by Andre Norton
He looked up at her. Slowly, she removed the veil. Her hair flowed like a stream at night over shoulders held as straight as any soldier standing in the square, ready to fight. As she had fought for him, Quintus realized, against the creature he had hoped had been his boyhood's dream, restored to him.
"Why did you drive her away?" he demanded. "My lifelong friend, my companion..." And more, had Fortuna favored me.
"She was the companion of your childhood? That one? She who would have deluded you, given you drink to rob you of your mind, and kept you prisoner here before your time and with your work yet undone? She— your friend? As well go to the serpent mages..." the woman glanced around as if even here she feared danger, "... and ask for kindness."
Quintus rose. He was much taller than the woman he faced. Taller, but so insignificant compared to her, like a thousand other Romans with his dark hair and eyes, but so less dark than hers; his sturdiness, against her grace, his stubborn mouth against hers—oh Venus, that was a thought! At first, he had thought her a creature of Ch'in, like the officer who had laid arrogant claim to the Eagle with the signifer's blood still wet upon it. Now, he thought otherwise. He suspected her to be a woman of Hind, far to the south and east of any place Rome's Legions marched.
"Who are you?" he asked. He was certain he was going mad. Here in Erebus, he must face the judges Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus, not this woman with skin of amber and the carriage of a dark goddess.
Perhaps he had already drunk of Lethe. Perhaps he could find forgetfulness with this woman. He took a step forward, and she held up a hand.
She stood circled by fires that had sprung up amidst the asphodels. They burned with fragrance, as if she had scattered incense upon their tiny flames. Beneath her veil, she wore gauzes of amber and scarlet. Gems glinted at throat, fingers, wrist, and even on bare feet.
"Did she give you a gift? Was it she who led you to the figure you bear and that saved you when so many good men died?"
Quintus's hands went to his breast, and he drew out the tiny bronze dancer he had found so many years ago. She laughed with delight, her earlier fire vanishing.
"You gave me my luck piece?" he asked.
She reached out long fingers, tipped with some crimson stain, to touch it. Fires sprang up on the torches that the dancer eternally bore.
"I do not call Krishna luck," she whispered. "But necessity. And your fate.
"Krishna," she mused. "Once again, you return to drive us, as you have driven this man across half the world."
She handed him back the dancer. To his astonishment, the fires did not go out, not immediately. The sound of flute music went up, mingled with a thin, high drumming. As much as the bells and drums of the Parthians had repelled and frightened him, this music drew him. Drew him from this trap of Lethe and the asphodels that looked so much like his lost home back into consciousness. Other voices impinged, other sounds—the rustle of sand, the distant rattle and clang of tethered beasts. His sight went dim, as if he peered under water.
"Are you she—that spirit whom I once knew?" he asked.
"We are all reflections," she whispered. "Some of us are true, and some illusions."
Tears—shameful, un-Roman tears—threatened. "She said she had come back for me. Come to take me home."
The woman shook her head. Dark hair fell smoothly over shoulders the color of amber and the crimson and gold draperies that she wore.
"There is no going back for you. Krishna told you that on the battlefield. Remember? You told me: For a moment, fighting the sons of the man who reared you, you paused, unable to go forward. And Krishna spoke plainly, as he seldom does, and only to those he loves best. There is only the battle, only faring forward."
"Told me? Who are you?"
The woman's long eyes filled and her jeweled hands went out. "Do you not remember Draupadi? You—Quintus? You who are five in one, and those five the ones I wore this robe to marry? It was prophesied that Draupadi would have five husbands—and every one of them a prince or king.
"Long ago, and far away, I was Arjuna's prize. Your brother the king lost me; your brother the hero protected my name. We wandered, we fought, each side using forbidden weapons. We conquered, but we died. Now, we are reborn. Once again, I think, we must find each other."
Overhead the eagle screamed. Lethe and land wavered. Well enough: They had been deceits. But the woman—Draupadi—also wavered. With a final cry, the eagle flew overhead, effortlessly fleeing Erebus for the freedom of the outer air. Quintus raised his head to follow it. Sunlight broke through the light that had shone upon Lethe before, making it a sham and a counterfeit. He was aware of thirst again, but not for this draught of illusions and forgetfulness.
"What must I do?" he asked Draupadi.
"What you did before, without knowing. You must follow the eagle to where the water rises in the desert, where the rock gapes open, and where serpents grow from the stone. You must seek me and my guide. You will be commanded to bow to gods not your own and wield weapons unlike any you have ever known. Do you think you have suffered? In our last battles, we commanded armies. Now, we have only what we can win.
"My dearest, we need you, but I do not beg. Once, I begged not to be stripped before a court. They did not listen, so I never begged again. The only assurance I can give you is of pain worse than any you have known. Choose carefully. If you persevere, there, beyond the circles of the world, we may find triumph."
