Shadows of Sanctuary

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  The girl, Seylalha, shrouded in a cloak of feathers and spun gold, clutched the side-rail of the open platform as six bearers recruited from the garrison struggled with the rough-hewn steps. She lurched violently to one side, spilling the luxuriant cloth almost to the ground, but her dancer’s reflexes saved her from an ill-omened tumble. Ten felons from the city dungeons, drugged into a stupor, clambered past—oblivious to the past and present as well as the limited future. Their white robes were already soiled by numerous falls in the muddy streets but none had seriously injured himself.

  At the rear of the procession, wearing another mask of hammered gold and obsidian, Prince Kadakithis groped his way to the tent. He glanced at Molin as he passed though their masks made subtle communication impossible. It was enough, for Molin’s purposes, that the Prince himself was entering the tent. He tied the cloth-door of the tent closed and braced three crossed spears against the lintel.

  The Hell Hounds formed an outer perimeter—the Hell Hounds save for Tempus whom Molin, with self-congratulations, had had assigned to other duties in the palace; the man might not do as he was told, but he wouldn’t be near this ritual. The Hounds held their drawn swords before them; they would administer the coup de grace should anyone leave or enter the tent before sunrise. Molin reminded them of their obligations in a voice that carried well beyond the unfinished walls.

  “Those Ten whom Vashanka destroyed have been disgraced and remain unworshipped to this day; their very names have been unlearned. But the wraith of a god is far stronger than the spirit of a mortal man. They will feel their deaths again and converge upon this site seeking an unwitting or feeble mortal whom they can usurp and use against their brother. It is your duty to see that this does not occur!”

  Zalbar, captain of the Hell Hounds, bellowed his comprehension of Molin’s order.

  Chapter 6

  THE WOMEN, AND they were all dressed as women though Seylalha knew some of them were the eunuchs who routinely guarded her, crept forward to remove the heavy cloak from her shoulders. She shook the cramped silk and knotted her fingers in anticipation. A partition of fine netting separated the musicians from the other participants in this drama, but their sounds were familiar and oddly soothing. The carpet on which she had always danced lay slightly to one side of the centre of the tent and behind the carpet was a mound of pillows to which the burly “women” directed her. The white-robed men were invited to partake of a banquet laid out on a low table and fell over each other rushing to the sumptuous food. The masked figure who stood apart from the rest and seemed distinctly uncomfortable under his splendid robe was led to a separate table where only stale bread and water had been laid and an ugly, heavy short-sword awaited him.

  So, that was the god, Seylalha thought, as the mask was lifted from his face. He was weak-chinned—but what civilized man did not show the stains of his rich foods and soft bed? He was, at least, a whole man. The man-god would not look at her, preferring to watch the darkest, least penetrable recesses of the tent. Seylalha knew fear for his curiously absent passions. Sliding off the cushions she struck the first position of her dance, expecting the musicians to lift their instruments.

  But the musicians reached for their clatter-sticks and the eunuchs guided her rudely back to the cushions. She shook their hands away, aware that they dared not hurt her, but then her attention, and the attention of everyone in the tent, was riveted to a newcomer, a more appropriate man-god who had eased out of the darkness and held an unsheathed dagger in his left hand.

  He was tall, massive, etched with the harsh lines of a rough and feral man. The one whom she had mistaken for the man-god embraced the newcomer with hearty familiarity. “I was afraid you wouldn’t show up, Tempus.”

  “Both you and He had my word. Torchholder is a canny man; he distrusts me already—I could not walk in right behind you, my Prince.”

  “She is beautiful…” the Prince mused, glancing to Seylalha for the first time. “You’ve reconsidered? It would be for the best if you did … even now. Her beauty means nothing to me. None of this means anything to me except that it must be done and I must do it.”

  “Yes, you’re the one to do it… though she is more tempting than I would have thought possible.”

  The chiefmost of the gowned eunuchs moved to separate the men, giving the interloper a stiff punch on the shoulder. Seylalha, who could read the language of movement, froze in terror as the feral stranger turned, hesitated and plunged the dagger deep into the eunuch’s chest all within the space of a few heartbeats. The other “women” who saw little more than a blur of movement, wailed and groaned in terror as the dead eunuch collapsed to the rough ground. Even the white-robed feasters ceased their eating and became a frightened knot of sheep-like men.

