Sabazel

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  She offered no salute. “Greeting,” she returned, in tones as cold as Cylandra’s ice-crown.

  Beside the conqueror stood Patros, gazing about him eagerly, searching for one certain face.

  Atalia turned on her heel and led the Sardians under the portico, into the sanctuary of the goddess. There, by the reflecting pool under the skylight, Danica waited. She wore a long shift of linen, belted with silver, and her hair was bound with a silver fillet. Ilanit stood at her right, and Shandir at her left; the youngest woman brightened, not imperceptibly, when she saw the tall form of Patros. Shandir saw her expression, and one corner of her mouth twitched.

  Bellasteros made a great show of removing his gleaming helmet, tucking it under his arm, folding back his cloak. He looked about him as if seeking some statue or other representation of the goddess, like the great image of Harus in the citadel of his temple in Sardis; there was none, and his nostrils flared in disdain of the plastered walls, the vases of barley and millet, the small pool.

  His bow to Danica was perfunctory, his voice brittle. “I have come, as I vowed, to make offering to your goddess for her help in my victory.”

  Danica looked not at him but through him. Their last meeting had been shameful for both. The pool rippled, the mosaic on its bottom shifted, and the small tiles rearranged themselves: the star-shield, a bronze falcon, a spear exploding into motes of golden light. “You are welcome. You shall remain welcome, if you and your people respect the laws the goddess has set for the conduct of these rites.”

  For we have only this rite. Danica added to herself, to share with outsiders, and that of initiation into the warrior band for ourselves alone. Only these rites for such an ancient worship. And our lives.

  Bellasteros stood with his chin high, his back straight, holding his arrogance like a shield before him; his dark eyes glinted over a concealed turbulence as if moved by Danica’s thought. But all he said was, “Set forth the laws.”

  “Three days and three days only are men allowed within the fortress of Sabazel. During that time they may approach only those women who wear the asphodel; the others have chosen not to participate, or have babes that cannot be left, or carry the fruit of earlier rites within their wombs.

  “During these three days a man may not approach a woman with other than a polite request; if refused, he will go his way; if accepted, he will respect her wishes in all matters. A woman may choose her partner as well, but the man has the right to refuse.

  “Any man who forces himself upon a woman who does not accept him, or who shows violence to a woman who does accept him, will be repaid in kind. As will be repaid any man who seeks to cross the borders of Sabazel at other than the solstices and the equinoxes, the designated rites of Ashtar.”

  “Repaid with death?” demanded Bellasteros.

  “Or,” Danica replied, “with what might, for a man, be worse than death.”

  He did not flinch. “Very well, then. You ask only the courtesy that comes naturally to us; with it we shall respect your laws.” And he added, quietly, for Danica’s ears, “Have we a choice?”

  She released a quick, tight smile. Courtesy? she asked herself. But to him she said simply, “No.”

  The surface of the pool stirred as if touched by an unseen hand. From shadowed doorways on either side came hooded forms, shuffling forward with the uncertain steps of age. They bore garlands of white and yellow asphodel. Danica took one; with a look almost of defiance toward the conqueror, she placed it around her own neck. The petals fluttered on her breast. “As you are king,” she said, “so I am queen, and the goddess destines us one for the other. But your polite request is still necessary.”

  For one brief moment the opacity of his dark eyes flickered, and sparks whirled deep within them. Then he blinked, restoring his composure. “Indeed.” he murmured, as if hardly interested.

  The mosaic in the pool shifted again. He plays the game well, daughter.

  I would wish the game over, Danica thought. She took another garland and set it about Ilanit’s neck, caressing her daughter’s warm cheek as she did so. She took Ilanit’s hand and, leading her past the taut form of the conqueror, approached Patros.

  The young man stiffened, and his cloak rippled as if brushed by a wind. With a start, in response to Danica’s nod, he extended his hand. Danica laid her daughter’s fingertips in his. “Her preference has been stated; she is the heir to Sabazel, and would choose the companion of the king. Will you respect her wishes? Or would you prefer another?”

