Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Shards of ice turned in Dana’s heart, and she heard her own voice cry out in desperate denial.

  *

  The tireless hooves of the great war stallion Ventalidar bore Andrion across the borders of Sabazel. He outdistanced his escort, straining toward the distant lavender peak that was Cylandra. It firmed and darkened. Tumbled rock at its base became the buildings of a small city.

  Ashtar’s womb, Andrion told himself. Sanctuary and rest and guidance in the arms of the mother. But my mortal mother is no longer there.

  He had accepted that. That was not what was wrong. The sky was hazy, indistinct, the sun only a glowing blotch emitting the thinnest of light. The wine-bright air of autumn was vinegar. A chill wind jangled through the black plume in Andrion’s helmet and plucked at his black cloak like a palsied hand. Solifrax rested mutely at his side.

  Flocks bleated in fields of dry stubble, and their small shepherdesses glanced at the passing horseman with incurious, oddly aged eyes. Here, too, was drought. The music of Sumitra’s zamtak did not echo here. Her moist lips had bid Andrion farewell, giving him for the greater good into the arms of another. But the other, it seemed, had troubles of her own.

  Andrion halted Ventalidar before the Horn Gate and dismounted. The horse pawed at the ground, snuffling, as uneasy as Andrion himself. The gates groaned open and Dana emerged, a pale, drawn Dana, with lines like check reins engraved in her face. The stiffness with which she braced herself, arms akimbo, and forced a smile, froze Andrion’s viscera. If her heart leaped at the ending of their two years’ separation, he could see it only in the tic at the corner of her mouth, revealing … No, her face was pinched too tightly to reveal anything. He ached to embrace her, but until she accepted his embrace he might just as well strike her down.

  “What is it?” Andrion demanded. “What has gone amiss?”

  “If you had not come, I would have summoned you,” was her only reply, and she turned to greet his escort. Her quick eye—thank the goddess that at least had not faded—sought one particular face among the mounted men. Not finding it, she said, “You would not keep Tembujin away if he had chosen to come.”

  “Could not,” Andrion amended. “He is escorting our wives to Sardis.” Was she resigned to the Khazyari’s absence, or relieved at not having to succor him too? He looked down at his greaves. They were dull, having lost their bright polish on the long and dusty journey here.

  “Does he no longer crave Ashtar’s embrace?”

  “He chooses another craving, that for family and rank. But I …”

  Her glistening green eyes avoided his questioning look, as though he were some strange male animal to whom revealing anything would be revealing too much. “Come,” she said. “Ilanit and Sarasvati are waiting for you.”

  Andrion’s mouth was dry. He tried to swallow, but his throat was packed with dust.

  The other men gathering for the rites were taken in hand by Sabazian warriors and conducted to the temple square. Andrion and Dana trudged up the narrow streets, past branches of browned lilac and chickens crouching dispiritedly in the dust. When she asked in sterile courtesy about Iksandarun, he answered frankly; at such news the corner of her mouth twitched even faster, but her expression, as bleak as a city razed by war, did not change.

  In the queen’s garden—once Danica’s, now Ilanit’s—the limbs of the sycamore trees were prematurely bare and wizened. Anemones and marigolds were only crumbling stalks. It was not the clean nakedness of winter, awaiting the joyous robing of spring; a malaise hung over Sabazel, out of season, out of time itself, as if the tiny country were only a faint image in a scratched and stained mirror.

  Andrion followed Dana into the queen’s house. He removed his helmet, tucking it under his arm; the diadem on his hair seemed suddenly garish. Perhaps it was discourteous to wear the symbol of a great realm into such a small one. But the diadem had been here before and had long ceased to be a threat. From faded frescoes on the walls faces turned to Andrion, Daimion and Mari remote and impassive, Bellasteros and Danica relentlessly expectant. The unmistakable reek of sorcery hung heavy in the small room.

  Gods, Andrion prayed. Harus, Ashtar, whoever you are, do not drive me backward into nightmare. Bellasteros had once lain here enspelled, and now it was Ilanit who turned a thin and wasted face to her half-brother. But she was the child of Danica’s youth, barely past forty—unfair, he wanted to cry, unfair! He said nothing.

