Then with a shriek the cat leaped onto Raksula, its claws raking long furrows into her forearm. She shrieked in turn and threw the beast away from her. In one smooth movement Shurzad wrenched herself free of Odo’s grasp, seized the necklace from Raksula’s fingers with her own maimed hand, and threw herself into the incandescent heart of the pyre.
Brush crashed and sparks flew. She screamed, less in pain than in ecstasy, “Qem, I commend myself to you. Harus, Ashtar, have mercy!”
“Gods!” Tembujin exclaimed. His bow leaped up. An arrow like a hissing brand struck Shurzad cleanly in the heart. Her hair was a torch, her clothing ash, her body a golden image traced in fire, but she was already dead; Andrion’s necklace was melted gold in the melted flesh of her hand, purified. The expression on her face, hopeful at last, remained an afterimage among the flames.
The cat, a gray shadow, disappeared. The Khazyari stood in utter silence, even Raksula struck speechless. Gouts of flame seared her face of any human expression, leaving only the cold, vacant sneer of a reptile. A wind pealed across the sky, too cold to spread the scent of death.
Tembujin raised his bow again. As if sensing his presence, Raksula jerked about. Her eyes were knives flaying his disguise from him, peeling his every motion down to the hard kernel of hatred in his soul. Her bloodstained hand pointed at him. She screamed in hysterical denial, incoherently. Vlad screeched excited orders, Odo shouted, the Khazyari cried out in dismay and confusion and surged in grotesque shapes about the roaring, all-consuming fire. Raksula was swallowed by the crowd.
“Seethe in your own wickedness, witch,” Tembujin shouted. Cursing her, cursing himself, he ran on the heels of the wind to his horse and raced into the uncertain light of day.
Chapter Twenty
In the thin light of the waxing moon the walls of Iksandarun were as stark as dried bone. Raksula stalked up and down, up and down, beside the small smoky fire outside her yurt, as if by an effort of her will she could lay those walls waste and return the Khazyari tribe to its high water mark in the north. Beside her stood the dark hump of Khalingu’s cart, stirred with the fitful rattle of unsheathed claws.
Voices drifted on a cold wind, warriors, women, children, slaves, fighting over what store of food could be found in this already drained land. The jewels and silks and fine porcelain looted from Iksandarun at midsummer could not now, at midwinter, buy food where food did not exist.
Raksula looked with loathing toward the shadow-tipped mountains to the south. She shook her fist toward the implacable black prince and his army, advancing from the north.
Her arm was scarred by angry red scratch marks. In the pale light of the quarter moon, in the flickering light of the fire, her cheeks were flushed and feverish. Her eyes glittered. When Odo approached she snapped at him like a jackal. “Well?”
“My lady,” he said, with arid courtesy, “the khan wants to go south. He fears we could no longer win a battle with the legions.”
“He fears everything. Khalingu, why give me such a son!”
Odo grimaced, the flesh of his face crumpling like stained, used linen. “If we return to the Mohan, claim our tribute, regroup—”
“No! I rule this tribe. I say we stay and fight and slaughter those who would push us from this land we have won!” The whites of her eyes and her teeth glistened with a phosphorescent pallor, fire and ice eerily mingled.
Odo stared at the toes of his boots, dull and resentful. Two guards approached, escorting one figure, dragging another. Raksula clasped her arms about her, her clawed fingers fondling and soothing herself.
Obedei sketched a polite if wary salute. “My lady, welcome. Iksandarun opens its gates to you and the khan.”
“Khan Vlad,” Odo said under his breath, tasting the words and then spitting them out in disgust.
“Yes,” said Obedei stolidly. “I received your message, of the glorious death in battle of Baakhun. Surely he sits at Khalingu’s feast.”
Raksula snarled some irritated courtesy. Her bulging eyes raked the figure held by the guards. Hilkar essayed a sickly grin and tried to prostrate himself. Obligingly, the guards dropped him. He fell face first into the dirt.
“Well?” Raksula demanded.
“Most noble lady. Ruler of the all-powerful Khazyari. All-seeing, all-knowing. I ask reward for my services . . .”
