Tides of Darkness (41 page)
Authors: Judith Tarr
“You doubted it?”
“I don't know what I thought,” he said. “This tentâits notâ”
“I need a place to hold councils and be royal. You need a place to rest. As do I. Would you object too strongly if I did my sleeping here with you?”
His heart swelled. He could barely speak. “I would be somewhat ⦠dismayed ⦠if you did not.”
She smiled. The pure golden warmth of that smile nearly reduced him to tears. But those were all burned out of him; he did not know when they would come back.
“This match is approved of,” she said. “My mother has no objections. You know that yours does not. The breeding, as they both say, is impeccable.”
“My father?
He
approves?” Daros shook his head. “Ah, but he would. Whatever he thinks of meâ”
He
approves?” Daros shook his head. “Ah, but he would. Whatever he thinks of meâ”
“He loves you,” she said. “He grieves for you. He's glad beyond measure that you are alive and well and proving your worth in the worlds.”
“And even if he were not, he would still be enormously pleased. Once again at last, Han-Gilen and the Sunborn's line unite in marriage.”
“He is not as cold as that,” Merian said, “and I am not in the mood for a quarrel. You will have to face him eventually: I gave our daughter into his care until the war was over.”
His breath hissed between his teeth. “OurâTell me. Tell me how it happened. Why you never told me.”
“You know how it happened,” she said. “You were there, dreamwalking with me. I never told you because there was never time. You were lost to the dark not long after I knew it myself. I didn't believe it, either, not until there was no escaping the truth.”
“Is that why?” he asked. “Did you name me your consort because it was the honorable thing? Because a child needs a father?”
“Among other reasons,” she said, “yes. But when I chose you, there was no such constraint. I wanted you long before I could admit it to myself. When I understood what our dreamwalking had done, I had already decided that if you came back, if you were alive and still had your wits, I would take you as my lover.”
“But notâ”
“I'm Sun-blood,” she said. “My first lover would inevitably be the father of my heir. You know that, surely.”
“Yes, butâ”
“If you don't want the rank or the marriage,” she said, “I won't force it on you. You will always be Elian's father. I will notâ”
“Elian? Her name is Elian?”
“It seemed appropriate,” she said.
He did not know whether to bellow at her or kiss her. Elian had been a princess of Han-Gilen long ago; she had loved and in time married the Sunborn, and borne his heir. She was Merian's foremother and his own kinswoman. It was a name of great honor in both their houses.
“Let me see her,” he said: peremptorily, he supposed, but he could not help it.
She took no offense. She opened her mind and showed them the child whom he had seen in dream: the child with his face, whose ancestry none could mistake.
“It was true,” he said in wonder. “All of itâall true.”
“As true as life itself,” she said. “Still, if you don't want the marriage, the child is still yours. I'll not forbid you your share in her raising.”
“You'd trust
me
to raise a child?”
me
to raise a child?”
Her smile grew wicked. “There's no preceptor so strict as a rake reformed, and none so stern as a father who spent his youth in debauching other men's daughters.”
“Ai!”
It was a cry of pure pain, but laughter broke through it. “Lady, you wound me to the heart.”
It was a cry of pure pain, but laughter broke through it. “Lady, you wound me to the heart.”
“Good,” she said: “you have a heart to wound.”
“After all, it seems I do.” He paused. She made excellent use of the silence, but he was not ready yet to give himself up to it. “What you've sentenced me to, this task hereâit may be long. Are you telling me that when it's done, my exile is ended? I can go home?”
“You can return to the service to which I swore you,” she said. “Have you forgotten that? I never have.”
“This is all part ofâ”
She nodded.
“Lady,” he said. “You've no need to bind me. I will belong to you if you will it or no, with oaths or without them, wed or unwed, sworn or unsworn, for as long as there is breath in my body.”
“That's an oath,” she said. “That's a binding.”
“Yes,” he said. “So it is.”
