Raksula growled under her breath, turning her back on Tembujin. She wiped Vlad’s hands with the silk rag. As she gave the arrowhead to Odo, she gazed long and hard at him, delivering some urgent if silent command; then she strutted after Baakhun. Odo trotted off toward his tent, humming under his breath, and then stopped as another scout approached the camp.
Hilkar, forgotten like some useless piece of baggage, still craned to see Sita’s face. But she crouched, her face averted, her shoulders rounded, beneath the gravid moon. He shook his head as if the light dazzled his eyes, and he realized that Tembujin was glaring at him. “Ah—g-good evening, my lord,” he stammered; hastily he scuttled away.
Tembujin spat into the dust at Hilkar’s heels. Then he extended his hand to Sita. “You may get up now,” he said in the common tongue. “No one remains to bite you.”
Perhaps it was the delicate moonlight that made her face seem so pale. “What were you saying?” she asked quickly, her words tumbling from her lips. “Something about a legion on the Road, something about Bellasteros and Andrion and sacrifice . . .”
“What is it to you?” Tembujin returned. He pulled her to her feet, caught her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to his. His thumb pressed into the softness of her cheek. “Why should it concern you that my father seeks to sacrifice Bellasteros, or failing that, his remaining child?”
Sita gulped and closed her eyes, denying him their expression. “I try to learn your language.” Her voice squeaked. “You and your . . . Raksula speak the common tongue so well.”
“Slave tutors,” Tembujin said dryly. “I would know my enemy.” And, inspecting her closely, “I wonder whether that worm Hilkar recognized you tonight?”
Her chin trembled in his fingers. His grasp gentled into a caress, but did not weaken. “Look at me, Sita.”
Slowly, reluctantly, her eyes opened. Lapis lazuli eyes, the color of the sky at evening, dusted by the moonlight with silver. Tembujin leaned so close that his face brushed hers. “I would advise you,” he whispered, “to call me ‘my lord,’ as Hilkar does. He is accustomed to such courtesy, although I daresay you are not.”
“Please, my lord.” she gasped, “Please . . .”
He kissed her, stilling her panicked breath, and close against her lips he murmured, “I told you. If you behave yourself, no harm will come to you. You are mine now.” He released her, saluted her, slung his bow over his shoulder.
Odo was interviewing the newly arrived scout. Tembujin elbowed the shaman aside and beckoned the man, questioning him closely. Odo followed. Words echoed fitfully down the wind, “Legion . . . Road passes through a valley . . . surprise attack . . .”
Sita stood unmoving, the print of Tembujin’s finger on her cheek, shaking like a willow leaf until they had all disappeared into the khan’s yurt. Toth slipped around a nearby wagon. “Are you well, my lady?”
“Do not call me that,” she hissed. “As for my health, it depends on Tembujin. On whether that relief column can turn the barbarian advance.”
Toth turned his shrunken face to the sky. His pale eyes filled with the lingering light of the sun, with the glow of the waxing moon, but the sky revealed nothing.
* * * * *
From the sanctuary atop the great ziggurat of Harus, Sardis’s two rivers seemed strands of light dividing sunset from moonrise.
Patros’s dark eyes, creased at the corners with years of sunshine and command, turned from the neat velvet-green squares of farmland to the east, past the jumbled tombs of the city of the dead, to the north where the port of Pirestia lay in a lavender haze against the rim of the sea. And on, to the west and the Royal Road to Farsahn, to Sabazel, to Iksandarun.
Shurzad rustled her finely pleated gown. Getting no response, she rattled her jewelry—a wide enameled collar, a headdress of golden leaves, earrings of cascading beads. Still her husband gazed silently into the gathering night. She lifted the veil that in deference to Sardian custom she wore in public, and her red lips whispered, “My lord, the ceremony is over.”
“Ah,” said Patros. He shook himself and nodded to the black-clad priest. “A fine ceremony of jubilee, Bonifacio.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Bonifacio bowed deeply in return. “I had hoped that my master Declan Falco would return from the emperor in Iksandarun in time to lead the ceremony.”
