Gard sprinted toward the palace, calling for Senmut and Deva to follow. Deva followed. Senmut limped in the opposite direction, muttering something about needing a machine from his cellar workshop, grumbling something about arrogance and mortality and hope.
Chapter Twenty-One
From the door Gard saw Rajinder’s body lying on the huge bed, staining the coverlet with blood and dirt. The opulent frescoes and furnishings seemed tawdry next to the pale integrity of his face. Ladhani crouched at his side, looking at him so hungrily that surely the force of her eyes alone would wake him. But he lay, battered hands folded upon scarred breastplate, unmoving.
The hush in the room was that of a temple. Impatiently Gard strode across the expanse of floor, Deva at his elbow, shedding officials like drops of water. “Go away!” he ordered the attendants clustering around the bed.
Every face snapped around to his. Water pots clanked and folded shrouds tumbled in cascades of silk to the floor.
Rajinder does not have the luxury of being a martyr! Gard wanted to shout. Instead he bellowed, “Get out of here!”
No one moved. Damn it— Oh. “Nazib-ji,” he said to the huddled figure of Jamshid. “Please ask everyone to leave.”
Ladhani glanced up. Reckless surmise lit her features even as a tear left a glistening trail down the sienna of her cheek. No fool she; Gard met her dark gaze as evenly as possible. “Go,” she ordered the attendants, the officials, the open-mouthed hangers-on. “Leave us.”
The crowd swirled and parted and with many quickly averted glances fled. They left Jamshid sitting on a stool at the foot of the bed, a bit of human flotsam, as shapeless as though every bone in his body were broken.
Srivastava stood behind Ladhani, glowering at Vijay opposite. The young man’s face was pared to a cynical minimum, his features barely human. “Raj gave his word,” Srivastava insisted.
“His word, not mine,” replied Vijay.
Jamshid crooned to himself under his breath, a funeral dirge perhaps, or some ancient and tragic ballad. The dragonet stood, unfurled its wings, and stretched its limbs with meticulous attention to each sinew. Its eyes glinted gray then blue then gray again.
Deva made purposeful splashings with pitchers and bowls. The door crashed open. Senmut bustled in, his hair standing on end, his arms full of the bits and pieces of some new contraption; he flung open the window, admitting an eerie wailing. In peered the bloodshot face of the quarter moon. Gard touched Rajinder’s brow. The prince was damply cool, not cold. He worked a tiny feather from the pillow and held it under Raj’s nose.
“He is dead, wizard-ji,” said Ladhani. Her voice darted suddenly upward on the honorific, making a statement an interrogative.
The feather fluttered. “No,” Gard said. “It is a sleep spell.”
“Sleep?” Ladhani repeated breathlessly, “Very good, wizard-ji—it saved him from a mortal blow.”
“I beg your pardon, Ladhani-ji,” said Deva. She pried Ladhani from her husband’s side and set her on the end of the bed, beside his feet. One of his boots had disappeared, probably left on the field, and his one naked foot seemed as achingly vulnerable as that of a child.
Senmut eased his burden of sticks and string out of the window and leaned precariously after them. Various rappings and twangings resonated in the room. Ladhani knotted her hands in her lap and with a tremor composed herself. “Please, wizard-ji, please, heal him.”
“I intend to try,” Gard told her. And he asked himself acidly, Why? A challenge? A demand of pride? Or of honor?
Vijay and Srivastava stared at each other over Rajinder’s supine body. The princess leaned forward into the gale of Vijay’s truculence, her face a distorted mirror image of his. “His word is that of Ferangipur!”
“Oh yes?” her brother responded. “I too am Ferangipur, and he never consulted me.”
“You would drag his honor in the dust?”
“It was his honor that dragged him in the dust!”
Deva unrolled the package of herbs. Senmut attached two long poles to an assortment of gears. Gard reached under Rajinder’s filth-encrusted side to untie the breastplate. From the foot of the bed came a low mutter, “—disrespectful to the dead. In my day funeral rites . . .”
“They won the battle,” Srivastava asserted. “We must surrender.”
“Why are you so eager to give away Ferangipur?” demanded Vijay. “Could it be that you want to marry that ape Jofar?”
“Marry him! He killed my brother!”
Yes, something at the back of Gard’s mind said matter-of-factly, Jofar is very good, I trained him myself . . .
Vijay snarled, “I am your brother, woman.”
