Tides of Darkness (11 page)

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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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“And yet,” said a portly personage who sat not far from the queen, “it is not random or capricious, like the wind across the red land. It has will; it has malice, living and potent. None of us has power to stand against it.”
That was manifestly true. The only magic here resided in the cats who deigned to share Estarion's lap. There were priests in the hall, but they were not mages; nor was there a mage anywhere among these people. They were defenseless against any power that chose to advance against them.
No, he thought; not altogether. The sun's light protected them, and it seemed that the walls of the city had some power, too, or else the enemy did not choose, yet, to pass through them.
They were all staring at him. His expression must be alarming. He smoothed it and said, “I don't know what power I have against this; but whatever I do have, I place at your disposal.”
They glanced at one another. These were courtiers, nobles and priests, and like all their kind, they were born suspicious. “Suppose,” said one of those nearest the queen—not the priest who had spoken before, but an elegant man in a heavy golden collar—“that you tell us who and what you are, and why you have come. With all due respect, of course,” he said, bowing in his seat.
Estarion bowed in return. “I come from beyond your horizon. My name is difficult for your tongue to encompass. Your lady has named me
Seramon; that will do, if it pleases you. I am a priest of the Sun, and the Sun is my forefather. I was hunting shadow on the other side of your sky, and found it lapping the shores of this world. My own world is not yet threatened, but will be soon. If it can be stopped here—if it can be driven back—” He drew a breath. “What I am … have you workers of magic here?”
“Indeed,” said the priest, “we work magic, who serve the gods.”
Estarion raised a brow. He could hardly call the man a liar, but there was not one grain of honest magic in that well-fed body. “May I ask what you reckon among the magical arts?”
“He's a spy!” someone cried, back among the pillars. “He wants to know our powers, so that he can destroy us.”
“I have no fear,” said the priest, although his breath had quickened a fraction. “Am I to understand, lord, that you also are a worker of magic?”
“I am,” said Estarion. “And you?”
“I am a master of the hidden arts,” said the priest. “In the morning, perhaps we may meet in a less public place, and speak as master to master?”
“I would be honored,” Estarion said.
“Show us now!” cried the man who had spoken before. He had come out from the pillars and stood in the light: a young man no older than Daros, with the passion of youth and the suspicion of a much older and wiser man. “Show us what you are. But promise us one thing: that you'll harm none of us here. Swear to it!”
Estarion bowed to that wisdom, however headlong the expression of it. “I will not harm you,” he said. “You have my word.”
“By the Sun your father?”
“By the Sun my forefather,” Estarion said.
He rose. Some of those closest drew away, but Tanit sat still, watching in silence. He stepped down from the dais into the space where the dancers had been. It was empty now, lit by a shaft of sunlight through the open door. It was still some time until evening, but the shadows were growing long. All too soon, the night's terror would come.
He gathered the light in his hands and wove it as if it had been a garland of flowers. Breaths caught round the hall; he smiled. It was a simple magic, such as a child could perform, but it awed these courtiers. He bowed and presented his crown of light to the queen, offering it with a smile.
She stared at it. It shimmered, taking life from the Sun in his hand, the burning golden brand of his line. Slowly she stretched out her finger to touch the crown. It did not burn; that startled her. She lifted it with sudden decision, in hands that trembled just visibly. “It is beautiful,” she said.
“Beauty for beauty,” said Estarion. He flicked a finger. The crown lifted out of her hands and settled on her brows. Brave woman: she did not flinch.
He smiled sweetly at them all. “As for the great workings and displays of higher powers, I beg your indulgence; among my people they are not reckoned among the entertainments proper to a royal banquet.”
“And why not?” the young man demanded. “Is there truly nothing else you can do?”
“Hardly,” Estarion said.
“Then show us!”
Estarion sighed. He had been a fool to do as much as he had; it forced him to play out the game. He paused to gather the threads of his power. People were stirring, beginning to mutter. The boy with the loud voice curled his lip.
He never said what he had been going to say. Estarion brought down the lightning.
He broke nothing, burned nothing. When all of them could see again, they stared at the floor in front of him. In it was set the image of the Sun in his hand, as broad as his outstretched arms, gleaming like molten gold.