Patros cleared his throat. “Indeed.” As he offered Shurzad his arm, his eye fell upon the slight form of their daughter Valeria. Above the clinging veil her cornflower-blue eyes were great with the wonder of the ceremony and the height of the temple; her fragile hands were clasped in worship. “You are my finest jewel,” he whispered to her; she flushed with pleasure.
“And the proper setting for such a jewel,” murmured Shurzad, “is in the arms of Prince Andrion . . .”
“Let him choose his own wife,” Patros said.
“Because you could not?”
Patros’s mouth tightened. He escorted his women with punctilious courtesy to the long stairway, leaving the garland-draped altar, leaving the incense to coil in a thin gray smoke to the darkening sky and be spread into gauze by the wind.
Gold faded in the west and silver lit the east. The gilded helmet Patros wore sparked, its crimson plume nodding; the helmet Bellasteros had worn on the trek to Iksandarun was now a relic in the chief house of Harus. Patros chuckled humorlessly. “We honor King Gerlac’s birthday on the night of the full moon, implacable enemy of the moon that he was.”
“Is it true,” asked Shurzad, reaching protectively for Valeria’s hand, “that Gerlac’s hatred was so strong he became a demon after death?”
“Quite true. But his evil was vanquished by the spirit of the wife he murdered, Bellasteros’s mother Viridis.”
“The royal family in Iksandarun never stooped to such . . . unpleasantness. Even my kinsman Hilkar, ambitious as he was, would not resort to outright murder.”
“Hilkar has gnawed the dry bone of resentment these many years, profiting nothing from it.”
Shurzad’s kohl-thick lashes fluttered. “Poor soul. He was to have wed the princess Roushangka, but he saw her given to Bellasteros. As a lesser wife. It was Chryse, after all, who bore Andrion.”
Patros glanced at her, a brief secret gleam. He peered over the walls and down the western road. No couriers approached.
The shrines of lesser gods crouched on a wide pavement at the feet of Harus’s ziggurat. To one side rose a new one, open to the sky, planted about with scarlet anemones that stirred in the wind. Patros nodded obeisance; to Shurzad’s suddenly stony face he said, “We must honor all gods, my lady. Even the emperor bows to Ashtar of Sabazel.”
“Sabazel,” she hissed. Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, even the emperor can be beguiled by the moon.” She bobbed perfunctorily.
The girl Valeria nodded, too, and looked curiously at the small temple. But the priestesses of Ashtar disdained to show their faces on Gerlac’s anniversary; the old king had ordered the original shrine destroyed and its women killed. Only under the rule of the conqueror, who could name any deity he wished, had the worship of Ashtar been restored to Sardis.
At the doorway of another shrine, before the sculpture of a reclining cat, Shurzad bowed deeply. Her manicured hand closed about the amulet, a stylized eye, she wore at her throat.
“Qem is but a minor god,” Patros remonstrated. “Probably an aspect of Ashtar. Why should you be his high priestess?”
“It was I,” returned Shurzad, “who brought Qem from the Empire. The wife of the governor of Sardis must honor all gods.”
Patros, rolling his eyes in silent supplication upward, agreed. He paused, removed the helmet, delivered it to a waiting acolyte. He bowed before it with a grimace of unease that could have been a grimace of pain. The wind caressed his crisp black and silver hair.
The moon, untainted by Sardian torchlight, hung round and bright and clear on the horizon.
* * * * *
Sita peered through the doorway and pressed her
hand to her mouth. Khazyari warriors dragged imperial soldiers triumphantly past the yurt; some were already dead, others lived only moments longer to be sacrificed by knife and by fire before Khalingu’s cart. Their pale faces were stunned, incredulous, stricken. Sita shuddered, choking back the bile in her throat, strangling her screams of outraged horror.
The full moon hung cool and serene at the horizon, remote from the last scarlet flare of the sunset, from the scarlet-tinted ground and the scarlet fires where Odo danced grotesque thanksgiving. Pipes wailed eerily, celebrating another victory. Khazyari women and children fought over mounds of imperial armor and food and clothing from the shattered army’s baggage train.
