Sabazel

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “Not here. In kingdoms ruined even before Daimion lived. Ashtar no longer craves such sacrifice.” She smiled. “Can you see Bellasteros baring his throat to my knife, as docilely as a bullock on butchering day?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “I would not want that of him.” The fire guttered shards of flame into the darkness. Danica raised on one elbow and pointed toward a ledge below the paintings. A clay female figure, still fresh in the dampness of the cave, lay there. Its elongated neck and head were bent shyly over pendulous breasts and swelling stomach; its tiny arms, just strips of clay, cradled its sex. The fingerprints of its maker remained on its belly and flank. “She who made it is long since dust, scattered by the wind,” said Danica, “but her vision remains. The goddess, when she ruled alone, worshipped by men and women alike, omnipresent.”

  Next to that figure was a more recent one, a baked clay statuette of a young man, slender and elegant in a pleated kilt, its arms upraised in an attitude of devotion. “The consort of the goddess,” Danica went on. “Men long ago discovered their own role in the creation of children; fittingly they were accorded worship in the role of helpmate and companion to the mother. And still Ashtar ruled the world.”

  Danica’s outstretched hand clenched into a fist. “Now men seek to carve their offspring with swords from the body of their mother; they seek to cut her into little pieces and sow her in the fields and forget her. They accord more respect to their brood mares and heifers than to their wives. They forget they ever had a mother-goddess, and worship only a harsh, jealous father-god. They turn their faces away from us, a reminder of their past, calling us barbarians and threatening to destroy us.

  “The Empire worships many different gods; it was not unusual even three decades ago for a noblewoman such as Viridis to discreetly bow to Ashtar. But when she went to Sardis, carrying the fruit of the rites within her … Sardis bows only to Harus, repudiating their own history. They did not have to admit Viridis’s supposed infidelity to excuse their destruction of Ashtar’s temple there. They needed no excuse to once again attack the Empire, as the Empire hardly needed Viridis’s death to excuse their renewed attack on Sardis. And to attack us, who had once been the friends of all.” She sighed. “And the future …?”

  The lamp went out. The solitary flame flared up. Beyond it, in the blue depths of the cavern, something stirred. A faint shimmering mist, a suggestion that shifted and moved and formed—nothing.

  Lyris exhaled shakily. “Mother,” she whispered. “I have seen how other gods treat their servants, and it is you I would serve.”

  Danica shook her head. “A god’s follower does not always do the work of the god.” And she wondered suddenly what caused such strange words to spring to her tongue. Mother, no longer know my own mind …

  She composed herself on the bench, clasping Lyris close beside her. Sleep, murmured the goddess. Sleep, and you path shall be shown to you. And within moments the exhausted Lyris was breathing gently in sleep.

  Danica gazed up into darkness, her eyes forming pinwheels of light that spun and collided in patterns she was almost ready to understand. She closed her eyes, and the patterns continued behind her lids.

  Her free hand-rested lightly on the mound of her belly. Under her fingertips the child moved, a faint flutter that was no more than the flexing of a butterfly’s wings when first it tries the walls of its cocoon. Her hand caressed her skin, reaching in vain for the baby. So small as yet. So vulnerable.

  She slept, and the pinwheels of light entered her, filling her, so that her body gleamed with them. In a vision so clear it was like a map sketched on parchment she saw a wasteland, a tree, Bellasteros impaling the sun on the blade Solifrax. And her own hands held not only the star-shield, but the vouchsafed power of the goddess.

  She moaned in her sleep, “I, carry your power—I am unworthy …”

  When morning came, a lavender hush in the depths of the cavern, Danica woke. Lyris sat beside her, wiping her hair from her face. “I dreamed of battle, and your shield lighting the way beyond battle, to peace. Am I … favored?”

  “Yes,” Danica told her. “You have been accepted.”

  Lyris smiled proudly. “And may I ride at your side?”

  “Soon,” Danica replied. “Soon.” Her own dream still thrilled in her body, like the fever of battle, like the fever of love. She inhaled and calmed the passionate beating of her heart. Strength, beyond any strength she had ever known.… Truly I am honored, she thought. No queen since Mari has been given such a gift.

