Danica lifted her shield. For just a moment she let her look linger on Bellasteros; he started up with a furtive hope. “Mother, please,” he whispered under his breath, so that none but she could hear.
Declan raised his hands, shaping wings above the prostrate form, and Chryse joined him in murmured prayer.
Sabazel, Danica thought. The hollow in the mountainside, the basin, the light of the moon on Cylandra’s ice field. The star-shield gleamed, drawing the light of the lamps and the brazier, drawing the faint filtered sunlight to itself. It gleamed, a slow, pale fire, a luminescent mist. Moonlight on a cloudless night, the sharp brilliance of the stars … The emblazoned star keened with one high, sustained note of power.
And star motes showered over Patros, hissing where they touched his skin. His eyes opened, wavered unfocused, fell on Ilanit’s intent face. Feebly he smiled. Feebly his hand lifted, touched the golden waves of her hair.
Danica trembled, straining, shaping her will. The child in her belly twisted, as if it would leap from her body as her strength poured from her mind. Patros! she commanded silently, and his eyes shifted to her, widened, cleared.
A pain tore at her, a lance cutting deep into her abdomen. The child! But no, it was his agony, not her own; she caught it, tightened her teeth on it, molded it to her will. And she directed his own pain back into his body, directing every quivering inch of flesh to still itself, to join with those next to it, to seamlessly bind itself together. His strength, the vitality of his young body, encompassed her.
His blood steamed in her mind, scalding her thoughts—a scarlet cloak flowing behind her eye…. She jerked with the last expulsive thrust of her spell, and the babe leaped inside her. Patros gasped, arching back against the linens; the bones in Ilanit’s hand creaked.
And the blood was gone, the scarlet cloak only stained fabric crumpled at the bedside. Patros lay panting, watching her with eyes both fearful and pleased. “My lady, what …?” he murmured.
With shaking hands Shandir lifted the poultices. The taut flesh of Patros’s belly shone in the light of the shield, marred only by a long pink scar.
Chryse fell to her knees, her hands to her mouth, amazed. Declan looked quickly from face to face, seeking reassurance that he could indeed believe his eyes. Bellasteros bowed weak with relief over his sword.
Ilanit bent her forehead against Patros’s hand and again he touched her hair, laughing in quiet pleasure. She beamed at him. His chest rose and fell, even, deep breaths, and he stretched as if waking from sleep.
Chryse watched their mingled smiles in meek, hopeless envy.
The shield sheen ebbed and went out. Danica leaned over the metal rim, exhausted, hardly able to control her dizzying thoughts. Foolish, she told herself, to expend so much for a man. Foolish, to entangle my daughter in my spell. Foolish and doubly foolish to do it before a priest of Harus—but Harus sits in majesty on majestic Ashtar’s arm. It is Adrastes who is our enemy.
She looked up, the perspiration glimmering on her forehead. The midnight darkness of Bellasteros’s eyes were fixed on her, his thought written as plainly on his face as on parchment: My thanks, Danica, for your favor; my love, Danica, for your compassion … How wise is Ashtar, to share her power with you.
Numbly she returned his look, pleading, I am so weary, I shall betray myself, please, do not ask this now … She pulled herself to her feet and accepted Shandir’s arm, swaying against her as if the ground heaved beneath her feet. “Come,” she told Ilanit, and the girl reluctantly stood, flexing fingers.
Chryse rose in her path, her eyes filled with tears of relief, of pain, of awe. “May I …” she squeaked. Her plump white hand touched the shield; its answering chime was audible only to Danica’s ears.
“If you will excuse us,” Shandir said.
Declan leaped to raise the tent flap, bowing in respect, and the three Sabazians exited into the dim light of day.
Bellasteros, also swaying, leaning on his sword, paced to Patros’s side. Patros sat up slowly, testing his body. “I… had a nightmare,” he said. “An imperial officer … a lance … blood …”
“It was true,” Bellasteros told him. He laid his hand on Patros’s shoulder, also testing, questioning if his friend remained normal flesh. “She saved your life, Patros.”
“Indeed.”
Declan bowed before the king, struggling to speak calmly. “Such an ally, my lord. Such an ally. We are fortunate.”
