"Closer to where we need to be," she murmured. "Give me your hand."
That surprised him. She had always been profoundly reserved before the others. Pleased, though, he held out his hand for hers. She touched it and made a small, happy sound in her throat. And he saw what she did: the dome of light cast by the Eagle, even with sun and moon gone from the sky.
"It will not hide us forever," she murmured. "But it will serve for now."
Behind them came the noise of a camp, of soldiers settling, some to sleep, some to guard. He should return, should allow them to see that he was still alert.
"Let them all rest," Draupadi said. "Your minds and gods can do very little against what we face. We have come far and fast, and we need rest."
At that moment, the desert floor looked as comfortable as a silken rug—to sink down upon it, to sink into it as into a bath of deep water.... He jolted himself back to full awareness. Then he knelt and thrust his hand down into the grit. Rock, dust, powder, sand—not water at all…
He let the powder pour from his hand.
"They wish to return this world to what it was," Draupadi mused. "Even now, because you are weary, they make these little tests." She sighed. "Guard yourself. The tests will worsen before we face them in truth."
Her gaze went to the Eagle, its bronze eyes staring out fiercely over their heads. "It is time now for our weapon to be our shield."
Quintus felt himself falling sideways. Draupadi sank down beside him, and let him pillow his head upon her knees. Sleep covered him like a saffron veil.
26
THERE WERE SHIPS on glinting blue water, small boats floating like swans or larger ones with oars stroking with the rhythm of the great wings of birds of passage, dipping and turning as the ships glided away from coastlines and spears of rock in which birds nested and from which they too sailed. The flags of the Motherland, brave with their disks of the sun, flew from masts. Below, on deck, sailors ran back and forth, steps as ordered as those of a dance but more urgent.
He stood watching as his ship came about between two rocky peaks of some dark stone that glinted in the sunlight and the light reflected from the changeable sea. But those were not just rocks jutting out from the expanse of the sea or markers indicating that the waters round-about might be treacherous for the uninitiated. Art, science, and craft had labored over them for many years, building piers at their bases and climbing steps up their hard surfaces to platforms that held beacons and gongs to guide ships home and warn off the unwelcome. And, at the rocks' highest crags, engineers had wrought long and skillfully: A triumphal arch joined two of the peaks, with scenes of the Motherland's history sculpted in high relief.
A shadow fell on his face, but his heart lifted and sang as his ship passed beneath the Arch of Memory. For beyond it lay the harbor, and on the hill above the harbor stood the temple where the Naacals studied and where they served the sun. This was home. His home and that of—
Who screamed?
Even before his eyes were open, Quintus's hand flew to his sword—broken now, he must be wary—and he leapt to his feet. Leapt too fast. Careful, man, or you'll fall overboard—no! Where was he? When was he? The sea of blues and green, with the gold of sunlight gilding a sail or the edge of a seabird's wing or striking fire from the crystal glinting in the living rock of the Arch of Memory—they were all gone, long gone. A sullen dawn glared down from the east like a soldier hoping to flee a battle he has no stomach for.
Again, Quintus heard a bubbling scream. He set out for the edge of the camp. One thing was certain. A man couldn't scream over and over like that if his throat were cut. The voice arched up into pure madness, then ended suddenly.
Ssu-ma Chao rose from his knees beside a limp body. "Dead," he said. "Did you catch that last word?"
"The shadow, the shadow," Draupadi repeated it.
Lucilius ran up, short sword in hand, present when trouble turned up as he always was. "Look you!" He gestured.
On the ground beyond the circle of light still cut by the Eagle, even in this harsh dawn, long shadows fell like bats shrilling to each other at the uttermost edge of a man's hearing, more felt than heard. Shadows like unto the flow and sweep of long, black cloaks, darkening still further as the sun rose.
Draupadi clapped her hands. The shadows remained. She raised her voice in a chant. The words faltered and came out hoarsely. The shadows flickered. She drew breath and sang the more strongly, clapped her hands once again, and they finally withdrew. She almost sagged with weariness, but caught herself.
Ganesha came up behind her. She spoke to him quickly in a language Quintus did not know, dismay in her voice.
"Yes," Ganesha answered her in Parthian. "They get stronger. And will continue to do so the closer we come to them."
"Do they think we are children or fools?" Ssu-ma Chao asked.
"Very likely," said the old magician. He laid his hands on Draupadi's shoulders. "They know we are with you. If it were I, I would seek to drain the two of us, leaving this, our army, without protection."
"Army?" Ssu-ma Chao's bark of laughter sounded almost like a sob. "At every dawn, we become fewer and fewer. Come and see."
It was one of the Ch'in soldiers who had collapsed during the time when the earth shook and time past and time present blurred, seeking to blot out mind and body alike. The man's face was set in what would have been a mask for the theatre signifying panic. For if ever that god had laid his grip upon a man to steal sanity and breath, it was now.
Lucilius muttered something along the lines of "loading up," and "the line of march." Ganesha smoothly interposed his bulk between him and the Ch'in officer, lest Lucilius hear.
