Winter King

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  * * * * *

  Hilkar ran, his scrawny neck outthrust, his robes fluttering, through the city, past the guards at the gate, into the Khazyari encampment. He stumbled to a halt, wheezing, and demanded of the guard outside Raksula’s yurt, “I must see her. I have news, important news, a warning.” He rubbed his hands together as if feeling riches between them.

  The fabric doorway was ripped aside. Gouts of shadow poured from the blackness of the yurt into the fitful firelight, eclipsing it. Raksula’s sharp-angled face, thin lips, glittering eyes, were those of a cobra peering angrily from its den. “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “My lady,” he gabbled, “Andrion was in the city tonight. He carries the sword Solifrax, and with it he rouses the slaves!”

  “What?” Odo appeared at Hilkar’s back.

  Hilkar turned and grasped Odo’s amulets so that they jangled with a brief, muted trill. “Andrion. He was in the city tonight.” Odo removed Hilkar’s hands.

  Raksula’s braids writhed. Her lips dripped venom. “What game is this? Maggot! You think you can play both sides?”

  “No, no. my lady.” Hilkar dropped to the ground, flattening himself at her feet. She stepped back. “I saw him, he saw me, he threatened me with the sword!”

  Odo looked at Raksula. Raksula looked at Odo. Odo leaned over and grasped what few hairs still adhered to Hilkar’s skull, pulling his head up. “Andrion saw you, and he did not kill you? Come now, such a pitiful story is not worthy of your villainy.”

  “No, no, lord,” Hilkar gulped. His hands fluttered, broken wings, against the ground. “And Tembujin was there, with Andrion, as an ally.”

  Raksula screamed like an animal suddenly caught by a swooping raptor. “No, no you did not see him; it was only an evil vision. No one has seen him, do you hear, no one! You cannot fool me with such a lie, he is dead, moldering, gone!” With an effort she controlled herself, wiping the foam from her lips. Her chest heaved.

  Odo stood staring at her, grated by some edge in her voice. For a moment his face clouded in suspicion; perhaps he wondered what she knew that he did not, what it was she so hysterically denied.

  Hilkar lay sprawled, quivering in terror. “I told you,” Raksula snarled slowly, savoring each word, “that if you came to me again, I would kill you.” Hilkar spewed protestations of loyalty and innocence. She laughed at him. “And you are stupid enough to think I would believe this tale. Pathetic fool.” She gestured to the guard. He drew his dagger.

  Hilkar squeaked, trying to wriggle away. Odo’s cloud coalesced into anger. He grasped one of Hilkar’s arms, the guard the other. Raksula turned back into her lair. Her voice, still laughing, still screaming in agony, arched higher and higher and sliced the night into shivering gobbets of darkness.

  Hilkar wept and pleaded as they dragged him to Khalingu’s cart. No one listened. Odo took the dagger, raised it, and the thin weeping voice stopped abruptly. But nothing stirred inside the cart, as if the god disdained this offering, as if Raksula’s shrill screeches offended even him.

  Odo turned, frowning; he wiped the red blade of the dagger on Hilkar’s scarlet-stained robes and returned it to the guard. The hangings about the cart remained as flaccid as Hilkar’s body. The sky was opaque and airless.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The night lasted forever. The sun, the moon, the stars faded into a dark featureless eternity. Andrion huddled on his narrow bed, caught in that uncertainty between midnight and dawn, between waking and sleeping.

  He saw Sarasvati’s lapis lazuli eyes filling with lamplight, burning like Valeria had once burned in his arms; he saw Tembujin’s tail of hair fall from his head and writhe like a snake across the dim flagstoned floor of the throne chamber in Iksandarun. He saw Solifrax fall into a star-muddled basin of water, inscribe a trail like a glowing crescent, slice the sky into tatters of light; he saw it plummet with a hiss into Gerlac’s sarcophagus, and nestle there safe in the golden billows of Dana’s hair.

  He sat up, cold sweat congealing on his body. The night was dark and airless. Solifrax lay silent beside his empty armor. He lay back down. His body was armor, a hard, dry husk, unfeeling, unseeing, hearing only expressionless voices planning strategy:

  “Danica,” Ilanit said, “teased Bellasteros about rebuilding the forts at the head of the pass, asking who would dare attack him. It is we, it seems, who would attack Iksandarun.”