He raked his glare across the lot of them. “What more would you have, my lords? Shall I cleave the tiles under your feet? Lift the roof and leave you naked to the sky?”
“No,” the boy stammered. “No, no, my lord. Please pardon—I didn't know—”
“Of course you didn't,” Estarion said with edged gentleness.
That ended the banquet: even without the shock he had given it, the sun was sinking low. Those who did not live in the palace were eager to be home before the fall of dark. It could not be said that they fled, but they left quickly, without lingering over their farewells.
In a very little while, there was only Estarion in the hall, and the servants waiting to clear away the tables, and Tanit sitting like an ivory image. Her crown of sunlight had not faded with the day; it shone more brightly than lamps or torches.
He took her hands and lifted her unresisting to her feet. She looked up into his face—rather a long way, for although she was tall for a woman of her people, that was not even as high as his shoulder. But he never thought of her as small. She had a queen's spirit, high and proud.
“You are a king of your people,” she said as if it had only just occurred to her.
“I was,” he admitted, “somewhat more than a king.”
“I see it,” she said, “like a shining mantle. You left it, yes? To become a god.”
He laughed in spite of himself. “I left to become a rootless wanderer, and then a shepherd. I'm no great lord of any world now.”
“A god is somewhat more than a lord,” she said. “You were sent to save us. The others don't understand. They're afraid. But you would never do us harm.”
“I would hope not,” he said.
The cats came padding down the table, among the plates and cups and empty bowls. The she-cat leaped to his shoulder; the he-cat sprang into her arms.
No magic? Maybe not as his own world would reckon it. But this queen of the people had power in no little measure. He paid it due reverence.
W
ITH THE COMING OF NIGHT, SERVANTS DREW SHUTTERS across the windows of the palace and hung amulets and charms on the lintels of the doors. Priests walked the walls, chanting and sending up clouds of incense. Guards took station in strong-walled towers. The bright and airy city of the day became the fortress city of the night.
After so many years, there were few left who could not sleep even amid such fear. Estarion would sleep soon, but first he had to know what the night was in this world. He saw the queen to her rooms, but did not go at once to that which he had been given. He went up instead, to the roof.
The last light was fading from the sky. He saw the jagged line of cliffs across the river to the west, blacker than black, limned in deep blue and
fading rose. Stars crowded the vault of heaven, not so bright as those he had known, but far more numerous, scattered like sand across a blue-black shore. This world had but one moon, smaller than Brightmoon, and wan; it rode high, but what light it cast was dim and pallid.
There was no other light in the world. The city was dark, walled against the night. Children here had grown to bear or beget children of their own, without ever seeing stars or moon.
Nothing yet stained the darkness. The night was clean, for a while. Not far away, a bird hooted softly, calling to its mate. Across the river he heard yipping and howling. Jackals, those would be: creatures like shrunken direwolves, scavengers and eaters of carrion.
Tonight he did not wait for the shadow. He was more weary than he had wanted anyone to know. He would rest, if he could, and in the morning, call on the priest who laid claim to magic.
 
He slept after all, as deeply as if drugged. If he dreamed, he did not remember. When he woke, the shutters were open; sunlight poured into the room. Servants were waiting to tend him, and there was breakfast: the perpetual bread and beer.
He felt sleepy and slow, but he roused as he ate. He must be as keen of wit as he could be before he faced the priests. They, even more than courtiers, drove straight to the heart of any weakness.
The servants saw to it that he was dressed in kilt and belt and broad pectoral of gold and colored stones. They plaited his hair with ropes of gold and red and blue, and painted his eyes in the fashion of their people. They declared him beautiful then, and fit to be seen, but insisted that he not go alone.
“That would not be proper,” said the eldest of them, a man much wizened by years but still bright of eye. He crooked a finger at one of his subordinates, young and strong and as tall as men grew here. “You belong to him. Serve him well, or pay the price which I exact.”
The young man blanched slightly, but bowed and acquiesced. He
carried a fan and a rod like a shepherd's staff, and walked ahead with an air of granting his charge great consequence.
Estarion was glad of the guide, and somewhat amused by the swagger the man put in his stride. He reminded Estarion a little of Daros, in his youth and bravado and his conviction that if he must be anything, it must be bold and bad.