“Forever and ever?”
“Forever,” he said, “and ever. Unlessâ”
She slapped him hard. It struck the breath out of him. “No evasions,” she said. “And no grinning at me, either. This is a true binding. Once it's made, you'll not be escaping it.”
“Should I want to?”
“Not while I live,” she said.
“Even though I am hopelessly disobedient, reckless, feckless, headstrong, and impossibly insolent?”
“Even so,” she said.
T
HE LORD SERAMON WAS DEAD.
HE LORD SERAMON WAS DEAD.
Tanit had known in her heart when he bade her farewell, that it was not a simple battle he went to, nor a plain rite of the temple. She had her duties, her people to protect, her armies to muster and send forth; that night was most terrible of all, the worst since the shadow came to the black land. Yet the raids stopped abruptly toward midnight. The darkness lingered, but the enemy turned their backs even where they were winning the battle, left captives and carts of grain from the storehouses, and vanished into the air.
It was not over then. Not for her lord, though the world was almost frighteningly quiet. She endured it as long as she could; saw to the wounded and the merely terrified; set her house in order, and last of all
before she left it, lingered in the nursery where Menes lay asleep.
before she left it, lingered in the nursery where Menes lay asleep.
He was breathingâshe assured herself of that. He dreamed: his brows knit, his lips pursed, his fists clenched and unclenched. Almost she fancied that she could see a play of delicate flame over his skin, but when she peered closer, there was nothing.
She kissed his brow, smoothed his thick dark curls, and left him with tearing reluctance. He was safe: he had his nurse, his guards, the young godling whom the Lord Re-Horus had made before he vanished into the dark. All prayers and protections were laid on him, and the gods' power, and guardian spells wrought by both of the gods who had come from beyond the horizon to tarry in Waset.
The one who remained lay in the temple. She needed no guide to find him. Her heart knew always where he was.
They had laid him on a bier, surrounded by priests and chanting and the scent of incense. He was alive then, but the spirit in him was far away, lost on the roads of dream.
She knelt beside him. The priests rolled their eyes at her, but none was bold enough to send her away. She made no effort to touch him. It was enough to rest her eyes on the alien beauty of him. Nothing like him was in this world.
How long she knelt there, she did not know. The sun sank slowly toward the western horizon; toward the land of the dead. He never moved, never changed, and yet it seemed to her heart that he sank with the sun: drifted farther and farther away, more and more distant from the flesh that had contained him.
At long last the sun passed out of sight from within the temple. In a little while it would touch the jagged line of cliffs across the river. It was already dark in this room, but a soft glow shone out of the body on the bier, even before the priests lit the lamps at its head and foot.
The glow faded so imperceptibly that she hardly believed it could have existed. But when it was gone, she knew. He was gone. He had flown beyond the horizon, and left his body behind.
She could not find it in her to grieve, not properly, as a wife should when her husband was dead. She laid her hand on his cheek. It was cooling slowly in the heat. She found herself thinking, not of death, but of a nest from which the bird has flown: a bird of light, spreading wings that stretched from horizon to horizon, soaring into the night.
“I told you,” she said. “You would leave, and I would be left behind. You never believed me. But I knew.”
The priests stared uncomprehending; all but Seti, who though blind had clearer sight than anyone she knew. He was gazing into his private dark, smiling, but as she glanced at him, a slow tear ran down his cheek. “The gods are gone out of the world,” he said.
“They live forever beyond the horizon,” she said.
“So they do,” said Seti, as if he humored a child.
From him she would accept it. She kissed him on the cheek, softly, and said to the priests, “Summon the servants of the dead.”
One or two looked as if he would protest, but she was the queen. Under her steady stare, they all bowed and left, all but Seti. He was an untroubling presence; he comforted her with his silence.
She returned to her lord's side. Not even the semblance of life was left in him. She took his hand in hers. It was still supple, but its swift strength was gone. She stroked the long fingers, committing to memory the feel of his skin. It would have to last her for long years, until she saw him again.
