Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah
The nightingale has come back, to the tree beside the pool under the tower. Sirai is pleased and sits listening as it trills in the blue dusk.
She reminded me that in Akhemony, they called it the kitri, the honey-bird. And of the song she made, which compares the nightingale to memory, flying as it wills, returning often to a particular tree, where sometimes it so sweetly sings. But shadows come also to the tree.
I REMEMBER HOW THE ROWERS sang on and on to the beat of a drum, louder than the heart of Akhemeny, working us through the hot, windless sea. They were Bulote men, the ship a Bulote ship, one of two he had taken at the little port of Belba. They had been turning for Oceaxis, but Klyton paid the men to put the cargo off, and board us instead. They did not know who he was, and took him for some Akhemonian noble. Their dialect is complex, and in it the word for king is like the word for lord. Only the title Great Sun has a separate meaning, and this was never used in front of them.
They did not want to go, either. But they were given gold.
A temple to Thon Appidax sat on the shore, facing out the way we would be making, to the Island. It was not like the houses of Thon elsewhere in the region. As Appidax, Thon is a youth, comely, with long black hair, a form the Death god assumed once, when he went, unusually, wooing. For the sake of that human lover, Thon Appidax may be placated, and asked to desist—or at least to wait. The dying often sought such shrines, to beg more days, or those on a dangerous journey bribed the god.
From the temple, which had four pillars dyed with cobalt, and a roof of red tile, our sailors and rowers came to the ships, laden with amulets and blessed bread for the voyage. The oracle, an old sightless woman masked only by her blindness, had assured them only one of the party would suffer immediate death. Though they were unnerved as to whom that would be, the felling of one among so many seemed worth the risk. Besides, the fatality might be in the ranks of the noble and his men, not theirs.
Adargon had said, “Klyton, my lord, no one goes there now. The Island is cursed.”
“Then it will suit me, won’t it. No, naturally I don’t mean that. The thunderbolts were my omen, Adargon. I must go where I am shown. That brought me the crown of the Sun Lands. I won’t believe the gods intended it to be snatched away.”
He had spoken very much in this vein. He would pace, or sit almost still twisting something—a knife, a fruit—in his hands. And he would say to us, those close about him, I was given the Kingship. This was never meant. There will be a way to put it right.
As we rode from Oceaxis, he had already decided on a portion of his course. He had Daystar wives in Uaria and Oriali, little girls he had wed deliberately too young, then garlanded and gifted, kissed on the lips, and left intact with their families, until they should be fifteen or sixteen, as old as his present Sun Queen, Calistra. But with Artepta a betrothal had been arranged, a princess of eighteen years, daughter of one of the triumvirate Pehraa, their kings, who ruled always by three, and whose bloodline had run also in Udrombis. This princess had been kept for the Sun House. Artepta was a powerful and isolate land, peaceful and slow to move, but with a vast army of priest-warriors, and the capabilities for many things, which the scholarly reckoned above anything known elsewhere. Esoterica, magic, marvels of architecture and science, and weapons, too, beyond anything employed in the upper Sun Lands. One had heard the tales of what Arteptans were. Udrombis had been an awesome ambassadress, though only partly of their blood. And I do not forget Torca who had enabled me to walk, and helped drive Klyton from his Kingdom.
Klyton said to me, “I must marry this woman, and perhaps another daughter, from one or other of the three kings. Don’t mind it that I seem to value these women. You see why.”
I was meek and affectionate, pliant to his will, trained like the dog. And so much had gone against him. I must not, even in the slightest thing. It was not that I had come to be afraid of him, not yet. But, as once before, I seemed not to know him. He radiated a hard and fascinating light. Not much more than a thousand men, some three hundred of them Sirmians, had followed him from Oceaxis. Those held by the fire of him, hung from his Sun, now too brilliant, and now in cloud.
We had been making for Sirma, so it was thought. Then Klyton drew us up again, northeast, to Belba. He had said to Adargon, no ship would have put out from Oceaxis for the Island.
At Belba, he gave the bulk of the soldiery over to Adargon, and in the wagons put presents, selected on the night we chose our possessions for our future life. “Go and speak to them in Artepta. You have my letters to the Pehraa. Add what you like. Only the facts. You only need set them out. I am King. Artepta is always gracious, and worships justice, and so on.”
With about sixty men loaded on the larger Bulote ship, a vessel of two oar-banks and double sail, Klyton put himself and his household, such as it now was, with ten guards, into the lesser galley that had fifty rowers and a single sail the color of brown Bulote mud.
Our ship had for her figurehead the goddess of the river up which they had sailed into the Lakesea. They wreathed her but bound her eyes. They did not want her to see the direction they were steering her. Which was to the Sun’s Isle where a piece of the Sun had fallen, in the time before time.
They had called their council in Oceaxis. By then, a deputation had come from the Sirmian troops in Akhemony led by a kinsman—so he called himself—of Klyton’s: one of the spear-wife Bachis’s uncles. He declared the Sun Lands would be plunged into anarchy if the King was no longer King. But the Sirmians were thought mostly savages, and did not have the weight of savage Ipyra, who had not yet learned the plan. If Klyton sent the Karrad-king, my grandfather, any word, I do not know. Probably not. Ipyra might fly either way, to Klyton’s standard or back into her rebellions.
The days dragged on for me there, shut in the tiny continent of my royal rooms. Food was brought, elaborate and artistic, and I shared these feasts with my dog and my two women, Choras, who was ten, and Nimi who was only a year or two older. One of my new guard came in to remove the dead turtle. My throat closed and ached at this, but no tears would come. He said he would have them scour out the precious carapace, and bring that back to me. Then I felt a piercing. I told him no, she must be buried with her shell intact upon her. But I saw his eyes. So I said, distractedly, I had changed my mind, we would see to it ourselves. I did not want to offend him, because danger seemed all around. Nimi and I carried the turtle to a huge chest, and put her down on silks, and covered her. Choras sprinkled spices. We locked and sealed the chest from the air, and got it away into the vacant rooms my women had occupied. I wrote on the lid in the script of Akhemony: A faithful one lies here. Leave her untouched. Alcos emai. Ancient queens had buried pets in this manner in the distant past, having the caskets installed later in their own tombs.
As for the doves, they never returned. Like the doves, my women. It interested me vaguely when we were on the road from Oceaxis going South at first towards Sirma, that Bachis the spear-wife, and her child, had managed to keep most of their small retinue. She might as well not have bothered, for Klyton set all but one girl and the Maiden loose on the road, as too much baggage.
I had told Klyton, in their hearing, that Nimi should now be my Chief Maiden, and Choras a Maiden too. Nimi blushed with delight. Her mercenary innocence warmed me. Choras only gazed at me raptly. To her I was almighty, having rescued her from Koian Thon. I would do no wrong, and could, ultimately, never myself come to harm. And this unmercenary faith chilled. But I scarcely noticed. They were only there, with the dog.
Through all the days and nights until that afternoon, I had not seen Klyton. He had penned me one letter. He told me he was sorry for my discomfort. It would soon end.
Then, when he came—without all the customary flurry, for no one was there to make much fuss—he had people with him. A guard, and a secretary, an old slave he had kept by him since boyhood. The slave took an itinerary of my wants, and Klyton led me aside into my—our—bedroom, where despite the ravishing food I was brought, no one had been to sweep or tidy, to see to the perfumes for the bath, or clean it.
“Calistra—”
This was when I saw again that I did not know my husband. He burned so bright. He laughed and the shining coins of his laughter struck the walls.
“I’ve brought you down. The God knows, no fault of mine. Trust me, it won’t be for long. Isn’t that what the hearty peasant says to his wife in the bad year when the orchards don’t ripen? The God’s Heart, Calistra. What can I say?”
Then he told me they had made the fake Amdysos High King, that he was to be crowned Great Sun. Certain of the princes, jointly, would rule for him, until his recovery was complete.
“Recovery—what, put back the crushed brain and sew it in, as they do in Artepta? This mad, crippled stick—because of a shower of thunder-stones blown in from some fire mountain of Ipyra—yes, that’s what Torca—even Torca—says they were. Volcanic debris. And for this—for this—But then, Torca believes that obscenity is his true King. I know Torca. He’d never sink down to this unless he did believe it.” And after that, pacing across the room, Klyton began one of his speeches, which till then I had not heard. How the gods had chosen him, making him wait, preparing and purifying him, snatching Amdysos away, the sacrifice, leaving the enthroning world to Klyton. And this—this was some aberration as if some word spoken in a fever were taken as the pronouncement of destiny. The fever would pass. They would see what they had done. Then they would cry after Klyton and he would forgive them, and gather them again into his hand.
