Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

“To make babies?”

  “And are you not expected to make babies in Ashtar’s rites?”

  Her smile hardened. “You were conceived in the rites. As was Bellasteros.”

  “His mother died for it at the hand of her husband, Gerlac of Sardis.” The flesh crawled on the back of his neck. He opened his arms—you have made your point, come now, I need you … Dana, shuddering with the same chill, abandoned reluctance and came. Gratifying, how their bodies warmed against each other.

  “And the rumors of Bellasteros’s birth haunted him always,” she said. “He was king of Sardis. You are king of Sardis. You must be perceived as Gerlac’s blood, burden as that name is.”

  Andrion set his hand on her face and kissed her. Her firm, narrow lips opened; her mouth was as tart and fresh as an orange. Her touch sanctified, as the touch of the goddess purified… . “You mean we are not to contest our separate worlds this night?” he whispered against her smooth cheek.

  “On certain nights I am permitted to indulge my own foolishness,” she replied, so quietly he hardly heard her. But she was smiling again, teasing him and herself both.

  Yes, she dared to love him. He grinned, and his body made it evident that he was not really tired. Confused, wrenched with pain, but not tired. He spread her shirt. He slipped his hands into the waistband of her trousers and pulled them away, his palms stroking her muscled thighs.

  She laid him down on the bed and loosened his belt. For just a moment her eyes focused beyond him, beyond the shadows that sifted the dim light in the room. Strange images moved in her viridescent gaze. He could never seize them, never free her from their possession; he would simply have to love her for bearing their burden.

  “The bull and the lotus, the shield and the sword. Chariots—Sardis has chariots.” She blinked rapidly. “I can see no more, Andrion.”

  “I do not ask you to see anything.”

  “I must. The goddess sets kings and queens upon the game board, until, tiring of them, she devours them all… .”

  He hushed her with a caress. She bent over him. Her hair fell about him, a shining curtain closing out the darkness. He set his lips against the warmth of her breast, and her breath fanned him with a long shivering sigh of delight. He drank, and for a few blessed hours his thirst was quenched.

  Chapter Three

  The sunlight was diffused as if through gauze into a featureless glare. The moon was a pale crescent hovering uncertainly above the eastern horizon. The sea was dark indigo blue, reflecting no light. Viscous waves probed ceaselessly at the beach, their murmur damped by the humid air. Far offshore a solitary ship stood in toward the land. On its sail was the weathered outline of a winged bull.

  Sumitra glanced up at the paradoxically unclouded but shadowed sky. The noon air was warm and still, but the sea emanated a chill breath. She removed the veil which she wore in deference to Sardian custom. “The moon is waxing again,” she said to Valeria beside her. “Andrion is returning.”

  Valeria waddled across the sand in the peculiar gait of the pregnant. She was not so preoccupied with her footing, though, that she could not glance quizzically at Sumitra. Sumi’s voice contained an unusual timbre, not an edge but an extra depth. Her dark eyes gazed across the sea with serene patience, as if she were a goddess watching the slow rising of land from water, the slow inundation by water of land. Her full lips smiled secretively.

  Valeria, too, removed her veil, and the women giggled conspiratorially. The children gamboled about their skirts, the older the child the farther its venture from protection. Ethan went so far as to climb a clump of soggy driftwood, great cedar logs from the coast near Farsahn. Shouting insults, “Rats, come out and fight!” he began to pelt his brothers with bits of bark. Shrieking with glee, Zefric and Kem joined forces and attacked, flinging curls of sea wrack like limp javelins. Ethan leaped to the far side of the logs and sprinted into the mouth of a sandy ravine. The other boys followed. The little girl glanced up at her mother, toward her siblings, and daringly toddled after.

  “Centurion,” Valeria pleaded, laughing, to the tall soldier who followed close behind. “Miklos, if you please …”

  Miklos grinned. “I have children of my own, my lady.” He offered a salute, called an order to the four other men of the escort and hurried after the children. Their happy shouts and the plop-plop of their steps echoed along the beach and then faded. White sea birds spun upward, squawking indignantly, before swooping low over the water. A falcon circled far above, hardly deigning to notice the earth.

  “We shall have little boots full of sand,” Valeria said, “and pouches filled with rocks and shells and strange scuttling creatures.”

