At first she felt the uneven ground beneath the rug and the damp spots upon it, just as she saw those icy eyes and the outstretched fingers. Then there were only the years of practice. the music and the desperation of the dance itself. Three times she felt herself collapse on a misplaced foot; three times the music saved her and, writhing, twisting, she caught herself with will-driven muscles that dared not feel their torture.
Her lungs were on fire, her heartbeat louder than the droning tambour and she danced. She heard only the pounding rhythms of the music and her heart; she saw Azyuna, dark and voluptuous, as she had first performed it before her long toothed, bloodstained brother.
The god Vashanka smiled and Seylalha, honey-hair and sea-green silk twined together, began the dervish finale of the dance. There was a salt-metal taste in her mouth when she doubled into a barely controlled collapse on the carpet, limbs trembling and glimmering with sweat in the torchlight.
Darkness hovered at the end of her thoughts, the total darkness of exhaustion and death; a freedom she had not anticipated, but in the still-bright centre of her thoughts she saw first the bloody god then the white-and-honey stranger, both smiling, both walking slowly towards her. The sword was gone.
Strong arms parted the hair from her shoulders, lifted her effortlessly from the carpet and held her close against cool, dry skin. A leaden arm shook off its tiredness and found his shoulder to rest on. Had Azyuna loved her brother so deeply?
'Release her! I'm the proper sister for your lusts.' A voice which was not Seylalha's filled the tent with images of fire and ice.
'Cime!' the white-and-honey man said while Seylalha slid helplessly back to the carpet.
'She is a slave, a temple's pawn - their tool to capture you and Vashanka both!'
'What brought you here?' the man's voice was filled with wonder as well as anger and, perhaps, a trace of fear. 'You did not know ...' .
'The smells of sorcery, priests and the timely knowledge of intrigue. I owe you this much. They mean to bind the God.'
'They meant to fill the lily-Prince with Vashanka and gain a Prince if not a child. Their plans are sufficiently thwarted.'
Seylalha twisted slowly, raising an arm slightly to see past her hair to the tall, slender woman with the steel-streaked hair. Her breath came easier now; the dance had not killed her - only the god could give her freedom now.
'Mortal flesh is no bond - as you well know. Vashanka's children bear a special curse ...' the man-god said, taking a step towards the woman.
'Then we'll complete their sorry ritual and damn the curse. They'll kill the slut when she bleeds again and for us - who knows? A god's freedom?'
The woman, Cime, jerked the knot loose from her vest, revealing a body that belied the steel in her hair. Seylalha felt the man step further away from her. Cime's words echoed mockingly in her ears. She had envisioned Vashanka falling upon his dark sister, this man-god would do no less. And she, Seylalha, would lie unbroken until the full moon. While brother and sister advanced slowly towards each other Seylalha's toes closed over the hilt of the discarded sword and dragged it into her reach. With serpentine swiftness and silence she shot between the pair, facing the woman, breaking the spell that drew them together.
'He is mine!' she screamed in a voice so seldom used that it might have belonged to Azyuna herself. 'He is mine to bring my child, my freedom!' She held the sword to the other woman's breast.
The sister stepped back; anger, thwarted desire and more burned in her eyes, but Seylalha saw the fear in her movements and knew she had won. The man's fingers wove through her honey hair, closing on the neck brooch that held the cloth at her shoulder, ripping it from the soft silk.
'She's right, Cime. You can't lure me with His freedom; I've felt it for too long already. We'll play Torchholder's little game to the end and let the Face of Chaos laugh at us. The girl's won her child. so leave - or I'll let her use the tent-peg on you.'
Cime's face was fury unbounded, but Seylalha no longer cared. The sword dropped from her fingers as soon as his arms lifted her a second time and carried her, without interruption, to the pillows. She grasped his tunic and tore it back from his shoulders with a determination equal to his own. The mute women gathered their instruments and found a compelling harmony with which to fill the tent.