I listened. The dog listened. Outside I heard the old slave talking sensibly to Nimi.
Did I grasp that Klyton’s golden sentences were only decorated ribbon’s tied about a rotten fruit, as they do it in so many markets in time of festival, to hide what must at last be smelled and seen?
That night he appeared again the beautiful young god I had married. He pushed me backwards on the stale bed, and mounted me as an animal does. But, I was all his, my sex at least knew him well. We struggled to the Paradise of the flesh, and then he slept exhausted at my side. And once two tears ran from his sleeping eyes. I saw, for that night I did not sleep at all.
Next day, the old slave, Sarnom, came alone and told me with a gentle courtesy I should select what I must have. His face was like a mourning carving. But old men and women, I thought, often looked sad, as sometimes they looked wicked.
I chose what I predicted I should require for the trek to Sirma. Here, I had been, told, we would go—to find friendly loyalty, and an army, whereby to persuade mistaken Akhemony.
What did I hold inside myself? Only a heavy dread that was not completely real. For I, too, had been led into the Sunlight, and gained what I should never have had. Surely, surely, the gods who helped me, would not leave me in this plight?
Outside, the gardens smoked still on the shore. What I had seen there so often, removed in an hour.
I offered to Gemli and to Lut. Both seemed like little made things of stone and wood. Not gods at all. But did the air hear? The moon-glow on the floor? The gods were presently engaged. Soon they would recollect us.
That night. The night when I had chosen what I should need and want, finding only later I had picked out usually nothing of any use, leaving behind me the dearest and the best. Alone on the bed, the covers thrown away, the hearing air so hot, so merciless, and the crack of moonlight streaming through the outer room and under the door.
The moonlight had blackened over in one spot.
Waking, I saw, and then that a woman stood up straight there, in her black robe, the gems lit like dark moons on her wrists, fingers, at her throat. It was Crow Claw. Now I imagine that she spent some of the ten years of her earthly wandering, prescribed by God after death, there in the palace at Oceaxis. This accounts for her ghost, the intrusions she made on us
“What do you want?” I said. And sitting up, “Have you brought some better tidings?”
The dog saw her, too. He did not seem alarmed, his tail even quivered, as he watched her, head on long paws.
“What’s your name?” said the witch, as long ago, in my childhood.
“Sun Queen Calistra. No. Now you’re Cemira again.”
I started violently, and made the circle.
She shook her head. “Remember, the Cemira is one of the Secret Beasts of Phaidix. Both names are yours. Shun neither.”
She had sung me to sleep in that long ago.
Not now.
I said. “Why are you here?”
“To bid you farewell, Great Queen. I’ll see you no more.” The mooolight caught the side of her crone’s face, as with a living thing it would. But she looked younger tonight. Not any older than thirty years. This was curious. No one had ever seen her young, since her death. “Nothing ends with death,” said Crow Claw. “Even the unborn don’t end there.” She pointed at me. Involuntarily I glanced down, to look where her ivory claw indicated. But nothing was there, beyond my own slender shape, the dirty pillow.
“Crow Claw,” I whispered, “do you speak with the gods? Do you see them walking? Beg them for me to give back to him what he’s lost.”
“But,” she said, “he has lost nothing at all.”
I cursed her, and she was gone.
We behold and cling to the rock, but the rock is a vapor. We tumble through space, shrieking, and in the night that is All-Night, open our wings. But the promise we are born with, in the land of illusions we forget.
The dog licked my tears, disliked them, and moved away. I held myself firmly and pushed off the weeping. Tomorrow we would go to Sirma. I was a Queen, and must act as a Queen would, even in exile.
Under the mud-brown sail the rowers sang and the oars churned and the sea had a flat poisonous iridescence. We had been two days on the water, and one night between.
The Sun’s Isle.
Here the thunder-stone had rushed from the Sun. A priesthood, it was said, had tended the place for centuries, and always they died, the young, the vital, died on Sun’s Isle. Animals there were monster-like, mythical. Few came there now. The force of that chip of the living Sun sucked out the life of men. And we were rowed towards it. It was the hub of the universe.
I sat under an awning, looking at the Lakesea. I had never before crossed it. The atmosphere had by now a peculiar glimmering film. Last night the stars had seemed of a thousand altering colors. The fish they had caught today was unnatural. It was the size of a calf, and almost snapped the line. It had three eyes and two mouths each packed with pearly teeth, that the pearl-loving men of Bulos pulled from the jaws.
But, they did not eat the fish and threw it back. By then it was dead. Things were done too late, or not at all. Nimi had had a terrible dream. The sky was torn open and a flaming creature dropped to the deck.
The Heart Drum of Akhemony had been audible at Belba, yet on the ocean it grew muffled, unknown, more distracting in its change.
Klyton talked to the captain. He had charmed them all, even in their superstition and unwillingness. We would sight the Island by Sunfall, or with the dawn. Ancient maps described it. It had the shape of a huge lizard lying in the sea.
In Bulos, they drive out the Scapegoat every year at winter. They mark a ram, or other animal, or even a criminal, and tie him with little tokens written by the priests, notes of various sins and omissions. Then they thrust him away into the river marshes among the man-high reeds. Possibly the Scapegoat dies then, of cold or hunger, or eaten by wild dogs, or large water reptiles. If a man survives, he never goes back. Ten years after, if they knew him, they would kill him, for bringing home their transgressions.
Perhaps the Bulotes no longer do any of this.
But I was thinking of it in the Bulote ship.
Did I say to myself that Klyton was the Scapegoat of Akhemony? A council of old men and priests had asked of him that he go away, perhaps to an estate at Airis, or better, to Sirma, where the Sirmians had given him land before even he was crowned King. Nexor, when unwanted, had been disposed of in just this way, into Ipyra. Klyton called his men, such as would go, and left. And around his neck were hung the stooping eagle, and the flight of firebolts, the drought that was beginning, and any other unlucky thing.
The second vessel had dropped behind yesterday but now, as the Sun began to rise at our back, we saw her again. The ships hailed each other with horns. A dismal mooing.
It had not occurred to me that Klyton could have resisted his dethronement and expulsion more vigorously than he had. Even there, on the ship, it did not. I saw Akhemony had closed to him like a door. He knocked and shouted, he raved. There was no answer so he came away to find a battering-ram.
During all the short voyage, the sea had been odd, so very flat, the waves scarcely stirring. No birds were seen once we were an hour out.
The dawn Sun looked very red, but as it lifted into the sky, it metamorphosed. The sailors started to cry out and call prayers. The Sun—behind us, reflected before us on the flat and half-dead sea—was an emerald. Its path was the shade of fresh grass. This lasted for some twenty heartbeats, the Heartbeats of the Mountain. After that the greenness dissolved and the Sun was the Sun, only dull, the track on the water faint as if under a skim of oil.
In silence, when we turned again, we saw the Island, the Sun’s Isle, pushing from the sea before us.
To me it seemed to have no particular shape, despite what had been said, only a dark scoop of land, with night still caught around its skirts.
Soon I could make out the sluggish waves dragging up on its rocky beaches, with hardly any frill of foam. Big stones stood out into the ocean, shapeless, or weathered into low arches. Even now there were no birds. But a scent sighed off the Island. It was rich and heady, as of perfumes and citrus fruit, and then like burning incense mixed with alcohol. And then it grew sweetly rotten, like decayed flowers.
A natural harbor had been shown on the maps. Here the sea was deep enough for the ships to stand close in.
The maps also stated that a hale man could walk round the entire scope of the Isle in a day. To reach its center where the Sunstone had fallen, took half a day. The ancient temple was planted there, and even in quite recent times, less than fifty years before, one man had dared the Isle and seen it, the Stone lying in its cradle. But the country was unsafe. They said three-headed beasts roamed the Island with snakes for tails, and womanlike things with snakes for hair, and a white lioness that had leapt down from the Daystar after the Stone.
Klyton left all but fifteen of his men on the ships. We heard later, aside from their captain, the soldiers had drawn lots, to see who must go. This was allowed.
After Sun’s Isle we would sail down the great river to Bulos, and so press on, marching overland to Artepta. But Klyton wanted his omens first.
