Leo stood rubbing his throat, fighting to spit out words of judgment.
“It isn't safe to return him to Father Demetrios,” Ioannes spoke over his shoulder. “Or any other monks. They don't know ... oh, Christ ... The Jews and the Turk here are our allies, just like the Northerner. You won't get people here to understand that, not if he keeps praying at them. God knows who else his hymns could hurt.”
“Find out...” Leo gasped. “Find out who sent him.”
They must all be mad in Byzantium by now. He knew that Emperor Michael was weak, but was he truly so weak that his masters would send assassins this far south to take out a man who had made it perfectly clear he wanted no part of Empire?
But who? And how? Those were the problems with which Ioannes now wrestled, and he had not the experience to deal with them.
“Kemal,” Leo gestured. “Take him. Question him. Don't kill him.” He released his clutch on Ioannes’ arm and pointed to three of the older men, a farmer, a Christian merchant, and a landowner of about Ioannes’ rank. “You go with Kemal. Keep them both alive.”
Kemal might be safe by virtue, if you could call it that, of his unfaith. But the others? “Do you have wax?” Leo asked the merchant. “Wax balls ... in your ears, if he starts up again.”
Odysseus, patron saint of desperate Byzantines, help us now, Leo blasphemed silently. He waved away an offer of watered wine: no telling who had touched it first. He scowled at the idea that he should return to his house and rest. He was building his house right here, building it of men and women washed up like potsherds on this shoal of Empire, ground together, mortared one to another by blood and fear and need, and used by a desperate craftsman first to patch a wall or two, then to construct an edifice to replace the old and crumbling one.
“We finish,” he said and walked on. The older men followed him as if he had been a strategos or a prince, not a man under sentence, now, of death. That was a sentence all men shared.
Dust and sour fear mingled foully in his throat. He paid correct attention to each feature of his home's defense. But his eyes strayed to the horizon like a man awaiting execution but hoping for a reprieve.
When they finished, the sun remained in the sky. Well enough: he had enough time to do what he hoped.
“I have to go out to the caves,” he said. “Now.” His voice was only a rasp. “Who will ride with me?”
Like rats in a trap. The madman's words had troubled him all day. Let a madman or a traitor—he had been the prey of both—lead the Turks into the cave cities that had been set up as refuges, and his own people would be trapped. He flinched from the waking nightmare: warriors slashing their way downward through the many levels of the underground, missiles, or even fire, hurled down airshafts, monks bleeding out their lives on their own altars, women, their skirts bloodied, or even burning, clutching children, trampling each other, trampling even those who tried to keep some order, as they pushed through the narrow passageways downward, ever downward, to wind up with their backs against a final wall.
But traps could have different users and more than one door. If it were his last act, Leo meant to make sure that this trap would spring only upon the victims of his choice.
By the time Leo reached the entrance to Malagobia, his shoulders and throat ached from the day's two attacks. He wanted nothing so much as to be permitted to sit alone in a safe, darkened room until he felt safe enough to emerge, probably at about the same time as the Resurrection.
“My lord!” Leo started, twisting so violently in the saddle that even his tired horse shied, and he was hard-pressed to control it with hands that shook upon the reins. He pressed his fingers together; the brute danced, then stood, trembling almost as severely as he.
It was only the messenger he himself had sent to Joachim to tell him that he would bring Asherah home himself: not a maddened puppet of the fallen City mage, not a werewolf, not even Turks.
Joachim had given the messenger a message for Leo: Nordbriht had still not returned home. Remembering his dead Emperor's rages, Leo hissed in frustration. His throat hurt too much to curse. With luck, he might be able to say what he needed before his voice gave out altogether. At some point, he was going to have to decide whether to search for Nordbriht or to abandon the man who had been his companion since he arrived in Cappadocia.
Slowly, Leo dismounted. Either the ground trembled, or his knees really were that unsteady. No children ran screaming from the entrance to the caves, and the horses stood patiently, waiting to be led away: it must be his knees, then.
