Below, in the square before the gate, huddled several Khazyari women and children who had escaped inside during the altercation with Obedei. Andrion glanced down; yes, the townspeople were reassuring them and leading them to safety. He felt he should smile at this small favor, at the sparing of Obedei, but his tendons were knitted too tightly to allow even that.
Warmth poured over him and he looked up. The clouds fractured into glades and rills of blue, Ashtar’s eyes contemplating the arrayed pawns of her vast and complex game. Sudden shafts of sun raked the battlefield, picking out one struggling knot of figures, dimming, picking out another; smoke swirled in the sunlight like starfire in the bronze basin. The swaying forms on the battlefield were only faded frescoes, indistinct figures caught in stylized attitudes, their movement an illusion in the corner of the eye. Their shouts and cries were less real than the low notes of a dirge-like wind. Perhaps, Andrion thought, this is truly one of the battles of Daimion, or the triumph of young Bellasteros, not my own clumsy ascension.
Andrion leaned over the parapet, straining toward the distant mass of men; he felt himself on the battlefield, Ventalidar’s muscles flexing and loosing between his thighs, the wind tugging at his black plume and black cloak. There, in a strand of sunlight so thick and golden it looked like an amber stairway leading upward, was Bellasteros. The red plume and red cloak streamed behind him, and Ventalidar’s black coat shone with echoing hints of red. The bronze falcon rode the wind just ahead, circling, swooping on its prey, avenging its brother smashed on the day of defeat.
And there, in another thread of light, was the shield of Sabazel, the embossed star pulsing in quicksilver swirls, illuminating Patros’s grim face. That calm figure, a rock in the midst of a torrent, was Nikander. That tiny form was Dana, clambering with several Sabazians up the turf-covered mound of an earlier generation’s dead Sardians.
Some Khazyari, their backs to the wall, fought berserkly on and died. But others . . . Andrion squinted. Yes, there, on the far edge of the Khazyari camp, was a scowling Tembujin, bow upheld over the prone bodies of supplicants, white horse capering. A squat figure scurried furtively through the smoldering piles of felt that had been yurts. He had seen that face before, in a nightmare, but the name escaped him.
He was not on the battlefield. He waited helplessly, the struggling armies beyond his reach. His hand slapped Solifrax on the parapet; the sword scored the great block of stone into myriad tiny fractures.
But warmth touched him again, a dazzling ray of sunlight caressing his head and then fading. The bronze falcon was at the gates of Iksandarun, followed closely by the scarlet and purple pennons. The battle, the world circled around him. He bounded down the stair, Lyris at his heels. Again Andrion opened the gates with his own hands.
Miklos rushed by, hand clenched on the standard, armor bloodied, eyes staring wildly ahead. Ventalidar rushed by, miraculously unscathed, the form on his back still erect and tall. Andrion thought for one scalding moment that Bellasteros’s pallid face was the youthful one of his visions: short hair, beardless chin, rich brown eyes surveying the width of the world, taking it as his own, bequeathing it to his heir.
Legionaries and Khazyari poured struggling through the gate. Miklos and Bellasteros were gone. Andrion spun for a moment, senses reeling. Then he sternly collected his scattered wits; his duty lay outside. Lyris was waiting. “Come!” he shouted.
Lyris called her Sabazians, Andrion shouted orders at his centurions. He commandeered horses from the first cavalry riders he saw. They surged through the mass outside the gate into the ruined encampment. Their horses stumbled through fire and smoke and mud, past dead camels and ponies, past an appalling number of sprawling dead people, horror-filled eyes looking beyond the turbulent iron-gray arch of the sky. The very ground seemed to shiver with an eerie sound, wailing high-pitched trills, like but not quite the Khazyari song of victory that had harrowed Iksandarun at midsummer; this song spiraled down, down into an abyss of fear and despair.
The full moon of midwinter, Andrion thought. Midwinter. The winter kings, Andrion and Tembujin, struggle toward the spring.
There was the shield, radiant not with sunlight but with moonlight and star-sheen. Solifrax flamed, seeming almost to leap from his hand toward the shield, its mate. Unerringly, cutting down anyone in his path, Andrion fought his way toward it.
