Tides of Darkness (13 page)

Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Tides of Darkness

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“It is a risk,” Seti said. “If the dark ones fail to gain their sacrifice, they may strip the fields in revenge.”

“The fields could be guarded,” Tanit said.

“No man will leave the safety of walls at night,” said the Mother's priest, with a slant of the eye at the Lord Seramon.

The Lord Seramon's mouth curved upward briefly. “No man will, but cats have no fear of the dark. The fields can be guarded. But you might wish to consider that wards of such size and extent may attract the very thing they're meant to repel. If I were to be asked, I would counsel that your people decide among them what they can spareâwhich fields, which housesâand withdraw from those.”

“This is all very well,” said the captain of the guard, “but defense only serves for so long. There comes a time when attack is the only wise course. Can this enemy be attacked? Can he be fought? Or will he wear us away until there is nothing left?”

“The raiders can be fought,” the Lord Seramon said, “but how and with what numbers, I don't yet know.”

“A
minor
god,” Kamut muttered to his brother.

The Lord Seramon laughed. “Very minor! But strong enough, I hope, to be of some use. So, then, my lords. Will you join with us? A wall is the first defense. An army within the wallâthat comes after. Will you be the wall?”

“As weak a stone as I may be,” Seti said, “I will hold up my part of the wall.”

“And I,” said Kamut, rather surprisingly; his brother Senmut echoed him.

They all agreed, even Seti-re, and the Mother's priest, whom Tanit would have expected to refuse. It was a spirit of rivalry: they were not to be outdone.

The Lord Seramon left them to plot their strategies. She could admire the skill with which he did it. They were not even aware of his silence or, after a while, his absence. He withdrew so quietly that even she hardly knew when he was gone. One moment he was there, watching and listening. The next, he was not.

It took this new and strange guard a rather long while to settle on how it would begin. Tanit was very weary when at last they scattered to the duties they had agreed upon. Her head ached; there was a dull pain in her belly, where so many children had grown and died.

Her maids would have put her to bed with a cool cloth on her brow and a potion to make her sleep, but she was in no mood to rest. She went hunting a minor god.

He was on the palace roof, where the maids spread the linens to dry on washing-day. It was bare now but for the pots of herbs that rimmed it. He stood on the edge as if he would spread wings and take flight, gazing out over the city and the fields and the river.

In the bright light of day he seemed both more mortal and less. The sun caught the threads of silver in his hair. There were scars on his back and side, down his arm, cleaving his face from cheekbone to chin. Scars of battle, worn almost to invisibility. She tried to imagine battles among the gods. Were their weapons like the ones she knew, or did they wield bolts of fire?

He glanced at her. “We have swords and spears,” he said, “and bolts of mages' fire.”

A shiver ran down her spine. “Do you know every thought I think?”

“Only the ones aimed like an arrow,” he said.

Not only her cheeks were hot; her whole body flushed. If she could have sunk through the floor, she would have done it.

His hand was cool on her cheek, shocking her into a shiver. “Dear lady,” he said so tenderly that she could have wept, “you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“No?” She looked him in the face. “Am I such a child to you?”

“Never,” he said.

“I am no goddess, my lord.”

“And I,” he said, “in my own world, am no god.”

“It has been so long a while,” she said through a tightening throat, “sinceâand I cannotâa queen may notâ”

“May she not?”

“Will you corrupt me?”

“I might seduce you,” he said.

She gasped. His effrontery was astonishing. And damnably charming, because he did not care, at all, for the ways of men in this world.

“The ladies of your court are free of their eyes and their favors,” he said. “Surely a queen may make what laws she pleases.”

“What if she does not please?”

He tilted up her chin and kissed her softly on the lips.

She should have struck him. Not held him when he began to straighten, and deepened the kiss until she was dizzy with it.

He tasted of strange spices. There was a quality to him, like leashed lightning, or sparks that flew in the air when the hot winds blew out of the red land. Magic, she thought; divine power. And yet he was as warm as any mortal man, solid, real to the touch; he did not vanish like a vision or a dream.

“You swore that you would never harm me,” she said to him.

“I shall keep that oath, lady,” he said.

“Then whyâ”

“Lady,” he said, “there are gods above us all. Maybe it amuses them to bring us together across the worlds; maybe they have a purpose for us, which our wits are too feeble to understand.”

“Maybe this was never meant,” she said, but she did not believe it even as she said it. She did not want to believe it. She wantedâshe yearnedâ

“Why are you afraid?” he asked her. “Am I so terrible a monster?”

“You are beautiful,” she said.