The stiff lacings came loose. Gard managed to ease the armor and peel the clothing from Rajinder’s inert body. With narrowed eyes he inspected his wounds. Many, many rusty cuts, bruises and scrapes would heal on their own if given the chance. A deep slash that had turned the corner of his breastplate and furrowed his abdomen might be mortal, as might a stab wound at the base of his throat. He looks much worse than he is, Gard assured himself.
With a damp rag he began to clean the prince’s body. The dragonet stood rampant in Gard’s chest, wings tickling his spine from neck to waist. Deva measured dried bits of green and brown into a cup of water heated by a lamp. Jamshid swayed, muttering to himself, “—my son, my heir, long years of waiting, only to fail in the end.”
Oh no, he has not failed, Gard thought. If anyone fails, let it be me. I am accustomed to failing.
Srivastava hissed like a cobra, “Rajinder died to save Ferangipur. He gave his life so the city might live.”
“Live how?” Vijay snapped. “Groveling to the Apsuri dogs? Never. Better to die!”
Rajinder, thought Gard, meant to sacrifice himself for the city. What if Rajinder does not die? Is his sacrifice worthless, and the city lost after all? Is it my choice to make, between prince and city? His face twisted. If only Jamshid, Srivastava and Vijay would just shut up and go away!
The sweet smell of medicinal herbs flooded the room, easing the acrid odor of sweat and blood. With a tremendous creak, Senmut’s makeshift soul-catcher began to spin outside the window, its bars sweeping across the moon. The gears and poles inside the room turned. A soft buffing sound rose and fell from a rotating disc; a whiff of turpentine stole into Gard’s nostrils. He straightened, distracted, and saw a whirling silver scythe, now catching the frail light of the lamp, now glittering in the chill light of the moon.
Senmut hovered over the machine like a parent over a toddler. “Well,” he called to Gard over his shoulder. “Get on with it, boy. I am ready.”
Rajinder’s wounds began to ooze again. Gard placed both hands flat on the prince’s chest, oblivious to the crimson smearing about his fingertips. Inside his own chest the dragonet swelled like fermented barley into beer, sharp and clean in the back of his throat. He sensed the slow palpitation of Rajinder’s heart, its rhythm half the speed of his own.
The soul-catcher droned, practical wizardry or magical rationality—some of Senmut’s contraptions were complication for its own sake—overcompensation, probably . . .
Steps, a crinkle of paper, a slamming door. Vijay had stalked out, seizing a piece of paper from Raj’s writing table.
Senmut leaned over one of Gard’s shoulders, Deva the other. “Well?” said the woman’s voice. “Go on,” needled the man’s.
“Then stop distracting me!” Gard snapped. The dragonet strained against his bones. His thought circled. His eyes crossed. The shadowed walls of the room receded and then rushed back. The lamps swung in slow orbits like censers at a sacrifice—no, we have had enough sacrifice already. His hands tingled with the faint murmurings of life in Rajinder’s body. Do not surrender, Raj, do not surrender!
His eyes misted with effort. Rajinder’s pale face blurred and ran. The dragonet pirouetted, the pinions of its wings gouging his skin. There was the tingle in the fingertips, the tickle in the blood. There was t
he trailing end of the spell.
He shuddered. The end came loose. Straining, Gard pulled his own magic from Rajinder’s body and spooled it around the windlass of his thought. Spooling darkness . . . He blinked. A cool breeze slapped the heat of his cheeks, the dragonet stood stock still but poised in his gut.
Rajinder moaned and twitched. Ladhani crushed her hands to her mouth, her eyes spilling down her face. Srivastava reeled against the head of the bed, realizing what was happening. Jamshid leaned forward, his eyes hardening and hinting at lucidity.
Deva held a cup to Rajinder’s lips. “Henbane, poppy and mandragora,” she told Ladhani. “A botanical spell to ease pain.”
“Gard had to wake him from the sleep spell,” offered Senmut to Srivastava. “Competing magicks, you see. Some equations cancel each other out. Unlike the solitaries, which often can occur in symmetry . . .” Srivastava watched the expressions chasing each other across her brother’s face—incredulity, relief, and finally agony. Senmut’s voice trailed away.
Gard retreated toward the window. Inhale, exhale. No healing without pain. His daemon cocked a limpid eye upward. The moon evaded the whirling arms of the soul catcher and mounted the indigo sky like a queen mounting an auction block—no, that was some other time.
