Tembujin swung in beside her and barely avoided colliding with a hanging lamp. His eye fell on a gold box spilling jewels across a tabletop inlaid with ivory; amethyst and turquoise winked duskily. “Ah, may I do some shopping? Valeria would look lovely in turquoise.”
“No,” Dana snapped, whether at the mention of his wife—whose jewelry was a sign of her husband’s power, not her own—or because of the sudden chill, she had no wish to analyze. But Tembujin subsided instantly, even he sensing the odor of sorcery.
Two gigantic vases stood guarding a rising stairway. It must lead to the tower. Dana picked her way across the floor tiles. Their complex patterns seemed to shift and swirl beneath her feet, and her head spun. But that insistent keening in her mind spurred her on. If the shield was there, she would find it.
The door was not bolted. The latch was so cold her flesh clung to it; she jerked her hand away. Pushing on the wooden door itself, Dana and Tembujin stepped shoulder to shoulder inside the tower room.
A blast of blue-white light greeted them. Not lightning; it came from inside the room, as if the chamber were the heart of a cool quicksilver star. Dana felt a force pushing her back, like the blackness that had knocked her down the night the shield was stolen. But this was blindingly bright.
Floor, ceiling, walls were obliterated. She staggered, and the high note in her mind shrieked. Tembujin’s strong hands clasped her waist and steadied her. “It is already fading,” he said. “Stand still.”
Giddy, she forced herself to shelter behind his body as he stood square, squinting against the light; he seemed to feel no threatening force. And the light did fade. A large black rectangle swelled up, inhaled the brilliance, and became a huge tapestry held upright on a wooden frame.
Dana’s dazzled eyes could not quite focus on the cloth; it shimmered darkly, flowing away from her gaze. Shaking herself, testing her footing, she turned to the rest of the now dim and hazy room.
She saw a small shrine holding a winged bull of greenish-black nephrite. Beside it stood a sardonyx male figure, arms looped proprietarily around the massive neck. Brass incense burners, their flames tiny remnants of the consuming light, emitted a wavering mist. The wooden floor was littered with baskets piled high with yarn, colors blending one into another like still-fluid dyes.
Tembujin was inspecting the tapestry. “Does it not try to escape you?” Dana asked.
“What?”
She elbowed him aside and stared fixedly at it, willing it to display itself for her. It was not a stretched piece of linen like Sumitra’s embroidered tapestry. It was loosely woven netting, starched into a stiff grid, many, but not all of its gaps filled with stitches in a multiplicity of shadings. Sumitra’s efforts, skilled as they were, seemed like twine and rags compared with this.
Because, Dana told herself, this was sorcerous. The incense burners with their heady odor of lethenderum could not mask that distinctive reek. And there were no other lamps, no source for the bright light.
Images were scattered seemingly at random across the netting. Dana recognized Iksandarun, Sardis, Sabazel. Her fists clenched, she recognized the shield. There was the galley spinning helplessly in the whirlpool, there was Solifrax lying among the rabid rocks. There were knives, ropes, a draped altar, a bull brandishing its horns—and pigs rooting in purple muck. Purple Dana understood, but pigs?
The stitched faces of the various human figures were quite familiar—Bonifacio, Ilanit, Niarkos—their expressions frozen like hares suddenly caught in a trap. The fabric seemed to hum, on a note approaching but too shrill to harmonize with the keening of the shield.
“I do not like this,” Dana said between her teeth. “The images are too accurate and too vague; they remind me of old stories better left forgotten. And the cloth itself—it sings.”
“Sings?” Tembujin coughed and tried to brush away the clinging tendrils of smoke. “What concerns me are the spaces left in the pattern. It is not complete.”
Dana drew her dagger and poked tentatively at the edge of the tapestry. A spear of black fire darted out like a serpent’s tongue and knocked the weapon clattering across the floor.
Lightning flashed outside, filling the irregular windows with a white light, which while startling, was less bright than the blue flare inside the room. Thunder reverberated down the sky, through the bricks and tile of the palace, and shuddered in the living stone of Minras itself. The tapestry flapped. The floor heaved. The yarn sword and shield, cities and sea, swam before Dana’s eyes, the stitches curling and snugging themselves tighter into their assigned images. The fabric swelled larger and larger, as if to devour the room, the shrine, the mortal creatures standing before it.
