His eyes glinted in the glow of Danica’s shield, but he said nothing, pleaded nothing, retained his dignity. The salt scent of his body, so like Bellasteros’s, made her dizzy. And Bellasteros himself stood just behind her, tensely silent.
Ilanit sat up, knowing better than to grasp her mother’s sword arm, assaulting Danica instead with her great shining eyes and the quavering strength of her voice. “It is I who should atone; I came here of my own free will. Mother, please, spare him.”
And my will that brought me to Bellasteros tonight—strike! Danica’s sword traced a thin red line down Patros’s body, past the scar on his abdomen, down to the inside of his thigh. And this time he did gasp, the cold metal nicking the root of his manhood.
“Danica,” Bellasteros said. Only one word, but his meaning was clear: Remember where you are, what this would signify to the army of Sardis.
Ilanit rolled off the bed and threw herself at Danica’s feet. “In the name of Ashtar, Mother, it is I who should pay, not him, the fault is not his …”
“No,” Patros croaked, “I enticed her here; if I must pay, I will …” He closed his eyes. The blood drained from his face; the perspiration stood in great amber beads across his brow. But he made no struggle, no protest.
“By all the gods, by starfire and moonglow, may the sky-demons damn me for my weakness …” Danica was almost sobbing with frustration, Patros’s courage too great, Ilanit’s honesty too painful, Bellasteros’s restraint too noble. Her wrist turned and her sword flicked, leaving a red furrow in the fold where Patros’s leg met his groin. And she released him.
He collapsed on the narrow camp bed, inhaling as deeply and shakily as if he had not taken a single breath since Danica had entered the tent. Bellasteros wobbled, started to step forward and thought better of it.
Danica whipped around and grasped Ilanit’s hair, jerking her upward so roughly that her knees left the ground, jerking her head forward and baring the back of her neck. “If you admit your complicity, then you shall indeed pay,” Danica said between her teeth. She hated the sound of her own voice. How can you do this to me? she thought. How, my love, my daughter, how can you make me do this?
Ilanit gasped at the pain, stiffening, but she did not struggle. My child, Danica screamed silently, I love you as my life … Her sword rose for the blow. The star-shield flamed, washing the girl’s naked body in fire.
“No!” both Patros and Bellasteros cried. The king lunged, grasping Danica’s arm in a steel-hard grip, holding the sword upraised.
Danica stopped, looking from horror-stricken face to horror-stricken face. And she realized what it was they thought she was doing. She wanted to laugh in despair. She wanted to cry.
“Leave me be,” she snapped at Bellasteros. “Only Sardians murder their daughters.”
He flinched, stepped back, turned aside. She remembered then, too late, that his own infant daughter, his and Chryse’s younger child, had been exposed by Mardoc simply for being a girl. Ah, Mother, Danica sighed to herself, I lash about me blindly, striking everyone, hurting those I love—forgive me most of all, forgive me.
Her eyes glistened in the glow of her shield. Her sword moved in delicate strokes, cutting Ilanit’s hair from her head; the fine-spun gold cascaded from Danica’s hand. When Ilanit appeared shorn among the Companions they would know why and would taunt her for her frailty.
Danica sheathed her sword and set down her shield. Her anger drained away like blood from an open wound; she seemed to be upheld in a thin, clear bubble of light, observing herself and the others from a great distance, carved figures moving painfully across a game board of light and shadow.
Patros huddled on the bed, hands covering his face, shoulders shaking, heedless of the blood smearing his thigh. Bellasteros swayed against a tent brace, eyes closed, mouth slack. Ilanit reached for her strewn clothing and dressed shyly, quietly, avoiding Danica’s gaze. But Danica’s gaze was as soft as the short curls now covering her daughter’s head. “My poor shorn lamb,” she murmured, and she gathered the girl into her embrace.
Danica, one arm clasping Ilanit securely to her side, laid the handful of hair across the glowing embers in the brazier. Patros and Bellasteros looked up. Each strand caught fire, flaming up into the image of a net, interlaced filaments of brilliant gold. Inside the net a luminescence gathered, crimson fire, yellow sun, silver moon. The light grew, flowing upward, brushing the top of the tent with tiny bursting sparks. It wavered as if breathing, and two points of blue, distant glimpses of a clear sky, shaped themselves like eyes at its top.
