Read Online Mortal Suns by Tanith Lee - Free Book Online Page B

priests. The clouds had cleared for Akreon. The Sun had come to claim him after all.
    Ermias oversaw the child’s bath. A slave washed the little girl carefully, without undue roughness or sensitivity. She even sponged, rinsed, and dried the stumps of the white ankles. They were like marble, delicately veined with the shadows of bones ending within. The skin was scarcely thickened there, but neither very feeling.
    After the bath, another slave brought a supper, some milk and bread and candies.
    The child was carried to and put into her small bed, that had such astonishing softness. She had been rather worried that she was not allowed her canes at all.
    She lay awake, now the door was closed and all the servants had gone, listening to the noises in the outer room.
    It was growing dark.
    Before a small altar, that had a statue of cheerful Gemli, as the child would discover, burned a low, reddish lamp. It cast one rose upon the ceiling. All else turned impenetrable.
    But outside, Ermias had received the merchant Mokpor. They were drinking, and eating savouries together.
    Ermias had been annoyed. She had vented none of that on the child, but then, she did not like the child, was somewhat repulsed by the child, so had no favors to take away.
    The disguise of a wife of Oceaxis had irritated Ermias, who was wellborn; how else had she been the Maiden of a Daystar queen. Now, Ermias was also promoted. Dressed again in silk, she had upon her hand the gold ring set with a yellowish fragment, that denoted her the guardian of a royal infant. She had been right to draw an omen from the talk of teeth. This in the ring was a sliver of tooth from a stallion of the Sun god.
    The childcould not sleep.
    She heard Ermias laughing, and the laugh was husky, sexual, and low. It sounded to her like the laugh of a witch, for in the dormitory of Thon’s House, sometimes awful old tales of the backlands had been rehearsed.
    Afraid in the dark, only the small charm of the bed, the red rose of the lamp to comfort her, uncomforted now, the child began to cry. But stifling her tears, naturally, as she had learned to do.
    Something came gliding up out of nothingness.
    Dark on darkness, blotting out the rose, it leaned towards her. It smelled of herbs, of frosty spring night, of mothy, musty dryness.
    The child caught her breath.
    “What is it now? Are you frightened, little girl?” The voice was ancient as a shard, but very gentle. A hand, moistureless as an antique parchment, settled on the child’s forehead. It reminded her of the priestess that she had already, callous with innocence, abandoned.
    Outside, again, sluggish, bubbling, Ermias laughed.
    “Is she a witch?” whispered the child.
    The crone laughed now. Old woman’s laugh, past such deceits, cindery and warm.
    “She? Ah, no. What you hear is what a woman does with a man when she likes him. She may make another noise soon. You may think he’s hurt her. Don’t trouble. It means that she is happy.”
    Soothed by voice and hand, the child accepted these words, uncomprehendingly. The real witch was at her side, but she did not know it. In the dark, the black eyes of Crow Claw were luminous and profound as those of some animal of night.
    “What’s your name?” said the witch.
    The child said, solemn, “Cemira.”
    “Yes, I thought it was. But now you have another name.”
    “She told me,” said the child, guilty and uneasy, “but—I forget.” Not yet was she accustomed to names.
    “Shall
I
tell?” The child waited. “Yes, I will. They call you here
Calistra
.” The witch took her hand from the child’s flesh and used it instead to tuck in the covers. The priestess had once or twice done this very thing, in the child’s babyhood. Now it seemed right, a fundamental. “But there’s the other name.”
    “She said—
it wasa monster
.”
    “She in the other room? That one?” As if in answer, Ermias gave a loud groan. “Hark at her,” said Crow Claw. “Do you think she knows