With a hideous effort he wrenched his mind back into thought. Bellasteros lay suspended between life and death, waiting for redemption. Ilanit crouched over the rim of the star-shield, caught between two worlds. The rumor of war echoed in the courts of Sardis, and the Empire was sorely wounded, circled by hooting demons.
“No!” Andrion cried, and he turned away from paradise. Tore himself away, flaying alive some part of his soul, and stood numb with regret while the music ebbed and died. The silence was absolute; he could hear the surge of his own living blood. He looked up. He stood in a doorway, beneath a painted stone lintel, gazing into a tomb. But still the light beckoned him.
He stepped forward. The tomb might have been furnished with rich enameled grave goods, but shadows hung over them, obscuring them; he could see clearly only the great sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. There, the light was there. Dust stirred around his ankles. The statue of a cat blinked solemn topaz eyes at him. Suddenly he heard a dry clicking sound, like finger bones tapping at the coffin lid, trying to get out. But the light was also coming from inside, welling through the crack between lid and base.
Andrion’s head spun. It was Solifrax, not safe in the hands of the gods but caught between light and dark, trapped . . .
He saw then the shining gold effigy, saw its twisted, vulpine face. The hollow eyes turned and glared at him, scornful; he read the words carved like a weapon on a figure’s massive chest, Gerlac, King of Sardis.
Andrion staggered back with a cry of dismay. He had himself cast the sword into this snare, into his worst nightmare. The tapping paused, began again, stronger. The lid began to shift. The light wavered and grew thinner; Solifrax faded, eaten by evil, destroyed forever.
“So then, I shall be strong!” Andrion stepped forward, thrust the lid from his demon grandfather’s grave, reached for the shining blade.
And awoke, deep in the heart of Cylandra, trembling, wheezing as if he had indeed moved a great gold lid and looked evil in its decaying face. His body was drenched with sweat. He sat up, shaking himself, seizing waking life and pulling it securely about him. His terror had melted into stoicism, but the desire roused in him by the goddess still seared his veins.
Silence. No sistrums, only the rush of water and a faint odor of asphodel. “Mother,” he said quietly, “I understand. If you did not love me, you would not test me by showing me my path, by letting me find my own forgiveness.” He rose quite steadily and knelt by the basin. His leg no longer hurt, his hands were healed. In fresh, cold water he washed himself clean of sweat and blood and indecision. The water steamed from his body in a fine, golden mist, and he waited.
* * * * *
Dana clambered carefully up the mountain. If Andrion came here, she told herself, he is indeed possessed. Possessed by the goddess, to her own purpose. She half expected to see his smashed body lying below a rocky scree or, bloodied and wet, in the basin of a waterfall, but he was not there. Fleeting wisps of shadow curled across her path like the tattered rags of sorcery, but she burst through them.
Dana was supposed to be on guard, but she had pleaded with her friend Kerith to replace her. She knew, she sensed, she felt where Andrion was. He needs me, she thought. She had not confided in Ilanit, who struggled with the contradictions of the night, nor in Lyris, who stalked through the garden, up and down, up and down, as if her pacing would return the emperor’s life to him, discharge him and his son through the gates, and seal the borders of Sabazel behind them.
Dana paused on the terrace before the cavern’s entrance and adjusted her bow on her back. The moon hung low in the west, too ripe to sustain itself across the sky. A faint pink blush rose up the east. The east, and my father in Sardis, she thought; I shall see you soon, I think. The wind murmured reassurance in her ear. Suddenly she heard the faint echo of a cry.
She sprinted into the cavern, hardly bothering to mind her steps, searching. No sign of Andrion. But wait. She heard a faint splashing noise, more irregular than the usual song of the water. Dana hurried down the steps and across the floor to the flame. She peered warily into Ashtar’s sacred grotto.
Andrion knelt on one knee beside the water channel, contemplating a wall drawing of a slender woman with a bow. His upturned face was shorn of immaturity, cheek and jaw etched by clear, square lines; his mouth was firm, almost tight, guarding against any importunate remnant of youth and uncertainty.