Danica and IIanit fell to their knees. Their upturned faces shone, cleansed of anguish; tears left trails of molten fire down their cheeks. Patros and Bellasteros exchanged one glance, then they, too, knelt.
The light formed the suggestion of a woman, seen more by the mind than by the eye. Wise eyes saw frailty and accepted it, raised arms offered absolution. A cold, fresh wind, the pure breath of ice-crowned Cylandra, sang through the tent and through the bodies of the people within, lifting them, bearing them away to some bright haven …
Then there was nothing but blackened strands matting the embers and a faint stench of burning hair. But the exaltation lingered.
Danica was strong enough to rise, calm enough to lay her hand against Bellasteros’s face and turn it to her own. “What, then, do we have?” she asked.
“Everything,” he replied. He turned his lips into her palm.
Patros bent to kiss Ilanit’s hand. He gave Danica her sword and shield and escorted them to the tent flap as if he showed them from the audience hall of the emperor’s palace.
The sleet was over. Stars raced among scudding clouds, dancing with a waxing moon. The wind sang across the depths of the sky, its melody a hymn of winter’s promise.
“Good night,” Danica said to Bellasteros. “Until the morrow, and the destiny thereof.”
“Until the morrow.” He bowed to both women; his dark pellucid eyes rested on Danica. “And the morrow after that, until the end of the game.”
She walked with IIanit close by her side into the rushing shadows of the night. A moment’s peace after all, she thought. One blessed moment. “Was it worth it?” she asked her daughter wryly.
IIanit returned, equally wry, “I think … yes.”
And Danica could not help but laugh.
Bellasteros turned back into Patros’s tent, finding his friend collapsed once more on the bed. “Never again,” he said, “accuse me of playing a dangerous game.”
“No, my lord,” Patros groaned.
But Bellasteros was smiling. Ruefully, but smiling nonetheless.
The hooded figure stumbled away from a tiny gash in the seam of the tent. A safe distance away it stopped. Declan’s narrow face turned upward to the fitful starlight as if he had never before seen stars, as if they were new molded of ice and fire for his own private audience.
“Ashtar?” he queried tentatively. The wind caressed him, filling his ears with distant, barely discernible chimes.
*
Adrastes and Mardoc sat opposite each other, empty wine cups dangling from their hands. The high priest’s ring finger was seared red, his face glistened with a pale sweat; his topaz ring, crushed and blackened, lay before him on a patch of rug burned to ash. In sepulchral if somewhat shaky tones Adrastes said, “He has fallen. You heard, my friend; the witch-queen holds him in the palm of her hand, and the evil light of her shield blinds him.”
Mardoc’s face grew even longer. “My poor lad. If only I had killed her then, after Azervinah, before she drew you to her in … Sabazel …”
“But he has always been obdurate, has he not, insisting on dealing with her?”
“She is an ally, he says, and she does fight well. If only …”
Adrastes tightened his jaw, leaned forward, and rapped Mardoc smartly on the knee. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop moaning over might-have-beens. Recognize the situation now.”
Mardoc stirred and stared with red
-rimmed eyes at the priest. Adrastes stared back, glittering nodules of jet pinioning the general to his chair.
“He has fallen,” repeated Mardoc, unblinking. “The witch-queen holds him in the palm of her hand. She carries his heir and he preens himself, pleased. He would not listen to my warnings and he is lost.”
“Yes,” Adrastes hissed. He leaped to his feet, speaking urgently to himself as he paced across the tent, leaving Mardoc squinting at the empty chair. “Yes. I tested him by sending Gerlac’s shade to kill the witch. But he would not accept my word that it was Chryse’s deed; he already knew of it, he said, and it angered him. Therefore he has fallen to the witch’s guile. He knew his concubine Theara was tainted with goddess worship, and yet he did not correct her, leaving that task to me.”
Mardoc shook himself and peered into his cup. The name of Chryse had penetrated his fog. “She gave him only daughters,” he said belligerently. “The demon-woman promises him a son. She must die, and the child she carries with her. Only then can Sardis be saved.”
