Free Arrows of the Sun by Judith Tarr Page B

Estarion barely bridled at the sight of her. He warmed to
her swiftly, even when she opposed his will: and that was a rarity.
    They were still awake, Iburan and the priestess, cousin and
cousin. The empress was with them.
    Vanyi was hardly tempted to join their company. Nor was she
minded quite yet to sleep. Restlessness twitched in her, and something deep,
like an ache, or a cramping in her middle. It had been vexing her off and on
for a day or two. Travel-weariness; anxiety for Estarion and for herself; too
much riding and too little walking and not enough plain stillness.
    She kissed Estarion’s brow. He murmured in his sleep, but
did not wake. She left him softly, pulling on such clothes as came to hand, and
crept barefoot out of the room they shared.
    This was the priestess’ house, the largest in this town and
for leagues about. Vanyi had counted ten rooms besides the room they dined in.
Still it was hardly large enough for an emperor’s train. Most of Estarion’s
escort camped outside the town; only his Guard and his closest companions
shared his lodging.
    Sidani should not have been one of them, and yet she was.
Vanyi found her in the temple, or rather at the entrance of it, leaning against
the doorpost. As Vanyi approached she moved aside, somewhat to Vanyi’s
surprise. She had looked as immovable as one of the pillars.
    Vanyi wanted to pray at this altar, to beg the god’s
protection for her lover and emperor. The wanting was as keen as a blade,
twisting in her center. And yet she paused. The wanderer’s face was a shadow in
shadow, her mind a singing silence.
    “Do you want to come in?” Vanyi asked her.
    “Do you give me leave?” Sidani asked. Vanyi could hear no
mockery in her, and yet surely that was what it was.
    “Do you need it?”
    “Maybe,” the wanderer said. “I cursed the bright god long
ago, and his dark sister, too. They took from me all that I loved. They left me
in ashes.”
    “They do that,” said Vanyi. “They give, and they take away.
Else they’d not be gods.”
    “Maybe we need no gods.”
    Vanyi was not unduly shocked. One learned on Journey: not
everyone yielded easily to the gods’ will.
    Sidani moved forward into the light of the vigil-lamp,
almost as if she had forgotten that she entered a temple. Her face was still a
shadow, but her eyes were bright, fixed on Vanyi’s face. “For once I don’t
appall you. Do you agree with me, then?”
    “You know I don’t.”
    Sidani looked down at her feet on the fine colored pavement,
and up past Vanyi to the altar with its undying light. Her hand rose to her
throat. Something, some trick of the lamplight, caught the thickening of scars.
Old galls.
    Slave’s collar? There were no slaves under the sway of the
Sun.
    Vanyi touched her torque. No slaves. But priests enough, and
the torque a cruel weight, rubbing raw the necks of those who bore it.
    “Yes,” said the wanderer. “I was a priestess of the Sun. No
one else has seen, do you know that? Least of all your great one, your holy
one, your mage and priest and master. He’s blind to aught but light.”
    “You ran away,” Vanyi said.
    Sidani laughed, harsh as a gorecrow’s cry. “Ran, and was not
driven? Can you be so sure of that?”
    “You’re not one to do anything but what you choose for
yourself.”
    “That’s a flaw in me,” Sidani said. “Yes, I ran. I flung my
torque on the altar, cursed the day I took it, and declared myself dead and
damned. They wouldn’t help me, you see. They wouldn’t lend me their power when
my beloved was dying.”
    Vanyi shivered. “They can be cold, the Sun’s priests.
They’ll do nothing for one the god has touched.”
    “So they said of him. But they always hated him. He wouldn’t
believe in them, you see, or bow to the god. Not even in the end, when the
Light was in his face.” Her own was stark, racked with memory. “Oh, he was a
cold, cruel, godless, heartless monster of a man, and I loved him with all that
I was. He