  With a snap of her fingers she lit the lamp. She parted the waterfall with a wave of her hand. With eyes as wide as a child’s she led Lyris through a narrow concealed passage; they emerged onto Cylandra’s eastern snowfield in time to see the sun break free of the horizon. Through a silvery mist, far below, Sabazel nestled in the mountain’s embrace. Its houses were as small and fragile as beads of amber on a string. Danica spread her blessing over them, spilling sparks from her upraised hands. Yes, it was power, and a welcome renewal; she looked to the sunrise and laughed.

  The goddess spoke in the dawn breeze. This is my gift, to aid you in your quest, to be reclaimed in time.

  “My thanks,” Danica said, and her voice wavered and died. The power—she was swollen with it, like a ripe fruit ready to burst, pained and yet thrilled. Oh, Mother, she thought suddenly, would you give me power in exchange for your counsel, would you have me decide my own course? Oh, Mother, I am more vulnerable now than ever.

  Lyris’s eyes were wide with worship, as if she had known all along that her queen was a goddess as well.

  So then, Danica told herself, I must be strong. I shall be strong, for you and for the others and for Sabazel itself. She set her chin and summoned a smile. And, indeed, there was a pleasure in it … “My thanks,” she murmured.

  Arm in arm the women picked their way down the path, toward home and the morning meal.

  *

  Chryse knelt before the image of the god, lighting taper after taper on his small altar. Behind her, in the brightly lit bedchamber, her servants packed her clothing. Her daughter clung to her mother’s skirts and wept.

  “If I may help my lord,” Chryse murmured, “I will leave, I will journey to his side—Harus aid me, for I am frightened— the world beyond the walls of Sardis is so wide.”

  The tapers burned with a steady light, yellow pinpricks of fire reflected in the adamantine eyes of the image, and the eyes did not blink.

  *

  Bellasteros was more bemused than surprised to receive the message from Adrastes. “I never thought to see the inquisitor of Harus commending me to the queen of Sabazel,” he said to Patros.

  Patros fingered the broken seal, rolled the parchment, returned it to his king. “I doubt if his plan is quite that simple.”

  “True,” Bellasteros said. One corner of his mouth crimped in annoyance. “Adrastes has always taken too much upon himself, and his pride is limitless.”

  Patros nodded. “Shall I send a message to Sabazel, then?”

  “Yes,” said Bellasteros. “Ask for a meeting.” And his lips smoothed unbidden into a smile.

  Mardoc stood behind the tent flap, listening, frowning, his own private message from the high priest clasped tightly in his hand.

  Chapter Eight

  Bellasteros led a century of Sardians three days’ journey from their camp beside the Royal Road, along a watercourse that crawled painfully through a stony wilderness; they stopped on the shores of a marsh, as the message from Sabazel had directed. His army was two-thirds of the way to Iksandarun, but he was not the only Sardian beginning to wonder if the imperial capital was, after all, unattainable.

  Danica led her Companions ten days’ journey from Sabazel to the rendezvous set by the goddess. The company made camp on a low hill, across from another hill where the Sardian camp bristled, and sentries nodded polite but cold greetings in the wasteland between.

  It was late evening when the king and the qu
een met again. The pale sun that swam uncertainly on the horizon was too weak to warm the chill slime of the marsh, and no life stirred. The gutted shell of a village, charred sticks and stones and bare-limbed trees, stood nearby; the hooves of the two horses stirred the bones of the dead to a choking dust. Ravens fluttered nearby, satiated.

  Danica reined in, leaned on her saddle, looked directly into his eyes. “So your army has been here,” she said.

  Bellasteros’s gaze did not waver. “Not my army. That of Bogazkar, my enemy.”

  “There are those who say that you find your enemies where your caprice takes you.”

  “There are those who set themselves as my enemies when friendship would serve them better.”

  “Friendship,” she repeated. She was surprised that she could look at him so calmly. But his face was a mirror of he own, polite, casual, closed.

  “Yes, my lady of Sabazel. Friendship.”