  The queen tried to rise from her chair. The effort drained her already pale face and left it a damp green. Sarasvati eased her back down. The hazy afternoon daylight was too weak to penetrate here; an oil lamp guttered in the draft from the open door and cast writhing shadows across the wooden stand that had once held the star-shield… .

  Andrion’s head spun, or else the world spun dizzyingly about him. The shield that had always chimed to his touch, that had glowed beside the sword whether the sword was in his hand or his father’s, that had shed its light over his birth—the shield was gone.

  His flesh shriveled in chill horror. “What happened?” he asked. His own voice grated his ears.

  “It was stolen almost a month ago,” answered Ilanit with a bone-deep weariness. “We opened our gates to a woman from Farsahn …”

  “Or so she said,” interjected Dana darkly. “She had a strange accent.”

  “… who escaped a forced marriage. She wore an armband embossed with a winged bull; I sensed power in it, but fool that I am, did not dream that power would be turned against us.”

  “There was a storm,” said Sarasvati. “A dark shape ran away with the shield. Later, after counting, we realized it had been Rue.”

  “Rue,” repeated Andrion dully.

  “She killed Lyris,” Dana said.

  Sarasvati added, “With a blast of black fire. Sorcery indeed.”

  Lyris, who had always dared Andrion to prove himself. No, she had not been waiting at the gate, rattling her javelin at the arriving men. Ilanit leaned back and closed her eyes; Lyris had been her pair. Hastily Andrion sought something comforting to say. But there could be no comfort. “She will be missed,” he mumbled lamely.

  “We searched the countryside,” Dana went on, her clear voice shooting each word like an arrow. “We could not find Rue or the shield. We sent messages to Nikander in Farsahn, but no one there had ever heard of her.”

  “And yet she knew Sardis and the Empire,” said Sarasvati. “She once remarked on Ilanit’s queenly aspect, that it reminded her of Chryse.”

  “Chryse?” Andrion replied. “An odd remark indeed. Chryse was as warm as a summer’s day, sweet and gentle. But not queenly.”

  “And she died in Iksandarun seven years ago.” Sarasvati sank her teeth deep into her lower lip, remembering the day of the Khazyari victory all too well.

  “I would have pursued her myself,” hissed Dana, “to Sardis and beyond, but I was needed here, and my Sight bade me wait for you.”

  Ashtar’s humor remained unchanged, it seemed, taking perverse pleasure in requiring her daughters once again to wait upon a man. Andrion set his hand on the hilt of Solifrax and averted his eyes from the women’s accusing gazes; the sword’s answering tingle was not unlike the chime of the shield its consort. He tightened his teeth so that his jaw ached, his thought groping with vicious thrusts through the miasma that hung about him as much as about the land of Sabazel. Sorcery here, and in Iksandarun as well. His call to Sabazel was only part of a larger pattern. And his role? To show his mettle, at the least.

  He bent over Ilanit’s blond head—by all the gods, her hair was less gold than silver now—and kissed her clammy brow. She tried to smile, and managed a quirk of her crusted lips. He touched the necklace at his throat. “You and I were born in the light of the shield, Ilanit. Surely it is not shameful to ask me to help.”

  “Even though you alone were born in the light of the sword, we would ask no other.” She did not avoid his searching look but met his eyes; she refused to despair, he saw, even as she
could not quite hope. Andrion would have wept at seeing her backed into such a corner, but his eyes were as achingly dry as his mouth.

  Muttering some courtesy, he turned and stalked from the room, from the uncompromising faces of the three women, and strode through the garden so fast that the hem of his cloak snapped like a whip. He paused at the steps that led to the basin and on up the mountainside to the holy of holies, the sacred cavern. He did not set foot on the stair. The mountain seemed suddenly menacing, as if the drought had dried its foundations and the great granite boulders were ready to tumble down, crushing man and woman and pestilence alike. No, there would be no omen, no water in the basin, no murmuring stream in the cavern he had once dared. In that distant world he had known his enemy. Now he did not.

  “Andrion.”

