Wings of Omen

She was dozing, almost oblivious to the ache in her shoulder and the clamor of the mid-moming bazaar around her, when a heavy shadow fell over the forge. The storms came this way: darkness, then wind and rain. Pushing herself to her feet, she told the apprentice to tie the wooden shutters closed before even looking up at the sky. The Bazaar became deathly quiet as Illyra, and everyone else, looked at the cloudless sky. Nothing could be heard but the frantic calling of great flocks of birds seeking shelter. Evening stars appeared on the horizon, then the white-gold disk of the sun could be seen in the sky-with a black disk sliding over it. Someone nearby shouted that the sun itself was being devoured. The Bazaar, and the city beyond it, which had endured more of natural and u

Illyra clutched the children to her and sat transfixed as the sun shrank to a glistening crescent of light. Then, just as it seemed it would vanish forever, a halo of white fire appeared around the black sun. It was too much-in a single unfeeling movement she dragged Lillis and the apprentice inside, where they cowered on the floor beyond Alton's cradle. The darkness became a storm that swept water and mud through the open doorway. Gusts of wind lifted the awning, beat it against the stones of the forge, then bore it away. Lillis and the apprentice whimpered in tenor while Illyra tried to set an example of courage she did not feel.

The storm had begun to die down when Illyra realized her son was crying aloud. Letting the apprentice hold onto Lillis, she crawled to the cradle and looked into it. Alton had thrown off his blankets and wailed mightily, but his tears were as dark as the storm itself. She gathered him into her arms and was assaulted by something which was not Sight and yet which showed her the ravening gyskourem, fueled by the ambitions and sacrifices of men like Zip, pushing aside Alton's mortal spirit, making him and themselves together into the Gyskouras of the new Stormgod. There was Sight as well, or at least empathy. She felt her son's terror and knew that in mercy and love she should take his life before the gyskourem did, but there was something beyond that: a glimmer of hope and sacrifice that might yet succeed. Ignoring the pleas and screams of the apprentice, she wound her shawl around herself and Arton and went through the doorway into the storm.

The wind carried more smoke than rain as Illyra made her way through the overturned carts and stalls. Damage and injury were everywhere, but in the chaos no one had the time to notice a lone woman picking her way carefully toward the gates with a bundle in her arms. Fewer dwellings had been leveled in the town, but great plumes of smoke were rising in some quarters. Gangs ran through the streets, some to rescue, while others went to wrest fortune from the misfortunes of their peers. Illyra thought of Dubro, somewhere in the tangle of streets himself, but she had no time to search for him as she continued on her way to the palace.

It was not like the last time she had made her way boldly through the streets of Sanctuary. Her path was not etched in the silver clarity of Sight, and she could not have confronted the palace guards with the Sight of their destinies. But the palace, well-lit by lightning from the storm, was the largest building in Sanctuary, and the guards, busy consoling aristocrats and arresting looters, had better things to do.

Within the palace walls Illyra moved with the frantic courtiers, searching for something she could not name. Her shoulder throbbed from the strain of carrying Arton. The sense that was not quite Sight led her to a half-enclosed cloister. There, sheltered from the wind, rain, and casual glances of the palace residents, she crumpled into a comer. Tears were flowing down her cheeks when exhaustion mercifully closed her eyes and sent her to sleep.

"Barbarians!"

Illyra awoke to the echo of a shrill yell. The storm had passed, leaving in its wake brilliant blue skies and only a faint trace of smoke in the air. Her shelter had become the scene of a private quarrel between a pair she could see quite well but who could not, thanks to the patterns of bright sun and contrasting shadows, see into her comer. It was just as well: the woman was Beysib by her accent, though she seemed dressed in a modest Rankan gown, and the man was Prince Kadakithis himself. Illyra clutched Arton tightly to her, almost glad that he was once again motionless and silent.

"Barbarians! Did we not open our court while the storm still raged to hear their complaints? Did we not personally assure them that the sun has vanished before and always returns? And that the storms, whatever exactly is causing them, have nothing to do with the sun? Haven't we let them move their filthy belongings into the very courtyard of this palace?

"And did I not drape myself in great wads of cloth and pile my hair on top of my head so that they might think of me as their proper Empress?"

Illyra gulped as Kittycat shook his head. "Shu-sea, I fear you misunderstood my lord Molin."

The Beysa Shupansea, Avatar of Mother Bey and Absolute, if currently exiled. Empress of the Ancient Beysib Empire, turned her imperial back on the Prince; and Illyra, despite her awe and fear, was inclined to agree with his judgment. True, her hair and dress were Rankan-aristocrat beyond reproach, but she had painted her face with Beysib cosmetics, and the translucent, shimmering green from hairline to neckline only emphasized her Beysibness.

"Your high priest makes entirely too many points," Shupansea complained, tossing her head. A curl sprang free from her elaborate coiffure, then another, then, with a flash of rich emerald, a snake eased down her neck and under the shoulder of her dress. Sighing, the Beysa tried to entice the serpent onto her forearm.

"His point, Shu-sea, was simply that as long as the towns-folk of Sanctuary think of the Beysin and, most especially, of you, as invaders, as people totally unlike themselves ... well, it makes a sort of unity among them that never really was there before. All their violence is being directed at your people rather than at each other," the Prince explained. He reached out to touch the Beysa, but the emerald snake hissed at him. He pulled back his hand and sucked briefly on his fingertips.

Shupansea let the snake slide into a flowering bush. "Molin this... Molin that. You and he talk as if you love these barbarians. Ki-thus, they don't love you and your relatives any more than they love me and mine. Your own Imperial Throne has been usurped, and the agents of the very man who sits on it in your place are sulking through the alleys of this horrible little city. No, Ki-thus, the time has come not to show them how benevolent we are-but how merciless. They have pushed us to the very edge. They won't push us any farther."

"But, Shu-sea," the Prince said, taking her hands in his own now that the snake was gone. "That is precisely what Molin has been trying to tell you. We have been pushed to the very edge; we weren't very far from it to begin with. Your Burek clan is here in exile-hoping Divine Mother Bey will finish off your usurping cousin. I don't even have that hope. All we have is Sanctuary-but we have to convince Sanctuary that there's some reason to have us. Talk to your storyteller if you won't listen to me or Molin. Every day that passes-every storm, every murder, every broken flowerpot-just makes it that much harder for us."

The Beysa leaned on the Prince's shoulder, and for a moment both were silent. Their lives, the minutiae of survival for a prince or empress, were beyond Illyra's comprehension, but not the weariness in the Beysa's shoulder; she had felt that herself. Or the anxiety in the Prince's face- the look of a man who knows he is not quite up to the tasks he knows he must perform; that look crossed the face of everyone sooner or later.