Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  You can, Dana wanted to scream. She confined herself to a truculent grumble. You rule here. I see much of Bellasteros in you, too, and little of gentle Chryse.

  Chrysais eyed Dana. Her nostrils flared either with amusement or with a bad smell, or both. She stood, summoned courtiers with a clap of her hands, and delivered a series of orders dealing with food, lodging, clothing. She turned in dismissal. Hastily Andrion, trying to prolong the interview, said, “My sympathies on the death of your husband—sister.” Dana noticed his emphasis. Good. He was not too smitten with her, ah, charms.

  Chrysais’s back was to them. Very slightly her spine stiffened. “Thank you,” she said, and she was gone.

  Servants waited, bowing and scraping. Tembujin shook himself and asked from the side of his mouth, “Are we guests or prisoners?”

  “It is hard to tell, is it not?” Dana snapped. She was flooded with relief at Chrysais’s departure; she was resentful at being relieved.

  But Andrion was staring into the mirrored surface of the basin of water. “She knows too much. The swirling water, now, and lethenderum …” Suddenly he chuckled, relieved in turn, almost admitting bewilderment. “Come. Let us make sure Niarkos and the men are cared for, and then lay what plans we can.” His voice cut off the sentence like an executioner’s sword decapitates a victim.

  They followed the servants back into the labyrinth. The air was as dank and still as if they wound deeper and deeper into the entrails of a giant beast.

  Chapter Six

  Andrion hoped he sounded calm and confident. But he doubted that he was fooling anyone. His head seemed to float several handsbreadths above his shoulders and his loins tingled; the effects of lethenderum and Chrysais, no doubt. And he had expected another meek sparrow like Chryse.

  Chrysais was altogether too much like Bellasteros. Or like their father had been when young, veneered by arrogant bravura. And yet Chrysais, at twelve years older than Andrion, was no longer a youth. She had had ample time to learn new skills; her swirling of the water in the basin was suggestive, horribly suggestive… . His thought fractured and spun away tauntingly.

  The servants led them into blessedly free air, to a terrace overlooking the arena. The evening sun melded sky and sea into one seamless cloth of gold. The quarter moon hung disdainfully high overhead. The arena was now a bowl of twilight, but still the faces watched, enthralled.

  Andrion paused by a colonnade. Here on the terrace it was pleasantly warm, but a chill breath wafted upward from the arena. Upon it rode not only the husky music of reed flute and pipes, but tantalizingly, a scent of roasting meat. No wonder he was light-headed, Andrion told himself; he was hungry. Tembujin smacked his lips, and Dana essayed a wary inhalation.

  A mound of bone and flesh, one of the bellowing bulls no doubt, lay on the huge garlanded stone. Next to it were several smaller mounds. Calves? Andrion wondered. The altar was surrounded by flaming cressets; in their light one solitary human figure moved, the focus of hundreds of eyes.

  Andrion squinted through the sun sheen into dimness, where the small torches were preternaturally bright. The figure that danced around them, weaving light and shadow into an intricate pattern, was so lithe and slender that at first he thought it was a woman. But Dana’s sudden exhalation, almost a moan, signaled him to think again.

  Yes, the angle of the limbs, the forcefulness of the gestures, were masculine. He was, on this island of dark faces, blond. His hair was held by a thin golden fillet, his beard was neatly trimmed. He wore only a belt, a codpiece, and an assortment of jeweled necklaces and bracelets which winked like laughing eyes as he spun, leaped, doubled back, and spun again. The fires around him flared. His body was gilded in their light, too perfect to be human, a living work of art.

  The sun set, and darkness devoured Minras. The flute coiled about a minor key, climbed, slipped downward in a smooth glide. The man danced. Tembujin watched mesmerized. Andrion could have sworn the ground beneath his feet moved.

  This was too much. He locked his knees against the wobble, groped for the hilt of Solifrax, and cursed himself for once again succumbing to that habit. So that, Andrion thought with a sideways glance at Dana, is what it feels like to be moved by one’s own sex.

  She turned abruptly away, her lower lip caught by her teeth; nauseated, he realized, not by the odor of roasting meat but by the other scents flirting with the wind, blood and a hint of masculine musk. He raised his hand toward her and then dropped it, warned by the glint of her slitted green eyes.