  Sumitra’s eye surrendered the image of the children. She grew introspective, listening to some silent message only she could hear.

  The soldiers broke formation and began scuffling playfully around the pony cart that had carried the party here. A serving woman stood aloof, staring out to sea. The ship was closer in; a tiny round-bottomed merchant tub, not a naval galley with banks of oars like a huge swimming centipede. The port of Sardis, Pirestia, was a translucent silk-screened print some distance down the coast, more illusion than real. The great city itself was out of sight beyond the coastal dunes and marshes of the delta of the Sar.

  “Smell that sea air!” exclaimed Valeria. “As glorious as all the exotic perfumes of the Mohan.”

  “Salt and rotten fish,” Sumitra returned. A brief tremor of doubt crossed face. By way of apology she added, “You grew up in Sardis, by this sea. I did not.”

  Valeria appraised that tremor. “Sumitra,” she crooned, “would you by any chance have something to tell me?”

  Sumitra smiled and then blushed.

  “Sumitra!”

  “Yes, yes. But you must tell no one, because I really should tell Andrion first …”

  Valeria laughed, chimes trilling into the turgid air and stirring it. “Say no more. I understand, and I thank you for your confidence. Do you know for sure?”

  “My last flow was almost three moons ago,” Sumitra whispered. “And my stomach has been uneasy since we left Iksandarun. Andrion, it seems, did not have to go to Sabazel to pray for children. Yet even had I been sure, I would not have stopped him.” She faltered, her serenity ruffled.

  “Sabazel,” sighed Valeria. “Bellasteros, my father Patros, Tembujin, and Andrion himself are all beguiled by the daughters of Ashtar. My mother, Harus rest her soul, dashed herself to death upon her resentment.”

  “I have met the Sabazians.” Sumitra raised her chin, serenity restored. “I choose to believe that the borders of Sabazel encompass us all, and Ashtar offers her grace to those who would accept it.”

  Valeria responded with a grateful smile, then beckoned to the escorting soldiers; they regained their gravity and with many bows delivered two sturdy stools and the zamtak. They sat down some distance away and began a dice game. The serving woman leaned eagerly toward the sea, balancing on her toes.

  Sumitra sat and stroked the strings of her instrument. They keened high and shrill. With a slight frown she stroked them again. Still they did not ring quite true. A sudden gusty breeze jangled along the shore.

  “I wonder where that ship comes from,” Valeria mused, perching tentatively on a stool. “A winged bull, is it not?”

  “Rhodope, perhaps,” said Sumitra. She tightened a peg on the neck of the zamtak. The string hummed to her touch. A hum of latent power, not unlike the murmur of Solifrax or of the star-shield of Sabazel.

  “That ship captain comes close to the land. The main channel is farther out, by the beacon. Look, Rue seems concerned.”

  Sumitra followed Valeria’s gaze. The ship was actually riding the breakers now. Her fingers plucked the strings of the zamtak and it spilled music into the muted sunlight, the slow susurration of waves against the shore, and the harsh call of a sea bird.

  The ship’s hull hissed into shallow water. The sail flapped thunderously and sailors leaped to furl it. A r
amp shot from the near gunwale. Seven dark, robed men poured down it, splashed through the water, ran crunching up the wet sand. The serving woman sped as if the hounds of hell were behind her and clambered onto the ship.

  The escorting soldiers leaped up. Sumitra’s hand stilled the strings with discordant clang. Valeria gasped.

  Long knives glinted with a sickly phosphorescence that was a reflection of neither sun nor moon. The soldiers were quickly overwhelmed. Valeria tried to rise, could not, was swept to the ground and kicked aside like a piece of jetsam.

  Sumitra spun first one way, then the other. Her gown wrapped her ankles and she fell. Four men seized her. Her right hand encountered the stool, grasped it, and struck out with it, shattering one man’s bearded jaw. The other men tore the makeshift weapon from her and bore her away. She clutched the zamtak and shrieked in terror and rage.

  A man in a lustrous purple cloak and cowl stood at the bow of the ship. His eyes, a clear, almost colorless gray, flickered with distant lightning as Sumitra’s struggling form was heaved like a sack of meal over the gunwale and hustled below with a protesting clash of strings. Then the light was gone and his gray eyes were as expressionless as mirrors. He shouted peremptorily; the brigands left the bodies of the soldiers sprawled on the mottled sand and rushed back to the ship.