  “We shall have to bludgeon the Khazyari into submission,” said Nikander. “A clumsy strategy, a waste of good men. And women.”

  “The Khazyari can simply retreat into the city and close the gates,” Lyris pointed out.

  Patros’s even voice replied, “But Andrion can lead troops into the city through the old tunnel, rallying our people. That would not only distract the Khazyari long enough for us to breast the pass and overrun them quickly, that would prevent their retreat.”

  “Andrion can lead the army to the gates of Iksandarun.”

  “Andrion can lead our people in revolt and open those gates.”

  “Andrion can easily be in two places at once.”

  Andrion twitched and groaned. Yes, that was the plan, formulated before he had walked again in Iksandarun or after he had returned, bleak and cold; he could not remember. He remembered the shuttered eyes of Tembujin, and the desolation on the face of Miklos. He saw the mound of Sarasvati’s belly, only it was Dana who sat, waiting, pregnant with the future.

  And Bellasteros the conqueror slept, serene in Danica’s hand. And Bellasteros slept. And Bellasteros, Bellasteros, Bellasteros . . .

  “Andrion!”

  Andrion started up into a glancing light. No, it was only a small oil lamp, held in Lyris’s hand. A woman, he was awakened yet again by a woman. “The battle begins,” he said thickly, reaching for his sword.

  “No, not yet.” She pulled the covers from him and jerked at his arm. “Your . . . your father . . . Danica sends me . . .”

  Andrion had never thought to hear Lyris stammer. “What?” he demanded, a ripple of cold tightening his spine.

  “Bellasteros wakes and calls your name.”

  The words seeped like a fiery liquor through his veins, and he heard himself gasp. The tent receded, rushed close, receded again. Then his body fired with a fierce joy and sudden sorrow; he seized the sword and burst running from the tent, sweeping aside his guard. It might have been Lyris at his heels, it might have been fate; he did not turn to see.

  The night was still shadowed, the sky flat, unyielding, black. The camp of the Sabazians stirred with small points of light like stars held in safekeeping. The women were wraiths plucking at him as he ran by. He plunged into Danica’s tent, leaving the world shredded behind him.

  The tent was filled with the yellow light of lamps, the red light of a fire in a brazier. It was warm and fragrant with healing herbs. Bellasteros sat propped on pillows like an effigy; Danica sat beside him, her green eyes fixed upon his face, greedy for every small movement, every nuance of expression. Shandir hovered nearby. Ilanit and Dana stood side by side, the shield between them. Its light cast a gentle glow on the face of the king. Or perhaps it was his face drawing a glow from the shield.

  His dark pellucid eyes fell upon his son. He smiled.

  Andrion knelt beside his father’s bed, his face upturned as if to the sun. He knew he was smiling, he knew his smile was tight with petulant, shameful resentment: Now you wake. Now, when I have learned not to need you. But no, that is not true, I shall always need you. . . . Bellasteros raised a wasted arm to touch his hair, reassuring himself that Andrion was a living being, not some figment of his long, long dream.

  Bellasteros’s face was gaunt, almost as gaunt as the skull Andrion had once held. His hair and beard were smooth shining electrum, the same color as Danica’s hair; the glow of the diadem was camouflaged by it. But Bellasteros’s eyes were rich dark brown, their depths stirred with many surfaces, many lights, internal reflections repeated over and over into infinity. His eyes were cl
ear, untainted by sorcery.

  Bellasteros’s face blurred, and Andrion blinked. He saw himself mirrored in his father’s eyes, he saw what his father saw, a man, not a boy. “So,” said his father’s faint but precise voice, “you have been busy, I hear. Leading my army, finding your sister Sarasvati, taming our enemy.”

  “I did it in your name. . . .” His throat closed. Andrion drew Solifrax from its sheath. It rang, and the shield of Sabazel behind it rang in greeting. The filigree hilt fit his own grasp now, the perfection of the blade was marred by his own blood; he sank his teeth deep into his lower lip and offered the hilt to his father’s remaining hand.

  Danica looked down on Andrion with a wry amusement. Bellasteros, with an effort, raised his hand and touched the sword. It sparked for him, a slow swirl of light motes raining upward to kiss his face. And he let the sword go. “It is now yours.”