  He started. Sarasvati stood beside him. His face cracked suddenly into a smile and he embraced her. Her hair, bright with the sheen of copper, tickled his chin; her eyes were deep lapis lazuli, the color of late evening. The color this evening should have been, held in the purity of Ashtar’s thought. But the sky was muted, the setting sun veiled, and Ashtar’s thought was as mysterious as a faded palimpsest. If a full moon rose in the east, only a rustred tint like dried blood smeared the horizon to herald its coming.

  “When will you return to Iksandarun?” he asked.

  She drew away, only a little, and looked at him quizzically.

  “You are the only child of Bellasteros to have imperial as well as Sardian blood. I want to honor you with your proper rank.” And bribe my restive councilors with your imperial mother’s name? he demanded of himself.

  Sarasvati said gently, “I am comfortable here, among women.”

  “Well, yes, of course …” Andrion indulged in an unfair blow. “Your son Ethan is well.”

  Her eye glinted and she parried, “So is your daughter Astra.” She pointed.

  A child, her hair as red as Sarasvati’s or the highlights in Andrion’s own, entered the garden from the street. She strode as purposefully as he had, small mouth tight, eyes hooded. But he knew those eyes, the deep blue-green of the sea.

  “My daughter,” he said, “the heir to Sabazel.”

  The child raised a tiny wicker shield and a stick and began sparring with an invisible enemy. In the midst of one dancing movement she stopped dead, realizing a man watched her. A man stood with his hands on Sarasvati. Warily she saluted. But her eyes, her manner, reserved her thought to herself.

  “The world of men,” said Sarasvati, “is so much larger than Sabazel’s. I was once a king’s daughter, a king’s sister, and once I was a slave. Here I am a healer, and that is the only rank I want.”

  Andrion’s cloak billowed in a brief, tentative breeze. The bare branches of the trees chimed discordantly. He would like to believe Sarasvati foolish, but it was his urging that seemed foolish, and selfish as well. Men’s games had their own rules, and the Sabazians only played when necessary, though they always played well.

  The door of the house opened and Dana appeared. The lines of care in her face eased at the sight of the child playing so earnestly among the dead leaves, a solitary testimony to life and hope. “Astra,” she called, “your grandmother would like you to sing to her.”

  “The lay of Daimion and Mari?” Astra asked, with a sideways glint at the intrusive male presence. “The true one, that gives Sabazel its own?”

  “Yes,” said Dana. “Yes, indeed.” The child vanished inside. Dana turned to Sarasvati and Andrion.

  “She does not know that I am her father,” said Andrion quietly.

  “The daughters of Sabazel have no fathers,” Dana returned.

  “You do,” said Andrion. “As do I.”

  “But you are not a daughter,” Sarasvati reminded him. And, to Dana, “I shall give the queen a strengthening draught. Andrion has encouraged her—even though he is only a man.” With a teasing smile she pressed his hand and freed herself from his arm.

  Thank you, Andrion thought to her, for that humor that was once our father’s. And he wondered suddenly if Bellasteros’s oldest child, Chrysais of Minras, had also inherited that temper like a two-edged blade.

  Dana took his hand and led him away from the garden. The sun set, the city darkened from featureless day into featureless night, and the moon remained a dim bloodstain upon a suffocating sky.

  *

  Andrion stood in the temple courtyard while Dana, in her mother’s place, announced the rules of the rites. Someday she would herself be queen, but her stern face as she spoke belied any ambition for the role. He accepted a sparse garland of asphodel from her hand, and set one about her neck in return. Now, at last, she looked at him, surrendering one watchtower of the fortress that was her soul. But still a wariness lurked deep in her eyes, the interior walls yet to be breached.

  He turned away from the games, no longer needing to prove himself. Kerith, Dana’s pair, was waiting at the door of their house. “So you come at last. I must reach the square in time to choose someone at least more prestigious than an emperor.” With a mocking if friendly wave to Andrion, she was gone. He had to smile at her impertinence, and at her discretion; on more than one occasion she and Dana had shared his attentions.

  Inside, a baby wailed. Andrion set down his helmet and fanned the embers in the brazier into flame. Red flame, not black. He shivered, from the cool of the evening, he told himself, not from uncertainty.

  Dana lifted the infant from its cradle and swiftly changed its wrappings. It screamed, its eyes disappearing into red, raging flesh.