* * * * *
Dana and a group of Sabazians sat atop the earthen mound of the Sardians dead in Bellasteros’s victory nineteen years before. She set her last arrow to her bow, raised it, stopped. Her mind writhed, sliced suddenly by a fiery blade. No, save that arrow! She gulped, lowered the bow, looked frantically around for some clue to her vision. The wind kissed her fevered cheeks and slackened.
The small, distant figure that was Patros sent pages scurrying. Ilanit’s shield gleamed at his side. A company of cavalry pounded by, pursuing Khazyari mounted on lathered ponies. A crimsoned sword gestured, and one of them fell and was trampled. Chariots skimmed across the plateau, harvesting death. The gates of Iksandarun opened again. The crimson plume vanished inside, the black plume and the fiery arc of Solifrax reappeared. So, Dana thought, time swallows the one and spits the other into play.
Nikander materialized out of swarming soldiers, Tembujin at his side, shouting something to Patros. As one Patros and Ilanit, Nikander and Tembujin wheeled. Encompassed by a guard of Sabazians and legionaries mingled, they plunged into the Khazyari camp. Women and children scattered before them like a covey of pheasant, their cries a weird resonance in a failing wind.
A thick golden thread of sun fell upon the camp, glancing through the haze of smoke, seeming to burn it away. Then the camp was dim, indistinct, a remote sketch once again.
A squat man draped with amulets waited in the midst of several imperial soldiers, hands upraised, shielded eyes rolling from face to face. He cringed as Tembujin leaped down, grasped the front of his tunic, and shook him like a lion shaking a bloated carcass. The odlok drilled the man with a few words of Khazyari; his fleshy cheeks quivering, the man responded.
Tembujin’s words, droplets of gall, seared Dana’s mind. The shaman Odo, she told herself. He says he will surrender the Horde. Odo’s body seemed as boneless as jelly; his eyes rolled up in his head, leaving only a rim of glistening white. In contempt, Tembujin dropped him.
Nikander spoke to the waiting soldiers; they formed a ragged circle, a dike holding back the ebb and flow of battle. At the edge of the circle, Dana noted, was a small two-wheeled cart curtained with opaque gray hangings. Or perhaps it was curtained with smoke. The wind had stilled itself, and yet the hangings moved in and out as if stirred by slow breaths.
Then her ear picked up a shout, one clear voice overriding all others. There was Andrion, buoyed up by Sabazian helmets, by the glow of Solifrax. Ashtar! Dana thought; to her keen eye Andrion’s face was melted gold freshly poured from its crucible, burned free of all pretense, all caprice, all lingering youth. She saw, heard, felt him rein up beside Ilanit. “Well met, my sister.”
“Well met, my brother,” Ilanit responded. She lifted her shield. He lifted his sword, the sword that was a part of his own body. They touched. Their light was lightning striking up, rending the clouds, drawing down a sunbeam that was also molten gold. The crescent of the sword, and the star of the shield; the necklace, Dana felt Andrion think. I have almost forgotten that necklace. The sword rang the shield like a bell, and Ilanit grinned.
The sun went out. Dana shivered, her perceptions flowing from her mind like water from her body. She cursed the Sight that took her unaware and used her as its vessel. The camp, the circle of soldiers, the figures in their midst were distance pieces upon a game board. And still she watched, unable to move, the hair prickling on the back of her neck, her bow prickling in her hand. There is the shaman. Where is the witch?
Andrion saw his officers waiting. He saw Odo, still crouching in the dirt. His eye touched Tembujin’s and considered the controlled rage within it. He di
smounted onto the churned and bloody ground. Ilanit and Patros followed; Nikander and Lyris remained mounted, leaning forward with great attention. Tembujin stirred Odo’s flabby body with his toe. He asked, no doubt, the same question: Where is Raksula?
Odo seemed to grope through clouds of fog, his face twitching with a tic. He said nothing.
Nikander regarded Odo as if he were a dead fish washed up on the shores of the Jorniyeh. Tembujin slapped his sword against his leg, before Odo’s face. Dana’s mind strained tighter and tighter toward the scene below. But she could not move toward it. She would break, she thought wildly, panting; she would burst into shivering strands of flesh and thought and dissipate down the wind . . . But there was no wind.
Then a frenzied shriek shattered the air, the smoke, the sunlight. Raksula leaped like a crazed leopard from beneath the cart. A long dagger glinted in each hand, her many braids streamed out from her head, her eyes bottomless wells of madness, as flat and dark as a moonless midnight, seeing everything, but recognizing nothing.