  Andrion tried not to snatch it away. He held it before him, between them. “Father . . .”he said, but there was nothing else to say.

  The corners of Bellasteros’s eyes crinkled with his smile, fine lines etched on his face as they had been upon Danica’s by years of decision and light. “Andrion,” he murmured, “beloved of the gods.” His voice was a fine thread of sound, savoring the name. “Again I come to Iksandarun. Again Iksandarun must be taken. I would ride at the head of the army one last time. I would be young again, and strong.” His face tightened in regret and then cleared.

  Patros knelt beside him, his face struggling with hope and fear. For just a moment Andrion saw Bellasteros and Patros as the boys they had once been, brothers setting off together across the world before its width divided them. “Marcos,” Patros said, calling his friend from the hazy borders he approached, too noble to hold him back if he wished to go.

  Bellasteros clasped Patros’s hand, comforting him. “I entrust your friendship to my son. He can have nothing stronger.”

  Patros’s composure cracked, his face twisting in anguish. But he allowed only one tear to course like a shining drop of amber down his cheek. Bellasteros set his hand gently down. Danica took Bellasteros’s hand and held it between her own, her face as brittle as fine porcelain.

  A pole appeared beside Andrion, clasped by Miklos’s white knuckles. The bronze falcon swooped over the emperor, wings glittering.

  Andrion bowed in pain over the sword. It flamed before his face; his cheeks were hot with it. In the corner of his eye the shield of Sabazel stirred in response, lovers murmuring together.

  Then Bellasteros grinned, white teeth flashing in his pale beard, rousing from his pillows as if drawn to some vision. Twenty years fell from his face. Andrion floated down into the cool fire of his father’s eyes. He saw a red plume and a crimson cloak and Solifrax flaring under a crystal blue sky. He saw the garden of the gods, Ashtar holding Harus safe upon her wrist, Solifrax growing from the earth itself beneath the Tree of Life. For a moment he heard the wind chiming in the branches of the Tree, rippling through its green leaves and golden fruit. Green and gold, Danica’s, Ilanit’s, Dana’s eyes . . . The distant reflection diminished, faded, and was gone. The light in Bellasteros’s eyes went out, and his head fell heavily onto Danica’s breast.

  Andrion felt the sword sear his hands and then cool. He saw the shield flash and then dull. He felt his mind reel through some great space, fall, shatter against the hard cold surface of death.

  Danica’s emerald gaze splintered into sharp, tearing shards. Patros bent his face into hands and crouched, his shoulders shaking. The falcon seemed to droop above Miklos’s ashen face.

  So, Andrion told himself, with a few banal words the conqueror dies, and takes his numinous cloak from this world to another. Yes, to another world; Andrion was certain of what he had seen in Bellasteros’s eyes. He reached to his mother’s breast and closed the blankness that had been his father’s eyes. The flesh was waxen, already transmuted to some other substance.

  Danica’s face was patched together with line and shadow, her features subtly changed, one important facet of her expression gone. With the greatest reverence, she laid Bellasteros’s head against the pillow and regarded it with a distant smile. Andrion sensed her thought, sparks in the basin of water: We shared the fruit that grows beyond the world, you and I. We shall never be truly separated.

  Slowly he stood, groping through his tangled thought: relief, that his father had at last left him; resentment, that Bellasteros had abandoned him to the task ahead. To speak of leading the army again . . . His heart writhed with sobs that could not pass the hard shell of his throat. I already cried for you, he thought, the night when they took your right arm.

  He saw Ilanit and Dana, eyes downcast, leaning together. He saw Patros grim and still. He saw Shandir clasping her hand to her mouth. He saw Nikander, standing to attention, tears rolling down his hollow cheeks. He saw Tembujin, of all people, hovering just inside the doorway of the tent beside a white-lipped Lyris. The Khazyari let Andrion see a kind of taut horror-stricken sympathy shadow his dark eyes, then hid his face. Miklos glanced around and scowled.

  Danica lifted the diadem from Bellasteros’s head as she had set it upon him, at the full moon of midwinter nineteen years before. She turned the coverlet over his calm, quiet face. She whispered, “The king is dead. Long live the King of Sardis, Emperor.” Andrion thought for a moment that her eyes filled with tears, filled with weary anger that she should even care about this event in the world of men. But they filled instead with that infinite green-gold shimmer, that certain vision of peace.