The city had a temple for each of its nine greater gods, and a lesser temple or shrine for a myriad more. The temple of the sun was the largest and highest, a good three man-heights of hewn stone in this city of mudbrick and reed thatch. Its walls were thickly and brilliantly painted, inside and out; whole worlds of story were drawn there, tales of gods and kings.
Estarion, priest of another sun in another sky, found this place remarkably familiar. Its priests wore no torques like the one he had given to the altar of the god when he left his throne, and they shaved their heads and wore no beast's flesh or wool, only cream-pale linen and reed sandals. Yet their chants and the scent of their incense recalled the rites of his own god; their temple with its progression of courts was rather like the Temple of the Sun in his own city.
He was at ease but not complacent when they came to what must be the shrine. It was a long hall, its roof held up by heavy pillars; a stone image stood at the far end, and before it the table of an altar.
Priests stood in ranks in front of that altar. They were all dressed in simple linen, all shaven smooth: row on row of shining brown heads. The priest whom he had met at the banquet was seated behind and somewhat above them, surrounded by a circle of older and more august priests.
It seemed Estarion merited a full conclave. He decided to be flattered rather than alarmed. There was no more magic here than there had been in the queen's hall; what little there was, he could attribute to the cat which, having followed him from the palace, now walked haughtily ahead of him down that long march of pillars.
He halted at sufficient distance to keep all of them in sight. The cat sat tidily at his feet. It was the he-cat; he had, between last night and
this morning, acquired a ring of gold in his ear. It gave him a princely and rather rakish look.
The priests regarded all of them, Estarion and the cat and the servant with the staff and the fan, as if they had been the children of Mother Night herself. They had heard the tale of the banquet from the one of their number who had seen it with his own eyes. They were afraid; and fear, in any mass of men, was dangerous.
Estarion smiled at them. “Good morning to you,” he said.
The priest from the banquet bowed stiffly. The rest did not move or speak. They were a guard, Estarion began to understand; a shieldwall. Those whom they protected might have laid claim to a dim and barely perceptible glimmer of power. In Estarion's world it would not have sufficed to make its bearer even the least of mages, but here, maybe, it was remarkable.
Two of them boasted this ghost-flicker. One was an old man, toothless and milkily blind. The other was hardly more than a child. Estarion inclined his head to each. “My lords,” he said.
The young one started visibly. The elder's clouded eyes turned toward Estarion and widened. Estarion saw himself reflected there: a pillar of light, towering in the darkness.
The old man came down from the dais. The younger one made as if to guide his steps, but he took no notice. He could see all that he needed to see. He stopped within reach, peering up, for he was very small and shriveled, and Estarion was very much taller than he. “You,” he said in a thin old voice, “are nothing so simple as a god. I cry your pardon for the foolishness of my son; there are some with eyes to see, but he is not one of them. He does mean well, lord. Do believe that.”
“I believe it,” Estarion said. The plump priest, he noticed, was struggling to keep his temper at bay.
“We will not be mountebanks for you,” the old man said, “nor strive to awe you with our poor powers. Some of us may be willing to learn what you can teach. Most will refuse, and I think rightly. Men cannot and should not pretend to the powers of gods.”
Estarion bowed as low as to a brother king. “I see that there are wise men in this country,” he said.
“Ah,” said the old priest, shaking off the compliment. “I don't call wisdom what's only common sense. Any one of us can turn a staff into a snake, or water into blood—but you, lord, could overturn the river into the sky, and set the fish to dancing. We'd all be wasting ourselves on trifles. There's only one thing I would ask of you.”
“Yes?” said Estarion.
“Promise,” said the priest, “that whatever you do here, whatever you came for, you will do no harm to our people or our queen.”
“I do promise,” Estarion said.
“I believe,” said the priest, “that you will try to keep that promise. Break it even once, however excellent your reasons, and even as weak as we are beside you, we will do our best to exact the price that such betrayal deserves.”
“That is a fair judgment,” said Estarion.
“Good,” the priest said. “Good. This gathering was meant to cow you, of course, and overwhelm you with numbers and power; but I do hope that it helps you to understand: we serve the gods and the city, and the queen's majesty. As long as you do the same, we are allies.”