Dana’s courage was sucked from her body and her every fiber thrilled with terror. Tembujin swore, his breath ragged. As one they spun toward the open door.
Eldrafel leaned against the doorpost, framed in lightning and shadow, toying with Dana’s dagger. He flipped it. It sailed in a smooth arc through the air and landed upright in the floor, quivering, a finger’s width from her foot. Smiling, he purred, “I beg your pardon. I do not believe we have been properly introduced.”
Chapter Eight
All the way from the palace into the town Andrion could hardly sit still. Not only did he feel sure he was waiting for an axe to fall, he hated palanquins, hated being toted about like a helpless infant. And in this one he was gagged by Chrysais’s lotus perfume, like her manner so rich and overblown as to verge on decadent.
The palanquin stopped. He shook off Chrysais’s overly familiar hand—that, oddly, now wore a bandage—and dove through the curtains into air that was by contrast fresh. “By all the gods!” he exclaimed, staring aghast at the scene before him.
There were his soldiers and sailors engaged in a free-for-all with what must have been the dregs of Orocastrian society. The courtyard of the disreputable inn seethed with engorged faces and flailing limbs; a trail of broken pottery led inside. Niarkos stood in the doorway, a cup dangling from his brawny hand like a flower from the limp fingers of a courtesan, his mouth hanging open, his eyes glazed. The scrabbling Sardians were similarly bleary. Andrion grimaced; they were not even giving a particularly good account of themselves. Were they drunk?
Chrysais anticipated Andrion’s question. “We lodged them in a decent hostel. They must have come here wanting cheap beer or cheaper women.”
Andrion shot her an exasperated glare. She had the grace not to grin until his back was almost, but not quite, turned. A sailor landed in a bloody bundle at his feet, almost knocking him into the churned and filthy straw, the scummed puddles staining the courtyard.
Harus! Andrion swore to himself. These were all good men, handpicked for trustworthiness, acting like swine! Why?
The shouts had attracted quite a crowd, dark eager faces peering out of pillared galleries and around corners, pointing at the Sardians and laughing. Andrion bent and picked up the man at his feet, reprimands bubbling on his lips. The sailor shoved him aside and plunged back into the fray.
Clamping his jaw tight, quelling the desire to pretend the squabblers had no relation to him, Andrion summoned Niarkos. And summoned him again, gesturing with brusque irritation before the man responded. Pulling himself out of some deep morass, the admiral stumbled through the tumult, stood slant-shouldered before Andrion, gazed at his feet with furrowed brow and slack lips and said, “Ah …”
Andrion’s irritation froze, his reprimands popped and dissipated. Niarkos could not even speak, let alone recognize his emperor. Mere drunkenness could not explain that.
Chrysais leaned from the silk hangings of the palanquin and trilled, “I must return to the palace. Here, these guards shall stay to escort you. And you might need this.” She threw him a small purse, the coins inside jangling wildly. Andrion caught it with one hand. Burly slaves hoisted the palanquin. Chrysais blew Andrion a kiss before the curtains concealed her damp, glowing face and supercilious smile.
The soldiers designated to
wait stood clumped together, leaning upon their spears, watching Andrion and his men as if they were the most entertaining troupe to play Orocastria for months. Several men who were undoubtedly the local constabulary strolled into sight and without undue haste began to separate the combatants. From their sneering asides, from the quick shoves and kicks they allotted to the Sardians, Andrion knew that the strangers had already been convicted of causing the disturbance.
He ground his teeth. His grasp could easily have melted the coins he held. As he glowered at the miscreants who were his men, he noticed, mingled with the odors of garbage and animals and filth, another smell, faint but unmistakable. Sorcery, of course; he was not surprised. Minras so reeked of sorcery that he actually grew accustomed to it.
He was, he thought, saturated with it, like sweat beading on every tiny hair and shivering with awareness… . His necklace stung his throat. It was all he could do to keep from crying out. A buzzing like a swarm of bees stirred his mind and then clarified into a high, sustained chime. A double chime, rather, a chord, the combined singing of sword and shield.