She had every intention of doing that. It might be impossible; she did not care. This was the half of her self. She would get it back.
She stayed with him until the servants of the dead came. They wrapped him in white linen, folding it close about his long limbs, and carried him away to their houses on the far side of the river.
Seti left when they left, leaning on the arm of a strong young priest. She sat alone in the flickering lamplight. Slowly it dawned on her: the night was clean. No shadow tainted it. No armies came riding across the river to raid the villages.
There had been respite before, a year and more of it. But this was different. There was no darkness behind the stars; only the night, pure and unsullied. Something about it made her think of her lord: dark beauty with the splendor of a sun in its heart.
She wept then, a little, because she was mortal and she was weak and she yearned for his arms about her and his warm rich voice in her ear. She yearned so strongly that almostâalmostâshe could have swornâ
“Beloved.”
That was his very voice. It lived still inside her. Yet it seemed so real, as if indeed, impossibly, he could be there.
She turned slowly.
He was standing behind her. The light within him was clearly visible. She could not meet his eyes at all, any more than she could stare straight into the sun.
“Dear heart,” he said. “What did I promise you?”
“That you would never leave me,” she heard herself say. “Butâ”
“I couldn't keep my body,” he said. “There are rules and prices, and that is one of them. But nothing could forbid me to come back to you. That oath I swore, and oaths are sacred. They bind even the gods.”
“Even you?”
He seemed bemused. “I suppose I am a god nowâtruly; not simply a mage from beyond a Gate. I wasn't thinking of that when I did it. There was no other way to kill the dark, except to overwhelm it with light. But to do that, I had to give up whatever mortal substance I had.”
His words were profoundly strange, but that was nothing new or remarkable. She reached carefully and touched him.
He was not flesh, no; it felt like holding her hand in sunlight, yet sunlight given shape and form. He moved under her hand. He seemed to breathe, though that might only be habit from his earthly self. She
could wrap her arms about him and hold him, and he could complete the embrace. The warmth of it, the sheer white joy, was almost more than she could bear.
could wrap her arms about him and hold him, and he could complete the embrace. The warmth of it, the sheer white joy, was almost more than she could bear.
A good part of it was his. He had likened his magery once to living with one's skin off. Now his skin was lost altogether.
“I can't stay long,” he said. “I can't be with you as I am now, not often; I'm scattered through the worlds, among the chains of Gates. I hold back the dark from all of them. But part of me is always here. It will never leave you. If you need me, or simply want to be with me, look in your heart. You'll find me.”
“Always?”
“Always,” he said.
“And when I leave this flesh behind? Will I be as you are?”
He ran his finger down her cheek as he had done so often before, a gesture so tender and so familiar that her eyes filled anew with tears. “The greater gods have promised, beloved. When your body has lived out its span, you will come to me. We will never again be parted.”
The question that rose in her was inevitable, but far from wise. She did not ask it. The gods knew when she would die. It was not right or proper that she should know. She said instead, “I shall live every day in gladness, and sleep every night in peace, with that before me.”
“O marvel among women.” He kissed her, long and slow and ineffably sweet. He said no word of farewell, but then he had not left her. Only this semblance was gone. The truth of him, the living essence, lay folded in her heart.
The dawn was coming, bright and free of fear. She wiped away her tears and composed herself. Her son was waking: she felt him within her, close by his father.
She would tarry with him until the day came. Then she would go out, and put on her mask of paint and royal pride, and be queen of her people. They would mourn because the gods had left them, and rejoice
because the darkness was gone. She would give them what comfort they needed, and rule them as best she could.
because the darkness was gone. She would give them what comfort they needed, and rule them as best she could.
After a while they would forget their grief. Hers was already passing. She must not seem too glad, not yet; none of them would understand. But in her heart, where he was, she could rest in his warmth and be deeply content.
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