Free Mortal Suns by Tanith Lee Page B

her lap. She outshone all the queens—not Udrombis, the rest. She’ll be something by the time she’s ready.”
    Amdysos glanced at him, curious. He had already started with girls, and had been at pains to make little of it, in case Klyton should feel left behind. Klyton was only twelve, though one tended to forget. What was this, now?
    “A child? Do you mean marriageable, or what?”
    “Sun’s Light, no. Only a brat. Our half sister presumably, anyway. But pretty as pain.”
    Amdysos offhandedly made the circle. This expression, meant to placate skittish gods of toothache and minor injury, had never appealed to him.
    “Whose was she?”
    “How do I know? Do you think I pounded about asking? I just noticed her. She was worth a glance. Of course, sometimes when they have it so young, they lose their looks at ten.”
    “Oh. Indeed.”
    “But it was odd. In the responses, she didn’t get up. They had to lift her by her elbows. And put her back. She was carried in a chair.”
    “She’s crippled then,” said Amdysos. He scowled. “Such children used to be given to Thon.”
    “That’s the old ways. What they do in the back hills. That’s if they don’t just leave them on the ground for lynxes and wolves.”
    “It might be better. Would you want to live disadvantaged like that? It would be like going to battle with your hands tied together.”
    Klyton said, slowly, “I’d rather have the chance at life.”
    The dogs barked madly, and fell dumb.
    Both boys looked up, and in their turn, changed to granite.
    Up on the slope, a huge whitish shape had come out of the trees.
    Through the year after Akreon’s death, there had been many portents. The moon was seen to be red, or steel. Stars rained into the Lakesea. And a spotless scarlet bull was born in the pens at Artepta, with a white sun-flash on its brow, a tuft from whose tail was sent to Akhemony, to gift the new King.
    Maybe thepig was a remnant of these things.
    She was not as mighty as they had said, but still, she was extraordinarily big, and though clearly female, her tusks extended the length of a man’s forearm.
    She swung her head, looking at the two dogs, which had flattened themselves down now as though in homage. She did not seem angry.
    Klyton’s hand twitched over the boar spears. His eyes glowed at her. If she was not enraged, he was. Half the day searching, and now this.
    “No—wait—” Amdysos caught his wrist. “
Look
.”
    Behind the pig trotted two little ones, the shade of pinkish amber, young as a morning, scarcely on their feet.
    “She is a murderess,” said Klyton, very low.
    “And a mother. She’s not going to run at us. The gods would curse us if we took her unprovoked, seeing the litter.”
    “She’s sloughed out of season,” said Klyton.
    “Yes, but she’s not a normal pig.”
    The creature bent her head, snuffing at something. The leveling sun picked out in gold the lethal dainty bristles of her snout. Her tusks were white as snow, as if she had never done more with them than gore a tree.
    She looked peaceful, grazing like a ewe.
    Klyton rose, and rising, raised the spear. The action was fluid. A streak like one of the meteors tore down his arm, the spear stem—and then Amdysos shouted out.
    The pig started. She jerked aside, as the spear, its cast interrupted, dropped well short. Rather than brace herself for a charge now, she shook herself, and swinging abruptly around, nudged the little pink pig-children away, over the rocks, and back into the green shadows of the wood. She might only have found the bare mountain too warm.
    “By the
Knife
!
Why
did you—”
    “I’d said. A mother.”
    “Damn it, Amdysos. You’d give a cripple child to Thon. What does a bloody pig matter?”
    “I’m sorry. It wasn’t right.”
    Klyton flamed. In his fury he might himself have fallen straight from heaven. Amdysos, who was fearless in everything, turned his head, as if from a blow.
    A windrustled down the glades with the