“Are we?” replied Bellasteros, somewhat dazed.
Chryse whispered, “How can she be a witch?” She looked desperately upward, seeking guidance, seeking comfort.
Declan led her away. “We shall discuss the matter,” he said firmly.
“And for a moment I dreamed,” Patros went on, talking to himself, “that I was a woman, carrying a child in my belly …” Suddenly he looked up, catching his king’s eye; his king’s eye, the quirk of his brow and the rueful crimp of his mouth, confirmed the unspoken sentence. Patros exhaled between pursed lips.
Bellasteros looked at the doorway, as if he could see through the fabric and across the camp to where Danica, supported by Ilanit and Shandir, carried her shield back into her own temporary borders and joined the huddle of wounded Companions.
Even as she sat wearily down, slipped the shield from her arm and propped it against her knees; even as she accepted a hot cup of barley broth from Atalia’s hand, leaned back, and tried to empty her mind of all thought, one thought remained. It was sent from Bellasteros, as straight and direct as the flight of an arrow. This, then, is the good of the power. This, and you will never be helpless. Stand with me, Danica, I beg you …
She smiled into her cup. Yes, my lord, my king, yes …
The day wore on, bleak and cold, but she slept and dreamed of a golden tree and a warm embrace. Her hands cradled the silent child in her womb. This, then, is destined for me; death and the healing after. The curving edge of the sword, a crescent moon, and my shield the evening star at its tip.
Chapter Thirteen
The army moved on the next dawn, passing out of the tainted valley, leaving the jackals and ravens to their feast. The storm clouds followed them with wind, sleet, and rain. Many provisions had been lost in the imperial attack, and Bellasteros had to send raiding parties to despoil the countryside.
Beside the Royal Road appeared another caravanserai, another dilapidated pile of mud-brick surrounded by withered tamarind trees. Several children, bellies distended, pitiful limbs barely covered by rags, played desultorily around a well.
Bellasteros spoke an order, the waiting pages relayed it to a quartermaster; the army took water and left some of its own meager stores with an aged crone crouching inside the smoke-scummed building. The children stared at the passing procession, unblinking, until their wasted forms seemed to fade into the walls of the caravanserai, and the caravanserai disappeared over the edge of the world.
“Like a swarm of locusts we come,” Bellasteros said to Patros, who rode again beside him. “Sardian army, imperial army—the countryside is desolate. This land is long overdue for peace. Children with ancient eyes …”
Patros, muffled to his eyebrows against the gale, cast a wary look at his king. “Mardoc would say you have lost your stomach for battle.”
“Would he? Then Mardoc misses the point of battle.”
“As we did once, I think.”
With a sigh of agreement Bellasteros looked up at the sky. The moon, sliced cleanly into light and dark as if by the blade of Solifrax itself, seemed to dance among tumbling clouds. A pale, spectral moon, competing with the sun for power. Bellasteros frowned up at it. No, the moon would be the mate of the sun, if only they could meet across the invisible borders that bound them …
Danica eyed the same moon from her place far back in the marching column. If only they could meet across those borders, she thought …
“We should be at Iksandarun by the full,” said Atalia.
“Midwinter’s moon comes late this
year,” Danica replied. “And the rites will be but a shadow, without us there.”
“Next year in Sabazel,” Atalia stated, with more hope than confidence.
Danica sighed. I want to be there, in Cylandra’s embrace; I want to rest in the womb of Ashtar, eating the figs from my garden, listening to the girl-children playing in the streets … “Next year,” she said.
The army struggled on, ever deeper into the southern provinces of the Empire.
*
“She did what?” Adrastes demanded.
Declan laid down the tray with the high priest’s evening ration. “She healed Patros of his wound. The legions buzz with the miracle. Did you not see him today, Your Eminence, riding at the side of the king?”
“I remained in my cart today, repeating the catechism in thanks for our victory.”
“Yes, of course.” Declan dodged a page bearing sumptuous carpets, pillows, furs, and bowed before the jeweled shrine and the gold image of the god.
