Free Arrows of the Sun by Judith Tarr Page A

what he wanted, when
he wanted it, and if he wasn’t too careful about how he paid for it, well then,
as often as he stole it outright, he rendered its value in gold thrice over.”
    “Stolen gold,” someone said.
    Someone else jeered at him. “I’ll wager he magicked it out
of the sea-salt, to deck his lady with.”
    “He never magicked any for me,” Sidani said.
    That made them all laugh. The nearest yelped: she had a hard
hand.
    “Puppy! I was none so ill to look at when I was young.
Though I grant you, I’d lost the best of it by the time Chubadai set eyes on
me. I was a whip-lean mad thing with an ear for the sea-spells, and so he took
me on, and sailed the world around.”
    Vanyi listened in spite of herself. There was always a crowd
where the wanderer was, pressing her for one of her wild tales or coaxing her
into a song. She could sing with a voice that time had barely blunted, and she
could play the harp that one of the lordlings had given her.
    God and goddess knew, he could barely play it; and for a
wonder he knew it. He was in love with her. He made no secret of it. They were
all twitting him for his ancient lady fair.
    But never where the woman could hear. And never with
conviction enough to suit Vanyi. The damnable creature was looking younger by
the hour. On the ferry across Suvien, though the swirl and rush of water made
the mages ill, all but Vanyi who was seaborn, Sidani stood in the bow with the
wind in her hair, and she laughed as the great ungainly thing rocked and
pitched under the weight of its cargo.
    Estarion was delighted with her. She had claimed one of the
remounts for herself, a mean-tempered gelding who knew too well the use of his
stunted horns, and she rode him as if she were born to his back. They rode for
long hours knee to knee, trading tales; or sat by the fire of an evening,
arguing the ways of men and gods; or sang together, dark voice and light, and
sometimes, by a trick of the wind, Vanyi could not tell which was which.
    The nights were another matter. He was all Vanyi’s then, so
wholly that often she wanted to weep. She kept a brave face for him, and
braver, the nearer they came to Asanion.
    “I’ll never leave you,” he said, “nor send you away, unless
you ask to go. I swear it, my love. No matter what comes of this—I’ll never be
aught but yours.”
    “Hush,” she said, and stopped his mouth with her hand. His
beard was well grown in, rich and full; she had trimmed it that morning,
smoothing its ragged edges. She tangled her fingers in the curls of it. “Don’t
swear to anything. Just let us have what we have now, for as long as we may
have it.”
    “Always,” he said.
    Her throat locked. She flung herself on him as if he were a
feast and she were starving.
    o0o
    He fell asleep unwontedly soon. This traveling tired him,
for all that he denied it. And the last few nights had been short of sleep: all
of them in towns along the edge of the great wood, and all much beset with
petitions for him to grant, dignitaries for him to entertain, affairs for him
to settle.
    In a day or two they would enter Asanion. Tonight they
guested in another of the numberless towns; but Saluyan was less importunate
than the rest.
    Its people had let him go not long after sunset. Its
priestess was compassionate. “Poor my lord,” she said where Vanyi could hear,
“you need sleep more than we need your sleeplessness. Rest, sire, and be
comforted. We’ll not trouble you till you wish to be troubled.”
    He would have argued with that, of course, but the priestess
was adamant. He would sleep, and her people would let him be.
    Wise woman. Stubborn, too, to resist Estarion.
    Not that one would expect any less from Iburan’s kinswoman.
In her the northern blood ran thin, though it gave her height and breadth
enough to tower over people here. She was a brown-gold woman, brown-gold skin,
gold-brown hair, brown-gold eyes: Asanian blood, Asanian face, but enough of
north and east that