Indigo. Must not let Bogatyl tell Tarek about Gard’s trickery, that Raj was still alive—but Raj might not be alive in a few more moments—no, he had not wanted to die, he thought death was his only choice. Exhale. Inhale.
The soul-catcher spun, trailing bits of string, the wind keening in its limbs. The poles rasped against the windowsill and the gears creaked. A bit of fur swept round and round an amber-colored disk that smelled of terebinth and beeswax. The scythe glistened just above, like a crescent moon dancing through wisps of cloud. The dragonet’s claws oozed from its paws. They, too, were silver scythes.
Senmut’s voice said testily in Gard’s ear, “Hurry and make up your mind. The man is dying. I cannot help him—your magic is stronger than mine.”
Gard turned and looked the old monk in the face. But his face was shadowed by his hair so that only the gleam of his eyes was visible. The man was goading him. He had a habit of goading him.
Rajinder moaned. “Wizard-ji!” pleaded Ladhani. Srivastava’s and Jamshid’s jet eyes bored into his back. And Deva—Deva, earth and water, his complement—her hands were stretched out to him, her sapphire, a third eye, beckoned him, her aura rippled about her like the finest silk sari.
“Are you frightened, boy?” Senmut demanded.
Of course I am frightened. It is no parlor trick to interfere with death. The gods might resent it—or they might have planned it all along—or there might be no gods and I can proceed with impunity . . .
Strands of darkness were gathering about the soul catcher like black wool about a spindle. Choose . . . “No, I am not frightened,” Gard snarled, sincere and sarcastic at once. “This damnable power must be good for something.”
Senmut backed away. The faces of Ladhani, Srivastava and Jamshid were pale anticipatory ovals in the lamplight. A faint phosphorescence gathered above the rotating amber disk, and light crackled along its edge.
Blood for blood, Gard told himself. His sleeves were already pushed back. He held out his arm. With a lick of light the scythe caught his flesh. He noted dispassionately how the crescent scar was completed by welling blood into a cross of Saavedra.
It was Deva who jerked in pain. She set one hand against her breast, over the folds of cloth concealing her tattooed cross. The other hand remained extended. “Earth and water, Gard.”
“Shakhmi,” murmured Gard as he turned, like a bellows pumping air upon a flame. “Shakhmi, shakhmi.”
“Yes,” Deva replied. “Here I am.”
The dragonet, neither air nor fire, earth nor water, filled him. Its smoothly scaled skin was his. Its wings sprouted from his shoulders and stirred the vaporous darkness into brisk, sparkling whorls. Its claws nestled, concealed power, inside his fingers. “Kundaraja, Lord of the Dance. Leader of Souls. Not Lord of Darkness—I have not been and never shall be Lord of Darkness . . .”
Darkness congealed upon the soul catcher, dimming the light of the moon. Shadows eroded the lamplight and sucked at the battered body of the prince. He twitched and lay still.
Senmut picked up a metal disk with a wooden handle and hovered over his invention. Motes of light gyrated along the rim of the rotating disk, illuminating his protruding eyes and his beak of a nose. The soul-catcher squealed.
Gard and Deva joined hands across Rajinder’s body. Flesh to flesh, the sensuality of power, mortal strength and supernal in one. One drop of Gard’s blood fell onto Raj’s smudged forehead and lay there winking like a ruby. The sapphire in Deva’s nose shed a clear blue light over the room—an underwater cavern, the hollow drumming of the depths of the sea—no, it was the drumming of the dragonet’s feet as it began to dance. Gard had two bodies, the one that leaned as still as Sardian granite across the bed, and the one that stepped meticulously through the steps of the dance, an image barely adhering to his own and yet inseparable from it.
Breath after breath, and a buzzing in the ears that was not unpleasant—bees singing of power as intoxicating as honey . . . Deva was praying. Let her pray. A ritual chant made a good focus—if there was no help in it, then neither was there harm.
Breath after breath, Rajinder’s piteous rasp, Ladhani’s quick trembling inhalation, Jamshid’s uneven gasp, and Srivastava’s—the woman did not seem to be breathing at all. Even if she dropped dead at his feet, Gard could not make the effort to deal with her.