Sarnom went ashore with Klyton. The slave had declared he would go. But Partho, the Sirmian boy, who seemed at all other times in love with Klyton, had become sick and was left on the galley.
Klyton sat down with me under the awning.
“Calistra, I know you can’t walk far over this terrain. But will you come ashore? I’ll leave you ten guard. And the others will be near enough on the ships.”
I replied, “Yes,” not considering. We were adrift wherever we went. And I have said, I did not want to cross him.
“You’re brave,” he said. “You always have been. But if they see it in a girl, their Queen, it will give them courage. And besides, besides … We’re far away from the Heart.” He looked out to the crinkled water, the Island beach where, as we could now make out, the mass of a forest descended. “I dreamed once that I flew with wings—did I ever tell you? I should not have done. But you anchored me to the earth. It was you. I don’t want moving water between us. If you will.”
His tone was thin and wooden. He smiled, as if he had said something mundane.
“Whatever you want, my lord.”
“Dulcet Calistra, like the dove. Look, do you see the shrine there, and the path like silver for your silver feet?”
I stared. There was a sort of building above the beach. A sort of path. Would I be able to manage it, even with my cane?
He read my mind. “No, of course. One of the men will carry you over the pebbles.”
Nimi approached when he had got up. I told her she must stay on the ship. But she shook her head. She put her chin back and said, sternly, I was the Queen and must have an attendant. I realize now her bravery made any of mine into a grain of dust. I was bemused. And she had heard, in her short life, all the stories of the Isle, which I never had.
A boat rowed us over, and went back.
By now the Sun was much higher, ambered, a huge smothered spark. The Daystar could just be seen, mauve and opaque.
There were no clouds. A kind of shivering luminescence hung on everything, and seemed to slide through the stony beach, and drip down off the clustered forest.
A few moments after we had got from the boat, a bird began to sing.
Nimi exclaimed, and two of the men made warding signs.
At first the song seemed exquisite, resembling the notes of the kitri. But then it sharpened, splintered. As with the odors of the Island, it was firstly pleasing and next disgusting. It scratched the nerves with needles. Then the song ended and did not resume.
Klyton walked at once away and up the path, which had originally been paved, and was now quilled by slivers of rock that must have shot up, perhaps, in a tremor. The ground was woven with brambles and creepers.
Five pillars were at the entrance of the shrine, and were black from age, with horrible shafts in them that showed out yellowish white —protuberant bones. The creepers had gone round and round like serpents. The roof was gone, smashed in on the floor below. This floor had had mosaic, a picture of a Sun with cat-animals running about it, but no colors remained in it, and something, maybe only the years, had pulled fragments out and thrown them everywhere.
Klyton told his men to clear an area in the shrine and put down for me some rugs, and the chair which had been brought.
I had after all managed the beach, and was now on the path, but going very slow, Nimi and one guard assisting me.
As I ascended, I studied the trees of the forest. They were twisted in extraordinary shapes, some like open hands stretching out cupped, clawing fingers, and some lying sidelong against each other, then bending back to run another way. There was one like a great ball, the branches thrust out as spines do from a hedgehog. All the bark greasily shone, and unlike the mosaic had deep, throbbing colors, a syrupy green, orichalc, and magenta. While out of some of the trees strange slender trickles of moisture flowed, red like magma, or greenish like sap.
The canopy of the forest had dark leaves at least larger than a man’s hand, and in places as big as a shield. These flags hung motionless, but as we climbed, we saw, threading through and through, a type of snake thing, pallid and scaled, long, rope-like, yet seeming to have a head also at the tail’s end. But it was blind, it had no eyes. It paid no attention to us or the men heaving out the rubbish from the shrine. When it vanished, we climbed on.
The creepers and brambles were also curious. They had the highlight of silk, black wizened berries.
In the shrine’s back, the altar had been split by the roof coming down.
Nevertheless, Klyton there offered wine, and some meal from the store on the ship. Only when the incense was lighted, it stank.
There had been a tale King Okos had had grapes brought from the Isle, to make a wine. He gifted it to an enemy, who died.
The bird began to sing again. With strands of burning liquid glass it webbed together the tree tops, then tore its web in splinters.
Klyton drew me aside. He kissed my mouth. He tasted of the char of the offering, but I did not recoil. Had I started to be afraid? Had I? Oh, yes, surely. But then, I loved him.
There was a film on his clear irises like the film on the sea. Behind the film, his eyes glittered.
“We’ll be back by nightfall.” And then, very low, “Pray for me, Calistra. The temple is ruined but stays holy. You can feel—the air’s like granite, weighing. The most holy ground in the world.”
The soldiers watched respectfully as we parted, and followed him out.
My guard sat dicing heartily, with frozen faces, on the path, three standing watch. The rest constantly looked up and around.
Out on the level, greyish sea, the Bulote galleys shimmered as if haloed or on fire. We knew, though standing in so near, they were miles off from us.
He told me, in the ship by night, on our last journey. And in Artepta told me again and again, along with his repeated speech of the favorable giving of the gods, this other tale. His dreams I listened to also, unless I could wake him. Until our situation was altered. Then she will have heard them. Or woken him. And later she used her soothing drugs.
Sometimes for battle, the prince puts on a badge or a particular high crest, to show his men at all stages where he is. Then it is the keynote, that sigil, of his fight. And for this final fight, this last march, Sun’s Isle is the blazon, how to find him and know him, the keynote to the ending.
The legend of the island I had heard. Kelbalba had recounted it, and more than once, for as a young girl I liked it.
Before history had begun, the center of the Sun Lands had not been a hollow lake of sea, but filled in by land. Here lived a despotic race, advanced in sorcery, who warred on the people of Akhemony, then only a tribe which lived about the hills and plains, in villages of dirt-brick. However, their priests were wise, and had found out that the Sun god was supreme, and worshipped him. So then Akhemony’s priesthood invoked the Sun.
The god had invented the act of breathing, to cleanse and fuel the bodies of humankind. Now he embued the breath of the Sun priests with sacred fire. Lying down on the earth, their feet pointing outward to all stations of the world, and in a circle that mimicked the Sun itself, they produced in unison one mighty outward breath. This, magically altered by the god, rose upward as a wind, and the form of it was mirrored ever after in the chimney of Akhemony’s temple. Spearing on, it entered the uplands of the sky, and here provoked a solar gale. Which in turn, by the god’s will, broke off a part of the greater Sun, and hurled it down upon Akhemony’s foe. So colossal was the detonation, the land sank there and filled instead with sea, as a hoofprint fills with rain. Only one small island stayed afloat, and on it an enormous fragment of the larger Sunstone. As Akhemony grew in might, this Isle became sacrosanct. A temple was erected there to contain the Stone and dedicate the victory. But the priests who served it were withered by the power of the Stone, and died, and the Isle itself was transformed into a place of marvels and monstrosities.
Sarnom walked behind Klyton, as they went up through the colored forest. An old man, he had stayed healthy and alert. He did not seem fearful.
The soldiers and their captain came after Sarnom, their eyes everywhere. They had drawn their swords, specifically to cut away the foliage and creepers, as Klyton did with his knife.
The forest was thick. It made them dizzy with its perfumes and effluvias. They passed through only one glade, and here there was no grass but a floor like obsidian, fused and sheer. On it, they saw a black shelled creature, like a sort of crab, and great as a mule, but it did not move, it might only have been another rock.
Some while after they found frog-like things, which appeared constructed from bright silver, and jumped away. They had each two pale eyes, and a third eye at the middle of the back, lidded and blinking.
When the forest ended, which it did without any scrub, the boundary drawn straight as a rule, there were hill slopes of tawny grass, brittle as baked sugar, that snapped, and smelled of new bread. Once or twice they heard the bird sing again in the trees, or another like it. On the first slope, there were scarlet ants the size of mice, or a little bigger. The soldiers tried to stamp on them to kill them, but, having done it, as they raised their boots, the ants, too, rose unharmed, and scurried off again through the grass.
Above this slope were others, but they were empty. Then the slopes became burnt, like meat, and scattered with boulders all eaten out, and cold, they said, to touch.
Something made a sound here, reminiscent of grasshoppers, but they did not see any. Aside perhaps from the crab, and the hideous ants, so far they had seen no creature that lived.
They continued. There were plants, bulbous things, which spurted juice when sliced at. They had colors, Klyton told me, which have no names. He said, colors like the eye of a storm, like the pain of thirst. They could hardly stand to look at them.