“And you,” he said, “were married to a man whom you admired and cherished, but for whom your body felt nothing.”

“I am not young,” she said as steadily as she could. “I have borne ten children. None lived long enough to walk the black earth. Now I have a thousand children, and they need my loyalty undivided.”

“Would a king divide his loyalty by taking a wife?”

“A king is a man,” she said.

“A queen is a woman.”

He was seducing her. That soft rich voice, those luminous eyesâthey cast a spell. She had known him two days, but every one of her several souls reckoned that a lifetime.

“Gods are quick to love,” she said, “and just as quick to leave. Mortals, who have so much less time to waste, are slower with both.”

“Many things have been said of me,” he said, “and not all have been to my credit, though they may have been true. But one charge has never been laid against me: that I was light in love. A king must marry well and often. So I did. But when I left the throne, I left that behind me. My bed has been solitary since long before you were born.”

Then it may remain so
, she meant to say, but the words would not shape themselves on her tongue. “I may take a consort,” she heard herself say. “I will not take a lover. That would dishonor my husband's memory, my family's reputation, and my own good name.”

Once she had traveled with her husband to the cataract of the river, where it roared headlong through a wilderness of stones. She had seen how flotsam, caught in the torrent, whirled and dived and for long moments vanished, but then suddenly reappeared an improbable distance downstream. So her heart felt now, hammering in her breast. It had spoken, not she. Half of it wanted him to recoil in horror and go
away and let her be. The other half wanted him to say what in fact he said.

“Are you telling me that I should marry you?”

“I am telling you that I will not take a lover,” she said with what little breath was left in her.

Two days, she thought. Two lifetimes.

“Will your people be appalled if I say yes? Will you?”

“Why would youâ”

“Life is short,” he said, “and the night is long. And from the moment I saw you, I have loved you.”

“IâShe could feel the water closing over her head, hear the rush and roar of the cataract. “Life is short,” she said faintly.

“Will your people be horrified?”

“If their queen takes a god for a consort? They'll reckon it a great good omen. The nobles and the priests will be less than amused.”

“Nobles and priests can be managed,” he said.

She met his eyes as firmly as she could. “If this is a jest, my lord, or a mockery, then may the greater gods repay you as you deserve.”

There was no mirth in his gaze, no mockery or contempt. “I never jest in matters of the heart,” he said.

She laid her hand over it. It was not beating as hard as hers, but neither was it as strong and slow as she knew it could be. Once more she found that she could see beneath the veil of him. The light was as clear as ever. He was a pure spirit. The beauty of him, within even more than without, made her catch her breath.

“You will be consort and not king,” she said. “Can you endure that?”

“I would expect nothing else,” he said. And with a flicker of lightness: “It's still a fair step up from shepherd.”

“And a long step down from king of kings.”

“Ah,” he said, shrugging. “I gave that up.”

“You are a very odd man,” she said, “but for a god, not so strange at all.”

He laughed at that. He took her hands and pressed them to his lips and said, “I'll see that this goes easily.”

“No spells,” she said. “Promise.”

“May I smile? Wheedle? Be charming?”

“No magic,” she said. Then added: “Except the magic that is yourself.”

“That will be enough,” he said.

THIRTEEN

T
ANIT WENT TO SETI AS SOON AS SHE COULD, WHICH WAS NEAR evening. The day had passed in a blur. She supposed that she had held audience, met in council, overseen the servants, and performed the myriad other duties of her office. She also supposed that the Lord Seramon disposed of himself in some useful fashion. He was seen round about in the city and in one or two of the nearer villages, and down by the river in the evening.

Her heart would have taken her there and begged him not to risk himself again by night, but her colder spirit bade her let him be. He could look after himself. This that she had determined to do was not at all as simple as she had led him to think.

Seti was preoccupied with the evening rite and sacrifice. She waited for him in a bare cell of a room outside the temple proper. A young
priest waited on her; she wanted nothing, but he seemed content to amuse himself in conversation with her maid. She half-drowsed, sitting upright, spinning in her mind the things that she meant to say to Seti.

When he came, it was as if it had all been said, and she could pay her respects and go away. But she was not quite as foolish as that. He greeted her gladly, and opened his arms for an embrace and the kiss of kin. His cheek was dry yet oddly soft under her lips, like age-worn leather. “Granddaughter,” he said. “It warms my heart to see you.”

“Grandfather,” she said to her mother's father. She insisted that he sit in the one chair the room afforded. She could be at ease on the floor, curled at his feet, as she had done when she was small.

“Tell me,” he said.

