your father has descended to the lower world. His immortality in this one must depend on us. You were sent away through an error. Your mother was foolish, but she’s gone. I stand in place now of this woman. I tell you, Calistra, that you are, despite your deformity, a fitting daughter of the Sun House. But you must strive. Since in one area you’re less than others, you must elsewhere excel them.”

  I sat. I looked into myself. I was nothing. What could I do? All my delicious month here, in this place of wonders, after Thon’s hell, had been fraught with trepidation. An old woman, a phantom, had comforted me once, in a dream. Other than that, I had no reference.

  I listened with my infant’s ears to Udrombis, from whom a power flowed like the magnetism of amber.

  “You will be our treasure, Calistra. Because you can make, once you are grown, through your beauty, a marriage to serve this house. And, by that marriage, you will bring your father to life once more, in your sons. Do you understand?”

  I faltered something. She knew I could not understand. She knew I would never forget her words. Nor have I forgotten them.

  One might say that my life began after this, and that Udrombis, Sun-Consort, Great Queen, the Mirror of the Sun, King’s Mother, now a widow, gave it me. Hetsa had had no rights to dispose of me. But if Udrombis had not liked me, if I had been plain, if even, maybe, my fright had made too acid my breath, she could have had me killed, mercifully and painlessly, as she had killed my stupid, wicked, sad mother.

  But I was a utility. The gods had robbed me and gifted me. I had use as a token of union and treaty, for the province-countries of the Sun Lands must always be secured. And beside, there were thought to be other lands, beyond the Endless Sea, which had—it seems—some end. One day, not Glardor, but one of the other Sun Princes sprung from Akreon’s loins, might foray there, and bring home another world to add to our own.

  More even than that I, being attractive, when grown, could entice from men their seed. I could make new men. I could restore Akreon to the earth in form at least.

  I had been given the apartments of my dead mother. Perhaps obviously, I thought Ermias owned the large rooms with their painted walls and crimson pillars topped by snakes, and in the outer room, the little pool, where the turtle played. I thought Ermias owned the turtle too, and so never even asked to feed it. This was my first request, two days after my interview. Udrombis had somehow made me know, with everything else, that Ermias did not have all the power there, that was—I.

  “She’ll peck you. You may think she can’t bite, not having teeth. But watch out.”

  However, the turtle was docile, and when I stroked her shell, that had on it a sort of shadow-map of some invented land, Ermias made a hissing noise, and went away.

  Now to the rooms came new people, all women, but for one old man. He it seems had been a famous athlete once, at various sacred games. He instigated for me, through certain trained women servants, the exercise program that was to save my body from an utter distortion.

  No more must I use canes, which might throw my spine awry. Now I must be lifted, and elsewhere learn to lift myself, and swing by a hanging bar, and, lying on the floor, curl and roll and twist, and, lying in the pool, juggle balls with the knees and calves of my legs. This at first amused me. Then I hated it and sobbed. The servants, thickset women who acted sometimes as assistants in the practice courts of the stadium at Airis, were patient with me. In their everyday role they were nothing, and might not touch, except in dire extremity, the body of a man. Having learnt the art of things from male tutors, however, they were in demand for work upon high-class women who had suffered any injury, or who had been harmed in childbirth. For this they were well recompensed.

  They seemed not to dislike a child. They lured me with sports and confectionery to my work, and when I had mastered everything, to greater performance and better tricks, with promises of stories, and sometimes demonstrations of the most amazing contortionist abilities, which they had gained years before and never lost.

  In two years, I would be nearly limber as a fish. Though I could not walk, I could twist and turn upon my bar like a snake off a column, and had all the agility of an accomplished child dancer—I, who could not put one foot upon the ground.

  They were very careful nevertheless, that my muscles should not bulge or b
e overly stretched. Tasks done, they massaged me lightly by the pool, where I would lie, dreaming upon the image of the green turtle, who in turn gazed back at me with eyes knowing all things, or nothing.

  Ermias was jealous. This must be true. Once she took to mimicing my antics, the fluid bends and turns of my arms and torso, screwing up her face as she did it. The older servant woman was there, the one with the scar along her cheek where once a charioteer had caught her, not meaning to, with his whip. She looked sidelong at Ermias and said, loudly, “Once there was a firefly saw a star. I can do that, said the firefly. But when the fly had done her very best, her fire went out. The star burns yet.”

  “You insolent sow,” shouted Ermias. “I’ll have you flogged.”

  “Been flogged,” said the woman. Unlike a princess, they had had no qualms at building up her frame as large as a strong man’s. “But I’d only take it now from the Sun Queen. Shall I go tell her you want that? Or will you try for me?”

  Ermias grew red as a lamp. She went away, again.

  The woman, whose name was Kelbalba, swung me round in a somersault from her big safe hands, catching my legs before any feet were needed.

  “Scum rises to the top of the jar,” she said.

  Then she told me a story in her rough voice, about the Daystar, and how she was the sister of the Sun, and loved him so much she would never leave him, although she always walked an hour behind him through the sky, to console men at his going down. The Daystar was not worshipped, she said, accept among the peasants. And yet, how lovely was her light, in the last of the evening.

  My education was taken in hand.

  The rudiments of reading, writing and simple numbers, which had been thrust at me in the House of Thon, were now expanded into long tutorials, which sometimes fascinated and sometimes irked me.

  Religion, too, was taught to me. I learned that the Sun had no other name and was only one. I was lessoned in the proper observances and prayers, and on how to conduct myself in his temple. To which, at the greatest festivals, I was carried throughout the year.