Where the crown of the highest hill was, they beheld a skeleton, old as for ever, brown and terrible, a beast that had, as in the tales, two heads, one much smaller than the other. Through the huge blackened skull, and the tinier skull like soiled bronze, an antique sword and knife poked up, rusted and brittle as the grass below: the remembrance of some hero’s battle, which he had won.
They had climbed up the hills of the Isle, and now went down into its valleys. But it took them less than half a day, because the blunted ember of Sun was not at the apex when they reached their goal. When they had cloven through a wall of dead and murky trees that once might have been oaks, they saw the temple of elder time lying over the lower hillside, before them.
It was black as a carious tooth, the temple, but steps went up to it, and columns held up a roof. There were said to be five hundred columns, a number of the Sun, but by now many had toppled. Even so the roof was whole, noduled by statues which seemed to have blistered, melted, becoming shapeless. Over this place, immanence had formed like a slab.
About the temple, grazed a flock of things. So you might see sheep, clustered around some little Sunlit fane of the hills of Akhemony. These were not sheep, though about their size.
The men stared, and Klyton stared, down at them. The flock was composed of rats. But they were bald rats, pinkish, with dim dark eyes as though their heads were full of rivers. There reached, even here, the rodent smell of them. And what they grazed on had had bones.
Klyton said to me, he meant then to go down alone, killing where he had to, to gain the temple.
But abruptly the Sunlight congealed, as if before a storm. And then a wind thrust up the hills, throwing the grasses and the plants together, snapping them, so the air was suddenly full of the odors of bread and mutton. The wind bent even the men over. It roared as it passed, and going down around the black temple, it danced, spinning. The rat flock fled from the wind.
But in three or four minutes, the wind died. And now the light itself was of a shade no man there could describe. In this they picked their way down, and over the carcasses of indecipherable dead items, and pellets of rat dung like loaves, and walked up the temple steps.
There were snakes on the steps, sinuous and whip-thin, and they sank into holes.
One of the men began to howl there. The captain hit him in the face. “Steady. You’ve seen worse.” This was a lie.
A friend helped him up and they went on.
The temple was a casket, and the door was down. Inside, light entered at a hundred cracks. Most of the pillars stood, and an aisle led to the great altar. This was of a washed-looking white marble that had scarcely darkened. And on it, above the place for offering, the Sunstone rose the thunderbolt, in a cage of black metal.
The soldiers stopped. They went to their knees. Perhaps they forgot the giant rats. Only Sarnom stayed at Klyton’s back.
Klyton strode forward through the temple and came to the altar, and faced the mythical Stone that was real.
He put back his head, to look.
The Stone from the Sun was black and rough, and veined with ores. It was my height, he said, no more, the height of a girl. It had an unlikely image, for it was also shaped like a woman. So he saw it. A head and breasts, tapering to a pair of little feet which were, he said, because of the ores, silvery.
From his clothes, Klyton took the jewel he had brought. It was a ring of golden leaves, finely crafted, set with a flawless topaz. He laid it on the offering place, before the Stone.
He spoke to the Stone, but without words.
The temple sang, he said, like a huge harp, a sithrom. And it glowed like a cave of the sea, all phosphorescent. He felt some substance of the temple spread over his skin, on the orbs of his sight, and in his mouth he knew its flavor. A spirit of the wind still twirled in the aisle, in and out of the pillars. One might see dancers in the wind, or the priests who were dead, advancing with a sacrifice, a pale stallion that had five eyes …
Deep within his brain Klyton now experienced the rippling glimmer of the Stone, reaching in and tasting him, like a snake sipping a cup of milk.
The god spoke then, muffled and soft, inside his brain, his mind. A tiny voice. Almost nothing.
No.
The god said only this. It was impersonal.
The god had forgotten him, for Klyton, a Sun, of a line of chosen Kings, was only mortal. No more. Nothing else.
No.
The impact wrenched through Klyton. He steadied himself, as the man had been told to do outside. He whispered, too low for the waiting soldiers and slave to hear, “Very well. Take my life. But give me just one year more of glory. Give me what you vowed to me. Since you said it should be mine.”
The god did not speak again. And the Sunstone was grey-black and cindery and ugly, and had silver feet.
Sarnom, seeing Klyton turn with tears lying out under his closed lids, reached up quickly and flicked the drops away, as if attending to flies.
“Thank you,” Klyton said. “We’ll go back now.” He added, “They must eat and drink nothing here. Do they know? Did I tell them?”
* * *
My guard had stopped dicing. They stood together drinking from a wine sack, at the bottom of the path.
Nimi and I sat watching the forest.
I wondered what Bachis was doing, aboard the smaller galley, and whether she felt favored or demeaned by being left there. Though the vessel was not big, she had kept elsewhere on it and did not share my awning. She knew her place, a lesser Daystar. She fed her baby herself, cloaked by the sturdy Maiden. This led me to remember my own childhood, Phaidix’s garden, Ermias, the turtle.
The day went slowly but also very swiftly. I cannot explain this. Perhaps I sometimes slept, without knowing it.
Conceivably, too, I was terrified that Klyton would be attacked within the Island, and so shut my mind numbly away in reveries. Yet I see I did not for one moment believe in his death, as I did not in my own.
Every so often, the bird splayed its glass web and destroyed it.
The guards talked of finding and killing it. Its song was so interesting, it might eat well. Or it might contain venom. They loudly laughed and at their noises, the song did not cease, as if it could not until its sequence was complete.
Then the Sun was low, and it came to me a Sunset was beginning, and the colors were at fault again.
Like the darkest carnelian the Sun sank, and the sea was henna. But as the solar disc went under the water and the land, there was a green lightning violent enough that it caused one of the men to cry out. And then the sky seemed to glow more tremendously than the Sun, and it was purple and beryl, and two shades that I, also, cannot name, though I have seen ghosts of them sometimes, in other substances.
Nimi murmured a soft prayer. She put her cool palm on my knee, as if to comfort me. She said, prosaic as a mother, “The dog will be missing us.”
But the guards were pointing into the sky. “Birds! Birds, do you see?”
I stood, and went out and positioned myself on the path. Nimi and I gazed upwards. Across the supernatural Sunset, out from the Isle and back again, the flying things streamed, but they were not birds but insects, great as dishes, and they turned the sky black.
The soldiers were shouting and on the ships I noted some activity. But then the winged things settled down again into the forest, the way dregs do in a goblet.
In an utter quiet, the bird sang once more. Its song was very close. After all this, Nimi gave a tiny shriek.
There on the path, between ourselves and the soldiers, was a cricket made of green chalcedony, through which the afterglow shone, revealing its inner life, bladders and arteries pulsing with dim blood. It was, this entity, almost of Nimi’s own height. And with its forelegs it strummed at its own body, and from it shrilled the web of glass, its ghastly song.
But it was beautiful. In memory I see its beauty as I did not then.
And while I was transfixed, one of the soldiers threw his shield. The shield slammed against the cricket; it toppled through the ethereal light, and the shield covered it, all but the edge of one spun-silver chitin wing.
Nimi and I turned away as the soldiers slew the giant cricket with rocks and bits of the Island they uprooted, yelling, cursing, retching. They would not touch it even with their swords, and the man who had thrown his shield, did not reclaim it.
In my belly, a deep aching.
Nimi, the mother, had buried her face in her hands. I put my own hand over her head a consoling gesture I had seen her make herself, with Choras or the dog.
As the upheaval died down, the glowing day color ebbed, and a glowing night descended. The hundred lips of the sea were lined with gilt. Daylight left behind.
And Klyton and his men walked from the forest, calling to us cheerfully, as if we were at home, and they had only been hunting on the hills.
Beyond this point, I find I can say little of Klyton, that is, of his thoughts, his mind.
Although with memory it seems I knew him before ever even he spoke to me, after Sun’s Isle I do not know him. And this is not the alienation of the past. Ah, no. He is now a stranger I see at a distance, as if from a high wall. A stranger who lies beside me, sometimes, and sometimes works on me the enchantment of lust, and who sleeps where I can hear his mutterings, and who in sleep, now and then—though so distant—strikes me a slight glancing blow, as he battles with an invisible other. “Amdysos,” he said once, “I didn’t wish you dead.” And then, “Of course you didn’t. Leave it behind.”
Klyton burned on, torchlike, often at the ship’s prow, looking forward, talking with the Bulote men, who forgave him the Isle as soon as we turned from it. Despite the prophecy, none had died. With his own soldiers he flared on, like a comet. Having seen nothing, yet they assumed his private omens on the Island had been favorable. Indeed marvelous. He played his part for them I think, from shame. Or did he yet not credit his gods had forgotten him, even while their No was branded black into his brain.