  Kerith’s child, no doubt. Sabazians paired themselves so that each babe would have two parents. Andrion laid the diadem carefully down and unclasped his cloak. He unbuckled the sheath of Solifrax and propped it against the wall. For a moment he felt as helpless as the child, bereft of the symbols of his kingship. Yet they were only symbols, and if his kingship did not spring from his heart, then he was no king.

  Dana sat down, opened her shirt, and set the child to her breast.

  Gods, Andrion wanted to shout, everyone has babies! He swallowed and asked coolly, “A boy?”

  “He is all of three months old now, and will soon be leaving Sabazel for Sardis. Patros’s new wife Kleothera will take him.” She stroked the baby’s wispy hair and touched the little hands that kneaded her flesh in an ecstasy of fulfillment, daring to love him for the short time he would be hers.

  No, Andrion told himself, I shall not resent Dana or the baby or any of the men who might have fathered him under Ashtar’s eye. That wound was scabbed long ago.

  Raising a brow, she said, “You do not ask if he is your son.”

  “I can count, Dana.” No, the wound was fresh. The coals in the brazier snapped and sighed softly; barely louder, Andrion asked, “Would you tell me if you bore my son?”

  “No. You know the law, that the sons we bear are traded for girls. Sabazians have no fathers.”

  “You do.”

  “I am … fortunate,” she admitted grudgingly. “I am also illegitimate, conceived outside the borders of Sabazel, outside the seasons of the rites, when my young and foolish mother lay with Patros during the campaign to Iksandarun.”

  “Young and foolish,” repeated Andrion. “As you were when you lay with me in the sacred cavern.”

  She did not reply. She looked up, eyes wide, offering Andrion at last a glimpse within. In denying the evils of the outside world, he saw, she denied it all; she would defend her redoubt of custom and law, protecting herself, her people, her land, even though that redoubt separated her from him. He had to come second, always second, for if she sacrificed her laws for him, she would not be Dana.

  He spun about, irritated, telling himself he could not afford irritation. He tore a piece from the loaf on the table, poured a cup of thin pink wine. The bread was stale, the wine sour. He set the cup down with a crash.

  “We are man-forbidden,” Dana said, not patiently but wearily, as if the words had worn an aching groove in her thought. �
��We are thusly man-cursed.”

  “But men and men’s laws keep Sabazel secure.”

  “Do they? Or is it a most subtle threat? Creeping contentment, and the solace of a man’s arms; the naming of fathers and sons. And soon the borders of Sabazel are breached by peace, and devastated more lastingly than by any armed force.”

  He had no answer. He watched the red flames in the brazier and their reflection in Dana’s face. Her cheekbones were sharper than he remembered, her jaw tighter. Translucent shadow spiraled about her, about himself, filling the room. Maybe the demands of love were indeed foolish.

  Dana’s lashes curtained her eyes. No, Andrion realized, she was not complacent in her certainty. She was not certain at all. Her troubled soul tried to smooth itself with certainty. It was Sumitra’s calm and certain soul that could barely be ruffled by trouble.

  Sumitra, daughter of Rajah Jamshid of the valley of the Mohan, bred to be a ruler’s wife. Dana, daughter of the queens of Sabazel, bred to be … free? In this man-ruled world freedom was the more expensive choice.

  Dana detached the baby, wiped his little milk-smudged mouth, prodded a surprisingly loud burp from him, and laid him in his cradle. She lingered, patting his back while he drifted into satiated sleep.

  Her shirt still gaped open. Her breasts were round and ripe with milk, reminding Andrion of Sumitra’s opulent body. And yet Dana was almost as tall as he, was as lean and well-knit.

  He inhaled deeply, trying not to quell the rush of quicksilver through his veins, but to read it. Was it desire for Dana or for Sumi? Gods, what a complex tapestry he found himself weaving. Or had it already been woven, by god and man, snaring him in its knotted threads?

  Dana smiled at the baby. Turning, she included Andrion in the smile, her duty apparently served. “Is Sumitra as gentle and patient as she was when we met in Iksandarun—was it three years ago now?”

  “Her temper is somewhat abraded by the duties expected of her, I fear.”