  The servants were hovering. Andrion targeted the nearest. “Is that dancer the high priest?”

  “Yes. King Eldrafel.”

  “King?” Andrion repeated incredulously. “Wait a moment—”

  Tembujin’s elbow jabbed his ribs. “Look, look there.”

  With an annoyed snort Andrion looked. On the terrace below, a woman stood clutching at a railing much as Andrion himself had clutched at the railing of Niarkos’s ship. She swayed in the rhythm of the dance, almost swooning. Her ecstatic features were harshly illuminated by a torch.

  “I do believe,” said Tembujin, his voice spewing venom, “that that is our wives’ treacherous serving woman, Rue.”

  “Rue!” Dana strained over their own railing. “Yes, yes it is!”

  Aware eyes were upon her, the woman looked up. Something about the shape of the chin, and the curious liquid eyes; she reminded Andrion of someone, and the resemblance was vital … He grimaced in frustration. Perhaps he had seen her without knowing her, in Sardis or in Iksandarun, but that thought was queasily unconvincing.

  Dana hissed and lunged forward, as if she would leap over the railing then and there. Andrion’s hand closed on a handful of shirt and hair. “We are not in a position to act. Wait. We know now she is here.”

  “You sound more like Nikander every day,” Dana growled, but she desisted.

  At that moment someone burst out onto the lower terrace. It was Chrysais, her flounced skirts swirling, her elaborate coiffure trembling. Her sultry voice was edged now, and her words floated fitfully upward in counterpoint to the music. “… told you to go … must be cared for … dithering around here…” She shoved Rue away, toward the interior of the palace.

  The woman staggered against a pillar and turned a sullen face upon the queen. “Go!” shouted Chrysais, stamping her foot. Rue fled.

  Chrysais’s entourage, an assortment of plainly dressed women, stood together like a flock of frightened sheep. As Bonifacio’s acolytes had huddled, Andrion thought for no apparent reason.

  The music stopped. Eldrafel was gone. The cressets guttered, as if his presence alone had been their fuel. Several robed figures moved toward the sacrificial meat, and the populace began to file from their seats. The servant at Andrion’s back shifted his feet and cleared his throat.

  “All right then,” Andrion told him, “all right.”

  He and Tembujin and Dana were led to a suite of rooms. Andrion inquired after Niarkos and the others, was told they had been cared for, and then dismissed the servants. Tembujin and Dana stalked silently away, each craving the privacy to curse or weep or throw crockery against the wall, or perhaps all three at once. Andrion found that image quite tempting.

  But when he was alone he simply stood, bowed under tormenting thought. Sumitra must be close at hand, but how and when could he find her? He did not even have the cryptic light of Solifrax to guide him. The sword was gone; his body had been flensed of its power. The diadem that he had abandoned was in danger, the Empire he had neglected was— Wait.

  I have never been without power, he told himself. I shall not be so now, even in this bizarre world sensed with the viscera, not the mind. I shall untangle this snarled skein, with or without the sword, and I shall come again to Sardis and the diadem.

  Impatiently he broke through the introspection that lurked in the darker corners of his mind like mist gathered above a marsh, and found himself in a luxuriously appointed chamber.

  The walls wer
e painted with rosettes, waving fronds, and octopi that seemed to swim in the wavering light of an oil lamp. An alcove held a large bathtub, steaming with scented water; not lethenderum, Andrion established with a wary sniff, but something heavier. Plugged terra-cotta pipes emerged from the wall at the head of the tub, providing water from roof cisterns which was then heated by a charcoal fire beneath. Very tidy, he thought.

  A contraption set into a wall turned out to be a built-in chamber pot, flushed by another pipe into a system of guttering. Quite clever. Something like that could be installed in the palaces in Sardis and Iksandarun… . Andrion almost laughed out loud at being distracted by such homely details.

  He discarded his torn chiton, stained leather belt, and sandals, and clad in only the necklace, eased himself into the warm water. A bronze razor and mirror lay on a stool nearby. His kingship stemmed from his heart, but a decent outward appearance never hurt.

