Spear of Heaven (23 page)

“Isn’t it the truth?”

“Well,” she said, “yes. But—”

Vanyi intervened, and none too soon, either. “We used that
expedient in Su-Akar. We were told it wasn’t necessary here.”

Bundur turned his attention to the Guildmaster, apparently
unruffled by her meddling. “Once, it wasn’t. Things have changed.”

“So I see,” she said.

He smiled. His teeth were white, and just uneven enough to
be interesting. “We’ll speak of that. But this is festival night, when we
should forget our troubles. Will you come into the city with us?”

Vanyi looked as if she might have pressed him for more, now
that he had begun. But she was no less wise than Daruya. She let be, for a while.
“We were intending to see the dancing.”

“With us,” he said laughing, “you can do better. You can
join in it.”

“Well now,” she said, “I don’t think—”

“Come,” he said, sweeping her up, and Daruya, too, and
whirling them out of the hall. “Masks, cloaks, festival purses—come! We’ll
revel the night away.”

oOo

It was a mad, glad night, a night of masks and laughter,
sudden lights, sudden shadows, dancing and singing and long laughing skeins of
people winding through the city. Daruya was swept right out of herself, whether
she would or no. With her alien face hidden behind a mask, her alien mane
concealed by the black hood of a reveller, she was no stranger at all. No one
stared at her; no one whispered, or called others to come and see the demon
walking free in the streets of the Summer City.

For all the wildness of the festival, her companions clung
close together. Bundur’s hand was strong in hers, fingers wound together,
inextricable. When she danced, she danced with him. When she ran, he ran with
her, and the others behind.

She had no wish to be free of him. He seemed like a part of
her, the moon to her sun, whirling ever opposite, ever joined, but never
touching save at arms’ length. More than once some stranger tried to pull her
loose; Bundur laughed and spun her away and shouted something that she could
not make sense of, something about festival right. It always sent the other
spinning off to a new quarry.

The music was all bells and drums, with once in a while the
moaning of a great horn. It sounded odd, but after a time it seemed
fitting—particularly after she had drunk a beaker or two of another wine than
she had had in Shurakan before. This was strong, heady, and not sweet at all.
If anything it was sour, like the yellow wine of Asanion.

What color it was, she could not clearly see. Pale, she
thought, not red, not blood-colored. Gold like sunlight. It burned going down,
and warmed her to her fingers’ ends, and made her feet light in the dance.

Bundur drank off a whole jar of it, dancing round a fire
that leaped and capered in a square. There were masks all around it, laughing,
clapping their hands, beating on drums.

It came to Daruya with a shock of cold that she was standing
alone and he was far away, across the fire. He whirled on the other side, arms
wide, singing in his deep voice.

She ran, lifted, sprang through the fire. It reached for her
as she flew. She laughed at it. “Cousin,” she said to it. “Soul’s kin.”

It warmed her but could not burn. It was never as hot as the
fire in her blood.

She landed lightly, reaching for Bundur. Their hands
clasped. The fire leaped out of her and wrapped him about.

He gasped. He was burning—but he was not. The fire filled
him and did not consume him.

“Mageborn,” she said, but in her own tongue, the language of
princes in Starios. “Fireborn, Sun’s blood. You—too—”

He understood, but in his bones, where he refused to listen.
In himself he knew only that there had been fire coming out of her, and it was
gone. They stood on cold paving, with the dance going on around them, and the
fire—simple mortal flames again—casting ruddy light upon them all.

No fear, she thought. Even in the refusal of knowledge, no
fear.

He pulled her away from the flames, but not back into the
dance. She tried to twist away. The others were gone. She could not find them.
The fire—

But he was too strong, and he was running, dragging her
whether she would or no. This was the trap, her mind gibbered. Now he had her
alone. He would take her away, hold her hostage, demand an empire’s worth of
ransom. Chakan would be gratified.

Stupidity. He was running away from the fire and the
knowledge it held. He dragged her because he lacked the sense to let her go. He
was lordly drunk, pure mazed with wine, and still too much the gentleman to
throw her down and rape her as many a self-respecting princeling might have
done.

Although, at that, he might not be so drunk that he thought
she would allow such a thing. She would have gelded him if he had tried.