The Lakesea changed herself as if to abet him. By the third day, birds flew over, sunny white. A score of small islets passed, with willows that the god is fond of.
Meanwhile I endured the laval ache in my womb. My courses had always been irregular. No doubt the journey, the Island, had brought it on after delay. But the cramps grew worse. I, too, burned with fever. I lay down and the motion of the galley made me sick. Then I was being carried through the shallows of the sea, to one of the little isles. I was in a tent beneath a pine, and Nimi bathed my forehead, and blood was all over my skirt.
Near evening, I saw another attendant had arrived. Bachis had sent me her Maiden, fifteen years old, a stout, strong girl from the country round Airis. I did not know, but the Maiden was a skilled midwife and had assisted Bachis in the act of birth. Now, she bent over me. An hour later, in a torrent of pain and awful blood, something was drawn out of me.
Though professional at her work, the Maiden was not canny with her tongue.
“Oh, lady, see. Is perfect. And would have been a boy.”
I had not, in my absorption, having no proper symptoms, and misled by the irregularity of my menses, known I carried Klyton’s child. He was the length of my last finger, under the filth, like a totem of white-fat jade, perfect, as she said. One might see the shape of all of him that was to come. He had hands, unopened eyes, lips, a phallus like a paring of the moon. And he was the bud of a flower. I stared at him, half delirious, and cared nothing at all, wanting this done with. It was in later years he haunted me, the only child I ever bore.
“They keep such aborts, in Sirma,” said the Maiden knowingly, “in a box of spice, with the lid sealed tight.”
Like my turtle, I thought. And slept.
I think Klyton did come in. Recollection seems to glimpse him, distracted, a man of affairs, who must pause at women’s business, from politeness.
To this day I am not sure if they told him, or if they did, whether he understood. Having become true strangers, we never spoke of it.
By the time I was well enough to notice, the Lakesea had narrowed to a long river, which the Bulotes call Her Plait. They worshipped still a mother goddess, and her river tresses were strewn through Bulos, but this waterway was three rivers on one, therefore plaited. Their goddess has pearls, too, in her hair, of course, and on the river, as always in that country, you found pearl fishers, boys and men, diving from the decks of thin brown boats, one coming up once, that I saw, with weed on his shoulders, a pearl like an egg clenched in his grinning mouth.
We had traveled through Bulos before, when we were a King and Queen, but not along this river. Anyway, none knew us now, though I heard Bulotes in the river villages speak on two occasions, in my presence, of that summer when the Great Sun went by on the road, his Chief Queen with him. And they spoke as of something momentous, and lucky. But we were only foreigners.
One sultry night on Her Plait, waking, I thought I heard something go overboard, very heavy, cumbersome. Maybe I dreamed this. But never again did I see Klyton bring from the baggage Amdysos’s shrine.
There was a minor summer festival about this time, seldom much observed in the royal house. I recalled Kelbalba had, a couple of times, laid flowers for Gemli, and Ermias sneered at them, before we were friends.
Klyton decided we should put ashore, and honor the festival and the summer goddess. We were near the end of the river. They would have to march afterwards, mostly. Klyton wanted the horses off the bigger galley to be exer cised, and the men. We landed near some villages and made a camp, and when the people saw the two ships, they came to sell or barter food, and milk their cows into our buckets.
For his soldiers, he organized games, horse riding, and throwing and shooting at a mark. He gave extravagant prizes from his own goods, astonishing some of the men, cups of silver, boots of bullshide, belts fringed with bullion, scabbards staring with gems, and often with a steel sword in them.
He spoke to them at their games, praising their faithfulness and endurance. He said he would not forget. They had started the wine ration by then, which was lavish, and they cheered and banged on their shields.
As he sat overseeing the contests, he was impeccable, and magnificent. No one could quibble at such a leader. But there was a flaw now, behind his face, under his eyes. Could I alone see it? I think not.
I, too, must sit to applaud the games. The Sun tired me out and I knew I could not lapse, not drop asleep. It was an agony.
Quite near me, Bachis sat too, with her stout Maiden fanning her, and her child in the slave’s lap. Klyton’s Daystar queen had plumpened rather after the birth, now she was short but round. Having come to him with not much, she was almost always in silk, and in winter in the palace, she had been hung with furs and pelts, summer foxes and leopards, with strings of whole tails trailing after her. She had jewels, too. Knowing she liked it, he had loaded her, for she was an ideal secondary wife, prepared to learn and never to demand. At these games in pastoral Bulos, she wore glinting, silver-sewn white, and on her head, I see it as clearly as if she posed now before me, a circlet of electrum with flowers of every colored metal —electrum, gold, silver, colcai—tumbling down through her darkish hair, to her fat, satiny shoulders.
She must have been about my age, I suppose, sixteen or seventeen, and the boy almost a year. He had pale gold hair that caught the sun. I glanced at him now and then idly. For I too had almost done what Bachis had, produced another living creature.
After all the feats and prizes, Klyton gave the soldiers a feast from the bounty of the villages.
The men roamed about, or sat around the cook-fires, where whole cows, one of whom had given us milk, were now roasting. Klyton’s household was in the greater tent, his two captains, and the two royal women, she and I.
The day cooled to twilight, and stars Bachis might have liked to have, spotted the enormous sky. On the river, swans had gone by, and the soldiers had shot one, being frisky. But here the swan was thought sacred to the summer goddess, so they did not dare eat it, and the river pulled it away.
I see the swan, too, in my memory. Its waste. For it had lived.
He was drunk. I believe so. His beauty was alight and his movements slow, or rushed. Then the drunkenness went down to melancholy, as it can. He had been acting out for them, on and on and over and over, his victory and hope. And somewhere in the Bulos starshine, he could not play any more the King and the Sun.
He seemed to sit in thought. He missed what was said to him. His eyes grew heavy. They turned black. I had seen this happen sometimes in desire, but never like this. There was no light in them, only a gloss slicked over.
Klyton began to gaze about at us all. He smiled once at me. It was a smile of forgetting. He had not meant to hurt me. On the captains who had stayed with him, he turned his black eyes, considering. Who were they? One jested, and others laughed; Klyton nodded. He could manage nothing else, for they spoke another tongue.
It was then Bachis’s son shook his rattle—naturally silver, with silver bells—the Maiden had given it him to keep him jolly and awake.
The black eyes sunk on to the face of the laughing, primrose-headed child. The eyes lightened. All the darkness left them, and they were colorless.
He said to Bachis, “Let me have my son.”
She fluffed up like a proud hen, and snapped her fingers at the slave.
They did not tell him, or they did. He and I did not speak of it, not then, nor ever. That bud of white jade buried in the powder box under a pine. Perhaps this had nothing to do with that.
Klyton took the child from Bachis. He gazed at it. The boy was solemn now, only waving his arms, slowly, and, as if to flatter, drunkenly.
Without another word, Klyton rose and carried the child outside the open tent.
Bachis’s mouth came open. What was Klyton doing—taking the child to the other tent, maybe, to wreathe him in jewels?
None of the men paid much attention. They, too, had drunk well. A father with his son. He might be showing him the stars.
About half an hour after this, Klyton returned, and told us the feast was done. He was unaltered, but his arms held nothing.
Bachis, who never demanded, went up to him in a slinking, fawning way. She put one finger on his sleeve and whispered something.
Klyton frowned at her.
“Don’t let it concern you.”
I saw her face fall in like an old woman’s, and it was the sensible Maiden who conducted her away.
The soldiers went, mumbling, uncertain, somewhat confused. In the camp, not many had noted that Klyton had not brought the child back again to the open tent. Could not a father lay his child elsewhere to sleep?
So he had. They discovered it before Sunrise. The scintillant hair was put out, dark and wet, and just so was the stone on which Klyton had broken in the child’s skull.
I know they said of Klyton that, having become insane, he killed the child, timid it would rob him of status, as his brother, Amdysos, had. And also there was a story he sacrificed it to the god, for better fortune.
He said to me, “I had nothing to give him but suffering. I myself can’t bear it. How could I make him heir to that?”
And I held the murderer in my arms, this evil and unspeakable thing he had become. Do not judge Calistra. She will judge herself more coldly. But she would hold him yet, I will not lie.
In the morning, most of the men had made off. Such country swallows those who wish it to.