  Patros’s sun-burnished face crumpled in a moment of uncertainty. His eyes sought Bellasteros’s, but the conqueror had noticed the change in the mosaic at the bottom of the pool and was staring transfixed at it. Inhaling, Patros said, “Yes. I would respect her wishes, and her person as well, and I prefer no other.” And, directly to Ilanit, “I am honored.”

  Ilanit flushed and covered her sudden color by offering a salute with her free hand. Danica turned away; the look the two shared discomfited her—too much of desire, too much of trust. Beside her Bellasteros moved impatiently, turning his back on the mysterious pool. They collided, the cheekpieces of his helmet ringing against his cuirass, and leaped apart as if burned.

  Danica set her teeth, lowered her head, and targeted Patros with a steady look. “You shall indeed respect her person. She was only this spring initiated, and these rites shall be her first. Respect her youth and the goddess shall smile upon you both. If not—”

  “You do not,” Bellasteros cut in, so loudly that the doves preening themselves in the rafters exploded upward through the skylight, “you do not need to instruct him in courtesy. He is a Sardian noble and my companion.”

  “Yes,” Danica told him. “Quite.” Her eyes met the conqueror’s with a clash, steel blades crossing.

  Patros and Ilanit stepped hurriedly apart. Shandir settled the asphodel on her breast and stepped forward, her hands outspread. “The games,” she murmured. The softness of her voice smoothed the harsh words; Danica and Bellasteros exchanged another look, angry, resentful, yet resigned.

  The aged priestesses scurried between the columns of the portico, bearing more garlands to the women waiting outside. Atalia, waiting in the doorway, pointedly did not take one. She executed an abrupt about-face and grounded her spear beside the door.

  Danica’s teeth were clamped together so tightly that her jaw and throat ached. She set her hand on the conqueror’s arm. His muscles were as hard as the metal of his armor. His scent came to her, a breath of spice and sweat, and she inhaled with a shudder. And yet, and yet, there was something pleasant in it.

  They walked together, in a false amity, out of the temple, and they stood side by side at the top of the steps, wincing in the sudden glare of the sun.

  The Sardian troops cheered their king; the Sabazians took up the sound, cheering their queen, and their voices overwhelmed the thin sound made by the men. At the conqueror’s gesture the bronze falcon standard was placed carefully at the entrance of the temple; Patros set a guard on it. Danica pretended not to notice.

  The other men moved irritably and muttered among themselves, shooting jealous frowns at the Sardians. But then the Sabazian warriors began to clear the central space of the agora, and the men, seeing the rites begin, brightened.

  “You would join in the games?” Danica asked Bellasteros from the corner of her mouth.

  “Need I prove my prowess like one of those peasants?”

  “That is for you to say.”

  He glanced sharply around and caught the ironic resonance in her look. “Would it make of me a worthy offering to your goddess?”

  Her green eyes mirrored his face. “Indeed, he who does well in the games is favored of Ashtar. We would have the strong father our children.”

  With a savage jerk he reclaimed his arm. He thrust his helmet into a startled Patros’s hand and began to unbuckle his cuirass. At his gesture the other Sardians began to lay aside their armor. The hooded priestesses moved slowly down th
e steps and set themselves as judges along the course of the track. Sistrums rattled in the sanctuary, a quick, subtle heartbeat drawing the people in the agora into one equal tension.

  Danica regarded the set lines of the conqueror’s face; one corner of her mouth flickered in what might have been a smile. Of course he would prove himself. He had won his kingship proving himself, answering to a herd of fickle followers, a boy playing a man’s game. No. That was unfair. A man playing the most dangerous game of all. And she had made of herself a piece on the board.

  Ilanit watched Patros lay down both his and his king’s armor. The short tunic he wore beneath revealed the lines of his body, and her lips parted in bemused anticipation.

  “The games in the honor of most revered Ashtar …” Danica began, stilling the bustle in the square with the clear tones of her voice. The wind stirred her hair, tugging at the fillet, and the goddess murmured in her ear. You also, daughter, play well.

  Danica’s cool, ironic expression didn’t alter.

