by Andre Norton
"Never mind that," Quintus said, holding onto a ragged calm. After hearing that his son was dead, his grand-sire had thanked the messenger and called him "guest." Never mind that he was dying inside. "What happened?"
"They've got her staked out like a lamb for a lion! She pointed at him and chanted something. Sir, he wasn't expecting trouble. He trusted her! And when she chanted, he just marched up and saluted. 'Watch this,' says one of the Black Robes, and slits his throat in front of that runaway from the crows, that traitor...."
"Lucilius just stood there?"
"Right before the altar. They've let him keep his sword and gear—haven't issued him a black robe yet. But they don't let him near the Eagle, and they don't treat him with the kind of respect he likes."
Maybe Lucilius had never been much of a tribune, but for him to stand there while priests slit the throat of a Legionary—crucifixion was too good for him.
Having given his report, Rufus stood waiting, as he always had, for orders.
Old war dog, Quintus wanted to say. Tell me what to do. Escape into the desert? Hide, and attack from within the ruins over and over again? Choose to die? But not even the centurion's years of experience had prepared him for this day. And it was not Rufus's duty to order, but to obey. Still, by his own example, Quintus had the advice he sought. Do a Roman thing.
Quintus drew his sword. "I shall not sheathe it again, save in enemy flesh," he said between clenched teeth. Manetho shuddered.
"Steady, man!" Rufus clapped him on the shoulder. "The tribune says we're going in there to fight, so we're going in there to fight. You like living this way? You'd rather die on the altar or like that poor fool who got his throat slit? At least now you can die like a soldier."
There were women, children in the ruins. They would die, too; but they would die in any case, whether the Black Naacals took them or by the half-understood powers they hoped to unleash overwhelmed this oasis. Families had died, too, Quintus knew, in the rising of Spartacus. And Ganesha and Draupadi would die, too. Poor Draupadi, trapped at the end in the illusions she spun so well. Perhaps the drug would wear off, and her mind would be clear at the last to remember he loved her—if that were not the last cruelty of all.
Manetho straightened. "You're going to fight. Even if you have no hope. We have never had any hope. So we will fight at your sides. Perhaps your gods will look more kindly upon us than our own have done."
"Good man," Rufus said, his voice oddly gentle. "Tribune...?"
"Let's go," Quintus duly ordered.
He followed the centurion to a darkened room in which Legionaries crouched, armed and waiting. At the sight of their officer, the Romans lined up, ready to move.
Manetho gestured, and slaves seemed to pour from every crack, every comer of the ruined walls. Moonlight spun a frail light through a broken wall, then faded as clouds scudded across the disk. When the wind blew them past, the moon was darker, as if moving into eclipse. The slaves flinched from the bloody light. It would be good to see the sun again. Quintus did not expect to.
Manetho guided them deeper within the Temple complex, where the great walls rose about them like the broken teeth of a slain Titan, dead in battle. The slaves he led seemed young and thin to Quintus, too young for real battle.
"Pass the word," he told Rufus. "Each of the men is to take one of our friends in charge. Under his shield."
Don't let them die alone in the dark with no decent example to follow, he was going to say, but his throat tightened.
Empty-handed, a man who had served long ago as standard-bearer came to his side. A pity they did not have the Eagle. At the worst, they could have used it to blast this entire place. Now, the best they could hope for was to destroy it too.
There was no one here to see these last of Crassus's Legionaries victorious or once again disgraced—no one except the gods and, maybe, the manes of those who had cared for them. And near them stood their allies, the men of Ch'in, led by Ssu-ma Chao. He nodded at Quintus as the Roman approached. He too preferred to stand by his own forces.
They had Draupadi, poor, drugged girl, set up as a guard. He knew she would give the alarm, and he was equally certain he could not kill her.
As the gong rang out once more, the slaves crept closer. A cloud slid once again across the cracked face of the moon, then vanished, almost as if it had been eaten. Under the tainted moonlight, Manetho's men blended into the Roman ranks. The battle lines shifted to receive them; for a moment, Quintus's heart was gladdened to see how much stronger they looked.
Again and again, gong and drums sounded, until the vibrations could be felt through their sadly worn-out boots. The Dark Ones must know that they were coming. Lucilius would have warned them. If the gods were kind, perhaps Quintus could at least kill him.
The air thickened. For a moment, his consciousness seemed to lurch sideways. By now, Quintus was used to that shock of displaced time. In just such a space apart, he had marched through a tunnel of wind and blowing sand to the oasis where they had found water and, seated by a fountain, Draupadi herself.
The way out from the arch would be closed now— even if they had Draupadi and Ganesha to break through the Black Naacals' magics. If they succeeded now, even if they won, their victory would be like that of Pyrrhus: another such, and they were lost.
The entrance to the shrine gaped wide before them. Once, great doors perhaps two or three spear lengths high must have swung to awe worshippers. Those doors were long gone: broken through and carried away, to be harvested by slaves for their metal over many years.