  With a sigh, acknowledging implacable time, Danica set the diadem upon Andrion’s brow.

  He had expected the diadem to be heavy, but it was not. It was barely a caress upon him, a brief dizzying tingle through his body. He could see himself in Patros’s and Danica’s eyes, the band of gold rippling in tiny flames across the bright embers of his hair.

  The tent swayed. Tembujin vanished. Patros knelt before Andrion, saying, “My fealty, my lord”; his voice leaped from one octave to another, but his upturned face was determinedly calm. And Nikander knelt, and Miklos. The falcon nodded gravely. The shield of Sabazel flared in friendship, and friendship only; who can ever know, Andrion thought to Ilanit’s green eyes, what Sabazel really is to me.

  He should be numb. He should be dazed by grief. But there was a shimmer in his own mind. His senses were distressingly clear, every color, every shape sharply engraved. Every sound, the creak of leather, the sigh of coals, the varied breaths, fell as distinctly upon his ear as the chime of a bell. Every fiber of his body sang, and his thoughts spun in great shining circles like scythes on the wheels of war chariots, cutting their way to a scheme so mad he did not at first trust his perceptions. But if he could not trust himself, he could trust no one.

  So this is why you lingered so long, he thought to the shade of his father, only to wake now, and die. Bellasteros, the proud king, would never surrender to weakness. Bellasteros, my father, would never abandon me before I was ready to see him go. Bellasteros, the master strategist, would throw himself one last time into the game. Pride and love and duty stronger than sorcery and death.

  Everyone was watching him. Andrion tightened his teeth until his jaw ached. He took the diadem from his head and set it, a glowing ring, upon the coverlet. He embraced his mother, commending the symbol of the Empire to her. He plunged Solifrax into its scabbard, hiding its whispering light. He summoned his followers and led them from the tent.

  The darkness was impenetrable. For a moment Andrion could see nothing but the gentle green and gold motes of light that floated in his own mind. Then they spiraled away and vanished, and the dim outlines of the imperial camp coalesced before him. A figure stood there, bobbing and bowing. “My lord, no one woke me, forgive me.” It was Bonifacio. Andrion was not the only one who had forgotten all about him. He muttered some courtesy and waved Bonifacio into the tent.

  The night was silent, every small noise absorbed by the flat steel-gray sky, by the harrowing chill. A
ndrion realized without surprise that hundreds of people were grouped politely if warily on the borders of the Sabazian camp. Only their eyes glinted in the darkness, reflecting the watchfires, waiting.

  Bellasteros had been the spindle upon which these people spun their hopes, weaving them with legends of the past. How could he dash that expectancy from them? Andrion raised his chin, confident in his plan; stubborn, some part of him said, and he accepted that as well. His mind sparked with tiny snaps, as if the diadem still graced his brow.

  He stepped forward and raised his arms. “Bellasteros is well.” he called, his voice firm. “He will lead us into battle tomorrow!”

  A great cheer erupted from the crowd, shivering the sky, calling a brief breath of icy wind to lift Andrion’s hair from his perspiring brow. He grinned lopsidedly, ashamed of himself, pleased with himself. “Go back to your quarters and get what sleep you can. Our destiny is upon us!”

  Again the people cheered. With many happy speculative murmurings they dispersed. Andrion turned to those dim forms standing behind him, and his grin faded into a long exhalation. Nikander’s brows were halfway up his forehead. Patros’s mouth hung open in astonishment. Lyris, Ilanit, and Dana were three blank, stunned faces. How fortunate, Andrion thought, that this is a dark night, and no one can see their expressions giving me the lie.

  He opened his mouth to explain and then stopped, hearing a muttering of angry voices. He turned and saw, a few steps away, Miklos grasping the pole of the standard as if it were a mace. Tembujin’s hands were raised, palms outthrust in cautious warning. The ursine warrior stood behind him, frowning at the tone of the words he could not understand.

  Miklos growled, “You had no right to intrude upon the emperor!”

  “You have no quarrel with me,” Tembujin replied placatingly.

  “No quarrel!” Miklos exclaimed. He lunged forward, the bronze falcon flashing in the firelight. The huge guard deflected him with a mighty arm. Tembujin did not move.