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darkmage
violet, were all faded, gone to the dim no-color of hedge-witches and hired
sorcerers.
    But the Gates endured. That one of them had gone briefly
strange—it meant nothing. The priest who came to relieve Vanyi had said as
much; and he was a mage and a master. She was initiate merely, priestess on
Journey, mage in training. She was making nightmares of hunger and
sleeplessness and a lover who might be taken from her.
    Estarion did not know of this, nor would he. He had troubles
enough.
    She attacked him suddenly with kisses. That made him laugh,
reluctant at first, then more freely.
    Yes, she thought. Laughter drove away the dark. Laughter,
and love; and that they had in plenty.

5
    The City of the Sun lay in the arms of deep-running
Suvien, where the river curved round a great prow of crag. To north and east
the walls rose sheer. Southward they eased to a long level of windswept land
and, half a day’s journey down a smooth straight road, the white gates of its
mother and its servant, Han-Gilen of the princes.
    Westward was no wall but the river and the quays of ships
and, black to its white beauty, that crag from which the city took its name,
Endros Avaryan, Throne of the Sun.
    The sunrise bank teemed with men and beasts and boats. On
the sunset side nothing walked, and no bird flew. The crag stood alone, dark
against the sky, and on its crown a Tower.
    No window broke that wall, no gate marred its smoothness.
Blind, eyeless, doorless, it clawed its way toward heaven.
    Estarion stood atop the highest tower of his palace, on the
northern promontory of his city, and glared across the river. He was nearly
level with the summit of the black Tower, with the globe of crystal that,
catching the sun, blazed blinding. But he was the Sun’s heir: he could look
unflinching on the face of his forefather. This, mere magewrought crystal,
barely narrowed his eyes.
    That whole Tower was a work of three mages conjoined, Sunborn
king and Gileni empress and northern warrior, and they had wrought it in a
night. “And why?” Estarion asked aloud. “Except to keep men off the crag, since
any man who walked there must come down mad.”
    The cat Ulyai yawned vastly and stretched. She propped her
forepaws on the parapet, leaning into Estarion. He wrapped an arm about her
neck. “Have you ever seen a more useless braggart thing? Caves like lacework
through that whole great rock, and tombs enough for a thousand years of kings,
and he witches a Tower on top of it. And no way in or out, either, unless
there’s a Gate somewhere, or a key I haven’t found.”
    Ulyai was not interested in the Tower across the river.
There were ringdoves in the lower reaches of this lesser tower; she watched
them with fierce intentness.
    Estarion sighed. She would not care either that the Sunborn
had left his bones there, and a story that he lacked the grace to die before he
did it, but had himself ensorceled into sleep, because his empire was won, and
there were no more battles to fight. He would rise again, the talespinners
said, when the god called him back to his wars.
    “It’s only a story,” Estarion said. “Or if it’s true, it’s
so far away it doesn’t matter. I’m all the Sun-blood there is, until I get
myself an heir. I’m all the emperor this world will have.” He shivered in the
bright sunlight. “There’s no Tower in Kundri’j Asan. He never came there, did
the Sunborn. They stopped him before he marched so far. He was a madman, they
say. I say he was saner than anyone else who came near him. He hated Asanion
with all his heart.”
    “He was a fool,” his mother said behind him.
    He did not turn to face her. He had been aware of her
coming, but he had chosen to take no notice.
    He had not spoken to her since the day of his enthronement,
nor had she sought him out. A pleasant enough arrangement, he had been
thinking.
    “An emperor cannot hate the full half of his empire,” she
said. “Not and remain emperor.”
    “Is that what