“Did you kill Sarasvati?”
Obedei’s brows tightened as he strained to follow this conversation in the common tongue.
“My lady,” Hilkar squeaked, “I . . . Governor Obedei would not let me.”
“Baakhun told me to bring her to Iksandarun,” Obedei said with stiff reasonableness.
Raksula glared at him, holding back scathing words. She kicked Hilkar in the ribs. He yelped and squirmed. “You worthless idiot,” she shrilled. “I wanted her dead, you piece of carrion!”
Obedei’s eyes clouded. Odo, elaborately disdainful of the entire exchange, contemplated the still, opaque hangings of Khalingu’s cart. Hilkar tried to scrabble away but confronted the bent bows of the guards.
“Go away,” shrieked Raksula. “If I see you again, I shall kill you!”
Hilkar fled in an awkward crablike scuttle. Raksula turned to Obedei, seized his tunic in her talons and spoke, close enough that her saliva sprayed his face like hot sour wine. “I want her dead, do you hear me! She carries Tembujin’s spawn, and I want her dead!”
“Yes, my lady,” Obedei replied, eyes hard, jaw set. “Those are the khan’s orders?”
Raksula cursed him and stumbled into the dark shadow cast by her yurt. Her voice remained, circling on the wind like the distant howling of a feral animal, “I rule here, I rule this tribe, I order the future!”
Obedei stared after her. He clasped his hands before his chest and then opened them, as if wondering if they contained anything. He tightened his mouth to a guarded slit.
Odo ran his fingers through the amulets he wore. They jangled faintly. The wind jangled a response and carried a tang of sleet through the disheveled encampment, across the scarred walls and into the desolate streets of the city.
A thin gray cat whisked across the open space, its topaz eyes glinting, and disappeared beneath the walls of Iksandarun.
* * * * *
Sarasvati stood on a battlement, watching the fires leap in the vast Khazyari encampment. Small fires, they seemed, tentative flames shredded by the wind, not the great bonfires of the night Iksandarun fell. The wind was cold, jangling in her ears. She drew her cloak more tightly about her shoulders and in an instinctive gesture stroked the mound of her belly. “Tembujin,” she sighed, “surely you deserved your death.”
The rooftop garden behind her was a wilderness of dried stalks and shattered filigree. Obedei stamped down the brick path, his boots crunching through the drifting leaves, his hand tight on the hilt of his dagger. Sarasvati turned to greet him, saying acidly, “How fares your people? Do they enjoy the taste of defeat?”
“No fair mock me, lady. Vlad rules, Raksula rules. I fear for all.”
Sarasvati regarded his bleak face, and begrudged him a smile. “Do not fight, Obedei. Hide until the battle is over.”
“No, lady.” He shook his head, a controlled shudder. “I am Khazyari.”
“Chained by your birth, as I am chained by mine to those people you call slaves. Have they food and fuel to see them through this cold night?” Something caught her eye; she turned to see a scrawny cat limping down the path. It paused, fixed her with guileless topaz eyes, meowed piteously.
Sarasvati, cooing sympathy, picked it up and cradled it in her arms. It raised its paw, patted softly at her breast, leaned its furry cheek against her and purred. The lines of care at the corners of her mouth melted into a smile, as awkwardly as though she had forgotten how to smile.
Obedei eyed her ripening stomach. He clutched white-knuckled at his dagger and then released it. He threw his hands outward, flinging away the treason of what he could not do, torn between loyalties. “I go, see
that slaves are fed, warmed, as you wish.” He strode back across the wasted garden, kicking in violent bursts of frustration at the leaves in his path.”
Sarasvati turned back to the battlement, to the sheer wall plunging into black shadow, to the sullen fires of the invader, to the sky. The stars were muted, veiled by thin cloud; the moon was cleft as precisely in half as if it had been sliced by the blade of Solifrax itself. Her smile wavered, her eyes were polished with a sudden moisture. “Andrion,” she whispered. “Father.”
The cat propped its chin on her forearm, fluffed its whiskers, gazed contentedly out into the night. It almost seemed to be smiling.
