by Andre Norton
"That too is like the man who won me." She laughed sadly. "Even at Virata's court, he was intent on the role he played, blind to all else. Perhaps I too have been blind, thinking only of what I see, what I know, not you as you are in this life...."
"I have it!" Ganesha shouted. For an instant his voice rang with the authority of a battle trumpet, summoning Quintus to the head of the column. Light gathered, shimmered over the old man, who moved with a sureness unlike the careful steps of any man his apparent age over the dead land.
Quintus headed toward the old sage. He stumbled, cursed what he tripped over, then recovered. A length of horn and wood conjoined jutted from the sand, and he snatched it up, using it to break his fall, then as a staff to speed him to Ganesha's side.
The old man held a body in his arms, though already it had withered to flaps of drying skin over bone even as he watched it with somber eyes. This one wore the dress of a guard. Quintus forced himself to look at the face. Already, the lips had peeled back from the jaws, revealing not the expressionless faces of the dead man's comrades, but something different. Younger than the others, this face still possessed a measure of individuality. And it wore a look of hate and terror, as if this guard had seen his death coming and fought frenziedly with what pitiful means he had. Last of all, Quintus saw what else Ganesha bore—a bow, broken as if the guard would yield it in no other way to enemy hands.
Ganesha laid the dead guard down in line with the others. The man's hands thudded to the ground, wasted fingers still clamped shut. "Look you," ordered the sage. He had pried one of the bony fists open to display a dark scrap of fabric.
"What is that?" Quintus asked, leaning forward to examine it even as Ganesha shouted rapid-fire Ch'in orders to Ssu-ma Chao.
"Do not touch it! This poor one did, and thus he died...." Carefully, Ganesha bent forward and breathed on the scrap.
"From a Black Naacal's robe?"
"I feel such a one up ahead," said Ganesha. "Waiting for us in the direction that we must go."
We could circle about, Quintus thought of saying. Arsaces knew the stars; he could guide them.
"But it is in that direction," Ssu-ma Chao stated, "that we must go." Some measure of sanity had returned to him, and he looked just as dangerous as he truly was.
"And so we do, Excellency," said the sage, bowing in Ch'in fashion. "But we do not take that road unwarned. I say to you: Beware. Trust no one, nothing, even though it wears the semblance of your eldest brother, until we have proved the truth of it."
"Why?" demanded Ssu-ma Chao.
"They seek weapons, perhaps that very Pasupata that Arjuna sought in the last age. They must not have found it for, if they had, we should be as dead as their victims here—or praying to all our gods or to those of our enemies for release. But they have found something almost as deadly to us—and deadlier still to these poor fools."
"And what is that?"
"Life," Ganesha said simply. "Life and health. Possibly spirit. These men are all drained, not just of life, but of what makes them men and not beast. I would pray peace to their souls and better aspects to their lives the next time the wheel turns, but there will be no next time for them. These men's souls have been consumed."
16
UNDER THE COATING of sweat and grime, even the swarthiest of the men still alive on that plain and within hearing went pale. Quintus saw Rufus battle a shudder and win— just. To have nothing left. No body to be entombed, no soul to travel across the river and face the Judgment that he had approached in dreams, yet evaded as it was not yet his time. Whatever his time was.
He had time enough to fare across a waste seemingly the size of Gaea herself. His time, indeed. When would it be his time not to suffer, not to endure, but to act—either as a Roman or this ghostly hero that Ganesha and Draupadi insisted on believing him to be?
Quintus would have been content only to sit and rest in clean air, away from these strange corpses. He would have been very well content to wrest the Eagles from the temples of those who had slain his comrades—the sign of his own Legion as well as those that had been sent to Merv. But it seemed that none of that was to be.
Why not make your life easier? came a voice. You want your gods, your freedom? They can be yours, along with sweet water flowing free over the rock in the shade at noon.... Only...
The bronze talisman over his heart twinged unnecessarily. Quintus tightened his hand on the stick he held, seeking relief from his anger.
That is excellent. Feel the anger. All that delectable rage. Let it out. Let it blaze like a fire at midnight when naphtha is tossed into it. Let it. We will reward you for your service.
The tribune's fingers tightened on the wood. In an instant, the frail staff would snap, he feared, and his control along with it. Let it snap like a stick, a broken bone, the spine of his enemy who stymied him and held in his keeping the terms and key to freedom that Quintus desired. And why should you—of all men—be balked of your desires?
Quintus's glance fell to what he held. It was not a staff at all, but a bow, the deadly recurved Parthian weapon that had destroyed his old, ordered life at Carrhae, complete even to its string.
"There are arrows in our supply for such bows," said a man from Ch'in. "Unless you expect—" his hand gestured about the endless arena of grit and salt flat as if he expected arrows and quiver to materialize.
With a Legion or two of good lads, Quintus mused. The gods forbid, though, that other Romans be lured out into the desert in which he was now certain he would spend the rest of an exceedingly short and unpleasant life. He nodded thanks to the soldier.
"So," Ganesha said. "You have found your bow. Will you not be convinced even now of who you are? I am an old man and never was a warrior; but it seems to me that when a warrior finds his weapon, then is battle near."