  “We need each other, it seems,” she murmured. For just moment the corner of his mouth indented, a smile beginning and quickly suppressed. A smile of triumph? Or of relief? “And I have told you,” she continued, “I am not the lady of Sabazel.”

  “Indeed? I think you are.”

  Perhaps, she thought. Perhaps… . She had been given power, some of the goddess’s own. Ashtar’s voice no longer spoke to her, and yet there was no emptiness in her mind, but a fullness, a second heartbeat complementing hers. It is now my decision, she thought. My will, how the game is played.

  She wondered again how much of her will was her own. She exhaled slowly, and a light wind stirred the putrid dust of the ruins into a rising spiral of smoke, bearing the ravens away.

  He was watching her, his dark eyes steady. “The oracle says that you can guide me to the sword of Daimion. The oracle says that I shall conquer the Empire. If the Empire belongs to me, then shall not Sabazel be secure?”

  “Shall I have bought its safety?” returned Danica.

  “Of course,” he said, almost impatiently. “I thought the bargain had already been made.” His great warhorse shifted restively in the breeze, and his crimson cloak swirled around him.

  “Ah, yes,” she murmured, “Bellasteros is a man of honor. But even Daimion failed in the end.”

  He scowled. His lips began to form an epithet. But she met his eyes evenly, and his mouth softened. “I shall not fail, Danica. With you by my side …” He jerked the horse’s head around and galloped back to the Sardian camp.

  Danica watched. It was as if she watched from two perspectives, with the eyes of a woman on horseback, with the omnipresent sight of a god. She winced; the sensation was akin to that of being torn limb from limb. Was this the way it was to Ashtar, watching as the pieces of her game moved slowly across the board? But then, Danica thought, why did Ashtar play at all? Why could the goddess not simply set the pieces as she wished?

  Danica shook her head. She knew only that the plume of Bellasteros’s helmet streamed behind him, and the hoofbeats of his horse reverberated in the depths of the earth. No, she thought, he would not fail. The set of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw, the firmness of his hands—he was chosen by the gods to shape the world, and it was his very weakness that made him strong.

  The breeze was chill. She drew her bulky cloak more tightly around her and walked her horse back to her own camp.

  *

  “No,” Danica told her daughter firmly, “he did not bring Patros with him. He had to leave his most trustworthy friend to assist General Mardoc in ruling the main Sardian encampment.”

  Ilanit nodded. “I see.”

  “And if he were just over there, separated from you by only some uncertain boundary?”

  “I would stay here, Mother, and keep the Companions until your return.”

  Shandir sat unobtrusively in the corner, checking over her parcels of herbs and her rolls of bandages; at Ilanit’s words she smiled gently to herself. Danica opened her arms to her daughter and embraced her, nuzzling into the fresh tousle of her hair. “You tell me what I want to hear. Is it truly what you would do?”

  “I do not know,” Ilanit replied, muffled against her mother’s shoulder. “But fortunately I shall have no opportunity to commit folly.”

  “Fortunately.”

  The tent flap opened, and the angular form of Atalia stood in the doorway. “I have set Lyris at guard here,” she said. “Ilanit, you are detailed to watch the horses.”

  “I am there already,” the girl said, and she hurried out. Danica’s eye held her daughter’s image even after she vanished into the night shadows. There was yet another resolution postponed; too soon, now, the Sabazians would be again in the Sardian encampment.

  The resonance in Danica’s mind, the lingering touch of the goddess, stirred. Cylandra and the city of Sabazel, the remaining warriors sleeplessly guarding their families …

  Her vision faded. Atalia was still there, watching the thoughts move silently behind her queen’s jade-green eyes. “Must you go with him?” she asked bluntly.

  “Yes. The game continues, Atalia.”

  “And will the conclusion be the destruction of Sabazel?”

  Danica stepped forward to take Atalia’s arm. Sparks seemed to leap from her flesh. “My mentor, my friend, please … if you cannot have faith in me, then can you at least trust in our mother’s love for us?”

  Atalia grimaced, shaking her head as if she would throw away the entire problem. “You know that I trust you with my life. And I know you do not mean to insult me by questioning my devotion to the goddess. But I fear… change. The changes that this game, as you call it, has already brought to you, to Ilanit, to Sabazel.”