Tembujin, slumped with weariness, stood talking to the nuryan Obedei just at the rim of flame-gutted twilight. “Yes,” he seemed to be saying, as much as Sita’s fluttering senses could comprehend, “the southern provinces of the Empire have collapsed. But the great generals of the north, Patros and Nikander, were not with this legion. They underestimated us. Let us not underestimate them.” His eyes scanned the death and disorder about him and darted suddenly to the doorway of his own yurt, striking Sita like a blow. His eyes were black, flickering with fire and moonlight, and she could not read them.
Several drunken warriors quarreled over a Sardian sword. Obedei’s face darkened. “Our own men are beguiled by the riches of the Empire.”
“Indeed,” Tembujin growled, and released Sita from his gaze. Her knees buckled and she sat suddenly onto the carpet.
Twilight gave way to darkness. Sita waited numbly until Tembujin came in and threw down his weapons and his stained garments. He washed himself, but the faint reek of death still hung about him. She averted her face and lay inert when he touched her, while he sought with grim concentration for something within her, something perhaps to respond to that black flicker in his eyes. But he could not find it.
After a time he rose and went wordlessly to the victory feast. Jackals held their own feast on the battlefield, under the merciless gaze of the moon.
* * * * *
The thick felt sides of the yurt repelled not only the moonlight but also the fires and shouts of celebration. Inside was a darkness relieved only by the feeble flames of three butter lamps placed around a smoldering pot of hemp. An iridescent swirl of smoke licked at the roof and the center pole, seeking an escape.
Odo squatted over the black arrowhead, his hands and arms still splashed with gore. He inhaled, shivered as the smoke seared his throat and lungs, coughed. He began to speak, his voice hoarsely intent, and saliva sprayed in droplets from his lips to fall upon the mounded shape of Bellasteros’s crimson cloak.
The tent flap stirred. Raksula bowed to the statue of Khalingu and slipped inside; kneeling beside Odo, she thrust her face into the smoke and breathed open-mouthed of it. She, too, shuddered. Then she threw back her head and laughed a deep throaty laugh, a response to the growls of the feasting jackals.
Odo’s voice never wavered. Raksula’s joined it, two different timbres blended into one; not harmony, but an oddly compelling discordance.
Something moved just at the boundary of light and dark. Eyes glinted, blinked, glinted again. Shadows coiled from the edges of the yurt, drawn on the words of the incantation, snaking lithely along the stained carpet. The lamps, engulfed by the darkness, guttered. The cloak rippled uneasily.
The shadow flowed over the arrowhead and sucked at it. Jerkily, it lurched toward the cloak. The cloak rippled again, starting back. Darkness blotted the center of the tent; the incantation stopped between syllables and its echo hung heavy in the silent air.
Then, suddenly, the lamps shone again. Lingering tendrils of shadow retreated into darkness. The arrowhead stood quivering in the center of the cloak, rent threads fluttering like welling blood around it. A faint and distant cry like that of a soul in agony plucked at the outside of the yurt and then faded.
Raksula and Odo sat silent for a moment, molding their spirits back into their bodies. Then Raksula turned to Odo with a smile of satisfaction. “So it was the emperor who was wounded. Khalingu is indeed with us.”
“But he still lives.”
“Not much longer. Leave the arrowhead there; let it continue its work on him.” She turned, took Odo’s hand, and pressed it to her breast. “We shall be honored indeed when Baakhun learns of this. And soon we shall rule.”
Odo’s face crumpled in doubt even as his fingers moved greedily into Raksula’s bodice. “Tembujin is strong, and has the allegiance of the nuryans. Shall I poison him?”
“No. We must not make him a martyr. He must be discredited and disgraced. We shall pit him against his father’s pride, and in the end both will perish.” Raksula leaned close to the sparse fringe of hair on Odo’s skull and began whispering into his ear, lips moist.
His face cleared, his tongue lapped out and back. “Henbane for persuasion; I understand. And I shall talk to Hilkar again.”
They lay down on the carpet, whispering and chuckling together. Their bodies twined like the stems of some choking weed. The statue of Khalingu shifted in its cart, settling back to rest after performing this last of its many tasks of the day. Its face leered up at the moon. The black arrowhead pinioned the cloak.