Adrastes tucked a napkin under his chin and contemplated with distaste the stringy meat of some unidentified beast and the stale bread. “My personal stores were lost in the raid?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
Adrastes shook his head. “A pity.” Delicately he placed a crumb on his tongue. “And the witch-queen—the king made her heal his companion?”
“I would say, Your Eminence, that she did it because she wished to.”
Adrastes snorted. “Because she wishes him alive for some plot of her own, you mean. She would enspell him, too.”
“A powerful spell, then,” ventured Declan. The bandage he wore helped to conceal his expression, and he stood behind Adrastes, just beyond the circle of lamplight; but something in his voice made the high priest turn and stab him with a black, forbidding stare.
“Take care, Declan. Devious, she is, very devious, all lies and mockery; she seeks to cast down the throne of Bellasteros and drag the name of the god in the dust. We are the sons of righteousness. She and her whores—evil, Declan, evil. We must defend the god from vile Sabazel.” His lips were moist, Declan saw, and he savored his words as he had savored the sacrifice of the prisoners.
“Yes, of course, Your Eminence,” Declan said with a bow. “Do you require anything else?”
“Where is my wine? Surely that, too, did not perish?”
“No. I shall bring it.” Declan backed away, turned, and vanished into the gathering dusk. His brows were drawn down, his mouth tight with thought.
*
I should not be here, Danica told herself even as she ducked, alone, out of the winter night into Bellasteros’s tent. The feeble light of lamp and brazier assaulted her eyes; she stopped and blinked.
In that moment when her eyesight failed, her other senses leaped awake. Something small and black and glittering, something hidden and dangerous—her eyes cleared. Bellasteros stood beside his table, watching her. His gaze was dark, rich, and warm. And this winter had chilled her to the bone. She laid her shield against a chest and went to him.
They embraced. Danica set her cheek against his and allowed herself for just a moment to taste his scent, to dwell on the memories that taste evoked. He was tired, she thought— they were both tired. Too tired, too tense to rest, suspended tautly in their words and deeds, intertwined.
“I become a small soft creature, protected by a shell,” Danica told him. “I make that shell thicker, stronger, fearing what I feel—fearing to feel at all, until I cannot feel. Forgive me …”
Bellasteros’s fingertip stroked her face, her chin, her throat. “Too much to say. Too much that can never be said. Forgive me.”
She let her lips brush his and she turned away. Her shield glimmered in odd discordant swirls, responding to something …
“My thanks again for your compassion,” said Bellasteros. “Patros, Chryse—I should have prevented the attack on the baggage train.”
“And I should have prevented the attack on my camp,” Danica returned.
Bellasteros sighed. “Mardoc turned their flank and routed them. Of course he could not stop to save Chryse …”
“He did not have to save Adrastes, either.”
“True. Very true.” They touched again, hand to hand, glance to glance, seeking reassurance. “The power is hard to bear.” he murmured. “We are mortal, but we know too much for mortals. We know our fates rest in the hands of others—friends and enemies alike. We have the power to see our own vulnerability.”
“So then, you sense it, too,” said Danica. “But is it a blessing, or a curse?”
His mouth softened. “At this moment, a blessing.” He laid his hand against the mound of her belly; the child twitched, restless, as torn with difficulty as its parents. “Of all my weaknesses, this little one here is the greatest—its mother rides hard, she fights hard, she spends her strength in my behalf, in Harus’s, and in Ashtar’s.”
Danica smiled against his cheek. “The same?”
“Ah … perhaps.”
“We shared the fruit beyond the end of the world, you and I.”
“My sister,” Bellasteros whispered. “My spouse. You of all women to carry my heir and plumb the depths of my weakness.”
“You,” she began, “of all men …” A thorn in her mind, pricking her; she started from his arms. Her eye fell on the sparking shield. “What?” she asked, stepping toward it. A wave of nausea swept over her and she staggered dizzily, as if she fell from a great height into waiting nets, nets spread open and ready, black as jet, sharp as flint, pitiless …
In two strides she was by the shield. She lifted it, set it on her arm, flung open the chest on which it had leaned. There, beneath oddments of silk and ivory, a black onyx ring. She touched it. It was so cold it burned her finger.