  Danica sighed. She had no answer to give, and yet she had to give one. “Ashtar moves in subtle ways,” she said at last. “She will not abandon Sabazel.” It seemed a lame reply, but Atalia accepted it. Perhaps she felt the power of the goddess in Danica’s touch.

  With a nod and a salute the warrior was gone.

  Shandir padded softly across the tent and set her hands on Danica’s shoulders, her fingers pressing away the tension. “She, too, is a worry to you?”

  “I wish she would not trust me. If I fail, I will destroy her.”

  “But you will not fail. And her trust sustains you.”

  “Shandir, my shield … Ah, yes, that feels good.” Danica stretched like a cat and let the healer lay her on her bedroll. The soft hands comforted and asked nothing in return. “But if I do fail, my pair …?”

  “Shh. Rest now, and stop thinking so much.”

  Ashtar’s trust sustains me, too, Danica thought later, after the healer had slipped understandingly away. Surely the goddess foresees the end of the game.

  She stared wide-eyed into darkness; a faint doubt touched her, a chill shivering the back of her neck. Bellasteros had perhaps reason to doubt the power of his own deity, the falcon, who was served by such an evil minion. But surely Ashtar was omnipotent—even if she shared her power with her daughter. If I bear power, Danica thought, then am I a demigod like Bellasteros? Is he a god simply because he thinks himself one? What then; who truly orders the world? …

  It was dark, dark and cold. But I cannot doubt Ashtar’s love for Sabazel, Danica thought at last. The goddess will love the king of Sardis, too, if he would permit it.

  Perhaps she sensed the tumbling thoughts of Bellasteros, so close to her, so far away across that uncertain boundary. She slept, and her sleep was fitful. The child tossed inside her as if it, too, both feared and anticipated the morrow.

  *

  The wind jangled amid rushing cloud, emitting spasms of sunlight that did little to warm a gray, cold day. Danica thanked the chill; she arranged her cloak carefully about her thickened waist and the chain mail corselet she had had to substitute for her breastplate, and she held the star-shield before her.

  Bellasteros strode to her side and greeted her with a courteous, cautious nod. “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied. “Did you?”


  He glanced back over his shoulder, at the Sardian camp glinting with armor, at the Sabazian camp glistening with weapons. “Do you want an answer?” he asked.

  “I think not.”

  As one they turned and trudged off, across the dry stubble of what had once been broad wheat fields. Bellasteros stumbled and cursed under his breath. “What kind of quest is this, that we cannot go horseback like warriors?”

  “Horses cannot go where we are going,” Danica told him.

  “And how do you know where we are going?”

  “I dreamed it, and it shades my mind like a map.”

  “Ah …” He started to speak again, thought better of it, said nothing.

  They mounted a low rise and paused. The ruined fields and tumbled, blackened walls of the village smudged the land behind them. The two hillocks where their respective followers camped were twin blots of darkness on a lowering horizon. One tiny figure stood outside the Sabazian camp, her armor reflecting a quick gleam of sunlight. Ilanit. Danica waved. IIanit waved in return. Danica’s throat closed and she turned away, her teeth set into her lip.

  They plunged down the far side of the rise and were suddenly alone in a barren world.

  Bellasteros took a deep breath, as if relieved to no longer have the eyes of his soldiers on his back. “Mardoc wants me to wet Solifrax first with your blood,” he said.

  “Atalia, I think, wishes me to take Solifrax for myself.”

  They paused to look at each other, in the first open gaze they had shared since Sabazel. Slowly they raised their right hands and clasped them together. “Allies?” Bellasteros asked.

  His eyes, Danica noted, were just as she remembered them, dark and deep, lit by a smoldering fire. “Allies,” she said, and she wrenched herself away. She had the impression that he was smiling at her, but she did not want to see. She might smile back. The pace she set was a quick, impatient one. “What do you suppose was the crime of that village, to be so destroyed?”

  Bellasteros fell into step beside her. “My crime, I would say. Bogazkar needed soldiers, so he took them. And he would deny me food and shelter within the borders of the Empire.”