She stood challenging him like a statue of Roma Dea herself. "Or you can kneel and drink here, and she will have you in charge. It is pleasure," she said with faint disdain, "if not life or duty. But you will think you have your farm and your contentment. You may even enjoy it for as long as anything lasts. Which may not be long at all."
The fires at her feet flared, and smoke rose up from them to cover her. When it reached her head, he knew, she would be gone. The high sweet music of flutes and drumbeats grew shrill, but even more compelling. Draupadi hurled her veil over head and face.
"Or you can face trial and judgment in one," she murmured. "Follow me and follow the eagle—or remain here, for as long as 'here' remains."
She leaned forward and touched her lips to his. Even through the saffron veil, he sensed their warmth and sweetness.
The smoke wreathed up and snatched her from his sight.
"Lady! Draupadi, don't go!" he cried, reaching forward into the smoke. He brought his hands away scented with sandalwood—but empty. It seemed to him that he had spent his life with his hands empty of all but trouble. And now that seemed a grief intolerable to him.
"Come back," he whispered again. His voice broke, and this time the tears did fall upon the asphodels. They melted at his feet. He was blinded, as if the incense fires that swept Draupadi from his sight now enveloped him.
His whisper echoed, distorted by illusion. Once again, the eagle cried from high overhead.
Come back? That was no wisdom for a man, a Roman.
"I will follow you," he whispered with more fervor than he had sworn when the Legion's brand was set into his flesh.
"Well judged!" Three voices so closely linked that they might have come from one throat rang out. "You have passed sentence on yourself.
"You will be removed from Erebus and restored straightaway to the upper air. So let it be set down."
The eagle shrieked. And he was sinking from his knees onto his face lest he see his judges before his death. Flute music and drums went up again, and he lay in darkness. Beneath him, the land shook. He tried to grasp a rock, a root, then anything at all, but it was all illusion.
He cried out once, wildly, as the earth cracked and gaped open, and metal flamed far, far below in the rock that underlay desert deeper than he had ever seen. Then he was falling, falling through it... past a blessed glimpse of clear water running over rock onto a woman whose cascade of night-black hair flowed over her wet body and hid it. Just as well, he thought, with other eyes glowing in the night, watching her, watching him.
As he fell past them, too, he realized that others were watching them, and the eyes—the lambent hostile eyes—that spied upon the watchers themselves were even farther from being human than they were from being friends. Even the touch of those eyes was intolerable pain. He shouted once, and then the speed of his fall snatched thought and breath from him.
5
His HELMET HAD fallen across his eyes: He was blind, and he was down. Hands pinned Quintus to the ground. Better to die than be taken prisoner by Parthians! He struggled wildly, but in silence. He was no match for the man he fought.
"Dis take you, man, what do you think I'm doing?" came a harsh voice. "Help me hold him. I don't want to put him out again. He might never wake up. Sir, sir, will you stop it! You're among friends!"
The big hands tightened on Quintus's shoulders, shaking him until his ears rung and he lost the will to struggle. He sank back, panting against the rough comfort of rolled cloaks. Raising one hand to his head, he brought it away damp, and a cloth fell to his lap.
Surrounding him, looking more like cutpurses than Legionaries, was a circle of soldiers. It was Rufus, the senior centurion, who had subdued him. There was a bruise starting near his mouth.
Quintus flung up a hand, as if he had taken a telling blow in training.
"Ah! that's better now."
Grins flashed, as if the Legionaries really cared that their tribune had waked. That surprised him. He had heard mutterings about some of the young officers— Lucilius, for example—being arrogant know-nothings, more trouble than they were worth to honest soldiers. He had heard muttering about him, that he had about as much life as a deathmask and couldn't take a joke if he found it in his pack.
But his men were relieved that he had wakened. Quintus found himself almost teary-eyed at that thought. He couldn't let them see it, so he forced himself to look around, as if inspecting them.
Squatting a little behind them was Arsaces, the Persian, his eyes and teeth flashing in the light of a tiny fire. Quintus squinted at it, then sniffed, remembering the sandalwood and frankincense of Draupadi's incense.
No such luck. Surrounding him were the smells not of a Roman force correctly dug in for the night, but of the confusion that passed among the easterners for camps: dung, smoke, sweat, and beasts. The fire hurt his eyes. Looking away Quintus saw the bulk of camels out beyond the tents and bedrolls of... was this a caravan?
Where were they? It felt strange, almost naked, to lie around a fire like a boy, camping out on the hillside, rather than in the orderly security of a proper castra.
Everything had changed. He looked up into the sky, searching for some sort of permanence—Orion hunting his Bear, perhaps. Here in the deep desert, the stars too looked different. Orion might still hunt somewhere, for all Quintus knew, but the stars were not the familiar twinkles of Tiber valley, blurred by the mists from the water or even the aloof gleams of the sky above the drylands of Syria. Above this land, enormous fires burned in the clear blackness. Daunted, his gaze slipped to the crest of a hill. The night wind blew, and pale swirls rose from the crest, dancing down the ridge like dust from the coils of a huge serpent. Was this the deep desert? He had thought Syria had been barren. He had never imagined such desolation. And he feared worse was to come.