Nearer than you think, old man.
The old one's eyes focussed upon Quintus, compelling belief and more than belief. He had seen what he had seen. He had fought against belief, just as he fought now against what he feared, demanded a surrender of himself more total than even his obedience to the Legion or the way that all of the Romans had surrendered at Carrhae.
Silence him. Do it.
Be quiet, he told the voice inside his skull.
He stared at the sunlight lancing sharply downward, like the swoop of some great raptor flying West. Let it be a good omen, he prayed.
Whatever Ganesha was, he had never lied, never betrayed Quintus.
Would Lucilius laugh? Before a battle, Quintus told himself firmly, a wise leader listened to augury and to the thoughts of his own heart.
"I have heard," he began slowly, "I have heard a voice speaking to me. Promising me..."
Ganesha held up his hand as if warning him not to reveal his secret before the entire company. The wise, weary old eyes transfixed his and grew even brighter.
"Be assured. Warrior—" the title sounded more proud than that of "prince," "—that I shall watch and guard, and that Draupadi shall weave us such protection that only our worst enemies can pierce the veil of blindness and illusion she will cast upon the land."
Of course, it was their worst enemies that they had to face: Nevertheless, this was better than nothing.
Ssu-ma Chao beckoned. "This one..." Then he dropped the formality. "I heard what you did not say to the old alchemist. You hear them too? The voices, promising you your most hidden desires, if only..."
Tell him you hear this. He will say you are mad and give your body to the desert so you do not poison the minds of the others. And then, we will have you, and we will eat your soul as we drank the souls from those fools scattered about you. Tell him, and learn the price for going against our will.
Quintus touched the talisman he carried, as if soothing it and his flesh at once. "Is it not said that there are dreams in the wind and the storm? These are not demands to obey that I hear, but the threats of evil men, thieves who steal life and the bandits of the waste who steal treasure."
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br /> For the first time, he saw Ssu-ma Chao not just as a captor turned ally, but a man as harried and afraid as he.
"And it does not drive you mad? You can sleep?" Ssu-ma Chao was too fine-drawn, had been too finedrawn for too long. His face bore the expression Quintus had seen when, after heaving up his guts after his first battle, he had staggered off to wash and stared at his own face mirrored in the blessedly clean water.
Water flowing free over the rocks...
"Roman," said the Ch'in officer, for a wonder, getting the name right, "are you and yours for hire?"
"We are not gladiators or guards," said Quintus, even as Lucilius's eyes brightened. Ask how much. "And we do not desire gold. You hold in your possession the treasures we would seek—the Eagle and our freedom to leave this place."
"It is my death and my family's if you are not brought to Su-le. But in the garrison at Kashgar I shall myself pray that you be given back your honor and this war god of your worship which has arrived there by now. Would that suffice you?"
"Suffice for what?"
"To have your swords beside ours on the trail to Kashgar."
"You have had our word already," Quintus said. (Behind him, Lucilius hissed in anger.) "Or do you think we march now into greater danger than any we have faced?"
Ganesha had held his gaze, compelling honesty, compelling Quintus to admit that he had been under some sort of attack. Now he borrowed the tactic to use upon the Ch'in commander. Let him respond with the truth, he wished. Please let him.
"Aye, we have endured storms before. But in the deep desert, surrounded by enemies, we may endure tempests that make what we have faced seem like grains of sand in a light breeze. Get us to the garrison at Kashgar, and I swear to you that you shall have my voice for your Eagle and your friends, even if I must cross the desert on my knees myself and make petition to the Son of Heaven."
The bronze dancer twinged in its hiding place. Answer him. The man suffers.
"I am content," said Quintus. He shouted for the men to prepare to march. There would be a moon tonight: no reason to waste the light in sleep when danger was so near. "Are you?" he asked in an undertone.
Ssu-ma Chao bowed agreement. Then he gestured" at his men. "If I fall," said the Ch'in officer, "take care of them."
17
DOWN TO SU-LE and the garrison at Kashgar they headed, finally—as Arsaces said—into the true desert. It was bleaker than even the wastes Quintus had seen, and likely to be bleaker yet. "Enter here and never emerge." That was the desert's name, they said all along the caravan routes and made signs against ill omen. How Arsaces chuckled when he saw the Romans, from half the world away, making similar signs.
"Enter here and never emerge," was not ill omen at all, Quintus thought, but stark truth. From where he stood, the desert, ringed by mountains whose snowy peaks were but inadequate substitutes for clouds, stretched out like an amphitheatre in which all men entering it were gladiators. It was a wasteland of gravel and dunes, broken by the glint of salt flats, whitened occasionally by bones. Pray all the gods they did not add their own.
A few dead tamarisks jutted from the grit. There were almost no living plants and no living creatures that they could see by daylight. As for the unliving—Draupadi and Ganesha stood watch with the Legionaries; for still the most highly strung of the men screamed in the night, declaring that they felt eyes upon them.
From time to time, Quintus saw Ganesha look about him. Not as if he marveled at him or stood aghast, as any man might, but as if he remembered it in other days.