He ran, and she ran with him, weaving through the crowds.
There was a giddy pleasure in it, once she gave herself up to it. Running,
darting, dancing when they fell into a skein of dancers, running loose again,
from end to end of the city and back, from fire to fire, dance to dance,
sunset- side to sunrise-side, till movement was all there was and all there
need be.

So was the sun in its dance with the moons. So were the
stars, wheeling in their courses. Such was the festival, this feast of the
peace in the Summer City of Shurakan.

It had not been a pleasant morning. Festival wine was
stronger than it looked, and hit harder; and Vanyi, having fallen into bed just
as dawn paled the eastward sky, was roused much too soon after sunup to greet a
guest.

Esakai of Ushala temple, fresh and bright-eyed as if he had
slept the night through, wanted to wish her a bright morning and was disposed
to linger. He was curious as always, questioning yet again the preposterous
belief the mages shared with Asanion, that there was no war in heaven between
the light and dark, between good and evil; that the worlds hung in a balance,
and that both light and dark were faces of the same power.

She was never completely averse to debating theology, but in
the morning after a night of revelry it was more difficult than usual. She
trapped herself, one way and another, into inviting her guest to breakfast. He
might have stayed till noon if Daruya had not come to her rescue.

Daruya, trained in a harder school than Vanyi had been, got
rid of the man in the most amiable way possible, but with admirable dispatch.
He seemed hardly aware of the speed of his dismissal; he was still smiling when
Daruya thrust him out the door, and still trying to persuade Vanyi that perhaps
balance was not the way of the worlds.

Once he was gone, Vanyi found herself wishing for a less
taxing escape. Daruya shut the door and barred it with an air of ominous
purpose, dropped into the chair that Esakai had vacated and filled an empty
bowl, tasting as she went, with a young thing’s ravenous hunger.

She had come to bed later than Vanyi, if in fact she had
slept at all. Her hair was out of its many plaits, new-washed and curling more
exuberantly than ever; she was back to the plain trousers and the worn coat
that she wore among the seneldi, her only ornament the torque of Avaryan’s priesthood.
She looked stunningly beautiful, and completely unaware of it.

She filled a cup with tea, grimaced but drank it. “This has
to be the most vile excuse for a tipple that man ever thought of,” she said. “I
even find myself missing Nine Cities ale.”

“You aren’t, either,” Vanyi said. “That stuff is undrinkable
by human creature. This is rather pleasant once you get used to it. It’s
subtle.”

“I’m not.” Daruya spread a round of bread with herbed
cheese, folded it over, devoured it in three bites. “You were wrong after all.”

“What?” Vanyi asked. “About tea?”

Daruya’s glance was disgusted. “Of course not. About that
man.”

Vanyi opened her mouth to play the idiot again, and to ask
if the child meant Esakai; but that would press her temper too far. “What did he
do, try to bed you?”

“No!” Daruya snatched up a fruit, hacked it open, scooped a
handful of blood-red seeds. She ate them one by one, frowning. “No, he didn’t.
We danced, that was all. And I had to carry him home and help his servants put
him to bed. He was drunk to insensibility.”

“Mean drunk?”

“Charming,” said Daruya. “Full of delightful nonsense. And
never, even once, trying to lay his hands on anything he shouldn’t.”

“Ah,” said Vanyi. “You’re insulted.”

That won her a molten glare, but Daruya’s tone was mild. “From
all you said, I thought he’d at least offer a proposal of marriage.”

“Oh, no,” Vanyi said. “That’s not how it’s done. The young
man and the young woman keep company, and dance round the festival fires. The
families discuss the colder aspects of the arrangement.”

Even through her wine-caused headache, Vanyi was tempted to
laugh. Daruya looked suddenly horrified. “You didn’t—they didn’t—”

“As a matter of fact they did,” said Vanyi. “His mother took
me back to the house—over my objections, I should add, and in spite of the fact
that she was right, the children did need to get to bed. She brought out much
too much of that damnable wine, and showed herself for a master negotiator. If
their majesties ever send an embassy to your grandfather, I’ll wager they send
the Lady Nandi. She’s as deadly as any courtier in the empire.”