  The woman Rue knelt at the commander’s feet, head bowed, dark hair tumbling loose from its bindings. Her cloak billowed open; an armband embossed with a winged bull glinted. She swept away her veil to reveal the pointed chin and the large, liquid eyes of a fox. “My lord,” she cried, “my lord, have I done well?”

  He shrugged, accustomed to being obeyed, and turned toward the beach. She stared at his back, elation dashed.

  The ramp was pulled in. Waves lifted the ship. The sail rolled down and bellied booming in the wind. The wings of the bull flapped.

  Valeria struggled to pick herself up. Her sand-stained face turned, a pale oval, toward the receding ship. The gaze of those gray eyes struck her like driving sleet, and she doubled over in pain.

  The falcon coasted impassively past the feeble moon.

  *

  The escort of imperial warriors and Sabazians, each ranked in its own company, plodded under a still, hazy sky that tarnished the golds and russets of autumn. An ox cart carrying Sarasvati and Dana’s baby churned silently through dust like the ashes of a burned city. A ghostly moon waned during the night, held aloft by a thin, feeble wind.

  Dana rode beside Andrion, her Khazyari bow set firmly on her shoulder, her eyes cold green shards in the shadow of her helmet, her mouth set in bitter resentment. Andrion knew his own face was lined with similarly resentful and impatient puzzlement. He had found little solace in Sabazel. Its flesh, too, crawled with sorcery, and its winds summoned him to … what? Even Ventalidar’s harness jangled discordantly.

  At Farsahn they were joined by the proconsul and an additional escort. Dour Nikander was the perfect companion, asking politely after affairs in Sabazel and Iksandarun, shaking his head in concern, saying nothing more.

  To Andrion the company seemed a tiny fly struggling through amber, through bits of debris that were villages, farms, military camps. Slowly, painfully, the great sea plain opened before them and the southern mountains slipped away over the horizon.

  Peasants winnowed sparse baskets of grain beside the road; the chaff spun wearily into the air and became dust devils clotting land and sky alike. The workers watched their emperor pass with hurt, bewildered eyes. Here, too, was malaise. But I am well, Andrion insisted to himself as he shouted encouraging words to his people. When the king is well, so are you. But then, that is an old superstition, and if followed far enough leads to the kinds of rite pictured on the ancient cavern in Cylandra’s flank, the summer king slain for the winter king … I am well. Am I not? He touched Solifrax and it rang hollowly.

  At last, at last, the moon thickened in the pallid afternoon sky; Sardis and action were only a day away.

  Another dust devil appeared, far down the road toward the east, glinting cold gray in the lowering sun. Andrion squinted at it; he could not tense any further than he already had. It was no dust devil at all, but a company of horsemen dressed in the black-and-gold livery of Sardis. Even as he told himself he had nothing to dread, his spine chilled.

  He turned away from the guard post where soldiers and Sabazians set up camp and stepped into the center of the road. A gust of wind snapped his black cloak behind him; his helmetless head glinted auburn and gold.

  The horsemen were a clump of darkness with many moving legs. They were separate men. They saw their emperor standing alone, waiting for them, and with many whinnyings and plungings they pulled up. The lead rider clambered down, threw himself into the dust at Andrion’s feet, offered a rolled parchment.

  Andrion ripped open the scroll, sending Patros’s seals flying. Words marched firm and black across the page: The lady Sumitra is gone.

  The world blurred. Trees, fields, buildings faded to indistinct blots; the many watching faces were ghostly wavering shadows. Gone? Andrion repeated. Patros would say Sumitra was dead, if that were the case. But gone?

  Andrion crushed the parchment in his fist and cast it to the ground. The messengers quailed. Automatically he made a reassuring gesture, and his voice thanked them and ordered food and water for their refreshment.

  But it was he who thirsted. One face steadied before his eyes. “Dana,” he said, “Sumitra is gone.”

  A muffled gasp hummed through the group. Or perhaps it was the wind that gasped, a sudden icy blast slapping his cheeks, waking him. He saw Dana’s pinched face groping for balance, needing to ride with him, needing to stay with the wailing bundle Sarasvati held protectively, needing not to care about him and his wife at all—the baby must be fed, duty must be fed, love must be consumed by the practicalities of ruling—ah, Andrion, as rulers we cannot wonder what this means for us, and yet I wonder indeed… .