  Sumitra, he mused. Chrysais. Rue. Eldrafel, the priest-king. He was too old to be the son Patros had thought Gath and Chrysais had had. But she styled herself queen, not consort or regent, and spoke with the assurance of a reigning monarch.

  His hand slipped. A drop of blood ran down his chin and swirled across the water like a tiny serpent. The lamplight in the main room flickered as someone entered, and judging by a clatter and an odor of bread, laid down a tray of food. Footsteps, and the door clicked shut.

  Chrysais stood beside him. In spite of himself he started violently. Like a vision, nightmarish or otherwise he had yet to decide, she kept reappearing. He laid down the razor and mirror and considered incoherently if the sponge floating beside him was large enough to conceal anything.

  But Chrysais’s cool blue eyes had already swept him up and down, appraising his body like a mollusk torn from its shell for her dinner. She touched his necklace.

  One side of her mouth shivered, pleased. She seated herself upon the stool and leaned forward. A slow, deep breath emphasized the magnificence of her bosom. “So, little brother! You have grown up!”

  “Most of us do, eventually.” Andrion commanded his only too mortal flesh to remain quiescent—she is your sister, for Harus’s sake!—and continued, “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “I thought a private interview would be in order.” The rest of her mouth smiled. Andrion saw that she wore a sardonyx amulet, a figure of some kind, not a bull, just peeking from the valley between her breasts. Surrounded by warm ivory skin and the scent of … that was it—the lush scent of lotus.

  He managed to keep his eyes from crossing. He propped his feet on the far rim of the tub and clasped his hands casually on his chest. He noted that the ceiling, too, was painted. “Tell me.”

  “No, you tell me.”

  His brows tightened at her peremptory tone.

  “What of Sardis? Do they still throw their daughters onto rubbish heaps?”

  So she did remember her ill-fated younger sister. “Such practice has been banned for years, but it happens upon occasion.”

  “Do they still hide their women behind veils and sell them like cattle at auction?”

  “I would not use quite those terms …” Yes, you would. Andrion slipped down until his chin touched the water. You can learn more by listening, he informed himself.

  Her voice poured over him. “I was but thirteen when I was sold to Gath. Sold to further Bellasteros’s ambitions, to gain him a toehold in the Great Sea. He could not know the Empire would have to be won back from barbarian invaders, and it would be his son who would cast his eye farther afield.”

  Yes, certainly; he made quite a conqueror, naked and alone. “I believe Bellasteros’s councilors urged him to send you to Gath. But it was your choice in the end, was it not?”

  “Children,” Chrysais said, “can be beguiled by rank and riches, especially when urged by their elders. My dear mother just had to make of me a ruler’s wife.”

  “To some that is a great honor.”

  “Pah. Meek little sparrow that she was, no spirit, no courage.”

  Nettled, Andrion said, “If you so scorned her kind of spirit and courage, if you did not want to marry, you could have asked the protection of Sabazel.”

  “Sabazel!” Her eyes flashed, hard and bright as sapphire.

  Ah, he thought, that struck home.

  “Women hiding in a hole, preening themselves with their pitiful strength. Danica sold herself to Bellasteros for a morsel of power, just as surely as he sold me to Gath. But only men have real power, Andrion. You know that.”

  Not necessarily, he told himself, but he said nothing.

  “Gath was not a large man,” she said, the honey in her voice turned rancid, “but was a brute nonetheless. I was just a child, unbelievably innocent. He split me open like a melon and left me crying while he went to drink with his cronies. So much for the honor of a ruler’s wife.”

  Andrion winced. No wonder she chose to name herself queen.

  “I bore him a son, as he demanded. And it was I who gained him the farther sea.” Her face clouded, but the shadow was gone as soon as Andrion noticed it. Probably a trick of the light. “Much good that having a son did him. On Minras the succession goes to the king’s sister’s son, not his own son.”

  “Ah,” said Andrion. “Then Eldrafel—”

  Chrysais seized his arm where it lay on the rim of the tub. Her grip was so tight it wrung the dampness from his skin. “How do you know that name?”

  So she knows much of me. Andrion told himself, but intends for me to know nothing of her. “We saw him dancing in the arena. The servant told us his name.”