“I hope,” said Daruya, thin and tight, “that you told her to
take her wine and her fever-dreams and vanish.”

“I thought of it,” Vanyi admitted. “But she’s persuasive. It’s
not, as she says, that her son can’t find a wife in Shurakan. Many’s the noble
family that would give silk to buy him for their daughter.”

“Then I wish her well of him, whoever she is,” said Daruya.

She sounded defiant. Vanyi, studying her, began inwardly to
smile.

She kept the smile from her face. “He wants you,” she said. “It’s
peculiar and considerably awkward, her ladyship and I agree, but they have a
belief here, a doctrine that rather reminds me of some of our own. You know how
their rulers are paired, king and queen, brother and sister; and they shudder
at the thought of a single child. In their philosophy, souls are twinned, too,
and for each man there is another matched to him. Sometimes it’s a man—did you
know they allow that here, and don’t frown on man wedded to man or woman to
woman?”

“That is strange,” said Daruya, but not as if she paid much
attention.

“It would explain your grandfather,” Vanyi mused, “and his
Olenyas with the lion-eyes, all those years ago. And Sarevadin the empress and
her Asanian prince. And—” She shook herself fiercely. “In any case, my lord
Bundur is convinced that you are the other half of his soul. He insists that he
felt it the moment he saw you, and he’s been adamant that he won’t consider any
other woman for his wife.”

“He’s out of his mind,” said Daruya. “And if that’s his
doctrine, why in the world do women take handfuls of husbands here, and men
marry only once but take women to their beds as often as they need to, to get
themselves their pair of children?”

“I asked that,” Vanyi said. “Nandi replied that the soul-bond
is precious rare, and good sense does dictate that people marry for
practicality’s sake.”

“Then let him be sensible,” Daruya said, “and marry one of
those nice respectable ladies. Even if I wanted to be his wife, it would be
impossible. I’m a foreigner, I’m a mage, I look like a demon’s get—and I’m the
heir to an empire he’s barely even heard of. I can’t stay here and be the next
matriarch of House Janabundur.”

“He knows all of that,” Vanyi said. “So does his mother. It
doesn’t matter.”

“It might matter when my grandfather hears about it. He’ll
be livid.”

“I should think that would be an incitement to do it,” Vanyi
said dryly.

Daruya bared her teeth. “Shouldn’t it? But this time I think
I’ll actually be the obedient granddaughter.” She raised her voice slightly,
and the voice of her mind very much indeed. “
Grandfather
!”

Vanyi should have expected the young chit to do that. The
ringing note of the mind-call nearly shattered her skull, but then,
paradoxically, mended it. It was like being tempered in a forge.

There was no mercy in Sun-blood. But she had always known
that. She felt the call reach the one it sought, felt the shifting of that
powerful mind, wheeling like a dance of worlds, fixing itself on this place, this
room, the two of them in it.

With an effort of will she brought him into his wonted
focus. Not the great mage and emperor on his god-wrought throne; not the
terrible warrior at the head of his armies. Simply Estarion, that dark man with
his golden eyes, saying to his granddaughter as if they stood in the room
together, “Good evening, grandchild. Is this important? If not, you have some
explaining to do.”

Daruya did not even blush. “Oh, and is she angry,
Grandfather?”

“Rather,” he said. In this meeting of minds he put on a
garment, a robe like woven sunlight, and divided himself briefly to soothe the
woman in his bed. Quite a lovely woman, and amenable enough once she had had
the circumstance explained to her—she was a priestess-mage, and not so young as
to be jealous of a man’s grandchild.

“She sends her regards,” he said to Daruya, “and asks if you’re
still willing to put your stallion to her Suvieni mare.”

“By all means,” said Daruya with remarkable grace. “My
regards to her, too, and, Grandfather, do you know that people here are trying
to marry me off?”

He barely reeled with the shift; his eyes widened, and then,
to Daruya’s visible outrage, he laughed. “Are they, now? And is he worth it?”

“Is any man worth it?” she shot back.

“Most people would think so,” he said mildly. He sat in a
chair as if he were a solid presence in that room, and investigated the remains
of breakfast. He pointed to one of the fruits in the basket, the blue-green one
with the thorny rind. “What in the hells is that?”