Arrows of the Sun Read Online Free PDF

would be war.”
    “So shall it be, if you let him go back unchallenged to his
people, and tell them what you did to him.”
    Estarion shut his aching eyes. It was no quieter in the
dark. “I don’t suppose one could apologize.” The word caught in his throat.
    “One could,” said Iburan. “But he’s only one man. What he
did . . . he acted for a whole realm. That realm must see you.
It must know that you belong to it as to the rest.”
    “My father took such counsel,” Estarion said. “He died for it.”
    “He died because no one would believe that an emperor, a
mage born, needed protection from magery in his own palace. He died because we
were fools, Estarion.”
    “Yes,” Estarion said. His throat was sour with bile. “You
were fools. All of you. He too. I. Everyone.” He swallowed hard. “I’ll be a fool.
I’ll go. Damn you, foster-father. I’ll go.”
    “Soon?”
    Estarion’s head was splitting. No one was trying to get into
it—it was not that kind of pain. This came from within. It made his sight blur,
and made him say, “When Brightmoon comes back to the full. Four days—no. Three.
I’ll go into the west. I’ll face my demons. I’ll make myself remember. But I
won’t—I won’t —bed an Asanian woman.”
    “That is as the god wills it,” said the god’s priest. There
was no triumph in his voice. He was never one to gloat over victories, was
Iburan of Endros.

4
    Silence ruled the heart of Avaryan’s temple in Endros,
silence so deep it seemed to drink the light, to transform the hiss of breath
to a roar and the murmur of blood into thunder. No foot fell, no voice spoke.
Even the air was still, wrapped in the temple’s veils and bound with magery.
    Vanyi kept vigil in her due turn, now praying to the
omnipresence of the god, now casting nets of power on the seas that were the
mageworld. Most often there were two to watch and to pray, but on this day of
Estarion’s enthronement, all mages who could were set to guard the palace and
the emperor.
    He was more valuable by far than the Magegate that shimmered
where wall should be. That might fail or close, but mages could restore it,
however high the cost. If Estarion died, there would be no heir of the god on
earth; and that would be beyond repairing.
    Strange to think of him so, and to know what he had been in
the morning, tousled laughing boy-man covering terror with exhilaration. Her
power twitched, yearning toward him, but the magewall barred it. And she was
forgetting her duty.
    She traced the patterns of the dance, sang the song that
sustained the Gate. Dance and song were part of her, had always been part of
her. Even on the shores of Seiun, fingers raw from mending the nets, nostrils
full of the stink of the fish, her feet had known the steps, her voice the
notes. Mooncalf they had called her,
and witch , and changeling , with her sea-eyes and her hair the color of moors in
autumn. She knew the speech of the gulls, felt in her bones the sway of the
tides.
    That was far away now, long ago. She stood in this chamber
as in a globe of glass, and even the pull of the moons was faint, overwhelmed
in the roar and reach of the Gate. There was sea on the other side of it, tides
that were no tide of this earth, waves heaving and falling on a shore that
looked like dust of rubies, or like blood.
    As she watched, it blurred and shifted, and she looked into
darkness full of stars; but stars that were eyes, great burning dragon-eyes
staring into her own. Seeing her. Knowing her for what she was.
    She gasped. A Word burst out of her, raw and barely shaped.
The stars blinked, steadied. They were only stars.
    A shudder racked her. The worlds changed: that was the way
of Gates. Most were alien. Some were horrible, hells of ice or of fire,
swarming with demons. None had ever left her as these stars had, crouched on
her knees, heaving as if she had taken poison.
    She scraped wits and power together. They were thin, threadbare,
but they were enough