Every fiber in Andrion’s body fired with recognition. For a moment he was conscious only of the notes of music, evocative, compelling, urgent. They were close by, then, waiting for him.
With an effort he awoke. Someone was looking at him. Looking at him more closely, that is, than everyone else. It was the tavern owner, judging by the grease and ale smearing his great round belly; his crumpled kilt barely clung to his loins beneath its protuberance. The man’s grimy face was set in a fawning smile.
With a crack of his spine Andrion unfurled his full height. He handed the man several coins and pointedly waited for change. He just as pointedly did not apologize for the now dispirited group of Sardians.
The tavern owner returned a few coins and bowed, not so much to the purple cloak as to the bearing of its wearer.
With a curt nod of thanks, Andrion looked around. His men were being led away. He collared the leading constable, demanding to know where they were going. “Drunk and disorderly,” the man said. “The penalty is thirty days’ servitude.” He began to sneer, but Andrion’s incendiary glare cauterized his expression and left it a dyspeptic grimace.
An emperor’s orders would count for nothing here, Andrion told himself. Save your breath. Writhing inside, he shouldered his embarrassment and his rage and followed the constables and their prisoners down the street. Did the catcalls of the Minrans die away as he passed, or were they simply filtered through the maddening hum in his mind? It did not matter.
His escort of soldiers grudgingly tagged along behind; they had expected him, it seemed, to abandon his men and return to the palace, especially when he discovered that the sentence was to be carried out in the miasma of the dye works. But even if these were not his men, shambling with dazed, bloodshot eyes like beaten animals, like pigs, he was still responsible for them.
The softness of the purse clutched in his hand barely concealed the hardness of the metal it contained; Chrysais’s body, Andrion thought, would feel like that. And he thought how odd it was that the day could be so close and humid yet not really hot, but chill. The leaden sky was a black avalanche poised to fall upon the island and inundate it. The air trembled with a frenzied expectancy, as if something rushed irrevocably to its conclusion. The necklace thrilled against his skin.
*
Chrysais swept into Sumitra’s cell, crooning, “Oh, my dear sister!”
That was fast, Sumitra thought. She forced her eyes away from Chrysais’s bosom to her face and laid down the pomegranate on which she had been nibbling. Nothing really tasted good here. The tension in the air, not to mention its accompanying reek, was stifling.
“My dear,” Chrysais continued. “I just discovered you were here. Poor powerless women that we are, our men never tell us anything.”
Do they not? Sumitra submitted gingerly to an effusive embrace, hoping none of Chrysais’s paint and powder would rub off on her.
With an elaborate sigh Chrysais settled herself on Sumi’s narrow bed. “Married to men that others choose for us. What can we do but what we are told? I do hope, Sumitra, you were not discomfited by your journey here.”
“Not at all,” Sumi said, at last given a chance to speak. She sat back down. At her knee the canvas bundle remained mute.
“You see,” confided Chrysais, “my new husband has ambitions. It was he who brought you here, as part of a much greater plan.”
“Eldrafel,” Sumi stated. She could not help but wonder what it was like to sleep with something that beautiful and that cold.
Chrysais’s bandaged fingers toyed with a small sardonyx figurine hung about her neck. “As a dutiful wife I must do his bidding, of course, but how I hate to see my dear brother Andrion bereft of his helpmeet.”
“Mm,” said Sumitra. Get to the point, part of her mind said. Another part of her mind was fascinated, like a bird charmed by a snake.
Chrysais flirted with the point, her sweet voice dropping into a cajoling, soothing timbre. “You could free yourself, Sumitra. You could be on the next ship back to Sardis. Eldrafel asks only a small task in return.” She shrugged, embarrassed at participating in schemes much too elevated for her pretty little head.
“Ransom?” asked Sumi. She brushed her long sable hair away from her face.
Immediately Chrysais was on her feet, reaching for the comb. “Here, let me help you.” She began awkwardly coiling the thick waves.
“No, please, not to bother. Rue was fixing it but I sent her to bring you to me.”