Seylalha lost herself with him until there was nothing beyond the pillows and the memory of the music. The torches were long since exhausted and in the darkness her god-lover was neither awesome nor cruel. He might have intended rape and pain, but her passion for a child and freedom consumed him and he lay asleep across her breast. Her body curved against his and though she had not meant it to happen, she fell asleep as well.
He grunted and jerked upright, leaving her puzzled and cold on the pillows. Wariness tightened the muscles of his leg. She raised herself up on one elbow without learning the source of his sudden concern.
'Cover yourself,' he instructed, thrusting his torn tunic at her.
'Why?'
'There'll be a fire here,' he spoke as if repeating words that swam in his head already. 'By Wrigglies, Cime or what... we're betrayed.'
He gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet as the tent burst into flames around them. Clutching the tunic to her breast, Seylalha moulded herself against him. He was motionless for less than a second; the fire swept through the roof cloth and raced towards the carpet and pillows where they stood. Sparks jumped towards her long hair; she screamed and flailed at the flames until he put them out with his hands and hoisted her rudely in his arms.
The firelight leeched all gentleness from his face, replacing it with pain and a glint of vengeance. One of the beams that supported the tent cracked down before them, sending a blaze of fire up past his knees. He cursed names that meant nothing to her as he walked through the inferno.
They broke through the ring of flames into the predawn moist-ness of the port city air. She coughed, realizing she had scarcely breathed since he had lifted her. With the gasps of cool air she caught the bitter scents of singed hair and charred flesh.
'Your legs?' she whispered.
'They'll mend; they always do.'
'But you're hurt now,' she. protested. 'I can walk - there's no need to carry me.'
She twisted to be free of him but his grip grew tighter and unfriendly. She began to fear him again as if their moments together in the tent had been a dream. The pinching fingers holding her arms and thighs could never have been gentle.
'I have not hurt you,' he snarled. 'Of more women than I care to remember you alone had demands that would sate me. You've got your freedom and I've got rest in a woman's arms. When it is safe I'll put you down, but not before.'
He carried her past the scattered stones of the unfinished temple and out into the open land beyond the limits ofRankan Sanctuary towards the houses left to ruins since Ilsig abandoned the town. She shivered and shed quiet tears, but clung tightly as he assaulted the uneven, overgrown fields in the grey predawn light. He stopped by a crumbling wall and set her down upon it.
'The Hounds patrol here at dawn; they'll find you and bring you safely to the Prince and Torchholder.'
She didn't ask to go with him, holding the request firmly within herself. The One for whom she had danced was gone, probably forever, and the one who remained was not the sort a dancer slave would be wise to follow. And there was the child to consider ... Still, she could not turn away from him as he glared at her. His face softened slightly, as if her lover might live somewhere behind that grim visage.
'Tell me your name,' he demanded in a voice half-gentle, half-mocking.
'Seylalha.'
'A Northern name, isn't it? A pretty name to remember.'
And he was gone, striding back across the fallow gardens to the town. She wrapped the torn, scorched tunic around her bare shoulders and waited.
7
Molin Torchholder hurried down the polished stone corridors of the palace; his new sandals slapped the soles of his feet
and echoed in the empty hallways. The sound reminded him of his slaves' leather-wrapped sticks and that reminded him of how few slaves were left in the temple since the mysterious fire had taken so many lives the night of the Ten-Slaying two weeks before.
He had sent a messenger to the capita] the next day with a full report of the events as he understood them. He'd written and sealed it himself. The Prince could not have sent word faster; no post could have returned in that time. There was no reason to think that Kadakithis or the Emperor himself would be thinking about Vashanka today. But the Prince's summons had been preemptive. so Molin hiked the long, empty corridors with a worried look on his face.
The Ten-Slaying had convinced him to take his Prince more seriously. When the charred tatters of cloth and wood had cooled enough to let the Hounds investigate the blaze, they had found a heap of blackened skulls in one place and the bodies of the ten felons scattered throughout the burned wreckage. For one who had expressed a distaste for bloodshed, Kadakithis had recreated Vashanka's vengeance to the final letter of the legends - a precision not required and which Molin could not even remember describing to the Prince.