  Chapter Four

  Danica walked slowly up the rockcut steps that led from the dim street to the moonlit courtyard and garden of her quarters. Thanks be to Ashtar—the fight had been only rough words between a Sardian farmer and one of the conqueror’s warriors. Atalia had summarily ejected the civilian from the city, and the soldier, with a grudging acquiescence worthy of Bellasteros himself, had taken up the guardianship of the falcon standard. It might have been worse; blood would have called for blood, and the king would have rushed to defend his soldier.

  She shook herself, forgetting the incident, and paused to contemplate the night around her. Torches gleamed before the temple doors, brazen below the radiance of the moon. The city echoed with a decorous murmur of voices, music, and celebration. In the garden the pale moonlight spilled from olive leaf to fig to fragile anemone. Danica reached out to lift a handful of the sheen, but it ran through her fingers and drifted away. The sistrums had fallen silent; it was her blood that pulsed quickly, insistently, through her senses. The wind was still, the goddess holding her breath.

  Through the open shutters of her chambers, in the feeble light of an oil lamp, she saw him waiting. Not patiently, never patiently; he paced across the room, from doors to curtained bed and back again, marching in as strict a cadence as if he led his troops to war.

  Danica inhaled deeply. He had won some games and placed high in others, careful to assert his strength, careful not to earn the resentment of his followers. Then his body had shone, sun-gilded, moving with the grace of an antique figure; now he was naked, washed and scraped and gleaming with oil. His arms and thighs were laced with the scars of a dozen battles.

  His quick ears had heard her sigh, and he stood at the door. His eyes were the darkness of a moonless night, smoldering with anger and lust. The clear line of his chin was as sharp as a steel blade.

  If she had hoped that the exercise of the games would dampen his energy, her hope was in vain. The sight of her alone seemed to strengthen, tighten, the lean muscles of his body. “There was no need for veiled threats,” he said. “There was no need to so insult my companions.”

  “Veiled threats?” she repeated, gauging the exact timbre of her voice. “I would not have thought they were at all veiled.” She brushed by him into the room. A taboret held olives and flat bread, quince jelly, pomegranates, and cheese. Her stomach rejected them all and she chose instead a cup of thin pink wine.

  He followed her, reaching for his own cup. “Hardly more than water,” he scoffed.

  And have you drunk the thick wine of Sardis, blood-red, blood-warm, since that night you tried to kill me? But she knew not to say that aloud. “The grapes we grow are delicate,” she said instead, “as is our place in the world.”

  “I am not here now to speak of your place in the world.” He gulped the drink and dropped the cup onto the table. With thumb and forefinger he snuffed the guttering wick of the oil lamp. Moonlight flooded the room and draped his form with silver.

  She turned away from him. Slowly she untied the fillet from her hair, letting the golden waves fall free. Slowly she unclasped the belt from her waist and folded the linen dress into a nearby chest. The breadth of his shoulders, she noted in a sideways glance, trembled.

  His armor lay neatly in the corner, piled upon the crimson cloak; hers rested in its rack across the room. Their empty helmets regarded each other expressionlessly, and the star-shield lay mute.

  “Did you examine the frescoes?” she asked, gesturing toward the murals on the wall. She found a comb and ran it with painstaking care through her hair. “There is Mari, an ancient queen, my ancestor, who aided Daimion in his quest for the tree and the sword. There is Ashtar’s daughter Ataliana, the foremost warrior of her generation. She played in the games in Farsahn, it is said—you burned Farsahn, winter capital of the Empire, sending Kallidar scuttling to Azervinah. Is it true that the pyre turned night to day, that the owls hooted in confusion?”

  The painted figures shifted uneasily, eyes glinting, bodies tensing. Bellasteros snatched the comb from Danica’s hand and sent it dancing across the planks of the floor. “You mock me,” he said hoarsely. “You goad me. You said you were destined for me.”

  “I said,” she returned, spinning away from his grasping hands, “that a polite request is necessary.”

  For one quick moment he coiled, and she thought he was going to strike her. She braced herself; that would give her an excuse to cast him out, that would destroy her hold on him. And that would betray the goddess.