* * * * *
Andrion sat on his great war-stallion, finding a furtive pleasure in the sunset. Before him were great banks of startlingly pink cloud, licked smooth by the wind like cliffs licked by the sea. An elliptical moon hung like a great pearl just at their edge. Behind him his escort waited discreetly. He knew he should be contemplating the campaign. But the planning, the worrying, had worn deep aching ruts in his mind, not unlike the dull ache in his gut when he passed the ruined caravanserais, villages, and farms of the southern plains. How dare the Khazyari tear down what his father had built?
My father, Andrion thought, transmuted into godhood while still living, worshipped by thousands. He sat often by his father’s bedside, presenting the problems of the campaign as if Bellasteros could counsel and commend him. Every now and then Danica’s voice would complement his, remembering other battles. But Bellasteros did not wake.
Andrion never wondered any more whether he wanted him to wake, just as he never wondered what would happen when he did. The people in their simplicity acclaim me, follow me, he thought; perhaps the sword does not, in the end, matter . . .
No. He touched the hilt at his hip and it tingled under his fingers. The blade was now etched with a curling tendril of roughness, the path of his own blood on that night of hopeless delirium.
In a few days’ time would be the full moon of midwinter, Andrion’s nineteenth birthday. Damned Khazyari, if they would only stand and fight and end this ordeal! But he knew they would stand at Iksandarun. He did not dare reckon the cost of victory. He was haunted by a vision of himself seated on the peacock throne, wearing diadem and sword, attended only by the shades of the dead. But then, the throne was not his. He shifted on Ventalidar’s reassuringly solid back; at least that was not ambiguous. The wind murmured soft nothings in his ear, playing with his black plume and his billowing black cloak.
Ventalidar shuffled his feet in an intricate dance step, toying with his shadow, and jangled his harness. Andrion felt his face crack into a smile. The sun sank, a crimson wound, toward the horizon.
I should go back and practice my weapons, Andrion told himself. But Lyris refused to spar with him anymore, finding his desperate, deadly assaults embarrassingly difficult to turn. Miklos could not refuse; for that reason Andrion would not force the young man to submit to him again.
Tembujin and Dana approached the solitary figure of the prince, followed by the odlok’s own escort, the hulking Khazyari warrior he had shot the night of Shurzad’s death. Tembujin, yielding to some obscure sentiment, had demonstrated how to use the man’s silk shirt to withdraw the arrow; reassured that the odlok was not some evil phantom, the warrior had attached himself to him and followed him like an adoring hound. Andrion’s escort, not to mention Lyris, looked askance at the man’s presence; but no matter how large, he was only one.
Tembujin said something in Khazyari. Obediently the warrior halted, tilting his face to the sunset. In the rosy light he seemed an innocent if overgrown child. Andrion’s brow quirked with irony; did the man realize that the implacable black prince now before him was the boy he had thrown in the mud in Bellastria?
Dana reined up beside Andrion. “Patros sends his respects, and asks if you are ready for the evening meal. We are fortunate; a scouting party brought down some antelope.”
Andrion allowed himself the pleasure of contemplating Dana’s precise face. She was somewhat pale; she had been pale for . . . how long now? Ashtar! It had been almost three months since the autumn rites!
She smiled secretly and let her lashes shadow her eyes. Tembujin leaned back, propping his leg on his saddlebow. “Now, Dana,” he said, his chin raised with expectation.
“I would not speak to him alone,” Dana explained. Andrion’s heart plummeted. His mind repeated the words as she said them: “I am pregnant.”
Tembujin’s eyes crossed with Andrion’s in a look somewhere between the clashing of swords and a wary handshake. “You cannot know which of us is the father,” he said aggrievedly.
Dana shrugged. “I know who is my child’s mother.”
Andrion searched himself for some reaction. Damn Tembujin, grappling with every woman he loved, filling her with his own—no, that was not the right reaction. “What pleasant news, “he stated.
“Indeed,” said Tembujin. He looked north. Andrion looked south. Dana sat between them, turning her head from side to side, and at last she laughed. Yes, Andrion thought, another twist to my fate. Another path chosen, again the most difficult.