The drop of blood on Raj’s forehead quivered, alive. A pulsing red haze flooded Gard’s vision. He gasped and started back as Rajinder’s agony consumed him; not the ache or burn of each specific wound, but the soul-numbing pain of them all. His own scars thrilled, his skin crawled. He fumbled at Deva’s hands. Her touch was steady, her fingers tingled with her power, with his own reflected power, with the imperatives and the rewards of the will, the flesh, the soul.
Sweat beaded on his forehead. The dragonet twirled and the red haze shattered into trailing crimson banners. A flash, a darting whine, and his wings, the sheer multicolored tapestry of the dragonet’s wings, expanded like a shield. Shapes gathered upon the soul-catcher—death’s minions come to claim Rajinder. Again the sudden devouring pain. Again the soothing touch.
Deva’s eyes were serene blue pools at the eye of the storm. Her lips moved in patterns of words, weaving phrases into strong and complex structures—shelter, shield, armor . . .
The dragonet danced. Gard felt his eyes turn upward and in. He saw the form on the bed and the shapes around him as shadows less substantial than the shadows swarming from the dark corners. Swords like pale flames—step, turn, leap, and they skimmed harmlessly from the dragonet’s limbs. Blue eyes flashed gray, and the shadows reeled back.
Sword dance, yes—I am good at that . . . A blade turned his guard, under the dragonet’s tail, and stabbed into Rajinder’s heart. The prince’s body arched back against the pillows.
No! He had bitten off too much! Gard fell to his knees, dragging Deva down with him. Their hands pressed into Rajinder’s chest. A breath, and after a long torturous moment, another one—feeble mockeries of breath rattled in Raj’s throat. No!
Gard ground his teeth together so tightly his jaw ached. Deny the darkness, welcome light—follow me, Raj, follow me to the light! The dragonet spun faster, wings flapping, tail curling, eyes wide and frenzied. Bees buzzed maddeningly across Deva’s face and he could no longer see it. No, not bees. Wings, feathery falcon’s wings shriveling into leathery bat’s wings emitting clouds of rancid smoke, sulfur and ash and burning flesh.
Not fair, not my own nightmare! Deva’s hands in his seemed like bony talons, but he held on. His chin thudded into the coverlet. Dance, damn you! he ordered the dragonet, and the creature leaped even higher.
A high-pitched piping filled his ears, accompanying the dance of
death. The pungent smoke thickened until he could see nothing; his lungs filled with it and he coughed and choked. The smoke coagulated, became a mountain spewing black molten rock fissured with red. Black and red, the darkness in his blood.
His thought stumbled. His resolve stammered. The dragonet faltered. He could no longer feel Deva’s hands. He was blind, staggering through darkness with something chasing him, carrying Rajinder’s body upon his back. The prince’s chest bristled with pallid spear points. Death, death was all-consuming, undeniable . . .
A flash of light. Senmut’s face, spread with a crazed grin. The metal disc lifted from the rotating amber one and came at him like the immortal shield of Sabazel raised in battle—defense, always defense. The metal disc touched him. His body convulsed. Silver sizzled through his veins and throbbed in his heart. He had power, he was power, he repudiated the power of darkness and claimed that of the light.
He was stubborn. He would show death itself how stubborn he was!
His mind writhed. Stars exploded across the firmament, sweeping away the clouds. The dragonet somersaulted and leaped up in one movement, wings blushing with an incandescence brighter than the sun, softer than the moon.
Gard knelt holding Deva’s hands beneath a huge gnarled tree. Sunlight danced among its branches. The dragonet flew around it, lighting delicately upon each branch and tasting the golden globes of fruit that grew there. Rajinder’s soul, a bright amber butterfly, shook out its mangled wings and took flight. Stars flamed in a blue sky—no, the stars were in Deva’s eyes—he plunged into the sky, into the sea, into the secret places of the earth, into bowls of crystalline water from which he drank deeply. And awoke.
Gard took a deep gasping breath. Beneath his hands Rajinder inhaled. Something clattered; pieces of wood falling upon stone. The soul-catcher had burst under the strain of competing powers.
Gard opened his eyes. No butterfly, no fruit; the tree, oddly enough, was a bedpost. The dragonet was perched not on a branch above his head but clinging to his spine. Its wings were wrinkled like damp tissue, bleeding colors. It eyes were dull and flat as iron. Even as Gard watched, it moaned through blubbery lips and slid into unconsciousness.
Wings of Power Page 30