He realized he was being watched, but he did not start. Slowly he stood and looked around. The fire in the basin was reflected twofold in his eyes, distant but uncompromising flames. And yet he spoke lightly, wryly, with a lopsided smile, “You have caught me trespassing.”
Dana inhaled, trying to calm herself. His boldness was intriguing, his smile compelling, possessed by some primal simplicity beyond the complexities of logic. “Already you break the laws of Sabazel,” she admonished him lamely, “and this, this is—”
“Sacrilege? I think not. Not now.” His smile wavered for a moment, as if touched by a memory of weakness and pain; then he assumed confidence like heavy armor. “There is madness here, Dana. Can you not feel it? Does it not tempt you, too?” He stepped forward, pulled the bow from her shoulder, and set it against the wall.
Not quite in protest, not quite in question, she said, “Andrion?” Her blood stirred, responding to the spell he had called upon himself. His body glistened in the firelight, draped with a numinous cloak, god-touched; his hair lay damp across his forehead like fine red-brown feathers, and his brows were straight wings over the bright depths of his eyes. Incongruous and yet right, this vision of manhood here in the ancient place of Ashtar. “Harus,” she said. The words spilled from her mouth, unbidden, “Harus, Ashtar’s consort, called to the secret crevices of her body.”
“Out of time,” said Andrion, continuing some ancient litany, “neither daylight nor dark, neither winter nor summer, beyond the world we know and yet undoubtedly within the borders of Sabazel.” Even his voice was firmer, more even. He lifted the quiver of arrows from her back and laid them down. He untied her shirt.
Dana’s head spun. The sacred marriage of the ruler and the priestess, she thought; love as strong as death. Her heart lilted, repeating the rhythm of the whispering water, the sistrums that rattled in the outer cavern, and the pulse that made Andrion’s necklace flutter like a tiny flame against his throat.
And she laughed. “A divine madness, surely.”
“A gift.” Andrion’s eyes were wide in amazement at his own presumption, even as his fingertips sought her body beneath her clothing.
Her clothing suffocated her. She slipped out of it and tossed it aside. Their hands touched, entwined. Their bodies entwined. They were the same height, the same length of supple muscle, the same suddenly urgent strength.
With some distant, lucid part of her mind Dana saw the rough stone roof of the grotto undulate like the surface of a wind-brushed pool. She lay inside the pool, deep in some moon-dappled depth; no, it was the fire and its shadow that danced over the rock. It was Andrion’s body hot against hers, and his lips and tongue sketching a delicate, fiery filigree across her flanks; it was Andrion’s face, intense, serious, close to hers.
“Accept my offering.” His hoarse voice pronounced the words of the rite; even here, even now, he would remember the courtesy due to her and to the goddess.
“Yes,” she responded, equally hoarse. “In your name, Ashtar!” She circled him, guiding him, and gently he filled her. They were one, held in the goddess’s hand, possessed of a timeless, worldless joy.
Dana heard her own voice waver upward into a soft cry, saw crystalline beads of sweat spring out on Andrion’s forehead as his voice caught and repeated hers. The darkness of his eyes reflected green, mirroring her own awed gaze. The moment was sharp, sweet, ungraspable. And was gone.
Dana set her hand against Andrion’s suddenly sober face and groped for words to preserve the spell a moment longer. “We have always been destined for each other. Our fathers like b
rothers, my mother the daughter of yours, both of us conceived with Bellasteros’s empire.”
“And yet we are no longer children,” he replied.
She glanced at their damp, tangled limbs and had to smile. “Innocent no more.” Andrion’s necklace was imprinted on her breast, the sword and the shield branded on her flesh. He kissed the image, stroking it with his fingertips until it faded.
The cave steadied, the rush of the water slowed, the sistrums fell silent. The two mortal bodies clung together as the beguiling madness ebbed, leaving exposed the hard stones of reality—Sabazel and the Empire and their own separate lives.
“I must go to Sardis,” Andrion said at last. He propped his head upon his elbow and gazed bemusedly at Dana’s body spread beneath him. “My father’s sword is there and I must reclaim it. Will you come with me?”
“To play Danica to your Bellasteros?”
“Bellasteros had an army at his back.”
“You will.”
“And at the beginning Bellasteros and Danica hated each other.” Andrion’s mouth tightened and he looked suddenly away.