Bellasteros leaned over her shoulder. “It was in my tent when I returned with Solifrax,” he said. “I knew it not.”
“And your pages packed it away when we moved.” Danica lifted the ring. Heavy, heavy and cold, it was an icy pulse driving the blood from her hand. With a curse she tossed it into the center of the tent.
Bellasteros seized Solifrax from the table and whipped it from its sheath. It spat fire, ripping the shadows. With the razor-sharp point he plucked the ring from the floor and held it aloft. “Notice,” he said, in a dry ironic rage, “that the band is cast like the encompassing wings of a falcon.”
“A pretty bauble, surely,” growled Danica, “and yet no one has complained of its loss.”
“Then I did condemn Theara from my own mouth!” Bellasteros exclaimed. “Stupid fool that I was, not to have realized what this meant …” They eyed each other, remembering what they had said in the last few moments, blanching in one mingled agony of fear, anger, and exasperated weariness.
“So declare yourself my enemy, Adrastes!” Bellasteros cast the ring into the embers of the brazier. It seemed at first to attract all the heat from the fire, growing larger, blacker, denser, blotting out the flame. Then, with a resounding crack, it exploded.
Both Danica and Bellasteros ducked, warding off the flying, needlelike shards, sword and shield ringing. The brazier was filled with a hissing scarlet fire, leaping upward, snapping at the braces of the tent—then it was gone. The brazier toppled onto its side, spewing cinders over the rug.
Bellasteros reached warily out, stirred the cinders with the point of the sword, then bent and touched them. They were ice cold. “And he accuses you of sorcery,” the conqueror said at last. His breath trembled.
“I am not sure,” said Danica, “whether to be angrier at his spying on you or at his interrupting the moment …”
Bellasteros rose and stood slapping Solifrax against his leg. “Perhaps I should escort you back to your encampment, my lady. The morrow, I think, will soon be at our throats.”
They did not touch again as they exited the tent. Their weapons dulled and fell silent, numb. The wind screamed as it scored the camp with tiny spicules of ice. Side by side the king and the queen walked, wr
apped in individual cloaks, wrapped in individual disgust. They did not notice the cloaked figure that stepped from behind Bellasteros’s tent and followed them.
I should not have come, Danica thought. Mother! Given one moment of peace and I reveal everything
“I let my guard fall for one moment of peace,” Bellasteros muttered, “and I reveal everything …”
They paused in the lee of another tent. Patros’s tent, Danica noted idly. “So we thicken our shells,” she said to Bellasteros.
He sighed, his face concealed by the murk, eyes shuttered.
Someone else sighed. A long, quavering sigh of pleasure and of satiety. A chill tightened Danica’s back that had nothing to do with the sleet lashing her face. Patros’s tent, and Ilanit’s hand drawing him from death … It was no happenstance, then, that had drawn her here, from Bellasteros’s quarters, with Bellasteros at her side. It was her accursed sixth sense. No, she moaned to herself. Not this as well. Mother, please, I cannot.
A gentle laugh, a murmured endearment, rustling linen. Even Bellasteros heard this time; the soft resonances penetrated the gale. He turned, seized Danica’s arm. “No, let it go.”
Desperate, the ground swaying beneath her, her heart wrenching unevenly in her chest—she set her jaw so firmly that it ached. “If I wink at her law-breaking, what then would I have left?” she demanded hoarsely. “What then?”
Her voice stung him. He dropped her arm and stepped back.
Danica almost wished he could stop her. She turned and ripped open the flap of the tent. No light but the gentle rosy glow of the brazier, shadows softly draped about enlaced limbs, a garden of joy blooming in midwinter, in mind-winter … It was too beautiful to be wrong; surely the borders of Sabazel enclosed this place, surely the winter solstice was already here—no!
The horror in the lovers’ eyes as they saw her cut her to the quick. She hated them for making her do what she had to do, hurting them, hurting herself.
Strike, before I fail! She lunged forward, drew her sword, knitted her fingers in Patros’s hair and yanked him upward, away from Ilanit’s supine body. Her blade indented the throbbing pulse in his throat. He wilted visibly. “So,” she said, acidly, “you are recovered from your wound.”
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