  “It will be as I warned you, my Prince—not merely the Ten but all the others. If you’ve no taste for bloodshed it would be best if you depart now. My men await you. I will do my father’s work.”

  “What of Zalbar? I knew nothing about that until Molin addressed them.”

  “They did not see me; it is unlikely they will see you.”

  The one who had been called the Prince slunk into the darkness. The other retrieved his dagger from the corpse.

  “Our Imperial Prince is not one for rituals of bloodshed and violence,” he said to everyone in the tent. “He has asked me to take the role of my father in his stead. Would any here gainsay my right to act for Vashanka and my Prince?”

  The question was purest rhetoric. The bloody corpse was testimony to the price of gainsaying this intruder. Seylalha wrenched a heavy tassel from one of the pillows and shredded it behind her. She clung to the belief that her life had been an arrow directed to this night, her dance would be her salvation; but that belief was shaken as the eunuchs who had ruled her for so many years cowered in fear and the feasting men made a doomed attempt to find hiding places.

  With an unpleasant smile the man-god strode to the table where he ripped a mouthful of bread from the loaf, drained the beaker of salted water and lifted the crude sword. He shifted it once or twice in his hand, his fingers adjusting to its awkward balance. With the same smile still on his lips he advanced towards the terrified men in white.

  Screaming, despite the drugs, they raced through the tent as he winnowed through their numbers. The wisest, least drugged, plunged through the netting into the company of musicians. The man-god stalked his ersatz-brethren as if the darkness did not exist and with a vicious determination that bespoke his acceptance of the role. He shoved the shrieking women aside with his free hand and delivered the final strokes with the bloody sword. The killing completed, he set about gathering the heads of his enemies and placing them in a gory heap on the banquet table—a task made no easier to do or watch by the edgeless sword he wielded.

  Still kneeling among the pillows, Seylalha drew the sheer silk tightly around herself, twisting the loose ends about her arms until she had become a sea-green statue, for the cloth did nothing to conceal her beauty and little to conceal her pale, quivering fear. When the blood-smeared stranger who was more god than man had placed the last trophy upon the table he vented his divine violence on the woman-garbed eunuchs. Seylalha pulled the pins from her hair; the honey-brown cascade covered her eyes and hid her from the sight of the guardians lying butchered on the ground. She took fistfuls of hair and pressed them against her ears, but that was not enough to block the knowledge of how the half-men had died. As she had done so many times as a child and as a woman, she began to rock back and forth, keening softly to gods whose names she had long since forgotten.

  “It is time, Azyuna.”

  His voice broke into her prayers. His hand clamped over her wrist and drew her inexorably to her feet. Her legs shook and she could not remain upright except through his hold on her. When he shook her slightly she only closed her eyes tighter and swayed limply in his grasp.

  “Open your eyes, girl. It is time!”

  Obedient to the outside will Seylalha ope
ned her eyes and shook back her hair. The hand that gripped her was clean. The voice that commanded her had something of that forgotten wild land of her birth in it. His hair was the same colour as her own, but he was not a man come to claim his bride. She hung from his grip as mute and fearful as the quiet women behind the torn netting.

  “You are obviously the one to make Azyuna’s pleas—however little you resemble her. Do not force me to hurt you more than I must already!” he whispered urgently, leaning close to her ear, his breath as warm and thick as blood. “Or have they not told you the whole legend? I am myself, I am Vashanka—we both grow impatient, girl. Dance because your life depends on it.”

  He flicked her wrist and sent her sprawling to the blood-dampened carpet. She brushed her hair away with a forearm made red from his grip. The man-god had shed the sombre clothing he had worn for the killing and stood near the pillows in a clean gold-worked tunic, but the crude sword still hung by his thigh—a rusty blush on the white tunic to mark where its cleaning had not been complete. She read the tension in his legs, the minute extension of his left hand towards the sword-hilt, the slight lowering of one eyebrow and remembered that the dance was her freedom.

  Seylalha brought one hand through the tangled mane of her hair, pointed two fingers to her musicians. They struck a ragged, jarring chord to mark their own apprehensions but the tambourist found her throbbing drone and the dance began.

  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 moistness 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.r />
  “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 of Rankan 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.

  Chapter 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.