Spear of Heaven (43 page)

As Daruya realized what they carried, she burst out
laughing. Kimeri had the little brazier with its lidded jar of coals, Hani the
pot and the cups for brewing tea; that would be the packet of the herb that
rested so precariously on top of the heap of cups. They were going to brew tea
in the dragon’s cave, for luck and for friendship, and because no one could
ever do anything in Shurakan without a cup of tea.

She looked back at Bundur, who was following slowly. His
somber expression had vanished. He grinned at her, and a fine set of white
teeth he had, too.

“And what,” she wondered aloud, “would a dragon look like,
if he were flesh and not myth? Might he look like a prince of Shurakan?”

“He might,” said Bundur. “Or she might look like a princess
of Sun and Lion, from the other side of the world.”

She stopped, briefly outraged. Dared he liken her to a
ravening beast, however prettily subdued?

Indeed. And rightly, too. She shrugged, sighed, smiled, and
went to drink tea in the dragon’s hall.

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Spear of Heaven

Avaryan Resplendent, Volume II

Judith Tarr

Book View Café Edition
August 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-284-6
Copyright © 1994 Judith Tarr

First published: Tor Books, 1994

Cover design by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Production team:
Proofreader: Julianne Lee;
Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

v20130818vnm

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Judith Tarr
holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for
The Isle of Glass
and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.

Novels

Ars Magica

Alamut

The Dagger and the Cross

Living in Threes

Lord of the Two Lands

A Wind in Cairo

His Majesty’s Elephant

Series

Avaryan Rising

The Hall of the Mountain King

The Lady of Han-Gilen

A Fall of Princes

Avaryan Resplendent

Arrows of the Sun

Spear of Heaven

Tides of Darkness

The Hound and the Falcon

The Isle of Glass

The Golden Horn

The Hounds of God

Nonfiction

Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right

BVC Anthologies

Beyond Grimm

Breaking Waves

Brewing Fine Fiction

Ways to Trash Your
Writing Career

Dragon Lords and Warrior
Women

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy II

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Avaryan Resplendent Volume I

Judith Tarr

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition
August 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-283-9
Copyright © 1993 Judith Tarr

1

“His majesty is in a rare mood this morning.”

His majesty, having flung back the shutters to let in the
newborn sunlight, turned in the flood of it and laughed. “His majesty is his
majesty this morning. What’s rarer than that?”

Vanyi stretched in her tangle of pillows and coverlets. She
was warm all through, and not with sunlight.

He was bathing in it, pouring it over him like water. Sun’s
child, that one, morning-born, bearing the Sun in his hand. It flamed there,
gold born in the living flesh, mark and price of his lineage:
Ilu’Kasar
, brand of the god.

She, who would have welcomed more sleep, still found it in
her to smile at the god’s youngest child. “Oh, there are rarities, my lord, and
there are rarities. But not every day sees a ten years’ regency ended, or a
throne taken that’s sat empty so long.”

He came out of the light, but it was on him still, limning
with gold the arch of a cheekbone, the angle of a shoulder. “I should be
terrified, I think,” he said.

“Probably,” said Vanyi. She sat up, drawing knees to chest
and clasping them. She shivered. It was not the warmest of mornings, bare
spring that it was, and the sun though bright was cool.

Warmth wound about her: coverlet, and Estarion’s arms about
that, and his white smile. “I had all my panic terrors yesterday. Today I’ll be
pure arrogance.”

“Joy,” said Vanyi. “Leave a little room for that.”

He left more than a little: enough for both of them several
times over.

She noticed before he did that they had a watcher. Green
eyes blinked at them. Ivory fangs bared in a yawn.

“And a fair morning to you,” said Vanyi, “milady ul-cat.”

The great cat-body poured itself across their feet, rumbling
with purr. Vanyi worked her toes into fur the color of shifting shadows, sleek
and almost stiff without, soft as sleep within. Estarion ran a teasing finger
down her ribs. She yelped and attacked him until he cried for mercy.

o0o

The next visitor announced herself more properly than the
cat had. The page was young enough to look everywhere but where his master was.
There was no telling if he blushed: he was a northerner, and dark as Lady
Night. “My lord,” he said. “Sire. The Empress Regent— The Lady—Your mother—
She—”

“Let her come in,” said Estarion before Vanyi could speak.
She could have hit him. She scrambled at blankets, cursed the hair that knotted
and tangled and got in the way, and added a choice word for young idiots of
all-but-emperors who did not care who saw them naked in the morning.

He kissed her into fuming silence. Knowing—damn him—what his
mother would see: her son making free of his favors with his lady of the
moment.

“Not that,” he said, drawing back, smoothing her hair.
Reading her through all her shields and her magery, and hardly aware that he
did it. “Never that, my love.”

Vanyi let her gaze fall. Even when she was angry, his touch
could make her body sing.

The empress found them almost decorous: Vanyi with the
coverlet drawn to her chin, Estarion stretched across her feet with the cat. He
raised himself on his elbow and smiled his sweetest smile. “Mother! I hadn’t
thought to see you here so early.”

“Hardly early,” said the empress. “The sun has been up for a
long hour.” But she smiled, and kissed him on forehead and cheeks with ceremony
that was all love.

One could see, thought Vanyi, where Estarion had his
darkness and his slimness, and much of his height. He did not have his mother’s
beauty. His face was pure Varyani: high-cheeked, hawk-nosed, neither ugly nor
handsome but simply itself. He looked like his firstfather, people said,
Mirain, who had called himself the son of the god: gone these fourscore years,
and four emperors since, and Estarion the fifth of them, sixth in the line that
sprang from the Sun. From Ganiman his father he had the thick curling hair of
the western blood, and the family profile; and, through some alchemy of
breeding, his eyes.

He was born to be stared at, but he hated to be stared at
for that. When he was younger he had cultivated a concealment of flamboyance,
made a fashion of hats and hoods, or worn garments so outrageously cut or
colored that lookers-on forgot his single, and singular, oddity. He had grown
out of that. But he still would not linger in front of a mirror, or happily
remind himself that he was at least in part a westerner.

It might have been simpler if the rest of him had not seemed
pure northern tribesman. But his eyes were Asanian, and worse than that: royal
Asanian. Eyes of the Lion, they called them in the west. Pure and burning gold,
seeming whiteless unless he opened them very wide; astonishing in that dusk-dark
face.

He was not thinking of them now, regarding his mother with
every evidence of content. But he said, “Do you mind terribly? That I’m taking
your titles away?”