She laughed a little. “Am I so obvious?”

“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe it will be night soon, and time's flying. What's in your heart, child?”

“Too much,” she murmured. She lifted her eyes to him, though he could not see; she suspected that he knew, somehow, or felt in the air what movements she made. “I am going to do a thing that will shock every priest and noble in this city. Except, I think, you.”

“Oh, I'm not past shock,” he said. “What is it? Are you going to take the god to your bed?”

She started and flushed. Even knowing how perceptive Seti could be, she had not expected him to see direct to the truth.

“I knew the moment you met,” Seti said. “There are stars that dance twinned in heaven, and souls that are matched, each to each. Even the walls of worlds and time, mortality and divinity, simple human and great magic, matter nothing to them.”

“That is very beautiful,” she said, “but we live in daylight, and the court and the temples will be outraged.”

“So they will,” Seti said. “Does it matter?”

“No,” she said slowly. “Butâ”

“What do you think I can do? Command them all to accept what none of them can change?”

It sounded absurd when he said it, but she said, “Yes. Yes, I had rather thought that.”

“I can command respect,” he said. “Once I might have commanded more. You would do better to win over your uncle.”

“Seti-re will never listen to me,” she said. She was not excessively bitter. It was fact, that was all. “But he will still listen to you. If he says the words that unite us, no one else will dare object.”

“You are set on this? It's not simple enough to take a lover?”

“A lover would give them a weapon against me,” she said, “and weaken us when we need most to be strong. A consort proves before the gods that this is no decision taken lightly.”

“You are stubborn,” said Seti, “and determined to make matters as difficult as possible.”

“If I don't do it,” she said, “the court willâor my uncle, who has never been my dearest friend.”

“Indeed,” he sighed. “Tell me, child. What do you truly hope to gain? Is this your revenge on us all for expecting so much but giving so little in return?”

“That would be the taking of a lover,” she said. “This begs the gods to be merciful to our city.”

“By binding one of their own to it?”

She bent her head.

“He consents? Freely?”

“It seems so,” she said.

Seti sighed. “Child,” he said, “I will see what I can do.”

She kissed him, less formally this time, and smiled. “Thank you, Grandfather,” she said.

Estarion had found that day astonishing and disconcerting and in parts delightful, like the lady who had issued so remarkable an ultimatum. Of marriage he had no fearâhe had done it nine times over. But that was long ago, and he had not lain with a woman in years out of count. It was the only thing that had made him think that he might, after all, be old.

Now it seemed he was not old but perhaps merely rebellious. He had had one great love in his life, and she had denied herself to him, because she was a commoner and a priestess and a mage of Gates, and he must marry where his empire required. When that duty was done, when those ladies had grown old and died, he had wanted nothing more to do with any of it.

He was a man for one woman. He had always known that. She was long deadâshe had lived an ample span, but she was mortal after all, and aged and died as mortals did. He still mourned her, though her death had had no grief in it. She had gone not into darkness but into light, soaring up like a bird into the luminous heaven.

There was a doctrine in the Isles from which she had come, and in the lands beyond the sea: that souls did not live only once; that they came back again and again, striving to perfect this life which they had been given. He wondered, even as he passed through palace and city and to the nearer villages, whether this was she, after all, with her bright spirit and her strong will, and her solid common sense. Or maybe it was only that he was made for such a woman, and when he met her like again, his spirit called to her and wanted her for its own.

For he did want her. He had turned his mind away from the harder truth: that he was not of this world. If he could escape from it, he would do so. She could not bind him, not against that.

That would come when it came. As the day waned toward evening, he knew that she went to Seti; he could imagine what she said to him. For his own part, he went to the one who could make matters most difficult. It was reckless, perhaps, and she would not be pleased to hear of it, but he was in no mood for prudence. That was a lost virtue in this world under the shadow.

Seti-re was at dinner. He dined alone tonight, but he dined well. He had a roast fowl and a platter of fish and the inevitable bread and beer. The priests who guarded him never saw the shadow that passed among them. Nor, while he savored his dinner, did Seti-re. It was only as he
picked at the last of the bones and sipped his third cup of beer, that Estarion let himself take shape out of shadows.

Seti-re started so violently that his cup flew out of his hand and shattered. Estarion made it new again, raising the shards and knitting them together, and set it gently on the table.

The priest stared at it. He seemed unable to take his eyes from it, or unwilling to look into Estarion's face. He was afraid; and fear filled him with rancor.

“My lord,” Estarion said, “whatever our differences, may we not work together for the preservation of this city?”