Chrysais’s hands tightened, yanking Sumi’s hair, and she gasped. “You sent her—” Chrysais said, and then caught herself. “Ah, yes, so I should help you now, should I not?”
Between her teeth Sumi muttered some assent. She ordered herself to watch her tongue. Obviously Rue had delivered no message.
“My husband the king,” Chrysais went on, “wants to see the magic of the legendary sword Solifrax and the famed shield of Sabazel. He, being a magician of some note, wants to make similar weapons for himself. If you will show him their power, he will send you back with them. Very simple.”
Not at all. The man was a sorcerer, practicing evil, not the beneficent magic of the gods; Sumitra would bet on that. Bracing herself, she asked, “Why do you not ask Andrion to show you the power in the sword?”
Again the jerk on her hair. But Chrysais, she had to admit, recovered very quickly. “Would you not like, my dear, to free him too?”
Good, Sumitra said to herself, let us forget pretense. She glanced in the mirror and grimaced at the rags and tags Chrysais had made of her hair. “Of course I would like to free him. But the sword is his, not mine. The shield does not belong to either of us. I can do nothing with them.”
Chrysais threw down the comb, dragged the bundle from under the table, and stripped the wrappings. The weapons were silent in her hands. Sumi was almost amused to see the expression on the other woman’s face, the mask of feminine inanity worn thin, revealing the strength of will and the greed beneath. Whose scheme was it, hers or Eldrafel’s? Did she, too, practice sorcery?
“Eldrafel knows that they speak to you.” Chrysais’s sweetness grew tart, resentful that she had to resort to something so coarse as a threat. “He might well destroy these pretty baubles if you will not reveal their secrets. Where would Andrion be then? Where Sabazel?”
The name of that small country was a hiss in her voice. Sumitra shivered, and despite herself reached protectively to the shield. Its surface swirled beneath her fingertips, and the sword chimed. Sumi started back, for a brief moment irritated at their betrayal. But they must have a reason for revealing themselves.
Chrysais smiled, with her eyes as well as with her crimson mouth. “Good. Shall I leave you to work with them?”
Sumitra folded her hands in her lap, so tightly her knuckles glinted white. She compressed her lips, refusing to speak.
“Think on it,” purred Chrysais. “You are m
uch too intelligent not to appreciate your situation. And that of your child.”
Still Sumitra did not speak. With an aggravated sigh Chrysais stalked out and slammed the door behind her, leaving Sumi to embroider her threats with any number of horrifying embellishments. And yet there had to be a plan in it, the gods had to have a plan.
Sumitra drew the sword and considered it. It rang, and flared so brightly that her shadow went lunging up the far wall of the room.
*
The serving-woman Rue moved silently, strewing fragrant chamomile on the floor, lighting lamps that struggled feebly against the leaden daylight, bringing a large brass tray and setting it next to the bed.
Eldrafel lounged among the pillows, the pleats of his purple kilt arranged on his thighs. A band around his arm shone tauntingly, the wings of an embossed bull rippling with power. “Would you like spiced honey wine? Elder wine? A brew of roasted beans that we call kahveh?”
Tembujin sat curved like a bow in his chair, arms and legs crossed negligently, eyes black suspicious beads. Dana sat bolt upright, her hands clasped on her knees, jaw thrust forward. Her emerald gaze followed Rue about the room with such harsh accusation that at last the woman looked up and cringed. But her bearing, that of a child stubbornly sure she has done no wrong, did not corrode.
Eldrafel’s brows tilted upward, interested. He beckoned Rue to sit beside him and serve from the tray. For himself he chose the pale elder wine. With a quick shared glance, Tembujin and Dana took the same.
Eldrafel drank, watching Dana over his golden cup. He, too, was golden—hair, beard, body—except for the odd silver eyes. Something moved in those eyes, some remote shadow, a nuance of purpose. His lashes heavy, he let his lips linger on the rim of the cup. Dana’s viscera melted. She crossed her knees and knotted her ankles. No, she said fiercely to herself and to him, I feel nothing. Except dirty.
Tembujin frowned at this play. “An interesting tapestry,” he said, somewhat too loudly.
“My wife has clever hands,” returned Eldrafel.
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