But Bachis stood with her slave and her Maiden among the sparse heap of her baggage, those items she had accrued and been able to keep. She stood as if grown into the ground, her fallen face as white as naked bone, and her eyes staring at him. She said only she would not move, no, never. She had a look of Udrombis, indomitable, and perhaps for that he left her there, where she had rooted herself. The Maiden bulked behind her, crying. I think the villagers buried the child. I do not know what became of Bachis.
South, the summer seemed it could never end, yet trees had autumn in them, when we got down to Artepta.
They said in Thon’s hells, where men were made to suffer for the worst earthly crimes, there were no seasons, yet there could be extreme heat or cold. A wind blew in the south that might have come from there. They call it in Artepta, Fire-Breath.
Adargon was waiting in a fortress house in the marshes, where all but one of the rivers end. It was a building Arteptan kings had had made long ago, partly ruinous now. The huge window spaces looked out at the miles of reeds, taller here than men, that rattled in the firewind like spears. Between were pockets of ale-dark water. Violet irises grew about them, these the height of a girl, on stems like brass. Great lizards couched in the mud, and vented a pig-like barking.
I had been able to exercise my body very little on the journey, confined to a ship, a tent, traveling overland in a litter between two mules. Then another man ran away, and he took a mule with him, and I rode the remaining animal awkwardly. I was stiff and in pain, and in the chamber I had in the fortress, at last tried to undo the knots of my body. Nimi rubbed me with scented oil. And the crocodiles barked from the rushes.
Artepta had sent Adargon emissaries with amiable words for Klyton, saying we would be welcome in her city. They had offered Adargon a ship, which had arrived, and lay now at the edge of the marsh, on the last narrow river that went to the sea. But, Adargon said, Artepta spoke of Klyton only as of a prince. Kindred, not lord. And there was another thing. Of the men left to Adargon after the desertions of his own march, scouts had tested Artepta. There were bizarre reports of a massive fleet, anchored out beyond the islands. True, the scouts had not seen it, but had met with those who had. The fleet came, perhaps, from the Benighted Isles. But that place was primitive, and the fleet, purportedly, like artisans’ work for sophistication.
It might be only a tale. Artepta spoke a language unknown elsewhere in the Sun Lands. Though the scouts had mastered it somewhat, possibly they were not as lingual as they thought.
Was the fleet Artepta’s own? If so, why anchored far off? And why clandestinely?
Adargon looked worn. Not like Klyton, for Klyton burned on. After what had happened, after what had been done, he was yet brilliant as the Sun. Until the shadow came, which was often. Adargon was raddled, unhappy and at a loss, but his mind was perfectly transparent. He must have heard soon enough about the murdered child. But Adargon did not deviate. He would do his best. The gods would expect that, but no more.
All told, Klyton had reached the marshes with fourteen men, the old slave and the boy, and three women: myself, and my two little girls. Adargon’s contingent now numbered seventy-six men.
In this panoply we would sail to Artepta, who might prove strange or false. But, beings of action must go somewhere on a road, and there was no turning back.
Artepta knew our numbers were low, too, for the ship they had sent was single and not significantly large.
Nevertheless it was not like anything I had seen. It had two decks. All the wood was gilded, even the oars, and the mast was twined by gold with a crimson and black sail crossed by a rayed Sun that became the crescent moon of Phaidix’s bow. There was a sort of pillared house amidships, and here Klyton and I were to sit, as one had seen gods did in Arteptan carving. So we dressed in our best and sat down, under the awning, with the sail unfurled above.
Nimi and Choras were at my feet, with the white dog, who now took notice only of them.
The soldiers had been positioned down on the lower deck. They were orderly and had polished up their gear.
Two slaves on the ship fanned the deck-house with leaf-shaped green fans. They were black, as the rowers were. There is a light strain, too, in Artepta, like malt or mahogany, even sometimes paler. But mainly you see slaves of this tone. And though at one time I thought I saw a noble and his company of this paler type, I was mistaken. The higher classes have skin like ebony. It came to me in Artepta, that Torca gained his blood from the higher caste. But Udrombis, whose blood had been mixed, was white.
So they rowed us downriver between the clashing reeds, the pale purple irises, where the water-lizards slid under the surface, disdaining us.
Then we saw wide fields, yellow and too ready, bending to the firewind, worked by black shapes whose scythes crackled with light.
In less than a day we came between two great statues, taller than the palace roof had been in Akhemony, sculpted of black granite that gleamed. They were so old, their form had become simplified, two giants, seated, their eyes up on the sky.
But from the stone lips of the right-hand statue boomed out the words sailors told one of: Who passes? And our ship flashed up its oars, saluting the statue which had spoken. Many believed, without this, it would not let us by. I did not believe it, however. With the death of hope had come the death of all wonder and awe. Magic belongs with life.
They gave me a house on the north shore above the Straits, looking back to the mainland. It was a mansion, with gardens and fountains. In the morning the rising Sun blonded an image of white marble to the left of the house. At Sunfall another, to the right, of porphyry, became a blood-kissed rose. I had servants there, and slaves. I had a Maiden with coal-dark skin, highborn, whose ten-times braided hair fell to her ankles like ropes of black wool.
In this place I saw the winter come, as it does in Artepta, mostly windless and never really chill. But dry, in some cold fashion, dry as age.
He was kind to me. He visited me every day.
I had become a secondary wife, a Daystar.
And she—she was Calistra.
He said. “I’ve put you aside from love. I mustn’t taint you, now. Say you see it, Calistra.”
But that one thing I would not comply with.
The beat of the Heart of Akhemony had faded beyond the Lakesea. Some claimed still to feel it, hear it. I heard it in my ears as I lay unsleeping. The heart decides. A murderer, I loved him. Lost to me, I would not agree that he was gone.
Usually he entered the house at noon. He would frequently sit without speaking, smiling, as if to reassure me, at the floor. After an hour, he went away.
Sometimes I was given the speech of the god’s bond to him. Sometimes of the breaking of the bond on Sun’s Isle. Once, only once, he said, “He took the she-pig from me. Then the Sun Race. And then my Kingship. Everything.”
The sea here was louder; it came far in on the land, at particular times, day and night, or drew away. Crossing it, I had felt dizzy, half afraid, as if above some endless drop. It copied whatever shade the sky was. Over it, from the house, I saw huge Arteptan monuments along the farther shore, or risen from the waves, one like a lion with a serpent’s head, crowned. And three white towns lay out there, with mansions and gardens like mine, that sloped to the water.
I existed for noon. I was extinguished after an hour. When he got up, and kissed me, I did not cling to him. I had never learned to importune, only to dissemble, a pleasing and dignified woman. Nothing improper.
Her name was Netaru.
At first, rooms were awarded me in the palace in the city of Artepta, and to Klyton an apartment near to mine. I never saw this.
We were treated like wished-for guests, given attendants, brought clothing, wonderful silks, and Arteptan linen that is thinner than gauze. At night, we dined in the palace hall. It was not like the halls of the northern Sun Lands, being open on pillars at three sides to the gardens. If the night turned colder, drapes were let down.
The Arteptans have canny acrobats, and their dancers would rival any in the world. There was always something to see. Sorcery was used too, now and then, as an entertainment, amazing things. Birds flew out of glass bottles too small to have held them, and flowers grew to twice their size, and turned another shade. One mage had trained a monkey to speak very clearly, with an accent like that of a child from a different country. By this, one saw their private sorceries, and those offered their gods, were profound.
There was a festival of Bandri, the birth goddess, and I saw the procession. There were male priests too, padded like the women with huge pregnant bellies. They say ejaculation in the male is also a birth.
If Klyton spoke at other times to the three kings, the Pehraa, of wresting back Akhemony, I never knew. Certainly he must have done. It had run off them, then, as the sea of the Straits ran off from the land.
The kings were men in middle years, Rhes the youngest of them, at thirty-four or -five—it was hard to reckon, for their calendar was not the same as ours, and their months of other lengths. The daughter of Rhes was the betrothed they had pledged Klyton, and despite dethronement, Klyton and she were apparently considered still hand-clasped, as they said, which made Klyton kin to them, and myself also.
In our presence, the Arteptans spoke the tongue of Akhemony. Klyton had asked to be tutored in the Arteptan tongue, at Oceaxis, but not spent much time on it. Now he asked for a tutor once again. It would have helped to fill his hours.