  He saw Nikander holding Ventalidar’s reins; behind him two soldiers were already mounted. He opened his mouth and found nothing in it, no moisture, no words. He closed his mouth, stifled his soul, took the reins and mounted. He turned Ventalidar east, towards Sardis, and with an oath urged the stallion into headlong flight.

  The three horses’ hoofbeats were the pounding of his own heart. Sumitra, my shield—who, where, how? Why, by all the gods, why?

  The day failed and died behind the riders, bloody sunset streaming over the arch of the sky until it lapped at the corner of Andrion’s eyes. Then the red glow was gone. A night seemingly shadowed by smoke and ash consumed the world. Still the hoofbeats rang upon the Royal Road, upon the bridges and aqueducts that Bellasteros had built to make the world smaller but no less terrible.

  His thoughts gibbered like bats streaming from a ruin at dusk. Sumitra, gone? Accident or enemy action? Who would dare? What could they gain? Not Tembujin, by Harus’s beak, I have learned to trust Tembujin; but if not Tembujin, who? The father of some nubile noblewoman? For I have no heir, no heir, no heir—the diadem lies uneasy on my brow—the Empire is threatened, my rule is threatened. Gods, for an enemy I could face and fight!

  Ventalidar ran ahead of the other horses. Andrion rode alone through the gloom, sweating in a fever of recrimination—if I had not gone to Sabazel, if I had not lingered with Dana and Sarasvati upon the road, if I had stayed to face my troubles in Iksandarun, if, if …

  A glow lightened the horizon; he was surely delirious. Camp fires, watch fires of the army of Sardis before Iksandarun, the gold of the shield and the sword raised as one. The sun was rising. Ventalidar stumbled as the road wound down into the wide valley of the Sar and then, heartened, pounded on. Irrigation canals reflected strands of torpid light. The city of Sardis was a black silhouette against gray dawn, the great ziggurat of Harus stairsteps into heaven. Andrion looked back, once. His escort had fallen completely out of sight. A waxing quarter moon watched him, a faint stain of silver on a murky sky. Damn the sardonic humor of th
e gods, will they not leave me in peace? Or is it my own parched humor that so cracks the surface of this life?

  The gatekeepers hailed the solitary rider. Then, seeing the great black horse and the black cloak, seeing the pale, even features and glimmering diadem of the emperor, they fell back with cries of welcome. Farmers carrying their produce, fishermen hauling their catch to market, leaped to the sides of the streets as Ventalidar swept by. And the wind blasted again, drawn by horse and rider, a cold, clean, uncompromising wind driving away the hazy reek and revealing an achingly pure sapphire sky, Ashtar’s eyes opened at last.

  Ventalidar stood wheezing in the forecourt of the palace. “Old friend,” Andrion said to him, stroking his lathered skin, “I am sorry. But no mortal horse could have run so far, so fast; surely you are indeed god-given.” He left Ventalidar in the care of a groom and staggered up the granite steps, his limbs cold and stiff, into glaring bronze light. This is the house where my father grew up and walked in defiance of Gerlac; Bellasteros, hero of Sardis, had no Sardian blood.

  Patros stood at the head of the staircase. His firm hands caught Andrion’s upward stumble. His face swam before Andrion’s eyes; snow-white hair and precise features stripped by joy and sorrow of any self-consciousness, of any weakness. “In the name of the god!” Andrion croaked. He tried to swallow and coughed up dust.

  “Come, my lord.” Patros laid a strong arm tight around his emperor’s shoulders and led him into a bedchamber. The room was fresh with the scent of lavender, stirred affectionately by the cool morning breeze. A woman lay upon the bed, her dark hair spread across the pillow, cornflower-blue eyes still soft with illusory dream. A man sat beside her, his black tail of hair coiling like a serpent over his shoulder.

  “He is here,” Patros said.

  Tembujin rose slowly, as if trying to discern whether this ashen-faced apparition was really Andrion.

  Andrion’s stark pallor extended even to the stubble shading his cheeks. His eyes were coals burning holes in the parchment of his face. He swayed, caught himself, allowed Patros to seat him in a chair and press a goblet of wine to his lips. The wine was almost as sour as that he had drunk in Sabazel, but it cleared his daze. “Where is Sumitra?” he asked.