As they swished through the dried grass toward camp, Andrion found himself exchanging a self-conscious chuckle with Tembujin. “How we must amuse the gods,” Andrion said. “They play with us, today a favor, tomorrow a blow.”
“The ordeal would be the same,” returned Dana, “whether we believe in the gods or not.”
“Is there any purpose to life and its indignities?” Tembujin asked caustically.
“I want to think so,” Dana replied.
Even the daughter of Sabazel knew uncertainty. Andrion was almost cheered. But then, why did they persist in trying to grasp the ungraspable? His thought spiraled downward, disappearing into an elusive mist, finding no answers. Perhaps there were no answers to find. The riders approached the outskirts of the camp. Tired sentries brightened at the sight of their prince and saluted; he returned their courtesy.
Miklos stood poised with the bronze falcon before the sunset-tinted pavilion, looking expectantly at Andrion. Forgive me, Andrion thought to him as they dismounted. I have no answer except duty.
* * * * *
The gold pavilion was bright with torchlight reflected again and again off Sardian bronze, an amber-rich sunrise, certainly, not a sunset. The image of the falcon seemed to preen itself on its pole; Bellasteros’s helmet, set in honor on the central table, gleamed as though a living head turned it back and forth, watching the diners with calm benignity.
Dana sat upright on her couch, her stomach intolerant of reclining. Valeria sat with her, unveiled, as she was frequently now, regarding Dana with wide eyes. “You are with child?” she whispered, making of it some dark secret. “How do you feel?”
“Queasy,” said Dana. “Bloated.” But that is not the question you really ask. “Would you like to come to Sabazel for the rites?”
Valeria colored. “I am not quite ready for that.”
Are you not? Dana silently asked, but thinking it would be unfair to press her, she laughed gently. “I tease you. Forgive me.” Valeria was a butterfly broken free of its chrysalis, delicate and beautiful and sad at realizing how transitory was its life.
Dana felt eyes upon her; she glanced up and saw Tembujin watching them both. Valeria flushed even more deeply while trying to hide a smile. So, Dana thought, the son of the lion is indeed loose among the flocks. The gods move in subtle ways.
Andrion watched from his place at the head table, glowering with amusement and annoyance, too proud to compete. His dark eyes guarded their depths, allowing only glimpses of the lambent flame that illuminated them. His mouth was bracketed with fine tight lines like controlling reins. Tembujin may be exotic meat, Dana thought, but you, Andrion, are my male half. She tipped him a salute of her rhyton, despite the fact that it contained only water. He smiled, and his face was transformed, lit brilliantly from within. How beautiful that smile, she thought with a pang;
doubly so for being so rarely revealed. If only he could discard for a moment the Empire that he carried, a heavy shell, upon his shoulders. But then he would not be Andrion.
Beside Andrion, Ilanit talked quietly with Patros. Patros, Dana sighed. An oak tree blasted by lightening, scarred but still standing tall. His hair was almost completely gray now, his face furrowed deep. But his eyes rested on Ilanit, finding sustenance in her strength even as she hoarded her strength to share with him. Dana could just hear his voice. “I should not have brought Shurzad to the battlefield.”
“Andrion and Dana asked you to bring her,” Ilanit reminded him.
“It was my inattention that turned her to evil” he insisted.
Ilanit hushed him, reminding him that he did not suffer alone. He looked up, saw Dana and Valeria side by side, and his weary face creased with a smile.
Nikander sat beside Lyris; their laconic remarks were pebbles thrown down a deep well, one at a time with long pauses between. The old turtle offered Lyris a date. Gravely she accepted.
Dana looked down at her own plate, sighed, pushed it away.
* * * * *
Iksandarun lay at last on the horizon. The forts guarding the pass to its plateau were dark blotches in the fitful light. As Andrion glanced up, a scurrying cloud covered the face of the moon, casting a translucent shadow across the land. Tomorrow, he thought, the moon will be full. He urged sable Ventalidar into the night, and his small band followed him, Tembujin on a dark horse, Dana with her bright hair tucked under a helmet, Miklos cloaked to the eyes against the cold.
Winter King Page 28