"We could send men out to scout, see if those Black Cloaks are anywhere in sight. Or smell," Rufus offered, oddly indecisive.
"No!" Quintus and Lucilius shouted it together. They could not afford to lose more men, soul as well as the mind.
"He was only a common soldier," said the Ch'in officer. "But he served faithfully."
"He served you well even in the manner of his dying," Draupadi told the officer. "For whatever reason, he was—how shall we say it—aware? sensitive? vulnerable, " she brought out the word with the air of one struggling to express sophisticated concepts in a language more akin to a child's speech, "to the influence sent among us by the Black Naacals. Who knows what they might have done had he not screamed and waked us? Until the end, he was faithful; in the end, he gave up his life for his fellows. His ancestors can look down upon him and be proud."
Even the Ch'in officer's narrow eyes widened in respect. He heaved himself off his knees and saluted the dead armsman as men wrapped him in his cloak and covered him in a shallow, hastily dug grave.
"And now?" he asked. His eyes went to Quintus. Lucilius glared as he always did when Quintus was deferred to as leader.
But it was Ganesha who answered. "We go forward. Always forward."
He gestured at the Eagle, which glinted in the coppery rays of the risen sun. Light welled out from it. "We will be guided—but the path will not be easy."
Day melted into day, and the dunes through which they passed loomed higher and higher. For some time, as many as possible who could ride, did. Then, as their beasts tired, they walked, leading them.
Rufus muttered, "It's like looking up from the bottom of a well. What sort of pit are we dropping into?"
Of course, no one had any answer for that. Day by day, they were descending, perhaps into what would have been the deepest part of the seabed. Day by day, the shadows ranged alongside them. At first, they paused if you looked at them dead-on. And the higher the sun rose in the sky, the smaller they were, vanishing at noon.
Later on, though, later on, it took Draupadi's or Ganesha's knowledge to disperse them. Closer and closer they ranged, not fading even at noon. Even for these men, the strongest who had set out so many months ago, it was hard to rest at noon when no shadows should mark the trail, and see these shadows, as it seemed, in a midday c
amp of their own, just watching—or ranging out in the late afternoon when all shadows lengthened. Quintus had a private nightmare that, one day, they would curve around one of the larger dunes and find an army of faceless shadow-soldiers between them and their goal.
On the fifth day after the first madman died, a Roman recovered from the stupor into which he had fallen. He recognized his thankful comrades, vowed himself strong enough to march—and disappeared late in the afternoon. The man nearest him had heard his companion shout and run out into the waste, arms outspread in welcome. He had started after the straggler, but two of his fellows had toppled him and sat on him.
"We grow fewer," Ganesha observed again.
As the water grew scarce, they dreamed shallowly, and always of water. When it seemed as if they could descend no further without losing sight of the night sky, Lucilius woke screaming about a well of water. Thirst had made him slow on his feet, or he too might have fled. He would have to ride, even when others walked, until he recovered from the shock. If he recovered.
"No loss," Rufus muttered, despite Quintus's glare. Every man incapacitated and needing to be carried weakened them even more than a death. Impossible to abandon a brother-in-arms—even if to do so would not put them on the moral level of the ones they fought.
As their throats grew more parched, Quintus had no more dreams of the sea. Odd: He would have thought he would have dreamed more of water, rather than less. His sleep was shallow. Too often, he woke in a cold sweat that wasted water he could ill afford to replace. He dreamt of sliding down the face of immense dunes. He woke shaking. And then he thought of water.
So far they had come, so far: If this had been a futile chase, they must now begin to resign themselves to having lost their way. It was too late now to retrace their steps. Perhaps they had all been befooled, betrayed. Perhaps the real Black Naacals marched beside them, a fat man and a slender woman, lithe and careworn, wrapped in tattered veils.
And that thought was worse than any possible dreams that Quintus might have.
The fifth horse died at noon. It had simply collapsed and refused to rise. Lucilius dispatched it by cutting its throat, surprising tears drying on his cheeks. The copper stench of blood seemed even hotter than the sun.
One of the Legionaries began to unstrap what the horse bore.
"Leave it," Quintus ordered. The man obeyed.
Do you really think, lad, we are going to need what the poor brute carried? The man might have been Quintus's own age, maybe even a bit older: At this point, they were all "lad" to him. Lucky men, who had someone to shoulder the burden of regret for all the lost lives.
Even if it had been gold or jewels, he would have ordered the pack left. Only food, water, and weapons were of value enough to be borne along—and blankets against the chill of the night.
The blowing grit stung their faces until they bled. They wrapped in the felts designed for storms until, from a distance, they might well have seemed to be a straggling column of mummies, bandages peeling, staggering and lurching from their inquiet sleep. "Look at us," Rufus muttered. "Maybe we'll scare those shadows."
That raised a laugh from the men that would have brought tears of pride to Quintus's eyes if they weren't so dry—and if the men didn't waste breath by laughing.
Then, late one afternoon, he looked up. An immense slide was beginning along the slope of a dune not all that far ahead. His heart sank: He had dreamed of an attack, but usually it took the form of the Black Naacals' shades arrayed in a triplex acies against them.