But his thought was tangible; if we love at the beginning, then how will it end? Dana pulled Andrion’s head back down to her and kissed him fiercely, trying to recapture an already fading passion. “So you will have your father’s sword. For yourself? For the army of Sardis? Or for him?”
“Yes,” he answered, and he answered her kiss with one much more delicate, accepting the end of their rite.
She sighed. “Then I shall stand by you.”
Quietly, deliberately, he asked, “And by Sabazel?”
“Always by Sabazel.” She shifted; his body, which she had borne so lightly a moment ago, was now heavy.
He slipped away and sat up on the edge of the bench. “Sabazel is all your life, Dana; it is only part of mine.”
“I know, Andrion. I know.” And they shared an affectionate if rueful smile, understanding each other only too well.
They washed in the water channel silently, as befitting the end of a solemn rite, and they allowed the icy droplets to damp the last embers of their madness. Chilled, they dressed, and Dana armed herself again. She could have wept; no longer could she anticipate the moment of their union, now that it had been consumed. But she would not cry before god-touched Andrion, the heir of the Empire.
She considered the rushes tangled and matted on the bench. “We shall pay for this. Enspelled, sanctified, and still condemned.”
“We choose to be tested.” Andrion grimaced.
They gave the rushes to the flame. As the light flickered on Andrion’s still face, Dana thought, I have lost the boy I loved;
I have found a man. And yet I must not love a man lest I be devoured by his world, by his name, which matters there far more than mine. But the flame warmed them, and the joy of their embrace lingered even as they left the grotto and the cavern behind.
A shining dawn mist obscured the horizon and transformed the city of Sabazel, nestling at the base of the mountain, into gauzy lace. As if they had stayed years in the cave, Dana told herself, and emerged only to find Sabazel a half-forgotten legend. But no, Sabazel waited.
* * * * *
Andrion heard Lyris’s voice, rising and falling through the mist, even before they had reached the place of the basin. “Duty . . . honor of Sabazel . . . Companion disgraced . . .”
“Why is she so angry?” he asked Dana. But he knew the answer.
She groaned. “I asked Kerith to take my place on guard duty. She was discovered, it seems.”
We are discovered. Andrion writhed in a moment’s embarrassment. Then that, too, peeled away like an outgrown skin, leaving only sorrow. That magic moment, so long anticipated, had been forever consumed and would now lie gutted at the impenetrable boundary of two worlds. But he would no longer weep before this warrior of Sabazel. I have lost the girl I loved, he thought, and found a woman I must not love; it can be no other way.
He turned and kissed Dana’s cool and reluctant lips, and she summoned a smile for him. With his own grim smile he said, “Let us divert Lyris’s wrath from the innocent.”
They hurried past the bronze basin. Andrion glanced back; mist gathered above the still water, wavering into a shape, into clear blue eyes and glimpses of the sky beyond the clouds. The queen’s garden held muted images of trees and flowers. Even a seated Ilanit was the ghostly shape of a dream. Only Lyris, fully armed and armored, and the slender shivering form of Kerith bent before her, were distinctly defined. “Please,” Dana called, “the blame is mine. I was called to Andrion in the cavern.”
The weapons master turned. Her keen eye quickly appraised the pink cheeks of the pair. Her nostrils quivered in outrage. She dismissed Kerith, small game, with a wave of her hand; the girl, with a wild glance from her friend to her queen and back again, fled.
Lyris’s steady, blazing gaze scoured Dana’s form, as taut as an upraised saber, clean of pretense. Then it leaped onto Andrion. Their eyes locked, struggling for dominance. You shall not catch me off guard again, he told her silently, and she snapped away, disdaining the struggle.
“So,” Lyris hissed at Dana, “you would abandon your duty to serve a man.”
“I serve no man,” returned Dana. “And none serve me. We were called together.”
Ilanit awoke. Her features crumpled and she choked, as if strangling either a laugh or a cry. Her eyes began to focus on the garden around her. The mist thinned and shimmered, diffused with the light of the morning sun.
“I would expect nothing else from a man,” Lyris stated, “than to dirty the sacred places of Sabazel, thinking himself above the law. But you!”