"A terrible stage," he said finally, "on which the fate of the world and all our lives, past and future, must play themselves out." Those were not words that Quintus, particularly, wanted to hear.
At least, there were no raiders. Wise in the tales of Modun and others of the Hsiung-nu and Yueh-chih from the Ch'in stories (told, Quintus was certain, more to affright than to inform), the Romans were somewhat relieved until their days' marches and their nights' marches made them realize that the waste held no other life at all. After that, they would have welcomed bandits to drive off as evidence that the curse upon this place was not the one that took the caravan by Stone Tower.
Draupadi, mistress of illusions though she was, had no such hopes. She grew pale despite that amber skin of hers. At her request, ultimately, they tied her to the camel with the gentlest gait. She has depopulated your world, you know, whispered the sinister voice that was Quintus's constant tempter. What if she dies? Clearly, she has already run mad—a kindness, perhaps, to kill her swiftly. The people you see now—cherish them, boy, for theirs will be the last faces you see in the world.
Unless, of course, he succumbed. He took a twisted satisfaction in the fact that the voice had given up trying to offer him rewards.
He tried not to listen and failed. Then he tried not to debate and did little better. He would run mad if he allowed himself to listen freely. Or, if he did not run mad, he could wither from inside, a blight of the spirit destroying him just as surely as the Black Naacals had sucked the life from those merchants whose husks he had watched shrivel under his touch. Then they would all die, yes, and their bones would bleach here in the waste, if the demon storms did not splinter them first. And the last man left alive would curse the fate that allowed him to watch his brothers escape.
His brothers.
Something in Quintus stopped at that thought. Used to the discipline of the Legions, though, he did not break stride—for they were walking now, to spare their exhausted beasts. They were all his brothers—the surviving men of Rome, the Ch'in soldiers, who, if not as far from their homes as his Legionaries, shared their exile and fear. Even Lucilius: for they sprang from the same earth.
But Ganesha, for all his wisdom, and Draupadi? How could he claim "brotherhood" with beings that far removed from him and his nation? As he glanced at Ganesha, did the ancient scholar momentarily shift form so that an elephant's head topped his bowed shoulders? A trick of the light, or the heat, or Quintus's own weary mind, no doubt: his eyes dazzled from the sunlight on the salt flats.
And Draupadi—for an instant, Quintus thought of the legend of Tithonus. Beloved of the dawn, Aurora had promised him whatever gift he might ask of her. He had chosen immortality, and it was granted. But granted without a gift of eternal youth. And after a time, Tithonus gummed his bread and his voice rose shrilly into the air; ultimately, when he was transformed from grandsire to grasshopper, his voice rose higher yet, like a string too tightly plucked. She is mistress of illusions. But if illusions fail, you might find yourself kissing a skull.
Birth and rebirth, she had told him. He could either believe that was true—or else the illusions had been spun for so long that they had become real.
So down to Su-le they plodded. Rome's pace. Rome's race. The beasts were rested—at least as rested as they were ever going to be—but they were Romans and they preferred to march.
"As stubborn as one of Marius's mules!" Lucilius called, riding just as Quintus might have expected. He might sound lighthearted, but his lips were as chapped, his body as worn as the rest, and the jeer was softened by the use of the old name. They were all Marius's mules, soldiers of a Rome they would not see again, following a captive Eagle.
One foot before the other, the nails of his sadly worn boots rasping in the grit. March. Sunlight flashed and glared off the grit and gypsum that formed the desert here: gravel and salt flat. Ganesha had seen all this when it was seabed. Seabed. Hard to believe this had all been an inland sea like the Middle Sea itself. So much water, Quintus thought. His mind reeled at the thought of such luxury; already, he found it hard enough to imagine the hidden pool by which he had found Draupadi so long ago, seated in the luxury of silken cushions, sandalwood, and amber lights. There was, she had told him, another such place, deep in the desert's heart. If such a desert could be said to have a heart. If they could survive, heart and sinew and soul, long enough to reach it... and if their allies did not kill them first.
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One foot before the other, steady, firmly planted. March, Roman. He heard his grandsire's voice now, strong as it had been in Quintus's boyhood, urging him forward. At first he had protested, but had been shamed into carrying on. Later, he had learned to persevere, even if the old man's demands outstripped his body's strength. Now, as he marched, he remembered the tough, fierce old face, and he blessed it.
Now the bronze talisman he bore near his heart neither heated nor jabbed his flesh. It was as if, somehow, it had achieved a truce with the genius loci of this place.
That thought staggered him for a moment. Keep marching. For a heartbeat longer, the marching stride, men coughing at the parched dust cast up by feet and hooves, and the cloudless sky stretching from overhead to an unreachable horizon made him reel. They were not a company, he thought of his men and his allies, but a coffle of slaves. He reeled again and flung out a hand.
"Careful, sir," came a mutter. There was a grin and a good-natured attempt to steady him on his feet. His hand touched the hide of a pack animal. It was dry, scaly: The sun had leached all the sweat from it as soon as it formed.