Tempus stood beside the Prince's throne, back in town after another unexplained absence. The massive, cruel Hell Hound did not look happy - perhaps the strains of the Sacred Brotherhood's loyalty were beginning to show. Molin wished, for the last time. that he knew why he had been summoned, then nodded to the herald and heard himself announced.
*Ah, Molin, there you are. We'd been wondering what was keeping you,' the Prince said with his usual charm.
'My new quarters, while much appreciated, seem to be several leagues from here. I'd never thought there could be so much corridor in a small palace.'
'The rooms are adequate? The Lady Rosanda ...'
'The girl who danced Azyuna's Dance - what has become of her?' Tempus interrupted and Molin turned his attention at once from the Prince to the Hell Hound.
'A few burns,' he responded cautiously, seeing displeasure in Tempus's eyes. The Hound had called this interview; Molin no longer doubted it. 'Minor ones,' he added. 'What little discomfort she may have experienced seems to have passed completely.'
'You've freed her, haven't you, Molin?' the Prince chimed in nervously.
'As a matter of course, though it's too soon to tell if she'll bear a child. I thought it best to take her survival as a sign of the god's favour - in the absence of any other information. You haven't remembered anything yourself, my Prince?' Molin faced the Prince but glanced at Tempus. There was something in the Hound's face whenever the Ten-Slaying was discussed, but Molin doubted he'd ever get to the bottom of it. Kadakithis claimed the god had so completely possessed him that he remembered nothing from the moment the tent was sealed until sunrise when he found himself in his own bed.
'If she is with child?' Tempus continued.
'Then she will live out her days at the temple with the full honours of a freedwoman and the living consort of our god - as you know. Her power could become considerable - though only time will tell. It depends on her, and the child - if there is a child.'
'And if there is no child?'
Molin shrugged. 'In many respects it will be no different. It is not in the temple's power to remove the honours we have bestowed. Vashanka saw fit to remove her from the inferno.' It was easier to imagine Vashanka possessing Tempus than the Prince, but Molin had not become High Priest by speaking his mind. 'We acknowledge her as First Consort of Sanctuary. It would be best if she had conceived.'
Tempus nodded and looked away. It was the signal the Prince had been waiting for. He had been even more uncomfortable at this interview than Molin; Molin was used to hiding secrets. The Prince left the chamber without ritual, leaving the High Priest and the Hell Hound together for a moment.
'I've talked with her often these past few days. Remarkable, isn't it, to discover that a slave has a mind?' Molin said aloud to himself but for Tempus's benefit. If the Hound had an interest in Seylalha the Priesthood wished to use it. 'She is convinced she . slept with the god - in all other respects she is intelligent and not given to false beliefs, but her faith in her lover will not be shaken. She dances for him still, in silence. I've replaced the silks, but women and eunuchs must come from the capital and that will take time.
'I watch her each evening at sunset; she doesn't seem to mind. She is very beautiful, but sad and lonely as well - the dance has changed since the Ten Slaying. You must come and watch for yourself sometime.'
A MAN AND HIS GOD by Janet Morris
1
Solstice storms and heat lightning beat upon Sanctuary, washing the dust from the gutters and from the faces of the mercenaries drifting through town on their way north where (seers proclaimed and rumour corroborated) the Rankan Empire would soon be hiring multitudes, readying for war.
The storms doused cookfires west of town, where the camp followers and artificers that Sanctuary's ramshackle facilities could not hold had overflowed. There squatted, under stinking ill-tanned hide pavilions, custom weaponers catering to mercenaries whose eyes were keener than the most carefully wax forged iron and whose panoplies must bespeak their whereabouts in battle to their comrades; their deadly efficacy to strangers and combatants; the dear cost of their hire to prospective employers. Fine corselets, cuirasses ancient and modern, custom's best axes and swords, and helmetry with crests dyed to order could be had in Sanctuary that summer; but the downwind breeze had never smelled fouler than after wending through their press.