Despite the terror that seemed to settle from the air above, the battle lines moved steadily. Rome's pace. Rome's race. The standard-bearer stood as firmly as if he still held the Eagle. They would see it once more before they died. Quintus drew a bleak comfort from that.
The inner shrine was shielded by a vast dome. Through narrow lancets torn out of its massive walls, the moonlight poured in. Between each window rose a bronze stand, wrought in the semblance of a great serpent; smoking torches jutted from their fanged jaws. Patches of light and darkness appeared to float in the dome, so high that one sensed rather than saw them clearly. The gong rang out, and the entire space quivered. The darkness seeped out, encompassing the light.
A reddish glow pulsed from about the altar on which a body gleamed pallidly. With a shock of horror, Quintus recognized Ganesha, stripped of his robes.
Fury replaced horror as Quintus recognized Lucilius, standing by the Black Naacals, his harness gleaming as if he stood in attendance on a proconsul. Guarded as carefully as Lucilius himself and placed at some small distance from him gleamed the Eagle.
Again, the clamor of the gong, followed by the thunder of huge drums and the braying of horns carved out of bones the length of a man's thigh. Those patches of light and darkness floating overhead shifted, clouds of illusion to twist the senses. When they cleared away, Quintus saw Draupadi.
32
TIME AND PLACE shifted once more. Amber light, tiny flames flickering in brass bowls floating in a pool, the splash of falling waters turning their light into a dancing shimmer, and, gleaming in the light, Draupadi, reclining on cushions the way Quintus had first seen her.
They had given her a new gown of the clinging saffron cotton she favored. Her long hair had been combed out and gleamed on her shoulders, and her face appeared washed clean of the exhaustion and fear graven in it by month upon month of hardship. A ruby line marked the part of her hair and a bloody hand ornament dangled between dark eyebrows. Her eyes had been elongated by some cosmetic, and there was absolutely no recognition in them.
And no way to reach the enemy or the Eagle except to pass by her.
The fires' glow shifted, to create on the stone floor the illusion of a pool. It was all illusion, Quintus thought, cast by a woman lost within her own creation.
She had been wary, the first time they had met. And Ganesha had challenged him to a deadly game. How had he ever dared to play? Well, this was the
final round.
Quintus gestured, and some of the men fanned out. He himself must be the one to approach her, and they would have to guard him. He forced himself to stare beyond Draupadi: He saw no archers, but that did not mean that the Black Naacals did not have such posted. He would just have to risk it: There was no way to the inmost part of the shrine but to pass Draupadi.
"Guard me," he whispered and started forward.
Quintus's first impulse was to go around the water. What water? he reminded himself. They had drugged her, he knew. But drugs could wear off. He only hoped that, to protect Ganesha, she had not consented in some fastness of her being, to serve as guard: If so, she too had been lied to, for Ganesha lay bound as a sacrifice upon the altar.
Remember—illusion, he told himself. Gesturing to the force at his back to stay behind, he strode out, setting foot onto the shimmering area that looked so like water. A corner of his mind expected to sink, but his boots scraped on rock until he reached the carpets on which Draupadi reclined.
She held out a hand to him. Once before, she had held out a hand thus, seeking to delude him—but that had been not Draupadi, but a simulacrum. The real woman had intervened to protect him.
As he had before, Quintus grasped the outstretched hand. The skin pressed by his callused hand had been smoothed with oil, and it smelled faintly of sandalwood. The nails were shaped and gleaming, the fingers henna-tipped. And none of that was right. Draupadi's hand was shapely, true enough, but callused nearly as much as his own from helping with the pack animals, roughened by grit-filled water, burnt from when she cooked over a dung fire. And the ring that he had given her was gone.
But he took that decorative, deceitful hand and drew Draupadi gently to her feet, holding her close against him. "I've come to take you out of here," he said.
"There is only here," she said. She shook her head, and her dark hair poured loose over those slender shoulders. He remembered the feel of that flow of hair in his hands. "Look about you," she told him and smiled.
Lights. Water. As he watched, the light shifted, and now he stood on a spit of land he remembered well. So often in his childhood, he had used this place for a retreat. From it you could see the entire valley. Now Draupadi had found it to share with him forever.
Her eyes fixed on his, and, he could find no other word for it, drew him in. Her hands went to his chest, his shoulders, seeking to pull him down to rest on the carpets. The smell of her hair and flesh made him giddy. Sit and talk, he thought. What harm... talk? He doubted it. Never had they lain together. This might be their last chance. She would cast a veil of darkness over them, and together they would dream their last dream: that they were alone together.
But it would all be a lie. The Black Naacals would stand witness and be ready to expose them to what remained of Quintus's legions: a last betrayal as their officer abandoned them to lie in the arms of the woman who had bespelled them.
"It is time to go, Draupadi," he said gently. She shook her head.
"We will get Ganesha and we will go." The dark eyes flashed. Fear began to flicker in their depths, fear for her teacher? Then part of her was awake, part of her was fighting the influence of the drug.