In a flurry of dark fabrics, Asherah emerged into the light of day and ran to him.
“I just heard from your father,” Leo assured her. “He is well.”
Asherah flung her arms about his neck. “Leo, who hurt you? I couldn't breathe, I felt as if someone were crushing me.”
Her eyes were wide with horror as she searched his face. Leo wrapped his arms about her. Joachim's “witchy” daughter, she had called herself. Yes, she would know if anything befell him. She had known.
“Asherah,” he rasped.
“Your poor voice! And you are bruised, too,”
Now, she touched his neck with far more care than before. When she hurled herself into his arms, her warmth and strength had reached out to encompass him. Now her touch eased the scrapes and bruises left by the madman's grasp.
Carefully, he eased himself away from her. She had always displayed such restraint. He did not want her ashamed, once her initial fears eased, to be caught embracing her husband in public.
Asherah turned and saw Leo's soldiers watching her. Most of them smiled. One or two looked courteously away. Meeting their eyes, she raised her chin, its stubborn set indicating clearly that she felt that, if their women would not run to them and ease their pain, so much the worse for them. Then, she flushed and reached for her veils. Her hands came up empty. Apparently, she had discarded both veils and self-restraint within the caves. She shrugged and turned back to Leo.
“Come with me!” she demanded. Taking him by the land, she led him toward the entry to the caves. The others hung back somewhat, still abashed, then followed. The entry gaped to receive them, then narrowed as if they crept down the throat of some landlocked Jonah's whale.
Still holding Leo's hand, Asherah caught up a torch. Leo glanced backward. Most of his men had never been inside Malagobia; that was for women and children and such men who had been sent to protect them. As the light of day diminished to a circle the size of a coin, then vanished, their eyes showed white. Shadows flickered on the rough-carved stone. Torches fastened to the wall darkened it with long ashen streaks.
Bending almost double, they descended until they came to the first level of common rooms. In the largest of them, women bustled as if in their own kitchens. Children clung to their skirts or huddled solemnly in those storage alcoves that were not stuffed too full to hold them.
One of the black-robed women moved across Asherah's path. “Some madman hurt him, Xenia.” Her voice cracked.
“In here,” said the older, taller woman. “You want the nard, don't you?”
“Please.” Asherah flashed her a worried smile and led Leo into the refectory in the room beyond. When it had been hollowed out, blocks of stone had been left at its center, and a long table and benches had been carved from them. Trenches before each bench showed the impress of feet over the centuries.
She drew him toward the nearer bench. Her hands pushed at his shoulders. “Sit down, Leo. Gentlemen, pardon me. Be seated, please. Thank you, Xenia.”
Opening the alabaster box the old nun handed her, Asherah dipped her fingers into it and rubbed the salve into Leo's throat and along the line of his jaw. The salve heated as it sank into his bruised skin, and its fragrance sweetened the dampness of the room. Leo sighed deeply and leaned his head back, resting it against Asherah's breast as she tended him. How odd her smile looked, with her face upside-down above his as she rubbed his neck. If no one else had been there, he knew
she would have kissed him.
Fabric brushed against the wall, and Leo came alert.
“Hush, my love,” his wife whispered to him, as if he turned to her after a nightmare. “Your men are thirsty. Your own throat must be parched. I think you can try to drink now.”
Two or three dark-eyed children toddled ahead of their mothers into the refectory, followed by a young monk (Leo managed—just—not to flinch) and the nuns. Sister Xenia herself carried a cup and pitcher that she set before Leo. Asherah poured for him. Again, the smell of herbs wreathed him.
Asherah nodded. “The others have wine?”
“Watered.” The old nun tightened her lips, a severe type of humor that brought a warmer smile from Asherah.
“This will help you, Leo.” She held the cup for him as if he were a child. He took it from her and brought it, and her hand as well, to his lips.