  “Talkative slaves find themselves—” She sat back and closed her eyes, contemplating an appropriate punishment.

  Slave? “I asked him,” asserted Andrion. And freed of the sapphire beacons, he hazarded, “You made Gath’s nephew Eldrafel your new husband?”

  “You are quick,” she muttered.

  Andrion grinned. “Not as quick as you to remarry, it seems.”

  Oddly, she did not bridle, but chuckled under her breath, moist as two willow branches rubbing together.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Dana loudly from the doorway. “I did not realize you were entertaining a visitor, Andrion.”

  Chrysais concealed her surprise very well. She shook back her hair, stood, smoothed her skirts. The blue eyes met the green ones and in a brief sharp skirmish struggled for dominance. Both women abandoned the battle at the same moment, nothing concluded.

  Chrysais kissed Andrion’s forehead, letting her nipples brush his shoulder. “Welcome, brother, to Minras.” She turned a frosted smile upon Dana. Dana bared her teeth in an expression nothing like a smile, and did not relent until Chrysais was gone.

  Andrion accepted a goblet of wine from Dana’s hand and gulped it eagerly. It was so sweet it intensified the lingering taste of rot in his mouth. Perhaps Chrysais’s lips tasted like that. With a shudder of both lust and revulsion he washed the stains of red paint from his skin and heaved himself out of the water.

  “You have been soaking so long you look like a potted fig,” Dana said. “Come, Tembujin has found the food, and I fear he will leave little for us.”

  Andrion wished he could smooth the furrows from her face. But he was drained of will and strength; his thoughts reeled like Eldrafel dancing, dark to light, light to dark. Silently he wrapped himself in a loose robe and followed her from the room.

  *

  Chrysais walking alone through the palace galleries was like any five other women walking in procession. Servants bowed, hooded priests raised their hands in respect, guards saluted. She ignored them all, the mask of her face iced with thought, her eyes splinters of corundum.

  She brushed past two guards into a sumptuous bedchamber. Several servants tended to a prone Eldrafel, scraping his back, trimming his nails, combing his hair. They looked up at Chrysais’s precipitate entrance, petrified in mid-gesture. All except Eldrafel himself, who lay, eyes closed, naked limbs draped not soft
ly over the pillows but coiled like wires.

  Chrysais snarled, and the servants scattered. Eldrafel did not move. “Well?” he prompted, voice muffled.

  “The Khazyari is exotic meat, but powerless, I feel. Andrion is a proper little prig, and that Sabazian basilisk with him.”

  The crisp gray eyes opened, considered Chrysais’s knotted fists, closed again. “I should not underestimate Andrion’s intelligence.”

  “No. Neither shall I underestimate his power.”

  The eyes opened again. Eldrafel propped his chin on his hands. “Power? He knows something of sorcery?”

  “He wears a necklace, a crescent moon with a star at its tip, that murmurs very faintly.” She paced across the tile floor to where a chest squatted beyond the light ring of the hanging lamp. From it she removed a cloth-wrapped bundle. “I cannot understand,” she muttered, resuming an argument abandoned without conclusion, “why it took you so much longer to sail from Sardis. They have arrived right on your heels. I thought we would have more time.”

  “Winds,” Eldrafel said. “Foul for us, fair for them. I expected such.” He stretched. If he had been a cat, he would have exercised his claws.

  “Winds are winds,” spat Chrysais.

  “Are they?” He sat up. “Bring it here.”

  She brought the bundle to the bed and laid it down. She laid herself down, draping herself over Eldrafel’s back, her arms like vines twining about his torso. He did not notice, intent upon the object he held.

  The wrappings fell away. The shield of Sabazel covered his knees. His fingertips traced a slow spiral around the emblazoned star, stirring the metal like clay to be shaped to his will. But the shield lay dull and cold, its rim seeming to shrink from the male body leaning over it.

  “See,” said Chrysais, her cheek against Eldrafel’s shoulder, “it is as I told you, reluctant to reveal its power.”

  His polished nails, like opals, drummed upon the metal. It emitted a remote tinny jangle. “Yet it bears great power,” he mused. And he laughed. “It reserves its strength, does it not? It does not like me. It does not like you.”