Chapter Seven
Andrion thrust the rattan shield forward. The sword whacked against it, and his arm shivered from the blow. He lunged to the side, parried another blow, struck. Lyris spun away. “Not bad for a boy,” she taunted.
“My father—” Andrion began indignantly
Lyris spun back again. The blunted edge of her practice sword turned the rim of his shield and jabbed him in the stomach. His breath started from his body, sparks pinwheeled behind his eyes, the ground leaped upward and jarred against his knees.
He crouched, doubled over in pain, gasping, “By the tail feathers of the god, Lyris!”
“If Harus teaches you nothing else,” she said, “he should teach you never to lower your guard.” Her left hand grasped his hair and the dull point of her sword pressed his throat. “See?”
Andrion found himself eyeing the taut muscle of her thigh, exposed by the short practice tunic. Hastily he cleared his throat, cleared his mind, tilted his head back so that he could see her face. She smiled at him in affection and challenge mingled, and tickled his chin with the tip of the sword. “I see,” he said stonily.
Lyris laughed. “Sulk then, Andrion. But remember that those Khazyari scouts would have been less gentle with you.”
“True,” he admitted. “Though they would have come here in any event.”
She lowered her sword and released his hair. Groaning, he found his feet; evidently his ribs were not broken after all. Lyris started to help him, thought better of it, turned to put her sword and shield away.
The row of faces on the wall of the practice field watched raptly. Andrion was growing accustomed to the audience of little girls who followed him about. This evening the gallery included some older girls, almost Dana’s age; warrior acolytes, evaluating the competition.
Suddenly he grinned. How absurd it was, the heir of the Empire on show like a monkey in a menagerie. He bowed extravagantly to the row of faces. They dissolved in giggles.
“Go on,” Lyris called to them all. “There is ample work to be done.” Reluctantly the girls drifted away. The weapons master turned back to Andrion. “When your father was your age, he commanded an army.”
Still she taunted him. “For Gerlac, his demon stepfather,” he returned, “who goaded him to conquest.”
Lyris paled. “Not a fair blow, my prince.”
“Neither was yours.” They eyed each other; Andrion offered his hand and she clasped it.
“Ashtar smiles upon you,” she told him, “but your will is your own.”
“Is it? Is it indeed?”
Her brows shrugged away the question. “Danica waits for you. We shall meet again on the morrow.”
“Thank you,” he called after her. “I think.” Gingerly he placed
his sword and shield in the nearby rack; gingerly he started for the bathhouse. I once held Solifrax in my hands, he thought; it should be mine, but I have yet to earn it. I have yet to earn the Empire.
Cleaned and shaven, but no less sore, Andrion sat in the queen’s garden and watched the sun hide itself behind the western horizon. Another sundown, he thought, and still I dally in Sabazel, waiting. Waiting for what?
The evening was clear, the sky a crystalline lapis lazuli like Sarasvati’s eyes, so deep and vivid that it seemed as if it should reflect the entire world: Iksandarun, clotted with the tents of the invaders, where Aveyron and Declan, Chryse and Sarasvati slept uneasily; the small figures of Miklos and the other guards creeping along the Royal Road, over aqueducts, through tunnels, to Farsahn and thence to Sardis with messages for Patros. I should go to Sardis, too, Andrion thought. But how can I go without Bellasteros?
Ashtar’s star hung like a solitary jewel in the depths of the sky. The full moon rose up the flank of Cylandra, and Sabazel was washed clean in its light. Somewhere in the town a lyre began to play a song of welcome, a skein of music spun through the gathering darkness to bind day to night. The quiet hum of insects filled the twilight like the insistent patter of tiny cymbals.
Andrion shrank from the moonlight, as if the moon were the accusing eye of the goddess. Why bother to shave? he asked himself. Why keep my hair cut short? To imitate the young Bellasteros? I love him, and would avenge him. I hate him for laying such a burden on me . . . The Sabazian shirt and trousers he wore chafed him, too tight across the shoulders, too loose in the hips.
With a glimmer of moonlight Danica walked among the asphodel, the anemone, the fruit trees. She set a plate and a cup before Andrion and settled herself on a low wall above him. “Eat.” she said softly. “You cannot nourish yourself with worry.”
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