She laughed and tugged her fingers free. To his surprise, the nun smiled again. Some of the other women laughed kindly, or (the younger ones) sighed. The men assigned to guard the cave city entered, and the women turned to leave.
“Sit down,” Leo husked. “All of you. No, don't go away.”
Asherah sat beside him, her hands flicking dust from his harness or brushing at him as if she were afraid she would be blamed for neglecting him.
Leo drank again, then wiped his mouth, watching the shadowed faces turned toward his. Some were thinner than they had been; all looked more careworn. I never sought to lead. I wish I could make this easier for you. Only that night, he had thought he had stumbled into a ballad with a Ducas as the hero. If the luxury of Joachim's house, the wealth that came with winning his wife were his rewards, the burden of these people's lives was the payment.
“I beg you, do not fear. I did not come here to sound the alarm. In fact, you have accomplished more in this short time than I would have believed.”
If his words made people straighten their backs and raise their heads, they were not as empty as they sounded to him. I never sought command. Father, let this cup be lifted from me.
“But I have thought. More can be done to keep you and the children safe.
“You need a line of escape.”
Asherah edged closer against his side, and he restrained himself from drawing her closer yet. So reserved, so shamefast she had always been; and now? For everyone to see, she made it clear that he was hers and she was proud of him.
The room erupted into questions and demands. A woman with two children clinging to her rose to leave.
“Please don't go,” Leo called after her. “We need you. We need you to be as brave as you were when you brought those babies into the world.”
Asherah pressed his hand approvingly.
“Are you settled now? Will they be comfortable? Good. Then, listen to me and do not fear.” He drank again. The herbs in whatever it was Xenia had brought eased the rasp in his throat, but only somewhat.
“You know why you are here, in what has always been your refuge. But this time, we face Turks. Oh, they are human and not demons. I have lived among them, and a Seljuk man now serves me. But these, these are Turkmen, wilder than the men I know. Now, we have no promise that they won't take prisoners, God have mercy on their souls.”
The women blessed themselves repeatedly, the men more slowly, and Asherah, of course, not at all. “Today, I took a prisoner. He is being questioned. The Turks would do the same. Which means that these cities might not be sanctuary enough.”
He paused to let that sink in and let them exclaim away their initial fear.
“The reason I want you here is that you, not armed men, may be your country's last and best guard. Every woman strong enough to lift a jar or shift a sack can protect her home, and every child.
“You know how easy it is to cut or burn yourself in a kitchen. How if you turn those weapons on the Turks?”
Smiles bloomed then. One woman wiped away a tear. A boychild stood before his mother, trying hard to swagger. Asherah laughed softly. Sister Xenia smiled, her white teeth gleaming like a blade beneath the shadowed blades of her high cheekbones.
“We will set up traps. Spears in the bins of grain, hot oil, simmering on the hearths, to pour down the airshafts or set ablaze to cover your retreat. Even the millstones themselves can be poised to fall and crush the men on the other side of them. I need the men among us with strong backs to set up other millstones to seal off passages as you withdraw below.”
These were countrywomen, not sheltered ladies, used to fighting only with their wits and subtle poisons. Some had wielded scythes or carried burdens as well as any man: there was no reason they could not give at least some account of themselves.
“Below!” cried a woman almost as broad as she was tall. “We burrow out like rats, but we will be trapped like rats below, our backs to the wall.”
“What does it matter?” a man told her. “If we're pushed that far back, say your prayers. The Earth may indeed shudder and engulf us. At least, we can die fighting.”
“Or by our own hands,” someone else muttered, but Leo could not quite see who.
“Not that,” Asherah said. “Never again, that.”
“What other choices do we have?” the first man asked.
Asherah muttered beneath her breath.
“There is one other way, sir,” she interrupted. “Even if Turks force our backs to the wall, there is a way through it.”