Adrastes nodded. “He is strong and clever, but he cannot hide the truth. He fears me, as well he should, but he does not fear me enough.”
“Truth?” Mardoc asked. “The Sabazian has enspelled him. Her alliance is useless and she must be destroyed. That is the truth.”
But Adrastes continued. “No, a greater truth than that. The rumors of his birth …” He scowled, his beard coiling venomously. “He has Gerlac’s temper, Gerlac’s courage—he has the spirit of a god. How could he have hidden, all these years … No. If it is true, he did not realize it himself. Not until the witch-queen bound him to the service of the goddess. He is no god, but a devil.”
Mardoc’s face flushed with comprehension. He hauled himself from the chair. “Could it really be true, that that chit Viridis was consecrated to Ashtar, that Bellasteros was conceived not in Gerlac’s marriage bed but in …” He could not say it.
Adrastes could, and with relish. “Sabazel. Think—he was born two moons early, but a lusty babe. He could have been conceived at the barbarous rites of Sabazel, a bastard with no Sardian blood, a heretic.”
“Gerlac always suspected … Forgive me, Your Eminence, but I thought it was the madness of age and care, lies planted in his overtaxed mind by those jealous of such a prince—” Mardoc’s voice broke. “Such a prince. A son to me, taking his first sword from my hands, returning my staff of office to me first, of all his officers, when he became king …”
Adrastes set his hands on the general’s shoulders, fixing the other man’s eyes with the force of his gaze. “Enough of this maudlin memory. Do you know what I recall? That Gerlac and I heard the girl Viridis praying to Ashtar, singing some spell over the babe; fortunate, that she was still weak from the birth and Gerlac’s hands so strong. Bellasteros was spared the taint of Sabazel then, and nurtured under the wings of Harus. Even I believed him the son of Gerlac, of the god. Until now. Now the witch-queen calls him and he obeys. He obeys, Mardoc!”
“He obeys,” repeated the general. Adrastes released him and again he blinked around him, shaking himself. “Proof,” he said, as if seeking for some remaining shred of his honor. “Show me proof, please, Your Eminence, that I may believe.”
“And that I may believe,” said Adrastes, frowning in a brief uncertainty. “A heretic king—a serious charge. We must be sure, so that being sure we can move.”
“Move?” Mardoc muttered. “Two days’ march from Iksandarun and the army eager to see Solifrax drawn in battle …”
But Adrastes was not listening. He blew out all the lamps except for the two before the altar of Harus. They guttered, flickering madly, casting gouts of shadow over the image of the god. The gold falcon seemed to move uneasily, its feathers fluffing, its bright eye fixed in guarded interest on the movements of the priest.
The tent flap shivered and Declan crept inside. “You!” Adrastes ordered. “My knives, my bowls—quickly.”
Declan scurried away, returned with the tools, set himself in the darkest, dimmest corner of the tent. Only his eyes reflected the twin flame on the altar, slowly filling with a terrible conviction.
“The dead know the answer,” said Adrastes, “let the dead respond.”
“Sorcery?” hazarded Mardoc, but the priest’s glittering eyes pierced him and he shut his mouth.
“Even Gerlac did not know,” said Adrastes. “He suspected, on good evidence, but he did not know. And his shade has been shamefully cast into darkness by the goddess and her minions, beyond reach, beyond hope …”
Adrastes lifted a large cloth-shrouded jar from behind the altar, wincing as his finger touched it; he pulled the cloth away and a thick scent of spices and natron flooded the tent. Delicately he dipped inside, grasped something, pulled—the severed head of one of the imperial prisoners appeared, flesh sloughing from bone, eyes glazed, dripping vinegar and decay.
Even battle-hardened Mardoc gulped several times in succession and dropped quickly onto his chair. In the corner Declan was surreptitiously sick.
Adrastes, chuckling with pleasure, set the grotesque object on the altar of Harus. He raised his knife, held the bowl ready, began the incantation. The lamps guttered again, whipping away from the severed head; then the flames leaped up steady and blood-red.
The entire interior of the tent flushed scarlet, as if bathed in blood. Only Adrastes’s breastplate did not reflect the light; it remained dark, a void on his chest. The image of the god shimmered rosily, somehow clean, pure as a sunrise, and a quick rustle of hunting wings sounded in the shadows.