But I saw Rhes’s daughter, Netaru, from the first night. She sat on the women’s side, among the black and stately princesses and queens. The wives of the Pehraa wore, all of them, helms of gold and silver, similar to that Udrombis put on for Klyton’s coronation. Netaru had only jacinths in her hair, which was not black, but the sheeny light brown of an acorn. Was this hair considered a lessening of her—and for that reason had they given her to Klyton? You could not be sure, with Arteptans. Besides, apart from her hair, she was so black her features, other than her eyes and lips, were hard to make out. And she was beautiful. The eyes one saw were long ovals, tapering at the corners and outlined with gilt, smoky white agate set with black. Her mouth was like a plum for color, and with the plum’s succulent indentation.
I do not think I was jealous. It was terror I felt. It was not immodesty but sense to know, before, I had had no rival. Though if we had been in Akhemony, his destiny unbroken, I think I would not have feared. And then, too, I would have prayed to the gods. If he loved me, he would come back to me … but all that was done.
Klyton behaved only as he should. He wooed her decorously. He showed that she was delightful, but that, as a prince, he did not dwell only on her. And he sought me every third night, although he never stayed long. Nor did he lie down with me. He talked of the god’s bond, and of Sun’s Isle. Or of the weather.
News had flowed, and Artepta learned, when we did—or rather earlier—that Amdysos had been crowned with an autumn crown in Oceaxis, his Queen beside him, in one ceremony, to spare him too much labor. Princes of Akreon’s line had uttered his words for him. Torca was one of the priests who officiated.
I visualize then, the Great Sun Amdysos, and his Consort Elakti, much as Udrombis had beheld them under the temple. Except the child is not on Elakti’s knees. Nothing was said of that, though Adargon had told Klyton the abomination was still at large, so it was reckoned, in the Precinct of Night. The priests left food for it, and went armed. It was sacred, yet profane.
In Artepta, they do not perform a wedding. There it is announced, if a woman of equal status goes with a man to his house, and stays a day and night with him there, they are husband and wife. And though a man may have more than one wife, in archaic times, they say, so might a woman, and their babies inherited through the maternal line, no one being sure of the fathers.
Since Klyton’s palace apartment was his “house,” they had only to go there. For that reason too, the kings gave me the mansion just outside the palace, whose gardens fell down to the sea.
But I witnessed the Blessing. It was etiquette I should, being his other wife in Artepta.
There was a feast. More of their vegetable dishes and dark red beans with hot eggs served on them, and sweetmeats in the forms of all the gods, of which they had, Kelbaba once told me, a thousand.
Then Klyton and Netaru, with garlands of irises, went to her father, and he blessed them simply, the same words an Arteptan peasant uses on such occasions. And he gave her, as the peasant does, a small pot of perfumed oil, with which to make fragrant her new home. The pot was gold, of course, with a ruby stopper.
Klyton laughed and so did she. He looked happy, like a young man again. The way I had seen him so often, with me.
Before they went out, Netaru came to me, her ladies rustling after, and kissed me on the lips. A man’s wives must be friends and sisters. She smelled of dusk on a lily, and her skin peppery and enticing.
Together they departed to his rooms, and stayed there the prescribed time. Actually longer. By then, I was in my house.
After a few days, Klyton entered the house for the first of his daily visits. He seemed washed free of all of it, and I was gone with the rest. But when he had spoken to me for a while about silly, domestic things, I saw the dark sink through him, as it had come always to do. No, the grief and rage, the bewilderment and shame, had not withdrawn. Only the joy of the other life, the glory, only they had been dismissed. Though with these bright things, I, too. Whatever stayed with him, Calistra was not there at all.
But then suddenly he said to me, “The tears run down your face like the fountain outside the window.” So I was weeping and had not realized. I turned away, and he said, “Calistra, Calistra. I can’t take you with me where I must go. Don’t you see?”
Should I have cried out that I would not be parted from him, would lie at his door like a dog, and follow him to the earth’s edge, and down into hell? Once there had been that time of passion, when I thought him lost to me before. But now I could not say it. He did not want me, and unwanted I could offer nothing, even my life.
Klyton said, “Don’t cry for losing me. Be glad. I haven’t tarnished you. No. You’re like the fountain, more than your tears. Look how it overflows its alabaster basin, and pours away in a stream to the sea. It vanishes in darkness and runs underground in darkness, to return again to the fountain’s source, and overflow once more. This is you, Calistra. But I’m the fire. A burning jet, and now burned out. There’s nothing left. Let her have that, then,” he said. “She knows. She’s generous and kind from her indifference. She asks nothing of heart or mind. It’s what I need. All I deserve.”
When he had gone I wept on for hours, but like the fountain, always more tears evolved. Surely he had been my source. I must only go back to him.
I remember looking so often from the windows of that house, at the slender strip of sea, at the gardens. White owls and sea-eagles nested on my roof, as in other high buildings and statues of the city. In the gardens I frequently saw Nimi and Choras at play with the dog. They were not despairing here. And my black Maiden told them stories. They had come to admire and trust her, as the dog had come to rely on them.
Without me, Choras would have had no life but for her penance in Thon’s Temple of misery. But then, without Udrombis, I also would never have come up into the day.
I could not imagine for myself any future. It was as if prophetically I knew my future would be unimaginable unlike anything I could ever foresee.
The winter moved smooth as cream. I exercised from long habit to the beaten drum of a musician girl, whose flesh was of the tone of brown bread.
She put me in mind, by her lightness, of a youngish man I had seen sometimes in the three kings’ hall. But his skin was not quite like hers, though resembling her unblackness, dark more in the way of smoke. He grew the hair on his upper lip. But some Arteptan men went bearded. Additionally, he dressed in finery, and gave evidence of military power—the way he stalked about, his manner, the sword cut on his left hand. One saw the soldiers of the Arteptans, who were of above average height, and each man’s breastplate crossed by the skin of a leopard he had killed.
The dark man did not seem, however, much like them. He had two servants, pale as he, sometimes others with him, also well-dressed. And he was treated with by the kings as a high prince, given far more subtle respect, in fact, than Klyton.
That I took him for an Arteptan is not surprising; I had never seen before a man from Pesh Sandu.
At last, the orchard trees under my seaward window put on a sugar of blossom. They alone, of all the native trees, had lost their leaves. The other plants, and the palms of the garden, had only grown sulky and sombre.
Something in me, finding the blossom, catching or pretending a quality of spring was in the light, raised its face and glanced about.
I was young. I looked for something. If seasons transcend, why not other things.
That morning, I was aware of a great many ships out in the Straits, and faintly now and then some sound of horns would lift up to me. There was always trade, and business. I thought nothing of it.
At noon, Klyton did not come. That filled me with perplexity, and a fresh distress. Then a letter was brought, asking me to excuse him. Messengers had docked from the Benighted Isles, so far as he understood. Artepta would be winning to them, as she was to everyone. And he was, he said, curious.
Did something wake in Klyton too? Did he, hopeless and resigned, scent the spring and look about him, for some unthought-of chance?
A statue of an elder king, visible from my mansion, for it was the height of two houses piled on a third, let out its bell-voice to the Sunset, as it always did. And the porphyry beast in my garden flushed, then was the grey of ashes.
I recollect I puzzled over an Arteptan book that evening. I found the language difficult, and the substance of it has disappeared from my memory. Quite early, exhausted as I often was from boredom, I went to bed, without a single warning. And slept without one portentous dream. Not until my black Maiden came to wake me did I feel alarm. So the sacrifice only guesses, when its nostrils widen to the altar’s previous blood.
Many years longer than Klyton, my brother, lover and husband, I knew the Battle-Prince Shajhima. His last heir, now that Prince Shajhima whom I sometimes see, was born in the Battle-Prince’s sixtieth year.
At twenty-seven, he was strong and tall, and handsome in a way unusual to me, and at the time unseen. His hair was blue-black, and his eyes also blue-black. His smoldered skin had been clad in the azure of the Pesh sky, and ornaments of gold and silver, as he sat at the table of the kings of Artepta. Besides this he wore the great sword, made of the white steel that the Pesh call Immortal Moon, and which can cut through any other metal. This steel is feminine, and represents, as we know, the moon goddess of the Pesh, who they put away centuries ago, in order to seek the Ultimate God. Decades after this time, I said to Shajhima that the Pesh stood therefore behind a woman when they slew their enemies. He answered nothing, but later told me I had been correct. For the Pesh—then, women were so much less, that no blame could attach to them for obedience to a man in war.