“Is that truly what you are doing? You have the others well ensorcelled, but the gods protect me. I see you for what you are.”

“Indeed?” said Estarion. “What am I?”

“Do I need to say it?”

Estarion raised a shoulder in a shrug. “Truly I mean you no harm. I was sent here to help; I will do everything I can, for the gods who sent me, but also for love of those to whom I was sent.”

“Love?” said Seti-re. “How can you love what you barely know?”

“Some would say that love is easiest thenâthat only the best is apparent, until time dulls the sheen. As for me,” said Estarion, “I have found much here to admire, and no little to love.”

“Words are easy,” Seti-re said. “Actions prove them.”

“Indeed,” said Estarion. “Will you say the words that join me to your queen as her consort?”

He had caught the priest utterly off guard. Seti-re stared, speechless. Just as Estarion began to wonder if he had any wits left, he said faintly, hardly more than a gasp, “If that is a jest, it is in extremely poor taste.”

“No jest,” Estarion said. “This too I was sent for; this I do in all joy.”

“You want â¦ me â¦ to say the words.” Seti-re looked as if he had bitten into bitter herbs. “You honestly imagine that I would consent?”

Estarion smiled. “Yes, sir priest. In fact I do. You are not a fool, and you have honest care for the city, whatever you may think of its queen. Or,” he added, “of me. I frighten you. I am sorry for that. I would wish us, if not
friends, at least to be allies; to make common cause against this enemy that threatens us all. My world, too, sir priest, and all worlds in its path.”

“I believe that you are part of it,” Seti-re said. “That you came not to save us but to destroy us.”

“There is a thing that I can do,” Estarion said, “which would place me utterly in your power if I break my word to the queen and the city. If I do that, will you lay aside your enmity?”

Seti-re eyed him narrowly. “What can you do? Offer your throat to my knife?”

“Better than that,” Estarion said. “I will give you a part of myself to keep. If I betray my oath, that part will be snuffed out, and I will be gone.”

“Dead?”

“And gone,” said Estarion.

Seti-re drew a slow breath. Estarion resisted the temptation to discover what he was thinking. That was part of his good faith: to force no magic on this or any man.

At length the priest said, “I would have complete power over you. Or is this a trick? Will it be I who will suffer, and you who will laugh me into scorn?”

“By the god who begot my forefather,” Estarion said, “and by the Sun he set in my hand, this is no trick. I offer it in good faith. Will you accept it?”

“You trust me as far as that?”

“One must give trust in order to receive it,” Estarion said.

“What will you do?” Seti-re asked after a long pause.

Estarion realized that he had been forgetting to breathe. When there was air in his lungs again, he reached into the heart of his magic and drew forth a gem of fire. It was cool in his hand, hard and round like an earthly stone, but the center of it was living light. It pulsed with the beating of his heart.

Seti-re's eyes were wide. He trembled as he took the jewel that held the key to Estarion's life and soul. And yet he said mistrustfully,
“This
is your great weapon?”

“You know it is,” Estarion said gently. “You can feel it thrumming to the center of you. That much power you have, turn your back on it though you will.”

“But what am I toâ”

Estarion wrought a chain of light, quickly, and strung the jewel from it, and presented it with a bow. It looked like a necklace of gold and fireopal, luminous and beautiful but perfectly solid and earthly. “Guard it well,” he said, “and beware. If you misuse it, it will repay you in kind.”

Seti-re's lip curled, but he did not argue the point. He held the jewel gingerly, staring past it at Estarion. “Why does a god want a woman of her age, who is barren? Even though she is a queen?”

“Because she is herself,” Estarion said. “Will you say the words?”

“Do you think you can compel me?”

Estarion smiled with awful sweetness. He held up his hand. In it lay a pebble. It was nothing like the fiery jewel he had given Seti-re, but within its grey dullness was a faint shimmer. “Trust for trust,” he said, “and hostage for hostage. We bind one another, sir priest, and have each the power of life and death over the other.”

Seti-re laughed suddenly. He was no more amiable than he had ever been, but in this laughter was genuine mirth. “Lord, you are devious! I almost begin to like you. What will you do with yonder stone? Swallow it? Fling it in the river?”

“Keep it,” said Estarion, “against the time when our alliance is ended. Will you say the words?”

“I will say the words,” Seti-re said. “On one condition.”

Estarion raised a brow.

“That my enemies are your enemies. That if I call on you, you will answer, and aid me against them.”

“If I may do so without harm to the queen or the city,” said Estarion, “I will do it.”

“Then I will say the words,” said Seti-re.