Mortal Suns Read Free

same. The memory of Death.
    It is the Arteptans who are black. A mysterious and scholarly race, their cities, tombs, and monuments of polished stone, tower beyond the ground, touching sky, as elsewhere, usually, only the landscape does, the architecture of gods.
    Thon was not black, despite his colors—the black robes of his priesthood and soldiers, the black of his temples and his animals—hares, black foxes, the hill leopard, black sheep and goat and cow, the crow and raven. One could never for a moment confuse the warm ebony of human skin for the lifelessness of that other black. Besides, black, in this land, was not the color of mourning.
    He rears out of the darkness of the inmost shrine, where the four torches find him. He did so then and, in my mind, he does so yet.
    Thus: the sudden burst of light, upon that colossal, perhaps disembodied head, seen high in the black air—the face was corpse-white, the eyes dull silver ringed with red. The lips were purple, bruised but not from kissing. His teeth, yellow, pointed like stakes. And from this face, the hair strewn back as if by a gale—
standing on end.
The hair of Thon, the god of death, is blood, made of blood, the blood exploding from a wound, the blood we see in nightmares, if we have truly sinned.
    Of course, the statue is only nine feet in height. But to a child, or infant, crouching on the floor of the area already scattered with so many bones, the head will seem to swim in space, since he is robed in black like his priests, and has no form, is only like a pillar, without hands or feet, without torso, legs, or arms. He has no phallus. Evidently, for Thon is not the giver but the Taker of Life.
    “Do anyremain?”
    It was a ritual question. Tonight it was virtually rhetorical. Sometimes the pious, consigning their unwanted babies or youngest children—none over the age of one year was acceptable—to the House of Thon, left provision. And so a secret priest would come, and administer a little food, for that particular child. In this case, the gift of gold was specifically for the god, that had been made most clear. This baby was to be left, in the sanctum, without covering or nurture of any sort. Thereafter, the decreed four nights would pass, and the three or four days before and between.
    Supposedly the slough of some woman of the queens’ courts, this one had only had to survive three days, four nights. That had been random, fate, dependent on the hour of arrival. Even so, newborn, it could not possibly have survived. The sanctum was also deadly chill, and the baby had lain stripped naked at the footless foot of the god, among the skeletons of all the others who had perished there through the centuries.
    “I will open the door, and see.”
    The ritual answer.
    They stood, the two priestesses of Thon, black-robed, the black mask, half a black eggshell, over each face, eyes glimmering at the slits, pitiless from more than shadow.
    Held high, the new torch flared.
    Bones like curious treasure, all shades, from brown to sheerest snowy white. And the black stretches where they had been pushed and swept aside. Here and there in the enormous room, were a few less clean, whose owners had died more recently.
    Below the edifice of the god, the baby lay, the daughter of Queen Hetsa, sixteenth Daystar of the Great Sun, the King.
    “Look—it’s moving.”
    “No. Some trick of the torch.”
    “We must be sure.”
    “Of course.”
    If any lived, it was now unlawful not to take them up. Seldom did any live, even those who had been fed. It was not an onerous or repetitive task, to descend to the floor of the pit. Once in a hundred times, perhaps, did they have to do it.
    When theybent over the baby it rolled its head, looking up at them. Its eyes were black, as if they had drunk up, wanting anything else, the dark. It had no voice. Had it ever tried, down here, to scream for rescue, or an answer?
    “What is the name?”
    “I forget—some dreadful one. The mother