But the steel of the Sun Lands was pherom, which also descended to us from Phaidix, a moon goddess.
He had sat quietly through winter, Shajhima, his warriors about him, only a handful in the kings’ hall. In the city were more. And south beyond Artepta, the fleet of the Pesh covered the sea as gulls cover a pool.
At the marriage rite that was no rite, when the pot of oil was handed to Netaru, I recall Shajhima frowned.
But he remained dumb. For Pesh had allied with Artepta, great power lying down beside great power, claws sheathed. And any way, the triumvirate had given one sanctified oath, which mattered very much.
That night when Klyton was curious, thinking to see the wild-men from Kloa and her Isles, was the night this oath was to be honored.
It was not Islers who walked into the hall, where the three walls of draperies were drawn up and the gardens were visible, black on the black sky, fountain-starred below with singing waters, silently starred above with stars.
Klyton was sitting, as was normal, among Artepta’s princes, but tonight he had been given a chair beside King Rhes. Adargon was on Klyton’s other side, and there were three of his captains, nobles from Akhemony. They had been talking since morning, trying to learn more about the Islers and their coming. But had learned very little, it seems.
Netartu had gone to the women’s place, and sat with her sisters, playing with a lion-cub.
The hall was built to face east, for moonrise, and Sunrise at dawn. Centuries before the Arteptans had considered Sunset ominous, and avoided, where possible, looking at it, marking its passage with raucous cries and blown trumpets. So the blind side of the hall was to the west. East, north and south, the drapes were raised, and Shajhima, the Peshan, had he been remarked, was on the north side, quite near to the Pehraa.
There was no preliminary for Klyton.
The silver horns sounded, and through the gardens, from east, north and south, came a long wide band of men. They were dressed in indigo and bronze, helmed in the Pesh helmets that cover the cheeks and are topped by spikes, which can, in battle, offer another weapon. They carried their ceremonial spears, chased with silver, and bound with white ribbon, which demonstrate they come in friendship not hostility.
Anyone could see at once now, these men, walking measuredly into the hall, were not Arteptans. And as Shajhima rose, they saluted him, raising their arms and tamping down with the spears. It was evident that he was their master.
The elder of the three kings also got up. He nodded to the phalanx, and then looking to Shajhima, he inclined his head.
Then the Peshan warriors drew back to the sides of the hall, and up the central floor was walking an old man heavily bearded, in a robe of dark silk, an embroidered cap upon his head.
The king spoke to the old man, in Arteptan, which Klyton understood by now reasonably well.
“You are very welcome, Teacher. Will you sit by me, here?”
The old man glanced aside at the royal women, and he drew his brows together, then loosened them. He gazed at the three Pehraa with hot and inky eyes. Then came up among them, and was sat down there between Rhes and the eldest king.
Rhes turned to Klyton. “This gentleman has traveled from Pesh Sandu across the Endless Sea, to teach us how to worship the True God.”
Klyton had no expression, though he had watched everything unblinking. He said quietly, “Did you not know how, sir?”
“It seems, not quite,” said Rhes.
Then turning back to the Peshan priest, he spoke to him in the Peshan language, which Klyton had never heard.
Adargon said, “Klyton, I think—they are Outlanders.”
“From the fabled continent beyond all the seas,” said Klyton. “Yes.”
He had meant to go there, if it existed, and grip hold of it. It took no great effort to reason that something like this had happened in reverse.
Rhes returned to Klyton and said, with the utmost politeness, “Pesh Sandu makes a holy war. Artepta does not war at all. So we have agreed to learn about God, and to reshape ourselves somewhat, in order to display to him our reverence. The Teacher will assist us.”
“And these armed men,” said Klyton, “will they also assist?”
“Some. But the bulk of their army, of which there are many, many thousands, will press on through the countries of the mainland, towards Akhemony.”
Klyton did not speak.
It was Adargon who said, “You mean, king, to make war on Akhemony?”
“To conquer Akhemony.”
And Rhes smiled. The smile was not villainous, nor sorry. Events came and went around Artepta as the sea did, and like their carved statues that stood in the sea, Artepta would remain.
Adargon swore and surged up. A slave, coming with wine for the old teacher, skipped back, and the drink was spilled.
“A bad omen for your friends,” said Klyton.
“They don’t believe in omens quite in that way.
“Then do they believe in swords?”
As a prince, and kinsman, he was permitted to feast with the kings, armed. Now he touched the red hilt of the sword, where the eagle poised.
“Please calm yourself, prince,” said Rhes, unruffled. “Nothing can be done. You need fear no insult. You are son to the Pehraa now, and your other wife is our daughter, as Netaru is. Your household, your half brothers, are held within our own safety.”
“Insult, and safety,” said Klyton, still in Arteptan. “You might,” he added casually, “have warned me. In the anteroom, say, before we came in, and looked so foolish.”
They had trusted probably he would not make a fuss. To how many had he said, as to me, he was a fire burned out?
But they had forgotten burned ground keeps heat a long while, and sometimes plants grow there, like the memories of flames.
Klyton drew the sword, but when Adargon also moved, Klyton put him mildly back. Klyton said to Adargon, “I see now I was brought down to this, for the moment that the gods have sent me, here.” And then he pointed with the sword, barbarously, across the elegant tables, the crystal bowls of lilies, the alabaster lamps, the glimmering of women’s gowns and skin, and all the shining of the angerless, acquiescent night. Pointed at the Peshan who was Shajhima. “Is that one their commander?”
And Shajhima, who could speak Arteptan better than Klyton, said in a carrying voice, “I am the commander of the force of Pesh Sandu. What you are doing means you wish a combat with me. Or have I mistaken your rudeness?”
“No,” said Klyton. “No mistake. I mean, very rudely, to cut your flyblown heart out of your stinking body. Will that do?”
Shajhima shrugged. He said, “Tomorrow, then.”
“Now,” said Klyton.
Rhes stood up—
And Klyton snatched a wine cup from the table and hurled it into the open floor, where the dancers, acrobats, and magicians had worked their lovely patterns all winter.
“I’ll meet you there,” said Klyton. “Now, before all this wondrous people, who have no word in their language for honor.”
Shajhima said, “I’d heard Akhemonians are savages, with kings who act like slaves.”
Klyton said nothing. He had been recognized, that was all it meant. He went down to the floor and kicked the thrown cup out of the way. But for its rolling, there was no other sound
Shajhima bowed to the Pehraa, and made a salute to the old teacher. “With your indulgence.”
He, too, had sat armed. But for ceremony, the sword of the metal named Immortal Moon, was curved, like Phaidix’s crescent. Shajhima drew it from the scabbard, and offered the blade to his god. Then he went to meet Klyton.
Klyton had said, for Adargon remembered and wrote it in his own chamber, wrote it on the white wall in his own last blood: I was brought down to this, for the moment that the gods have sent me, here.
Klyton. What is in his mind—only the words that have left his lips?
Does he see the lamp-glow on their cool faces, on the face of Netaru, who has not left her seat, while the jewels move slowly over her breasts that he has kissed. Does he see the Arteptan night of fountains and stars? Or does he see only the past?
Not Shajhima. He does not see Shajhima. Nor does that count, for the moment sent is not for the hero, but for the sacrifice.
I cannot, even from the air, gaze down into their fight. Will not, perhaps, see it. Refuse.
The swords, curved and straight, ply to and fro. Light slides and drips from the blades. It is easy to become mesmerized, missing the instant, after all.
Klyton. He had grown old, in Artepta, this young god. He had lost his skill. Does he stumble? Does he hear that noise in his head he has complained of occasionally, the sound the thunderbolts made, bursting on Oceaxis?
Perhaps a glint from some jewel interferes with vision. Or he is only weary. Or simply knows what the moment is, and consents. The King must go first for his land, to slay—or be slain. If he will not, he is no king.
And, he has been dead some while.
No, never can I say it. Cannot have written the words. Let it not be said or written, then.
Only the spinning of steel, the sudden flash of goldenness, then of scarlet. Stars going out, not eyes. Smoke moving, not life, away, away, and into the darkness for ever.
Oh, my beloved, says the song of Pesh that the women sing under my tower, when they wash garments at the lower pool. Oh, my beloved, my mouth is stopped with emotion. My heart has been stolen and hidden under a stone.
I had become a shadow with him, and to regain myself, must lose him. But losing him, only the shadow remained of me.
I was a shadow. But, early in the morning or late in the night, the black Maiden woke me, to tell me so.