She paused. In the silence, the ground rumbled. A faint spray of dust trickled from the carved ceiling.
“There is a way out,” Asherah said. “I found it.”
“Where does it lead to?”
Leo could have beat his forehead on the table. That was the problem, wasn't it? They didn't know where it ended.
“As Basil over there has said, if you're driven that far below, what does it matter where it ends? Run as far and fast as you can, and fight when you cannot run. You will not be alone. The rest of us, I pledge you, will be fighting our way down to relieve you.”
“A pincers!” Xenia's voice belled like a stooping hawk. “You would fight through to us?”
“By the grace of God,” said Leo. His voice broke, and he drank again. “I will take you to see the passageway my wife found in the depths of this city. Who will come with me?”
Ultimately, the nuns pressed in after Leo, crowding out the soldiers and the other women at the head of the line. Their dark robes whispered against the scarred rock of the narrow passageways, tall shadows gliding in an eerie regularity. This far beneath the surface of the earth, they showed no fear.
“Ai,” said Xenia, drawing her finger along the stone, “this looks older than the upper ways.”
“So I thought,” Asherah replied. “It grows older still. Soon you will see the wall paintings.”
“Wall paintings survive?” Xenia's eyes glinted, black under black brows.
“As they do in the walls of your churches. I have not seen the ones in the valley from which you were driven out, but my father tells me that some of the figures are marred about the face. These are untouched.”
The tall figures bent their heads, whispering to one another. If Nordbriht were here, Leo thought, he would reach for the amulet he no longer carries. Surreptitiously, he blessed himself.
“Let me lead from here,” Asherah whispered. Leo nodded and flattened himself against the rock face to allow her to pass. Asherah took the torch she carried, lit it from his, and slipped by him. Smaller than the other women and far more lithe, she slid past the bend in the corridor where, in what seemed like another life, she had hidden tools and torches. Here, the passage expanded almost into a hall; and here the walls had been smoothed to receive the paintings, mention of which caused such excitement among the women.
“Now you can see.” Asherah held up her torch well away from the figures on the walls lest its smoke and grime deface them.
"There." She pointed at the wall through which Leo had broken. Subsequently, they had slipped away together and patched
it, but only lightly, in case they must break through again—as they would probably do now.
Even in the brighter light, the nuns looked oddly formidable with their dark garb, dark brows, the hollow beneath sharp cheekbones: aging women, angry women, cast out from a cherished home.
They stared at the paintings of marching priests and priestesses—and Leo was far from certain that they did not represent gods every bit as much as the triple-crowned figures he had seen carved into cliffs above ground. One woman bent and traced the figure of a cat. Another followed the twinings of a serpent from the bend in the wall to where the painting broke off. And Xenia stared at the central figure's face with its olive skin, its too-bright eyes, and harsh brows. They resembled each other, save that the painted image possessed a beauty Xenia surely never enjoyed, even in her youth.
Two of the women laughed with joy. “Our mother, our Queen!” The echoes made Leo shudder.
“You found her?” Xenia demanded of Asherah. “You?”
The two women, tall and tiny, faced each other. Asherah did not drop her eyes.
“And said nothing?”
Asherah only shrugged. “It is hardly a thing the likes of me should spread the news of for the good of her kin. Do you understand what you see?”
“How should she find the way within?” Sister Phryne demanded in a harsh whisper.
“Is she not a woman? Was she not barred entry to the valley?”
“She refused to enter it. Her father is friend to the man who drove us out.”
“Her blood is older than ours; perhaps, she too has been called.”
“Did I not tell you,” Sister Xenia interrupted the whispers, “that she is the one chosen to bring what was hidden up again into the light?”
Leo was certain he did not like the sound of that. Nor of the way the nuns’ eyes flicked from Asherah to him and back again. The torchlight beat down on his wife's face: symmetrical, serene, but her eyes blazing with the passion for knowledge. She was going away from him, and he had to get her back.
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