“Not above the law,” insisted Dana, “but caught within its meshes, as are we all.”
Lyris snorted, and her glance again stabbed like a javelin at Andrion. He stood firm, determined and yet respectful. “I am sorry, Lyris, that we offended you. It could not be helped.”
“Self-righteous prig,” she spat. She turned, indignant, to Ilanit. “You and I have borne sons, my queen, and we traded them for girls as the law requires. Why should this boy be not only acknowledged but favored?”
Ilanit looked toward the house that sheltered Danica and Bellasteros. “This boy is beloved of the gods,” she said. She almost sang, as if chanting a liturgy. “His birth secured Sabazel from slavery to Sardis, to the Empire.”
“And tied Sabazel too close to the outside world.”
Ilanit fixed Lyris with the glow of her eyes, asking with dignity and love for mercy. “The goddess’s winds blow strange and subtle, Lyris, and who are we to question them?”
“I do not question the law,” Lyris muttered.
Ilanit turned to Andrion. “Why did you enter the cavern?”
“I wanted the goddess to speak to me.”
Ilanit smiled at that. “And did she?”
“Yes. I must go to Sardis.”
“Soon?” asked Lyris hopefully.
“Soon. With Dana at my side.”
“Ah?” exhaled Ilanit, as if pierced to the heart.
Lyris drew her sword and regarded it as if it were the only certainty left to her. “But they must pay for their crime,” she persisted. And she, too, was pleading. A sudden breeze swirled through Sabazel, shredding the mist, and a thin, watery sunlight brightened the colors of the garden.
Ilanit set her jaw and raised her hand in judgment. “Their rite was a valid one,” she pronounced. “If penance is due, then their journey will be it, I think. But the letter of the law must be obeyed. For taking a man outside the quarterly rites I was shorn of my hair, and the Companions mocked me for my frailty. But Patros paid only with blood, not with his manhood.” Her hand fell to her side and closed into a protective ball. “Token payment, Lyris.”
Lyris bowed to the queen’s verdict. She turned narrow-eyed to Andrion, her sword twitching. He rolled back his left sleeve and extended his arm. “I entered the cavern and Dana both, illegally,” he said. “Strike.
”
The sword darted out and bit. He stifled a gasp. A runnel of crimson appeared on his forearm, welled, and dripped onto the ground. The wind quickened. “Nothing personal,” Lyris told him.
“No offense taken,” Andrion returned between clenched teeth.
Lyris grasped Dana’s hair, pulling it so hard she winced. Again the sword darted, and a long flaxen lock spun away into the wind. The mist burned away and the warmth of the sun poured down upon mountain and city. For a long moment the world was silent except for a faint chiming in the wind, and Andrion tried to pray. But he had spent prayer as he had spent his passion between Dana’s thighs, as his blood spent itself upon the ground, offerings to Ashtar, to Harus, to Bellasteros. Perhaps to himself.
Lyris sheathed her sword and strode away. The morning filled with the song of birds, the hum of bees, the voices of women and children.
Ilanit touched Andrion’s shoulder hesitantly, as if afraid his flesh would burn her hand. “You tread a narrow path. A dangerous one.”
“Yes,” he said, with a sideways look at Dana. She was staring off into the distance, listening to some other sound. “Have I a choice?”
“No. None of us do.” Ilanit laughed shortly. “Ask Danica to bind your wound.” And, to Dana, “Come. We have work to do, small things like winnowing grain and weaving cloth, pleasant things that tie us to this world.” She turned and walked away, her head tilted to the leaf-latticed sky, blue sky winking between olive and laurel leaves like Ashtar’s amused glance. Dana smiled at Andrion sadly, and was gone.
With a weary sigh he opened the door of the house, stepped into the dim interior, went to the bed and leaned over the still form of the emperor. Bellasteros could well have been asleep, deeply, serenely, his face illuminated as if by the glow of the basin, as if he looked into the otherworld where Solifrax now waited. With a tremor of sorrow Andrion kissed the cool, waxen skin of his father’s brow. “Forgive me,” he murmured to the unconscious face. “I shall try to redeem us both.”
Winter King Page 10