"You have wandered far, Draupadi." He could make a song of her name to lure her back. "Too far. Now, come back!"
He put a snap in his voice, hoping to shock her awake.
"Why should we leave?" she asked, still drowsy. "Here is quiet. Here is peace. Here is all we shall ever need."
"Here is death," Quintus said. "Have you forgotten? You are in the keeping of the Black Naacals, and so is the Eagle. If they learn to use it, they will let the seas flow out to cover half the earth, then rule over the other half. Do you remember the time before, when that happened? Do you remember?"
She shook her head, fearful and reluctant.
"Draupadi, you remember. I know you do." He turned her face up forcibly to meet his eye to eye. "Do you want it to happen again?"
"No... oh no..." Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Then you must come with me."
She was faltering, weakening. He began to pull her toward the "water" that lay beyond her carpets.
The gong and horns rang out. Just let him get her back, and the Dark Ones could raise all the alarms they cared to. Almost, they drowned out a death shriek. Not Ganesha, please all the gods. Rufus, make them hold the line.
As if the man's death fueled the illusions that the Black Naacals wanted Draupadi to cast, the images became stronger, fragmenting into a confusion of light, sound, and color. It was getting hard to breathe, let alone walk. Draupadi gasped and almost collapsed. If he had to carry her, how could he fight? He thought of the dagger he wore. Had she lived long enough among Romans to prefer their way out to surviving in any way that she might?
"I am not your enemy, Draupadi," he muttered. "They are. Fight them."
He pulled her along, expecting any moment a blow, screams of rage, perhaps, or some attack of the spirit that might leave him flat. Instead, she burst into tears. "I can't!" she wept. "I am old. I am hideous. If I leave this place, I will die and crumble into dust."
He had seen crying women before. Tears must mean she was weakening. He tugged this one past the bounds set by her illusions and her fears. She was clinging to him, her face close to his.
"Is that what you want, Quintus, mea anima?" Sarcastically, she brought out the Latin endearment. "This, for all time? Kiss me!" Her face, so close to his, shifted, the smooth tanned flesh shrinking from the bone, wrinkling almost into peeling strips. Her dark eyes glistened furiously in all-but-naked eyesockets, and her lips drew back from yellowed teeth. Her breath smelled not of cardamom, but carrion.
"This flesh you want—already, it rots and dies. Is my death what you want? Is this?" She tugged at her garments with one hand. Her breasts were no more than leathery flaps,
"Cover yourself," he ordered. He tightened his hand upon her wrist, hating how the fragile bones felt as his fingers pressed against them. She screamed, high, anguished, and hopeless like a victim of sacrifice. If she were mad or permanently twisted—better dead. And better that she meet her fate with a clear mind.
What would his men say if they saw him dragging a skeleton across the floor and calling it by her name? They'd think he had run mad, and they would kill him.
Mistress of illusion, he told himself. And her illusions are twisted now.
Gods only grant she wake. He pushed her through a patch of light that showed her ravaged face far too clearly. For an instant, his feet "splashed" in illusion. Then he was walking on "dry land" once more, well away from where she had been set to ensnare him.
She collapsed, weeping without tears, a dry, tearing sound that subsided gradually into mourning without madness.
If he turned her around, would he see the lady or the hag?
"Tribune..."
Perhaps only Rufus's voice could have forced him to that duty, the most merciless of any in his service. He bent, dagger in hand, over her. She lay, her eyes tightly shut in rejection, on her side now. Though she was less warm and beautiful than the illusion she had cast, she was still lovely.
"Mea anima, mea vita," he whispered. "My soul, my life, awake. Look at me."
The eyes remained stubbornly shut.
Who knew what voices were speaking to her within the confusion of her mind? Quintus thought. He had suffered such barrages himself. He shook her roughly, but she turned her face away again. Forgive me, he thought, and slapped her face. Her eyes flew open in rage—and to the sight of her face, reflected in his eyes and the blade he showed her.
"See yourself," Quintus ordered. "You know the difference between truth and illusion. You are not a hag! And I will kill you myself before I let you be a traitor. You are Draupadi, and we need you. Now do you understand?"
"Alone," she stammered, "...the water rises, the earth shakes... all alone, and death all around..." Her face began to shimmer, to decompose again, and she looked longingly at the st
age set for her illusions.
Quintus bent his head and kissed her, hard and fast. "Never alone. Do you understand?"
She clung to him for one blessed instant, then pushed free.
"Ganesha," she said, fear mounting. "And Lucilius tricked me."
"We are ready to fight," he told her. "Your part is over. Go back where you will be safe."
"My part?" She was keeping pace with him as they hastened back to the waiting soldiers. "And there is no safety here."
They reached the soldiers. She took up a position on one side of him, and the standard-bearer stood on the other.
Rufus barked the order to advance.
33
"WAIT!" QUINTUS FLUNG up a hand. For the first time, he countermanded one of the senior centurion's orders. Despite their peril, the expression on Rufus's face made him grin.