The alternative was perfectly clear. “I see we understand one another,” Estarion said. “That's well. I too am a priest of the Sun. It would be a great grief if we could find no common ground.”
“You must tell us of your rites and your order,” the priest said, “as far as you may, of course. But not this moment. My brothers have duties that they've been neglecting in order to put on this show of force, and I don't doubt that you have things that need doing. May we speak again under less nervous circumstances?”
“Certainly we may,” said Estarion with honest warmth. “Good day, reverend sir, and may your god bless and keep you.”
“And yours,” said the old priest: “may he hold you in his hand.”
 
 
Estarion had much to ponder after he left that place. Not least was the plump priest's expression as Estarion and the old man parted on the best of terms. There would be war in the temple after this, he had no doubt. He had been sorely tempted to stop it with a blast of cleansing fire, but it was neither the place nor the time for such excesses. He must trust that the old man could look after himself, and hope that the city and the queen were not forced to pay for the outcome.
He said as much to her that afternoon when she had taken a few moments' rest in the garden of her palace. She was dressed for the day in court, in fine linen and a great deal of gold; her face was a mask of artful paint. She still had the loose, free stride of a hunter or a warrior as she walked down the path from the pool to the little orchard that grew along the wall.
“Seti is neither as feeble nor as innocent as he seems,” she said. “He was high priest for more years than I can count; when he handed the staff to his son—yes, that fat fool is the heir of his body—he surrendered no part of his actual power. If he approves you, the rest will follow. Some may snarl and snap, but none of them is strong enough to stand against Seti.”
“Or so you can hope,” Estarion said.
“So I know,” she said, politely immovable.
Estarion bowed to her knowledge of the place and the people. “I'm a difficult guest, I know. I hope I've not created factions that will bring you grief.”
“There are always factions,” she said. “This may bring out one or two that we had been needing to know of.”
“There is that,” he granted her.
She passed under the shade of the trees, which was a little cooler than the fierce heat of the sun, and inspected the green fruit clustered on a branch. Her gown clung tightly to her body, so sheer and so delicately woven that it concealed nothing, only made it all the more beautiful. Her blue-black hair was plaited in a myriad small plaits, some strung
with beads of gold or lapis or carnelian; they swung together as she moved, brushing her bare shoulders.
He would have loved to touch them, to run his fingers over the sweet curve of them, and know the softness of her skin. He was startled to discover just how keenly he wanted it.
She would not thank him for the liberty. He kept his hands to himself. She seemed to have forgotten him, but he sensed the spark of her awareness. She knew exactly where he was and what he did there.
He wandered back toward the pool, in part to test her, in part to cool his feet. The water was not particularly cool, but it was cooler than the air. He laved his face and arms, and stroked the bright fish that came crowding about him. They slid over his fingers with oiled smoothness, butting him with their heads but offering no insolence.
They seemed content in their captivity. He was not. This world was lovely, even with the heat; its people were well worth knowing. Yet he was not one of them. The shadow's strength had grown even in the scarce day's span since he fell out of it onto the harsh red earth. Whatever had held it back through a king's reign and into the reign of a queen was fading fast. His fault, maybe, for falling through the Gate. Maybe he had drawn the darkness' attention; maybe he had shown it a clearer way in.
There were no rents in the fabric of the world. The Gate through which he had come was gone, swallowed up in his deepest self. The tide of shadow darkened his sense of the stars, though it did not yet dim the sun.
He withdrew into himself and sighed. He was no nearer than before to knowing what the shadow was. What hope he had of defending this world, he did not know; he did hope that it was not too arrogant to think that he had been sent here, that the gods had given him this task. His own world, however great his fear for it, was as well defended as a world could be. It had hundreds, thousands of mages; it had its godborn rulers. It was a great fortress and deep well of magic. This world had, as far as he could tell, one lone Sunborn mage from beyond the sky,
a tribe of small mageborn cats, and no more. Unless a warm heart and a strong spirit could be enough, the people here had no defense.
“If that scowl is for me,” said the queen, “I'd best call my guards.” Estarion blinked and focused. Her face was stern, but her eyes were glinting. He found a smile for her and put away the scowl. “Do please forgive me,” he said. “I was pondering imponderables.”

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