Here and there among the steaming firepots siegecrafters and commanders of fortifications drilled their engineers, lest from idleness picked men be suborned by rival leaders seeking to upgrade their corps. To keep order here, the Emperor's haifbrother Kadakithis had only a handful of Rankan Hell Hounds in his personal guard, and a local garrison staffed by indigenous Ilsigs, conquered but not assimilated. The Rankans called the Ilsigs 'Wrigglies', and the Wrigglies called the Rankans naked barbarians and their women worse, and not even the rain could cool the fires of that age-old rivalry.
On the landspit north of the lighthouse, rain had stopped work on Prince Kadakithis's new palace. Only a man and horse, both bronze, both of heroic proportions, rode the beach. Doom criers of Sanctuary, who once had proclaimed their town 'just left of heaven', had changed their tune: they had dubbed Sanctuary Death's Gate and the one man, called Tempus, Death Himself.
He was not. He was a mercenary, envoy of a Rankan faction desirous of making a change in emperors; he was a Hell Hound, by Kadakithis's good offices; and marshal of palace security, because the prince, not meant to triumph in his governorship exile, was understaffed. Of late Tempus had become a royal architect, for which he was as qualified as any man about, having fortified more towns than K-adakithis had years. The prince had proposed the site; the soldier examined it and found it good. Not satisfied, he had made it better, dredging deep with oxen along the shore while his imported fortifications crews raised double walls of baked brick filled with rubble and faced with stone. When complete, these would be deeply crenellated for archers, studded with gatehouses, double-gated and sheer. Even incomplete, the walls which barred the folk from spit and lighthouse grinned with a death's-head smirk towards the town, enclosing granaries and stables and newly whiled barracks and a spring for fresh water: if War came hither, Tempus proposed to make Him welcome for a long and arduous siege.
The fey, god's-breath weather might have stopped work on the construction, but Tempus worked without respite, always: it eased the soul of the man who could not sleep and who had turned his back upon his god. This day, he awaited the arrival of Kadakithis and that of his own anonymous Rankan contact, to introduce emissary to possible figurehead, to put the two together and see what might be seen.
When he had arranged the meeting, he had yet walked in the shelter of the god Vashanka's arm. Now, things had changed for him and he no longer cared to serve Vashanka, the Storm God, who regulated kingship. If he could, he was going to contr
ive to be relieved of his various commissions and of his honour bond to Kadakithis, freed to go among the mercenaries to whom his soul belonged (since he had it back) and put together a cohort to take north and lease to the highest bidder. He wanted to wade thigh-deep in gore and guts and see if, just by chance, he might manage to find his way back through the shimmering dimensional gate beyond which the god had long ago thrust him, back into the world and into the age to which he was born.
Since he knew the chances of that were less than Kadakithis becoming Emperor of Upper and Lower Ranke, and since the god's gloss of rationality was gone from him, leaving him in the embrace of the curse, yet lingering, which he had originally become the god's suppliant to thwart, he would settle for a small mercenary corps of his own choosing, from which to begin building an army that would not be a puerile jest, as Kadakithis's forces were at present. For this he had been contacted, to this he had agreed. It remained only to see to it that Kadakithis agreed.
The mercenary who was a Hell Hound scolded the horse, who did not like its new weighted shoes or the water surging around its knees, white as its stockings. Like the horse, Kadakithis was only potential in quest of actualization; like the horse, Kadakithis feared the wrong things, and placed his trust in himself only, an untenable arrogance in horse or man, when the horse must go to battle and the man also. Tempus collected the horse up under him, shifting his weight, pulling the red-bronze beast's head in against its chest, until the combination of his guidance and the toe-weights on its hooves and the waves' kiss showed the horse what he wanted. Tempus could feel it in the stallion's gaits; he did not need to see the result: like a dancer, the sorrel lifted each leg high. Then it gave a quizzical snort as it sensed the power to be gained from such a stride: school was in session. Perhaps, despite the four white socks, the horse would suit. He lifted it with a touch and a squeeze of his knees into a canter no faster than another horse might walk. 'Good, good,' he told it, and from the beach came the pat-pat of applause.
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