Mardoc’s eyes danced red and gold, awestruck. He slid from his chair to his knees. Declan huddled farther back, looking out between his fingers as if hardly daring to see.
The incantation grew louder, commanding. The knives did their work, filling the bowls with gore; the skull beneath the skin was florid, the eye sockets filled with flaming motes, the teeth clenched in a rictus grin.
The tent flapped suddenly, billowing as if admitting some presence. The incantation stopped between one syllable and the next. “Speak,” ordered Adrastes.
And the skull spoke. It was hesitant and slurred, but it was speech. “Who calls—breaking the bonds of the otherworld. Who dares …”
“The talon of Harus, the grand inquisitor of Sardis, Adrastes Falco. I call, offering flesh, offering fire; answer me.”
“Answer …” The voice trailed off, a sigh, a moan.
“Who are you?”
At first silence, and then, distantly, “I was serving-woman to the princess Viridis, and nurse to her son. I fed him and bathed him and guided his first steps, until he was taken from me. The king, Gerlac, the demon murderer …”
Adrastes’s knife flicked. Liquid from the bowls sprayed the face of the skull, leaving steaming pockmarks. The bone cracked. The unearthly voice stopped, mumbled disjointedly, moaned again,
“The child,” asked the priest. “Where was he conceived? Not born, woman; conceived.”
The lamps sprayed sparks upward, golden flecks of light raining on the image of the god, on the grisly skull, on Adrastes himself. “Fathered in Sabazel, under the eye of the goddess Ashtar. Fathered according to her rites and consecrated to her name …”
“Then may he be damned to all eternity!” Adrastes raised the knife and drove it deep into the skull. The voice shrieked, not loudly, but high, keening, a blade of sound. And the skull shriveled into black gobbets of stinking muck, fouling the altar so that it reeked like a charnel house. “So perish all heretics,” declaimed Adrastes. He panted, his eyes flashed, his mouth opened on sharp teeth. An orgasmic shudder rippled through his body. “So perish them all!”
The fires of the lamps guttered again as wildly beating wings swept through the tent. Then there was silence. The lamps were only tiny clear flames, the shadows simply shadows.
Adrastes inhaled deeply, calming himself. “Declan,” he ordered. “Clear this away.” And to Mardoc, “So our questions are answered, General. We have
waked from our dream and find our duty clear before us.”
Mardoc looked not like one wakened from sleep, but like one cast into the depths of a nightmare, incapable of escape. “He was a son to me,” he croaked. “I loved him. But he betrays me, he betrays Sardis, he betrays the god—he chooses the witch-queen to bear his son …” Suddenly he turned to Adrastes, grasping his arm. His eyes almost started from their sockets. “No one must know this, no one. Not here, not before the gates of Iksandarun. He must take the Empire for Sardis …”
“Indeed,” said Adrastes. He eased Mardoc into the chair and laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Fear not for Sardis. It will prevail; the falcon’s wings will protect it, grateful for this cleansing.”
Mardoc lay back in the chair, looked up at the roof of the tent, and wept.
With an impatient snort Adrastes turned away. He inspected his burned, gore-stained finger. Shrugging, he began to suck on it. “Declan,” he said thickly. “Do your ears no longer function! Clean up the altar!”
The young priest drew himself up slowly, as if he had aged fifty years in the last few moments. He stepped forward, avoiding even the hem of Adrastes’s robe. “I doubt,” he whispered, “if such befoulment can ever be cleaned.” He reached out in supplication to the falcon, and the falcon, briefly but perceptibly, nodded.
*
Danica lay awake on her bedroll. Through a slit in the tent flap she could see the clearing night. Her body seemed to float a handsbreadth above the blankets, buoyed by the wind, the starlight, the setting rays of the moon. Tired, so tired, and yet for a moment the tension was gone, the grim awareness abandoned; her thoughts drifted like snowflakes down Cylandra’s clear, cold wind.
She was growing accustomed to the cleft in her dialogue with the goddess. She spoke in monologue now, answering her own questions—could it be that even the goddess had to answer only as best she could?
Ilanit is to me as I am to you, Mother, she thought. Both of us, bound by an implacable mercy; you ask much, but you give much in return.
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