But there was another question he must ask first.
"The men?" he whispered. "Our Eagle?"
Rufus brought a fist down slowly onto the blankets in which Quintus was wrapped.
"You saw the proconsul." The senior centurion didn't ask a question, but stated fact.
They all bent their heads, nodded. No point in asking about the Eagle, then, and making Rufus drag it out of the silences in which he buried dishonor.
"Died like a Roman, at the last. He got his honor back. Protecting the Eagles. That was when you fell. Trying to guard him.
"Aren't many of us left. We started out with—what? Some twenty-eight thousand of us and four thousand cavalry? Maybe ten thousand made it out. Most of them—they're sending them on to Merv along with the standards."
Yes. Quintus remembered. The Eagles would tarnish on the altars of whatever gods the Parthians worshipped.
The young man gestured vaguely. He didn't see ten thousand captive Romans, much less hear them or smell the wounds or sickness that must inevitably accompany so great a throng of prisoners. He thought he remembered.... He dropped his hand to his waist. No belt. His fingers groped at his side for the weapons he had been trained to keep ready to hand. Nothing.
He should have expected that.
Seeing him search for weapons, Rufus went expressionless. It was worse than rage.
"They disarmed us, of course. Not that they think they need to worry. Just leave troublemakers and mutineers behind, and the desert will even save you the trouble of a burial party."
"How long have I been out?" Quintus whispered it because he was afraid to ask. He held up a hand and was surprised at how it trembled—and that it did not hold the marks of great age.
"Long enough."
It was not an answer.
"Why didn't they...?"
Rufus looked grim. "We have lost enough Romans. We convinced these..."
Quintus stared at the centurion till the older man looked away. "We carried you ourselves. We tended you ourselves."
"And they let you?"
"Drink this—no, slowly if you want to keep it down. Don't spill any."
The watered vinegar stung in his throat on the way down and brought tears to eyes made sore by the desert heat. Yet it tasted sweeter than the Lethe-water he had refused to accept from the treacherous creature who had posed as his own genius loci.
He felt strong enough to press the matter.
"They let you?" he repeated. "I want an answer, Centurion."
"We were granted that much grace," said Rufus. "I... convinced them." The Roman's powerful hand clasped and unclasped on the skin canteen he held.
Quintus glanced around the circle of Romans. They looked down. He must have begged. It would be poor thanks for his life to press the issue. Glancing up at the huge stars, he sought to change the subject.
"Is this the deep desert?" He had to ask it.
"This trifle of sand and stone? Hardly. The Ch'in tell me that we'll be climbing into mountains that make the Alps look like meadows," Lucilius's light, cultivated voice came from across the tiny fire, like a surgeon's fingers searching out a wound. "Then, the desert gets really bad. Like the stories of Trachonitis. Didn't you ever learn about that from your tutors?"
Quintus could all but see the young patrician's eyebrow arch up in disdain. However, they were now heading into a land where patrician, equestrian, and plebeian, or even officer and soldier, made less difference than the distinction between Roman and outsider—or between quick and dead. Even so, Lucilius couldn't let go of his ingrained superiority.
Maybe it's all he has. That voice in Quintus's ears again. Was it the woman—Draupadi—he had dreamed of, or had he actually gained some wisdom in that nightmare vision of Hades?
"No? Where did you grow... well, not to make a short story longer than need be, Trachonitis is serpent and basilisk country. They say it is so bare that if the shadow of a bird falls across it, the bird falls dead.
"We owe you, though, Quintus. If it weren't for those very convincing fits you threw, we'd have stopped in Merv. Forever."
"With... the others?" He was glad for the darkness, which hid his blush at how hard it was to ask. "What happened to..."
Rufus hung his head. "Slaves, gods help them. Leastways, they've got skills, maybe they can buy themselves out...."
"If these barbarians follow decent laws," Lucilius cut in.
"They've got the Eagles too. All but the one you almost got brained with. That's the personal property of this Ssu-ma Chao, who wants to take it back with him to Ch'in to his Emperor. And us with it. He's decided we're auspicious for him, or some such thing. Strange fellows, these yellow barbarians, thinking defeated Romans a good omen. But i
t's not for me to turn down a chance of not putting my head under the yoke.
"So we're making the trip Alexander didn't live long enough to complete. From Nisibis past Merv, upcountry to Marakanda and into the hills. Then down into the real desert that would have fried any Macedonian born. Dis take me, how do they pronounce these names?"
"Takla Makan Shamo," Arsaces said. For once the mockery, an unwelcome twin to Lucilius's scorn, was missing from his voice. That shook Quintus worse than a warning.
"It means, 'If you go in here, you don't come out.' I have seen this desert. When I was young, I ventured across some small corner of it as a caravan guard. It is terrible, littered with the bleached bones of man, beast, and town. Truly, they also call it the Realm of Fire, but this fire is far from sacred."