  But Bellasteros clenched his fists at his sides, stood to attention, and spoke, spitting each word between his lips as if tinged with acid. “Danica, queen of Sabazel, if you would please to celebrate the rites of Ashtar with me, your humble Sardian servant.”

  “Enough,” she told him as she strangled the brief laugh that had tickled her throat. “Your point is made. Humble you are not, nor have you ever been, I think; and never would you be my servant.”

  One corner of his mouth shivered, as if he choked down some echo of her laugh. “We understand each other,” he said. He extended his hand.

  Danica laid her fingertips on his palm; his skin was as hot as hers. It was she who drew him toward the bed at one side of the room, who pulled aside the gauzy hangings and admitted him to its pillowed depths.

  “Such luxury for a warrior,” he commented lightly, but his hand tore away the garland of asphodel and scattered the blossoms across the coverlet.

  “And your cloth-of-gold pavilion is not luxury?” she returned. He did not reply. Slowly he bore her backward, and for one long minute she did not resist. His face was a handsbreadth from hers; his exhalation was the warm odor of sandalwood in her nostrils.

  Mother, she prayed, if ever I have needed your aid, now, lend me your strength, lend me your resolve.

  The laugh escaped him then, a short bark of triumph. Deliberately he released the rage he had for so long held in check. He fell on her and started to pry her legs apart.

  No triumph, Danica told him silently. The victory is for Ashtar. She tensed, gathering her strength, and threw him to one side.

  She could have punished him with impassivity but she knew her own body, her own desires, would make that impossible. This was a contest to be won, fought with angry passion; they struggled, speaking only in sharp intakes of breath and muttered imprecation.

  Bellasteros would have broken a weaker woman, despising her weakness even as he used it. But Danica held him back, twisting around him so that he could not pinion her beneath him, and at last, with only a token reluctance, he served her with the attentions she demanded.

  He was not unskilled; his touch, rough and direct, suited her well. She grew drunk on the scent of his skin and the taste of his mouth, and his lithe, feline strength, so like her own, excited her.

  He sensed her pleasure, the fevered pounding of her blood. He smiled. He closed for the kill.

  And it was she who pinioned him, holding his shoulders against
the pillows, kneeling on his thighs. Her body strained toward his, aching, but she ignored its sudden pain. She fixed his face with a hard, clear emerald gaze. “A polite request,” she whispered. Louder, and her words might have trembled.

  His chest heaved with his breath; his teeth glinted, set, between his lips. His narrowed eyes considered the expression on her face. “You jest,” he hissed. “Still you jest with me.”

  She grimaced in what might have been a smile. “A polite request, my lord of Sardis, and I shall make you Ashtar’s own.”

  His body shuddered, struggling to cool its own fever. “No,” he said, hoarsely but steadily. “It is you who will now request of me. I have attempted to fulfill my vow; it is on you now, my lady of Sabazel.” His hands closed on her arms like talons, tightening as if to push her away from him.

  And he would push her away. He would throw her down, get up, and walk away, just to spite her, just to spite the goddess. Just to spite his own birth.

  A wind sprang up, rattling the shutters, ringing through the shadowed room. Danica winced as it smote her mind:

  Checkmate, daughter. Take him.

  And it will be you, Mother, who wins.

  Her voice did tremble. “I would ask, with all due respect, if I may receive your vow.”

  His mouth relaxed into a lopsided grin. “Indeed.” His right hand released her arm and stroked her cheek in a gesture that was too close to a caress.

  She fell on him, enclosing his body with hers so firmly that his breath caught in a cry. It was a sword thrust into her own vitals and she, too, cried out, sobbing the ancient litany, “Ashtar, in your name, in your honor …” His hand against her face closed on her hair, wrenching her head back; his body arched and she tightened her thighs on his hips, riding him as she would ride a wild stallion.

  Then it was over. He lay quietly beneath her, his tension ebbing quickly, his body shivering as if chilled by a cold wind. He released her and laid his arm across his face, concealing its expression; she could see only the dark strands of his hair blotted across the dampness of his forehead. Their bodies were locked together, and yet he was as distant as if he lay alone in the echoing halls of his stepfather’s Sardian palace.