She fell upon Ilanit. The shield arched up. The daggers rang against the emblazoned star and the ringing echoed into the sky.
Ilanit’s sword struck one braid from Raksula’s head, spun, feinted, struck again. But Raksula’s scrawny body seemed to carry the miasma of the battlefield around it, she was never quite where she appeared to be. She fought with an uncanny strength and speed, screaming as she struck, “Sabazel chokes my every plan, denying me my rightful place. Sabazel be damned!” Ilanit swung and parried; frowning, she gave back one step, then two.
Every watching eye was drawn to the swirling forms, mesmerized as surely as a moth by some gleaming candle. Patros’s teeth glinted between drawn-back lips. Tembujin swayed as if fighting a sudden dizziness. Nikander and Lyris leaped from their horses and froze, weapons poised. Andrion stood with a suddenly dimmed Solifrax upraised, eyes transfixed by the dancing shapes before him, blades weaving an intricate pattern of light and shadow, clashing again and again with dull thuds. He grimaced. The sword glimmered before him and then faded.
Dana leaned from her horse, screaming, “Sorcery, it is sorcery, the witch has a spell about herself!” Her entire body was one quivering strand of awareness, arcing swift and sure to where the small doll-like figures circled; her body was bound to the saddle of the horse and she cried in a paroxysm of frustration, “Wake up! Wake up!” The Sabazians about her jostled each other, sharing alarmed glances.
“All your fault, all yours, not even any of your concern . . .” Raksula screeched in Khazyari and common tongue both, her lips flecked with foam.
“Loyalty,” gasped Ilanit. “Love.” Her eyes narrowed in concentration, as if replaying every practice session, every battle she had ever fought; her finely knit body bent and swayed. Still she gave way, uncertain whorls of light eddying across the face of the shield.
Every face was drawn to Raksula, Odo forgotten. He pulled a dagger from his tunic. Raksula’s eyes, glittering jet, snapped in command. Odo threw himself toward Andrion’s back. The dagger flared as sunlight spilled again over the battlefield.
Dana saw the distant figure rise and move, slowly, slowly, a fly struggling through golden resin. Her thought exploded into white-hot sparks. Her hand ripped the last arrow from her quiver and flung it against the bow; the bow leaped. One shot, now, or another king devoured by bloody Iksandarun, all this agony for nothing . . . Andrion, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. “Ashtar!” she screamed, and the bowstring sang high, clear, strumming the air itself.
The thick golden rays of the sun were shattered into prismatic dust by the shriek of the arrow. With the hideous sound of a melon splitting open it struck Odo’s back, passed through his body and sprouted in bloody petals through the amulets on his chest. In utter astonishment he fell face first into the dirt, the dagger still in his hand.
In that moment Raksula howled and spun, slicing Patros’s arm from shoulder to elbow. Ilanit shouted. Raksula whirled, striking again; her other dagger shattered against the star-shield into glowing shards of metal.
Someone cried out in pain. It was not Patros. Dana realized, but she herself. Tears blurred the world before her. She threw the bow onto her shoulder and urged her horse, scrambling and slipping, down the mound.
* * * * *
The shriek of the arrow broke the spell. The shield rang and flashed in rays of fire, clearing the air. Ilanit shook herself, settling her perceptions in the glow of the shield. Solifrax fired in response. Everyone moved at once, Lyris clasping Patros as he crumpled, Tembujin and Nikander coiling, Andrion surging forward, cloak flying, sword cleaving the sunlight with a bright white light of its own. One sideways glance showed him Dana hurtling down the side of the mound. Gods! he thought, I let myself be blinded, I let down my guard! Dana, you are my other half.
Raksula spun, drunk on her own hatred. Ah, Andrion thought, it is indeed exhilarating. He felt his teeth bare themselves, his eyes burn.
She struck. Andrion struck faster. Solifrax sang and Raksula’s right hand flew from the end of her arm, still clutching her dagger, and hit the hangings around the cart with a thwack. The hangings rippled violently. Raksula screeched and clutched the stump of her arm to her breast, dark vermilion blood staining her tunic. Her features contorted, at one instant recognizably human, at the next shuddering in malign bestial rage.