Nevertheless, he told himself. Nevertheless, we fight.
He grasped the Eagle firmly. "Let me go first." He had heard sweeter tones from a crow. There were no crows here: too dry.
The shadow marched ahead of him. The Eagle showed no soldiers waiting for him, and the tiny bronze dancing Krishna he bore still rested quiescent against his heart.
Something marched alongside his shadow. He chuckled hoarsely, and it all but turned into a sob. The shadow he watched and feared so had been his own—his and the Eagle's. They had reached the depths and were climbing once more.
The grit that crunched underfoot gradually yielded to spurs of rock, then a rocky floor covered with drifts, and worn in patterns that even now showed the smoothing of water upon rock very long ago. They seemed to be marching through the foothills of some mountain range below the surface of the world.
"Move along," Rufus said for what had to be the fiftieth time that day to Ganesha. Once again, the adept had sunk to his knees, staring raptly at the outline of a fish's skeleton embedded in a rock. That is, Quintus thought it was a fish, though he had never seen one that looked that way. "Wouldn't you rather eat a real one?" he asked.
"I would rather be at peace," Ganesha replied. "I am very old, and I would be glad to rest. But the tale is not over yet; and as long as it goes on, I must be part of it—to undo what I did. And what my brothers and sisters, the Flame forgive them, still do."
Rufus shook his head. They looked at each other, senex and senex. Two old men, old from the desert as well as in years; too old for much more than tending land and handing on their wisdom. Quintus's throat ached. Ganesha should be basking in a temple courtyard someplace— Juno grant—talking to a child who looked like Draupadi or like himself. And Rufus—he should have little more on his mind than showing a child that might have been his grandson how best to tie up vines or, for the hundredth time, allowing him to see his sword, or even hold it, as a very special reward.
Long wrinkles angled down from the corner of Rufus's eyes, squinting shut as always in the desert glare. He looked older than Ganesha and, in the harness he stubbornly refused to lay aside, far more frightening.
Yet, Ganesha was the elder by far and possessed of powers far more fearsome—those of the White Naacals. Despite the heat, Quintus shuddered. The Naacals' power harnessed the virtue of the sun: Misused by the Black, such power had cracked the land through which they now struggled and a great sea had vanished into the depths.
Better not think of all that water. A drop of sweat ran down Quintus's back. Momentary relief: Now that was a delicious thought, like the time after harvest when he was a boy, his chores over, and free to slip off his tunic and plunge into fresh water. He could dive as deep as he could and emerge, spluttering and laughing on the other side of the arch.
Arch? What arch?
The ebb and flow, the lapping and splashing of water seemed very real in that moment. The arch? Any fool knew the Arch of Memory. And so did he. He had dreamed it long ago: the gateway that welcomed those who served the sun to the island that was one of their schools and fastnesses. Statues had ornamented that arch, statues of ancient heroes and wise men and women, depicted with beasts out of legends that Quintus did not know, all surrounding the great, many-headed serpent that meant wisdom and power—the illumination of the sun.
He did not even need to close his eyes to see that arch. A moment of vertigo came. Place and time flickered in and out of focus. Once again, he could hear seabirds and the splash of oars, the shout of pilot to the guardians of the shore, hailing them from the gateway. And he knew the price of that gate to the unwary. Those who were not expert in the passage were swept onto a rock shore.
Quintus fought not to think of the image of the arch that thrust itself so insistently into his consciousness. Draupadi would tell him that this was illusion, the sort that thrust a man from his wits and off the nearest cliff— or that left him prey to the Black Naacals. The Eagle's staff warmed in his hands, a warmth that ran up from his hand to his shoulder and down into his spine. For a madman, he felt surprisingly well.
Again came one of those flickers between then and now. One of the madmen tied to a camel whimpered and giggled, then fell silent. Now Quintus saw the arch as it was in this time and place. No longer a matter of pride for artisans and engineers in its construction or its ornament, it looked like a skull, most of the teeth rotted out and one temple battered in. The span of the arch was weakened from
the many rocks levered out of it by tremors, perhaps, or eroded by countless desert storms.
Most of the gleaming stone was gone, and many of the carvings. The heroes' faces had been blotted out, hammered into nothingness like the tomb of a disgraced ruler. A few statues still raised weapons in defense against ancient enemies. And the great serpent still occupied the space below the keystone. But how changed it was. It was no longer a symbol of light, but of illumination wasted, power turned in on itself, fueled by a hunger that grew from age to age because there was not enough, not ever enough in all the world to feed it. It would devour the world in a rage that it had not even more to eat.
Draupadi caught her breath in a faint sob. "And to think how fair this all was once."
The usual trick of the light in the desert made the despoiled arch seem much closer to them than it really was. The approach actually took them many hours of hard climbing up an immense hill toward what had once been an island. That rock ahead—was it a cliff or a fortress? Or, all the gods help them, was it the temple that had once graced the height?
Andre Norton - Empire Of The Eagle Page 29