Mortal Suns

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Authors: Tanith Lee
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bees in a cavern, or the noise one hears in the head when one is sick. How do I know? I was a child in the crowd below the terraces, yet, I have seen it, the going up of my father.
    Four of his soldiers lifted Akreon to the altar, where he stretched, magnificent, between the two dishes of fire, an offering to the god.
    Udrombis, the Consort, stepped forward. She tore her garment, a religious gesture, its passion foreign to her, yet executed with such control, such forethought, it had great power. Beneath the robe of sand and silver, another of white and silver. With her right hand she scattered upon her lord the funeral wine meant to represent her heart’s blood, as—outward show apart—perhaps it did.
    At this moment, the sky above the temple portentously cleared.
    A rift appeared in the cloud, and the Sun, at its apex, seared through the aperture of the chimney. To those within, the intimates of the dead, his children and women, the wonder was vouchsafed.
    A shaft, burning like molten gold, split suddenly down through the funnel of the chimney, where every facet of a gem scorched out in reply.
    The Queenstepped back.
    Directly upon the breast of the King, the shaft was fired, striking the jewels of his collar, so that a splash of fire shot back into the air. For some moments, he lay suspended, seeming to levitate in a blaze of light, and then, unconscionable, undeniable, the thin smokes began to issue from his body.
    Those in the temple held their breath, perhaps. Or waited, with instructed silence, still, like the trees, as stones.
    The smoke unfurled, massing, permeating the temple with the scent of rare spices and perfumes.
    As the King’s body erupted into brilliant flame, the priests’ voices, the boys’ clear altos and the sonorous bass, sprang like the fire to uprushing life.
    Akreon’s body was burning, there on the altar of the god. For the god had sent his fire to bring this chosen son into the upper air. The god received Akreon, and the priests sang loudly, as if in joy, and triumph.
    From the terraces below, the smoke was visible now, pouring up towards the golden wheel of Sun, and breaking sky. The air was heavy with a delicious and cloying odor.
    The slave who held the child murmured very low, “He is going up. My eyes witness the ascension of Akreon, the Great Sun.” All the crowd was murmuring this.
    The child stared in vain, striving to see the body of the King, sailing to heaven in the grip of an eagle, but seeing only … smoke.
    Is it possible I wondered even then, on the nature of what God might be?
    I cannot say that I did, for I had understood nothing of the ritual of a King’s cremation in Akhemony, and no one had explained—the demonstration, its reality. Who indeed, of those who knew, would tell a child, a crippled girl child at that, the substance of the miracle of the sunfire?
    That, in the innermost circle of the temple roof, the chimney, were concealed various craftily angled mirrors of burnished pherom and silver. That these, put ready to receive it, would focus down the light of the noonday Sun, on to the altar below. At this spot, normally, a vessel of syrup or wine was left standing for the god. But at the time of a King’s obsequies, it was a King who lay there. And it was the jewelry on his breast which took the shaft of the Sun.
    Soldiers oncampaign know well enough this trick. The focusing of the Sun off a shield or blade, to start a cook-fire.
    And that—was all it was. The ray of heaven, the fire from the god. Science, applied.
    And yet, evidently, there had been a miracle. I learned in my later years how, if the sky were overcast, a concealed panel might be opened in the chimney side, that gave down on the inner room of the fane. Light could then be shone upward another way to the mirrors, and so in turn the ray would leap out and, if more reluctantly, the pyre be started, apparently still through supernatural means.
    But, it had not been needed, this final ploy of the

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