Arrows of the Sun by Judith Tarr

down the long smooth track.
    o0o
    They camped a league short of the meeting of Suvien and
Ilien, still on the sunrise side of Suvien. There was a ferry below Suvilien’s
fortress, or so the guides said, and boats enough to bring them all across.
Here the river was both deep and wide, its banks high but less steep than they
had been or would be, and a level of grass and trees stretching round a long
bend.
    “Eddy there,” the guide said. He was a dour man, a forester
in the service of the lord of Kurion, and in no apparent awe of the imperial
majesty. “Round that bend she wraps her arms around an island, Suvien does, and
up past that is the castle and the rivers’ mating. There’s good fishing in the
quiet place. People come down from Suvilien with nets and poles, and bring
catches up for milord’s dinner. He’s partial to fish, is milord.”
    “His majesty will dine on fish tonight,” said Estarion’s
squire. Godri took his duties to heart. He did not approve of commoners who
spoke too easily to his emperor.
    The forester raised a brow at him. “Who’s fishing for it,
puppy? You?”
    Godri drew himself up. He was a chieftain’s son from the
deep desert south of Varag Suvien, and the swirling scars that ornamented his
cheeks were marks of one who had killed a man in battle. He was neither the
eldest nor the chief of Estarion’s squires; he had won his place in combat,
though he would have been mortified to know that Estarion knew.
    He looked like a court elegant, with his delicate hands and
his slender grace. “We have servants,” he said, “to do servants’ work.”
    “Maybe I’ll do it myself,” said Estarion.
    That silenced both of them. He laughed at their faces:
matched astonishment and matched outrage. “My lord of Suvilien will be sharing
our dinner tonight. See that he’s received as his rank deserves.”
    “But—” said Godri.
    “I am going fishing,” said Estarion.
    o0o
    He escaped before they could marshal their resistance.
There was camp to pitch, fire to build, mounts and baggage to see to. The lord
of it all could slip away uncaught.
    Vanyi’s saddlebag yielded a hook and a coil of line, and a
parcel wrapped in soft silk. She was with the priests, building wards about the
camp.
    He touched the edge of her power, a bright singing thing
like water in the sun. She was deep in the working, unaware of him save in her
bones, where he was part of her. He set a smile where she could find it in the
secret places of herself, and left the camp behind.
    It was quiet round the bend of the river. Now and then the
wind brought the sound of men’s voices or the squeal of a senel.
    They comforted him, but they did not touch him. Escape was
rare, solitude rarer yet. Even Ulyai was gone, hunting in the deep coverts. She
would come back in the night, purring and replete, or she would appear in his
shadow on the morning’s ride, then ghost away again.
    The air was colder here than in Endros. There summer would
have begun after the long spring. Here it was spring still, the leaves young
and green, and in hidden hollows a memory of snow.
    He paused to dip his hand in the river. It was snow-cold. He
drank a little of it. Earth was in it, and snow, and something of the northern
sky. That was the taste of Ilien that was born in the mountains of Ianon, first
kingdom of the Sunborn, bastion of the world’s edge.
    He wandered along the bank. There was another bend farther
up, where the river curved round one of its many promontories. High and
forbidding as that was, the one beyond it, they said, was greater. Suvilien sat
on that. Kurion’s lord would be coming down from it even now, riding a boat on
the river.
    Estarion could see none of that from here. This arm of the
river curved round a steep wooded islet, running aground on a spit of sand
before a trickle of it freed itself to run back into the greater stream. It was
more pool than river, its current faint, its water deep but almost clear.
    Fish would