Hatred! howled Andrion’s mind. If I hate anyone it is you! And yet, and yet . . . He caught himself, braced himself, sword upraised and thrilling through his entire body. Ilanit appeared on his right, shield pulsing with the same power. Tembujin appeared on his left, head lowered, eyes narrowed, a lion poised for the leap. Nikander stood just behind, ready for anything.
Dana burst through the surrounding cordon and stopped, her horse rearing, her eyes flicking from Lyris stanching Patros’s wound, to wary Nikander to Tembujin and Ilanit and Andrion standing side by side, shining warriors.
Raksula recoiled, eyes glazed. She scrambled onto the tongue of the cart and ripped away the hangings. The statue of Khalingu, wings furled, claws sheathed, tail curled, looked at her with eyes of adamant.
Her hoarse voice began muttering a prayer, a spell perhaps, incoherent words pouring like bile from her mouth. An echoing purr filled the air, mocking her rough words. She stopped, lips parted, eyes staring. There, on Khalingu’s lap, lay the cat Qemnetesh. The beast’s fur shimmered with quicksilver and its topaz eyes glowed. It yawned, its flicking tongue red and sharp, and it crossed its paws in lazy, insulting indolence.
“Qem,” murmured Patros, “an aspect of Ashtar.”
Andrion felt the gleam of the beast’s eyes. He raised Solifrax like a scepter before him. Silence fell over the battlefield as if a lid had been clapped upon it. Dana’s nostrils flared. “Not sorcery,” she murmured, and a breath of wind carried the words to Andrion’s ear. “Magic, the touch of the gods themselves.” Her voice faltered.
A shaft of sunlight struck the cart with an audible peal. In reply the statue of Khalingu glittered, filling with swirling motes of light. It wavered and faded and changed. It became the figure of a cloaked woman holding a falcon upon her arm. Her eyes and the eyes of the raptor were a blue so piercing that Andrion felt they could see right through him, as though his flesh, his very soul, were no more substantial than the wind or the sunlight and could be molded at will. Whose will? he queried silently. Whose?
A serpent rose from beneath the woman’s feet, spread its hood, shadowing Raksula’s appalled face. The sheath of Solifrax writhed at Andrion’s side.
Unnoticed, Odo crawled to his knees and then staggered to his feet, a decaying corpse reanimated, clutching a dagger in its scabrous hand. He fixed Raksula with eyes yellowed by a sick, sour spite.
The cart filled with mist, glimmering silver smoke shrouding the images of the gods. Raksula collapsed, hand outstretched, wailing demands and imprecations. The shapes flickered with tiny golden flames and crumbled, leaving only sparks to float down upon her face.
&
nbsp; Her eyes cleared. She glanced behind her, at the icy faces, at the shining weapons. Her thin lips wavered, into a sneer perhaps, or perhaps a smile; defiantly she cursed the gods themselves. Odo threw himself into her embrace. The dagger flared and buried itself to the hilt in her breast. Odo and Raksula fell together into the burning cart and were consumed.
A wind rang suddenly down the sky, unfurling Andrion’s cloak and snapping it like a banner. In the wind was a taut, clear note of music, a serenity beyond this world. Even as the note faded from his ears it hung, quivering, in his mind.
Andrion’s cold carapace shivered into thousands of tiny fissures, revealing the raw, naked, mortal creature beneath. Tears rolled hot down his cheeks, draining him of rage and hatred. He was filled with the music, ripened by it, his awareness vibrating like a plucked lyre string. He stared into the sky, every sense extended. The westering sun drenched the battlefield and the walls of Iksandarun with light as thick as the finest honey. A wind scented with ice and asphodel rolled up the clouds and swept them away. The distant but distinct call of a falcon echoed down the wind, repeating that same note that trembled in his body.
Andrion inhaled deeply of the cool, clean wind. “So,” he said quietly to it, “do I pass the test? Or have I merely won this game for you?” This day, the long-anticipated ending, was nothing like he had ever feared or hoped. His mouth tucked itself into a rueful smile. He sheathed his sword, sheathing his bewilderment and his strength. He turned to the shapes around him, recognizing them, his blood and his flesh.
Every face was set in the same god-struck awe. He had not imagined that note of grace. “Our faith is rewarded,” he said to them all, and laughed at the complacent certainty in his voice. Only death was certain.
The cart burned in waves of heat, but it emitted no smoke, no smell. The gray cat padded to Andrion’s feet, meowed up at him as if to say, And that is that, and slipped like a whorl of mist away.
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